Tag: crime

Cracker Barrel, Walmart, Other Businesses Closing in Dem Cities Because of Crime and Employee Issues

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

“Cracker Barrel this week became the latest company to announce it is leaving the Portland, Oregon, area shortly after Walmart announced its departure following comments from the CEO that crime and theft were taking their toll.

Cracker Barrel, which has over 600 locations nationwide, blamed the COVID-19 pandemic for its decision to close its final eateries in the Portland metro area.

“As a standard course of business, we continually evaluate the performance of our stores, using various criteria to ensure we are meeting the needs of our guests and our business,” the company said in a statement.

“With that, we are saddened that we have been unable to overcome the impact the pandemic had on our business and have made the difficult decision to close the Beaverton, Tualatin, and Bend locations on March 20. The decision to close a store is never one we take lightly, and our focus right now is in assisting our impacted employees during this transition.”

In a statement to Fox Business asking for specifics on what aspects of the pandemic led to the closures, a Cracker Barrel spokesperson said, “Like so many other companies, the pandemic impacted our business, and we have struggled to staff and profitably run these stores. Despite the extra efforts made, we couldn’t viably continue to keep our doors open.” (Courtesy FoxNews.com)

A report posted last November by the Heritage Foundation found that Democrats controlled 27 of the top 30 cities with the highest homicide rates in the country in 2022, due mostly to Democrat policies and soft-on-crime prosecutors.

“Starting in 2016, with the election of the first [George] Soros rogue prosecutor, Kim Foxx, in Chicago, cities with rogue prosecutors have imposed policies that all — each and every one of them — inure to the benefit of criminals, as we have detailed in our scholarship for the past two years,” the report said.

The top three cities with the highest murder rates were New Orleans, Louisiana, with 36.8 killings per 100,000 of population; Baltimore, Maryland, with 29.1 killings per 100,000 people; and Birmingham, Alabama, with 28 killings per 100,000 people, according to data compiled by the Datalytics research firm.

With the exceptions of Republican mayors in Lexington, Kentucky, Jacksonville, Florida, and an independent mayor in Las Vegas, Nevada, the other 27 top homicide rate cities are controlled by Democrats. Of those, 14 had Soros-backed, progressive district attorneys that have enacted policies that favor criminals, including cash bail reform, releasing convicted felons, refusing to prosecute thefts, drug possession, shoplifting, and several other misdemeanor offenses, according to the report.

Homicides in the 14 cities with Soros-backed district attorneys accounted for 1,752 of the total 2,554 killings in all 30 cities in 2022, the report said.

I live in a small town across the Mississippi state line from Memphis, Tennessee, where one of those Soros-backed prosecutors took office as a result of the last Municipal Elections.

Since then, an already out of control crime wave has gotten worse, with shootings on the expressway and robberies increasing in all of the towns located directly across the state line from Memphis.

In fact, a Walgreens just 10 minutes away from where I am writing this closed its doors yesterday at 3:00 p.m., joining the CVS Pharmacy across the street, which had to close a few months earlier.

They were located at the intersection of two state highways, which allowed shoplifters to drive down from Memphis, run in, snatch and grab, and get the heck out of Dodge.

Besides the fact that crime is out of control. restaurants and department stores are faced with a shortage of employees because thanks to the benevolence of Biden and the Democrats, there is still “free money” available to those who do not want to work.

Our cities must be made safe again, and the “free money” fountain must be turned off for the able-bodied who are refusing to get and keep a job.

Otherwise, America, as we know it, will become just another footnote in the history book.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Getting Ready to Vote: Dems Control 27 of the 30 Cities With the Highest Homicide Rates

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

“A new report from The Heritage Foundation finds that Democrats control 27 of the top 30 cities with the highest homicide rates in the country in 2022, due mostly to Democrat policies and soft-on-crime prosecutors.

“Starting in 2016, with the election of the first [George] Soros rogue prosecutor, Kim Foxx, in Chicago, cities with rogue prosecutors have imposed policies that all — each and every one of them — inure to the benefit of criminals, as we have detailed in our scholarship for the past two years,” the report said.

The top three cities with the highest murder rates were New Orleans, Louisiana, with 36.8 killings per 100,000 of population; Baltimore, Maryland, with 29.1 killings per 100,000 people; and Birmingham, Alabama, with 28 killings per 100,000 people, according to data compiled by the Datalytics research firm.

With the exceptions of Republican mayors in Lexington, Kentucky, Jacksonville, Florida, and an independent mayor in Las Vegas, Nevada, the other 27 top homicide rate cities are controlled by Democrats. Of those, 14 have Soros-backed, progressive district attorneys that have enacted policies that favor criminals, including cash bail reform, releasing convicted felons, refusing to prosecute thefts, drug possession, shoplifting, and several other misdemeanor offenses, according to the report.

Homicides in the 14 cities with Soros-backed district attorneys accounted for 1,752 of the total 2,554 killings in all 30 cities in 2022, the report said.

According to Datalytics, the national homicide rate increased almost 30% from 2019-20.

The report refutes a March report by Third Way think tank, The Red State Murder Problem, that blamed Republican leadership in red states with high murder rates.” (Courtesy Newsmax.com)

The crime-ridden cities, which are controlled by Democrat Politicians, are the way they are because they believe that good and evil are “human constructs”.

These Far Left idiots believe that criminals have “psychological issues” which “prevent them from acting appropriately”.

They believe that all it takes to rehabilitate a criminal is “counseling”.

Just look at how they were willing to defund and eliminate police departments until they figured out that citizens do not want to live in fear of losing their lives and started to move away from their cities.

The Red Tsunami that we will experience next Tuesday is partially a reaction to the out-of- control crime wave that the Democrats have caused in this country.

Let’s face facts.

The Democrat Elite have never cared about the lives of average Americans.

Why should they?

Their “Government Jobs” have made them rich. They all live in gated communities, protected by private police patrols and the best security systems money can buy.

That’s why New York Governor Kathy Hochul downplayed the crime problem in New York City.

Oh…one last thing…speaking of crime…have you noticed that the Paul Pelosi story has been pulled from the MSM?

I guess that it all depends on what your definition of “crime” is.

Crime.

Just another thing to think about when you cast your vote on November 8th.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Pelosi: “There is an Attitude of Lawlessness in Our Country Which Springs From I Don’t Know Where”…Americans Know

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Pelosi Crime

FoxNews.com reports that

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Wednesday decried recent crime waves, including organized retail theft, in San Francisco and elsewhere in the U.S. as “outrageous” and decried “an attitude of lawlessness” she said is behind it.

Pelosi, D-Calif., made the comments when asked about recent comments from San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who is pushing a renewed effort to “change course on how we public safety” and crack down on crime.

“It’s absolutely outrageous. Obviously it cannot continue,” Pelosi said. “But the fact is that there is an attitude of lawlessness in our country that springs from I don’t know where… and we cannot have that lawlessness become the norm.”

“These people coordinate with each other and they plan traffic patterns and the rest so they can reach their goal and depart very quickly,” Pelosi added of the brazen retail thefts that are grabbing nationwide headlines. “”This isn’t like somebody stealing something to go home because they don’t have money to buy. This is about stealing for profit.”

The House speaker said an upcoming bill in the chamber could include multiple provisions that address the source of income for those “stealing for profit,” which is often online.

“Within that bill, the Energy and Commerce Committee has something called INFORM… legislation that would require those who are selling online especially is to establish their legitimacy as to where these products came from. Because what people do is they steal things and they sell them online,” Pelosi said.

“The Judiciary Committee has a bill, Save Shopping, which addresses the same problem in of a different way in terms of holding platforms accountable and those selling things accountable for the prominence of those goods,” she added. “Out of the question that people should be able to think that they can just steal things, profit from them and not have accountability.”

Pelosi also in her press conference touted the passage of a bill in the House to combat Islamophobia and a separate one condemning Chinese oppression of Uyghur Muslims.

“That’s genocide,” Pelosi said of how the Chinese Communist Party is treating that ethnic minority.

The speaker also said she hopes the Senate will pass Democrats massive reconciliation spending bill soon. She specifically touted the child care provisions in the bill and child tax credit checks – the last of which is being sent out Wednesday unless Congress passes legislation to renew it.

But she did not address criticism of the child care provisions in the bill that many are warning could nearly double the annual price of child care for many middle class families by imposing costly new regulations and salary requirements on child care facilities.

San Fran Nan does not have a clue.

Or, at least, the old witch is pretending that she doesn’t.

Actions have consequences.

The disrespect shown by the Democrats since the days of the Obama Administration, coupled with the disintegration of the Black Family Unit as a result of LBJ’s Great Society”, has led us to this moment in history.

The Democrats’ push to “Defund the Police” in favor of “community policing”, was a bone-headed idea which did not help things at all,.

Rather, it was like lighting a match and throwing it into your car’s gas tank while filling up at your local gas station.

It is not just San Francisco which has an out-of-control crime problem, it is every Democrat-run municipality in America, especially those who have District Attorneys who were funded by the Puppet Master himself, George Soros.

And now, with all of this happening, the Democrats want to do away with bail??!!

I was going to ask if they are out of their minds, but that is very apparent to the majority of Americans.

The Democrats had better figure out that Americans will not put up with a lawless society for very long and that futile gestures, like my Hometown of Memphis honoring a local rapper named “Lil Dolph” who was recently assassinated in front of a bakery, by renaming a part of a major street after him, will not deter crime.

The Democrat Elite, like Nancy Pelosi, who live in mansions surrounded by gated walls, actually could care less about what happens to us “Deplorables”.

That’s another reason that we must vote them out of office in the Midterm Elections of 2022.

Our families’ safety depends upon it.

Until He Comes,

KJ

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Rep. Ilhan Omar Blames Defunded Minneapolis PD for a Rise in Crime While Backing a Measure to Replace the Entire Department With a “Department of Public Safety”

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Ilhan Omar Police

You reap what you sow.

FoxNews.com reports that

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., blamed police for the recent rise in crime in Minneapolis, accusing the city’s officers of not fulfilling their oath of office.

“What we must also recognize is that the reduction in policing currently in our city and the lawlessness that is happening is due to two things,” Omar said during a town hall event Saturday in Minneapolis.

One of them, she said, is that “the police have chosen to not fulfill their oath of office and to provide the public safety they are owed to the citizens they serve.”

The lawmaker’s comments come as violent crime has surged in Minnesota over the last year, rising 17% in total while setting records for murders.

Omar’s approach to crime includes backing a Nov. 2 ballot measure to replace the entire Minneapolis police department with a “Department of Public Safety.” The measure would remove the requirement that the city have a minimum number of officers based on the city’s population.

Minneapolis, the state’s largest city, has had to fight the surge while its police department suffers from staffing and morale problems after the death of George Floyd in the city, something some say has fueled the crime surge. Others have pointed to a rise in unemployment and other stresses brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that other large cities have experienced similar issues.

But Omar pinned the blame squarely on the shoulders of the city’s police department, accusing it of being “dysfunctional.”

The Democratic lawmaker blasted the department for a lack of accountability, saying that it is something that “doesn’t exist in this moment.”

“And I do believe that the current charter that we have does tie the hands of those who want want to have that accountability,” Omar continued. “We are mandated to have a specific amount of policing. We are mandated to have this kind of union contract, that you have right now.

So, Representative Omar Biden and the rest of you Far Left Democrats, how are you going to protect the citizens of Minneapolis when you take their municipal law enforcement officers off their jobs?

What are you going to do? Post “This is a Gun-Free Zone” signs all over your city to discourage the criminals?

Tell all of the Gang Bangers to hand over their guns?

I know.

Since Minnesota Attorney General and his family are all Muslims, perhaps they plan on installing Sharia Law in Minneapolis.

After all, they do have a large Somalian population there, who gave us the America-hating, Anti-Semite, Far Left Democrat Congressional Representative Ilhan Omar.

They should have kept her to themselves.

Anyway, where did this idea that the Liberals are pushing of “community policing” come from?

On July 2, 2008, Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama proclaims in a speech:

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

This part of Barack Hussein Obama’s political platform was quickly hidden away, never to be spoken of again.

At least, not openly.

Fast forward to today…

All of the cities and states which have experienced “trouble”  with police departments happen to be Blue States with Democrats in charge of State and Municipal Governments.

Instead of relying on traditional police departments and the American System of Law and Order, Democrats like Rep. Omar want to have the power to circumvent the American System of Justice because of their issues in the past with it.

The death of ex-convict George Floyd gave them the excuse to attempt to defund police departments.

And now, with a Democrat in office, those who oppose Law and Order are all taking the side of the criminals.

Even the Democrat sitting behind the Oval Office…when he is not taking a nap.

Just like a criminal does not represent an entire race, neither do bad policemen represent an entire nation’s Law Enforcement Officers.

They are heroes.

So, please allow me to end today’s post with the text of a classic narration by the late, great Paul Harvey  titled “What is a Policeman?”

“A policeman is a composite of what all men are, I guess, a mingling of saint and sinner, dust and deity. What that really means is that they are exceptional, they are unusual. They are not commonplace. Buried under the froth is the fact, the fact is that less than one half of one percent of policeman misfit that uniform, and that is a better average than you’d find among clergymen. “What is a policeman?

“He of all men is at once the most needed, and the most wanted, a strangely nameless creature who is sir to his face and pig or worse behind his back. He must be such a diplomat that he can settle differences between individuals so that each will think he won, but, if a policeman is neat, he’s conceited, if he’s careless he’s a bum, if he’s pleasant, he’s a flirt, if he’s not, he’s a grouch.

“He must make instant decisions that would require months for a lawyer but if he hurries he’s careless, if he’s deliberate, he’s lazy. He must be first to an accident, infallible with diagnoses. He must be able to start breathing, stop bleeding, tie splints and above all, be sure the victim goes home without a limp.

“The police officer must know every gun, draw on the run and hit where it doesn’t hurt.

“He must be able to whip two men twice his size and half his age without damaging his uniform, and without being brutal. If you hit him he’s a coward, if he hits you, he’s a bully. The policeman from a single human hair must be able to describe the crime, the weapon the criminal, and tell you where the criminal is hiding but, if he catches the criminal he’s lucky, if he doesn’t he’s a dunce.

“He runs files and writes reports until his eyes ache to build a case against some felon who will get dealt out by some shameless shamus. The policeman must be a minister, a social worker, a diplomat, a tough guy, and a gentle man. And of course, he’ll have to be a genius, because he’ll have to feed a family on a policeman’s salary.”

Until He Comes,

KJ

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The Memphis Mayoral Election: Character Won

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

th (39)History was made in my Hometown of Memphis, Tennessee on Thursday Night.

The Commercial Appeal has the story:

Voters in majority-black Memphis on Thursday elected the city’s first white mayor in 24 years as City Councilman Jim Strickland’s message of change propelled him over incumbent A C Wharton.

Although a glitch caused a delay of several hours in tallying the vote, Wharton conceded to Strickland shortly after 10 p.m., saying he had no regrets about the race. Strickland declared victory a few minutes later.

Complete but unofficial returns showed Strickland took 42 percent of the vote to Wharton’s 22 percent. Harold Collins captured 18 percent and Mike Williams had 16 percent. Six other candidates stood at less than 1 percent each. There is no runoff in the mayor’s race.

Strickland was the only white contender among the four major candidates.

It was a rare victory for a challenger against an incumbent — the most recent was Willie Herenton’s historic 1991 win over Dick Hackett — and the first time a council member will move into the city’s top job since 1972.

“Today the people of Memphis spoke loudly and clearly. You want a new direction for this city,” Strickland told a crowd at the Memphis Botanic Garden. “Today, the people of Memphis — you — said we want change.”

Wharton conceded to Strickland in an upbeat concession speech to supporters.

“This is Memphis, Tennessee, known for its graciousness and its hospitality. And I’ve tried to epitomize that throughout all my public service and nothing is going to change,” Wharton said. “That’s just the way I roll.”

Watching Wharton’s speech on a borrowed cell phone, Strickland was asked by an aide how he felt. “Good,” he simply said.

In his victory speech a few moments later to deafening cheers, Strickland said he would be the mayor for all Memphis — including the people who didn’t vote for him. He said he would spend the next four years trying to win them over as well.

The crowd included well-known names from Memphis: Convention & Visitors Bureau chief Kevin Kane, County Commissioner Steve Basar, and friend and fellow City Council member Alan Crone. And joining him in the back, shortly before Wharton made the call, was County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

Strickland called Wharton “an outstanding ambassador for the city of Memphis” and thanked him for his service.

For Wharton, toward the end of the evening, none of it — the 510 colorful balloons, the skewered chicken and crab cakes, the overpowering live band, or even the cash bar — could lift the watch party’s spirits or candidate Wharton to a victory Thursday night.

Ultimately, Wharton descended from his Holiday Inn-University of Memphis hotel room to deliver an upbeat, undaunted concession speech.

“It’s been a good run,” the smiling 71-year-old said as 15 of his family members stood behind him on the stage.

Not for Memphis, it hasn’t, A.C.

Immediately after the controversial Mayoral Election referenced in the article, in which Former Controversial School Board President W.W. Herenton was elected Mayor, in an election, which by any measure, should have been investigated for chicanery, the demographics of Memphis, Tennessee, slowly and irrevocably began to change.

As with any major American City, more and more suburbs began to be built, to accommodate the movement of Memphians seeking to leave the city proper.

By 1997, I was one of them.

In what has become almost stereotypical, the City of Memphis began to decline under the leadership, more accurately, lack thereof, of its first Black Democratic Mayor.

And, while taxpayers left, the size of Memphis City Government expanded, like Rosie O’ Donnell at an all-you-can-eat buffet, while cronyism flourished, leading to hundreds of new City Employees, “working” in dozens of new departments, with such euphemistic “duties” as teaching the citizenry how to “Dress For Success”.

I’m not kiddin’.

While the Memphis City Government was expanding and the taxpayers were leaving, Herenton was raising property taxes and any other kind of taxes he could raise.

If you wanted to see “King Willie”, you could find him every evening, hanging out at the magnificent Lobby Bar of the historic Peabody Hotel.

Here’s a clue: Hizzoner wasn’t there to watch the Peabody Ducks. He was interested in other “birds”.

Anyway, eventually, King Willie was forced out of office by a FBI Probe, which led to the coronation of A.C. Wharton.

Instead of turning around the Bluff City’s Downhill Spiral, Wharton succeeded in putting the pedal to the metal and actually accelerating it, keeping all of Herenton’s “appointees” and adding his own, chasing even more taxpayers out of the city, through his inability to stop the burgeoning crime rate, which has led to a reluctance of major corporations to relocate to the Memphis Area.

According to the FBI, in 2014, in Memphis,

11,399 violent crimes were logged compared to 10,894 in 2013;

Homicides increased from 124 in 2013 to 140 in 2014;

501 rapes were reported in 2014 and 437 in 2013.

Property crimes declined nearly 2 percent;

Motor-vehicle thefts were up 11 percent, an anomaly in the overall drop in property crimes.

Notable among the crimes in Memphis in 2014, was the outbreak of violence committed by “Youth Mobs”, which made Memphis the object of local and national news.

Last September, I wrote that

My beloved hometown of Memphis, Tennessee has been gutted by decades of poor financial stewardship and corrupt Black Democratic Leadership, who never saw a dollar they couldn’t spend, or a relative or friend that they couldn’t give a job with the city to.

And now, Memphis’ chickens have come home… to roost…brought about by a failed school system which turned in its charter in a successful scheme to take over the more affluent county school system, only to see the county municipalities start their own individual systems, Memphis’ black citizens murdering each other every night, and gangs of black teenagers beating the snot out of innocent people, simply because they’re bored, they have no parental guidance, and they know, as “juvenile offenders”, that nothing will happen to them.

Wharton’s solution was to open the community centers until Midnight, so that the “troubled youths” could play basketball.

Sheesh.

As I reported earlier in the week, the final nail in the coffin in the re-election bid of Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton came when it was discovered that there some more corruption in his Administration involving an

$880,000 deal between the maker of MPD’s body cameras and his campaign manager. The city required TASER International to hire a woman or minority PR company to educate the public about their new body cameras for MPD.TASER chose Deidre Malone, who also runs Wharton’s re-election campaign.

“It’s my understanding that Taser and Ms Malone by mutual consent agreed to cancel that contract,” said Wharton.

TASER said it was “disappointed” Malone didn’t tell them about her connection, and they’re committed to ethical business practices.

The mayor said he didn’t see the deal but didn’t think there was anything legally or ethically wrong with it, and apparently neither did his inner circle.

Everyone from his campaign manager, chief administrators, lawyers, and police leaders were aware of the issue.

“Had I wished I’d known before there was communication so I could say don’t do that, but it didn’t happen, and I’ll move on,” said Wharton.

The city said the money wasn’t all profit but to pay for billboards and TV ad’s, but it’s unclear how much.

Wharton said someone else will get the job, and they’ll be a minority too.

Now that the dust has cleared from Thursday Night’s Historic Election, Jim Strickland will begin the process of assembling a team, through which to attempt to undo, or at least begin to make a dent in 24 years of a level of corruption in Memphis City Government that the legendary Memphis Mayor “Boss” Crump could have never even have conceived of.

The Memphis Mayoral Election made the National News because of the fact that Jim Strickland, who happens to be White, defeated a Black Sitting Mayor in Memphis, Tennessee, a city which is almost 75% Black.

What it all boils down to is this:

The citizens of Memphis did not elect Jim Strickland based on the color of his skin…but, rather, the content of his character.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Memphis Mob Violence: Mayor And DOJ “Jail Not the Answer”

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Memphis KrogerFlashMobEach new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late. – Dr. Thomas Sowell

Friday Night Football. High School students, parents, and teachers rooting from thier team as they line up er stadium lights across the country.

Great memories, made to last a lifetime.

And now, the Administration of my hometown wants to end that tradition, in order to “protect the citizens” from teenage thugs who are beating the snot out of the very citizens he is supposed to be protecting.

Friday Night Football games could end for high schools in Memphis, because of an increase in youth mob violence.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has asked Superintendent Dorsey Hopson to look into the possibility of ending night games on Friday breaking one of the biggest fall traditions in the Mid-South.

“What I told him today that we would look at it, we certainly want to be good neighbors,” Hopson told WMC.

Hopson added that the problem isn’t what’s happening inside school stadiums where the games are played.

“We are not having incidents at the games. What’s happening is things are happening outside the games after the game issues,” Hopson shared with WMC.

There have been waves of violent attacks by youth in recent weeks, including an attack at a local Kroger store and a high school mob who attacked a mother’s car.

Hopson explained that he thinks poverty and other factors are contributing to the increase in students acting out. He also said that something needs to be done right away about the social conditions people are living under before a change in the behavior of the youth happens.

Congressman Steve Cohen announced Wednesday that more than $800,000 in federal dollars will be spent in the 9th district to fight youth behavior and prevent violence. A portion of the money will be used to target at-risk teenagers and help their families create violence prevention strategies. Anti-violence programs will also be established in schools within the area with the money.

What the heck ever happened to actually punishing these tugs for their crimes?

The Obama/Holder Department of Justice Guidelines happened, that’s what.

WREG.com reports the following…

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — US Attorney Edward Stanton III was in Memphis to talk about something that’s on everyone’s mind: youth violence.

He says court summons instead of jail time aren’t the cause of an uptick in violence, but admits the justice system needs to make serious changes.

“I want to be clear that Smart on Crime is not a hug-a-thug policy or program,” he said.

Stanton says it’s time for a change in the justice system because Memphis, and the rest of Shelby County can’t arrest their way out of violence. He argued mass incarceration has never made our streets safer.

“We need to understand that one size does not fit all. What we may have tried 15, 20 years ago or when I was a youth, those things may not be working,” he said.

Stanton says this is especially true with kids today. He says the Memphis streets he grew up on are much more dangerous, and kids are getting sucked into crime at a much younger age.

“We didn’t have to worry about drugs or gangs or bullets flying over our heads. I think what we are doing today is a great start,” he said.

He said Thursday’s Justice Reform Conference shows the community wants to help bring change to the streets. And he says this is exactly where change starts.

Stanton brushed off suggestions the Department of Justice mandate that gives most kids court summons instead of jail time is leading to more violent crime. He says this mandate protects kids from a potentially racially biased system.

“We want to be vigilant in holding individuals accountable but the constitution prevails and safeguards must be in place before doing those things,” he said.

These messages of community and coming together to tackle the problem are exactly what everyone else in leadership roles are saying, but Memphians have said time and again, enough with the talk, let’s see, some action.

My beloved hometown of Memphis, Tennessee has been gutted by decades of poor financial stewardship and corrupt Black Democratic Leadership, who never saw a dollar they couldn’t spend, or a relative or friend that they couldn’t give a job with the city to.

And now, Memphis’ chickens have come home… to roost…brought about by a failed school system which turned in its charter in a successful scheme to take over the more affluent county school system, only to see the county municipalities start their own individual systems, Memphis’ black citizens murdering each other every night, and gangs of black teenagers beatomg the snot out of innocent people, simply because they’re bored, they have no parental guidance, and they know, as “juvenile offenders”, that nothing will happen to them.

President Obama will not address Memphis’ problem.

And, Outgoing (Praise the Lord) Attorney General Eric Holder is noticeably silent as well as are the Justice Brothers, Revs. Jackson and Sharpton.

For, boys and girls, the harsh reality of an out-of-control populace of a Democratically-ran city, well on its way to becoming another Detroit, must be ignored at all costs…due to political correctness, political expediencies, and the Liberal naivete that these “misguided lren do not need to be punished for ‘acting out”. They need to be “affirmed”.

Because, for these self-serving Democrat Liberal Politicians, as President Barack Hussein Obama himself has conceded, it is not about those “Black Youth” who break the law, it’s about making up for “past transgressions” that America was supposed to have moved past, with the election of Barack Hussein Obama.

Under the presidency of “The Great Uniter”, America has become more divided.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Detroit: Though I Walk Through the Valley…

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

Back on March 31, 2008, Rich Lowry wrote the following in an article on townhall.com titled, “Detroit: The City That Liberalism Ruined”:

…Detroit suffers from every possible malady except a plague of locusts, and that’s only because they find urban living uncongenial. The city has a revitalized downtown, but all around it, the city rots. Forbes magazine declared Detroit “America’s Most Miserable City,” on the basis of its unemployment and crime rates, among other things. The unemployment rate of 8.2 percent is the highest of any major urban area in the nation, and its homicide rate is higher than New York’s in the bad old days of the early 1990s.

The city has lost 1 million residents since 1950. It was hit by the decline of the auto industry and white flight, fueled partly by racism. These trends would have rocked the city no matter what. Detroit compounded them with disastrous governance, personified by Mayor Coleman Young, who held office for 20 years beginning in 1974.

His record raises the question why, if it wanted to engage in a nefarious plot to hurt blacks, the federal government would invent the AIDS virus when it could simply emplace mayors like Coleman Young instead. “Imagine a Rev. Jeremiah Wright with real power,” says urban expert Fred Siegel. Coleman taunted suburbanites, accusing them of “pillaging the city,” while his scandal-plagued administration managed the city into the ground.

And then the Liberal “messiah” Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) bailed out the horribly-managed American Automobile Industry, gerously giving them OUR tax money, so that they would not follow the dinosaurs into extinction (and his huge contributions from the Auto Workers Union would keep coming in).

At halftime of the 2011 Superbowl, Clint Eastwood starred in and narrated the following television commercial for Chrysler:

It’s halftime. Both teams are in their locker room discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half.

It’s halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback. And we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game.

The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again.

I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our heart at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.

But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one. Because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one.

All that matters now is what’s ahead. How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And, how do we win?

Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And, what’s true about them is true about all of us.

This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah, it’s halftime America. And, our second half is about to begin.

Well, Dirty Harry, Detroit is well into the second half…and they’re waaay behind.

Bloomberg.com has the story:

Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating almost half its streetlights.

As it is, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed board, can’t afford to fix them. Mayor Dave Bing’s plan would create an authority to borrow $160 million to upgrade and reduce the number of streetlights to 46,000. Maintenance would be contracted out, saving the city $10 million a year.

Other U.S. cities have gone partially dark to save money, among them Colorado Springs; Santa Rosa, California; and Rockford, Illinois. Detroit’s plan goes further: It would leave sparsely populated swaths unlit in a community of 713,000 that covers more area than Boston, Buffalo and San Francisco combined. Vacant property and parks account for 37 square miles (96 square kilometers), according to city planners.

“You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas like we light other areas.”

Detroit’s dwindling income and property-tax revenue have required residents to endure unreliable buses and strained police services throughout the city. Because streetlights are basic to urban life, deciding what areas to illuminate will reshape the city, said Kirk Cheyfitz, co-founder of a project called Detroit143 — named for the 139 square miles of land, plus water — that publicizes neighborhood issues.

“It touches kids going to school in the dark,” said Cheyfitz, chief executive of Story Worldwide Ltd., a New York marketing company. “It touches midnight Mass at a church. It touches businesses that want to stay open past 9 p.m.”

Bing in 2010 began an independent project called Detroit Works to sort ideas on how to reconfigure the city for residences, businesses, green space and even agriculture, a plan due in August.

Meantime, Brown said, the city will fix broken streetlights in certain places even as it discontinues such services as street and sidewalk repairs in “distressed” areas — those with a high degree of blight and little or no commercial activity.

Bing’s plan requires state legislation to create the lighting authority. Governor Rick Snyder supports the plan, said his senior policy adviser, Valerie Brader.

There’s already experience snuffing out streetlights within Detroit’s borders. Highland Park, a 3-square-mile city encircled by its larger neighbor, removed 1,100 of 1,600 streetlights last year, after piling up a $4 million debt to DTE Energy. The move saves $45,000 a month, said Alejandro Bodipo-Memba, a spokesman for the company.

Only major streets and intersections remain lit in the city of 12,000, once home to Chrysler Group LLC’s namesake car manufacturer and Henry Ford’s first moving assembly line. Mayor DeAndre Windom, 45, said residents at first complained, though few do now. He’s considering grants and private funding to relight darkened streets

Colorado Springs pulled the plug on 9,000 of its 25,600 lights in 2010 to save $1.3 million, said David Krauth, a city traffic engineer. Some were relit as revenue improved, though 3,500 remain dark, saving about $500,000 a year, he said.

In Detroit, some streets have no working lights. Many appear dim or are blocked by trees. And some areas with mostly vacant lots are well-lit.

So, instead of encouraging capitalism, and encouraging its citizens to pull their helmets back on and get back in the game, Detroit is, instead, herding them like sheep through the dark valley that used to the Motor City.

With cities like Detroit and the others being turned into a bunch of non-contenders by the “Democratic Coaching Staff”, it sounds like Team America needs a new quarterback, doesn’t it?