OBAMA DOESN’T THINK RAPISTS, ARMED ROBBERS, DRUG DEALERS ARE CRIMINALS, Kyle Smith writes at the New York Post:
It’s only May, but I think I’ve found the euphemism of the year: According to Team Obama, criminals should now be declared “justice-involved individuals.”
The neo-Orwellianism comes to us from the bizarre flurry of last-minute diktats, regulations and bone-chilling threats collectively known to fanboys as Obama’s Gorgeous Goodbye.
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Obama is fighting the war for criminals to get closer to you on several fronts. Last month, through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he went after landlords, threatening them with penalties if they barred criminals from living in their buildings.
In November, Obama unilaterally ordered federal agencies to strike the box asking applicants whether they had committed crimes and referred to criminals as “folks.” This would be the same president who on Oct. 25, 2010, referred to Republicans as “enemies” and suggested voters should “punish” them. Convicted rapists? They’re just “folks.”
Related: California ballot measure blamed for shoplifting jump, AP reports:
Perry Lutz says his struggle to survive as a small businessman became a lot harder after California voters reduced theft penalties 1½ years ago.
About a half-dozen times this year, shoplifters have stolen expensive drones or another of the remote-controlled toys he sells in HobbyTown USA, a small shop in Rocklin, northeast of Sacramento. “It’s just pretty much open season,” Lutz said. “They’ll pick the $800 unit and just grab it and run out the door.”
Anything below $950 keeps the crime a misdemeanor — and likely means the thieves face no pursuit and no punishment, say retailers and law enforcement officials. Large retailers including Safeway, Target, Rite Aid and CVS pharmacies say shoplifting increased at least 15 percent, and in some cases, doubled since voters approved Proposition 47 and ended the possibility of charging shoplifting as a felony with the potential for a prison sentence.
Shoplifting reports to the Los Angeles Police Department jumped by a quarter in the first year, according to statistics the department compiled for The Associated Press. The ballot measure also lowered penalties for forgery, fraud, petty theft and drug possession.
And it isn’t just shoplifting that’s on the rise: “‘We have a problem.’ Homicides are up again this year in more than two dozen major U.S. cities,” the Washington Post adds.
Unexpectedly.
As Kyle Smith writes in his article on “justice-involved individuals,” the Obama administration’s invention of this phrase “is just a step in a long-term strategy pursued by progressives, who love criminals the way little girls love Disney princesses. The goal is to sneak criminals into your apartment building or workplace or campus.” Responding to the same Orwellian euphemism, Rod Dreher warns, “Get used to it. We’re probably going to have four more years of federal rule by liberal government-involved individuals.”
This is end game of a philosophy that was first articulated in 1968, an era when there really was a relatively benign liberal dominant culture, and a far left counterculture working to undermine it. Back then, one of its most visible spokesmen famously sang, “just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints, as heads is tails…”, well, you know how the song ends, and who it’s dedicated to.