A crime wave is underway in the once-Golden state of California, and another crime wave is soon likely in the once-Empire state of New York.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are among the leading crusaders who are imposing policies to address climate change. They also are part of the same “progressive” class of politicians provoking crime waves in their respective states.
Fighting climate change, not crime, is going hand-in-hand.
People who will purportedly benefit from climate policies from flawed predictions of lower global average temperature decades from now are increasingly the victims of criminal acts today, unleashed by the same politicians.
In New York, the state legislature and governor eliminated bail requirements for all but the most violent crimes. No bail, no problem – still no jail. Accused criminals get to walk until their trial date, assuming they show up.
This pending situation may get so bad with absconders, New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio (another climate change extremist) plans to offer criminal suspects gift cards, movie passes and tickets to New York Mets baseball games to entice them to show up for court. Seriously.
The state’s progressive politicians also changed the rules of pre-trial “discovery” to require prosecutors to produce more evidence within 15 days from when a criminal suspect is charged.
Faced with these new pre-trial mandates, which go into effect on January 1st, the state’s district attorneys are in full panic mode. The outcome will be more criminal suspects on the streets, and more accused criminals set free due to the inability of prosecutors to meet the new discovery deadlines. Crime is certain to increase as a result.
Meanwhile, California’s crime wave is well under way. The state already eliminated bail requirements before New York did, and softened other criminal penalties. Property crimes including burglary, larceny, shoplifting and vandalism are on the rise in major cities, particularly in San Francisco, as are “low-level” crimes such as drug possession, encampments, public intoxication and street harassment.
One of the main culprits in this crime wave was the voter approval of Proposition 47 in 2014, which reduced criminal penalties from felonies to misdemeanors for possession of illegal narcotics and theft of anything valued under $950.
Another culprit for the higher incidence of “low-level” property and nuisance crimes is a new generation of far-left district attorneys being elected throughout the country, thanks to the largess of billionaire progressive philanthropist, George Soros. The latest example of this movement is San Francisco’s newly elected DA, Chesa Boudin, who won with just 36 percent of the vote in a four-way race.
Consistent with the fight-climate-change-not-crime theme, Mr. Soros also has long been a major contributor to a plethora of climate organizations, and he has financially supported the world’s most vociferous teenager, Greta Thunberg.
California and New York are in effective competition to become environmental extremist nirvanas by passing laws to restrict fossil fuel energy, mandate electric vehicles, impose higher quotas for renewable energy sources on utilities, and subsidize with taxpayer money wind and solar energy. All this in the name of addressing supposed man-made climate change, with the goal of being “carbon neutral” by 2050.
Assuming that such climate polices could alter the earth’s temperature, would the citizens of California and New York be better off? Economically, the people who remain in those states will be paying substantially higher energy costs – more so than they do today, which already are high.
The new criminal justice changes add a progressive wrinkle to their destructive policies advocated by climate change politicians, along with including higher taxes and single-payer health care. While the political classes of both states believe they are saving the planet, it is their own constituents who are (and will be) suffering not only from higher energy prices, but higher crime.
Beware of politicians promising a cleaner planet in 30 years since some of them are the leading culprits in reducing the quality of life today. What will it matter to a crime victim (or anyone else) if these negligent politicians who instigated increased crime are committed to making the temperature one degree cooler three decades from now?