This week for his address to the nation, the President essentially rehashed his address from two weeks ago. 2.2 million people (including illegals) behind (state and federal) bars. $80 billion in taxes to keep people (also known as criminals) incarcerated. Non-violent offenders (like burglars, drug dealers, car thieves, and others who bargained to get their more severe charges dropped) with unnecessarily long sentences. No mention of violent offenders with obscenely short sentences.
Obama says,
I believe we can disrupt the pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails. I believe we can address the disparities in the application of criminal justice, from arrest rates to sentencing to incarceration. And I believe we can help those who have served their time and earned a second chance get the support they need to become productive members of society. That’s why over the course of this year, I’ve been talking to folks around the country about reforming our criminal justice system to make it smarter, fairer, and more effective.
Again with the criminal justice pipeline. Hundreds of billions in taxes (“investments”) for underperforming schools isn’t enough. If only our teachers had more expensive healthcare plans and bigger pensions and the unions could take a bigger fee from the teachers’ paychecks, our kids would learn more and would stop breaking laws and getting busted (or shot) by cops and not go to court where judges pass down sentences that send the young ones to prison for too long for breaking the law and minorities get an unfair shake and white people don’t get enough punishment because they’re privileged and we have to get these poor ex-convicts jobs and maybe they won’t screw up again because the government needs to love our children and criminals more, America.
Obama proceeded to talk about flying around the country, meeting with cops and robbers and he cares, everyone. Obama cares.
He made sure to add that he called for “common sense gun safety reforms,” too. Because more common sense gun safety reforms will stop people from breaking the law and will get them to pay attention to the no-no signage in schools and movie theaters. Because more common sense gun safety reforms will detect, out of over 300 million people, who will become the next psycho who would never think to go on a killing spree if his access to guns was hindered. Because more common sense gun safety reforms will fix those people who never shot anyone and who own those hundreds of millions of legal guns that were never responsible for claiming lives because guns are inanimate objects.
Because more common sense gun safety reforms that infringe on Second Amendment rights will keep people from breaking the Fifth Commandment. Or Sixth, depending on your religion. Whichever. The one that says “don’t murder people, dummy.”
Because it feels good to say you’re doing something, anything, except fixing the problem that’s been around since the first sons of the first parents of the Bible.
Obama obviously received the memo on replacing “gun control” with the feel-good “gun safety.” All it sounds like now is an effort to subsidize gun locks and cabinets for the masses. Rebranding control to make it sound like it’s not control is control of the narrative. Though Obama’s compulsion to control doesn’t stop, rebranding gun control will not work. People aren’t that stupid, aside from the more gullible progger sycophants.
And we know that having millions of people in the criminal justice system, without any ability to find a job after release, is unsustainable. It’s bad for communities and it’s bad for our economy.
No ability to find a job? Their legs are broken? Their fingers are paralyzed? Their mouths are sewn shut? Have them get in line with the millions of others who are unemployed. He’d better not be planning to give criminals the speed pass to the front of the line.
Maybe stop creating more laws and regulations that make things harder for businesses and communities to thrive. That’s what’s bad for the economy. Don’t teach the public that the government will come to their rescue for every last aspect of their lives. Teach them that hard work, responsibility, and ingenuity will lead to independence. That’s what’s good for the economy.
Obama’s traveling up to Newark on Monday to “highlight efforts to help Americans who’ve paid their debt to society reintegrate back into their communities.” Reintegration is good. Does he really need to be there, though? Why can’t the guy just sit at his desk and focus on fixing stuff from there? Emissions! Gas! Greenhouse! Carbon! Toxic!
No, I don’t expect him, nor most politicians, to know how to work from home. Community Organizer-in-Chief’s gotta go organize communities.
“Everyone has a role to play” in the efforts to help American ex-cons, Obama says.
That means YOU.
Not me, though. I have enough of my own problems.
It’s one corny, hackneyed line after another with that guy.
And I’ll keep working with people in both parties…
Comedy reforms everything.
…to get criminal justice reform bills to my desk, including a bipartisan bill that would reduce mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders and reward prisoners with shorter sentences if they complete programs that make them less likely to commit a repeat offense.
There’s a reason that good people across the country are coming together to reform our criminal justice system. Because it’s not about politics. It’s about whether we as a nation live up to our founding ideal of liberty and justice for all. And working together, we can make sure that we do.
Reform. Criminal justice reform. Common sense gun safety reform. Reform is “the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc.” How many so-called improvements or amendments have succeeded in deterring crime? We’re told that crime is going down, but we’re told that we still need more reform, which is really just a rebranding of the word “laws.” That also isn’t going to work. But B+ for effort, Mister President.
Sometimes I can be generous with the grading curve.
It’s definitely about politics. If this wasn’t about politics, there would be no need to rebrand things like laws and control. There would be no need to convince us of universal agreement on the reform bill by calling it “bipartisan.”
With Obama, it’s always about politics. It’s the only way he knows how to work.
I suppose I should be grateful. He didn’t make me have to look into so many of his “facts” this week.
