Go ahead and trust your government and politicians, particularly Democrat ones. Then go to sleep and dream about what you just bought or were promised. Barnum was right, sucker born every minute
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More stupidity from Democrats and yet citizens of Portland seem to suck it up because they love having their town destroyed:
Portland wants to walk back defunding the police but officers don't want the jobs
By JOHN SEXTON
Last June Portland’s Mayor Ted Wheeler, who is also the police commissioner, decided to put an end to the Gun Violence Reduction Team (GVRT) as part of an effort to reimagine policing. The $6 million that would have gone to the team was redirected ” toward communities of color.” Even at the time the assistant chief of police warned their could be serious consequences.
According to Assistant Police Chief Andy Shearer, who oversees the team, the GVRT tracks all shootings in the city (homicides, suicides, robberies, domestic violence, etc.)…
“There’s been cities in the recent past, two in California that I’m thinking of, that both had to reduce their staffing sizes and did away with their gun violence reduction units. Both agencies saw record numbers of homicides in the year immediately following that. And one of those cities even set a new record the second year after they did away with that team … The partnership between the community outreach and then data-driven, very deliberate law enforcement efforts are critical in addressing this type of gun violence,” Chief Shearer said.
Daryl Turner, the head of Portland’s Police Union issued a similar warning. “That is going to cripple us in our ability to be able to stop violence in the streets of the city of Portland,” he said.
After the GVRT was cut, the number of shootings and murders in Portland skyrocketed. Last September there were 110 shootings in Portland, a 243% jumpcompared to a year earlier. At the end of the year, Portland had more than 900 shootings, double the previous year.
The spike in violence continued into 2021. In the first two months of this year Portland had 17 homicides compared to just one the previous year. The city is currently on track to have the highest number of murders ever recorded, going all the way back to a record set in the late 1980s.
In January, Mayor Wheeler was arguing that even if the GVRT was still in place the surge in violent crime would have happened anyway. But at some point, Mayor Wheeler seems to have changed his mind. In early March he announced he was seeking funding for a new GVRT albeit with a different name and some new oversight.
If approved, the city would restore nearly all of the functions – though not the name – of the city’s Gun Violence Reduction Team, a program that was disbanded in 2020 in response to longtime community demands.
“We are not bringing it back,” Wheeler said. “To be clear, the part about GVRT that was objected to by many members of the community was that there wasn’t community oversight. There wasn’t clarity in terms of what the engagement was. There wasn’t the collection and the transparent dissemination of data.”
The new plan would create an independent watchdog to oversee the new program that will bring back many of GVRT’s functions.
How is the plan to get the band back together going? Today the Wall Street Journal reports that Portland can’t find officers willing to take positions on the new Focused Initiative Team. A total of 14 opening were announced in May. More than two months later, there have been only four applicants:
Portland officers say such positions, once considered prestigious, are now less desirable, given the increased scrutiny that accompanies them. The new unit has its own citizen-advisory board, instituted after the old unit was criticized by city leaders for racial profiling. A job description says qualifications include the ability to fight systemic racism.
“They’re demonizing and vilifying you, and then they want to put you in a unit where you’re under an even bigger microscope,” said Daryl Turner, head of the union that represents Portland’s officers.
One of the qualifications for the new team is that applicants show the, “ability to identify and dismantle institutional and systemic racism in the bureau’s responses to gun violence.” That didn’t go over well with one veteran officer:
“Martin Luther King couldn’t dismantle systematic racism. Now you want a cop to do it?” a veteran Portland officer said of the new unit. “Nobody wants to be part of something that’s set up for failure.”…
The veteran Portland officer said his colleagues “are incredibly hesitant to do anything proactive because either they have a complaint filed against them or every stop is a fight.”
This is the Ferguson Effect in action. Things are especially bad in Portland because police there have faced some of the most vocal and violent opposition from the mayor, the city council and left-wing extremists attacking them in the streets. As a result, officers have been leaving the city for jobs making less money elsewhere.
So it’s not really surprising that no one wants to step up to be the tip of the spear on reducing violent crime in the city when they know the entire political machinery and the media are primed to blame police the first time something goes wrong. It’s gong to take a lot more money to get officers to take jobs in a city that despises the police than in one that supports them. In the meantime, residents are getting exactly what police warned would happen if these cuts were made.
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Just as I am leaving for the Rotten Apple the Governor of that state was found guilty of
sexual harassment but shows no sign he will resign. So what, who cares. What difference does it make. Just another Democrat who drifted in the snow storm.
The Andrew Cuomo Standard
If Democrats take sexual harassment seriously, they’ll move to impeach.
By The Editorial Board
We’re about to find out if Democrats believe what they say about having no tolerance for sexual harassment. If they do, then they have little choice other than to move to impeach Andrew Cuomo as Governor of New York.
Mr. Cuomo asked Attorney General Letitia James to investigate the many accusations women have made against the Governor, and on Tuesday the outside lawyers the AG appointed issued their 165-page report.
The report recounts the facts as related by 11 women who worked for Mr. Cuomo or came to his attention as part of their work in government or private business. A couple of the accounts don’t seem to rise to the level of harassment. But many do, at least by the contemporary standards set and episodically enforced by the political and cultural left.
No corporate CEO, or even a junior executive, would survive in the job amid the trail of bullying, groping, leering, unwanted kissing, and suggestive come-ons recorded in the report by six lawyers at two law firms. In one instance, the report says, Mr. Cuomo noticed a female state trooper he fancied at a public event, had her transferred to his personal protective detail though she lacked the necessary minimum tenure, then “sexually harassed her on a number of occasions.”
This included caressing her stomach and back, kissing her on the cheek in the presence of another trooper, and on another occasion asking for a kiss. The reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Cuomo used his power as Governor to violate New York State Police rules to transfer a woman he figured he might be able to coax into a sexual relationship. The report concludes that “the Governor engaged in conduct constituting sexual harassment under federal and New York State law.” In other words, he violated the law.
Mr. Cuomo denies some of the allegations and explains others as the too affectionate style of an old-school man. He says the women misinterpreted what he meant as compliments.
That’s hard to believe when there are so many accusers and the report cites others who described an office culture that was “filled with fear and intimidation” and “contributed to the conditions that allowed the sexual harassment to occur and persist.” Everyone in Albany has known for years that Mr. Cuomo is an abusive, bullying figure. The report describes a man who acted as if he is politically invincible, which is what often happens in a one-party state with a largely one-party press.
The report has triggered calls from Democrats for Mr. Cuomo to resign, including by President Biden on Tuesday. But this is pro forma outrage. They know he’s staying in office unless forced out, and that he plans to run for a fourth four-year term next year. He has adopted the Donald Trump-Bill Clinton strategy of deny and stonewall until people forget.
If Democrats have the courage of their convictions, they’ll call on the Legislature to start impeachment proceedings. Make the case for why the verdict of voters should be short-circuited with specific charges and evidence. This would give Mr. Cuomo’s lawyers the chance to defend him against the allegations and to cross-examine his accusers. Anything less will mean giving Mr. Cuomo—and themselves—a pass.
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Then we learn a Taliban prisoner, who America urged be released, is back leading another attack. Let's empty Guantanamo quickly so more "be-headers" can lead their pack animals to victory.
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Finally, landlords are about to be screwed again by deadbeat renters who could work and pay their rent but Uncle Sam sends them your tax dollars so they can learn another redeeming liberal life lesson brought to you by Democrats who believe in free lunch concepts. Biden seems to have caved and now plans on extending eviction forgiveness even though SCOTUS believes doing so is unconstitutional..
After all, there are far more renter than landowner voters.
The Eviction Ban Has to End Sometime
Tenants and landlords have to work it out, and better now than later.
By The Editorial Board
As Democrats push to renew the nationwide ban on evictions that expired Saturday, they’re squabbling—er, screaming—over who’s failing the party’s progressive base. Speaker Nancy Pelosi puts the onus on President Biden, urging him to act unilaterally. The White House says it lacks legal authority, as the Supreme Court recently made clear.
Mr. Biden is correct: The public-health powers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not extend to an interminable blanket prohibition of evictions across the entire nation. Any ban also may be an unconstitutional “taking” of property under the Fifth Amendment, though that’s an argument for another day. The point is that for 11 months President Trump and President Biden stretched their authority, but now Mr. Biden must heed the Supreme Court’s warning.
What is Mrs. Pelosi’s alternative? Five Justices this summer let the eviction ban stand until it expired. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s caveat was that the policy couldn’t be continued without “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation).” On Tuesday a defiant Mrs. Pelosi lauded the White House’s “intention to identify all available authorities to extend the eviction moratorium.” In other words, Mr. Biden might be bending under progressive pressure to reinstate the ban. This would be strikingly lawless, as the White House has admitted.
Little is being said in this debate about economics, but the numbers make it hard to see any case for a blunt national policy. The unemployment rate is 2.5% in Nebraska. It’s 2.7% in Utah, 2.9% in both New Hampshire and South Dakota, and 3% in Idaho. How much more recovered from Covid can those labor markets get? Other places that suffered longer lockdowns are lagging. But if state and local leaders want, they can pass tailored eviction policies, and then they can be accountable for the results.
Too often ignored are the costs on the other side of the evictions ledger. Renters are facing hardships, but so are landlords. There are about 48 million rental housing units in the U.S., according to a 2018 federal survey. For 42% of them, day-to-day management of the property was performed by either the owner or an unpaid agent. Another 25% had a paid manager who was still “directly employed” by the owner.
There are millions of mom-and-pop landlords who own a house here, a duplex there, a small apartment building two streets down. Some of them are going on a year, or more, without rental income, yet they’re responsible for paying the taxes and the upkeep. A few nightmare stories are trickling out, say, of a woman living in a house with a basement apartment, occupied by abusive tenants who apparently saw the moratorium as impunity.
A group of New York landlords is asking the Supreme Court to take a look at that state’s eviction moratorium. One of the petitioners is a retiree who rents out a co-op as a supplement to her Social Security income. Without $24,720 in unpaid rent, she “has been forced to ask friends for donations to help make ends meet.” Another is a “single mom who was living with her fiancé, broke up with him, and is now effectively homeless.” She would like to move into a rental property that she owns, but it “remains occupied by non-paying holdover tenants.”
And what about the longer term? Many parts of the U.S. face housing shortages, with price inflation that’s already through the vaulted ceiling. The only real solution is to encourage more constructing, more renovating, more renting. But if a landlord has gone a year without income, and Democrats extend that into the foreseeable future, it will undermine the economic incentive to invest in getting new rental units on the market. Why bother?
Not every eviction threat ends in eviction. Tenants can leave on their own, maybe for properties that better fit their budgets. They can work out a payment plan with the landlord. But at some point the housing market must transition back to normality. The U.S. is 11 months from when President Trump’s CDC first issued its eviction moratorium. Democrats would like to extend it, and for who knows how long. What would be the criteria for ever rescinding the policy? Good luck trying to get an answer.
The hard fact is that eventually the rent will come due, and tenants and landlords will have to work it out. If the moratorium is extended, back payments will continue to stack up, and the result will be an even bigger problem when the music finally stops.
And:
The Coming Eviction Crisis
States, localities, the Biden administration and Congress all deserve some blame.
By William A. Galston
Millions of Americans—mainly lower and middle-income workers—lost their jobs last year amid the pandemic and couldn’t pay the rent. Congress enacted a limited and temporary moratorium on evictions, which ended in July 2020.
To avoid worsening a public-health crisis, President Trump issued an executive order asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to step in. Citing its authority under the Public Health Service Act of 1944, the CDC responded in September with a broader moratorium, which has been extended several times through a new law and administrative actions. In March, the Biden administration extended the ban until the end of June, later updated to the end of July. The administration stated that the CDC wouldn’t extend the moratorium further unless there was a new surge in coronavirus cases.
Two key events have happened since then. The first is a June 29 Supreme Court decision. States brought lawsuits challenging the CDC’s authority, and five justices agreed to allow the moratorium to stand. But one member of the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, stated that the CDC had exceeded its authority and that the moratorium couldn’t be lawfully extended beyond the end of July without “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation).”
Second, the Delta variant has sparked a dramatic rise in new coronavirus cases, many in unvaccinated people, and the Biden administration has struggled to respond. Although the president’s domestic-policy team urged him to request an additional CDC moratorium extension, his legal team advised him that the Supreme Court’s decision had closed this path, and Mr. Biden agreed. Last week he asked Congress to enact an extension, but by then it was too late. The administration’s decision not to extend the moratorium unilaterally has produced a serious rift with progressive House Democrats.
The public-health consequences of allowing the moratorium to expire could be serious. One study from last fall found that states that had lifted their own moratoria last spring and summer experienced much higher coronavirus caseloads and deaths than states that kept them in place. Those evicted ended up living in more-crowded places—relatives’ apartments, motel rooms or shelters—where social distancing is harder. This is especially relevant to the Delta strain, which is substantially more transmissible than earlier variants.
We never should have reached this point. The Emergency Rental Assistance Program, signed into law by Mr. Trump in December, provided $25 billion to help tenants pay their rent. Another relief bill, signed by President Biden in March, offered an additional $21.5 billion. But less than 10% of these funds have been disbursed. Landlords are complaining that they can’t pay their bills for taxes, utilities and maintenance.
This is a classic case of good intentions undermined by poor design and implementation. Unlike measures that sent federal funds directly to individuals, rental assistance was structured as a partnership between the federal government and states and localities. The latter is responsible for distributing the funds.
This arrangement has not worked. The application is too detailed and requires verifying documents, which has slowed getting checks out the door. Overloaded websites have crashed. According to a Washington Post analysis, only 36 of the more than 400 states, counties and municipalities reporting data to the Treasury Department have disbursed half or more of their allotted funds. Some 49—including New York state and major metropolitan areas—had not spent anything. Although stimulus checks have helped reduce the rental backlog, a recent Census Bureau survey found 7.4 million tenants in arrears for a total that Moody’s puts at $27 billion.
Some states and localities have enacted their own eviction moratoria, and some landlords prefer to work out informal arrangements with their tenants rather than moving to evict them, which can take a long time. The impending end of enhanced unemployment benefits on Sept. 6 may encourage some renters to re-enter the labor market, giving landlords reasons to defer evictions. Still, millions of people may endure hardships that more effectively designed programs could have avoided.
The blame for this sad situation is widely shared. Months ago, Congress could have provided the executive branch with the clear legal authority the Supreme Court is now requiring. States and localities could have designed simpler, more efficient ways of carrying out the clear intent of Congress. And the Biden administration should have responded sooner to mounting evidence that state and local plans were not working.
As the pandemic subsides, the U.S. should mount a serious effort to learn from this transformative event. Two lessons are already clear: The federal government is better at writing checks to individuals than just about anything else, and working through our complex system of federalism isn’t always the best course.
Finally:
American citizens must wear masks to protect themselves from illegals who are swarming over the border maskless and vaccinationless. Just another blessing brought to you by our Democrat president who loves proving how stupid and feckless he is:
If Biden Is Serious About Covid, He’ll Protect the Border
The government releases migrants, untested, to live in tight spaces alongside scores of strangers.
By Jason L. Riley
If it’s unfair to lay all blame for the mess on the southern border at the feet of President Biden, his administration certainly deserves the lion’s share.
For all the devastation that Covid-19 has heaped on us, the pandemic provided a breather for border patrol. Apprehensions at the Mexican border are a proxy measure of illegal entries, and in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2020, there were about half as many apprehensions as there were a year earlier.
After Mr. Biden took office, the initial rise in border arrests was thought to be no big deal. “What we’re seeing right now is a predictable seasonal shift,” the Washington Post reported confidently in March. “When the numbers drop again in June and July, policymakers may be tempted to claim that their deterrence policies succeeded. But that will just be the usual seasonal drop.”
Except that no serious deterrence policies emerged, and the numbers didn’t drop or even level off. They’ve increased every month of the Biden administration, even during the hottest part of the summer, when they normally come down. Customs and Border Protection announced in July that June apprehensions were not only higher than the previous month but significantly above the next-highest June in more than two decades. For the current fiscal year through June, CBP recorded more than 1.1 million apprehensions. The last time it reached even a million was 2006.
Don’t worry, it gets worse. As left-wing Pecksniffs like to remind us, the pandemic ain’t over, the Delta variant is spreading, and too few people are vaccinated. I don’t doubt that White House officials believe this and want to convey their concerns to as many vaccination-averse Americans as possible, but you’d never know it from their unserious approach to border enforcement. And Fox News isn’t the only media outlet that’s noticed.
In late April the New York Times reported that the government “has insufficient time and space to test migrants,” and therefore “testing is being postponed until their release to local community groups, cities and counties, usually after the new arrivals have spent days confined in tight spaces with scores of strangers, often sleeping shoulder to shoulder on mats on the floor.”
The report went on to note the obvious, which is that such a policy is at cross-purposes with fighting the pandemic. “As the United States vaccinates larger numbers of people and several states begin to reopen after seeing lower infection rates, the failure of U.S. authorities to test adult migrants for the coronavirus in jam-packed border processing centers is creating a potential for new transmissions, public health officials and shelter operators warn.”
No one can say for certain how big a role these high levels of illegal immigration have played in the spread of the virus, but the Biden administration can’t have it both ways. If the president wants the public to defer to public-health officials when it comes to masking and social distancing, he can’t expect people to ignore these same officials when they tell us that large numbers of recent migrants may be contributing to the crisis.
Team Biden insists that the problem is driven by forces beyond their control, which is a dodge. Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris released a 14-page plan for addressing the “root causes” of illegal immigration, citing high rates of violence and poverty in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which have become large sources of illegal immigration to the U.S. Collaborating with other governments is smart and necessary, but it’s insufficient. Violent crime, high unemployment and widespread poverty back home all play a role in sending people north, but so does lax U.S. border security and an unwillingness to enforce our laws.
El Salvador’s homicide rate fell by more than half between 2015 and 2018, and Guatemala’s economy was averaging 3.4% growth in the years leading up to the pandemic. Both countries continue to be much poorer and more violent than ours, but it’s worth noting that emigration to the U.S. from Central America kept rising even as these “root cause” trends moved in the right direction.
The situation is unlikely to change until the administration makes it clear that people who come illegally are unwelcome. Sure, Mr. Biden mouths the words, but his policies are telling people that if they make it here, they’ll probably get to stay. When the president plays down the need for better border security, tells asylum seekers they no longer have to remain outside the U.S. while a court adjudicates their claims, and urges Congress to pass an amnesty bill for millions of people already in the country illegally, he shouldn’t be surprised that would-be immigrants aren’t taking him seriously when he says don’t come.
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Since California now allows shoppers to depart with merchandise without paying and theft is no longer a law breaking issue why should renters not be able to screw landlords out of their rent? Why should vacationers pay their hotel bill, or gamblers pay Casino debts? Democrats and Biden have made theft virtuous.
Who in his right mind believes you pay for a free lunch? You would have to be a church going, gun toting, patriotic "deplorable/Neanderthalic" American
Democrats love buying votes with your tax dollars and teaching moral lessons to American citizens.
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Far-Left Democrats Want Eviction Moratorium To Last Forever
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