Defunding Consequences

Aaaaaand once again, we see “well-meaning” actions having unforeseen consequences — unforeseen only by those without common sense and / or brains, that is.

Last year, Burlington, Vermont, cut its police budget by nearly 30% through attrition. Now, people are afraid to speak up because they know they’ll be called “racist.”

It’s been more than a year and a half since the city cut its police budget, and now even the city councilor who proposed the cut is unhappy with the consequences.

Oh, and what consequences would those be in sleepy little Burlington VT, home to so many hippies, academics and Lefties? [some overlap]

The move to slash the police budget, however, has led city leaders, as NBC reported, “to reckon with the unintended consequences of that decision, including problems with public safety and quality of life, police and residents say.”

The unintended consequences of the resolution apparently showed up quickly, NBC reported. The council thought attrition would take years, but it was completed in months, leaving the police department understaffed. Police officers left en masse, leaving only about five to patrol at night. The police have had to shift focus to high-priority crimes and less on quality of life issues. Burglary, vehicle theft, mental health issues, and overdoses all increased with fewer cops on patrol.

You don’t say.

Local business owner Mark Bouchett told NBC that people were afraid to speak out about the problems that have arisen due to the reduced police force.
“If you speak out against defunding the police force, you’re labeled a racist,” he told NBC. “Or at least an idiot that doesn’t understand the problem.”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of Lefty assholes.  It’s just too bad that the good (conservative) folks of that part of Vermont have to suffer the consequences as well.

At least they’re not unarmed…

Always Has Been

In one of his customary well-reasoned comments, Longtime Reader GMC makes this statement (discussing this post):

“If citizens do not have faith that the State will hold up its end of the social contract, they will take matters into their own hands.”

Will, and should.

My only corollary to this is a reminder that in answer to all those who wail about people “taking the law into their own hands” (not the same as the above, but parallel to it), we have to note that the law has never left our hands.  The law is not the sole preserve of lawyers and judges, but of the People in general (a point that GMC likewise addresses in his comment about jury nullification).  Likewise, the enforcement of the law is deputized by the People to agents of the State — and if said agents are incapable of or unwilling to perform that responsibility, the the People have not only a right but a duty to take the enforcement back into their own hands.

The law belongs to us, We The People, not to all its priests and Sanhedrin, and even less so to its enforcers — despite all their delusions to the contrary.

Yes, It Has

Here’s a headline which made me giggle like a little girl:

Rittenhouse Verdict Has Leftist Rioters Worried: “It fundamentally changed
the culture of protest”

The punchline is equally delicious:

This is still America, much to their chagrin, and in the absence of police protection and intervention, the American people can and will protect themselves and their fellow citizens from lawless mobs bent on mayhem, violence, and destruction.

Remove or incapacitate police, and yes, Americans can and will step up to lawfully fill that vacuum. Who couldn’t see that coming?

Read the whole article, and don’t have a mouthful of coffee while doing so.

“Losing”?

I yield to no man in terms of my respect for Victor Davis Hanson, but I’m afraid the worthy professor is extremely late to this party.

Losing Confidence in the Pillars of Our Civilization
Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America.
Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation’s traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies — especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks.
Not so much anymore.

He then enumerates said institutions:  the FBI, the military (senior officers), Big Tech / Woke journalism, federal health agencies, and the criminal justice system in general.

I will admit that the above are relative newcomers to the conservatives’ hall of shame, but as we all know, we’ve always loathed and distrusted the alphabet soups of the IRS, ATF and DHS, as well as Cabinet departments like the EPA, Energy, Interior and Education — to name but a few.

Wake up, VDH:  they’re all on the shit list.  They are very close to being — and in some cases very much already — not the “pillars of our civilization”, but active destroyers thereof.

And if you Readers want proof of this, ask yourself this question:  would you rather deal with your local law enforcement, or the FBI?  Your county tax office or the IRS?

Q.E.D.