Miami, Comfort Inn, Tuesday, 1995-12-19 18:00 local (Z-5)
Back on the road again, again in Miami for a freighter run to Buenos Aires, again getting delayed. The delay is now up to 24 hours, which means I could have stayed at home another day (big sigh!).
I had a great 12 days at home. Got a lot done, much of it in understanding the internet and the World Wide Web. I even learned how to construct a home page on the web. So, for those of you who have a web browser, you may visit my home page at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/t_liittschwager. Don't expect much, this was just a first effort to see if I could do it. There's no graphics, and having it on compuserve makes it a little slow as they haven't got their internet link all worked out yet.
I also figured out that once you're on the net, the mail server address that you assert doesn't have to have anything to do with your logon address. That's really convenient for me. That means I can log on to compuserve and pick up my compuserve email and ALSO the email at efn.org.
While I was home, the Eugene Register Guard published an editorial on 1985-12-09 entitled “Prison boom must end”. Part of it is below:
Many lack the vocal range to sing the refrain of The Star Spangled Banner, “O'er the land of the free...” Now that part of the national anthem will be hard to sing for another reason: The United States keeps a greater proportion of its people behind bars than any other country. Last year the incarceration rate in the land of the free surpassed Russia's. The nation will pay for this disturbing distinction in many ways, and for years to come.
Plainly, a shift in focus is needed. It can begin with an understanding that the incarceration boom is largely a drug boom. Sixty percent of federal inmates were serving time for drugs offenses in 1993, compared with 25 percent in 1980. It's time to admit that the nation can't put its drug problem behind bars. The solutions lie more in the direction of treatment, education and job training—all of which are expensive, but not as expensive as prison.
I couldn't resist. I wrote the following letter to the editor, and was very surprised when they printed it without change except for using italics rather than caps for MUCH GREATER and using the normal font for the first occurrence of “drug war”, which I had put in caps. They've made it convenient to send letters to them by now having an email address, which I used. It is, in case any one else is interested, rgletters@aol.com.
I commend you for an editorial of Dec. 9, “Prison boom must end.” It is not just that the United States keeps a greater proportion of its people behind bars than any other country; it keeps a MUCH GREATER proportion behind bars than any Western industrialized country, five to 10 times as many people proportionally as the societies of Western Europe. Those countries' incarceration rates are approximately 100 prisoners per 100,000—except for The Netherlands, which is around 50 per 100,000.
You correctly state that the incarceration boom is largely a drug boom. I believe it would be more explicit to say that it is primarily a drug war boom. Thus, the headline of the editorial could well have read, 'The drug war must end,' for the prison boom cannot possibly end until the drug war ends.
I often walk the streets of Amsterdam in the wee hours of the morning without concern for my person safety—there is no problem. I also regularly walk the streets of Manhattan late at night, but always with trepidation, keeping to the street side of the sidewalk, walking hurriedly, never making eye contact—in short, doing everything I can to avoid being mugged. One would think the situation would be reversed. After all, according to the latest statistics I've seen, the state of New York has 518 people per 100,000 in prison while The Netherlands, often criticized as being soft on drugs, has an incarceration rate of a mere 49 per 100,000.
The difference is the drug war. It doesn't make us safer, it just costs us more money, and more loss of basic civil rights.
I would have liked to have said more, but they have a 250 word limit, and I didn't want to push it.
Also, surprisingly, I've found out that people actually read those letters. We went to two xmas parties while I was home, and at both I got comments about my letter, one of them from Don Bischoff (whom David L. has talked to). I also got two warnings that I would now probably be on a DEA list. I had expected that, and figured that I was already on their lists. When I was writing my novel, I had exchanges with a DEA intelligence analyst on Compuserve. He pointed out that the DEA at that time had around 400 people watching the on-line services and newspapers looking for people who publicly acknowledge being anti-drug war. The DEA considers such worthy of attention for possible leads to drug trafficking. They're as bad as HUAC was when I was young (that's the House Un-American Acitivites Committee for those of you not yet politically aware [or alive] back then. It was headed by a guy named Joseph McCarthy—you may have heard of him). It is sobering to think that the mere expression of opinion—a right supposedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution—can make you the target of a federal law enforcement agency.
Oops, major factual error. While Senator Joe McCarthy was the most visible and outspoken proponent of the anti-Communist hysteria of the time, he did not head the HUAC. A senator can't head a House of Representatives committee. The first HUAC chairman, and the one who set the pattern for its anti-Communist investigations, was Martin Dies.
It's about 75 here in Miami, and it's raining—pretty typical for this time of the year as I understand it. Okay, time to go visit the Chinese restaurant around the corner.
Terry