Category: Politics

Why Voters Are Killing the Defund Movement

by · Nov 4, 2021 2:44 pm

As Kent reported Tuesday, voters in Minneapolis rejected a ballot measure proposing to eliminate the police department and replace it with social workers.  In a New York Post article Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald reports that Charter Amendment 4, which would address crime with a “comprehensive public health approach” received major support from progressives including $500,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center.  “Minneapolis voters didn’t need to imagine the results of Amendment 4’s utopian scheme:  they have been living though a preview of police abolition…..Traffic and pedestrian stops dropped at least 75 percent following the George Floyd riots, in response to the charge that police were racists for investigating suspicious activity in high-crime neighborhoods.”

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Bring Back the Death Penalty in Virginia?

by · Nov 3, 2021 12:22 pm

Yesterday saw a small revolution in Virginia politics.  For the last few years, the Democrats have controlled both the Governor’s chair and both houses of the state legislature.  With that alignment, they repealed the state’s death penalty on an almost (but not quite) straight party line vote.  But with yesterday’s election, things have changed.  Is there now a way to restore the death penalty? Continue reading . . .

Landslide in Seattle

by · Nov 3, 2021 10:53 am

Voters in the famously left-leaning city of Seattle rejected the defund/woke candidates by wide margins in yesterday’s local election. Alec Regimbal has this story for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

In the race to become Seattle’s next mayor, former Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell is triumphing over M. Lorena González, the council’s current president.

Harrell’s decision to appeal to residents who are fed up with homelessness, as well as the way he distanced himself from a city council that vowed to cut the police budget in half last year, appears to have paid off. Harrell has secured 84,975 votes — 65% — while González has won 46,046 votes, just 35%.

Wow. A 2-to-1 landslide in a bastion of progressiveness. Continue reading . . .

Crime Policy on the Ballot Tomorrow

by · Nov 1, 2021 3:06 pm

“Issue one, two, three in this election is crime and violence,” said former and possibly future Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, quoted in this article in the WSJ by Cameron McWhirter. As Bill noted yesterday, we are seeing shifts in public opinion and political campaigns as the country slowly sheds its “woke” delusions and recognizes the reality that softness on crime means more crime. Continue reading . . .

Milestone Met in SF Recall of Chesa Boudin

by · Oct 25, 2021 10:29 am

Pigs were seen flying over San Francisco last weekend as the campaign to recall uber-progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin turned in 83,487 signatures to county officials last Friday.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that 51,325 signatures are required to put the recall on the ballot, which leaders of the Safer SF Without Boudin say is now nearly a certainty.  “It says a lot about the anger and the fear that San Franciscans have about what’s going on in the community,” said the Co-chairwoman of the group.  Boudin’s tenure as District Attorney has been marked by skyrocketing crime, including shootings, while his office has chosen not to prosecute thousands of offenders arrested for theft, drugs, assault and burglary.

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Alarm About Violent Crime Is Now America’s Lead Issue

by · Jul 13, 2021 2:22 pm

For years, the Left’s complacency about crime has tried to disguise itself by claiming that it’s really the norm of mature thinking, and that the problem is the “fear” and “hysteria” of those of us who think complacency is a foolhardy and dishonest response.

As has become undeniably evident in recent months, however, even well disguised complacency isn’t going to work anymore.  The country is  headed into its second year of an unprecedented surge in murder (and yes, the correct word is “murder,” not “gun violence”).  The question is whether this will come to a head in the mid-term  elections now less than 16 months away.

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The New York Mayoral Primary

by · Jul 8, 2021 11:31 am

Earlier this week, after much grinding through the complex ranked-choice voting system, AP called the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York for Eric Adams. Today the WSJ has this editorial. “Perhaps the city that these days never sleeps safely has a chance to reverse its eight-year downward spiral under mayor Bill de Blasio.”

Perhaps, but that is a very tall order. Continue reading . . .

Biden Tanks as Violent Crime Rises

by · Jul 2, 2021 1:12 pm

The Washington Post, ever tooting the horn for President Biden and his pet project of more gun control, nonetheless apparently sees itself as forced to cover some of the uncomfortable truths about surging violent crime, what the public wants to do about it, and what the President says he wants to do about it.  (What he’s actually done, so far as on-the-ground results show, is nothing).

The Post’s headline is, “Concern over crime is growing — but Americans don’t just want more police, Post-ABC poll shows.”

Continue reading . . .