The Revolution Reaches Portland

by · May 21, 2024 11:21 am

Multnomah County in Oregon, which has not voted for a republican president since 1960, is poised to replace its uber-progressive, Soros funded District Attorney with a former republican law-and-order prosecutor.  A piece by Johnathan Martin in Politico reports that the current DA, Mike Schmidt, was swept into office during the George Floyd riots in 2020 with 77% of the vote.  Schmidt ran on the same criminal justice reform platform as other Soros-bankrolled prosecutors including Chicago’s Kim Foxx, San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, and Los Angeles DA George Gascon.  The main tenet of that platform is that police, prosecutors and punishment are racist constructs of the white male ruling class and social justice requires that they be abandoned.  UPDATE:  Schmidt was defeated Tuesday by longtime prosecutor Nathan Vasquez with 54% of the vote.

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Pound Cake at 20 Years

by · May 17, 2024 11:03 am

Twenty years ago today, at an NAACP event commemorating the golden anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Bill Cosby gave a speech that has come to be known as the Pound Cake Speech. Cosby was a towering figure at the time, a major star in the entertainment industry. He triggered an earthquake by delivering a message that a great many people did not want to hear.

Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: “The cops shouldn’t have shot him.” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother.” Not, “You’re going to get your butt kicked.” No. “You’re going to embarrass your mother.” “You’re going to embarrass your family.”

Cosby turned out to be a horribly inappropriate messenger, but his message was spot on then and remains true today. His downfall was fully justified, but a tragic side-effect was that no one with the stature that he had then has picked up the baton. Continue reading . . .

Attacks on Cops Highest in Decade

by · May 15, 2024 3:39 pm

The FBI reports that in 2023 over 79,000 law enforcement officers were attacked, the most since 2014.  As reported by the Associated Press, over the same ten year period the number of officers who were shot increased by 113%, from 200 in 2014 to 466 last year.  Fatal attacks on officers totaled 60 last year compared to 61 in 2022.  Seventy three officers died in the line of duty in 2021.  During the national George Floyd riots in 2020, groups including Black Lives Matter, several civil rights leaders and progressive politicians spoke openly about their belief that police were racists, justifying the attacks on officers.  As that trend has continued, it is no mystery why fewer young men and women are choosing careers in law enforcement.  Update:  On May 17 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning violence against police officers.  61 democrats voted against it.

Ban-the-Box Busted

by · May 14, 2024 9:45 am

Among released criminals, there is a substantial connection between employment and going straight. That is, those who find employment are less likely to commit new crimes. The “ban the box” movement seeks to forbid employers from asking about criminal convictions. A related effort is to expunge criminal convictions. The theory is that by removing this information from employers, more past offenders will find employment, and fewer will return to crime.

But does it work?

This study has recently been posted on the National Bureau of Economic Research site. “We find consistent evidence that removing an existing record does not improve labor market outcomes, on average.”

Add another example to the list of confirmations of H.L. Mencken’s famous observation: “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” Continue reading . . .

Insufficient SCOTUS Cases

by · May 13, 2024 8:54 am

The WSJ has this article by Jess Bravin on comments by Justice Kavanaugh that the Supreme Court is not taking enough cases. The majority of his colleagues evidently do not agree.

As if on cue, the Court today announced yet another Monday orders list taking no new cases for full briefing and argument.

We now have a working majority on the Court who believe in enforcing the Constitution actually ratified by the people, not one made up later by judges twisting the original words out of shape to fit their own policy preferences. In criminal procedure, there are huge piles of pseudo-constitutional muck violating the people’s right of self-government and needing cleaning up. So far, though, we do not seem to have enough justices interested in doing so. Continue reading . . .

Pennsylvania Joins Blue State Search For Racial Profiling

by · May 10, 2024 11:51 am

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is expected to sign legislation into law that prohibits drivers from using cellphones as reported by Fox 29.  While most states have adopted similar laws to reduce distracted driving, the new PA law also requires police departments to document and report the race of drivers detained for traffic stops. The purpose of this new requirement, according to the legislature’s black caucus, is to expose racial profiling by police. In doing so, Pennsylvania joins other Democrat-controlled states in the effort to characterize law enforcement as “systemically racist,” a narrative advanced by Black Lives Matter, the ACLU and race hustlers such as Al Sharpton. The irrefutable fact that different races commit crimes at different rates, unrelated to their proportion of the population, is an inconvenient truth that progressive politicians and the mainstream media prefer to ignore. As Pennsylvania traffic officers shy away from stopping a black motorists using smartphones to avoid being tarred as a racist, the new distracted driver’s law will become merely symbolic.

Report Finds California Best Place for Cops

by · May 7, 2024 3:35 pm

A report released yesterday by WalletHub ranked California as the best state in the country for police officers. The report compared training, salaries and job hazards among the states to establish the ranking.  However, the surveyors did not actually take the time to talk to police officers. Josh DuBois of KTLA reports that the state’s police officer associations are having none of it.

“We don’t see any of these metrics in this ‘study’ but that is the reality law enforcement officers face in California,” he added. The unions also took issue with the report’s findings on officer compensation, saying WalletHub failed to consider the high cost of living in the state, especially where housing is concerned,” said the President of the Los Angeles Police Protective League.”

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