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OPINION
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TheMesaTribune.com | @EVTNow /EVTNow
Soaring violent crime rates are no surprise
BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ
Tribune Columnist
As June winds down, already we have a shoo-in winner for the least surprising story of 2021: Violent crime continues to surge in this struggling nation of ours.
How bad are we talking? Murder jumped 33 percent last year in America’s major cities, meanwhile 63 of the nation’s 66 largest police jurisdictions saw jumps in at least one category of violent crime – murder, rape, robbery or aggravated assault.
So far, 2021 hasn’t been an improvement. The White House says homicides jumped 24 percent nationally in the �irst quarter of 2021 versus the same quarter last year.
Father’s Day weekend was especially violent, with CNN reporting 10 mass shootings claiming seven lives across nine states.
And that doesn’t count the June 17th West Valley shooting spree allegedly committed by 19-year-old Ashin Tricarico, who stands accused of 90 minutes of drive-by gun�ire that claimed the life of 67-year-old David Liebler and wounded a dozen other innocents.
Our streets have so run with blood, President Joe Biden felt compelled to address the nation Wednesday, to announce a �ive-part “comprehensive strategy to prevent and respond to gun crime and ensure public safety.”
The gist? A crackdown on illegal guns and rogue gun dealers. Plus additional millions for local law enforcement, more money for community anti-violence efforts, more summer jobs and activities for teenagers and young adults, and beefedup programs to help those leaving prison re-enter society.
Pardon me, please, if my response is somewhere between a gaping yawn and a sad shake of my head.
Because all of the above – along with the academics who blame COVID-19 for this spike in violent crime – seems to miss what’s actually happening in our communities and on our streets.
To borrow a cliché, our chickens have come home to roost.
I’m talking about the widespread disrespect of police of�icers and the rule of law that has been a dominant news story for the past year-plus.
To hear many of our progressive neighbors and pundits tell it, every cop is a racist ogre or a perpetrator of systemic injustice so widespread the entire system must be reformed beyond recognition, or dismantled to begin anew. The police are to be defunded, declaimed and derided – and certainly never respected. And the law? If it is enforced by the corrupt it, too, must be corrupt. Thus, shouldn’t we excuse those who ignore it?
Couple this neutering of law enforcement with an exponentially expanding sense of entitlement, a growing self-specialness that has permeated every aspect of our culture, and is it any surprise that Americans are quicker to anger, quicker to maim, quicker to kill, loot, assault, rape?
Virtually everywhere you look and to whomever you listen, the narrative put forth focuses on the One Percent having unfairly gotten theirs, so why shouldn’t you get yours, whatever it takes?
Throw in a few hundred million guns of every caliber for good measure, mix in widespread mental health issues, and is it any wonder the nightly news and front pages frequently resemble an especially gory Tarantino �ilm?
Like every other complex issue facing our country, rising violent crime is multi-
���LEIBOWITZ ���� 25
Some thoughts on Arizona election audit
BY JD HAYWORTH Tribune Columnist
The “Washington Wise Man” earned that nickname because he saw things clearly, conveying common sense in the backwoods vernacular of his native Kentucky.
When a cacophony of criticism would arise from the legions on the left – at once both enraged and entitled – the Wise Man would describe it thusly: “A hit dog hollers!”
The Wise Man may have departed this vale of tears but his rough-hewn observation lives on.
It is hard to see the wisdom in the left’s incessant squawking and dogged insistence that thinking people should suppress any curiosity or concern about the tabulation of votes in the 2020 Presidential Election.
Government policy and public health policy became synonymous. Our highest-paid bureaucrat, Dr. Anthony Fauci, became the de facto “dictator doctor,” advocating an unprecedented economic shutdown.
The opportunity for voting by mail was greatly expanded, and with it, the opportunity for vote fraud.
Press coverage of vote by mail in 2010 was skeptical.
NBC News partnered with News21, a program headquartered at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, and posted an article headlined, “The real vote fraud opportunity has arrived; casting your ballot by mail.”
Ten years later, an even more partisan press, collectively incensed about Donald Trump’s presidency, offered glowing accounts of voting by mail, and those stories increased in frequency and stridency once President Trump offered the same objections found in many media accounts a decade earlier.
“For folks on the left, it’s wrong until it’s right for them,” the Wise Man would say through the mists of memory.
Fortunately for Arizona, the name calling and intimidation that causes hesitancy on Capitol Hill does not apply to our Legislature.
Skeptical of reassurances from the Governor that “We do elections well here in Arizona” when complaints were lodged and discrepancies discovered, the Arizona Senate requested an audit of ballots in Maricopa County. The County Board of Supervisors at �irst ignored that request, then lost in Court, and has subsequently displayed unremitting hostility throughout the process.
If they have nothing to hide, then what are they worried about?
“An honest man has no need to dive in the briar patch,” the Wise Man would say.
Meanwhile, the woman in charge of elections statewide, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, has found herself amidst the metaphorical thistles and thorns of suspicion. The distrust has developed despite the best efforts of a partisan press to clear her path to the Governor’s Of�ice in 2022.
The most pathetic example came recently on CNN. Anderson Cooper, sputtered frantically, at once conjuring up non-existent charges of discovering bamboo in the �iber of Arizona paper ballots, then quickly admitting no such charges had been leveled while implying that some outrage was sure to develop.
Mindful of his recent guest hosting stint on “Jeopardy,” Cooper ended his bizarre screed in the form of an interrogative: “What do you do in that case?”
Other accounts have described Katie’s CNN appearance as a “meltdown.” Clearly, she was feeling the heat, because she invoked a hypothetical in a way that did her no favors. “There’s nothing that can be done now to overturn the election, even if the audit was valid.”
The Wise Man would offer this response: “That dog won’t hunt!”
We need to let teachers teach and let students learn.
Between community members railing against school boards, demanding they remove the word “race” from teachers’ lips and legislators threatening teachers with a $5,000 �ine for failing to teach “both sides” of slavery, AZ classrooms are under siege.
Do parents believe teachers are indoctrinating their children, telling them what to think? In fact, the opposite is true as standards have evolved to include multiple voices and perspectives, to engage students in critical thinking vs. memorizing facts and dates.
A history teacher might present a lesson about Reconstruction. Using primary sources from notable universities or the Library of Congress, the teacher presents the 14th amendment then poses a compelling question: does the 14th amendment still affect the lives of Black Americans today? If so, how? Instead of giving answers, the teacher urges students to research the question and build a case to support their opinions. This lesson is taught as an inquiry with lasting impact.
As an advocate for teaching historical truth in schools, I know that the best teachers put powerful texts in front of students and invite them to investigate those texts, to dispute them and to draw their own conclusions.
Teachers don’t tell students what to think; they teach them how to think. Parents and legislators could take a lesson from the very people they are trying to shut down.
-Shelley Gordon
LEIBOWITZ ���� ���� 24
determined, driven by numerous interwoven factors – especially hatred of police.
Stemming the violence will require more than money, summer programs, and a few new gun regulations ardently opposed by half the nation.
Just as we have had a so-called “racial reckoning,” we need to unpuzzle America’s love-hate relationship with its cops. We cannot damn police, then act shocked when criminals, emboldened, take to our streets to take lives and property.
The only surprise about rising crime is that anyone is surprised it’s happening. The blue line, always thin, has been stretched to the brink of snapping.
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