Joe Doakes from Como Park – who knows his way around a city budget – writes:<\/p>\n
The Legislature failed to reach agreement with the Governor meaning no state aid money for cities. Mayor Coleman wants to know how many cops the Republicans want him to lay off to balance the City budget.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course, the rest of the city’s bureaucracy is off limits. \u00a0But we digress.<\/p>\n
Sad to say, Mayor Coleman has a point. In the Obama Economy of straitened finances, local government may be forced to privatize some services including aspects of police protection. Citizens may need to assume responsibility for their own safety. But many people have found themselves unable to afford to do so, or have been prohibited from doing so, by onerous government regulation or market forces. How can we address this urgent public safety issue consistent with reduced city government revenues?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s a tough question. \u00a0But Joe has an idea:<\/p>\n
I think Congress should pass a Community Re-Armament Act requiring gun dealers to sell pistols to people who traditionally have been underserved in the firearms market (felons, minors, the insane); establish a federal agency to subsidize the price of those guns at taxpayer expense; assign BATF to audit gun dealers to make sure they\u2019re selling enough guns to children upon pain of losing their dealer\u2019s licenses; have Community Organizers sue high-profile gun dealers for \u201credlining\u201d by failing to make enough such sales; wait 15 years to view results.<\/p>\n
Empowering those traditionally excluded from power: I\u2019m astonished Barney Frank isn\u2019t all over this idea. Hey, it worked so well in the housing market. What could possibly go wrong?<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p>\n
Como Park<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Leave out the “felons, minors, the insane” bit, and it could <\/em>work…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park – who knows his way around a city budget – writes: The Legislature failed to reach agreement with the Governor meaning no state aid money for cities. Mayor Coleman wants to know how many cops the Republicans want him to lay off to balance the City budget. Of course, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20291,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20290\/revisions\/20291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}