FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Strange Bedfellows by Randall L. Dickinson
As she begins making preparations for her re-election bid in 2006 and a possible run for the White House in ‘08, it seems New York Senator Hillary Clinton is attempting, once again, to broaden her political base by appealing to yet another “under class” of disenfranchised voters - convicted felons. Earlier this month she introduced the “Count Every Vote Act”. Included among the Act’s various other provisions is one that would restore voting rights to “felons who have repaid their debt to society” by completing their prison terms, parole, or probation. She claims such a measure is “critical to restoring America’s faith in our voting system”.
Writing in the New York Post recently, John Lott and James Glassman, both of the American Enterprise Institute, acknowledged that there may, indeed, be reason for Senator Clinton and the Democrats to be encouraged that such a strategy has merit. They cite research showing that ex-cons, when given the opportunity, overwhelming vote Democratic, and that there could be a potential pool of as many as 1.2 million of them ready and willing to do so, once their voting rights are restored (“The Felon Vote: Hillary’s new crusade”, Tue., 1 Mar. ’05).
While it may be true that ex-cons tend to vote for Democrats, however, the big question everyone should be asking is can they be expected to vote for any Democrat. Alas, in the case of Hillary Clinton, specifically, one dimension that may have been overlooked should give the Dems. pause to reconsider whether such a strategy is really that well-advised after all.
Throughout her career, Mrs. - or is it Ms. - Clinton has been a standard bearer for a constituency that has worked with single-minded determination to advance an agenda that emphasizes the rights of women and the responsibilities of men. The result has been a whole range of social policy and legislative initiatives intended for the exclusive benefit of a single protected class of citizens. Included among these are such things as women’s economic “equality”, confiscatory “equitable” distribution laws, increasingly more punitive child support standards, Draconian domestic violence legislation, and ever more intrusive and coercive social services bureaucracies, to name but a few.
Because of the success the so-called “women’s lobby” has had in achieving “victim” status, special interest legal and social policy “experts”, with the blind cooperation of many elected representatives, have determined the lofty ends of the agenda place the means of achieving them above the law. Thus certain fundamental though inconvenient legal doctrine, such as the burden of proof, the principle of innocent until proven guilty, and the constitutional guarantees of equal treatment and equal protection have been suspended in the consideration of such policy initiatives and laws.
Measures once intended as a shield for those truly in need of protection have become swords used to wage a campaign of terror against the perceived “patriarchal power structure”. Today, just as citizens of Eastern Europe once did, it is men/fathers who wait for the knock on the door in the middle of the night.
Despite her smartest-woman-in-the-world persona, it seems not to have occurred to Mrs. Clinton that the vast majority of felons, who’s votes she now proposes restoring, are men. Countless thousands of them, many innocent of any wrong doing, have been criminalized by the very same policy initiatives and laws she and her supporters have advocated for so long. Indeed, many of these men owe their current felon status to Hillary Clinton and the politics of gender feminism.
While our prisons were once reserved for the incorrigible criminal element, their populations are now expanding to include mere civil offenders, some who’s crimes are no more serious than sending a birthday card to an estranged child in violation of an order of protection, issued, by the way, on the basis of false allegations - allegations accepted with no questions asked, no burden of proof required, and no accountability for perjury. It is estimated, for example, that as many as 100,000 men are incarcerated each year for failing to pay child support alone, and that approximately twelve percent of the nation’s total prison population are child support “scofflaws”.
No provision is made for the suspension of any obligation to pay child support during the term of one’s incarceration, so, while these men are experiencing the five-star lodging accommodations and haute cuisine up at the “Big House”, the child support meter keeps right on running. When they return - now as felons - to society, they discover that they owe more than they did before they began their little sabbatical. In the mean time, their professional licenses and commercial driver’s permits have also been revoked, further restricting their ability to earn a living, and making it increasingly less likely they will ever be able to repay their “debt to society”, to which Senator Clinton refers in promoting her new bill.
If their child support obligation is not paid within a “reasonable” amount of time, they will find themselves in detention, once again, thus beginning a downward spiral from which there is little or no hope of recovery. In order to satisfy their “debt to society” and avoid more time behind bars, many of these newly minted felons are often left with little or no recourse but to move back in with elderly parents, who, in turn, may often find it necessary to finance the extortion payments from their life’s retirement savings.
Hillary and Company have a name for these men who, often through no fault of their own, have been sucked up into the vortex of this Dickensonian - or should we say Clintonesque - nightmare. They call them “deadbeat dads”.
Virtually never publicized, however, and, so, little known, is the fact that approximately 70 percent of these men earn less than $10,000 per year. Many more are unemployed, sick, or otherwise disabled. These men aren’t “deadbeats”. They’re dead broke. Some, who inexplicably continue to show up on the books as delinquent, are simply dead! So we now have a $3 billion bureaucracy, created with the endorsement and support of Senator Hillary Clinton and an enlightened class of self-styled “social progressives” to squeeze blood from a stone.
I’m a little soft between the ears sometimes, so somebody help me with this. Somebody explain it to me again; tell me just one more time. Why is it that we expect these ex-felons to vote Democratic? Why are they going to vote for Hillary Clinton?
In what may turn out to be one of histories great ironies, the first woman who would be President now feels compelled to turn to the very felons she has spent her career helping to create for the votes necessary in order to realize her own ambitions. Now that’s what I call Karma!
While neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have been quick to recognize the potential political capital that may lie in the issues raised here for whichever party is first to endorse them - or, put another way, the implications for the party that fails to do so - it is, nevertheless, tempting to suggest to Republicans that they consider giving as much encouragement and assistance to Hillary as possible in her initiative to “make every vote count”. After all, as long as she and the Dems. are as intent as they appear to be on committing political suicide, what’s the harm in at least loading the gun for them.
Randall L. Dickinson resides in the Albany, New York, area, and is Vice President of the Coalition of Fathers and Families New York, Inc. The Coalition of Fathers and Families New York, Inc. is a not-for-profit public information and education and lobbying organization dedicated to the advocacy of family related issues and to preserving the relationship between fathers and their children. Its national affiliate is the American Coalition of Fathers and Children. Mr. Dickinson can be reached at (518) 899-3302. e-mail: dickins895@aol.com
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