May 30^th

Cal Thomas’ column today is concerned with the high murder rate which results from blacks killing blacks in many of our major cities. He tells us that Chicago, Baltimore and New York, all of which have high murder rates of blacks by blacks, have in common Democratic Mayors and Democratic majority city councils. It would appear that Cal wants to persuade us that electing a Democratic mayor will cause black people to kill each other.

Other cities with high crime rates, Miami, Anchorage, Oklahoma City and Indianapolis all have Republican mayors. The rape rates in Anchorage and in Alaska are by far the highest in the country. South Dakota has the second highest rape rate of any state and South Dakota has a Republican Governor. Alaska’s new governor previously ran and lost as a Republican but is now an Independent. The state has had for years, had a Republican governor the most famous of which was Sarah Palin.

The point of this exercise is that the Democratic mayors of high crime cities are no more responsible for the crime there than are Republican governors of Alaska and South Dakota are responsible for the intolerable incidents of rape and sexual abuse in their states.

Thomas contrasts the crime rates of New York under Bloomberg and then as it increased under Democrat De Blasio. Of course we had a similar lid on crime with the Democratic mayor of Baltimore, Michael J. O’Malley, but then when the ACLU folks and other evil constitutional rights groups came along, the stop and frisk whomever you please was abandoned, as it was in New York City, and crime went up in both places. Again this has nothing to do with the political party in power; it has to do with whether or not you want to honor the constitutional rights of the citizens and in doing so risk an increase in crime. I’m afraid Cal Thomas does not understand this issue.

Other variables are obviously involved in crime rates, variables that surely have more relevance than the political party allegiance of the civic leaders. Has Thomas looked at unemployment or at population density? Not likely, Thomas is not interested in solving problems; he is only interested in blaming Democrats for them. Unfortunately this seems to be a typical conservative position and it will solve nothing.