Previous post
Next post
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez never fails to astound with the vacuity of her arguments, does she? On Sunday AOC blamed poverty for the sharp rise in crime in New York City. She also used that old saw about the virtuous thief — a poor man who steals bread for his starving children.
“Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren’t paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent and so they go out, and they need to feed their child and they don’t have money so they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry.”
She’s grasping at straws to explain away the precipitous spike in crime in the Big Apple. For example, shootings have increased a whopping 130% from June, 2019, to June of this year.
But according to AOC, these people are all desperate for food or something.
Needless to say, she got a lot of pushback for that nonsense. So AOC took to Twitter to defend herself, and to throw shade at Republicans for not being down with the struggle.
Republicans are all upset that I’m connecting the dots between poverty and crime.
I know most of them haven’t experienced or seen these issues first hand, but I have.
This may be hard for them to admit, but poverty and crime are highly linked, both violent & nonviolent alike. https://t.co/4t34dCLZlw
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 13, 2020
Um, no it’s not. That’s a talking point for liberals who constantly beg for mo’ money to fund anti-poverty programs, but research doesn’t back that up. In fact, a 2014 study by the University of North Dakota concluded: “we have arrived to the conclusion that poverty does not have a significant effect on violent crime in the United States.” Rather, I would propose the reverse — that crime causes poverty. Go into any high-crime area of any big city in the United States and notice the dearth of commerce. Crime rates keep businesses away, and no businesses, no jobs — the cycle continues.
AOC then continued with a personal story in a Twitter thread about a boy she knew growing up. According to her account, the boy was being raised by a single mother working a minimum-wage job. And because they struggled, this boy turned to selling weed to help pay the rent.
She didn’t give the boy’s name, instead “wording vaguely to protect people.” Perhaps his name was T-Bone. Who knows?
At any rate, AOC then compared the plight of this boy to the “glamorous” white drug hustlers from Breaking Bad.
“Mind you, there are entire TV series glamorizing, humanizing, and sympathizing White Americans in this exact situation of selling drugs to live – Weeds, Breaking Bad, etc. But fact is, Black & Brown communities have been in this predicament forever & get called “animals.”
Has she ever watched Breaking Bad? I’ll take a big fat no for $100, Alex.
She's missed the point of Breaking Bad too. Breaking Bad shuns crime (everybody involved in it in the show dies or gets their life destroyed) and nobody did it to put food on the table, they did it for their ego/revenge.
— Sean (@Sean54872257) July 13, 2020
Yeah, Walter White was not exactly a charmer, was he?
Credit: giphy.com.
However, it’s not like there aren’t corresponding TV series that glamorize black people — Oprah, in fact, has a whole list of them. These include The Chi and Snowfall, both of which deal with drugs and gangs.
Perhaps AOC can explain why multiple New Yorkers died over the weekend as the result of shootings. Why people “who are scared to pay their rent” shot not only a 20-year-old man, but a one-year-old baby, who was with his family at a cookout. Gunmen emerged from an SUV and began firing, hitting the baby boy in the stomach.
Mayor Bill de Blasio says much the same as his fellow traveler Ocasio-Cortez. He blames the crime wave in NYC on . . . boredom.
“So many people don’t have anything to do. They don’t have anywhere to go. They don’t have a job, they can’t go to school, they are dealing with so many challenges.”
How does boredom or being short on rent money lead someone to shoot a baby? It doesn’t, of course. Yet AOC and her fellow traveler de Blasio continue to grapple for excuses.
The crime wave in New York City has nothing to do with economics, or boredom, or hunger. It stems from a poverty of the soul.
Welcome, Instapundit readers!
Featured image: jaroh/flickr/cropped/CC BY-SA 2.0.
GERARD says: She is getting confused with Les Miserables and Jean Valjean.
Sally says: Yes, the uptick in crime seems indeed to be comprised entirely of people stealing bread for their starving children. The Jean Valjean Dilemma. The culprits will hereafter be known as Prisoner 24601.
Robert 1344 says: Somehow these people in New York who can’t pay the rent or feed their children are finding money to pay for very expensive, professional-grade fireworks and firing them off all over town. Or are the fireworks a gift from China?
GWB says: that crime causes poverty
Yes, progressives always have trouble with getting cause and effect in the right order.
Perhaps his name was T-Bone.
I was thinking Corn Pop.
Why people “who are scared to pay their rent” shot not only a 20-year-old man, but a one-year-old baby,
Well, that one might have to do with income-production choices. That sort of thing is often an inter-gang hit.
They don’t have anywhere to go. They don’t have a job, they can’t go to school, they are dealing with so many challenges.
Hmmmm, and who has put them in that position? Who has shut down the schools, and the restaurants, and the gyms, and the theaters? Who has told them they have to destroy their social interaction by wearing masks and standing far from one another? (And, I concur that it’s another example of misunderstanding cause and effect.)
Progressives have always failed at understanding the connection between poverty and crime – because Marx insists everything is economic, and they worship the man’s idiotic rantings.
Sadie McQueen says: My immigrant (Lithuanian) grandparents had five children. Grandpa was a coal miner, and most of the time they were dirt poor. For Christmas one year, all the children got was a nickel and an orange apiece. None of the five ever ended up in crime (in fact, three of them became lawyers), and the parents never resorted to stealing to feed their family.
Kim Hirsch says: Interesting! My grandparents were also from Lithuania, although they were part of a minority German population there. My grandfather was a steel mill worker.
They also raised five children. The family was also “dirt poor,” as my father put it, during the Depression, yet avoided engaging in crime. Funny how that works, huh?
SFC D says: A poor man who steals bread for his starving children is still a thief.
NTSOG says: Ms. AOC has also claimed in a recent speech to a Jewish organisation to have “Sephardic Jewish heritage”.
Is there anything that she cannot be or do – besides mathematics, the Law and understanding history?
GWB says: You forget “not understand economics” and “not know what common kitchen appliances are.”
njc says: Poverty doesn’t cause crime, but taken far enough helplessness and hopelessness may, especially when it looks like someone else must be doing it. And the Left, through a mixture of willful action and willful ignorance, is imposing both on their devoted subjects.
Ampleforth says: I guess Boston U. has a degree program in sophistry. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez must’ve been a star pupil. She graduated Magna Cum Stultus.
11 Comments