Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

A Mystery for Elizabeth Spiers and the Times, but No One Else

Posted: August 5, 2021 by datechguy in crime, media, News/opinion, politics
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Elizabeth Spiers at the New York times has written a long essay on Cuomo. She uses 917 words to answer the question that she asks in title:

How Cuomo Got Away With It for So Long

This is a real poser to Ms. Spiers who opines on the subject thus:

Perversely, his abrasiveness may have given him a sort of immunity to consequences until now, at least when it comes to his public image. Any time he exhibits terrible interpersonal behavior, it can be regarded as an intrinsic part of his personality. He’s established a reputation as a jerk who treats people badly, so people shrug when he proves, yet again, that he is a jerk who treats people badly. His behavior is normalized because it seems normal for Andrew Cuomo.

If all of this verbiage sounds familiar it might not be a surprise because you’re read something like it before about

In her experience with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez met a justice system that rarely takes up complaints like the one she put forward in 2015 against Weinstein. Her experience in going to the police with a complaint that she was sexually assaulted and then having her case stall is more the rule than the exception.

With a title that sounds rather familar:

How Harvey Weinstein got away with it for so long

And of course the mystery continues with Matt Lauer:

“He’s angry about what he sees as the media’s unfair treatment of him, and hasn’t been taking things well,” said the source. “He had done a lot of work to repair his relationships with his kids and they’ve been sticking by him.”

“He went from being the biggest deal and being able to do whatever he wanted to being an outcast and it’s been a bitter pill to swallow,” the source continued.

Apparently none of these writers had a clue how they got away with it for so long but the clue to the answer is in the sentence below Ms. Spiers byline:

Ms. Spiers has worked in New York media since the early 2000s.

Now while this is a mystery to these New York Liberals it’s something that the rest of us already know.

He got away with for so long for the same reason that Weinstein, and Lauer, and Clinton and Epstein did because he is a Liberal Democrat who has supported the liberal democrat cause and those who knew what was going on, and I’m sure like Weinstein et all there were plenty in politics, in media, in entertainment and in government, considered him useful a source of money or power and influence and both

At best a lot of folks on the left are in denial at the moment worst they are covering themselves with phony displays of shock and disbelief.

Now I don’t know Ms. Spiers, it’s possible that she knew all about Cuomo and Weinstein, and Lauer and others it’s possible that she heard rumors and ignored them and it’s even possible that she knew absolutely nothing Cuomo and all the there. I have no idea one way or the other, but there is one thing I do know.

I know that sooner or later another prominent Democrat pol, or operative or donor who has spent years doing exactly what Cuomo was doing will suddenly no longer be useful to the party and when that time comes we will see another opinion piece by another New York Liberal titled: How did they get away with it for so long.

Unexpectedly of course.

Electronic monitoring for violent criminals in Chicago and Cook County is a failure

Posted: August 1, 2021 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

The far-left has taken over many elected prosecutor’s offices, including Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, George Gascon in Los Angeles County, Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, and Kim Foxx in Cook County, where Chicago is the county seat.

As I sadly live in Crook County I’m going focus on Foxx, Cook County’s state’s attorney and Jussie Smollett’s protector, who among other things, refuses to prosecute shoplifters with a felony unless they are accused of stealing merchandise worth more than $1,000.

Foxx is also a huge supporter of electronic monitoring of criminal suspects.

Small-time crooks often move on to bigger crimes. The “broken-windows” practice of policing that Rudy Giuliani put into place during his eight years as mayor of New York–his cops aggressively cracked down on petty criminals–led to a major decrease in violent crime. In the years before Rudy’s election NYC averaged over 2,000 murders annually. His successor, Michael Bloomberg, largely kept Guiliani’s policies in place. When Bloomberg left office in 2013 there were just 333 murders in America’s largest city. The murder rate has gone up with Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York but that’s a post for another time. 

The soft-on-crime approach of Foxx has been a disaster for Cook County residents, particular minorities who Foxx claims to champion. According to Hey Jackass there have been 467 homicides after the first seven months of 2021. Of the victims 83 percent of them were black and 13 percent were Hispanic. 

Bail is often light under Foxx and her prosecutors. Bad people who yes, have not yet been convicted of the crimes they are accused of, are being released with low bail or under electronic monitoring. 

Even Cook County’s sheriff, Democrat Tom Dart, doesn’t think electronic monitoring should be utilized the way Foxx is using it. “We were handed this thing—we didn’t ask for it,” Dart told NBC Chicago last week. “This is not what it was designed for The program was never designed for violent people.” And yet that is what is being done. 

More from NBC Chicago:

Nevertheless, numbers provided by the sheriff’s office show that on a recent day this month,100 murder suspects were free on electronic monitoring. Another 106 suspects were out in the community charged with criminal sexual assault, 547 charged as felons in possession of a weapon, and 263 as armed habitual criminals.

Let me repeat the first two: There are 100 people accused of murder who are free on electronic surveillance in Cook County. And what happened to the #MeToo movement? There are 106 people charged with criminal sexual assault on home arrest right in the county where I live.

Some of those on electronic monitoring in Cook County have eluded surveillance, including a man who escaped from electronic monitoring a few days after agreeing to it; he has since been charged with shooting a man in the face. Then there is the man accused of attempting to murder a cop who escaped from house arrest who was later found with an auto-fire gun. It gets worse. A man on electronic monitoring for a gun charge was charged with a murder during a home invasion.

Then there is this bizarre twist on electronic monitoring. Last month just a few minutes after being fitted with an electronic surveillance device rapper KTS Dre was shot–Sonny Corleone-style–64 times outside Cook County Jail. Clearly the rapper was better off being locked up. But Dre wasn’t the only person shot, two women were wounded in that attack. 

Can crimes be committed by people who stay home during their electronic home confinement? Of course! A woman selling cars on Facebook was lured to the home of a man on electronic monitoring. “Give me everything. You don’t f*cking move,” the accused allegedly warned. He also told the man who accompanied the salesperson, “Tell your b*tch not to move or I’ll shoot her too.”

As bad as Kim Foxx is–and she is indeed horrible–the ultimate responsibility for this public safety debacle belongs to Cook County voters–not me of course–who blindly voted Democrat party-line and returned Foxx to office last autumn. 

The warning signs on Foxx were there.

Chicago mayor’s Lori Lightfoot weak-on-crime policies deserve condemnation too. The man she chose to run the Chicago Police, David Brown, who for the most part has done a rotten job, did express some wisdom last week when he asked, “How many people think it’s OK to have over 90 people on electronic monitoring that we’ve charged with murder released back into our communities?”

The local mainstream media, NBC Chicago being an exception, is either ignoring or minimizing the crimes in Cook County being committed by accused criminals under house arrest. Many thanks to CWB Chicago for regularly reporting on this issue. After all, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The Democrats’ delta variant

Posted: July 27, 2021 by chrisharper in elections
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By Christopher Harper

As Joe Biden’s approval ratings plummet and his policies falter, the Democrats are turning to a tried-and-true strategy of promoting anxiety and fear over the delta variant of COVID-19.

The renewed imposition of mask wearing in St. Louis and other locales seems to be just a start in the election battle for 2022. Moreover, some major cities are forcing students to wear masks when school starts in the fall.

I firmly believe that the COVID coup forced Donald Trump out of office, but I don’t think the strategy will work for the upcoming election.

At the outset, it should be noted that Biden’s approval rating, according to a recent Gallup poll, fell from 56% approval to 50% in only a month. An estimated 45% disapprove of Biden’s performance, with 5% having no opinion.  The poll found that 90% of Democrats, 12% of Republicans and 48% of independents approve of the job Biden is doing. His ratings among Democrats and independents are the lowest to date among those groups. See https://news.gallup.com/poll/352733/biden-approval-drops-lowest-date.aspx

As is often the case, the media have become water carriers for the Democrat strategy—as evidenced by recent stories about possible opponents.

For example, The Wall Street Journal ran a story that targeted Florida, the home of potential GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis.

“Driving the rise are the delta variant, large numbers of unvaccinated, relaxation of preventive measures, and more indoor time,” the news organization reported.

The local CBS station in Miami picked up the attack by quoting a local physician. “While hospitals in our state were filling up, DeSantis was shouting about ‘Freedom over Faucism,’” said Dr. Bernard Ashby, who leads a group of Florida physicians. “If DeSantis were as concerned about stopping COVID-19 spread as he was about coming up with these clever jabs about Dr. Fauci, we might not be in this position.”

Ashby said DeSantis has bragged about Florida’s approach to handling the pandemic, but he accused the governor of being reactive and not having a plan to protect residents.

That sure sounds like the same media-fueled attack that Trump faced during the election campaign in 2020.

The article failed to acknowledge how successful DeSantis had been in dealing with COVID in comparison with other states.

But let’s be clear: The Democrats have no one other than themselves to blame for what’s happening in every aspect of American life.

As Gallup noted: “Consumers are paying higher prices for gas and other goods. Biden has also struggled to deliver on his promise of greater bipartisanship, although negotiations on an infrastructure bill continue in the Senate.”

Add to that Biden’s moves to divide rather than unite Americans over issues such as the border crisis, critical race theory, energy independence, and international affairs.

Simply put, the play toward politicizing the pandemic once again should not have much traction. That’s because Joe Biden—not Donald Trump—has been in charge.

Fool me once; shame on you! Fool me twice; shame on me!

Chicago has most of the tools already to fight violent crime without additional federal help

Posted: July 25, 2021 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

Another federal crackdown on guns in Chicago is coming. Just like in 2017 when the Chicago Crime Gun Strike Force was created by the federal government. Obviously it didn’t work well–because here we are in 2021 coping with out of control violent crime in America’s third-largest city.

According to Hey Jackass here are Chicago’s recent homicide and shooting totals:

Year       Homicides  Wounded
2021 
(to date)   443        2,023
2020	    456	       1,902
2019	    303	       1,307
2018	    338	       1,433
2017	    425	       1,813
2016	    414	       2,050
2015	    283	       1,358
2014	    243	       1,227

Already as you can see more people have been wounded so far this year than in any year since 2014, with the exception of 2016. And there have been more homicides–the totals comprised by Hey Jackass include other deaths, such as self-defense shootings–than any year except 2020, when there were 456 homicides. We’re already at 443 with a little more than five months left in 2021.

“2020 did have a lot of shootings in it,” Saniie said. “But it’s also important to put this into perspective.”

Here’s your perspective, Saniie: As I wrote earlier in this entry, violence is out of control in Chicago. A few weeks ago I wrote, correctly of course, “Chicago has a street gang problem not a gun problem.” There are ten gang members for every cop in the city. But let’s talk about guns. Chicago has among the strictest gun laws in America. Oh, don’t believe the long-time apologists’ line that guns from out of state are responsibile for this, or previous, violent crime waves. David Harsanyi ripped that pathetic argument to shreds last year in the National Review. And of course those out of state guns don’t fire themselves.

Chicago has plenty of other laws on the books to fight crime. But Kim Foxx is not a forceful prosecutor. The essential website CWB Chicago, unlike the city’s mainstream media outlets, honestly reports on Chicago crime and holds no punches. Since New Year’s Day it has been documenting the people in Chicago “accused of killing, trying to kill, or shooting someone in Chicago this year while awaiting trial for another felony.” Many of those earlier crimes involve guns. So far CWB Chicago has found 30 such individuals.

According to the same site, 32 people “were charged with committing murder, attempted murder, or aggravated battery with a firearm while free on bail for serious felonies in 2020.”

I don’t have any firm numbers on people in Chicago charged with new felonies while on electronic surveillance because I can’t find any. Perhaps the Chicago Sun-Times, which deems itself “the Hardest Working Paper in America,” or the Chicago Tribune, both of which have greater resources than internet stand-alones, can find out how many ankle-bracelet offenders there are if they put forth the effort. Perhaps such work can reverse their long decline in revenue and subscribers. But alas, both newspapers have a narrative to advance. A false one when it comes to crime.

Even though she is a leftist ideologue like Foxx, Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is not politically close with the Cook County state’s attorney. They may even hate each other. But on the issue of crime they are in lockstep. Last week Lightfoot said Chicago “can’t arrest its way” of of its violence crisis.

Perhaps she is right. But Chicago–and Cook County–can jail and imprison its way, at least for now, out of its violent crime outbreak. But that probably won’t happen. Last month Foxx said that she might drop many low-level charges–her office hasn’t said which alleged crimes would be covered–because of a backlog of cases dating to the 2020 lockdown. Crime very well may pay in Chicago. Foxx is a supporter of “affordable bail.” Meanwhile Illinois’ no cash bail law goes into effect in 2023, two months after Gov. JB Pritzker, who signed that bill into law, faces voters. Al Capone and his henchmen picked the wrong ’20s decade to commit crimes, for sure.

Presumably Cook County judges and Foxx’s attorneys are well-rested from an easy 2020. They need to work harder and fulfil their duty to protect the public. Foxx can put on her lawyer hat and pitch in and help out in the courtroom, although if I was a criminal and she was the lead attorney against me I’d be confident of my chances for an acquittal.

While I’m sure federal assistance will help in fighting violent crime in Chicago, many of the tools are already in place for Lightfoot and Foxx to clean up Chicago now.

Only the Chicago Police Department needs to bring back stop-and-frisk searches, allow foot chases again, and reinstate its gang crimes unit, for starters.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from suburban Cook County at Marathon Pundit. And no, I did not vote for Kim Foxx.

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