Nicole Lewis writes:
“Sessions uses the alleged crime wave as evidence for the need to return to “law and order,” which President Trump has vowed to make a top priority during his presidency. As attorney general, Sessions has advocated for several policies aimed at preventing violent crime from continuing to rise, including tougher policing practices, reinstating mandatory minimum sentences for drug users, providing surplus military equipment to police departments, and a dismantling of “sanctuary cities.” In June, Sessions launched a new program to combat gun, gang, and drug violence in 12 cities across the United States.
At the same time, Sessions has lauded Miami-Dade County as an example for the rest of the nation — a major urban area that has reduced crime significantly since the “Miami Vice” days of the 1980s.
But Sessions, in his rhetoric and use of statistics, is being remarkably inconsistent. Let’s take a look.
. . . .
Sessions claims about crime across the country are a distortion of the facts. Nationwide, the violent crime rate and the murder rate are lower than they have been in almost 45 years. Violent crime and the murder rate increased slightly from 2014-2015, but the one-year increase does not qualify as a national trend.
Sessions applies the same distortion in his spotlighting of crime in major cities. Sessions routinely highlights an increase in violence in Chicago as evidence of the rising crime wave, but when viewed in conjunction with the national data, Chicago stands out as an outlier that is out of sync with national trends. In major cities across the country, violent crime has also dropped to historic lows. When Sessions lauds Miami-Dade County, he is implicitly acknowledging that crime rates actually have dropped dramatically since the 1980s.
Yet Sessions claims violent crime is “back with a vengeance,” and that it is “surging,” which is the result of a “staggering increase,” in crime in urban areas. With every dramatic assertion, Session is stoking American’s fears about crime and safety to advance a political agenda of “law and order.” Sessions earns Four Pinocchios.
Four Pinocchios
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Read the much more detailed analysis of Sessions’s “parade of misrepresentations” at the link. He isn’t even a good liar because he keeps making claims that can not just be disputed, but can clearly be disproved.
I had to be selective; there were lots of articles about Sessions’s astounding dishonesty in the past few days, including his lies about the need to “militarize” the local police, his distortion of Obama DOJ policies, and how gonzo inappropriate militarization of local police and a false “war on crime” is an essential part of the Trump-Sessions White Nationalist agenda.
Sessions is probably a perjurer and certainly an habitual liar, distorter, and knowing purveyor of false White Nationalist narratives aimed at diminishing the rights of minorities (including migrants) and promoting White Supremacy. So, why is a dude with no respect for law, the truth, or the rights of non-white, non-Christian Americans (in other words, the majority of Americans) qualified to be the chief law enforcement officer and spokesman for justice in our country? Shades of John Mitchell. I could get pretty tired hearing about the “rule of law” from a guy and a party that have no concept of what it means.
PWS
09-02-17