Damn, he’s good!
Cannot do better than quote former mayor Dave Cieslewicz (pronounced exactly as spelled). Also, my North Korean scriveners walked off the job today so I’ve got to poach someone else’s work. Anyhoo, Dave C. writes:
Madison is experiencing a record number of shots-fired incidents. City streets and parking lots are littered with shell casings. The Madison City Council is responding with almost a quarter million dollars of poorly targeted programs that will likely do nothing to stem the violence. This week the council voted to spend $225,000 on a bunch of programs intended to increase public safety … but I don’t see how they will stop the shooting.
Let’s break off from Dave C. to explore the numbers:
Shots fired up 74%
Madison WI police report unprecedented levels of gun violence in 2020. “The number of shots fired incidents that occurred in 2020 was the highest since the department has been tracking them, and the nature of those shooting incidents – the number of shots being exchanged, the public locations where many shootings occurred, and the utter disregard shown to uninvolved members of the public – was disturbing.”
• 250 shots fired incidents, up from 144 in 2019 — up 73.6%
• 97 reports of property damage due to shots fired
• 48 persons hit by gunfire
• 1,111 casings recovered
Dave Cieslewicz continues:
According to the Wisconsin State Journal, here’s an example of one of those programs: “Community Agency Bridging the Gap: Up to $10,000 for crisis intervention services while also building resident leadership, engaging in connecting residents to resources, and improving cultural responsiveness and supporting the cultural identity of community members.”
What exactly does, “improving cultural responsiveness and supporting the cultural identity of community members,” mean and how does it relate to reducing violent crime? …
The council would have been smarter to invest that $225,000 in police overtime to increase patrols in parts of the city where the bullets are flying. Over the past four decades, Madison has used “blue blanket” approaches to good effect. Believe it or not, the block of Main Street between Pinckney Street and Webster Street was one of those cop saturation areas in the late 1970’s. Now the biggest crime committed there is what the bars charge for a glass of wine. …
Another effective strategy might be to take the bad guys off the street … but that is anathema to the hard-left politics of the council.
Meanwhile in George Floyd’s Minneapolis
19 children hit by gunfire so far this year
Mayor Jacob Frey said he wants to prioritize funding for Minneapolis Police overtime to ensure the department can “efficiently and safely increase its patrol presence.” He’s also proposing body cameras in high-crime areas and staff to review footage in real time. He also wants to hire more civilian staff for MPD.
“Gun violence is traumatizing our neighborhoods across our city, including and especially right here in north Minneapolis,” he said, according to local television.
Democratic party shibboleths
Dave Cieslewicz, well aware that he is bucking a Democrat(ic) party that endorsed avowed Marxist Rebecca Kemble and BLM operative Brandi Grayson, compensates for his heresy by reciting the standard liberal-progressive talking points:
- A higher minimum wage — the catch phrase is “making work pay.”
- Get the guns off the streets. Perhaps with a capitol dome-sized magnet?
- “Focus on the problems and needs of young men.” Which is another way to repeat the “unmet needs” mantra of the Left.
Blaska’s Bottom Line prescription: A minimum security, residential school coupled with legislation charging the custodial parent every time Junior goes gang banging, as outlined here.
Blaska Policy Werkes 
24 responses to “Virtue signaling in a hail of bullets”
It will take considerably more than flying bullets to lessen the occurrence of virtue signaling among Madison’s liberal elites. (Actually I can’t think of anything that would.) As for the “problems and needs” of young men–by which I assume you mean black young men. Here’s the problem (or constellation of problems): dysfunctional families, gangsta/drug culture, endless excuses for bad behavior from those who should be teaching them right from wrong, scorn for education, glorification of violence and promiscuity. Here’s the need: authority figures at home and in the schools that teach and reinforce the knowledge, skills and behaviors necessary to become citizens in a functioning society. Unfortunately, it’s the problems that are being reinforced in places like Madison that continue to believe that costly and useless government programs devised by those committed to a poisonous leftist agenda will somehow succeed despite a decades-long record or failure.
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I see the editor of the State Journal published an embarrassing self-indulgent piece today in which he confesses his outrage at a Madison police officer knocking on his door just before midnight to warn him about his garage door being wide open.
This is the kind of neverending idiocy of the liberal elite in Madison. People who think they are smart who are actually rather dumb when it comes to everyday common sense. The State Journal editor has to know that an oprn garage door at midnight is practically an invitation to burglary or even home invasion yet he dumbly thinks he’s somehow immune from it.
And he’s willing to publicly virtue-signal his animosity toward the police for trying to be helpful.
Do these people realize how arrogant and stupid they appear???
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Uh, you must not have read the whole article. I suggest you go back and do so.
Start here:
“When I woke up the next morning, though, I was embarrassed.
How could I be angry with a police officer who took the time to warn me about possible danger to my home and neighborhood? That’s his job. He was doing his job.”
There’s more after that. Read it.
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Uh, yes I did read it. His initial response was anger at the police and it took him until the next day to calm down and realize the officer was just trying to help??
The guy sounds like a typical Madison liberal who can’t stand admitting when they are caught doing stupid stuff.
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NOT a typical Madison liberal as HE DID admit his initial reaction was wrong.
Honestly It’s a great example of someone changing their mind, especially since it was an embarrassing admission.
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“This week the council voted to spend $225,000 on a bunch of programs intended to increase public safety … but I don’t see how they will stop the shooting.”
Just another shakedown to line the pockets of proglibot friendlies while not actually accomplishing anything because the end result of any program will always be a reinforcement of the claim that white supremacy and systemic racism are the root causes of all problems any black person may be experiencing.
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10k for “improving cultural responsiveness and supporting the cultural identity of community members.”
Exactly which, cultural identity would that be?
Would that be the gangsta culture or the *all whites are evil culture* or the *black people bear no responsibility for anything because of systemic racism culture* etc., etc., etc.?
Always helpful to define terms in advance.
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Right arm, Batman.
It’s always better to define the problem before kneejerking to a half-fast solution.
So, … what’s the problem?
Bad behavior. Criminal behavior. Making bad choices.
How does one person change their behavior?
Removing penalties for bad behavior and appeasement hasn’t worked, neither has more doomed-to-fail welfare programs. In fact, Uncle Sugar’s largesse has had the opposite result and effectively destroyed the black nuclear family, begot generational government dependence and created a sense of entitled victimhood.
Change begins with education and using “Tough Love”.
Wokescold social-engineering, caring, custodial Lefties refuse to hold blacks accountable for anything. AA calls those who make it comfortable for an alcoholic to continue behaving irresponsibly, “enablers.” Not holding blacks accountable severely undermines black empowerment. Surrendering one’s success/failure into the hands of someone else. (i.e., guilty white Democrats) weakens you.
Stop blaming whitey. Stop seeking government programs. Stop voting for Democrats.
Stop the soft bigotry of low expectations. Generations of black dreams have been stolen because Democrats, (just like your friendly neighborhood drug dealer, “Here. First one’s free.”) have addicted blacks to free government cheese. While the handmaidens of the Democrat Party, Planned unParenthood, push blacks to abort themselves into extinction, Democrats are replacing black voters with millions of unskilled, uneducated and poor illegals; taking jobs away from blacks.
But that begs another question, “Why would illegal aliens, (i.e., undocumented Democrat voters), risk everything to come to America if America was so bad, so racist and so white supremacist?”
Here’s some “Tough Love” advice: Wake up! Snap out of it. Take off your stylin’ victimhoodie. Put your hat on right. The bill goes in the front, big guy. Pull up your pants. Pull yourself up. Educate yourself. Cheer for your God, your Country, your family, your community and yourself. You’re on the home team, and the home team always bats last. You were blessed to be born in America, the greatest land of opportunity on the planet! Stop hatin’ on America. Stop this nonsense and go work for your dreams!
GDHM
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Easy Mac. All these new slang terms. I’m still on youts and 2 genders. I need to step up my game. Maybe some reeducation is in order. When does the train leave for camp?
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Why are white people so upset by shots fired? They need to just embrace diversity , equity and inckusion. This is our culture, if u dont like it go back to europe.
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By looking at those stats they can’t hit s#$t anyway. They need time at the range?
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Where are they getting ammo?
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What we need here is some NCO justice. My father served in the Army Air Force as a crew chief on a C-47. He told me that when he as going through basic training he saw men who were screw ups get their butts kicked by the NCO’s if they were screwing up. (Most of the men who were my fathers NCO’s were veterans of the second world war.) He also witnessed “blanket parties” when a guy would screw up and the officers would make the whole company pay for the mistakes of that one man. Blanket parties were when a man was held down in his bunk with a blanket and beaten up by their fellow recruits who used socks with bars of soap in them to hit the offender in the body, not the head, as to instill in the offender the reason not to screw up again.
The reason they did this is because they knew that the offender was headed for a military court with a possibility of serving real time in a stockade or even someplace like Leavenworth prison. They also did this as a way of enforcing unit cohesiveness.
We in this modern times allow people to commit ever increasing less crimes against their fellow man and we don’t even slap them on the wrist for doing so until they commit a crime that is so dastardly that we can’t overlook it.
We need prosecutors and judges who will give youthful offenders more than just a slap on the wrist. We are doing them a disservice by allowing them to continue to re-offend without consequence. I don’t want to see my fellow man sit in prison or die for something that should of and could of been nipped off at the bud long before he began to commit more serious crimes.
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The voters disagree with the opinions expressed here.
Time to vote with your feet. Madison is lost.
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Hold on, whatever happened to last year’s popular chant “DEfund the POHllice”?
Mayor Jacob Frey is a dunce. No, strike that, he’s close to a moron. He could pick up the white clue phone and ask his Chief about such things, if he wasn’t a box of overrated rocks. MPD already has bodycams – some of us saw bodycam video during the Chauvin trial, it was in the news, remember? But it’s not gonna be easy or cheap to enable video review in real time because of the communications issues involved. Dumb. Ignorant. Foolish.
Minnie has the mayor it deserves, I guess.
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A higher minimum wage — the catch phrase is “making work pay.”
Let’s start small, ok? Test it out. See how it works.
Raise the minimum wage at all the business re-opened and flourishing on State. Seem reasonable?
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Want to wonder what some of the people who represent us think about this? Just how much do the people who represent us really CARE about the problems of their constituents? Just how much do our elected representatives really care about our real world problems and just how much is just Virtue Signaling?
Well have I got something for you.
Yesterday on the Dan O’Donnell show, he talked about our representative in Congress, Mark Pocan who has used a proxy quite a number of times, to vote for him while he has not been in Washington D.C. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-the-dan-odonnell-show-27550539/
Dan also wrote a perspective in the Maclver Institute: https://www.maciverinstitute.com/2021/05/laziness-by-proxy/ about how Congressperson Mark Pocan along with Congresspersons, Gwen Moore and Ron Kind, have used the proxy vote system to give themselves long times away from being physically in their offices in Washington D.C.
To this I pose the question to you my fellow Wisconsinites, especially those of you who like me are represented by Mark Pocan: Just why the hell are we paying Mark Pocan $175,000 in salary and much more counting benefits, if he only shows up for work part time?
I found it funny but true when in his monolog on this topic Dan said something like that in Madison a tree stump with a D attached to it could get elected.
I want the people who we elect to represent us on all levels of government to represent the WHOLE PEOPLE, not just those who whine the loudest about how crappy their lives are. I want them to think of the big picture, not just concentrate on the minutia, thus only virtue signaling when it becomes politically expedient to do so.
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Why you such a homophobe, hating on Porkie like that?
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Balboa: To peaceful people, “shots fired” are indicative of violence, threat, mayhem, evil, and mindlessness. These elements need to be eradicated by strict gun control and education. Embrace violence as part of “diversity”? No. This is madness. We all deserve a safe culture in which to live.
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V-W… Good thoughts, except “gun control” & “education”…. Sadly, Crims will always have gun sources -And “education” ? I agree thus far they are fabulously poor at aiming, etc. but other than teaching them how to shoot straight, “education” as a helpful construct is ludicrous & confusin’ for Oh, so many reasons. Please: Perhaps some detail/specifics by yourself would be helpful here.
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georgessson: I’d say the burden is on people who support unfettered gun rights to produce a solution to the “shots fired” problem and occasional collateral damage that happens along with it, the latest publicized tragedy being a six year old boy riding in a car with his mother caught in road-rage gunfire on a Los Angeles freeway.
But since you ask, I support banning handguns and assault weapons within Madison city limits. I know that this symbolic gesture has failed in Chicago, mostly because criminals bring their weapons into the city from other states which have lenient gun laws. We need uniform curtailment.
Before you all start piling on me, I don’t want to interfere with your right to bear arms, but we’re in a national emergency. People are getting killed. I trust most of the commenters on this platform are responsible gun owners, but everyone is not like you guys.
As for education, GDHM addressed that topic very well in his eloquent post of May 22 at 10:45 A.M.
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Rephrasing, should read: “..not everyone is like you guys.”
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There is no such thing as “unfettered gun rights” except perhaps on the illegal black market where the only fettering is the amount of money one has to spend.
Your banning proposal is ridiculous in so many ways Voice, so I will allow you to figure that out for yourself instead of embarrassing you in front of your friends.
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Similar to the derpy policy geniuses in Madison who actually think the solution to high-risk reckless speeding on city streets is to punish and frustrate all of us by lowering speed limits to 20mph. Like that is somehow going to convince our people driving 60mph in a 30 zone to suddenly change their ways instead of ramping up their aggressive driving even more with ill-timed red lights etc., which only puts the rest of us at even more risk on the roads.
Derpy derpy derpy!
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Yep, this is our culture, you don’t like it go back to whatever European Country your ancestry hails from, to be upset by this is just your racism showing. African Tribal Gang Governments are run this way so if it works there why not here. Get over it an d submit to your new masters of chaos, this is what equal misery for all looks like!
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