The 90s gave us presidential sex scandals, Jennifer Aniston’s hair, dotcom rich kids and, and best of all, a decrease in gang violence. Those days are over, perhaps most profoundly for the latter. Gang-related homicides are up 50 percent. According to the Justice Department, there are about 21,500 gangs nationwide with over 730,000 members, in red state cities like Salt Lake, as well as the old standards, New York, LA and Philly. In response, W has proposed to cut nearly a billion dollars from programs designed to help anti-gang programs. Over the next few days, House and Senate negotiators will try to come to agreement on their budgets. W’s budget proposal would cut over $400 million from education and family-support programs, which hopefully keep kids away from gangs (and where they really belong: with their dysfunctional parents). It also eliminates $54 million in Juvenile Accountability Block Grants, and reduces almost 90,000 police officers.
Arianna Huffington’s latest blog has a great story on this subject, but to add a La Blogda spin, here’s the deal: W wants us to know that he is big on family values. But it would appear that is true only as long as those families are upper class Republicans. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you are lower middle-class and you voted for W, you are too poor to be a Republican, especially a neo-con Republican. So get your head out of your bible and get serious about 2008. Send those zealot conservative packing and straight into therapy, which is what they really need.
