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Lawlor, Malloy’s Second Chance Society And The Racist Red Herring

Mike Lawlor, Governor Dannel Malloy’s law and order chieftain, has a Chris Christie in his craw.


The Governor of New Jersey, a convenient campaign foil for Eastern Seaboard progressives such as Mr. Malloy, was recently cited in a news report, as a Republican not infested with racism who seemed to support a measure used by Connecticut progressives, Mr. Malloy among them, to tar Connecticut Republicans with racism – not by intent but by outcome. In the Malloy Eden, it is possible for an innocent Republican who opposes a Malloy measure to slither into a racist mode. To be sure, Connecticut Republicans, a moderate lot for the most part, intend no racism. But by questioning the hoped for outcome of Mr. Malloy’s “Second Chance Society,” they have shown themselves to be "racist in outcome."

Mr. Malloy’s Second Chance Society is one that compassionately and empathetically would repeal a law that unfairly punishes minority urbanites. The law, passed by a legislature that has been dominated by Democrats since 1965, illegalizes the selling of drugs within 1,500 feet of a school or public building. The Democratic majority that affirmed that law, according to Malloy-Lawlor logic, was racist – if not in intent, surely in outcome. Apparently, “outcome racism” is ubiquitous in Connecticut. We know, for example that the rate of abortion among African Americans in cities is much larger than is the case in Connecticut’s pearly white suburbs, and there seems to be a connection between the high rate of abortion in cities and the distribution of Planned Parenthood facilities in the nation; there are more of them in cities. One wonders if Planned Parenthood might fall into the “racism by outcome” category that progressive Democrats find so useful on the campaign stump as a means of bringing home urban votes.

It turns out that Mr. Malloy is not alone in opposing the racism by outcome law. Right of center politicians such as Mr. Christie are seated in the same pew as Mr. Malloy and Mr. Lawlor, who find the proximity distressing, not to mention politically inconvenient. Other right of center politicians and political theoreticians – Nobel Prizewinning Economist Milton Friedman and conservative-libertarian icon Bill Buckley for instance – seem to be pulling on the same oars as Mr. Malloy and Mr. Lawlor.

When a reporter pointed this out to Mr. Lawlor, venomous flecks of campaign spittle bubbled up from Mr. Lawlor’s molten progressive center, and he gave the game away.

"It's not my job to say nice things about Chris Christie," Mr. Lawlor fumed. “Many Republicans [in Connecticut] seem to be back in Willie Horton mode when in the rest of the country, conservative Republicans, they're proposing these same things."

See – Connecticut Republicans are even more racist in outcome than Mr. Christie, Mr. Buckley, Mr. Freedman and Saint Francis of Assisi. Got that?

So then, let us inquire. The urbanscape in Connecticut has been handcrafted by dominant Democrats in the General Assembly. The law that Mr. Malloy and Mr. Lawlor consider “racist in outcome” could not have been promulgated or passed without the support of majority Democrats. The last time Republicans were a majority in one of the two houses in the state legislature was way back in the 1963 and 1965 sessions. Are people in Hartford, circa 2015, more integrated, safer, better educated, less prone to shooting each other with illegal weapons readily available to the criminal element that preys on defenseless women and children, than was the case fifty years ago  when Republicans last commanded one of the two houses in the state legislature? The answers to these questions are: No, no, no and no. In a one-party state, the one party controlling the legislative agenda is responsible for the condition of African Americans and Latin Americans in the state.

Headline, Hartford Courant, circa  2015, front page, top of the fold: “Hartford Police Have Little To Say About Pastor's Shooting.”  Lead Paragraph: “The shooting of a pastor outside a church on Capitol Avenue Sunday continues a string of gun violence in Hartford over the past several weeks.” More: “Robert Jones, 27, of Hartford, was shot multiple times at 402 Garden St. and listed in serious but stable condition at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center.” And more: “On May 19, Mariano Gonzalez III, 19, of Fairmont Street, was found in a car on Irving Street with a gunshot wound to the head. Wednesday morning, he was pronounced dead.” And more: “On May 16, two others were fatally shot: Michael Clahar, 28, of Hartford, was found at Mary Shepard Place and Rashad Collier, 27, of West Hartford, was killed at George and South Streets in the South End.”

Over time, even those living in communities ravaged by such crimes committed, one may note, with weapons not purchased by violent criminals at the local gun store, become used to the gunfire, the bullets, the tears.

Now then, lawgivers should make a sharp distinction between violent crime and non-violent crime, and violent criminals should not be given a second chance or a third chance or a fourth chance. They should be apprehended, tried and, if convicted, sentenced to appropriate punishments that are not diminished by parole boards or by Mr. Lawlor’s brand-spanking-new “get out of jail early” Risk Reduction Earned Credits program, the result of legislation passed in an omnibus bill that had not been vetted in a public hearing.

Rape is a violent crime committed mostly against defenseless women; though, of course, men are raped as well, sometimes while in prison in the custody of Mr. Lawlor and Mr. Malloy. Should rape be among the violent crimes excluded from Mr. Lawlor’s program? The answer, Republicans in Connecticut have said over and over again is – Yes. Neither Mr. Lawlor nor Mr. Malloy have been moved by Republican pleadings, nor by the pleadings of women who have been raped.


Why do Mr. Lawlor and Mr. Malloy find it so difficult to support by swift and certain sentencing the second chances of those who are victims of rape and other violent crimes? Do the victims of violent crimes not deserve the justice meted out by courts, undiminished by politicians who find it convenient to marginalize the Republican Party by falsely accusing it of racism?

Comments

Can't think of a more apt example of George Orwell's observation that "[i]n a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Surely that observation must stick in the craw of Russian Studies Major and former U.S. Soviet exchange student Michael Lawlor. Not much a surprise really that he entered politics as a Democrat, huh?
peter brush said…
The urbanscape in Connecticut has been handcrafted by dominant Democrats in the General Assembly.
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If we consider our situation since 1963 your description is accurate. To account for the condition of our urban centers in the larger time frame we can substitute "progressives" or "liberals" for "Democrats." Frederick Law Olmsted, for example, was a Republican. But, the first thing to recognize when considering how our cities became so crumby, is that their decline wasn't a function of incompetent municipal pols; enlightened state policies ruined our cities. Northern American cities have without exception lost population. Since 1950 Boston is down almost 200,000. And, as noted in today's Hartford Courant, the people who remain domiciled in our towns are of colour and poverty. We can bet that Freddie Olmsted wouldn't be happy about Hartford 2015.

Connecticut went in for land use regulation in the beginning of the last century; gave municipalities the power to zone. Since the U.S. Supreme Court bought into the theory of "preventative nuisance" it was legal for the government to prohibit a private land owner in West Hartford from building an apartments. The object wasn't to exclude poor(er) people from suburban zones, but that has been the effect.
A lot of people would have preferred urban living even if though it entailed proximity to not-so-beautiful people , particularly immigrants, Blacks, and Puerto Ricans; i.e., white flight wasn't driven by white racism. Unfortunately, when exclusionary land use regs were coupled with government education districts, the need for people to leave was irresistible. The problem was not the schools themselves. In the old days Hartford's schools were the finest in the region. Embarrassingly for liberal Nutmeggers, the problem is the kids. As the flight to the suburbs took off after WW2, the problem of the kids became increasingly "concentrated." As the better sort of people fled the State school districts the population of the cities became increasingly barbaric, more of a nuisance, if you like. Add to the mix the unique American race problem, including the advent of demonstrative disaffected blacks making life less than pleasant out of black pride, struggle, and resistance, and you have the utter catastrophe that is Hartford, Newark, and Detroit. Even if we were to institute school vouchers now so that normal people wouldn't have to put their kids in the Connecticut urban district schools, a re-population of our cities with civilized people isn't likely.
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We should be screaming at our City leadership to end this violence
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I doubt you'll find many people who disagree that crime makes a city unattractive. I don't think it at all unreasonable to suggest to civilized people contemplating moving into Hartford that, although there may be 20-30 homicides in town each year, their chances of being victimized in that way are slim if they stay indoors late at night (and avoid a few neighborhoods at any time of day). Not unreasonable, and should not be offensive to victims who may be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They're still victims even if they're out on Barbour Street engaging in illicit commerce at 2:00 a.m.

It's no good denying that living in Hartford entails risk. The risks have to be assessed, managed, and compared to benefits, if any. The fundamental problem(s) with Hartford are a function of the people, the residents, and the citizenry. We are above average in poverty, family dysfunction, and criminality. A mayor can't stop the violence, but he can adjust police policy in accord with facts on the ground. The leadership in Baltimore has adjusted in one direction. I'd prefer the Hartford adjust in the other direction. God Bless the guys/gals of the HPD.
http://wethepeoplehartford.blogspot.com/

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