For John, BLUF: Good idea, needs to be thought through. Nothing to see here; just move along.
On City Life this morning there was a discussion of fighting crime and one of the issues was getting the District Attorneys to actually fight to put convicted criminals in jail. This issue has evolved over the last few weeks, from what the police are doing to what are the judges are doing to, finally, what the DAs are doing.
That is the real locus of the problem. The District Attorneys make the decisions to make the deals. They often view these things through the lens of what is good for their office. At the same time we find that with the continuing proliferation of laws we have truly become a "Ham Sandwich Nation", a nation in which Federal and Local Government Attorneys can indict just about anybody for this or that infraction of some obscure law.
Back to City Life, the suggestion was made that since other efforts are not getting the attention of the DAs, we need to talk to our Representatives on Beacon Hill and have them cut budgets. At the end of the day money talks and mere rhetoric walks. I think this is an excellent proposal, but we really do need to talk seriously with our Representatives, because often we just get MOTS, more of the same.
I would add a note of caution. Way out in Texas the Governor, Rick Perry, used his line item veto to deal with a DA who had become a fairly notorious public drunk, Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg. For that Governor Perry has been indicted on two felony counts of abuse of power.
Regards — Cliff
2 comments:
That Rick Perry story is certainly a study in hardball politics. One suggestion I might make from the sidelines is that such (difficulty in doing the right thing because of political things) is possibly a logical consequence of "opposition at all costs" political philosophies. I'm hopeful that, unlike our failure to rein in Ken Starr on his multi-million dollar folly in pursuit of very little, the Texans are able to dismiss the prosecution of Perry and admit that there are bigger and better fish to fry. It would be discouraging if a sitting executive could not take this sort of action when clearly needed.
Which is not to say there aren't ample reasons to oppose Rick Perry.
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