The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment on the same tax and spending proposal I (and the editors of Crain’s Chicago Business) remarked on earlier. They don’t add a lot to the conversation. Basically, if you make it costly enough to do business in Chicago businesses will leave and those hurt most will be the most vulnerable.
Except this:
The mayor’s pals say a “city budget is a moral document.†Readers can decide what kind of morality lets criminal gangs run wild while shrinking the police force and chasing taxpayers out of the city.
I join the editors in wondering what sort of moral code they’re following? It sounds more like “nature red in tooth and claw” than any moral code of which I am aware.
One final remark. You can no longer say that the progressives in the Democratic Party don’t want to defund the police with a straight face. The proposal is quite clear; not only does the proposal eliminate the 1,000 positions for uniformed officers presently unfilled permanently it cuts 9% from the CPD budget on top of that. Saying “we don’t want to defund the police we just want to spend less on them” doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Arguing whether having more police officers on the street is the most effective way of improving public safety is a reasonable point and worth discussing. Claiming that cutting spending on the police isn’t defunding the police isn’t.
I’ve already made my views clear: I think that the problem doesn’t start and end with the police. I think that the CPD, the Cook County States Attorney’s office, and the Cook County judiciary need to arrest more people, try more cases, and convict more people found guilty respectively. Our problem is everybody is not rowing in the same direction. The direction should be greater public security rather than reducing incarceration.
You are living in a black run city. The blacks who rule over you are only interested in maximizing the goodies that blacks have. The rest of you, Hispanics, Asians, whites, are of no consequence and no interest.
This is the result of identitarian politics. Each race attempts to seize as much of the pie as possible, regardless of any consequences. Your are living in Hobbes “war of all against all.” This is the end state of the American experiment–chaos.
“You can no longer say that the progressives in the Democratic Party don’t want to defund the police with a straight face. “
That’s been true for quite awhile for anyone paying attention.
Que: Steve
Should we talk about the authenticity of Hunter Biden laptop now? Or how about the vital services provided by Hunter, his ex and now wife, and Joes grandchildren for that Romanian, Ukrainian and Chinese money they got? What with Joe totally uninvolved and all……. Snicker.
AFAICT, these are proposals from some progressive groups, not the mayor’s budget. Why dont we wait and argue about the actual budget. AS i have noted many times, there are groups that want to defund the police, but it actually didnt happen very much and where it did 100% of those places increased in the following year.
I have been arguing with Sailer off and on about stop and frisk. He always claims it was uniquely stop and frisk which lowered crime in NYC, but crime decreased everywhere. NYC had a larger increase than many other places but some laces were pretty similar. When stop and frisk was stopped crime continued to decrease. Then there are cities like El Paso and San Diego which as larger cities have very low rates of crime and we dont really understand why, but they didnt have stop and frisk.
I think maybe we concentrate too much on the police. The number of police per capita in cities varies a lot and there isn’t much correlation between that ratio and crime. Chicago and NYC have both generally had the highest ratios with NYC a low crime city and Chicago high crime. Maybe we need to look more, as you suggest, at courts, prosecutors, judiciary, etc. There are huge delays in many places in going to court. If you commit a crime but it takes 2-3 years to go to court maybe getting arrested isn’t such a deterrent. How competent are the prosecutors?
Steve
PS- Does this mean I get to find some proposal from people on the far right and claim it is the official GOP position? All Republicans want a total ban on abortion for any reason? All gays should be stoned to death? Cutting taxes always increases revenue?
Steve
Not only does the mayor have close ties to these organizations (high-ranking members are in his administration) everything in the proposal is something he ran on.
If Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy ran on it, that would seem fair to me.
Frequently, it doesn’t even get that far—the states attorney doesn’t prosecute it at all.
Mayor Lightfoot did not fill open positions in the CPD. It was clearly a strategy—defunding the police without saying “defund the police”.
So you are saying the mayor ran on defunding the police? I cant find that. Why is it that it’s OK to claim that Dems all believe stuff their most radical people believe but it doesnt make it into law but not OK to do that for Republicans? I guess it wouldn’t be politically correct to note that the people who think it a bad idea to blindly throw money at govt to solve problems are willing to do that when it comes to police.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/03/16/im-not-going-to-defund-the-police-brandon-johnson-tries-to-set-the-record-straight-on-his-public-safety-plan/
Steve
He used exactly those words as Cook County Commissioner and has repeated that his views haven’t changed but the words he uses have. Your argument is sophistry.
steve –
I know its fun to trade barbs, but stop being so literal as to make yourself a fool. “Defund the police” is a catch all term meaning actual defunding, reallocation of funding and the general philosophy adopted by, especially big city, DA’s of being lenient on crime. The results are so predictable, and in fact harming the very people whose communities require policing the most.
Your defenses make you sound like, well, a fool.
Dave- No political ever changes positions on an issue. The whole GOP went from free trade to protectionist. I am merely suggesting that you wait to see the actual budget the mayor proposes, not some other group.
Drew- Defund the Police has no meaning as you guys use it. It’s just like CRT, woke and everything else. It’s just a word to rile up your base. As i keep noting, not many cities actually defunded police. So you change that to include some other stuff, but you really mean only the stuff you dont like. I know that I am not going hear you, and rarely Dave actually criticizing the police for not arresting people for example. AS I also keep pointing out, there are a fair number of cities with higher homicide and overall crime rates than Chicago. Many of those dont engage in the “lenient on crime approach”.
Steve