The vast majority of my pieces are quick reads. This is the rare exception, at 8+ minutes. However for a shorter version just look at the nice pictures with hilarious captions.
Politics aside, most of us have one thing in common. We work. We show up, listen/don’t listen to our boss, and put in a full 40+ hour week.
Now let’s take a look at Congress. One member in particular: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You know her as AOC. Friends call her Sandy.
Why this essay’s guest of honor? Because of all the wacky things she says (talking is considered work in Congress) and, well, she’s very photogenic.
Does she make more than you? Probably ($174,000).1 Does she work a full week? Probably not.2 But you and I pay her salary. Which pays for her Tesla. And luxury apartment in D.C. But I digress.
Sandy represents a portion of the Bronx and Queens, both of which are New York City boroughs. Three local Queens, NY papers ran this story on April 4th: 3
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Blasts Mayor Adams’ Hardline Approach to Crime
Roughly translated:
Mayor Adams Is Fed Up With Criminals’ Hardline Approach to Law-Abiding Citizens
Trick question: Is anyone from either party living in NYC happy about skyrocketing crime since ex-mayor Bill de Blasio slashed the NYPD’s budget? 4
The Queens-Bronx congresswoman took to Instagram Saturday to pan the hardline measures Mayor Eric Adams has implemented since he took office in January in order to rein in soaring levels of crime.
Hardline measures. Like dungeons? Firing squads? Medieval stretching racks?
Unfortunately, no. “Some of the mayor’s policies include bringing back plainclothes police teams and removing homeless encampments.”
Encampments. Sounds nice enough, right?
Except they’re not full of little old ladies who got kicked out of their rent-controlled apartments. For sure, some genuinely nice people live there, but those places are also full of filth and drug use.5 And where you find drugs, you also find crime.6
Dear AOC, there were over 300 encampments in the city. Your constituents don’t want to be hit up for a few bucks every time they leave their homes, or smell poop, or fear the subway, or have parts of their neighborhood resembling a third world you-know-what. Just sayin’
“Cutting virtually every city agency’s budget while raising NYPD’s, bringing back the plainclothes unit notorious for misconduct and responsible for an enormous percent of all NYC police killings, torture in the form of solitary [confinement] at Rikers and destroying homeless people’s sole belongings/shelter in the middle of winter while defunding the very shelter system they’re supposed to turn to?” Ocasio-Cortez posted to her Instagram story.
Oy vey. Hyperbole and fibs.
When cops break up an encampment (previously referred to as squatting) they’ll take anyone to a shelter who wants to go. But some homeless shelters are dangerous, say supporters of leaving the homeless, well, homeless. To those devoid of critical thinking skills, here’s an idea: devote your efforts to making those unsafe shelters safer, right? That’s the truly compassionate thing to do.
“Cruel is having people live in cardboard boxes and tents. Human waste, drug paraphernalia, no bathrooms, no showers, no place to put your clothing — that's cruel," [Mayor] Adams said. "And so I want to work with my council members, and I would like to see them with me at 2 in the morning when I'm at the train stations, when I'm talking to people who are homeless. I want to see them at 4 a.m. when I'm going to encampment sites." 7
Normal people understand this. Nutcases don’t.
Meanwhile, over at Politico:
‘Back to the Giuliani era’: Adams’ order to clear homeless camps ignites fury in New York Elected officials and advocates say there's no safe place for homeless New Yorkers to go after Adams already cleared out the subways and transit hubs.8
Former mayor Bill de Blasio liked to say he took one billion from the NYPD, but it really wound up being a few hundred million. Still, you can’t make homeless shelters any better and safer with some of that loot? Really? 9
These people could give coma patients a headache. Again, nutcases.
As for Rikers Island prison, I know one of the retired wardens. Some very bad people live there, the kind that need to be caged so normal people don’t get hurt or killed. And solitary confinement is “torture”? It’s actually punishment for misbehaving in prison, which puts other inmates and guards in even more danger.
(Or just avoid Rikers altogether. Get a job instead of creating mayhem.)
Fun fact #1: Sandy helped kill Amazon’s plans to bring 25,000 jobs to Queens.10 No worries though, in Clown World homeless camps are more important than jobs.
Seeing another nutcase pattern here? Socialists elected by taxpayers who care more about the people who don’t pay taxes - homeless and prisoners - than those who do.
In the facts-over-fiction department, Mayor Adams is not increasing the NYPD’s budget: “Instead, he plans on trimming it by nearly $30 million to about $5.41 billion, according to his 2023 budget proposal.”
“Police budgets have NOTHING to do with crime levels,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “If they did, crime would be at their lowest rate across the country, because police have more money than ever before.”
Let that sink in: Police budgets have nothing to do with crime levels. Translation? Nutcase. Because more funding = more cops = less crime. (Just ask any 5-year-old if more policemen are better than less policemen.)
And no, police don’t have more money, thanks to folks like Sandy, who’s all about defunding the police. Which means, despite her beliefs, she’s actually for more crime.
In Queens, crime is up 51 percent for the year through April 3, compared to the same period a year ago, according to city data.
Has she secured some federal funding for District 14? To be fair, yes.11 But she has not secured that same district from dirty homeless encampments and a 51% increase in crime. And probably never even asked her constituents if they’re okay with that.
The congresswoman also wrote that tough policing practices — like plainclothes units — were not the answer to rising crime levels.
Here’s another idea. Let more of us plainly-clothed folks carry sidearms. Then watch crime decrease. A lot. (Yes, this actually does work.12)
In February, Adams brought back the plainclothes units — which were disbanded in 2020 by former Mayor Bill de Blasio – in an effort to crackdown on illegal guns and major crimes. The units have netted more than 100 arrests since it launched— and nearly 70 percent of the people busted have a prior criminal history...
Alexandria doesn’t seem to appreciate cops - in uniforms, street clothes, or naked. On Instagram, she said undercover units have “been responsible for a significant portion of the deaths caused by the NYPD” but “failed to provide data to support her case.”
(The article tried to support her case but failed, citing a 2018 “study” by The Intercept, which leans so far left that their reporters have a hard time standing up straight.)13
Undercover cops deal with some of the most violent felons out there. So there’s that. And after reading the “study” you’d think it’s all about “police violence" since there’s no mention whatsoever of criminal violence.14
Sandy concluded that “the root cause of the city’s crime crisis stems from broader social policies and that more policing would not work.” (If any of that makes sense to you, please bang your head against the wall to reboot whatever’s left of your brain.)
Fun fact #2: NYC was much safer under former mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. Why? More police, more arrests, cash bail, and no “catch and release.”
Oh, and crime also stems from crappy parenting. Really crappy parenting (not sure you could even call it parenting). And severe mental illness (think personality disorders).
“But as long as people think we can police our way out of problems that our housing, education and healthcare policies created we are going to continue having crime and violence,” she wrote.
Just a hunch, but how many of those so-called parents told their kids to stay in school, work hard, graduate, get a college scholarship or become an apprentice to a trade?
Not sure if Sandy’s ever spoken with a repeat offender. They don’t care about “housing, education and healthcare policies.” They like getting stuff for free. They hate work. They refuse to live by the rules. And quite a few actually enjoy violence - because most of them are sociopaths, devoid of empathy for their fellow human beings and thus beyond help.
Yes, you can have it all: social programs, safe shelters, safe streets.
That is, unless nutcases are involved.
A train wreck is a terrible thing. But cover it with lots of dirt and topsoil, then grass, flowers, benches and steps, and it would be lovely, right? Except there’s still a train wreck underneath.
Bonus fun fact #3: “And in 2017, when Ocasio-Cortez first filed paperwork to become a congressional candidate, she didn’t even know what district she lived in, mistakenly declaring plans to run for neighboring District 15 before correcting the error days later.”15
Need more convincing about what constitutes a Nutcase? Twitter July 1, 2022:
“Joy too can be an act of resistance. I want to talk about personal acts of reclamation because sometimes people will say, ‘There’s nothing I can do. I feel so powerless.’ There is no act too small that you can engage in. Even today, I have a personal errand, I need to redo my nails. And I’ve decided that I’m going to use my new manicure as almost like a personal act of reclamation for me and my story.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (see video below16)
Salaries of Members of Congress: Updated January 25, 2022 https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/97-1011.pdf
Why Do Congressmen Spend Only Half Their Time Serving Us? https://www.newsweek.com/why-do-congressmen-spend-only-half-their-time-serving-us-357995
Sunnyside Post, Jackson Heights Post, & Astoria Post: https://sunnysidepost.com/rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-blasts-mayor-adams-hardline-approach-to-crime?unapproved=115896&moderation-hash=ea02f449fe55f342554fa58c88381d26#comment-115896 Portions of all 3 areas are represented by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/about/our-district
7-1-20: “Patrick Lynch, president of the New York City Police Benevolent Association, the largest NYPD police union, condemned de Blasio and City Council members for the cuts. "Shootings more than doubled again last week…the NYPD doesn't have enough staffing to shift cops to one neighborhood without making another neighborhood less safe…the Mayor and the City Council have surrendered the city to lawlessness." https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/us/new-york-budget-nypd-1-billion-cut-trnd/index.html
“Though a small geographical area, Skid Row accounts for 60% of the crimes in central Los Angeles. It’s a problem Los Angeles can’t afford to ignore any longer.” https://totally-la.com/skid-row-los-angeles-the-largest-homeless-encampment-in-the-united-states/ & https://nypost.com/2020/02/18/the-moral-crisis-of-skid-row-las-most-notorious-neighborhood/
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/02/adams-nypd-homeless-camps-00022473 & “This effort is about taking care of our people and our public spaces because no New Yorker deserves to live on the street," Adams said. "We are breaking down silos and working together across government to keep New Yorkers safe and our streets clean. These are basic expectations we have for our city, and we are going to deliver." https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/26/us/nyc-clears-homeless-encampments/index.html
A 2007 study in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy entitled “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?” looked at firearms prevalence and violence in countries around the world. The authors found that gun bans are ineffective because they do not affect the socio-cultural and economic factors that are the real determinants of violent crime rates. https://www.heritage.org/firearms/commentary/more-guns-does-not-mean-more-murders & https://calculators.io/would-banning-firearms-reduce-murder-and-suicide-study/
Ha! Does she know what district she's in now? Probably not, and of course, ALL REPUBLICANS are after her, I mean, seriously, she thinks she's the bomb! Which I guess she is, a real BOMB! Great article, you make me laugh!