Now, Here’s A Victory
By Mitch Berg
Murders are way, way up in Minneapolis this year.
No, that’s not a victory. That’s an endless tragedy, and an indictment of Minneapolis’ long-term strategy of using the North Side and Phillips to warehouse the poor.
No, the victory is buried in this piece in the Strib about the launch of a community program to combat the violence.
Read it carefully, and observe what you don’t see:
Project Exile, a program that has been successful elsewhere, will focus on convicted felons in possession of firearms, who officials say are responsible for the dramatic uptick in homicides. The city had 19 killings in 2009, a 27-year low. With more vigorous prosecution, the officials argue, gun offenders not only will be put away longer, but they’ll think twice before arming themselves on the streets… [US attorneyB. Todd] Jones said his prosecutors will begin by meeting weekly with staff from [Hennepin County attorney] Freeman’s office to review every gun case in Minneapolis to determine which should be brought to federal court. They’ll look at the most serious and dangerous offenders, and at which statutes are likely to result in the most effective consequences. Under some federal statutes, certain offenders can face mandatory minimum sentences of up to 15 years. Others average from two to five years.
What’s missing?
Go back 20-25 years; there would have been an unctuous proclamation from someone like Alan Spear or Wes “Lying Sack of Garbage” Skoglund about the need to pass “tough” new gun control.
And make no mistake about it – the left’ll be working on it. But in this post-McDonald world, they’ll have to do it vewwwwwy quietly.
But at least outwardly? Who’d have thunk in 1990 that by 2010 Minneapolis’ ultraliberal leadership would essentially be repeating the NRA party line?
Perhaps we need a victory parade?
July 23rd, 2010 at 1:40 pm
29 so far, and July isn’t over yet. I saw one bereaved mother on TV last night asking why this is happening, and found myself asking, “Why do black people have this habit of shooting each other”?
It’s not a racist question, it’s a serious one.
July 23rd, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Kermit;
I served on the Hennepin County Grand Jury a couple of years ago. Sadly, all of the gun related violence involved either young black or young, illegal alien hispanic gang bangers. In three cases, the stupidity and unprovoked nature of the shootings of innocent people for no apparent reason, was appalling!
July 23rd, 2010 at 2:38 pm
I disagree with RT on just about everything. However, he should be commended for finally doing the right thing. I have been bringing up operation exile to Minneapolis libs and put it on RT’s short lived blog ( if you can call a propoganda site a blog) several times. Mostly my comments were disallowed but RT or someone running his site read them.
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Boss, it breaks my heart. The “black community” can do better, and they sure as Hell deserve better. Somewhere LBJ is repeatedly answering the question “WTF were you thinking?”
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Careful Kermit, they never take any excuses when it comes to “Racism”.
But about LBJ boss and kerm are right. I have to think that the souls of all the black soldiers who fought in the civil, spanish american and world wars I and II and the civil rights war have to be screaming at the past couple of generations fo their people for wasting everything they won.
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Fortunately, there are still some of their children that still remember the victories. I’m sure that many of you are familiar with Ken Blackwell, Herman Cain, Thomas Sowell and Larry Elder, to name a few. Another young conservative American that I have found recently, Kevin Jackson. He is based in St. Louis and (Mitch, I hope that it’s OK to pass this on) he just wrote an interesting book “The Big Black Lie” and has a blog called The Black Sphere.
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:09 pm
I’ve interviewed Kevin, and we’ll do it again soon.
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:41 pm
I served on a jury in Dakota County last year and we convicted a 20 year old gang banger on a gun charge. The cops in St Paul didn’t have enough to get him on the drive by shooting, but he left the weapon in the car he borrowed from his girlfriend and that was enough to nail him. Off the streets for four years. A good start.
July 23rd, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Is Chris Coleman going to call for no junkets by St Paul city employees due to this racist action?
July 23rd, 2010 at 8:40 pm
This thread is taking on racial over tones that I am not entirely comfortable with.
Though I live in a place that can hardly be called urban (or even suburban) there is a lot of poverty, a lot of crime and very few blacks. The underclass of uneducated, ignorant young men and boys with no marketable skills is the source of most drug and violent crimes, just the same as it is on the US mainland, though the cops, the politicians, the rich and the poor come from the same ethnic groups.
July 24th, 2010 at 9:49 am
Haven’t you learned anything from the Age of Obama, Terry? EVERYTHING is racial. Geez, watch CNN for a while.
July 24th, 2010 at 11:36 am
Heh. I went to West High School & North High School in the 70’s Kermit. I’ve seen it all.
July 24th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
First of all, thanks to Mitch for highlighting this despicable gun-grab by Minneapolis and Hennepin County.
The underclass of uneducated, ignorant young men and boys with no marketable skills is the source of most drug and violent crimes
Well, I wonder if all those “poor, uneducated & ignorant young men” were committing any more crimes during the Great Depression, Terry.
The state of our economy and finances is crap, but I haven’t seen a correlating big upsurge in crime.
And I don’t otherwise think of myself as a libertarian, but I’ve completely soured on the drug war. In this particular case, I think we should acknowledge that the source of “drug crimes” is drug prohibition, just as the sources of illegal immigrant gang warfare include our stupid border fences (with frickin’ Mexico, when the terrorists are coming in through, uh, Canada) and Arizona-style police powers that make your average José Sixpack immigrant afraid to cooperate with law enforcement.
July 26th, 2010 at 1:36 am
Buddhapatriot wrote:
“Well, I wonder if all those “poor, uneducated & ignorant young men” were committing any more crimes during the Great Depression, Terry.”
No, they weren’t. New York City was safe enough to keep your doors unlocked and for a teenage girl to walk in Brooklyn at night with out fear. True story.
Remember, even brown people are required to follow the law. Black people, too.
July 26th, 2010 at 1:39 am
Terry wrote:
“This thread is taking on racial over tones that I am not entirely comfortable with.”
Black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime in the United States. It’s a fact. Deal with it.
July 26th, 2010 at 7:29 am
Nachman;
“New York City was safe enough to keep your doors unlocked and for a teenage girl to walk in Brooklyn at night with out fear. True story.”
Same thing here, bro. I grew up in Bloomington and we didn’t lock our doors at night until the early ’70s. We even went on vacation for a week and someone forgot to lock the front door. My dad realized it when we got home, but all was well. But then, everyone knew the neighbors – the first step in having an effective Neighborhood Watch program!
July 26th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Regarding the racial question, when you account for marital status of the perp’s parents, the racial correlation to any crime largely disappears. Blame LBJ, yes–for monstrousities like AFDC paying young girls to have babies out of wedlock on the condition they won’t get married or find a job.
July 26th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Well I grew up in the Near North/Camden neighborhood. Our family had roots in the West Broadway area going back several generations. There was an area referred to as the “projects” that was poorer, but it was mostly a nice middle class area.
I experienced the race riot of ’68 first hand. Even during that time, when there was considerable tension between races, there wasn’t the crime in the neighborhood that you read about in the news today. You could pretty much go anywhere-anytime without fear.
I left the neighborhood 25 years ago for the boonies; it’s changed dramatically in that time, sadly not for the better. Certainly the causes are many; drugs and gangs probably top the list. In my opinion removing the criminal element by way of long prison sentences is a necessary first step in the effort to clean up the mess. Project Exile makes sense to me.
July 26th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
The down side of Project Exile is that it brings the BATFE into everything, and as one who has followed the case of David Olson–convicted of owning an automatic weapon despite no BATFE definition of the same and no clear evidence that his weapon was automatic in any real sense–I don’t like the idea of bringing them in. They’re too corrupt, to put it mildly.
Put crooks into jail? Sure. Let’s understand, though, that the root cause is not race or poverty, but rather….
…unwed parenting, if you look at the stats.