RUTHFULLY YOURS

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Power and money are at the heart of politics, so it is unsurprising that politics is rife with corruption. Corrupt politicians rank among the world’s oldest professions. In his 1894 novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark Twain wrote: “There is no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress.” Theodore Roosevelt is alleged to have once said, “When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘not guilty.’ Humor aside, has corruption become more common? Certainly, we have moved beyond the late 19th and early 20th Centuries’ big city political machines like Tammany Hall in New York and the Pendergast organization in Kansas City. But we live in a time and a place that venerates wealth and power.

President Truman famously refused a corporate board seat in 1953 – “You don’t want me. You want the office of the president, and that does not belong to me. It belongs to the American people and its not for sale.” His decision can be contrasted to the wealth accumulated by ex-presidents Bill Clinton ($80 million) and Barack Obama ($70 million). George W. Bush has an estimated net worth of $40 million. Unlike Messrs. Clinton and Obama, Mr. Bush entered the Presidency with an estimated $20 million. And then we have the greatly resisted Donald Trump who became the first individual to lose a billion dollars while President. Yet he is the one cited by an honor-challenged media as being the most corrupt.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/left-twisted-priorities-crime/

Crime is on the rise in cities across America and the left is asleep at the wheel. Democrats are set to be routed in the upcoming midterm elections, but instead of getting onboard with tough-on-crime policies, they’ve focused their efforts on measures that are wildly out of touch with even their own voters.

To start, Democrats have their pandemic lockdowns to thank for at least some of the crime crisis. Carjackings are up in cities, which experts attribute to teenagers who are not in school or extracurricular programs. James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, said that the pandemic has given people too much free time, which can lead to an uptick in crime. New York City has seen major crimes increase by nearly 40 percent this year, and coincidentally also has some of the strictest pandemic measures.

Even though Americans are clamoring for a crackdown on crime, Democrats have spent the past few years going all in on criminal justice reform. They’ve advocated for “defunding the police,” which in its most generous interpretation means redirecting funds to social workers. Their bail reform policies have made it much easier for violent and career criminals to get out of jail after committing a crime. Plenty of these individuals, such as the Waukesha man who mowed down bystanders at a Christmas parade, commit even more heinous acts of violence after being released.