Blogging Blue

Well, in Oneida County, a life’s only worth three years in prison. That’s the sentence Jeffrey Habenicht received for a boat crash that killed Melissa Mann, an occupant of the boat Habenicht crashed into. Habenicht, who was driving a boat drunk at the time of the crash, had originally faced multiple felonies and a possible prison sentence of more than 100 years, but a plea agreement with Oneida County prosecutors whittled the case down to just a single felony, along with an agreement that prosecutors would recommend no more than a year in county jail. Now sure, Circuit Judge Mark Mangerson went above the agreed-upon recommendation of the District Attorney in sentencing Habenicht to three years in prison, but the maximum penalty for Homicide by Intoxicated Use of a Motor Vehicle is 25 years in prison and 15 years of extended supervision, for a total 40 years. Now perhaps if this were Jeffrey Habenicht’s first brush with the law, I could see a lighter sentence, but Habenicht was no stranger to the court system, with at least two prior convictions. As a condition of probation for one of those convictions, Habenicht was court ordered not to consume any alcohol.

What happened in Oneida County is a travesty, plain and simple, and Judge Mark Mangerson and the District Attorney’s office ought to be ashamed of themselves for letting Jeffrey Habenicht off easy.

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Barack Obama 59%
Hillary Clinton 41%

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Apparently so, according to those “compassionate conservatives” in Madison. Assembly Republicans have released a list of things that the Republican leadership sent out that they find objectionable in the Governor’s new budget, and included among the many objectionable items is this:

• Autism Insurance Mandate with $1.3 million in new spending to cover the cost of the new mandate in state health insurance program.

So in our state’s multi-billion dollar budget, Assembly Republicans find it objectionable to spend 1.3 million dollars to make sure the autistic children of folks who have state health insurance are provided with coverage - coverage that they don’t have right now. Now maybe it’s because I’m biased, given that I’m the parent of an autistic child, but I simply cannot comprehend how anyone with children would vote against providing health insurance coverage to children who didn’t choose to be born with a life-altering disorder like autism. As Michael Mathias over at Pundit Nation has pointed out, “now that Republicans in the House of Representatives, including Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, are vowing to block an expansion of the SCHIP program, it seems inescapable that poor, very sick children are simply fair game for the more extremist elements of the GOP.” What kind of world is it we live in when folks are willing to use children as pawns in a partisan game of chicken?

I’m absolutely disgusted at the lengths some lawmakers are willing to go to in order to score cheap political points in an attempt to pander to their base, and I refuse to stand idly by while Republicans attempt to punish autistic children and their families simply to save a few dollars. I’ve emailed Mark Honadel, my State Assemblyman, because he apparently doesn’t care too much about autistic kids, as he voted against Governor Doyle’s proposed budget. Perhaps those lawmakers who want to cut the autism mandate from the state budget should put a face to all those autistic children who’d suffer, but if they can’t, I’ll do it for them. This is my autistic son Nicholas…

Edit: This post is what happens when you blog while angry. I’ve received a letter from Mark Honadel, and my assertion that he doesn’t care was way off base. I know I’m oftentimes very passionate about the issues that matter most to me, and sometimes that quality can be a bad thing.

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Does Wisconsin have a racial disparity when it comes to locking up minorities for crimes? According to John McAdams, Marquette University’s resident wingnut professor of political science, the answer is no. Professor McAdams posits that blacks are disproportionately imprisoned because they commit more crimes. In fact, McAdams cites a recent report he wrote as proof of his point, arguing blacks served essentially the same sentence as whites for a violent crime, but about five months less for a property crime. For a drug crime, black offenders served about 1.5 months less than a white would.

What’s really interesting about professor McAdams’ conclusions are the fact that they fly in the face of a recent report by the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission, a report that indicates:

• African-Americans and Hispanics convicted of drug trafficking in Wisconsin are more likely to wind up in prison than white drug dealers, according to a report on race and sentencing by the state Sentencing Commission.

Further, the report goes on to say:

• Compared with whites, Hispanics are 2 1/2 times as likely to be imprisoned, while blacks are nearly twice as likely to end up behind bars for dealing drugs, according to the report issued last month.

What I found to be most interesting is a statistic that showed in less serious Class E drug offenses, 66% of Hispanics and 61% of blacks were imprisoned, compared with 30% of the whites sentenced. Blacks were twice as likely as whites to go to prison. Now maybe professor McAdams doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of disparity, but as I look at those numbers, I sure am seeing a very obvious disparity between the rates of incarceration for black and Hispanic offenders versus the rates of incarceration for white offenders.

Here’s another interesting tidbit from the report by the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission:

• Among all offenses examined, compared with whites, black offenders were 1.7 times as likely to receive a prison sentence, while Hispanic offenders were almost twice as likely to go to prison.

What really disturbs me about these numbers isn’t the fact that more blacks than whites are getting sent to prison; it’s the fact that blacks are far more likely than whites to be sent to prison for the same crime. That’s a disparity, and that’s just not the way things ought to be. Professor McAdams can try to spin the numbers any way he wants, but he can’t run from the fact that there is in fact a racial disparity when it comes to how our criminal justice system works.

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It seems like an all too commonly held belief in some circles (i.e. Republicans and small-government kooks) that state employees are lazy and overpaid, and throughout the Joint Finance Committees’s budget negotiations, some Republicans have floated ideas on how to really stick it to state employees, such as only paying state employees once a month, cutting health care benefits, not giving raises, etc. State employees have become a bogeyman of sorts for some conservatives, and that’s why I was so amused to see someone finally stick up for state employees.

The following was sent to the LaCrosse Tribune in response to an article on a recent Citizens For Responsible Government meeting and the meanderings of Scott Walker and Todd Berry about public employee benefits.
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