Dane Smith’s editorial<\/a> parrots the execrable Paul Krugman; both of them are utterly, unforgivably wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n“Red” states with crime problems have one or more of the following factors in common:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1) They have one or more large cities, usually Democrat-controlled. Tennessee has Memphis. Louisiana has NOLA. Alabama has Birmingham. Even in Minnesota, if you leave out Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the violent crime rates are almost European level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2) Scots-Irish culture, exacerbated by centuries of poverty driven by the servitude culture that led to “white trash” culture. Dueling, honor killing and violence as an accepted part of life are still fairly routine down south. They were even MORE routine when the South was Democrat. They were, in fact, routine before the US was a nation. It’s why parts of rural South Carolina and Louisiana are as dangerous, *per capita*, as Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Krugman and Smith ignore a couple of vital facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1) Yes, *Conservative* policies *do* curb crime. 30 years ago, New York City was one of the most dangerous cities in America. They elected Rudy Giuliani, who replaced social justice mewling with law enforcement – and made NYC a place you could take your kids to. He wasn’t the only one; Jersey City elected Brett Schundler 30 years ago, and nine years of his very conservative leadership turned Jersey City from a crime-riddle hellhole to the jewel of the Jersey side (for a while, anyway).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2) Why do neither Krugman nor Smith point out that places like the rural, hard-red West have crime down around European levels? “But empty land doesn’t have crime problems”, some innumerates may reply – but we’re talking *per capita rates*. Still, they make a point – cities have pathologies that lead to crime. And they are overwhelmingly blue. Correlation? Causation? I don’t know – and it’s for certain Krugman and Smith don’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3) “Red” policies DID work, already, in Minneapolis. In the late ’90s, the city went from being among the nation’s most dangerous to a fairly safe one for close to a decade and a half, ENTIRELY due to diliegent law enforcement, including cracking down on career criminals. (Were there excesses? Absolutely. That’s the hard part – given a choice between public safety and ethical police, CHOOSE BOTH, NO EXCEPTIONS .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
4) Whatever you can say about “red” law enforcement, “blue” law enforcement has been a failure…EVERYWHERE. In large part because they believe, in Lisa Bender’s words, that public safety is a “privilege”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So – if a Democrat says it, and it’s about crime in particular, it’s a lie. There’s no way to pretty that up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smith and Krugman are trying to deflect the gullible. Do not let it work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The DFL is getting nervous about crime; their line has morphed from “We ARE tough on crime!” to “The other guys are no better”. Dane Smith’s editorial parrots the execrable Paul Krugman; both of them are utterly, unforgivably wrong. “Red” states with crime problems have one or more of the following factors in common: 1) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,2,189,263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tc-media-bias","category-minnesota-politics","category-minnesotas-ministry-of-truth","category-narrative-for-sale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83725,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83724\/revisions\/83725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}