The Crime Edition
Two important posts about how marijuana legalization was supposed to reduce crime; also, everything you know about Willie Horton is wrong
Issues and Insights Editorial:
When President Biden announced he was pardoning those charged under federal law with possession of marijuana, he added that he’s looking into “how marijuana is scheduled under federal law,” which to many meant he’s moving toward decriminalizing. “Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana.”
Biden is right about lives being upended because of the federal government’s current approach to pot, and that putting marijuana in the same category as heroin makes little sense. But anyone pushing for legalized marijuana should look at what’s going on in California before cheering this on.
That state, as have several others, legalized marijuana on the promise that it would reduce crime, improve public health, increase traffic safety, and stimulate the economy. Instead of wasting time prosecuting people for possession or for selling pot, states could capture a new revenue source by taxing it. Legalization would also mean that states could regulate it, presumably making the marijuana safer and free of adulterants.
So far, 19 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for nonmedical use, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
While it’s certainly lived up to the raising revenue promise, as the Los Angeles Times found after an exhaustive investigation, it’s done little else.
When voters approved California’s Proposition 64 in 2016, they did so believing that “a legal market would wipe out the drug’s outlaw business and the violence and environmental disaster associated with it.” Instead, the Times found, it’s done the opposite.
“Illegal weed farms are flooding parts of rural California on a scale never before witnessed, exacerbating violence, labor exploitation, environmental damage and more. Police are overwhelmed and can raid only a small percentage of the farms; even then, the growers are often back in business within days.”
The Times also found that the black market growers are using “banned, lethal pesticides and unchecked chemicals,” and that “small farms operating legally are unable to sell their crops, pushing them closer to financial ruin.”
“The scale of the crisis is immense,” it reports.
Those who pushed hardest for legalization are having a hard time coping with these facts.
For example, the libertarian Reason Foundation declared in 2016 that: “taxes may incentivize a small remnant of a black market to avoid taxes, such as California has with cigarettes to avoid tobacco taxes. But by making it legal to grow your own, the incentive for a black market is even more diminished. Opponents’ assertion that black markets increase in a legalized market are unsubstantiated and frankly ludicrous.”
What did Reason say after the Los Angeles Times proved them so wrong? That the state government is to blame because “state and local taxes drive up prices” and because of “the exorbitant costs to do business legally in the state.” As if those factors weren’t present in California in 2016.
Nor is there any evidence that legalization will reduce violent crime rates. A study from the libertarian Cato Institute found no clear impact one way or another. Colorado, Oregon, Alaska, and California saw crime rates increase post-legalization. In Washington state, where violent crime had been on the downtrend, the rates flattened out. Others continued the trend set before legalization. Only one state, Nevada, saw a clear drop in violent crime after the state legalized pot.
Cato’s data only goes through 2018, and the more recent data won’t be of any comfort. In Colorado, for example, violent crime, which counts homicides, aggravated assaults, sex assaults and robberies, is up 17% between 2019 and 2021. Murder is up 47% in those two years, notes Colorado Public Radio. In California, the violent crime rate increased by 6.0% in 2021, aggravated assaults were up 8.9%, and homicides climbed.
The Democrats’ Willie Horton Problem, TIPP Insights, Diane Allocco, Part One
EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT WILLIE HORTON IS BULL – PART ONE
“One of my objectives, quite frankly, is to lock Willie Horton up in jail.” —Joe Biden, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, bragging Democrats were tougher than Republicans on criminals, 1990
The nation’s 2022 top-tier fear is crime. Three quarters of Americans say violent crime is a major problem, and getting worse. Democrats’ cashless bail laws, attacks on police, and other liberal soft-on-crime policies have unleashed unrestrained criminality across the country, particularly in Democrat-run cities, where dangerous criminals are no longer locked up in jail. At all. “Arrested-and-released” is now the most common phrase in every crime article.
And this is not just theory to people, or some kind of political talking point. According to a recent Golden/TIPP poll, a record 16 percent of Americans themselves or a family member have been victims of crime — and the distressing numbers are particularly elevated among African Americans, Hispanics, and urban voters, where close to 25 percent — one in four — are crime victims.
Republicans are campaigning hard for the midterms on the real problem of crime — and gaining traction everywhere. The Democrat response: “That’s racist! It’s Willie Horton all over again! Shut up!”
•“National Republicans Are Bringing Back Willie Horton-Style Advertisements…” — HuffPost, 9/14/22
•“Racist ‘Willie Horton’-Style Fearmongering on Crime May Win Midterms for GOP: Devoid of actual ideas, the GOP has ripped a racist page from a 1980s playbook to scare voters around crime. The polls suggest it’s working.” — Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/2/22
•“‘This is Willie Horton 2.0,’ Cornell Belcher, a Democratic strategist, said… The Republican campaign is streaked with racism, a blatant attempt to exploit white anxiety about dark-skinned felons…” — Santa Maria [CA] Times, 10/4/22
•“Meet Willie Horton, Again.” — The Scranton Times-Tribune, 10/5/22
•“…Republican candidates are turning to a tested ad-campaign strategy: making Democrats look soft on crime.” — Matt Stieb, “It’s Willie Horton Season in the Midterms,” New York Magazine, 10/7/22
•“[C]rime is where [GOP candidate Mehmet] Oz found the sweet spot in the [PA] state’s broader electorate. Crime has long been a go-to issue for Republicans. The echoes of Willie Horton are loud and clear….” — Eleanor Clift, Daily Beast, 10/7/22
•“This is Willie Horton all over…. [T]hat was one of the most racialized, divisive ads in our history…. [I]t’s a playbook that has been used over and over since 1988 for one party [the GOP] to uplift themselves as tough on crime, and the other party [Democrats] as weak on crime and to find opportunities to use these radicalized scare tactics….” — Wendy Daniels, Marquette University professor, quoted in Wisconsin Examiner, 10/7/22
To Democrats, Willie Horton is shorthand for: “Racist Republicans using racist dog whistles to get racist votes.” Democrats spit out this name like a two-word incantation, with total confidence that few current voters have any idea what the real story is. Well, let me lay out some essential details — because everything you think you know about Willie Horton is bull.
Gore’s Gambit. Struggling to stay afloat against the Democrat front-runner in the April 14, 1988 primary debate, Sen. Al Gore (D, TN) tried to hit Michael Dukakis on the Massachusetts governor’s prison furlough program, with a vague, generalized reference to “weekend passes for convicted criminals.” Cold-fish Dukakis responded with statistics and policy-wonkism — sneering that he, unlike Gore, had actually run a criminal justice system. Al went limp, his “you’re-soft-on-crime” attack didn’t impress Democrat primary voters, and Gore dropped out of the race two weeks later, on April 21, 1988.
That Democrat Al Gore first put the issue on the table is occasionally admitted by the media — who always rush to add that Al Gore mentioned no names. True. Which is why this would have likely been the end of the story, except for events happening beyond Democrat Party control.
Forgotten History. One year prior, on April 3, 1987, an inmate supposedly serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at Northeastern Correctional Center, a state prison in Concord, MA, broke into a random house in Oxon Hill, MD and lay in wait. Clifford Barnes, a 28-year-old car salesman, arrived home at 7:30 pm. The armed convict jumped him, pistol whipped him, gagged him, tied him to a post in the basement, punching, kicking, and stabbing him through seven hours of torture — while laughing. During this nightmare, Barnes’s fiancée Angela Miller walked into the house, and Barnes’s tormenter turned the violence on her. The convict raped a screaming Angela at gunpoint again and again as Barnes struggled to free himself.
After four more hours of hell, Barnes was finally able to loosen his bindings, stumble to a neighbor’s house, and call police. Cops apprehended the attacker in Barnes’s stolen car after a high-speed chase and shootout.
An April 8, 1987 headline in a local Lawrence, MA newspaper, The Eagle-Tribune, read: “Brutal Killer Caught After Vicious Binge.” The brutal killer: William R. Horton, Jr.