It's adorable when Hector pretends to be a liberal, or even a decent human being... when it's clear he's neither.
I believe that you are mistaken about the Democrats, and I believe that Democrats are mistaken about criminals.
To begin with, Democrats understand privately that a rising crime rate benefits the GOP. Nevertheless, the will to believe causes people on both ends of the political spectrum to advocate policies that have failed many time in the past.
The Republicans will use fear to get stupid white people to vote against their own economic interests no matter what the crime rate is. Before Trump, Crime rates had his a 30 year low, but dammit if Trump didn't go out there telling you that there was a Mexican Drug Dealer ready to rape and murder you in your own bed.
The problem is, our crime policies aren't sustainable. We have 2 million people in prison, another 7 million on probation or parole, and another 70 million with a police record. And yes, while the latter group doesn't spend any time in prison, it does show up on background checks.
For example it is obvious by now that tax cuts for the rich to not balance the budget, and they do not benefit those who are not rich. Nevertheless, Republicans still advocate tax cuts for the rich, Then they use the resulting increases in the national debt as an excuse to cut domestic spending programs that are popular with the voters, including many Republican voters.
Well, you are confused as to why the GOP still drinks the Supply Side Koolaid. Yes, it became obvious supply side doesn't work after Reagan tried it, which is why he rolled back many of his tax cuts in the 1986 Budget deal. Conservatives were so upset about it that Bush had to promise not to raise taxes ("Read my lips") and broke that promise when the S&L Crisis hit. Clinton raised taxes on the rich again, and you FINALLY balanced the budget (Partially because Clinton went along with welfare reform and slashed the military budget calling it a peace dividend. I call it a "Kick me" sign, which Bin Laden did. )
Of course, as pointed out, we spend 2.5 Trillion on Middle Class Entitlements and only about 600 billion of poverty relief, so the real problem isn't in welfare spending, it's in the fact that people have realized they can vote themselves money.
Heck, look what happened during TRUMP PLAGUE(TM). Trump and the Republicans increased unemployment spending almost to the point where it became preferable to working for a while. Heaven Forbid anyone hold them accountable for their incompetence in the economy or Covid.
Most liberals - and I am liberal on many issues, as you know - really are naive enough to believe that criminals are decent guys who never had decent chances, and if only we had given their unmarried welfare mothers bigger welfare checks, they would be pillars of the community.
Just read the nonsense posted by JoeB131. He really believes that.
Empirical evidence. The Europeans (some of whom have decent sized minority populations) and the Japanese (who don't) don't lock up millions of people and do have substantial social welfare programs. As much as you ***** about "illegitimacy" (Again, did Jamal knock up your woman when she dumped you?) the French have an out of wedlock birthrate of over 60%, and they don't have the issues we have.
They also treat drug addiction as a medical issue, not a criminal one. They have universal health care and the mentally ill can get their meds.
Just as Republicans have not learned anything from the failure of Reagan's economic policies to balance the budget by 1963 "if not sooner" as he promised in his debate with President Carter, most liberals - myself excluded - have not learned anything from the liberal failures of the 1960's.
Um, I'm not sure how Reagan could have promised to balance the budget by 1963 in a debate he had with Jimmy Carter in 1980. Did he have one of these?
Of course, the real failure of Reagan's policies is that he didn't cut government spending when he cut taxes. He massively increased spending on the military. (Which was a good thing, the military was in awful shape from 8 years of Democrats slashing spending after Vietnam).
The failure of liberal policies, is of course, is that they were never really tried. Tricky DIck rolled back social welfare programs almost as soon as LBJ was out the door. Carter and Clinton were marginally liberals, and while Obama tried to do some stuff, he really didn't try hard enough.
www.minnpost.com
abc7chicago.com
