(This is a fellow accused of murder while here in Georgia as an “undocumented” non-citizen. They call them something else these days, but there are so many new terms we can’t keep track. we would run a photo of the Sheriff who holds him, but that would open up another lane in the slippery slope of American justice).

Morning, Folks! This is apparently a red-letter weekend for prevarication. You know, that is the fancier term for making up things that are not exactly true in order to make some other point, normally asserting that something false is true. We saw a bunch of it over the high-octane trips by the powerful to a troubled region of our nation.

The reporting was a little different, as you probably observed, one was fairly vigorous and the other one not at all. Then another senior official chimed in on the legal system that she claimed “has lowered violent crime to the lowest levels in fifty years.”

That caught our attention, since it is a startling claim at considerable variance from what all of us are observing first hand. The one we see right over on Washington Boulevard at the CVS is that small, high-value items like cosmetics or personal care items are now behind glass and locks, delivered to customers only on request. That is an inconvenience that represents something else.

You know what it actually reflects, and that is the impossibility of operating a business ransacked by insta-mobs of coordinated theft. Macy’s is closing the store just up the block because it is losing money, since people are uncomfortable in shopping the way they traditionally have. This is causing what some call “commercial deserts” in many urban areas. There is clearly a problem, and there is no denying the facts of it. Unless you change the facts.

So how do some say “lowest crime in fifty years’ and keep a straight face? Except for the thieves, no one could desire that, right? How can you claim it is true? Actually it is easy.

Some of us used to do numbers for the government. Budget numbers, so you know there is both honesty and fabrication in how you put them together. Some of us were good at it and some less so. But even if the “Out-year Costs” were not included in current year reporting in order to make a worthy project seem more reasonable, even if more expensive, it was a good cause.

You can see that is one of those slippery slopes in which we sometimes feel ourselves sliding quickly from doing something clever for good into something criminal for personal gain. We are seeing an example of that in the court proceedings down in Atlanta this week. So, it can truly be more accurately said that “reported violent crime is the lowest in a long time.”

You know the slippery slope on this one. There are fewer cops to report crime, arrest or prosecute it, and accordingly, there are lower numbers. Not because there is less of it. The numbers are lower because there is less crime reported, not less crime committed.

At least that what the old Budget guys claim. They have no apparent reason to lie, although of course publicizing larger amounts of criminal behavior could cause government to behave in a more aggressive manner. For those old enough, you may remember the last time the criminal element took advantage of social change to run amok in the turbulent 1970s.

That led to measures like “Three Strikes and Your Out” which increased jail populations and a certain amount of resentment from those who were arrested. And higher reported numbers, of course. This swing of the pendulum is a little wider, since there are other factors in play, though in both swinging arcs there is power accrued to the people doing the numbers according to their desires about how to run our society.

We here at Big Pink would prefer to be left alone. There are others who campaign for things like more “social fairness,” and even have a three-letter term for it: DEI.

It is in politics, of course. We do not have access to raw reporting to make our own numbers, but the indications are illustrative. This morning there was a report from the New York Times that outlined the position of a Sheriff named John Williams, who won election in Athens County, GA, with the boast that “when in office, I will not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers.”

It is interesting, since an ICE detainer is a written request from the Federals to local law enforcement to “detain an individual who has been arrested on criminal charges and which ICE believes is a non-citizen subject to deportation.”

There is plenty of prevarication in that at the start, since the argument is for “fairness,” or something. The curious thing is that the fairness is for people who have committed criminal acts. In the case of illegals, crossing the border illegally is their first offense. The most offended are probably those standing in line to be processed in the manner our laws specify.

Athens County has been in the news since the murder of a pert and popular 22-year old nursing student. Her funeral was yesterday. The accused killer whose mugshot starts this account is part of a Venezuelan group accused of several other violent crimes committed here, in a place they had no permission to be.
Other crimes in Athens? Sheriff Williams just released from confinement an illegal (we are supposed to call them “newcomers” now) who has three charges of rape against him. They are in Oregon, which has not requested extradition. So, he cannot be held on the motor vehicle offenses in Athens. “Nothing I can do,” said Sheriff Williams.

Another report- this one from Jupiter, Florida- has four more “undocumented newcomers” in custody held for automotive-related offenses- no licenses and driving drunk. They killed five citizens on the roadway. All of them would be alive today except for driving while a big pendulum was swing toward them.

A cursory count this morning produced at least a dozen recent killings by illegals. That does not mean all the illegals are criminals, although, of course, they violated their first US Law by being here without following our law. Sheriff Williams said that he believes that cooperating with ICE detention requests instills a “culture of fear” in the community. That is how slippery slopes work, we assume. It is just a question of who exactly is going to be afraid.

So that is where were are with prevarication in our great land today. What has become the norm is a scheme of prevarication so vast as to call everything into question. That includes this, of course, but we are tempted to quit drinking or driving after sneaking into any one else’s country, you know?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com