EVERYTHING FROM BIDEN'S WHITE HOUSE IS HALF-HEARTED SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING

Biden’s pathetic anti-crime package is an empty press release

Post Editorial Board

 

New York Post 

July 21, 2022

 

President Biden's new $37 billion anti-crime plan is a grab-bag that wouldn't actually help reduce crime

 

Coming down with COVID stopped President Joe Biden from heading to Pennsylvania to “announce” his new pro-police package Thursday. But judging from the details released in advance, it’s likely just as well he canceled: Like everything else from this White House, it’s half-hearted sound and fury, signifying nothing.

First off, he’s merely calling on Congress to spend another $37 billion on a grab-bag of stuff:

• $13 billion (over five years) to hire/train an added 100,000 cops nationwide.

• $3 billion for local courts to clear backlogged cases, especially involving murders and guns.

• $15 billion for a grant program funding “ideas” for preventing violent crime or creating “public-health responses” to nonviolent incidents, all in the name of reducing burdens on law enforcement.

• $5 billion to aid “violence prevention” programs.

This is barely a press release, with the headline “$37 billion” and “100,000 new police” numbers meant to sound bold to those not paying attention, even as more than half the cash would go for stuff the left keeps pushing instead of actually getting tough on crime.

Plus, the new-cops money would mainly justify another tranche of eternal federal spending — since localities would continue to need the handouts to retain the new officers. (That’s how it always works, whether it’s the outlays from the 1994 crime bill or from post-9/11 anti-terror police-aid programs.)

 

Biden’s plan wouldn’t do anything to address soft-on-crime district attorneys like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg

 

Biden’s already said he’s against defunding cops; this is just a lame bid to convince people that it’s Republicans who push that idiocy.

Since the money wouldn’t even start going out the door anytime soon, it’s certainly no serious effort to do anything about the crime wave sweeping the nation: That’s plainly the result of the mass, ill-conceived handcuffing of cops and election of pro-crime district attorneys — neither of which Biden or most elected Democrats will even condemn, let alone actually do anything about. (Witness Gov. Kathy Hochul’s refusal to push real fixes to New York’s disastrous criminal-justice reforms, or to fire Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for refusing to do his job.)

And, again, more than half the money he’s basically just wishing for is for more lefty nostrums.

This is a White House staff going through the motions because 1) they know Democrats stand to get slammed on Election Day and want to look like they’re doing something about it, and 2) the president imagines he can have an impact by making personal appearances — even though he won his job by hiding in his basement through the 2020 campaign so the public couldn’t see how much he’d lost off his fastball.

From Biden on down, they’re not remotely focused on what the nation needs and can’t even figure out any effective way to pull more wool over the voters’ eyes.