Washington Free Beacon: Matthew Continetti: 'Bernie Sanders Fossil Socialism'

Source:Washington Free Beacon- U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Democratic Socialist, Socialist Republic of Vermont)

Source:The New Democrat

In an era where the Democratic Party and New-Left have been about class and identity politics and protecting this group, or that group, or members of groups from any possible critique in the name of political correctness, you have a self-described Democratic Socialist, unlike most of his supporters, even though he is about as far to the left as anyone can be in America short of being a Marxist, stand up as the voice of moderation. Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist, who is the voice of reason and moderation. Even though ideologically he is about as Far-Left as most of his supporters.

With Bernie Sanders, you don’t get so-called, “White people, are bigots and bad by in large. And the only ones that are good come from, or were educated in the Northeast, or West Coast” and share their worldview. You don’t get that “American capitalism is a bad thing and it is what is ruining America and making the rest of the world poor.” You don’t get that, “America, is the real terrorist state and terrorists. And we are the real bad guys in the world.” Or that, “individual choice and competition are bad things.” Or that, “middle class Americans are under taxed.” Or that, “private ownership of the media is a bad thing.” And I could go on, but you do hear this, garbage, over at MSNBC and publications as far to the left as their talk lineup.

Matt Continetti, made a good point in his piece about Senator Sanders. Talking about the message that Senator Sanders gave when he announced for president. That government should work for everybody and not just the wealthy. That health care should be a right and not a privilege, that we need a huge investment in infrastructure. That college should available and affordable to all Americans. His message for the most part was positive and reaches a lot of Americans. But then go to MSNBC’s Chris Hays, who might qualify as a Far-Left radical in Sweden, who said that Sanders missed a big opportunity. By not talking quality for transgender people, racial minorities, women and everything else that the Far-Left in America spends most of their focus on now.

On one side you had a U.S. Senator announcing for president who has been in Congress for twenty-four years, representing Vermont in both the House and now Senate. Who knows how Congress works about as anyone who is currently in Congress. Whose chaired a committee and is now the Ranking Member on the Senate Budget Committee. Whose passed a lot of legislation on his own and has his hands on a lot of the legislation that has passed Congress in the last six years that has been signed by President Obama. Because he knows how the system works. He knows how to govern and work with other people. Which is what moderation is about.

And on the other side, you have someone and his followers and colleagues over at MSNBC and a whole host of Far-Left publications, who have very little if any experience in government, especially Congress, who’ve spent very little time outside of Washington, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, traditional Far-Left areas of the country. Critiquing Senator Sanders for not being the class warrior and race baiter and spending his speech speaking up for groups that they feel deserve special treatment from government.

Bernie Sanders, is a radical by most political standards in America. He’s not dangerous, or a bad person by any definition. The opposites are true, but he’s radical because of what size and role he would give the U.S. Government. And yet, he’s moderate and even centrist compared with his supporters on the Far-Left and the Tea Party on the Right.

Washington Free Beacon: Matthew Continetti: The Old New Europe'

Source:The New Democrat

Look I'm not crazy about President Obama's foreign policy right now either. Just three years ago and even through 2012 I thought I had a pretty good idea about what it was. What is called the Obama Doctrine speech from early 2011 laid out clearly what the Obama foreign policy at least was then. And was built on what is called Soft Power. Which means you are strong which includes military, diplomacy and economically so you don't have to use that strength. Meaning you are so strong that other countries would be crazy to want to mess with you.

Another part of Soft Power has to do with when you use your strength. The obvious one being when you are under attack by either another country or some terrorist group. Or when another country is protecting terrorists that just hit you. Which is the reason why we invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because the then Taliban Afghan Regime was protecting terrorists in their country that were part of the 9/11 attacks. And another being you use force when your allies are under attack and do not have the resources to defend themselves. As we saw with Britain in World War II.

The third one is trickier and a hell of a lot more controversial than just the second one. Which has to do with what do you do when innocent people are being murdered especially by their own government. As we are still seeing in Syria and as we saw in Libya in 2010/11. Do you but out and say "that is none of our business what countries do to their own people". Even if you can do something constructive about it. Or do you act and say the "developed world or West will not sit on our hands and watch innocent people being murdered".

But again Soft Power is not just about military force. There are strong diplomatic and economic components to it as well so you never have to use the military to intervene in the first place. Under Soft Power military is always the last option. With Neoconservatives it tends to be first if not the only. With Liberals and Soft Power is a liberal foreign policy military force is generally the last option. Because you only want to risk the lives of your military when you have to. So you take advantage of all of your diplomatic and economic options first .

In the first term except as it related to Syria I thought President Obama and his National Security Council had this policy down. But lately it seems to be that they are worried about disasters and things blowing up in their faces so much which makes it very difficult to act on anything controversial. So what we see instead from this President is inaction. That "it is better to not act and rick some situation blowing up in our faces then to act and making the situation worst". Which is not Soft Power or Hard Power, but No Power and it makes America look weak as we've seen with Russia with their actions against Ukraine.

Washington Free Beacon: Elizabeth Harrington: Tea Party Celebrates Five-Year Anniversary

Source:The New Democrat

To talk and think about the Tea Party, you have to know the state of the Republican Party in late 2008 and early 2009, when they were basically shut out of power at the Federal level, facing a new Democratic President with Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress, both House and Senate. To speak positively about the Tea Party for a minute, they were the energy that a badly damaged Republican Party, thanks to the Bush/Cheney Administration, needed to wake up and get back into the fight, not only with issues but also with rhetoric and an agenda to take on Obama Democrats.

To be real about it, we would probably be looking at not only a Democratic administration but probably also a Democratic Congress in both chambers right now, with Democrats still controlling a majority of governorships and legislatures, because the GOP was in debt. However, the corporate-funded Tea Party groups gave the GOP the resources that it needed to get back in the game politically and put many races that wouldn't have been competitive otherwise in play for Republicans to not only take on Democratic incumbents but also to beat them and beat them handily.

The Super Bowl for the Tea Party was November 2010 election day, when the GOP won back the House of Representatives with 62 seats but didn't win back the Senate because of their oddball Tea Party candidates, to put it lightly. It picked up six seats in the Senate, giving Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a large minority to be able to obstruct the hell out of Senate Democrats and the Obama Administration and gave the Republican Party a majority of governorships and state legislatures.

That is really where the story ends positively for the Tea Party and the broader Republican Party because the Tea Party is not representative of America as a whole, coming primarily from the South and rural America and older Anglo-Protestant stock in a country that is diverse racially and ethnically and becoming more diverse every day, where many of these Americans see the Democratic Party as diverse and tolerant, unlike the GOP.

In 2012 the Tea Party was a negative factor and, if anything, held them down as badly as President George W. Bush held them down in 2006 and in 2008, even though the GOP was able to hold onto the House. President Obama was reelected in an Electoral College landslide and again because of the Tea Party and some of their oddball candidates (Todd Akin comes to mind) pretty quickly trying to run statewide in swing States, Senate Democrats not only held onto the Senate with vulnerable incumbents, but picked up two seats as well.

We still have the 2014 mid-terms, but we are already seeing establishment Republicans now not afraid to take on the GOP, like Governor Jan Brewer in Arizona or former Tea Party candidates like Governor Chris Christie in New Jersey.  This suggests that the strength of the Tea Party peaked in 2010 and since the fall of 2011, they've been sliding, with 2012 almost a wasted election for the Republican Party, an election they should have won easily. We are seeing the adults in the Republican Party take over, charting a new course for the GOP. 

Washington Free Beacon: Andrew Evans: 'Taking on Crime'

Source:Washington Free Beacon- with a look inside a Texas prison.

"Conservatives push for criminal justice system reform, say it saves money while reducing crime

Texas faced a choice in 2007: spend billions on new prisons to house its convicts or find creative ways to deal with criminals in the state.

State leaders chose the second option, and Texas’ reforms, which have been championed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, have become the model for a conservative movement to reform the criminal justice system.

The Texas foundation started the "Right on Crime" project in 2010; its "statement of principles" has attracted support from conservative public policy heads like Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Grover Norquist.

"It’s one of the more exciting things I’ve worked on," Norquist said.

Right on Crime promotes reforming the criminal justice system by following conservative "first principles" of individual accountability and measured results, said Right on Crime policy analyst Vikrant Reddy.

The group supports transparent and innovative approaches to reforming the system for nonviolent offenders while reducing incarceration, promoting victim restoration, and reintegrating criminals into their communities.

The program’s supporters say Texas is the marquee example of what can happen when states apply the approaches proposed by Right on Crime.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, Texas saved almost $2 billion by diverting some of the resources from building prisons to treatment and other programs.

The criminal justice system is the second fastest area of budget growth for states, said Pat Nolan, a senior vice president for Prison Fellowship, which is cooperating with the Texas Public Policy Foundation on the project.

Norquist said conservatives, who oppose waste in many government programs, ignored waste in the defense and police budgets because those are traditional areas of government work.

Prisons especially were "blowing huge holes" in state budgets, Nolan said.

Much of this spending came in response to the crime wave in the 1970s and 1980s. For years, Republicans pursued a "lock them up, throw away the key" approach to criminals, said Right on Crime spokesman Brendan Steinhauser.

But crime has dropped since the 1990s and the federal government and states now need a new set of policies, said Eli Lehrer, president of the think tank R Street and one of the original signers of the Right on Crime statement of principles.

"The right policy for right now is pretty much embodied in the Right on Crime statement of principles," he said.

Many states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina have implemented prison reform similar to Right on Crime’s policy proposals.

Fiscal constraints are not the only force pushing states toward Right on Crime’s reforms. Its proponents also point toward the effect the reforms are having on crime rates.

According to Pew, parole failure in Texas has dropped 39 percent and crime is at its lowest level since the 1960s since the reforms were instituted in 2007.

"We can make real progress and effectively reduce crime and recidivism while not spending boatloads of money," Norquist said.

Texas is not alone in its success. Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (or HOPE) is also reducing incarceration while helping drug offenders stay clean. HOPE subjects the criminals to regular drug testing with the threat of immediate, short-term incarceration if they fail.

Nolan heaped praise on the HOPE program and its results: new crimes dropped by half, while both positive drug tests and missed probation appointments dropped by two-thirds when compared to other probationary programs, he said.

Reducing incarceration can also help keep nonviolent offenders from turning violent, Nolan said.

Prison can change prisoners and make them "antisocial" when they have to reintegrate into society, he said.

"There are ways to hold them accountable in the community," he said, but this effort will require a strong network of support in the local communities. Nolan pointed again to Texas as a good example, saying the state has worked to strengthen its community mental health and drug programs.

"If nobody’s there to catch them, they’ll fall through the cracks," Nolan said.

Reintegration into society after their punishments conclude can also pose a problem, said Reddy.

Criminals’ records loom over them and make it much harder to find a job, creating a "situation where society has effectively incentivized incarceration," Reddy said.

"That’s a really sick situation," he said." 

From the Washington Free Beacon

I like the Right on Crime approach as Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist call it. That if you are a Conservative one of the principles of conservatism, is to judge the results of investments that you make in government at tax payers expense and corrections and prisons are a government operation. 

Since corrections fall under a key area of responsibility for government, especially for state government's, then we want to have corrections systems that are the most effective and affordable possible. Instead of judging prisons and law enforcement by how many people we arrest every year and how many people are part of the criminal-justice system. 

We need to judge prisons as taxpayers who are paying for them, by who needs to be there and what prisons are for and how we finance them and what we are getting form the money that we spend. If there's a good thing thats come from the Great Recession and the slow economic and job-growth since, it's that its forced governments to reexamine how they spend tax payer funds and forcing them to look for savings wherever possible. Instead of judging law-enforcement and criminal-justice based on how much we spend on it.

The best way to save money on our criminal-justice system is to look at how we treat nonviolent-offenders who do not represent a major threat to the economy. And how we treat inmates that we need to have in prison, who are violent-offenders and how we treat our mentally-ill inmates and get them in the institutions where they need to be and not in prison.: 

so for example we shouldn't  be sending nonviolent-offenders who do not represent a major threat to the economy to prison in the first place. Especially drug-offenders, users primarily and get these people in private drug-rehab clinics and halfway-houses instead at their expense. 

And our nonviolent-offenders who aren't drug-offenders and again aren't major threats to the economy. Shoplifters to use as an example, have them to their time in county-jail and get them in halfway-houses at their expense. Where they can be covering their living-expenses.

The reason why we have so many people in prison, is because of the War on Drugs and how we treat nonviolent-offenders, who aren't drug-offenders, as well as all of the inmates who end up back in prison after being released. These are the inmates that we should be targeting and make sure they are where they need to be and are prepared for life on the outside before they are released.

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