1. So Bernie released his criminal justice plan today, and it is... underwhelming.

It’s long on proposals—some good!—but so completely devoid of specifics as to say very little.

Also, has some strange errors that suggest a weak understanding of things.

berniesanders.com/justice-and-sa…
2. Like this error. In 2006, the last year we have data, states and counties spent $4.5B on indigent defense; the Feds just a fraction of that.

Unless Bernie is proposing to completely federalize indigent defense spending, that triple-to-$14B... isn’t possible.
3. Or this “particularly high at the county level.”

At what other level does pretrial detention take place? Maybe it’s state-level in... Connecticut, which has a unified system? But jail IS a county-level policy.

It’s the sort of gaffe that suggests a weak grasp on details.
4. And that permeates the proposal. He wants to get rid of excessive fines and fees to fund the local systems. Great! Fines and fees are a big issue.

How?

He’ll “incentivize” them. Somehow.

Which is hard, bc locals themselves barely understand how they use fine and fees.
5. He wants to make sure people have housing. Great! Housing instability def contributes to recidivism.

How? He’ll... guarantee it. Does this mean repealing limits on who is eligible for public housing, expanding the stock of housing, elim one-strike laws even for relatives?
6. This often doesn’t cleanly distinguish between what he would do at Fed level (which may still require difficult legislation) vs changes he’d like to make at state levels (which... harder still).

Like these: all fine, none could be imposed on states, that drive juvie system.
7. To his credit, towards the end, he brings up thinking abt violence and how survivors of violence are less punitive than we think. Good!

And Cure Violence. Good!

But again, most proposals are generic, and this comes at the end of a long proposal—many won’t get this far.
8. And, unsurprisingly, Sanders starts his proposal by attacking private prisons and private firms, and never really ever talks abt how the public sector is actually worse (except to mention prison gerrymandering, which: good).

Sanders is a true believer abt privates.
9. This proposal does a decent job a laying out the PROBLEMS, but it falls way short on the solutions.

Lots of “I’ll incentivize” without details.

“I’ll fund” without numbers (or number that are wrong).

Often blurs fed and non-fed issues.

There are a lot of red flags.

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More from @JohnFPfaff

May 13, 2023
Fair—it wasn’t right of me to say that the “we’re being silence” intellectual-dark-web McKinsey-is-too-woke types are annoyed solely over their inability to state certain racial views publicly.

They’re also annoyed they can’t dehumanize trans ppl openly too.
But it is fair, and not cynical at all, to point out that a HUGE chunk of what the “forbidden knowledge” types complain about boils down to not being able to openly dehumanize certain marginalized groups.

Thus their need for safe-space echo-chambers in which to do so.
Like I said when it came to opera-watch SCOTUS buddies, I can be friends and politely debate anyone over tax policy or the goals of punishment.

The “I don’t want to hear it” only comes up when they start making it clear that they don’t see certain ppl as full ppl.
Read 4 tweets
May 4, 2023
I’d add, without sarcasm: I think I see a way to push for SCOTUS retirement.

Congress surely CAN pass a law saying that justices can receive $0.00 in royalties, honoraria, etc while in office. Prob can limit above-market returns on housing sales, etc.

Wanna cash in? Retire.
It’s clear that outside payments—whether direct cash payments or cozy “teaching” gigs overseas or sudden land sales—are a non-trivial form of SCOTUS compensation.

A chunk unprotected by Art III.

Cut that off, maybe lifetime employment is less appealing.
“Won’t that reduce the quality of ppl who apply?”

1. The what now?
2. Short terms as a philosopher-king followed by big bucks? Think lots of quality ppl will be fine with that.

“What abt the incentive to look to that future payment?”

They’re getting paid NOW. ON the job.
Read 5 tweets
May 4, 2023
If this is the best The Daily Wire can come up with, then it looks like the liberal justices are pretty clean.

How did the DW learn abt the $3M?

From Sotomayor DECLARING IT ON HER DISCLOSURE FORMS. ImageImage
Sotomayor was in full compliance w the Court’s (pathetically-nonexistent) recusal rules.

Thomas and Gorsuch were out of compliance with the Court’s (anemic) disclosure rules.

These are … not remotely the same thing.
Obviously, maybe some other shoe will drop, Thomas-and-Gorsuch style, for a Dem appointee.

But this rushed effort to force a both-sides—which reflects how indefensible Thomas’s growing misreports are—is not that.
Read 6 tweets
May 4, 2023
I’m not saying that the causal story here isn’t true, but I feel like at this point we should basically just ignore studies that are purely correlational with—AFAICT here—absolutely NO identification strategy beyond “we control for confounders.”
Like, this is an issue where reverse causation is really, really plausible—the vulnerability to schizophrenia CAUSES the self-medicating use of marijuana. Which makes correlational-only so so risky.

And that it may align w other such studies tells us nothing, if all are biased.
Given all the alleged benefits of weed, it shouldn’t be hard to create an ethically sound RCT that simultaneously tracks for these sorts of risks.

They did it for Vioxx with heart risk. Surely can do for weed.
Read 4 tweets
May 3, 2023
Thread, on the murder--it was a murder--of a homeless man on the F train this week: on how we have consistently failed to provide adequate services, disrupted effective self-support the homeless have devised in their absence, and thru it all dehumanized them.

To lethal effect.
The coverage of this, from every source, has made the consistent, deadly, dehumanizing error of equating disorder with danger.

The claims of "threatening behavior" are simply asserted, although nothing I've read suggests he *actually threatened* anyone.
Can it be somewhat scary when someone in a mental health crisis acts erratically on the train? Sure.

But the time between stops on the F in Manhattan is ~1 minute. If you're scared, that's more than enough time to just ... change cars at the next station.
Read 6 tweets
May 3, 2023
This is why I always disliked those allegedly heart-warming stories abt how the justices were all chummy across the aisle.

Why would you want to go to the opera with someone so openly racist as this? (And no: this isn’t funny, or sarcastic, or anything. It’s just racist.)
Moreover, by going to the opera w Scalia rather than shaming him, those who went w him failed to impose any costs for this racist behavior, despite being among the few anywhere who could. Which only likely encouraged him more.

(This applies to his takes on homosexuality too.)
Also, honestly? If you could go and laugh and have fun with someone who thought like this, it makes me wonder about the seriousness of one’s commitment to the rights of Blacks or gays.

How was this sort of thinking not repulsive on a personal level?
Read 7 tweets

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