Daily Outrage: 16 September, 2010
The FBI has released crime statistics for 2009, but you won’t hear about them from Jan Brewer, John McCain or supporters of SB1070. The overall rate of violent crime in Arizona declined 14%, with murder type crimes falling a whopping 22%. These are the kind of numbers that office holders used to trumpet on their campaign stump, but 2010 is no ordinary election year. Today’s right wing catch-word is fear.
Good news of any kind is “off message” for Republicans, and not a few Democrats as well. Conservatives want to talk about how bad things are in this country, as if they had not held power recently and bear no responsibility for creating the current circumstances. The issue of immigration reform is a perfect example.
When conservatives owned Congress and the White House, a worse situation received less attention, both in the echo chamber and from elected officials. Under Obama, the number of illegal residents and illegal crossings are down, border agents and deportations are up; some reforms (e.g.: the dream act) are even fighting through the filibuster log jam. Despite these improvements, Republicans disingenuously lament that not enough has been done. Then they use every legislative trick in the book to delay action of any kind.
But hypocritical complaints and parliamentary tactics did not meet the election year needs of Arizona’s Governor nor its senior Senator. These two decided that fear of border crime was a vein of campaign gold just waiting to be mined; so took their picks. Brewer whined about headless bodies, and McCain growled over kidnappings. When both claims turned out to be baseless, they switched to vague warnings about increased dangers to the state’s residents and visitors. The FBI statistics reveal the truth, an uncomfortable one for our two campaigners.
Their pernicious statements are little more than fear mongering designed to stir up the electorate, but they are doing real damage to Arizona. Tourism, a major industry in the state, has already suffered from the SB1070 controversy; inflating the threat of crime is making a bad situation worse. That means job losses, which seem to concern these two incumbents only as far as their own are at stake.
Arizona voters must reject the fear, the fabrications about border crime, and the mountebanks who keep pointing at the illusion. Desert dwellers should know better than to follow a mirage.
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Comments
So the logic of this position is "Crime is down, so let's continue not to enforce the laws already on the books?" This is ridiculous.
Does your reading comprehension leave something to be desired -- or is this just the studied ignorance of right wing dogmatism? "Logic" is nowhere to be found in your comment.
No one contends that laws should not be enforced; that is a straw man argument with no relavance to my position. In fact, I said nothing of the kind. I simply state that McCain and Brewer have consistently lied about border crime for political purposes.
As for enforcement, you need to check the web links provided in the 3rd paragraph (which begins with "When conservatives owned Congress"). Obama is doing much better than Dubya; the data are there if you bother to look.
Crime statistics do not change the fact that Mexicans violate American laws.
And that is relevant to the fact that Brewer and McCain are using scare tactics to gin up political support because ... ?
Our leaders are supposed to lead us, not terrify us, and their actions become particularly odious when they use made-up "facts" which can easily be proven false. Unlike the ditto heads of this world, I get very offended when someone insults my intelligence while they are trying to pull the wool over my eyes. If there is one thing that is sure to get me going, it is a stupid lie. AND THESE WERE STUPID LIES.
I am glad to hear that a murder almost everyday in Tucson means Violent Crimes are going down.
So, if five years ago there were five murders every day, and four years ago there were four murders every day, and three years ago there were three murders every day, and two years ago there were two murders every day, then when there was one murder every day last year, that means the murder rate went up? Don't be stupid!
One murder, one rape, one violent crime of any kind: is one too many, but the simple truth is that these things happen. The point is that such things are happening less often and our elected officials are telling us something different for their own corrupt, political purposes. That is not leadership; it is fear mongering.
Let me see if I understand your logic. AZ was on the verge of enacting and enforcing illegal imigration laws. This effort made the state less attractive to illegals which resulted in a drop in illegal immigration. At the same time Obama was fighting AZ's efforts at every turn and the release of FBI statistics showing a drop in illegal imigration is proof Obama is doing a good job protecting the borders? Let me guess....you are a recent public school grad who was either denied access to Logic 101 or subjected to extreme indoctrination and appeared in a video singing, "Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm". Sad. Very sad.
My 1960's Catholic grammar schooI education was delivered by nuns who would not have graded your comment very kindly in regard to reading comprehension skills, nor would the above demonstration of those skills have qualified you for 1971's remedial classes with the football players at the University of Notre Dame (which I attended on a full academic scholarship). I will dumb it down for you by removing all the big words.
McCain and Brewer lied about crime. That was a bad thing. Get it now?
Thank-you Mr.Felcon for being a voice of reason! Apparently some folks don't appreciate the facts. It's just awful how bad the election is this year, politics as usual but worse.
And thank you for actually hearing what I was trying to say.
The politics of 2010 are more reprehensible than any in my memory, which extends vividly back to the 1964 campaign (at 7 in 1960, I was blissfully unaware of politics). Nor have my studies of history revealed any comparable period in our nation's heritage.
The studied ignorance of today's tea party wing nuts is playing an uniquely disruptive role within the Republican Party. While U.S. politics has always been afflicted with this kind of fringe group (e.g.: the know-nothings of the mid-19th century), this is the first time that one of the two major parties has succumbed to their influence.
At no other time in our Republic could a debate performance like that given by Jan Brewer lead to an increased lead in the polls. And don't even get me started on some of the nominees for Senate (Nevada, Delaware, etc.), much less on the half-term Alaska governor whose name I refuse to mention. These people seem truly to believe that "Ignorance is bliss."
I thought that I had seen the worst possible President in Dubya, but I am convinced that he was secretly smarter than he let on (big clue: he called himself the "master of the malapropism" - not something an ignoramus would say). I despised him for pretending, but the current crop worry me even more, because I don't think that they're faking it! They may really be as dumb as they seem.
This whole strain of anti-intellectualism runs contrary to reason. Smart people are better at finding solutions than morons; so it would seem that the nation's problems would be better addressed by electing the best candidate. The fact that voters are consciously, even willfully, doing the exact opposite bodes ill for our Republic.
If I find any parallel at all in history, our times seem similar to Rome in the first century BCE. That period saw three leaders (spaced about 30 years apart) who undermined the Roman Republic and turned it into an Empire. We are just passed the second (Nixon, Dubya, ?); so I have some hope that I will shuffle off this mortal coil before the final blow. It would break my heart to see an American Caesar come into power, but I believe the countdown has already begun.
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