 Each year over 2,500 commercial vessels enter the Port of Hampton Roads alone, so adequate funding for port security is a significant issue for those of us who live in Richmond and Hampton Roads. |
| One of the problems with even suggesting that purpose of a Federal law is for law enforcement officers to assist in protecting the public outside their jurisdictions is that it may give them encouragement or even a sense of obligation to do so. |
| We can play politics, or we can reduce crime. |
| Mandatory minimums have been shown to be discriminatory and waste the taxpayers' money. |
| Obviously, there has to be a profound change in direction. Otherwise, interest on the national debt will start eating up virtually every penny that we have. |
| Studies have shown that inmate participation in education, vocational and job training, prison work skills development, drug abuse, mental health and other treatment programs, all reduce recidivism, significantly. |
| And what is needed to prevent them from joining gangs was ample recreation for boys as well as girls, jobs and internships for training and money, and assistance to allow their families to live in decent homes. |
| Unequal funding resources also results in unequal educational opportunity when you consider studies that show that one half of low income students who are qualified to attend college do not attend because they can't afford to. |
| While we must ensure that these dangerous new drugs and precursors do not get in the hands of children or others who would use them improperly, we must also be aware that these same drugs have legitimate uses. |
| The Federal prison population has increased more than 7-fold over the past 20 years. |
| The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. |
| Unfortunately, the elimination of incentives such as parole, good time credits and funding for college courses, means that fewer inmates participate in and excel in literacy, education, treatment and other development programs. |
| In fact, the Harvard study data indicates that 70 percent of African American children attend schools that are predominately African American, about the same level as in 1968 when Dr. King died. |
| The promise of equal educational opportunity envisioned by the Brown decision remains unfulfilled. |
| So, the struggle for equal educational opportunity continues. |
| Giving a 10-year mandatory minimum for a second offense fist fight is not going to reduce the chance that someone will be stabbed 16 times when you are not funding any of the programs that are desperately needed to actually reduce juvenile crime. |
| We can fight Big Industry. |
| We live in an information and knowledge-based economy. |
| The first year of the Bush administration we used up all of the surplus and ended up just with the Social Security and Medicare surplus, and each year worse than the year before. |
| It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Civil Rights Act. |
