Law Enforcement

American’s Should Not Kneel/Kowtow Before Provably False Ideas

Published by Papa Giorgio

KOW-TOW

  • DEFINITION: To kneel and touch the forehead to the ground in expression of deep respect, worship, or submission, as formerly done in China…. To show servile deference. synonym: fawn.

Vietnamese mandarins kowtowing before the Governor-General of Tonkin

AMERICAN THINKER has an intro to the below Tucker Carlson video I wish to excerpt from before you watch the video:

…Back in the 1960s, authority figures also collapsed before the black mob.  Shelby Steele, in WHITE GUILT, describes how his college president, the quintessential white liberal who gave to all the Civil Rights causes, backed down like a deflated balloon:

Dr. McCabe simply came to a place where his own knowledge of American racism—knowledge his personal integrity prevented him from denying—opened a vacuum of moral authority within him. He was not suddenly stricken with pangs of guilt over American racism. He simply found himself without the moral authority to reprimand us for our disruptive behavior. He knew that we had a point, that our behavior was in some way connected to centuries of indisputable injustice. So he was trumped by his knowledge of this, not by his remorse over it, though he may have felt such remorse. Our outrage at racism simply had far greater moral authority than his outrage over our breach of decorum. And had he actually risen to challenge us, I was prepared to say that we would worry about our behavior when he and the college started worrying about the racism we encountered everywhere, including on his campus.

And this is when I first really saw white guilt in action. Now I know it to be something very specific: the vacuum of moral authority that comes from simply knowing that one’s race is associated with racism. Whites (and American institutions) must acknowledge historical racism to show themselves redeemed of it, but once they acknowledge it, they lose moral authority over everything having to do with race, equality, social justice, poverty, and so on. They step into a void of vulnerability. The authority they lose transfers to the “victims” of historical racism and becomes their great power in society. This is why white guilt is quite literally the same thing as black power. 

Steele, Shelby, White Guilt [Kindle Locations 370-374]. HarperCollins; emphasis mine.

In the 1960s, thanks to Jim Crow and endemic racism in the Northeast, whites had good reason to feel guilty.

But what about whites in 2020? Well, that’s where the Big Lie comes in….

Why Are Americans Surrendering To Violent Mobs?
Because They’ve Been Told They Have To

Here is an excellent CITY-JOURNAL article that Heather Mac Donald draws sensible reactions to these outliers:

 …Many protest supporters have expressed frustration with the attention being given to a relative handful of agitators driving the violence and looting—behavior, they say, that distorts the image of what is largely a peaceful movement. Their frustration is understandable but also ironic: the narrative that has driven thousands into the streets is itself a distortion. Just as the violence that has alarmed the American public does not represent the peaceful protesters exercising their right to air their grievances, the police violence depicted in viral videos does not characterize the institution of law enforcement.

This is not to say that police are perfect, or that officers never abuse their power; they are not perfect, and some do succumb to what can be an intoxicating sense of authority. This is a truth I’ve personally experienced. Nor is it to say that there is no room to improve policing and to make police-citizen encounters both safer and less fraught. But if there is to be any hope for peacefully bridging the gap so strikingly represented by the glass-covered asphalt separating rioters and police, destructive hyperbole needs to be recognized for what it is.

[….]

This is in line with other data I highlighted in these pages two years ago—namely, a 2018 study published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, which analyzed more than 114,000 criminal arrests made across three midsize police departments, finding that more than 99 percent of arrests were carried out without the use of physical force. In 98 percent of the cases in which those officers did use physical force, suspects “sustained no or mild injury.”

Historical context is important, too. In 1971, New York City Police discharged their firearms 810 times, wounding 221 people and killing 93. By 1990, those numbers were down to 307, 72, and 39, respectively. In 2016, police discharged their weapons just 72 times, wounding 23, killing 9. This is real progress; but it would come as news to anyone observing the mobs that have spent the last few days hurling insults, rocks, and Molotov cocktails at exhausted and demoralized members of the NYPD.

As troubling as cases like that of George Floyd are, we must remember that they are outliers. That knowledge won’t bring comfort or justice to those harmed or killed by police who use unjustifiable force, or their families; but it can help lower the temperature in an environment that is about as inhospitable to reasonable discussion as can be imagined. … 

THE DAILY CALLER weighs in:

…However, this destructive delusion has been completely demolished by a recent study that demonstrates there is no epidemic of racially biased police shootings of black people, that black citizens are not more likely to be shot by white officers, and that the shooting of unarmed people of any race is extraordinarily rare. In fact, an individual American citizen is substantially more likely to be struck by lightning than he is to be shot by the police while unarmed.    

In the article, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Joseph Cesario of Michigan State University and David Johnson of the University of Maryland assess hundreds of fatal police shootings since 2015. Their groundbreaking study exposes what is, at least for the anti-police mythmakers, an inconvenient truth indeed — that police shootings of citizens are not motivated by race or racism.

Here are the facts: 55% of all people fatally shot in America by the police are white — more than double the number of black (27%) or Hispanic (19%) individuals. Those police critics who accept at least this fact are generally quick to point out that black citizens are 27% of the people shot and killed by the police despite making up only 14% of the U.S. population. They say this disparity provides statistical proof of “systemic racism and bias,” but this superficial explanation doesn’t stand up. There are racial disparities in police shootings, but the disparities are not caused by racism.

According to Cesario and Johnson, who analyzed crime data from more than 200 U.S. counties, the strongest predictor of being shot by the police isn’t a person’s race, but whether the person is engaging in violent criminal behavior. Disparities across the major races in rates of police shooting are almost entirely consistent with the rates at which members of these different races are accused by victims of committing violent crimes. In other words, the greater the number of crimes committed by white individuals in a county, the more likely a white person will be shot by the police. And poor white Americans in Appalachia, for example, often are involved in police shootings. But, the greater number of crimes committed by black individuals in a county, the more likely it is that a black person will be shot by the police. The same is true for Hispanic individuals.

It’s not “systemic racism” that makes it more likely that a person will be shot by the police; it is how mathematically likely that person is to be committing crime. An individual’s behavior, not his race, is the determining factor.

The claim that racial bias on the part of individual officers is the cause of racial disparities in police shootings was also specifically found to be untrue. The researchers determined that: “The race of the officer doesn’t matter when it comes to predicting whether a black or white citizen will be shot.” White officers are no more likely to shoot a black person than are black or Hispanic officers. Not only is racial bias on the part of individual officers not a significant predictor of police shootings of black people, but also, remarkably, police officers off all races are statistically less likely to shoot a black than a white person under the same circumstances….

AGAIN, for good measure:

Here is Heather Mac Donald’s WALL STREET JOURNAL article in full [I believe] with thanks to PECKFORD 42:

Hold officers accountable who use excessive force. But there’s no evidence of widespread racial bias.

By Heather Mac Donald
June 2, 2020

George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist. On Friday, Barack Obama tweeted that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’ ” Mr. Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal,” in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts.”

Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home.” That echoed a claim Mr. Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz denounced the “stain . . . of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement during a Friday press conference. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.

This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.

In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.

The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued—a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day. This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.

The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was PUBLISHED in August 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,” they concluded.

A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police.

The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilization-destroying violence. If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighborhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.

The Minneapolis officers who arrested George Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics. But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.

Black Lives Matter (Exposed): Joel Patrick | Hodge Twins

Published by Papa Giorgio

Following the money donated to Black Lives Matter, via Joel Patrick

[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=567696250827248″ width=”691″ height=”400″ onlyvideo=”0″]

Candace Owens has brought new vigor to the above:

White Lives Matter & Black Lives Matter Exposed, via the Hodge Twins

Released Prisoners Part Of The Riot Equation

Published by Papa Giorgio

NYC releases inmates amid coronavirus pandemic, New Jersey is no following their lead; Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden speaks out.

This is a large part of the violent equation we have seen as well:

NEW YORK
New York City released over 2,650 criminals from prison to protect them from the pandemic. But they didn’t stay home or wash their hands. They went back to their old jobs and 100 of them accounted for 190 arrests for crimes like burglary and robbery. A rapist was released and he went back to raping.

One of the freed criminals was responsible for 18 burglaries at closed eateries. And when he was arrested, the end of bail meant that he was set loose. This looting was going on long before the riots.

Now as the rioters and looters rule the streets of Manhattan, when the police manage to arrest them, they have to quickly let them go.

“When it comes to a burglary, a commercial store, which is looting, they’re back out,” Chief Terrence Monahan said. “Because of bail reform, you’re back out on the street the next day. You cannot be held on any sort of bail.”

Of the 650 thugs arrested, almost all will be released back on the street to riot and loot again.

CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles County released about 5,000 criminals accounting for around a third of imprisoned criminals. And with no bail, arrested criminals were set loose and then arrested again. In the first 30 days of the experiment, 213 criminals were rearrested again after being put back on the street.

Sacramento County’s jail population fell 30%, Orange County’s prison numbers dropped by 45%, Detroit’s jail population dropped by 40%, Philadelphia’s by 17%, and Denver’s by 41%. Massachusetts freed 1,000 criminals while Illinois freed around 4,000. Dallas released 1,000 criminals and Hennepin County, the home of the riots that went on to sweep major cities, reduced its prison population by 44%.

What impact did the hundreds of released criminals have on kickstarting the riots?

It’s no coincidence that some of the areas hardest hit by the rioting and the looting had also opened up their prisons to protect inmates from contracting the coronavirus. Despite apocalyptic predictions from policymakers and the media, there were no mass deaths in prisons or ICE detention facilities. But the critical mass of criminals out on the street left police in major cities hopelessly outnumbered…….

(SULTAN KNISH)

Police Departments and Progressives (The Five Update)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Minneapolis officials vow to dismantle city’s police department.

Brian Fallon was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager; and is now a leading
member of the resistance movement serving as Executive Director for Demand Justice.

A friend called the below “Evil Masquerading as Virtue” – yep, couldn’t put it better.

(My Facebook intro to this video) June 7th — take Note MC Hammer was on stage — A veto-proof majority of Minneapolis City Council members announced during a rally at Powderhorn Sunday that they are planning to dismantle the police department.

So, I have noticed that many of these Leftie’s look young, or at least think in childlike terms. Take for instance POWERLINE commenting on their home states Minneapolis Mayor:

Today at a rally in Minneapolis, Boy Mayor Jacob Frey addressed a crowd that was even more left-wing than he is. Dutifully wearing a mask, he told the crowd that he doesn’t favor defunding the Minneapolis Police Department.

I’m actually not sure what “defunding the police department” means. I take it that these people really want to live in a city that has no police services. So, if you see that someone is trying to break into your house, what do you do? One possible answer is, pull out the semiautomatic pistol that you keep next to your bed, and blow him away. But I don’t think that is what these people have in mind. To put it politely, I don’t think they are serious.

But even Jacob Frey’s modest engagement with reality was too much for Minneapolis’s leftists. They booed him off the stage:

[I INSERT THE LONGER VERSION]

THE DAILY WIRE notes the interview of Minneapolis’ City Council President on CNN. (A previous story by the DAILY WIRE may be worth your time for context) I will HIGHLIGHT the magic words/phrases:

Speaking with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Monday morning, the president of the Minneapolis City Council, which has stated it intends to “dismantle” the city’s police department, was asked what a citizen should do if an intruder broke into their house in the middle of the night and there were no police to call. In response, she blithely suggested that the opportunity to call police “comes from a place of privilege,” adding that those citizens should “step back and IMAGINE what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm.”

[….]

Bender answered, “Yes, I mean, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors, and I know, and myself too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and IMAGINE what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done.”

[HERE IS A SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION]

And to finish off DAILY WIRE’S post, they say this [quoting]:

  • Bender continued, “Our commitment is to do what is necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth that the Minneapolis Police are not doing that. Our commitment is to end our city’s toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department, to end policing as we know it, and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.”

These kids are all influenced by their professors and most hyper politically correct influences from their work environment. Take Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender, she has her master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from University of California, Berkeley.

Berkeley.

Which is why she can say things like, “end our city’s toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department,” or, ““step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality,” or, “and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.” Because of the atheistic, progressive bull-crap spoon fed her there.

Anyways, when a friend posted this, he intro’ed it by saying:

  • The definition of “woke” may as well be “evil masquerading as virtue”.

To which I added,

  • Wow. She is a child (watched the video in the DW article). Thinks in child like terms. Uses words like “imagine”. A “Blackwater type organization” will have to be used as contracted security… and the “well-off” [rather than everyone through 911] will truly have a system that works JUST for them. And conceal carry should be allowed fully to everyone without a record.

Here is another conversation with said friend and the intelligent analogy with Pakistan:

(Joshua P.)
Minneapolis will officially disband their police department and replace it with “community law enforcement”.

If you value your life and property, get out of Minneapolis and avoid the city like the active war zone it will be.

(Brandon P.)
I refuse to step one foot in a city without a Police Department.

(Joshua P.)
Yeah, they basically want to replace the police with publicly sanctioned gangs. It will be interesting to watch an American city model it’s security on Kabul, Afghanistan.

I wouldn’t go in the city unless I was in a tank, and then only if I had to, and I had air support.

Yep, the same thing will happen as in other parts of the world, since there is a large Somoli Muslim area in Minniapolis, no-go zones may be the norm? (via CONSERVATIVE TREE HOUSE, June 4th)

…This “community policing” process is already taking place in many European communities the results create what are known as “no go zones.” Neighborhoods, and entire parts of cities, where local Sharia compliance enforcement officers have replaced the police force; and the rules, regulations and enforcement are detached from the larger social compact. Considering that Minneapolis has a large concentration of Somali Muslims within the local population, it makes sense this approach is now discussed for their city.

Minneapolis – […] Now the council members are listening to a city that is wounded, angry, fed up with decades of violence disproportionately visited upon black and brown residents. Various private and public bodies – from First Avenue to Minneapolis Public Schools – have essentially cut ties with the police department. Council members are trying to figure out what their next move is.

Their discussion is starting to sound a little more like what groups like Reclaim the Block and the Black Visions Collective have been saying for years. On Tuesday, Fletcher published a lengthy Twitter thread saying the police department was “irredeemably beyond reform,” and a “protection racket” that slows down responses as political payback.

[….]

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the man now in charge of the prosecution of Derek Chauvin and the Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s death, is a very well known Muslim activist and supporter of the sharia doctrine….

Are ‘No Go Zones’ where non-Muslims are not allowed and Sharia Law prevails coming to the West. Breitbart London editor Raheem Kassam takes a closer look in new book:

Institutional Racism (Blue Collar Factcheck)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Jason has a way of making you look at an issue that broadens the mind.

ABSTRACT

Officer Characteristics And Racial Disparities In Fatal Officer-Involved Shootings (PNAC)

Despite extensive attention to racial disparities in police shootings, two problems have hindered progress on this issue. First, databases of fatal officer-involved shootings (FOIS) lack details about officers, making it difficult to test whether racial disparities vary by officer characteristics. Second, there are conflicting views on which benchmark should be used to determine racial disparities when the outcome is the rate at which members from racial groups are fatally shot. We address these issues by creating a database of FOIS that includes detailed officer information. We test racial disparities using an approach that sidesteps the benchmark debate by directly predicting the race of civilians fatally shot rather than comparing the rate at which racial groups are shot to some benchmark. We report three main findings: 1) As the proportion of Black or Hispanic officers in a FOIS increases, a person shot is more likely to be Black or Hispanic than White, a disparity explained by county demographics; 2) race-specific county-level violent crime strongly predicts the race of the civilian shot; and 3) although we find no overall evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities in fatal shootings, when focusing on different subtypes of shootings (e.g., unarmed shootings or “suicide by cop”), data are too uncertain to draw firm conclusions. We highlight the need to enforce federal policies that record both officer and civilian information in FOIS.

 

 

This Guy Expertly Disarms Rioter

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is the audio of him yelling an order forcefully, clearly, and multiple times to bot announce intentions and control the situation:

Good Comments on the same video:

Are Police “Racists”? (Larry Elder)

Published by Papa Giorgio

After a caller leaves a message mentioning the 72-police officers being put on leave for “racist” comments on their social media sites, Larry Elder brings some rational stats into the conversation. Let me also say, all I have read so far is that these offices said some racist, Islamophobic, and disparaging comments. I bet a good amount of these comments were stuff the PC-Police “think” are these things, but are are not. See Larry’s article entitled, “Criminal Behavior, Not Racism, Explains ‘Racial Disparities’ in Crime Stats“. See more on SIXHIRB at my post here: “Deck O’ Race Cards (PJTV), and Dennis Prager“.

FBI Special Agent James Gagliano Calls Comey a “Feckless Leader”

Published by Papa Giorgio

  • “But what’s worse, Trump world’s behavior or someone writing about trying to sound the alarm about it,” Stelter whined. “This is nothing to do with that,” [FBI Special Agent James] Gagliano exclaimed. “He held the moral ground, Brian, until he leaking to The New York Times. And then folks like me that defended him last May, you lost our respect.” (link below)

And amid his lionization of Comey during Sunday night’s CNN Newsroom, CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI Special Agent James Gagliano embarrassed Stelter by calling out Comey for being a “feckless leader.”

[….]

“The issue I take with him, and many former agents and those on board, current on boards take this issue, James Comey is still an FBI employee,” Gagliano said, explaining why what Comey was doing was against DOJ policy. “He’s discussing matters that are relevant and salient to an open or ongoing investigation or case. I.e., the Russia probe. I.e. the Inspector General’s probe. I.e., a number of different congressional probes still going on right now.”

Gagliano noted that what Comey was doing (and what the media had been praising) in term of chiding and sliming the President both in the book and social media was exactly what they hated about Trump (NEWSBUSTERS)

Cities Fight Back Against California’s Crazy Democrats

Published by Papa Giorgio

Sheriff’s take an oath to the Constitution. They HAVE to follow what the Constitution clearly enumerates:

TAMMY BRUCE (via Fox News) has this article about the crazy leftists in California dividing it’s own state. A civil war of sorts.

Poor California. Its politicians thought they were declaring war on the federal government, but now the state is embroiled in a war with itself, as at least one county has said enough is enough with the scourge of being part of a sanctuary state for criminal illegal immigrants.

“Orange County will now join a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that argues California’s SB-54, which restricts local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in matters related to undocumented immigrants, is unconstitutional,” United Press International reported.

California’s Democrats don’t like President Trump, so they decided to punish their own citizens by becoming a “sanctuary state.” The sponsor of the legislation made his impetus clear, stating: “California is building a wall – a wall of justice – against President Trump’s xenophobic, racist and ignorant immigration policies.”

When Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill that transformed California into a haven for illegal immigrant criminals, California State Sheriffs’ Association President Bill Brown said that as the result of the new law, “people who are chronic or serial criminals that just haven’t risen to a particular level of crime yet are going to go back out into the community, and people are going to be victimized.”

  • It’s now undeniable that liberal policies have destroyed the quality of life in one of our most beautiful states.

[….]

If the chaos surrounding the protection of criminal illegal immigrants wasn’t enough, Californians are dealing with the results of Proposition 47, which was passed by the voters in 2014. Californians were told the measure would allow them to put fewer people in jail and save the state tens of millions of dollars, which could be invested in diversion programs. In other words, the state decriminalized certain drug and property crimes.

Instead of rainbows and unicorns, what actually happened was a disaster.

“Proposition 47 downgraded a variety of ‘non-serious, nonviolent crimes’ that had previously been considered felonies to misdemeanors…. A thief may now steal something under (a $950 limit) on a daily basis and it will never rise to felony status.… In the event that a perpetrator is pursued and apprehended, the consequence can be a small fine or a brief stay in jail. In reality, these repercussions are rare,” reported National Review.

“Outrage in these circumstances is apolitical…. ‘Every bicycle in our building has been stolen,’ says Karen Burns, president of a San Francisco condo association. ‘I’ve caught so many people stealing packages. They don’t care. They know nothing will happen to them. It’s crazy. It’s horrible. I feel like these people need to go to jail.’”

Proposition 47 also downgraded personal use of illegal drugs to misdemeanor status. The result is the destruction of any semblance of safety and quality of life. In San Francisco, National Review notes: “Now more than ever, residents and merchants are living with a proliferation of addicts who roll up their sleeves, inject, and then nod off on the sidewalks or careen down the street and into traffic.… Why not shoot up wherever you want, leave bloody syringes in piles, steal, and deal when there are few if any consequences?”

With policy like this, it wasn’t a surprise when the FBI reported in September that violent crime was up in California for the second straight year. Housing and wage crises are also gripping the used-to-be Golden State.

It’s now undeniable that liberal policies have destroyed the quality of life in one of our most beautiful states. This isn’t hyperbole, it’s an objective assessment by US News and World Report’s “Best States” ranking, which places California dead last in the “Quality of Life” category.

Not at all distracted by the dumpster fire their policies have created – including explosions in homelessness, drug abuse, crime, and criminal illegal immigrants enjoying state protection – California’s Democrats have decided their next big mission is to sue the federal government over the citizenship question being included again on the U.S. census form.

In addition to a lower census count possibly costing California a seat in the House of Representatives, Newsweek reported that California’s attorney general complained “that depressed participation (in the census by illegal immigrants) would ‘deprive California and its cities and counties of their fair share of billions of dollars in federal funds.’” 

And with that, we finally found something California liberals want from the federal government – everyone else’s money.