The Nation Magazine's Take on Domestic Policy Choices and Comments on the War on Drugs

I. Policy Choices Between Clinton and Trump
Minimum Wage
Hillary Clinton supports raising the federal minimum wage to $12, and she has also supported the Fight for $15 in individual cities and states.

Donald Trump's stance has been called "indecipherable," but campaign officials say he supports a $10 federal minimum wage, as well as the right of states to set their own minimums.

Immigration
Hillary Clinton says she'll introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a path to full citizenship in her first 100 days in office, and she has also pledged to end private detention centers.

Donald Trump says he'll build a wall along the US-Mexican border, deport undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes with zero tolerance, and triple the number of deportation officers.

Health Care
Hillary Clinton supports expanding the Affordable Care Act and incentivizing states to expand Medicaid.

Donald Trump has vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and plans to encourage states to design their own Medicaid programs.

Reproductive Rights
Hillary Clinton stands with  Planned Parenthood and defends access to affordable, safe, and legal abortions.

Donald Trump says he's opposed to abortion except in a few cases; he supports defunding Planned Parenthood and turning the Hyde Amendment --which severely restricts Medicaid's coverage of abortion services - into permanent law. (Source: Samantha Schuyler, "Easy Choices," The Nation, October 24, 2016.)

II. By the Numbers
12 - Weeks of paid leave an employee will receive to care for a new child or a sick family member under Hillary Clinton's plan.

35M - Number of Americans who would be lifted out of poverty by Hillary's proposed minimum-wage increase to $12 an hour.

$275B - Funds that would be invested in comprehensive infrastructure rebuilding under Clinton's plan.

$0 - Tuition that students from families making up to $125,000 a year will pay at in-state four-year public colleges and universities by 2021 under Clinton's plan. (Source: Molly Stier, "DC By the Numbers," The Nation, October 24, 2016.)

III. Exporting Jobs
5M - US manufacturing jobs lost between 2000 and 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

3.6M - Manufacturing job loss from 2000 to 2007 attributable to trade deficits, according to the EPI.

2.3M - Manufacturing jobs lost during the Great Recession.

900K - Manufacturing jobs that have been recovered as of 2015.

82% - Americans who believe that factory workers should have the right to unionize, according to a recent Pew poll.

11.1% - American workers who belonged to a union at the end of 2014. (Source: "Exporting Jobs," The Nation, October 24, 2016.)

IV. Law Fools
1886 - In its class listings, Yale University notes that the law courses as open only to men. While several women practiced law at the time, elite schools were still hostile to enrolling women.

1939 - The dean of Columbia Law reports an urgent need for a new women's bathroom, as the only one available is in the cellar.

1968 - A group of Harvard Law women protest an institution common at elite schools, called "Ladies Day," in which professors single out women to answer embarrassing or provocative questions ranging from dower to what degree of penile penetration constitutes rape. A 1969 graduate said it was "entertainment, a show put on at our expense." The Harvard women ended the practice by dressing in black and, when prompted to finish a lewd joke about women's underwear, produced from their briefcases lacy lingerie, which they tossed at their male classmates and mortified professor.

1994 - A study published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review reports significantly lower rates of class participation among women, who describe a classroom dynamic in which they felt their voices were "stolen." One women recounted being called a "man-hating lesbian" due to her frequent participation, which she said nearly made her drop out. (Source: Samantha Schuyler, "Law Fools," The Nation, October 24, 2016.)

V. Comments on the War on Drugs
"Penalties for the possession of  a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself." Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States.

"[It's] about creating fairness and consistency in our laws since there is a blatant inconsistency in the way we deal with small amounts of marijuana possession ... together we are making New York fairer and safer, and ensuring that every New Yorker has access to [a] justice system that doesn't discriminate based on age or color." Andrew M. Cuomo, Democratic Governor of New York.

"Obviously if the expected result was that we would eliminate serious drug use in America and eliminate the narco-trafficking networks, it (the war on drugs) hasn't worked." Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States.

"Can any policy however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided, and vulnerable individuals and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?"  Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize Winner, Economics.

"We've got to take a look at what we're considering crimes. I'm not exactly for the use of drugs, don't get me wrong. But I just think criminalizing marijuana... criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot ... is costing us a fortune and ruining young people who go into prison as youths and come out hardened criminals." Pat Robertson, Founder, Christian Broadcasting Network.

"After 40 years of the war on drugs, I can't change what happened in the past. What I can do as the governor of the second largest state in the nation is to implement policies that start us toward a decriminalization and keeps people from going to prison and destroying their lives." Rick Perry, Republican Governor of Texas.

ADDENDUMS:
*The Arrest Related Death Act requires the Department of Justice to require police officers to collect data on any and all deaths of people while in custody. This data would go to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Police say that this is another burden placed on them.

*By a 2 to 1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's structure is unconstitutional but allowed it to continue to operate. It is headed by a single director and not a required multiple-member board.

*Six nations -- Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa -- introduced a resolution to the UN General Assembly urging the commencement of negotiations in 2017 for a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

*Sen. Ed Markey (D-MASS) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) have introduced bills to eliminate the ability of the President to conduct a nuclear first strike without an explicit declaration of war from Congress.

*Military convoys that transport British nuclear weapons through UK cities and towns have been involved in 180 mishaps in 16 years.

*58% of South Koreans support the idea of their country developing nuclear weapons. 39% of those in their 20s support the idea and 3/4s of those 60 and older support the idea.

*The use of 1% of the world's nukes could put two billion people at risk of starvation. 127 nations have said their security is directly threatened by the worlds's nukes.

Distortions of Donald Trump's Acceptance Speech

On the Opinion page of the July 23 Albuquerque Journal, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas writes that Donald Trump's acceptance speech was too loud, and he declared that: "Modulation is the key to good public speaking." This is a welcome antidote for those who single out Hillary Clinton for shouting her speeches.

Besides agreeing with Thomas on Trump's speech being too loud and too long, I found Thomas's comments on the content of the speech to be wrong on almost every count. Thomas cites the latest Real Clear Politics data showing 69.3 percent of those polled believing that the United States is on the wrong track and adds that one has to go back to Jimmy Carter to see similar numbers. Wrong track polling has been done frequently during recent years and the results consistently show that about two-thirds of respondents say the nation is on the wrong track. One poll taken in 2015 added the question of whether more or less government is needed to get on the right track. The respondents split 50-50 on the question, meaning that the public didn't have  a clear remedy to offer.

Cal Thomas alluded to Trump promising to be a "law and order" president, with "specifics to come." Given that Donald Trump is notorious for not giving specifics for his policy proposals, it is unlikely that specifics will come. What Thomas did not say was that crime statistics, as measured by the FBI, have fallen significantly since the early 1990s and have continued to decline during President Obama's time in office. No president can end crime, or end it quickly, as Trump proposes to do.

Donald Trump's proposals to torture "beyond" waterboarding; allow soldiers to commit war crimes; and his encouragement of violence against protesters are not attributes of a "law and order"president.

Thomas claims "Poor children are trapped in failing public schools and Democrats won't let them escape." It is no deep, dark secret that Republicans have pushed school vouchers because they want to weaken teachers' unions.

When Thomas speaks of blue-collar workers who "haven't had a significant pay raise in years," he fails to mention that Trump wants to leave the minimum wage issue to the states and Trump is a strong foe of labor unions -- two avenues of increasing worker pay.

It is when Donald Trump said: "Only I can fix it." that movement conservatives should have started shaking in their boots. Trump rules out any role for Congress in fixing what he views as a nation falling apart. Republicans have been fierce in their condemnation of President Obama legislating from the White House, yet Trump's "go it alone" course will make Obama look like a "wet-behind-the-ears" amateur. A key tenet of movement conservatives is that the smaller and weaker the government is, the better, while Trump is saying that government will remedy all of America's problems by himself.