Bread and Circuses

The Governor is trying to buy off urban voters with another slush fund:

“… Operation IMPACT, which since 2004 has sent more than $20 million to Albany, Schenectady and Rensselaer counties to make police more data-driven and nimble, has been replaced in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed 2014-15 budget with a $15.2 million program focused more intensely on the most violent crimes.  Rather than an abandonment of IMPACT, which debuted in Albany’s then-crime-ridden Park South in 2004, Cuomo administration officials are billing the new Gun-Involved Violence Elimination initiative as an expansion of the earlier program …”

This is just SNUG by another name.  The publicly stated idea behind SNUG was spreading money around in high crime areas ostensibly to teach young people that shooting each other is bad.  In Albany, some it went for block parties:

“… Albany SNUG volunteer Vivian Kornegay says the violence around the Capital Region is heartbreaking.  That’s why she organized a block party with music, food and dancing in Albany’s South End …  Kornegay, the mother of a shooting victim herself, says there have been similar events in the past.  But she says part of the difference here, is that Saturday’s event is more than just a party.  She says not only will they be having block parties, they will be out canvassing the neighborhood and engaging the community in order to bring an end to the violence …”

And how well did this strategy work?

“… The son of a woman who has been fighting against gun violence in Albany, was shot Tuesday. Police say 32-year-old Rasuan Kornegay was shot one in the leg on First Street.  No one was arrested.  This is the second time in two years Rasuan Kornegay has been shot.  In 2010, he was shot outside a food mart on Quail Street.  Kornegay is the son of Albany SNUG volunteer Vivian Kornegay …”

The Center for Public Safety Initiatives did a study on the effectiveness of program and determined it had no discernible effect in reducing crime.

So, summing up Cuomo’s approach to public safety we have:

1. Gun control – which has never worked anywhere and the public hates.
2. Bread and circuses – for urban areas already run down by decades of failed “progressive” ideas.
3. Emptying the asylum – by forcing the mental ill out of supervised settings and back into the streets where they cannot take care of themselves.

The only question I can think of is, “Are you not entertained?”