Hillary Clinton Edges Out Bernie Sanders for the Most Absurd Comment about Prisons and the ‘War on Drugs’ While Carly Fiorina and President Obama Lag Far Behind --According to the Washington Post Fact Checker

Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post Fact Checker, checked out the statements from four prominent politicians about drug user incarcerations and ranked them from most outlandish to least egregious characterizing Hillary Clinton’s as Absurd (4 Pinocchios), Bernie Sanders’ as Confused (3 Pinocchios), Carly Fiorina’s as Correct for Federal Prisons (2 Pinocchios), and President Obama’s as Correct for shear numbers but not for proportion (1 Pinocchios).

Here is what each said and how the Fact Checker graded them. 

— Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, remarks at debate, Oct. 13 

“We have a huge population in our prisons for nonviolent, low-level offenses that are primarily due to marijuana.”

The Fact Checker found Hillary’s statement “simply laughable” so her campaign did not even bother to offer a defense.  Hence, Clinton earned Four Pinocchios for her “absurd” suggestion that prisons are overflowing with marijuana convicts. 

—      Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), remarks at Democratic debate, Oct. 1 

“We are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana.”

 

Sanders confuses “arrests” with being sent to jail as most of the arrests do NOT lead to prison.  In the entire federal system just 187 inmates were sentenced for simple drug possession — of which only 75 were jailed for marijuana possession. Almost all drug offenders were convicted of drug trafficking.  Hence, Sanders earned Three Pinocchios for confusing arrests with jail sentences and Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s discussion on the subject is described by the Fact Checker as “almost a parody of the issue.” 

Businesswoman Carly Fiorina, remarks at the GOP debate, Sept. 16

“Two-thirds of the people in our prisons are there for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug-related.”

 

Fiorina is on target for federal prisons as more than half of all federal prison inmates were convicted of drug trafficking, often for dealing cocaine, and adding in other nonviolent offenses, such as property and immigration, you get to two-thirds of the federally sentenced offenders.

Fiorina at least can point to data backing up the general thrust of her statement but she still earned Two Pinocchios because her statement, while correct for federal prisons, was off when state prisons are added in. 

—      President Obama, remarks at the NAACP Conference, July 14, 2015 

“Over the last few decades, we’ve also locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before. And that is the real reason our prison population is so high.”

 

The problem is the president’s phrase “the real reason.” It makes a difference whether just federal prisoners or state and federal prisoners are counted (he appears to be talking about both) and he makes the connection between drug offenders and rising prison populations too stark reaching back several decades.  His accretion here “is clearly wrong” as the proportion of Federal and State prison inmates who were drug law violators has been pretty nearly flat at 20 percent since 1990 as the number of people in prison on non-drug offenses has risen just as fast as drug law violators so the proportion has held constant.

About 52 percent of the growth in prison populations between 1980 and 2009 came from locking up violent offenders, compared to just 21 percent for drug offenders so locking up violent offenders explains 60 percent of the growth, to just 14 percent for drug offenders.  Any growth has come from admitting more people to prison, not from longer sentences as the president asserted and time served has barely changed in federal prisons, according to Justice Department data.

Obama can point to longer prison terms for more drug offenders, at least in terms of raw numbers, but runs into trouble when he says that’s the “real” reason for the size of the prison population. He earns One Pinocchio.

DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, HERE IS THE FACT CHECKER ARTICLE THAT APPEARED IN THE SUNDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2015 WASHINGTON POST:

WASHINGTON POST FACT CHECKER AWARDS OBAMA, CARNEY & REID EACH 4 PINOCCHIOS FOR SEQUESTER WHOPPERS

PRESIDENT OBAMA, SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY “My Invisible Friend Told Me” REID & WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY JAY “the Clown” CARNEY TIED WITH 4 PINOCCHIOS FOR SEQUESTER WHOPPERS!

When it comes to the Sequestration Whoppers Sweepstakes, it appears Senate Majority Leader Harry “My Invisible Friend Told Me” Reid just pulled into a dead heat with President Obama and White House Press Secretary Jay “the Clown” Carney when the Washington Post Fact Checker awarded him FOUR (4) PINOCCHIOS for his 31 July 13 World-class prevarication about sequestration already cutting 1.6 million jobs. Seems that in the Democrat “Crying Wolf” competition, every speaker tries to “out exaggerate” a previous one when it comes to the impact of sequestration. Unfortunately for them, we’re about 6 months into Sequestration and “the sky has not fallen”, airports and airplanes are still operating, and the government is still operating relatively normally (with the exception of the IRS I suppose.)

But it was actually President Obama that kicked off the Whopper competition when he uttered something so outlandish that even the Fact Checker was flabbergasted (See Below Graphic #1 - entire WaPo Obama Whopper article):

“Starting tomorrow everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol. Now that Congress has left, somebody’s going to be vacuuming and cleaning those floors and throwing out the garbage. They’re going to have less pay. The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they’ve got to figure out how to manage that. That’s real.”
President Obama, news conference, March 1, 2013

Now this one was so absurd that the three people in charge of all the Capitol janitorial staff, Stephen T. Ayers, the Architect of the Capitol; Carlos Elias, the Superintendent of the Capitol Building; and Terry Gainer, the Senate Sergeant at Arms; all immediately issued statements contradicting the President to calm their workforce by assuring them that there would be NO pay cuts or furloughing for any of their staffs.

Once the President quickly earned his Four Pinocchios and especially after senior officials at the Architect of the Capitol (AOC), the federal agency that employ janitors on the House side, and the office of the Sergeant at Arms (SAA), which employs janitors on the Senate side, issued statements saying the president’s comments were NOT TRUE, Jay Carney and his White House Press Staff then went into “full damage control” mode and began issuing “clarification” but as each one was exposed as false by the Fact Checker, their narrative continually changed. Still, the White House kept up its spin offensive, finally claiming that there would be a cut in “overtime” and that was a de facto pay cut and thus the president was right — or at least not wrong – which turned out to be wrong also. Then again, I wouldn’t believe Carney “under oath.”  Here is some of how they began to “spin the story” which continually changed as they were caught in one lie after another (See Below Graphic #2 - entire WaPo Press Office Whopper article):

“On the issue of the janitors, if you work for an hourly wage and you earn overtime, and you depend on that overtime to make ends meet, it is simply a fact that a reduction in overtime is a reduction in your pay.” 
— White House spokesman Jay Carney, news briefing, March 4 

And

“You know, those Capitol janitors will not get as much overtime. I’m sure they think less pay, that they’re taking home, does hurt.”
— Gene Sperling, director of the White House economic council, on ABC News’ “This Week,” March 3, 2013

Then when the Fact Checker pointed out that the janitorial staff clocked almost NO overtime the story changed again saying they were talking about the contract janitors. Again, the Fact Checker pointed out that almost all the janitorial staff was Government employees and for the few janitors that were contractors, it would be more costly to cancel contracts than to allow them to continue working.

Realizing they had been caught lying, the White House PR Crowd finally just quite responding and here is how the Fact Checker summed up the fiasco: “… a clean-up brigade shouldn’t simply try to deflect and obfuscate. Apparently, the president assumed — incorrectly — that the janitors on Capitol Hill would get a pay cut. Rather than admit an error, White House aides doubled down on their talking points about overtime being essential to their livelihood, without actually knowing the truth.”

And finally, here is what Senate Majority Leader Harry “My Invisible Friend told Me” Reid (D-NV) chimed in with that scored him his FOUR PINOCCHIOS, enough to pull into a virtual tie with the President and his Chief flake Carney (See Below Graphic #3 - entire WaPo Harry Reid Whopper article):
:
“We have learned that the sequestration already has cut 1.6 million jobs. So we need job creation. We need to help the middle class by creating jobs.”

— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), floor speech, July 31, 2013


And here is how the WaPo Fact Checker characterized Reid’s Whopper which he must have gotten from his same Invisible Friend” that told him about Mitt Romney not paying any Federal Income Tax.  This one was so bad his own staff would even defend it -- they just quit answering his Senate office phones!

“While the dust has not settled on the impact of the sequester on employment this year, the available evidence shows that Reid’s claim that 1.6 million jobs already have been cut this year appears wildly off course.”


This has just been the Reader’s Digest version which doesn’t do justice to the full story so I’ve included all three full Washington Post Fact Checker articles below.

Graphic #1 - President Obama

Graphic #2 - Carney & His White House Press Office Crowd

Graphic #3 - What Harry Reid's Invisible Friend (Harvey) Told Him