Maybe it’s a ploy to get the minority vote. Maybe it’s part of a new angle at changing the way the GOP has been looked at recently. Whatever it is, Rand Paul is determined to introduce a bill this week, that as he says:
??if it comes forward, would allow somewhere between a half a million people, to a million people, to get the right to vote back.?
Of course the numbers that the junior U.S. Senator for Kentucky is talking about, would come from those convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. In a move that Paul hopes will help him reach the minority community, he was interviewed Sunday on Meet The Press, where he also had this to say:
?Three out of four people in prison are black or brown for nonviolent drug use. However, when you do surveys, white kids are doing drugs at an equal rate, and they are a much bigger part of the population. So why are the prisons full of black and brown kids? It is easier to arrest them. It is easier to convict them. They don’t get as good of attorneys.?
While the comments regarding the ease of conviction, and the less than stellar attorneys that these ?black and brown kids? receive would provide plenty of newsworthy material on their own, Rand Paul seems on the verge of opening up these topics for debate on his own.
As it stands, the Sentencing Project estimates that ?5.8-million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony conviction.?
While it will be interesting to see how Mr. Paul’s GOP brothers will feel about this, he made sure to make his intentions clear with this statement:
?The war on drugs has had a racial outcome, unintentionally, but it has a racial outcome. And I want to try to fix it.?
Unintentional? He honestly wants to fix it? You be the judge.
Watch the video below. Let us know your thoughts at the Liberal America Facebook page.
edited by tw
