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This. One of the best comments I have ever read. In the south you also need to account for the lack of voting power of African Americans. %30 of African America

This. One of the best comments I have ever read. In the south you also need to account for the lack of voting power of African Americans. %30 of African Americans can’t vote in Florida because of their dealings with the “justice” system. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse/os-former-felon-voting-rights-20170223-story.html http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse...

bilbo0s 8y ago
"...%30 of African Americans can’t vote in Florida because of their dealings with the “justice” system..." I'm not a southerner. I'm certainly no Floridian. But I strongly suspect that's not a "coincidence". I think the current system was likely set up as a political "gimme" meant to appease Southerners.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  It's a state-by-state system. Whatever is set up in the South wasn’t set up to appease Southerners, it was set up by Southerners to give effect to their desires.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    I'm referring to Federal laws and Constitutional underpinnings. For instance, the loophole in the 13th. Which, but for it's existence, would not have allowed "...Southerners to give effect to their desires..."
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      Penal enforced labor was not a uniquely southern thing (or a uniquely “slave state” thing) before the Civil War, and not abolishing it along with chattel slavery was not a sop to the South. The South really exploited that allowance as a replacement for chattel slavery, though, but they did that with every power state governments were not explicitly denied (and, because of the lack of substantive enforcement of much of the 14th Amendment for nearly a century after the Civil War, many which they were explicitly denied.)
      - bilbo0s 8y ago
        ??? Are you seriously proposing that the loophole in the 13th was not placed there as a consolation to Southerners? I mean let's be frank here, the entire issue of slavery in the Northwest Ordinance was a compromise to Southerners. It wouldn't have passed otherwise. Fast forward to the end of the Civil War, and they chose the compromise in the Northwest Ordinance instead of the Sumner Amendment for the same reasons. Sumner's Amendment didn't even make it out of committee. I don't see how anyone can say that slave states have not had an outsized influence on the slavery question as it is practiced in the US. They've had that influence, in my opinion, since our inception. It, (slavery), really was almost one of the original questions we had to answer at the founding of our Republic.
        derefr 8y ago
        Yes: the "loophole" you're referring to is no such thing. It's language directly aimed at enabling felons (white, black, or otherwise) to be put to useful work. That's what everyone, everywhere, was doing at the time the law was drafted. Imagine if Britain had been the one drafting the 13th amendment, at the same point in history. Removing this language would have meant giving up on the penal labor colony known as Australia. America was—not as famously—doing exactly the same thing.
        bilbo0s 8y ago
        ??? Why would we have cared what Britain was doing? They were our cold enemy during the Civil War. (At least, they were the cold enemy if you were on the Union side.) What the rest of the world was doing was irrelevant to how the 13th was drafted. The war would be won. Slaves would be freed. The only questions we were considering was how to put that all down on paper. And for that question, the only thing that mattered was domestic politics.
        derefr 8y ago
        Uh? I think you misread. I was pointing out that every major nation-state was running—and relying on the productive output of!—penal labor colonies in the 1800s. I brought up Britain as a well known example: everyone knows that Britain ran penal labor colonies. But the US was also running—and depending on—penal labor colonies. The "loophole" is, to put it in modern terms, a concession to the American penal-labor-colony industry lobby. (Well, not really, since we didn't have private prisons back then. All the work being done by US penal labor colonies was directly to the productive benefit of the US government.)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  I would advise being careful about treating this as just a north/south thing. For example, the exact mechanisms by which it happens might not be quite the same, but the disenfranchisement rate among black voters in Wisconsin is about the same as what GP reports for Florida.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    Oh it's the exact same mechanism. The only difference is that here in Wisconsin we know that our government is corrupt, and because of the corruption here there is little we can do to combat that corruption. I mean we have everything from Walker, to little boys being used for sex at Lincoln Hills, to out and out DA's who are crime lords. (Literally, a few years back there was a DA who would take "donations" to "charity" from drug runners. They would actually divert shipments to go through his jurisdiction because if you get caught all you had to do was pay the "donation". It was really bad.) I'm pretty sure if you were to ask the average Wisconsinite, they would openly admit much of the corruption up here. Not only with crime, or blacks, but with money, with land, with everything basically. Why do you think we have protests with hundreds of thousands of people showing up? It's not just Walker, at least in my opinion it's not. It's the system that people feel he represents and defends. By contrast, in Florida, I get the sense that people think that's the way things are supposed to work. They believe they have a good system and that the system works the way God intended.
    - howard941 8y ago
      > By contrast, in Florida, I get the sense that people think that's the way things are supposed to work. They believe they have a good system and that the system works the way God intended. It depends who you ask. I've only lived in Florida for 40 years but I find it split in thirds with 1/3 willing to tolerate Tallahassee corruption and crumbling infrastructure as the price of low taxation while the other 2/3 are appalled but don't or can't vote.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    I think from an outside POV the sorts of divides are more in your face and more geographically dispersed in the south. There also seems to be more political homogeneity.
- delecti 8y ago
  The 13th amendment only ended slavery in name. > Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted[...] The current system is absolutely a political gimme to appease the south, or at the very least the south of the past.
  - arcticbull 8y ago
    I continue to have a hard time seeing the difference between a US prison farm and any other (slave) labor camp. The UN ILO should have IMO effectively abolished US labor camps in 1957 with resolution 105 [1]. It bans among other things its use "as a method of mobilizing and using labour for purposes of economic development." As such prisoners in the US can be loaned out to private enterprise, an argument should be made. Not to mention, forget immigrants, nothing undercuts wages payable to US workers quite like slave labor. I actually can't see why the US system isn't in violation of resolution 29 in 1930 where forced labor is only permitted when under "supervision and control of a public authority and that the person carrying it out is not hired to or placed at the disposal of private individuals, companies or associations." [1] When your system is "universally condemned" by the United Nations, maybe it's time for another look? [1] http://www.ilo.org/global/standards/subjects-covered-by-international-labour-standards/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm http://www.ilo.org/global/standards/subjects-covered-by-inte...
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      I don't think anyone is arguing that these are not slave labor camps. These are slave labor camps. That fact is not in question. The question we're debating is why they are legal in the US. My theory is that the government made them legal to appease Southerners after the Civil War. Some people disagree, but the evidence in terms of the Congressional record of the time definitely points to a deal to appease Southerners.
      - cmurf 8y ago
        The North was maybe a little more than an inch less racist than the South. It's just that the line of slavery being right or wrong went right through that inch. Institutional racism has come from everywhere, in particular by the power of the silent majority. The Nixon Southern strategy was not to appease only Southerners. It was to appease the ignorant. Bigots with malice in mind. It's worth listening to the Lee Atwater interview he didn't want released until he died. They had a vile plan, they put it into action, it was successful, and it's still happening. And such ideas and policies are far worse than just a word that begins with the letter n. https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-inf...
- forapurpose 8y ago
  A popular theory is that mass incarceration was the replacement for segregation when it was outlawed.
tejtm 8y ago
Ahh yes the old Three Fifths Compromise is still in effect. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise
DuckHuntMaster 8y ago
I agree with this law. A felony is a serious crime actually. The law was made so that people who have demonstrated an inability to make good choices don't get to make choose our rulers and laws.
- polski-g 8y ago
  Yeah. What's stopping them from decriminalizing their own criminal desires? Be it drugs, child rape, petty theft, etc.
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
A constituent group that removes rival constituents from the voter pool... wow, talk about a conflict of interest
S4M 8y ago
A webcached version of your article, since orlandosentinel.com blocks visits from European countries because of the GDPR: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pI5zTYkFBSYJ:www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse/os-former-felon-voting-rights-20170223-story.html+&cd=1&hl=es&ct=clnk&gl=es http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pI5zTYk...
nkkollaw 8y ago
You can't vote if you're in prison..?

bilbo0s 8y ago

"...%30 of African Americans can’t vote in Florida because of their dealings with the “justice” system..." I'm not a southerner. I'm certainly no Floridian. But I strongly suspect that's not a "coincidence". I think the current system was likely set up as a political "gimme" meant to appease Southerners.

dragonwriter 8y ago
It's a state-by-state system. Whatever is set up in the South wasn’t set up to appease Southerners, it was set up by Southerners to give effect to their desires.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  I'm referring to Federal laws and Constitutional underpinnings. For instance, the loophole in the 13th. Which, but for it's existence, would not have allowed "...Southerners to give effect to their desires..."
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Penal enforced labor was not a uniquely southern thing (or a uniquely “slave state” thing) before the Civil War, and not abolishing it along with chattel slavery was not a sop to the South. The South really exploited that allowance as a replacement for chattel slavery, though, but they did that with every power state governments were not explicitly denied (and, because of the lack of substantive enforcement of much of the 14th Amendment for nearly a century after the Civil War, many which they were explicitly denied.)
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      ??? Are you seriously proposing that the loophole in the 13th was not placed there as a consolation to Southerners? I mean let's be frank here, the entire issue of slavery in the Northwest Ordinance was a compromise to Southerners. It wouldn't have passed otherwise. Fast forward to the end of the Civil War, and they chose the compromise in the Northwest Ordinance instead of the Sumner Amendment for the same reasons. Sumner's Amendment didn't even make it out of committee. I don't see how anyone can say that slave states have not had an outsized influence on the slavery question as it is practiced in the US. They've had that influence, in my opinion, since our inception. It, (slavery), really was almost one of the original questions we had to answer at the founding of our Republic.
      - derefr 8y ago
        Yes: the "loophole" you're referring to is no such thing. It's language directly aimed at enabling felons (white, black, or otherwise) to be put to useful work. That's what everyone, everywhere, was doing at the time the law was drafted. Imagine if Britain had been the one drafting the 13th amendment, at the same point in history. Removing this language would have meant giving up on the penal labor colony known as Australia. America was—not as famously—doing exactly the same thing.
        bilbo0s 8y ago
        ??? Why would we have cared what Britain was doing? They were our cold enemy during the Civil War. (At least, they were the cold enemy if you were on the Union side.) What the rest of the world was doing was irrelevant to how the 13th was drafted. The war would be won. Slaves would be freed. The only questions we were considering was how to put that all down on paper. And for that question, the only thing that mattered was domestic politics.
        derefr 8y ago
        Uh? I think you misread. I was pointing out that every major nation-state was running—and relying on the productive output of!—penal labor colonies in the 1800s. I brought up Britain as a well known example: everyone knows that Britain ran penal labor colonies. But the US was also running—and depending on—penal labor colonies. The "loophole" is, to put it in modern terms, a concession to the American penal-labor-colony industry lobby. (Well, not really, since we didn't have private prisons back then. All the work being done by US penal labor colonies was directly to the productive benefit of the US government.)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bunderbunder 8y ago
I would advise being careful about treating this as just a north/south thing. For example, the exact mechanisms by which it happens might not be quite the same, but the disenfranchisement rate among black voters in Wisconsin is about the same as what GP reports for Florida.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  Oh it's the exact same mechanism. The only difference is that here in Wisconsin we know that our government is corrupt, and because of the corruption here there is little we can do to combat that corruption. I mean we have everything from Walker, to little boys being used for sex at Lincoln Hills, to out and out DA's who are crime lords. (Literally, a few years back there was a DA who would take "donations" to "charity" from drug runners. They would actually divert shipments to go through his jurisdiction because if you get caught all you had to do was pay the "donation". It was really bad.) I'm pretty sure if you were to ask the average Wisconsinite, they would openly admit much of the corruption up here. Not only with crime, or blacks, but with money, with land, with everything basically. Why do you think we have protests with hundreds of thousands of people showing up? It's not just Walker, at least in my opinion it's not. It's the system that people feel he represents and defends. By contrast, in Florida, I get the sense that people think that's the way things are supposed to work. They believe they have a good system and that the system works the way God intended.
  - howard941 8y ago
    > By contrast, in Florida, I get the sense that people think that's the way things are supposed to work. They believe they have a good system and that the system works the way God intended. It depends who you ask. I've only lived in Florida for 40 years but I find it split in thirds with 1/3 willing to tolerate Tallahassee corruption and crumbling infrastructure as the price of low taxation while the other 2/3 are appalled but don't or can't vote.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  I think from an outside POV the sorts of divides are more in your face and more geographically dispersed in the south. There also seems to be more political homogeneity.
delecti 8y ago
The 13th amendment only ended slavery in name. > Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted[...] The current system is absolutely a political gimme to appease the south, or at the very least the south of the past.
- arcticbull 8y ago
  I continue to have a hard time seeing the difference between a US prison farm and any other (slave) labor camp. The UN ILO should have IMO effectively abolished US labor camps in 1957 with resolution 105 [1]. It bans among other things its use "as a method of mobilizing and using labour for purposes of economic development." As such prisoners in the US can be loaned out to private enterprise, an argument should be made. Not to mention, forget immigrants, nothing undercuts wages payable to US workers quite like slave labor. I actually can't see why the US system isn't in violation of resolution 29 in 1930 where forced labor is only permitted when under "supervision and control of a public authority and that the person carrying it out is not hired to or placed at the disposal of private individuals, companies or associations." [1] When your system is "universally condemned" by the United Nations, maybe it's time for another look? [1] http://www.ilo.org/global/standards/subjects-covered-by-international-labour-standards/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm http://www.ilo.org/global/standards/subjects-covered-by-inte...
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    I don't think anyone is arguing that these are not slave labor camps. These are slave labor camps. That fact is not in question. The question we're debating is why they are legal in the US. My theory is that the government made them legal to appease Southerners after the Civil War. Some people disagree, but the evidence in terms of the Congressional record of the time definitely points to a deal to appease Southerners.
    - cmurf 8y ago
      The North was maybe a little more than an inch less racist than the South. It's just that the line of slavery being right or wrong went right through that inch. Institutional racism has come from everywhere, in particular by the power of the silent majority. The Nixon Southern strategy was not to appease only Southerners. It was to appease the ignorant. Bigots with malice in mind. It's worth listening to the Lee Atwater interview he didn't want released until he died. They had a vile plan, they put it into action, it was successful, and it's still happening. And such ideas and policies are far worse than just a word that begins with the letter n. https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-inf...
forapurpose 8y ago
A popular theory is that mass incarceration was the replacement for segregation when it was outlawed.

tejtm 8y ago

Ahh yes the old Three Fifths Compromise is still in effect. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise

DuckHuntMaster 8y ago

I agree with this law. A felony is a serious crime actually. The law was made so that people who have demonstrated an inability to make good choices don't get to make choose our rulers and laws.

polski-g 8y ago
Yeah. What's stopping them from decriminalizing their own criminal desires? Be it drugs, child rape, petty theft, etc.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

A constituent group that removes rival constituents from the voter pool... wow, talk about a conflict of interest

S4M 8y ago

A webcached version of your article, since orlandosentinel.com blocks visits from European countries because of the GDPR: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pI5zTYkFBSYJ:www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse/os-former-felon-voting-rights-20170223-story.html+&cd=1&hl=es&ct=clnk&gl=es http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pI5zTYk...

nkkollaw 8y ago

You can't vote if you're in prison..?