This video is about Bush, education and the war in Iraq. My thoughts are indifferent to those things.
As one of my high school teachers used to open class, I want to cuss and discuss, how popular it is to pick on Bush. I support credit where credit is due and President Bush deserves all the "credit" for Iraq. However, I'm more inclined to applaud him for opening military recruitment to individuals who lost their financial aid than criticize him.
I'd challenge the creators of this video to review the circumstances. This law was passed in 1998. Mr. Bush took office in 2000. How was he in any way related to congress passing the Aid Elimination Penalty. It appears to me that he at worst is taking advantage of an opportunity created by pre-existing conditions and at best is offering an alternative to someone who has lost their school funding. Granted he could fight to eliminate the Aid Elimination Policy, but as a hard line conservative how does what could be considered supporting marijuana use fit into his agenda?
I then ask myself, do I support the Aid Elimination Policy? Is it a reasonable response to a crime? I believe I do. I don't want my tax dollars supporting criminal activity. This drives me to ask a second question, do I consider marijuana worthy of definition of criminal activity. That is an entirely different consideration and one I don't want to mix into this post. Defining punishment for a crime and defining what is a crime are different thoughts and I refer to my earlier post referencing C.S. Lewis and doing time for crime versus treating a criminal or preventing future crime.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
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4 comments:
i'm surprised you support the aid elimination—based on your views of the sex crime registry, i would think you'd say "let the drug offender do his time, and then let him have all the rights and priveges of everyone else once it's served." i see losing finanacial aid much like you (and i) see the sex offender registration. denying $ aid really does affect the person's whole life; if she can't pay for college any other way, she'll pay for the crime her whole life with the disadvantage of not having a college education. if she's paid her debt to society by jail time, i don't think we need these additional bills adding on hardship. that just makes it all the harder for someone to become a productive member of society. am i saying the criminal justice system is one of reform, then? nope. just that once you're out of the system, there shouldn't be residual effects that punish you your whole life, like finding yourself unable to fund higher ed. These residual effects would be especially unfair if the person does clean up after serving the court-issued punishment (and cleaning up from dealing drugs seems like it'd be easier to do than cleaning up from pedophilia ...though i know there are studies on both side of the fence for that issue). So I guess my question is, is a sex registry any different than aid elimination in its appropriateness? registry?
take off that last "registry?" :)
I hadn't thought of it in those terms and that is very interesting. The Aid Elimination Policy doesn't actually prevent a person from permanently receiving aid. It just stops the aid they're currently receiving and they have to reapply after a period of time. (I believe 1 year for first time offenses) So it doesn't permanently wreck their life.
I'm not sure how strongly I believe my counter argument, but here goes: When someone commits a crime part of the punishment is losing some of the rights the rest of us enjoy and I consider federally funded financial aid more a privilege than a right. So taking away financial aid from a law breaker and allocating it to a non-law breaker doesn't upset me.
I'd also say the sex registry is completely different from aid elimination. Committing crimes will have a negative impact on your life and there are going to be consequences. I feel that the sex registry making public your information and opening you up to continual harassment is different than losing your financial aid.
I think denying federal money to those with drug convictions and requiring a sex offender registry are easily distinguishable and certainly allows a person to agree with one and dislike the other. The denial of Federal Aid Benefits is a punishment for a crime. This is a well established institution which you may agree or disagree with based upon how you think the punishment correlates to the crime.
Requiring sex offenders to register, however, is not meant as a punishment to the individual. It's a safety measure to the surrounding community and an extremely reasonable exercise of state police power. Again, you may agree or disagree when balancing the hardship of the offender against the benefit to the community.
The point, however, is that your opinion on one topic in no way needs to influence how you feel about the other. They are mutually exclusive.
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