Posted on 07/27/2006 10:11:03 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Once again a rival attorney general candidate is blaming Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown for the city spiraling homicide rate -- and offering to help local officials fight crime.
This time it's Republican state Sen. Chuck Poochigian, who traveled to Oakland from Fresno last week to criticize Brown's inability to put the brakes on violent crime. Poochigian also offered to help support state Sen. Don Perata's plan to fight crime and noted that Brown was not invited to Perata's summit last week that including 40 public officials and community activists.
"I commend Sen. Perata for acknowledging that Oakland is in the midst of a serious public-safety crisis, and for taking steps to fight back against those terrorizing the streets," Poochigian said in a statement. "Perata and other local and law enforcement officials are filling a void left by those with the most direct control over Oakland's rising crime and seem to realize that city leaders who ignore the problem or deny that it exists only make things worse."
The charge was dismissed as a political play by the staff members of both Perata and Brown, who deny there is any rift between the East Bay's two most prominent politicians.
--snip--
Perata said after his meeting last week that he did not invite Brown because he didn't want this to become a "political event" and since the mayor is leaving office in six months, the senator preferred to work with their mutual ally, Council President Ignacio De La Fuente.
"None of this is meant to be political -- we didn't invite any candidates for statewide office," Perata spokeswoman Alicia Trost said. "Sen. Poochigian is obviously taking this as a political opportunity."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Yes but Brown says he will use "social justice" as his main weapon as the new Attorney General.
Yeah! So why not blame the incumbent for the mess?
Is Brown responsible or not?
What's the big deal?
I've said it before and I'll say it again. We could have done worse than Mayor Moonbean this past eight years. In fact, I fear that will be demonstrated by the record of his successor.
The biggest problem Oakland has is not enough cops. Right behind that is a population of lefties who are ambivalent as to where they stand in the fight between order and civility on the one hand, and chaos and criminality on the other hand.
Most of them would oppose murder and robbery generally, but few see the connection between certain "tolerant" attitudes that give the "green light" to crime, and the crime that results, and want to keep the police on a short leash. I would rather see the police crack some skulls now and then.
You should have heard the comfortable progressives squeal when there were two murders in a usually upscale section of Oakland [yes, we have them] in the space of two weeks a few months ago. This was after half a dozen murders had occurred in my neighborhood, which raised no fuss among the progressives, because 1) most of them don't live there, and 2) my part of town is zoned for murder.
What are your feelings about Ron Dellums about to assume the reins of power as Mayor?
Feelings about Dellums:
As I stated in my previous post,
"We could have done worse than Mayor Moonbean this past eight years. In fact, I fear that will be demonstrated by the record of his successor."
To expand, I think Dellums was put in by the "Old Guard" Black Democrat establishment who have spent the past eight years in the wilderness under Brown, and realized they needed a marquee name. Sort of like when the Republicans nominated Eisenhower - because they needed a winner.
I think Dellums is going to be a figurehead. There will be lots of happy progressive talk, about "empowerment", and "diversity" [even though the influx of Latinos and Asians has put an end to the old black/white calculus] and lots of Berkeley-style symbolic nonsense in solidarity with various leftist causes -- Dellums will be involved in this stuff, whereas "those who brung him" will actually attend to the business of running the city.
I see little useful getting done. To preserve his progressive credentials Dellums is going to have to entertain every pet concern of every progressive crackpot in Oakland, at least in the beginning. The result will be anything but progress.
Dellums only identifiable initiative so far is to bring 100,000 new people downtown. In this initiative Dellums has trumped Moonbeam's largely realized goal of 10,000 new downtown residents. This initiative is fine with me, and I hope Dellum chooses to concentrate the bulk of his finite resources on it -- because it's an utter fantasy with no danger of being realized. 100,000 people is a quarter of the current population. To fit them all would require that downtown look like Hong Kong. Dellums might as well have proposed 100 gazillion people as 100,000.
My main fear is that he will come up with, or be talked into, other initiatives that use up a lot of tax money and produce little benefit, or skew economic incentives in such a way as to screw things up.
Thanks for your reply, all the best to you and Oakland.
CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION ARTICLE 5 EXECUTIVE SEC. 13. Subject to the powers and duties of the Governor, the Attorney General shall be the chief law officer of the State. It shall be the duty of the Attorney General to see that the laws of the State are uniformly and adequately enforced. The Attorney General shall have direct supervision over every district attorney and sheriff and over such other law enforcement officers as may be designated by law, in all matters pertaining to the duties of their respective offices, and may require any of said officers to make reports concerning the investigation, detection, prosecution, and punishment of crime in their respective jurisdictions as to the Attorney General may seem advisable. Whenever in the opinion of the Attorney General any law of the State is not being adequately enforced in any county, it shall be the duty of the Attorney General to prosecute any violations of law of which the superior court shall have jurisdiction, and in such cases the Attorney General shall have all the powers of a district attorney. When required by the public interest or directed by the Governor, the Attorney General shall assist any district attorney in the discharge of the duties of that office.
Like so many other brainy citizens, we and our fellows blame all our ills on convenient top officials rather than demanding serious reform of those actually responsible. (We see it here in LA quite vividly with the monster we now have in the mayor's chair).
The results would be comical if they were'nt so tragic.
Crime is out of control in most cities across our country and we will inherit the wind as the new WWIII rolls out as it inevitably will.
(Wait till we see what 30MM invaders already here is going to do to this new World War...it will be a little less than joyous.)
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