Monthly Archives: May 2022

Current Events

Welcome to Seattle – “The Emerald City”

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Once a great city known as the Gateway to the Pacific. What a great place to live — NOT!

Shoplifting as Usual in Seattle

From the Wall Street Journal

Friday 6 May 2022

Lowe’s employees came to recognize William Piccone by his skinny jeans, distinctive gait and posture—and his prolific shoplifting, police say. Over a 97-day spree last year, he allegedly stole from the same store 27 times, walking away with more than $4,650 in merchandise. Welcome to Seattle, where impunity reigns.

That’s what Ann Davison, Seattle’s newly elected city attorney, is learning as she acts on a voter mandate to restore order. Her office ran the numbers and discovered that 118 individuals were responsible for more than 2,400 crimes in Seattle over the past five years. Her effort to crack down on the worst repeat offenders is facing progressive resistance.

At issue is Ms. Davison’s proposal to exclude prolific criminals from Seattle’s Community Court. In 2019 her predecessor signed an agreement with the Seattle Municipal Court and the Department of Public Defense. Some two dozen classes of misdemeanor cases now go straight to the Community Court, which releases the accused after referring them to support services and sometimes assigning them a life-skills class or community service.

Theft of up to $750 in a single incident in Seattle is a misdemeanor. Other crimes that go express to Community Court include residential trespassing, possession of tools for burglary or auto theft, and property destruction.

The 2019 agreement includes no eligibility restrictions, so those with serious criminal histories qualify. Seattle criminals get four tries in the Community Court before they flunk out. Each can encompass multiple charges. Repeat offenders see the lack of consequences as an invitation to commit more crimes.

Since 2017 Mr. Piccone has been charged in some 60 criminal cases across Washington, and police have referred him for prosecution to the Seattle city attorney 46 times, Ms. Davison’s office says. Twenty-two of his most recent cases were referred to the Seattle Community Court, where he was turned loose, the city attorney’s office says. The King County Prosecuting Attorney, which handles Seattle felonies, has three current cases against Mr. Piccone for organized retail theft and burglary. On a judge’s order Mr. Piccone was released into a halfway house after receiving detox treatment. On April 28, Mr. Piccone missed a hearing after he was arrested on multiple municipal warrants earlier that day.

Mr. Piccone has pleaded not guilty to a second- degree burglary charge and didn’t respond to a message left at a phone number listed for him in police records. His public defender didn’t respond to our inquiry by deadline.

“With regard to Mr. Piccone, court documents show significant mainstream criminal court involvement predating the creation of community court,” said Anita Khandelwal, the director of Department of Public Defense, in a written response to our inquiry.

She continued: “That involvement resulted, at times, in multiple months of incarceration, but it neither ended his involvement with the system nor addressed his unmet needs. Those same documents suggest that Mr. Piccone is experiencing housing instability. Providing him housing is much more likely to promote safety than continued court involvement.”

As Ms. Davison seeks to renegotiate the 2019 agreement, she sits across the table from Ms. Khandelwal and Judge Damon Shadid, a progressive who oversees the Seattle Community Court. On April 27, Ms. Davison told the Seattle Municipal Court that negotiations had reached an impasse. Is it any wonder?

Ms. Davison has now asked the Seattle Municipal Court to intervene. The court said in a statement that it was considering her proposal and would work “to identify how to move forward together and create a prioritized plan for people whose needs and issues are not being addressed, and have not been addressed historically, by our criminal justice system.”

Here’s hoping the court means the victims of crime, not the criminals. But I doubt it!

Current Events

Pennsylvania

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Most do no know this but this place is not a state, but a Commonwealth. Big deal? No, not really as there are three others that are not “states.” Do you know which ones?  But then who cares, I sure don’t All of my kin came from PA, Altoona area to be exact. I spent a lot time there as a small child with my parents visiting kin. I always thought it was a beautiful place, and even considered possibly retiring there — sure glad that didn’t work out. Now it has become a liberal haven full of folks who are certainly not my kin anymore. I cringe when I see cars here with PA license plates during non-snowbird season. I hope they are here to escape the liberal mindset and not here with a goal of changing the color of our state.

Anyway, here’s one from my Marine brother, Greg.

Doubling down

By: G. Maresca

Given President Biden’s slumping approval numbers, CNN+s sudden termination, increasing crime rates, record inflation, a nonexistent border, transgender education being foisted upon kindergarten children, Democrats are doubling down with their four candidates for the open U.S. senate seat in Pennsylvania’s May 17th primary election.

It is easier to win an open seat than to defeat an incumbent. Retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey’s senate seat is a prime opportunity for Democrats to add to their senate number in a pivotal state that Biden carried in 2020.

 These are the haughty days for the left owning the White House, both houses of Congress, academia, and the mainstream media.  Not to be outdone, their four Democrat senate contenders in the Keystone state are ideologically pure exemplars of this self-aggrandizing age.

 Candidate Malcom Kenyatta’s senate website opens with a video of the 31-year-old state representative from Philadelphia kissing his gay lover. Prior to entering politics, Kenyatta served as the diversity and inclusion engagement coordinator for the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia and is polling in the single digits. The same poll results have been following Alexandria Khalil whose campaign is about “compassion, justice, and prosperity for all.”

Who isn’t for such things?

The frontrunner is the goateed and tatted up Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who prefers gym shorts over a suit, who not only leads in fundraising but the polls, too.  Fetterman is a 6’9” cantankerous and unapologetic version of Bernie Sanders.

The huge fund-raising advantage for Fetterman underscores the blunder of ratifying the 17th Amendment, where candidates are more beholden to out-of-state donors than they are to their own constituents.

Fetterman supports abortion up until birth, allowing transgender males to compete athletically against females, Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage, a moratorium on fracking and “climate justice” whatever that is. Fetterman is also a favorite of the defund-the-police mob never turning down a speaking engagement.

What is little known is how as mayor of Braddock, Fetterman pulled a gun on an unarmed Black man jogging and accused him of committing a felony he did not commit. This is the same Fetterman that wants to seize your guns and a major reason why a majority of Americans value their Second Amendment.

Fetterman never met a tax or government program that he did not love. He is better fit as a stand-in for an Addams Family revival as either Lerch or Uncle Fester than taking a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Trailing Fetterman in Franklin & Marshall College’s latest poll 41% to 17%, is U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb with 26% of Democrats still bewildered. Lamb is pro-abortion, supports Biden’s Build Back Better Act and having the federal government regulate all voting and ending the Senate filibuster.

Lamb was one of three House Democrats who voted to make permanent provisions of the GOP sponsored 2017 tax reform bill. Lamb has also voted on bills with small numbers of Democrats where the Democrat National Committee knew would not pass the House. Those meaningless votes bestowed upon him the much-ballyhooed canonization as a “political moderate” in an evident appeal to voters.

On key leftist issues, however, Lamb marches lockstep with House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Being able to manipulate the electorate into believing they are electing a so-called moderate when in fact, they are every bit as left as the privileged running the party is essential.

They are all the same wolves whether sporting gym shorts or a blue pinstriped suit.

Left-wing groupthinkers and scolds that makeup the current breed of populist progressives, believe their senate candidates will embolden their base to win a battleground state like Pennsylvania. Democrats see no problem in doubling down on issues that fail to resonate with the majority and are proven failures. With each passing day, Democrats fall further under the sway of an outspoken leftist minority whose members care more about imposing an unpopular agenda than winning elections.

Democrats today are what would have been called communists 40 years ago.

This is yet another refined illustration of the dismal state of the Democrats, but never underestimate the dogmatic trifecta of your median Pennsylvanian’s naivety, their dead relatives, and fabricated ballots when it comes to electing a Pelosi puppet or Bernie Bro.