LeAlan Jones: The Audacity of In-authenticity

Pondering the strategic-obsequiousness of African American Democrats who championed the 1994 Crime Reform Bill, while analyzing President Joe Biden's Presidential Pardon for his son Hunter.

Hunter Biden smoked his white privilege with big puffs, according to the images from a laptop associated with his past legal issues. It's safe to say we now know whose cocaine was found in the Biden White House in July 2023.

Although no official charge has ever been made or suspect identified, according to the Secret Service. With the presidential pardon in his privilege-pipe. Hunter Biden is floating into 2025 higher than a cloud over justice.

"They must be taken off the street—number one," said then-Senator Joe Biden in 1993 on the Senate Floor. He yielded himself an additional three minutes of time to drive home the point he had supported every crime reform bill presented in the Senate since 1976. All his votes were to demonstrate Democrats weren't soft on crime. "I don't want to ask what made them do this(crime)–they must be taken off the street," exclaimed then-Senator Biden.

Not only will Hunter Biden not be taken off the street, but he will face no legal recourse for crimes he was convicted of now his father, the lame-duck president of the United States, has issued him a pardon. What would a tough-on-crime-no-compassion Senator Biden say to President Biden about a son who had substance abuse issues and committed other serious crimes while being an addict?

Hunter Biden Photos published by the Daily Mail

No African Americans in the Democratic party leadership want to discuss the 1994 Crime Reform Bill. The African Americans in Congress have observed their president use his power at "1600 Pennsylvania Ave" to ensure his child has a chance to live a sober and productive life. In the aftermath of being a committed dope-fiend and deadbeat dad, when his father was Vice-President.

ABC news vide coverage of Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell’s endorsement of Biden

No African-Americans who are "blue-no-matter-who" Democratic voters want to discuss the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1992. Certainly, no status quo African American voter who follows the leadership in the Democratic party desires to understand the symbiotic relationship between NAFTA and the Crime Reform Bill.

Senator Joe Biden politically hustled African Americans while running for president in 2020 better than the best slave trader ever could have from the state of Delaware. So confident he was, African American voters were told by him: "You ain't black" if they considered voting for the Republican nominee Donald Trump. Biden gloated on the campaign trail with African-American voters in his back pocket.

Former President Obama made sure Senator Biden's Crime Reform 90s enthusiasm wasn't a reason to deny him the White House. Biden received 87% of the African-American vote

Getty Images / Kevin Dietsch

The for-profit private prison industrial complex is currently a $7.4 billion industry that was initially started to incarcerate illegal immigrants in the early 1980s. The Prison Industrial Complex grew to its peak in profitability in the 1990s, driven by unemployed and undereducated inner-city African American men and women who couldn't "keep hope alive," so they emerged as "super predators."

"Super predator" was an often used political term of that era. Ostensibly, it was terminology for tricky white liberals to point the finger at the breakdown in the foundation of the post-Civil Rights era. This was absent of confronting and admonishing African American leaders, such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton, for being milquetoast administrators.

Reverend Al Sharpton taking one of many selfies he posts to social media.

With unsustainable public policy frameworks to grow the African-American middle class. Between the late 60s and the early 90s. The "Dream" of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. evolved into a pipe dream filled with crack cocaine. Which flooded urban centers across the country, creating a public health crisis that demanded robust public policy to remedy.

The Crime Reform Bill of 1994 was President Bill Clinton's signature legislation to reduce crime and ensure he would be re-elected in 1996 by making white liberals safer. While touting the legislation. Senator Biden stated that President Clinton had called him over six times about getting the legislation passed–sometimes at 11:30 pm.

Senator Joe Biden (back) cheering on President Bill Clinton signing of his Crime Bill

The Crime Reform Bill was a priority so a hundred-thousand new police officers could be trained, hired and deployed in cities where living wage employment evaporated. Most of these new officers were essentially military veterans who fought in "Operation Desert Storm." Veterans who weren't in the inner cities could work at Private Prisons.

President Biden pardoned his son for crimes he insisted was vital for millions of African-American men and women in the 1990s to be prosecuted and jailed over. The silence is predictable from African American Democrats as to why they neglect to reevaluate the failure of the neoliberal Clinton-era policies. The Crime Reform of 1994 is also an inconvenient conundrum for tricky white liberals when you connect the dots.

Facebook MEME / Erika Kastel

Senator Biden was a big promoter of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Delaware is a state where many corporations register. This public policy would increase the profits of those corporations registered in his state. How profitable is it when you can shift manufacturing and production costs across the border and then ship those goods back domestically–and globally–with no tariffs or voter accountability?

NAFTA predictably produced jobless men and women in the inner cities that became the central commodity for the Private Prison Industrial Complex. Multinational corporations and their shareholders profit tremendously from lower labor costs and regulations.

Independent Candidate Ross Perot (center) at the 1992 Preisdential Debate

Some of those profits can be reinvested in a growth industry. After the Crime Reform Bill was passed, private prison investing was the lucrative growth industry before the Internet boom and bust, energy deregulation that created Enron, and the National Security State after the "War on Terror."

Couple all this with a compliant political class of African American Democrats, consciously up-selling their lower working-class voters for pennies on the political dollar. This made the 1990s a massive political success for Senator Biden. When he became Barack Obama's vice president in 2008, name-branded civil rights organizations like the NAACP and Urban League conveniently held their noses.

President Obama giving Vice President Biden the “medal of freedom”

Senator Biden, on the Senate floor while demanding passage of his crime reform legislation, continued: "Unless we do something about that cadre of young people. Tens of thousands of them born out of wedlock, without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscience developing. Because they literally haven't been socialized. They literally haven't had an opportunity—we should focus on them now. Not out of a 'liberal instinct,' for love, brother and humanity. Although I think that's a good instinct. But for simple and pragmatic instincts. Because if we don't they will, or a portion of them will, become the predators fifteen-years from now–and madam president we have predators on our streets."

Throughout the 2020 presidential cycle, African-American women were the most loyal base in the Democratic party. Yet, they never challenged then Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden, on why he was so insistent on incarcerating their sisters, sons, husbands, fathers, and nephews with impunity in the 1990s.

Having a woman of color on the presidential ticket may have assuaged that critique. The image of Kamala Harris becoming the vice-presidential,and then presidential nominee was powerful enough for her career as a tough prosecutor in San Francisco to go unscrutinized. The crime reform of the 90s was one she never had to confront by the mainstream media.

Clients of Children of Promise in 2012 / Photo Shaun Mader

Nonetheless, how many African American women have attended courtrooms since the passage of the 1994 Crime Reform Bill had their souls ripped out when they observed the men and women they loved sentenced to extensive mandatory minimum prison sentences—for the same amount of crack cocaine Hunter Biden inhaled in his privileged presidential pardoned lungs?