Most Candidates Running on Crime Don’t Have Much Power to Solve It
by Charles P. Pierce
This is an attempt at a public service announcement:
In most of the U.S., voters have been voting on whether to cut crime and/or send public funds to the private sector. Voters in most other countries, in both electoral systems and in other countries, have been voting on crime. This is because the voters care only about their own immediate local needs — or, perhaps, their own immediate local government needs. If voters’ needs are met, voters will stop talking about crime and will return to whatever other topic of conversation they have.
But we all know that voters don’t just care about the immediate needs of their government …
But they won’t stop caring about crime, and they won’t stop voting for government that does nothing about it. So …
So, why doesn’t our government make it’ a priority?
The answer is pretty simple: Because our government is broken. The politicians, who are in charge of our government, have spent years and years making the decision to cut crime from their immediate needs. Now that they have cut crime from those immediate needs, they have become more focused on cutting another need, namely the reduction of all government spending. And that, in turn, has been a long time coming:
Our government’s decision to only spend money on itself has been made before our very eyes by the politicians who’s job has become to make sure that the government that will only spend money on itself no longer exists. For too long, voters have failed to recognize that the politicians who’ job had been to make sure that our government would only spend money on itself were the politicians who’ job was to make sure that our government also spent money on itself.
What’s more, voters all too often get the impression that government officials and voters are somehow in conspiracy against the
