Admin
To adjust to false-advertising legal guidelines, Albany ought to discover a new phrase to explain what it now calls a legislative “listening to.”
The want grows out of a rare current occasion on the state Capitol. Invited to deal with a Senate listening to on felony justice, Albany County District Attorney David Soares was subsequently disinvited.
He was canceled due to what he supposed to say, proving that the Empire State’s authorities operates on the identical kangaroo court docket ideas of most faculty campuses. If you don’t wish to hear what somebody has to say, you’re free to silence them lest you be offended.
Soares’ sin was straight speak in that he aimed to inform lawmakers they made fatal mistakes in their so-called reforms of bail and different crime legal guidelines. He wished to clear the air of radical nonsense about who was being detained beneath the previous system and say that suspects who ought to have been held pending trial had been now being let loose and had been committing further violent crimes in extraordinary numbers. He additionally promised to convey statistics to show his factors.
Most inflammatory of all, he would present that the very individuals lawmakers aimed to assist, poor black and Latino New Yorkers, suffered the most as a result of the changes.
All this was an excessive amount of to bear. No, no, no, the information be damned, mentioned the far-left Dems who management each homes of the Legislature. Rather than even politely hear out the skilled prosecutor, who occurs to be black, and problem his factors, they tried to remove his message by capturing the messenger. Soares reportedly received a cellphone name late the evening earlier than he was to testify, telling him to not trouble.
‘Absolutely false’
As a compromise, his written remarks had been entered into the document, and even that set off fireworks. Statements like this one had legislators’ heads exploding:
“The notion that many individuals had been being held on minor costs on low bail quantities was completely false.”
And this one: “These reforms have had their most devastating impression on black and brown communities. If you’re taking an trustworthy take a look at the information — the increases in crime, the victims of those crimes, and the situation of probably the most violent crimes, the connection is sort of clear.”
An trustworthy take a look at the information just isn’t one thing the Legislature will do, not when the information disprove their crackpot theories. Their story is that the felony justice system is completely corrupted by racism, they usually’re not about to let the information — or the bloodshed — get in the way in which.
This is what passes for a “listening to” among the many Dems of Albany. Because they aren’t precise gatherings the place information are offered and legal guidelines debated, they want a brand new identify.
I humbly counsel we name them what they’re — performances — the place favourite myths are endlessly repeated for the consolation of the deluded and the deceitful.
Fortunately, we all know concerning the disgraceful remedy Soares received as a result of Hannah E. Meyers, director of Policing and Public Safety on the Manhattan Institute, first wrote concerning the fiasco beneath the provocative headline, “Do Black Victims Matter?”
The Post adopted by working Soares’ written remarks Monday, noting they present what has gone fallacious in Albany and asking if lawmakers will do something about it.
The reply appears to be completely not. Which raises one other query: Where within the hell is Gov. Hochul?
Once once more, she’s MIA.
As even former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famous, the refusal of state Dems to understand the crime subject nearly cost Hochul her job in final 12 months’s election and helped the GOP decide up sufficient House seats in New York to win a nationwide majority. Yet right here we’re, 4 months later and the blinders stay firmly mounted in place.
What are we ready for?
Hochul’s absence from the crime fight is very grating. She says repeatedly that “public security is my prime precedence,” however the place’s the meat?
Now that Soares has offered crystal-clear knowledge displaying that recidivism is thru the roof and that youngsters are committing extra violent crimes since Albany moved most instances for these beneath 18 to Family Court, the trail ahead is evident. So what’s the governor ready for?
With price range negotiations about to start, Hochul ought to say no to all legislative spending till she will get true felony justice reform.
The ugly reality is that state Dems have foolishly put themselves in a field of their very own making. New York has lengthy been too smooth on crime, however the progressive wing made massive inroads in Albany even earlier than the George Floyd homicide and the “Defund the Police” madness that adopted the 2020 riots.
It was in late 2019, as David Soares reminds us, that judges began a “smooth opening” of the jails and releasing inmates in anticipation of the lenient bail regulation taking impact on Jan. 1, 2020. He notes that within the 75 days or so earlier than COVID hit in the midst of March and lengthy earlier than the Floyd summer season riots, crime within the metropolis all of the sudden shot up 20%, an increase not seen in 27 years.
“If you deny that the discharge of lots of of automobile thieves, burglars, drug sellers and petty thieves had an apparent impression on crime in New York, you’re denying widespread sense,” he wrote in his testimony.
But that’s precisely what we’re witnessing — a wholesale denial of apparent information. And a refusal to appreciate that crime stays the No. 1 subject driving individuals out of New York, making the state America’s chief in inhabitants loss.
All of which leads me to ask two different questions of Albany Dems: How do you sleep at evening? And what lies do you inform yourselves to justify the slaughter and destruction your insurance policies have unleashed?
Lessons on tantrums
My column on the editors of The New York Times going through boorish assaults by transgender activists, together with a few of their very own reporters, leads John Busacca to supply parental recommendation. He writes:
“When our children had been younger and threw tantrums in shops as a result of they wished sweet or soda, we quickly realized that when you give in, the identical factor will occur many times. So one time I walked away from my baby doing this and he was so enraged he received up, adopted me down an aisle and tried once more. After about 5 minutes, he stopped and by no means did it once more.”
He provides: “The radical left is a 4-year-old throwing a tantrum and the media maintain giving it sweet repeatedly.”
Sack the hacks
Martin Carus advises the paper’s editors how to treat the staff rebels particularly, writing: “If the Times is sensible, it arms out pink slips ASAP. There are loads of out there replacements!”
Easy appeasey
Reader James Dalton hears historical past’s appeasement footsteps, writing: “Why do I believe that the irony was misplaced on this administration in addition to the supine media when the primary head to head assembly with the Chinese after the Biden administration’s feckless balloon caper was held in . . . Munich?”
