Posted on 04/29/2015 12:05:50 AM PDT by grundle
In Baltimore, as the National Guard steps in, curfews are imposed, and business owners pick up the pieces from their burned-out, looted stores, let’s not forget why one more American city has been torn apart by racial violence. Blue America has failed at social justice. It has failed at equality. It has failed at accountability. Its competing constituencies are engaged in street battles, and any exploration of “root causes” must necessarily include decades of failed policies — all imposed by steadfastly Democratic mayors and city leaders.
Are the riots caused by the Baltimore Police Department’s “documented history” of abuse? Which party has run Baltimore and allowed its police officers to allegedly run amok? Going deeper, which American political movement lionizes public-employee unions, fiercely protecting them from even the most basic reform? Public-employee unions render employee discipline difficult and often impossible. Jobs are functionally guaranteed for life, and rogue officers can count on the best representation money can buy — courtesy of Blue America.
Are the riots caused by inequality? Orioles’ owner Peter Angelos’s son, John, made waves on the left with his “tweetstorm” stating that his “greater source of personal concern, outrage, and sympathy” was not with “one night’s property damage” but with a litany of economic outrages that he claims have “plunged tens of millions of hard-working Americans into economic devastation.” Mother Jones summed up his message by declaring, “At the end of the day, it comes down to social and economic inequality.”
The more “blue” a city is, the greater its level of income inequality.
So let’s examine inequality. It turns out that the more “blue” a city is, the greater its level of income inequality — inequality compounded by a lack of affordable housing. This chart, from The Atlantic, is telling:
Translation: As a city gets increasingly blue, its housing gets increasingly unaffordable.
There is a deep literature tying liberal residents to illiberal housing policies that create affordability crunches for the middle class. In 2010, UCLA economist Matthew Kahn published a study of California cities, which found that liberal metros issued fewer new housing permits. The correlation held over time: As California cities became more liberal, he observed, they built fewer homes.
Are the riots caused by an expansive government, which uses police officers as the tip of the spear to enforce social reform? The expansive regulatory state criminalizes everything from legitimate crimes to selling “loosies,” the individual cigarettes that triggered the New York City police’s fatal encounter with Eric Garner. In a powerful post the very liberal Tah-Nehisi Coates (who is presently condemning calls for nonviolence in Baltimore as a “ruse”) decried “the belief that all our social problems can be solved with force.” Coates continued:
Peel back the layers of most of the recent police shootings that have captured attention and you will find a broad societal problem that we have looked at, thrown our hands up, and said to the criminal-justice system, “You deal with this.” . . . Was Walter Scott’s malfunctioning third-brake light really worth a police encounter? Should the state repeatedly incarcerate him for not paying child support? Do we really want people trained to fight crime dealing with someone who’s ceased taking medication? Does the presence of a gun really improve the chance of peacefully resolving a drug episode? In this sense, the police — and the idea of police reform — are a symptom of something larger. The idea that all social problems can, and should, be resolved by sheer power is not limited to the police. In Atlanta, a problem that began with the poor state of public schools has now ending by feeding more people into the maw of the carceral state.
The regulatory state necessarily creates more interactions between armed law enforcement and citizens. It fosters resentment. It creates the possibility for confusion, mistakes, and petty acts of violence and vengeance. Yet the Left never seems to learn. Even now deep-Blue Hawaii wants to raise the legal smoking age to 21. How long before there’s a tragic incident tied to confrontation between a police officer and a 19-year-old smoker?
For decades, the Left has ruled America’s great cities, presiding over often-unaccountable police departments, denying access to affordable housing, and dramatically increasing the state’s intrusion into citizens’ lives. In fact, the Left’s diverse urban centers are at the heart of the so-called coalition of the ascendant that will allegedly guarantee liberal domination for years to come.
Yet now one part of that coalition is throwing rocks and burning cars, and another part of that coalition is locking shields and wielding pepper spray. And a third segment — the urban intellectual elite — can’t decide whether to justify or condemn the riots. It’s blue versus blue in America’s cities. Their one-party rule has failed.
— David French is an attorney and a staff writer at National Review.
Nothing I love more than God’s word.
>>The left have destroyed more cities than nuclear weapons.
And then made a shyte load of money rebuilding them - just like the RINOs.
“Blue America has failed at social justice.”
That’s a really disturbing take on things. It suggests that “Blue America” is the problem, not “social justice” itself. National Review is dying.
“But I still think you have some mental problems. Please see a doctor.”
Au contraire...
All cities are libtardian, throughout the world and throughout history. Demand for bigger government is driven by population density. It should surprise no one that housing becomes more expensive as more people try to live on the same plot of land.
Now I live not far from the Wilmington, DE sections that rioted and were under martial law 9 months in 1968. The mayor (black, a former city policeman) has just turned down the suggestions of a commission instituted to define changes needed for the police department of the "Murder Town" of America (by Newsweek), most of whose statistics accumulate in the black/hispanic sections.
How lucky can I get? Summer is coming up --
Indeed
How lucky can I get? Summer is coming up >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You might want to think about moving to Texas or Wyoming for a vacation.
I can see the hand of the Obama campaign organizing these street riots, and recruiting black youth to be Obama’s cannon fodder.
The organizing is very much like that which created the Arab Spring in Egypt , Libya, Israel and Gaza.(The results were disastrous)It was accomplished by the use of oneline “get out the vote” workers from the Obama Campaign, which has never ceased to operate against Obama’s adversaries, including Bibi Nethanyahu.
NOw that Obama organization has turned itself inwards to America, and we will now have a national “arab spring” ourselves, brought to you by Obama’s community organizers.
What is the goal?
The nationalization of all state and local police forces, with assigned political officers to all departments based on the Civil Rights Act ( Our very own SS, just like Germany). There will be selective prosecutions for racial minorities, one law for minorities and a different law for the majority...a violation of the Constitution and a cause for Civil War.
This is what new AG Lynch represents....the totalitarianizing of America. The ten Republicans who voted for her confirmation should be tarred and feathered , and run out of town.Its actually sickening.
I hope your idea of nationalization of police forces is all wrong, but if my memory is correct, Bush set up the mechanism for this to happen with his regime’s 9/11 legislation.
I’m hoping that for obama to make his happen, he’d need Congressional authority - or at least congress would put a stop to it. Oops! Sorry, I forgot, our nation is governed by the Uniparty.
On the bright side, I do not think your typical cop would go for this and would just play along or work against it until someone like Cruz got in power.
Oh, that whole not coveting, not stealing, respecting your elders, and being married thing - that stuff is “hate speech” in the leftists’ handbook,
but would be the solution to the problems we’re seeing in these cities.
On the bright side, I do not think your typical cop would go for this>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, I agree, but then they can resign their jobs, and those police jobs will be filled by people stepping up from the TSA.
This is the HopeNChange Obama was talking about in 2007. Its finally come.
The States had better get ready for a battle royal. Its coming.Some blue states have already knuckled under.
Yo, vegetarian odd are you there?
Amen. Why? Because it is what we have of our Lord Jesus before our eyes, for He is The Word Personified; and It is His Holy Spirit speaking to us from its pages, if it is faithfully and precisely translated for us from copies of the original languages by which His Words have been preserved.
How It touches one's soul!
Yes. He changes our perspective, He gives us reason to get up in the morning. Without God, it is eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
Washed in The Blood . . .
Hope someone from Delaware reads this . . .
Everybody's got one.....
Some people have more than one......
Some people are nothing butt one.....
I once was blind...
I just read Whittaker Chambers’ excellent book, “Witness,” and in it he captured the essence of the problems in the cities, “Communism is a faith of the cities, and can look upon the countryside only to organize, that is to say, to destroy it. For it is clear that the history of the 20th century will be determined by the cities, not by the countryside.”
. . . and broken-hearted and lost . . .
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