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"So, my wise guru, why do so many Republican politicians and conservative media avoid saying “communists”, even misusing “socialists”, radicals, and Marxists instead ? They seem to be sitting on the sidelines believing Biden will commit political suicide. Not a winner! I’m firmly convinced twe need a HUGE turnout in November that MUST be driven more by people who are scared $h!t£€$$, like moms, rather than anger. We need to make the message so TOXIC and convincing traditional lunch bucket Democrats cannot fathom participating in a communist overthrow. We need big margins in HoR and Senate to be on the offense against the Communist Democrat Party.
I, along with many conservatives, have argued progressives and radical Democrats were destroying America but our views were to no avail.
Liberal Jews and enslaved black voters certainly did not care to understand. They were oblivious to the decline in our nation's values and the American character. The best evidence of this is their willingness to accept the cheapening of American citizenship by looking the other way when it comes to open borders and illegal immigration.
And what about the hue and cry for defunding police and election of district attorneys who do not enforce the law and acceptance of rioting and the list is endless?
But it does not stop there. The second article, pertaining to Jack Welch, is also eye opening because the author suggests he was partially responsible for the decline in America's middle class and the widening of income disparity between worker and management.
Capitalists, captains of industry and the corporations they run must earn profits to exist and their first responsibility is to their stockholders but this does not mean this is their sole responsibility. They also have a serious obligation to society and to perpetuating the economic blessings that flow from capitalism.
In my autobiography, I wrote about an accounting consultant to my firm and the role he also played as an advisor to GE. Professor Hawkins of Harvard, always mentioned how Welch saw to it GE had reserved/pocketed earnings he would flow through to maintain an upward trend in earnings so GE's stock had momentum as a market fall back. GE was always able to beat the "whisper number."
While Welch was at GE his management style set the corporate management trend but, in the end, what he did proved destructive not only to GE but to the nation. We are still paying the price for his arrogance.
A perfect example of an entity that is the personification of give back capitalism is The Booth Western Museum of Art in Cartersville. Lynn and I are founding members. When the management of a local cable company sold out they dedicated a significant portion of the proceeds to establishing this magnificent museum of Western Art and offered positions to employees. They paid for the current director to go to college and learn how to be an administrator of a museum.
I always urge readers of my memos to visit this fascinating/exquisite museum which rekindled commercial life in Cartersville Ga.
My last art tour included a visit to The Booth.
Don Kole of Savannah , Ga. has done much the same with his Savannah African Museum. Don fell in love with African Objects on a trip and for the last 10 or more years has been actively acquiring African Art of all kind and now Savannah has a fascinating museum because of his munificence. I urge all to visit this local treasure.
Again, Don is a capitalist who personifies the best in those who thrived because of capitalism and then gave back some of the fruit to society.
In terms of Henninger's prediction, if the Republican sweep occurs they will have, perhaps unwittingly, assumed a serious burden. America is in decline, the nation is adrift and faltering. Republicans cannot waste the opportunity to do everything in their power to right the ship.
It is hard for self-serving politicians to put politics aside but that is what they must do. That is the secret to why Trump was successful in accomplishing so much good in the face of overwhelming odds. Were it not for his personality and inability to modify his narcissistic behaviour he would still be president and America might still be thriving. Trump was not a politician, he was a tough, focused businessman who made a pledge and then worked to implement his pledge.
Through all the self created bile he loved this country and placed it's welfare first as all presidents should.
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Oh to be a glorious Democrat and progressive radical liberal:
Democrats Blew Covid’s Politics
Biden and the party’s progressives think spending money will earn voter gratitude. Not this time.
By Daniel Henninger
WSJ Opinion: The Democratic Party Is Midterm Toast
Wonder Land: Biden and the party’s progressives think spending money will earn voter gratitude. Not this time.
The dictionary’s second definition of “landslide” is a torrent of votes for one party over its competition. But the original, more to-the-point definition is a destructive mass of rocks, mud, trees and debris hurtling down a mountain. There must be a New Yorker cartoon somewhere of a politician standing below a landslide’s leading edge and remarking, “They’re predicting sunshine tomorrow.” Say hello to the Democrats—while they’re still standing.
Congress came back to the Washington mother ship this week, and the buzz was that the Democrats will move heaven and earth to give the American public a reason to vote for them in November’s midterm elections. Maybe enact another $10 billion in Covid relief or wave a wand that erases student-loan debt. Normally I’d say good luck with that, but the party is beyond luck.
It’s time for a premortem on the Democrats’ House debacle and very possible loss of Senate control.
Barack Obama, now the party’s main oracle, said during his recent visit to the Biden White House: “You’ve got a story to tell—just got to tell it.” No, their story is the problem.
From the day Joe Biden entered office, the Democrats have displayed a misreading of how the Covid-19 pandemic had altered the country’s normal political and social alignments.
Obvious to everyone now, the pandemic forced millions to rethink everything in their lives—their jobs, children, schools, where they lived, care for elderly relatives, the routines of daily life.
This was a complex political and cultural event to which the Democratic response was Pavlovian: Throw money and expect gratitude.
What the Democrats did—first the $2 trillion 2021 Covid relief bill followed by the attempt to pass $4.6 trillion more with Build Back Better—was an exercise in political grandiosity wholly out of sync with a public that had turned inward. Even now, as the pandemic ebbs in an election year, people are preoccupied with either rebuilding their lives or restructuring careers.
Democrats might say that Mr. Biden simply replayed FDR’s Great Depression playbook of patching holes in the social fabric. Maybe, but the Depression didn’t include lockdowns, school closings and masking policies.
Democrats can also argue, in retirement, how they only “followed the science.” Whatever the justification, Democrats displayed little understanding or sympathy for how much the pandemic restrictions were disrupting people’s lives.
The White House anointed Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as arbiters of pandemic policy. Last week, Dr. Fauci confirmed that he considered himself answerable to no one outside his circle. How could the White House have seen so little peril in abdicating control of the politics amid the evolving mysteries of Covid? On Wednesday, Dr. Fauci announced we are “out of the pandemic phase.” Better late than never for Democrats.
Joe Biden promised a return to normality. But that was about Donald Trump. There was nothing normal about the America over which Mr. Biden presided. The pandemic’s social dislocations increased. Schools closed, then sort-of opened, with masking policies micromanaged into incomprehensibility. Parents were overwhelmed. The schools mess alone has baked in Democratic losses, notably in states such as New Jersey, a tinderbox of rage over closed schools.
Masking became a left-right issue. But the Democrats’ lockstep support for masking hurt them. Covering half one’s face with cloth is an apolitical hassle, which in time wore down many people who wanted out. Instead the Biden CDC, supported by the Justice Department, insisted in the pandemic’s last hour on extending the travel mask mandate. Is this what the Democrats mean by getting their message out?
At every level of government, the Democratic Party defended restrictions by aligning with the authority of science. Result: After living for two years under that authority’s thumb, people are looking for respite from government, which by definition means the Democrats.
President Biden’s claim that his economic recovery is unprecedented also mischaracterizes the public’s understanding of the pandemic experience. People know the lockdowns suspended a strong economy. One day they had a job. Then they didn’t. The U.S. rebound from this mandated downturn is natural, not a Biden miracle. Some aid helped some people, but there’s no reason that should translate into a wellspring of support for the party.
The Washington Democrats wasted their political capital in 2021 trying to create a once-and-for-all U.S. entitlement state with Build Back Better. That became a spectacle of political failure. So Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another progressive oracle, argued last weekend that the party’s survival depends on passing legislation to regulate drug prices and leaning on Mr. Biden to issue a long list of executive orders. Likely political resonance: about zero.
Six months before Election Day, this is the political landscape: Most voters see House and Senate Democrats as largely irrelevant to their lives, which today consist of climbing out of a pandemic amid rising inflation, crime and illegal border crossings.
That the Democrats are about to tumble down the mountain has nothing to do with their unheard message and everything to do with conscious policy choices.
And:
Author Headshot
By David Leonhardt
Good morning. We look at why economic inequality began soaring in the U.S. four decades ago.
Jack Welch before his retirement in 2001.Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Net losses
If you look at historical data on the U.S. economy, you often notice that something changed in the late 1970s or early ’80s. Incomes started growing more slowly for most workers, and inequality surged.
David Gelles — a Times reporter who has been interviewing C.E.O.s for years — argues that corporate America helped cause these trends. Specifically, David points to Jack Welch, the leader of General Electric who became the model for many other executives. I spoke to David about these ideas, which are central to his new book on Welch (and to a Times story based on it).
How do you think corporate America has changed since the 1980s in ways that helped cause incomes to grow so slowly?
For decades after World War II, big American companies bent over backward to distribute their profits widely. In General Electric’s 1953 annual report, the company proudly talked about how much it was paying its workers, how its suppliers were benefiting and even how much it paid the government in taxes.
That changed with the ascendance of men like Jack Welch, who took over as chief executive of G.E. in 1981 and ran the company for the next two decades. Under Welch, G.E. unleashed a wave of mass layoffs and factory closures that other companies followed. The trend helped destabilize the American middle class. Profits began flowing not back to workers in the form of higher wages, but to big investors in the form of stock buybacks. And G.E. began doing everything it could to pay as little in taxes as possible.
You make clear that many other C.E.O.s came to see Welch as a model and emulated him. So why wasn’t there already a Jack Welch before Jack Welch, given the wealth and fame that flowed to him as a result of his tenure?
This was one of those moments when an exceptional individual at a critical moment really goes on to shape the world.
Welch was ferociously ambitious and competitive, with a ruthlessness that corporate America just hadn’t seen. In G.E., he had control of a large conglomerate with a history of setting the standards by which other companies operated. And Welch arrived at the moment that there was a reassessment of the role of business underway. The shift in thinking was captured by the economist Milton Friedman, who wrote in The Times Magazine that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”
General Electric announced in 1998 that it was closing its plant in Fitchburg, Mass.Gail Oskin/Associated Press
Was Welch’s approach good for corporate profits and bad for workers — or ultimately bad for the company, too? You lean toward the second answer, based on G.E.’s post-Welch struggles. Some other writers point out that many companies have thrived with Welch-like strategies. I’m left wondering whether Welchism is a zero-sum gain for shareholders or bad for everyone.
Welch transformed G.E. from an industrial company with a loyal employee base into a corporation that made much of its money from its finance division and had a much more transactional relationship with its workers. That served him well during his run as C.E.O., and G.E. did become the most valuable company in the world for a time.
But in the long run, that approach doomed G.E. to failure. The company underinvested in research and development, got hooked on buying other companies to fuel its growth, and its finance division was badly exposed when the financial crisis hit. Things began to unravel almost as soon as Welch retired, and G.E. announced last year it would break itself up.
Similar stories played out at dozens of other companies where Welch disciples tried to replicate his playbook, such as Home Depot and Albertsons. So while Welchism can increase profits in the short-term, the long-term consequences are almost always disastrous for workers, investors and the company itself.
Welch was responding to real problems at G.E. and the American economy in the 1970s and early ’80s. If his cure created even bigger problems, what might be a better alternative?
An important first step is rebalancing the distribution of the wealth that our biggest companies create. For the past 40-plus years we’ve been living in this era of shareholder primacy that Friedman and Welch unleashed. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage remained low and is still just $7.25, and the gap between worker pay and productivity kept growing wider.
There are some tentative signs of change. The labor crisis and pressure from activists has led many companies to increase pay for frontline workers. Some companies, such as PayPal, are handing out stock to everyday employees.
But it’s going to take more than a few magnanimous C.E.O.s to fix these problems. And though I know it’s risky to place our faith in the government these days, there is a role for policy here: finding ways to get companies to pay a living wage, invest in their people and stop this race to the bottom with corporate taxes.
American companies can be competitive and profitable while also taking great care of their workers. They’ve been that way before, and I believe they can be that way again.
More about David Gelles: He was born in New York and got his first full-time job in journalism working for the Financial Times, where he interviewed Bernie Madoff in prison. His book about Welch is called “The Man Who Broke Capitalism.” He recently spoke about the media’s role in celebrating Welchism.
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The Motivation to Disarm Millions of Americans Should Be Met with Extreme Skepticism
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Poll: Black Americans Are Fed Up With Biden
By Sarah Arnold
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Patriot (Edited.):
Let me be crystal clear, if Joe Biden was one of my subordinates, I would immediately relieve him of command and court-martial him.
We’ve gone beyond just weak leadership, bad leadership, or even failed leadership.
No, what Biden has done to this country is tantamount to criminal negligence.
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I have several liberal friends who are obsessed with finding articles supporting their narrow thinking. My response: "Juries often are that way as well. Otherwise, a football star who was allowed to go free, after incontrovertible evidence, would have been sent to jail."
Being judged by your peers is not perfect. More decisions based on ignoring evidence is the price we must pay if we are going to allow peer justice. Milbank is too committed to stupidity so he chose to overlook this fact.
Bezos bought control of WAPO and this makes him dangerous. He uses it as a vehicle for his narrowness and much like a play toy for bias.
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Opinion Bill Barr’s reign of innuendo — unmasked
Image without a caption
By Dana Milbank
This week saw the unmasking of former Trump administration attorney general Bill Barr, and it wasn’t pretty.
A jury deliberated for just six hours before reaching a unanimous verdict acquitting former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, leaving the Barr-appointed special prosecutor John Durham with essentially nothing to show for his years-long attempt to find wrongdoing by the FBI and the Clinton campaign in the Trump-Russia probe.
Hours after the jury dismissed Durham’s bull, BuzzFeed published a previously secret Justice Department report, also ordered by Barr, in which Barr’s own DOJ concluded that the Obama administration didn’t intend to expose the identity of Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn “for political purposes or other inappropriate reasons.” It was further evidence that another favorite Trump claim enabled by Barr — that Obama officials engaged in illegal “unmasking” — was bunk.
The day after these twin repudiations of Barr’s fantasies, the hoaxster explained himself on Fox News — by arguing that Durham’s failure in court was in fact a triumph. “While he did not succeed in getting a conviction from the D.C. jury,” Barr said, “I think he accomplished something far more important.”
This is about as convincing as the Washington Nationals saying, “While we did not succeed in scoring a run for 27 innings, we think we accomplished something far more important.” In a courtroom, a prosecutor either wins or loses.
So what did Barr think was more important than Durham actually winning his case? “He crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching, as a dirty trick, the whole Russiagate collusion narrative,” Barr said, and “he exposed really dreadful behavior by the supervisors in the FBI.
Durham didn’t “crystallize” or “expose” anything. He packed his court filings with innuendo, and the jury decided he hadn’t made his case. The only conviction Durham has earned to date was a plea deal with an FBI lawyer over a doctored email — and that wrongdoing was uncovered by the Justice Department’s inspector general, not Durham.
But Barr’s argument, that the innuendo Durham spread is “far more important” than proving actual wrongdoing, unmasks Barr’s perverted view of justice. He didn’t tap Durham (or John Bash, who handled the unmasking probe) primarily to prosecute criminal behavior. He launched the inquiries to tell a political “story.”
“Part of this operation is to try to get the real story out,” Barr told Fox News. “And I have said from the beginning, you know, if we can get convictions, if they are achievable, then John Durham will achieve them. But, the other aspect of this is to get the story out.” Bringing a case for such a purpose violates Justice Department policy.
Running Trump’s DOJ, Barr was all about telling stories rather than prosecuting wrongdoing. He sat on the Mueller report of the original Russia investigation, instead releasing his own purported summary that gave a misleading impression of Mueller’s findings. Barr baldly alleged, “I think spying did occur” against the Trump campaign, but no proof has surfaced.
In fulfilling Donald Trump’s demands to investigate the Russia investigators and those who allegedly “unmasked” Flynn, Barr wasn’t seeking justice. He now admits that trying to make a case that the FBI acted in bad faith against Trump — as Republicans allege — would have been “onerous” and “a herculean case” and a “very hard thing to prove.”
Barr was giving Justice cover to the reckless allegations being made by Trump and his allies. Barr made sure the lies had a lengthy head start to leave lasting impressions before any corrective could be issued.
Barr made space for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to predict “one of the biggest political scandals in American history”; for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) to proclaim a scandal “bigger than Watergate”; for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to claim there was a “smoking gun found”; for Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) to declare “a threat to democracy itself”; and for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) to allege that Obama officials “were unmasking anyone and everyone so that they could leak information to a press that was willing to take that illegal information.”
Now we know Trump’s DOJ, in its own words, had “not found evidence” of inappropriate unmasking. And we see Durham’s claim of wrongdoing in the Russia probe ending in swift acquittal.
Barr, unmasked, now claims the federal jurors in Durham’s failed case violated their oaths by following political biases. “A D.C. jury,” he said, “is a very favorable jury for anyone named Clinton and the Clinton campaign. Those are the facts of life. … There are two standards of the law, and we have had to struggle with that.”
So, now, Barr is trying to discredit the centuries-old American jury system. It’s just one more “story” he tells to replace the rule of law with the reign of innuendo.
Meanwhile:
John Durham vs. the Beltway Swamp
Michael Sussmann’s trial showcased the incestuous culture of elite Washington.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
The Michael Sussmann trial is over, but the stench lingers. Special counsel John Durham did more than expose Hillary Clinton’s dirty political tricks. He exposed the incestuous elite Washington world that enabled those tricks to succeed. America, meet again the Beltway swamp.
Mr. Sussman was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI, but not before the Durham team revealed the Clinton campaign’s work in 2016 to use both the FBI and the media to smear Donald Trump. The campaign relied on outside techies for false accusations of Trump links to Russia’s Alfa Bank, which Mr. Sussmann fed to the FBI. Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele separately funneled their infamous dossier to the Bureau. Then the Clinton team shopped the dirt to the media, using the fact of FBI investigations as proof it deserved coverage.
Still, it’s a long way from unfounded smears to full-fledged FBI investigations. The entire Clinton operation depended on getting the FBI to bite. The Durham trial was a glimpse at the chummy web of brokers who used their access and influence to make that happen.
One trial revelation was that Rodney Joffe —the tech executive who used privileged access to nonproprietary data to create the Alfa claims—was a confidential human source for the FBI in 2016. Yet Mr. Joffe, according to testimony, didn’t take his accusations to his regular handler. He instead gave them to . . . Mr. Sussmann, a lawyer in private practice whose clients included Mrs. Clinton.
Why? Mr. Sussmann was tight with the FBI. So tight that according to trial evidence, the bureau in 2016 allowed him to edit the draft of one of its press releases. Mr. Sussmann was even on a first-name basis with then-FBI general counsel James Baker. He was able to text his “friend” (Mr. Baker’s description of their relationship) and score a meeting the next day. He assured “Jim” he didn’t need a badge to get in the building—he already had one. All this allowed Mr. Sussmann (who later sought to recruit Mr. Baker to his firm, Perkins Coie) to avoid the pesky agents and questions that would accompany any average Joe trying to sell the FBI on wild claims.
Mr. Joffe meanwhile called a separate special contact at the FBI (again, not his handler), an agent who had once nominated the techie for an award. Mr. Joffe relayed his Alfa data again and asked the agent to pass it along but not tell anyone he was the source. The prosecution during trial dryly asked this agent if he was familiar with “circular reporting”—where a source plants info with two different parts of the FBI to make it look corroborating. It’s a crafty tactic—one that most people wouldn’t have the access to pull off.
The Steele dossier likewise received special handling. Fusion GPS happened to choose for its dossier duties a guy who’d also worked as an FBI source. Mr. Steele initially went to regular FBI agents. But he followed up with his own top contact—former senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife worked for (where else?) Fusion. Mr. Ohr handed the dossier up to Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe. Mr. Steele separately shopped his dossier to a top State Department appointee, Jonathan Winer —who also handed it up the chain.
Getting the dirt to the top made all the difference. Prosecutors in the trial introduced an internal message from FBI agent Joseph Pientka two days after the Sussmann-Baker meeting, reading: “People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server. . . . Did you guys open a case? . . . Its [sic] not an option—we must do it.” This despite testimony from rank-and-file agents who said they’d quickly dismissed the claims as ludicrous.
And the powerful guys at the top continued to work their influence. Former CIA director John Brennan tipped Harry Reid to the collusion claims, prompting the Senate minority leader to write a letter that went public with the accusations. Mr. Comey engineered a Trump briefing in January 2017 that served as catalyst for BuzzFeed to publish the dossier. Mr. Comey secretly memorialized his privileged conservations with the president, later leaking these to provoke the appointment of his colleague and mentor Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate President Trump. All this was aided by the Beltway media, which ably served as scribes for their claims, and those of their buddies at Fusion GPS, some of whom formerly worked for the Journal.
The trial environment was no less intimate. Judge Christopher Cooper worked with Mr. Sussmann at the Clinton Justice Department in the 1990s. Merrick Garland, today attorney general, officiated at the judge’s marriage to Amy Jeffress, an Obama Justice Department official and now a private lawyer representing former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. And on and on the special circles go, down to the judge’s refusal to grant prosecutors’ request to dismiss a juror who admitted her daughter is on the same crew team as Mr. Sussmann’s child.
None of this—the special access, the abuse of power—would be granted to an average American, and it explains how the Clinton team was able to spiral a dirty trick into a national hysteria. If Washington institutions want to reclaim the public trust, they’ll first need to remember that the country is rooted in the notion of one set of rules for all. Not a special set for D.C. operators.
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Can common sense and politics mix in Democrat la la land?
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Can a Common-Sense Liberal Save Los Angeles?
Crime and disorder give Rick Caruso a serious shot at being elected mayor. The left is panicking.
By Allysia Finley
Democratic Rep. Karen Bass was widely expected to walk away with the race to become the next mayor of Los Angeles. The progressive former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus has endorsements from government unions, Democratic activists and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Then along came Rick Caruso—a onetime Republican, prominent city real-estate developer and philanthropist—and Ms. Bass is no longer a certain bet.
The race now is a clash of visions: the progressive ideologue vs. the liberal pragmatist. If no candidate wins a majority of votes in Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary, the top two finishers will face off in November’s general election.
Democrats have long controlled Los Angeles, as they do most other big American cities. But in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots, voters elected Republican businessman Richard Riordan to re-establish public order and revive the city’s floundering economy.
A similar political moment is giving rise to Mr. Caruso’s campaign. Republicans make up only 13% of city voters, and many Democrats won’t consider voting for one. That’s no doubt one reason Mr. Caruso, 63, dropped his GOP affiliation when he last considered running for mayor, in 2011. Before announcing his current bid in February, he registered as a Democrat.
But unlike Ms. Bass, 68, he isn’t running a partisan campaign. He is promising to make government competent and solve the crime and quality-of-life problems that are driving away families and businesses. Homicide and car theft are on the rise. Robberies involving guns are a particular problem. According to Los Angeles Police Department data, such incidents through March 2022 were up 57% from 2020 and 60% from 2019. The city lost nearly 40,000 residents in 2021.
Mr. Caruso wants to add 1,500 police officers and move tens of thousands of homeless into temporary housing while cutting red tape that makes building homes expensive. He says he would insist that the city attorney prosecute misdemeanors that now go unpunished.
Mr. Caruso’s sensible ideas have drawn an eclectic fan base, including the city’s police union, celebrities such Snoop Dogg and Kim Kardashian, Korean-American business leaders and an 88-year-old community activist known as Sweet Alice Harris, who founded a charity to help youth in southeast Los Angeles.
Progressives accuse him of trying to buy City Hall. Mr. Caruso has spent some $30 million of his personal fortune on his campaign. Class-warfare attacks helped sink Republican Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor in 2010, but they may have less traction in this year’s mayoral race. Most residents consider crime and vagrancy bigger public threats than billionaires.
Ms. Bass pays lip service to the city’s deteriorating quality of life. “We’ve tried arresting our way out of the problem before—it doesn’t work,” her campaign website says. “Breaking cycles of crime requires going beyond law enforcement to provide coordinated prevention, intervention, mental health services, substance abuse treatment, and other social services.”
No doubt mental illness and substance abuse contribute to crime. But her plans merely involve more spending on social welfare to “quash economic inequality.” The state and city have already been doing this, to no discernible effect. She says “neighborhood violence is a place-based problem at the magnitude of a public health crisis, and it demands place-based and population-specific solution” such as improving city parks and recreation.
But crime isn’t confined to poorer neighborhoods. In November, several high-end shopping malls and boutiques were looted in a series of smash-and-grab robberies. Fourteen suspects were arrested and released within hours without paying bail. Days later, 81-year-old philanthropist Jacqueline Avant was shot dead in her Beverly Hills home by a burglar. The next week, thieves stuck up a few guests at gunpoint outside a posh downtown hotel and made off with $100,000 of jewelry.
Ms. Bass wants to keep the police budget flat while hiring 250 civilian employees to handle administrative tasks that officers sometimes have to do. Yet she also wants to pile more administrative burdens onto police, including reporting on stops and searches and “implicit bias” training.
The high-pitched attacks reveal how
terrified the Democratic-
government-union machine is of
losing this election. A Caruso
victory would represent a
repudiation of progressive
mis-governance by rank-and-file
Democrats. As Los Angeles goes
, so could other big cities.
Ms. Finley is a member of the
Journal’s editorial board.
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