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Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Convictions

By Jeralyn, Section Legislation
Posted on Wed Jul 20, 2005 at 04:50:42 AM EST
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The House Education and Workforce Committee will be voting today on an amendment by Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) to completely repeal the Higher Education Act Drug Provision. The Andrews amendment would reinstate financial aid to all of the more than 160,500 students who have been affected by this misguided law.

Contact your legislators and tell them to support the Andrews amendment to scrap the Drug Provision once and for all. Click here to take action now.

This will be the first time Congress has revisited the Drug Provision since it was slipped into the Higher Education Act Reauthorization as an amendment in 1998. Since then, more than 160,000 students with drug convictions have been blocked access to federal financial aid.

In 1998, this amendment quietly became law without debate or recorded vote. Now, seven years later, we finally have a chance to get members on the record about whether or not they truly want to help at-risk young people get the education they need to live productive lives and be responsible citizens.

Editorials in the New York Times and Minneapolis Star Tribune today explain how cutting student aid will foster crime and why we need to make it easier, not harder, for drug offenders to get an education.

[Via Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.]

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    • Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Convictions | 15 comments (15 topical)
    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#1)
    by scarshapedstar on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    It's about time.

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#2)
    by Johnny on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    Yes Scar, because NOW when they get out of prison after their mandatory sentencing, they will have NO hope for a better life, and will fall back on the welfare system even harder, and spiral into deep poverty. But hey, at least that dam financial aid ain't going to no druggie...

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#3)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    "Your financial aid has been revoked for violations of the morality code." Hope it passes, I thought it rather odd that a murderer could get financial aid, but some kid who gets busted with a 1/4 ounce of reefer can't. Talk about screwy.

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#4)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    et al - Okay for a stop gap. But what we need is to fully fund K-16 in the state school system. Now, if you want to go to a private school, then you pay the freight, or workout a finance plan with that school. No federal aid, no state aid. Let's put the resources where it will aid the most people. The plan would also provide adult training anytime the person, who must be a citizen of the state and the US, wants to enroll.

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    Education for all...once we get ride of these...undesirable ones...and the poor…and the…

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#6)
    by Che's Lounge on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    Won't happen. We need the recruits.

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#7)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    Che - If you have been convicted it is highly unlikely that you will be let into the military.

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    Right, Jim, Go look at what the military will take...
    Offenses/Moral Behavior Which Cannot be Waived: Intoxicated or under influence of alcohol or drugs at time of application, or at any stage of processing for enlistment.
    So if I am on drugs during the interview, that is a deal breaker, but otherwise... crappy recruitment numbers and all...

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#9)
    by Quaker in a Basement on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    et al - Okay for a stop gap. But what we need is to fully fund K-16 in the state school system. Now, if you want to go to a private school, then you pay the freight, or workout a finance plan with that school. No federal aid, no state aid.
    Who are you really, and what have you done with Jim?

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#10)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    Quaker - I keep telling you I am a social liberal, but you won't believe.

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#11)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:25 PM EST
    V2Marty - Being so would void the contract, and I suspect it would any contract... I notice you didn't make a comment on the conviction issue.

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#12)
    by aahpat on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:27 PM EST
    The $ 360 billion a year world wide black market created by the right wing American drug war prohibition policy funds and facilitates much of the terrorist groups and armies in the world. The Madrid train bombing was not only funded thanks to the black market but people in the conspiracy were recruited while in prison for drug dealing crimes. Imprisonment that I am sure helped to develop the terrorist mentality and social hopelessness that rationalized the terrorist act. Anyone who supports the drug war is supporting alQaeda and other terrorist groups and armies around the world. If you want to reduce terrorism then end the drug war and break the back of the black market with democratic institutions of regulation and licensing. This is how we reduced the terrorism of the roaring twenties alcohol gangs and it is how we can reduce the terrorism of today. Here is more information on this vital national security issue: al Qaeda's success strategy - Silent Jihad - http://mysite.verizon.net/aahpat/aq/aq.htm The drug war is also a tool of America's right wing for subverting American democracy. Very successfully too. At least 7 million Americans are electorally disenfranchised by the drug war. Mostly minorities and political nonconformists. Both the 2000 and the 2004 elections were decided by 3 million or fewer votes. that is the only real success of the drug war, subversion of American democratic institutions. The only way that the right wing can maintain their electoral hegemony in America is by subverting our democracy. We have hit the critical mass of disenfranchisements so that only right wingers can win national office. Someday soon we will also hit a critical mass where there will be enough disenfranchised Americans with NO reason to love America to precipitate a civil war in America. A civil war to restore American democracy. I would take up arms to restore american democracy. Screw any fascist right wing creep who does not like me for that.

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#13)
    by aahpat on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:27 PM EST
    Here is a page that illuminates one of the ways that the right wing GOP is using the drug war to subvert American democratic institutions. Pennsylvania -democracy incarcerated- http://mysite.verizon.net/aahpat/pdi/pdi.htm

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#14)
    by jackl2400 on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:27 PM EST
    Well, whaddya expect from Goopers, aahpat? What twists my shorts in a knot is the Dems, "my" supposed party. We all know about Clinton's evil cowardice, but what about today's Dems? Has Joe Biden being lied to about the RAVE act targets caused him to "get" that thing about "fooled me once, shame on you/fooled me twice etc."? Or is he still gonna be a "useful idiot" on the HEA drug amendment? How about Loserman? More important to me are my senators who I've capwizzed and called: Clinton and Schumer. Schumer seems all hot and bothered about this John Roberts Supreme Court nomination, but, I'm telling you, that's a loser. Doing a whole bunch of useless, ankle-biting questioning about "would you overturn Roe v. Wade" (which can't be and won't be discussed by a judicial candidate) doesn't cut the mustard for me. It's ineffective posturing, and there aren't real grounds to oppose this candidate for his qualifications, even if he seems "conservative". But where the rubber meets the road for me is the HEA amendment. The GOPpers can be dicks fighting for the elites, that's who they are and what they do. But for Dems to capitulate to this agenda or cower behind not wanting to oppose it deserve to be voted out of office or to run as Republicans or independents. There is *no*, repeat, *no* legitimate reason to penalize students for drug convictions with this financial aid penalty. The social evil that it causes is truly reprehensible, adding to the cycle of poverty, social marginalization and civic death (some have likened it to genocide, see, Richard Lawrence Miller, Drug Warriors and their Prey).

    Re: Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Co (none / 0) (#15)
    by aahpat on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:27 PM EST
    Jackl: I left the Democratic Party in 1995 over the drug war prohibition policy. If they can advocate mandatory minimums of anal rape tough love in order to coerce and intimidate their own children into capitulation to the right wing drug war then I can withhold my electoral franchise until they get right on this issue. I vote third party or Independent until the Democrats learn to oppose the drug war for what it is, the fascist subversion of American democratic institutions. Actually right wing Democrats have been ardent supporters of the drug war since Nixon, in collusion with the Wallace wing of the DNC, created the drug war in 1970 to neutralize and subvert the electoral empowerment objectives of the Voter Rights Act and the 26st Amendment. When John Kerry left the Vietnam Veterans Against the War it was in dispute over whether or not to join up with the civil rights movement. Kerry opposed that move. He then went to college and immediately went to work as a drug war prosecutor mass disenfranchising minorities and nonconformists. his entire political career has been as a drug warrior. The U.S. senate has not had an opponent of the drug war in its ranks since Paul Wellstone was killed. Both Bill and Hillary are fascist dupes who will always run to the right at the word boo. The drug war is, for Democrats, their way to run to the right whenever they are demonized as liberals. I don't really care about feminist issues anymore. While I respect all human beings as human beings regardless of anything feminists are right wingers other than the abortion issue. Just look at Orrin Hatch's favorite butt babe and another former district attorney Democrat Dianne Feinstein. She has never read a social oppression law she didn't like. Except for abortion laws. The Supreme Court is a unique institution that makes the people on it. The people appointed to it do not make the court. Rehnquist, while in the Nixon White House, passed constitutional muster on the original Controlled Substances Act. Last month he concurred in the O'Connor/Thomas dissent on the med/mari case. thomas, of all people, actually wrote in his dissent: "If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything—and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers." http://leftindependent.blogspot.com/2005/06/federal-government-is-no-longer-one-of.html That means that O'Connor, Rehnquist and Thomas all said that with the med pot prohibition constitutional governance in America is null and void. That is pretty powerful stuff for any Supremes to say about any aspect of the drug war. I don't think too much about small component issues such as the HEA amendment. My philosophy is that the drug war prohibition itself is a corruption of our constitution and democracy and I would rather attack the entirety rather than be distracted with elements. End the drug war and the HEA issue is itself resolved. Same for med pot. But even after working for years on any one of the component issues and achieving a success in any one the big monster of the drug war is still there. I would rather bring down Goliath rather than trim his toe nails.

    Impending Vote On Student Aid Ban For Drug Convictions | 15 comments (15 topical)