There’s hot-takes, and then there’s this insanity
Simplistic, fear-based messaging helped the GOP get a rare win. https://t.co/ix4Q4h3f5q
— Capitol Alert (@CapitolAlert) July 17, 2023
There’s a big time paywall, so, you can read it in full at Yahoo News
California Democrats spent the final few days before summer recess in an unusual spot: embroiled in a legislative fight with Republicans, who typically operate in the shadow of the state’s blue supermajority.
The cause? A bill to strengthen penalties for child sex traffickers that lawmakers killed ahead of a looming legislative deadline.
By the time they left Sacramento last week, Democrats had doubled back and advanced Senate Bill 14 in an emergency hearing of the Senate Public Safety committee, likely at the behest of both Gov. Gavin Newsom and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister.
And Republicans were celebrating a “win for law and order in California” with bill author Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield.
How did a party with almost no power in California manage to achieve a political win?
In part by employing simplistic, fear-based messaging that exploited the divide between progressive and moderate Democrats on criminal justice reform. Social media posts amplifying the bill’s failure suggested Democrats are soft on crime, especially related to children.
Democrats had voted AGAINST a bill that protected children from child trafficking. And, without that messaging, the GOP would have had zero power. They cannot do anything in the California general assembly. And Democrats would have simply moved on
Their arguments in favor of the bill also carried a whiff of the far-right GOP conspiracy theory related to Democrats and pedophilia.
Now, just imagine that it was the GOP who voted against significantly increase the felony penalties on child traffickers. How would the SacBee frame that?
California has spent the past 15 years moving away from the tough-on-crime sentencing laws that created overcrowded prisons filled with Black and brown people. A panel of federal judges in 2009 ordered the state to begin reducing the incarcerated population.
That resulted in a series of changes that reclassified some lower-level crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, shifted some prison inmates to county jails and increased opportunities for people to earn credits and reduce their sentences.
Progressive Democrats have been hesitant to support bills that would increase penalties, wanting to avoid a return to policies promoting mass incarceration.
And look at what this has gotten California. But, we’re also talking about trafficking children, and Democrats are so soft on crime they refused to strengthen the law.
Human trafficking has long been a strong issue for Republicans. This is especially true in far right corners of the party, where conspiracy theorists have perpetuated myths that Democratic leaders are trafficking children.
Maybe there wouldn’t be a conspiracy theory if Democrats weren’t so weak on protecting kids, much less crime overall. The authors call this a political issue. It shouldn’t be, but, Democrats are batshit insane, and no matter how much their pet media wants to position it, most of the parents in California do not want to go soft on child traffickers.
One does need to wonder why it seems Democratic party activists only care about the civil rights of child molesters and criminals, not the civil rights of children and their parents.
you will note that the dems did not explain WHY they voted against it. what was the reason?
QAnon is a supposed conspiracy theory that government is full of child molesters. Perhaps, just perhaps, QAnon wouldn’t exist if the Democrats weren’t so frequently providing them with evidence.
You forgot to include your “evidence” that the government is full of child molesters.
Mr Dana believes allowing LGBTQ individuals to exist in public is “evidence” of grooming and pedophilia.
Our far-right brethren sanitize the QAnon BS…
Digging into the specifics, QAnoners believe the offenders kidnapped children kept them in a frightened state and then harvested their blood for the youth-enhancing chemical adrenochrome!
The far-right has reduced this insanity to “Dems are pedophiles”.
Dear Elwood:
Why do you provide supposed quotes but not a link to the source??
Our commenter from St Louis County wrote:
Sadly, it has not been only Democrats who have been child molesters, but it does seem strange that those fighting more stringent laws and rules to impede child sexual abuse have mostly been on the political left.
On Sunday, I wrote about a 21-year-old man, out on bail on a serious assault charge from two years previously because the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, ‘progressive’ Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner hasn’t brought him to trial yet, has now been accused of raping a 13-year-old girl, and the very liberal Philadelphia Inquirer refused to cover the story, which I suspect is due to the accused being a member of an Accredited Victim Group™. The rest of the professional media in the City of Brotherly Love have accused Fox 29 News of over-reporting crime news, because that is raaaaacist, but Fox 29 was the only source I found noting what is a very serious crime.
The problem for the Democrats is actually a simple one: since the woke seem to take the furthest left position possible on anything that has to do even remotely with sex, lest they be accused of being evil reich-wing conservatives or Republican enablers, they have to soft-peddle — at best — or totally ignore sexual offenses against children when they are committed by just about anyone other than a Catholic priest. Most Democrats don’t actually support child sexual abuse, but the politics of the situation, which could only help conservatives, are such that a lot of leftists try to ignore such cases, which winds up enabling the abusers.
Mr Dana: it has not been only Democrats who have been child molesters, but it does seem strange that those fighting more stringent laws and rules to impede child sexual abuse have mostly been on the political left
While that is a biased generalization, does the claim hold up to examination?
Here is a list of the worst US states regarding the rate of child abuse (per 100,000 under 18):
Maine: 1,904.4
Alaska: 1,797.1
West Virginia: 1,716.7
Massachusetts: 1,680.0
Kentucky: 1,671.6
Montana: 1,644.4
Oklahoma: 1,540.1
New Mexico: 1,492.1
New York: 1,482.5
Iowa: 1,460.9
It’s clearly a mix or red, blue and purplish states.
How does the state of Kentucky enable abusers?
Here’s the ten with the lowest rate:
Pennsylvania: 174.8
New Jersey: 188.9
Washington: 238.1
Virginia: 303.1
Missouri: 324.4
Wisconsin: 331.9
Kansas: 342.4
Georgia: 347.6
Idaho: 434.1
Hawaii: 437.4
Pennsylvania, which contains gawdawful Philadelphia, has the lowest rate of child abuse in the entire nation!! Again, it’s a mix of blue, red and purplish states. PA is some 10 times safer than next door neighbor WV.
Note the states with the lowest rates are many fold safer than the most unsafe states.
Gawdawful California has the rate: 686.1, a bit on the safer side, when compared to conservative Alaska or Kentucky.
It’s likely that child sexual abuse has more contributing factors than just severity of penalties. Poverty, drug use, enforcement, rurality, stress, education, blended families, disabilities, family support…
Why don’t conservatives support the death penalty for child sexual abuse perps?
Our socialist from St Louis wrote:
Actually, many do, but the Supreme Court ruled, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008), that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of the death penalty for a crime in which the victim did not die and the victim’s death was not intended. This was a child rape case.
Note that I stated “many” conservatives support capital punishment for such cases; I do not, as I am opposed to capital punishment in all cases.
However, our wag from west of the Mississippi River — I hope that you appreciate the increasing difficulty I am finding in coming up with alliterative descriptions — assumes that child sexual abuse is evenly discovered and reported in all states; that seems improbable to me.
Perhaps Mr Dana has better state by state data.
Or perhaps Mr Dana prefers to present his opinion as fact.
Whatever.
We can all read Wiki, Elwood. You actually believe this shit? Show me their headquarters, their leader or anything not dreamed up by leftists traitors to cover their own acts. You believe anything anti American , Christian, White because that’s what you nazis do. Who burned 26 cities in the summer of 2020 Qanon ?
You believe in global warming yet know not one prediction has been correct. You believe that senile predator won with 81 million votes yet cant seem to see any cheating. You believe men can become women a bleed.
Seems everything you believe is wrong and not true so it follows you believe in Qanon. My God you’re stupid.
As for the Sacramento Bee, it is both the ‘lead’ McClatchy newspaper, but the one which began the idiotic policy of refusing to publish mugshots of accused criminals, because they “perpetuat(e) stereotypes about who commits crime in our community,” by which they meant that black people are seen as criminals. Soon after, that policy was put in place across all McClatchy newspapers.
Oddly enough, despite several searches, using various permutations of the words, I have been unable to find the McClatchy Mugshot Policy formally listed. But, when it first came out, a couple of McClatchy reporters got too eager and published it on Twitter.
To be fair, democrats ARE the masters of simplistic, fear-based messaging…
It comes from their nazi and communist roots.
Teach’s friend Putin has kidnapped 1000s of kids and shipped them off tho Russia and hidden them from everyone.
Teach must consider that to be an appropriate response to a simple “border dispute”
Thousands of children have crossed the border hoping to find safety here. Teach says send them back!!
We say, Johnny take them in! By the way, how do you know they’re not safe where they came from?
John,
How many are you caring for?
Send them right back home. I don’t care. We have enough crap here caused by the Dems.
“Journalists stop by shelter to inform trafficked children they are a QAnon conspiracy…”
The left blames the fictional “Qanon” but this crap is actually the unintended consequences of hard left policies of hate, racism and deprivation.
QAnon is hardly fictional. That thousands of Americans believed/believe the QAnon BS is not fictional.
We’re pleased to hear that conservatives either refute or at least minimally attempt to change the definition of QAnon, as if finally embarrassed or ashamed.
But cons still stick with the lie, tale, fantasy the the Dems support pedophilia.
In reality, projectionist conservative Republicans are child molesters.