Republicans in power: violent crime rate soaring, corporate crime soaring.

[Perry Logan]

As you may recall, the violent crime rate went down for eight straight years under Bill Clinton.

Six years of Republican stewardship have changed all that:

"According to the FBI's final crime statistics for 2006, violent crime is up for the second consecutive year, the first time that's happened in over 10 years. Gun crime in particular is surging nationwide, with an 8% increase in gun robberies and an almost 3% increase in gun assaults.

The numbers are much worse in America's small- and medium-sized cities, with gun robberies in cities of 25,000 to 50,000 people up twice the national rate at 16.2%, and in medium-sized cities (250,000 to 500,000 people) up a whopping 14.7%.

As the former mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana (a Midwestern city with just under 250,000 citizens where the number of violent crimes actually dropped between 2005-2006), and as a former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, I know first-hand the challenges that cities and communities face when confronting the scourge of gun crime. Creating safer communities takes hard work, and success is no accident.

Neither is it any accident that weak gun policies at the Federal level have contributed to the current national violent crime trend: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), responsible for the enforcement of our nation's gun laws, does not have the resources or effective tools it needs to stop the trafficking in illegal guns; there are gaps in the Brady background check law that allow prohibited purchasers - including the dangerously mentally ill and even suspected terrorists - to walk out of a gun store fully armed; and we have no Federal limits on how many dangerous weapons someone can buy at a time.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-helmke/violent-crime-is-up-in-am_b_67038.html?view=screen

Corporate cirme is also soaring:

"The Blackwater case fits the broader pattern of the Bush administration's almost total failure to enforce the law against corporations.

Take the many False Claims Act cases filed by whistleblowers against the U.S. companies contracted in Iraq. As attorney Alan Grayson has testified numerous times before Congress:

"the administration has not actively litigated one single case of fraud, or even breach of contract, against any contractor in Iraq. Iraqis have looked on in disbelief, and then in anger, as one botched Iraq reconstruction job after another has been paid in full, and they see that this Administration won't even protect our own troops from cheating and overcharging. Many Americans feel the same anger."

Indeed, David Rose reports in the November issue of Vanity Fair that whistleblowers have filed dozens upon dozens of lawsuits, trying to prod the Bush administration to fight contractor fraud. The response: The administration has obtained court order after court order barring the filers and their attorneys from even discussing the cases - i.e. to keep the American people from knowing how bad the cronyism and corruption really is.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charlie-cray/blackwatergate_b_67018.html?view=screen


The good news: world terrorism has more than tripled under the Bush Administration.

[Lost4words]

1. Keep us safe from terror mr afraid of horses!

If Pappy were a man of conscience, left two guys to die in a fighter, so we know he isnt, he would do the correct thing and off himself for bringing this abomination into the world and destroying our country.

[benEzra]

2. "Suspected terrorists" according to (repub) Helmke...

there are gaps in the Brady background check law that allow prohibited purchasers - including the dangerously mentally ill and even suspected terrorists - to walk out of a gun store fully armed

"Suspected terrorists," according to (repub) Helmke, are people on the Bush Administration's secret watchlists, e.g. the "No-Fly" list. That proposal was made by none other than Alberto "No Habeus Corpus" Gonzales, before he resigned as Attorney General.

The list is secret, you can get put on the list for merely having a name similar to a guy who used to attend a mosque with a guy who is thought to have visited Pakistan eight years ago. Being an outspoken environmental activist can get you put on the blacklist. Senator Edward Kennedy was on that list for a while, and only his pull as a sitting U.S. Senator allowed him to get off it.

It is not a crime to own a gun if you are on the Administration's blacklist. Yet. The administration and the gun-ban lobby would like to change that.