Two hardcore leftists want Blaska's Blog to apologize.
Writing about the arrest in the Joel Marino murder, Bill Lueders asks:
Will the homeless get an apology? Isthmus blogger David Blaska and local right-wing radio squawkers, prompted in part by police rounding up and getting DNA samples from homeless persons, freely speculated that Marino and Zimmermann were killed by transients ... Will Blaska and the squawkers now admit they were rash and eat some humble pie?
Former politico Andy Olsen takes up the cudgel in TDPF:
Come on, Dave. Man up and admit you were wrong (and, irresponsible to boot). You rushed to blame a bunch of poor and politically powerless people for murders in absence of facts.
The proprietor of Blaska's Blog hereby responds: Apologize? To whom and for what?
Three quick facts:
- Blaska's Blog neither "freely speculated" nor "rushed to blame" anyone for the two murders.
- As Lueders acknowledges, Madison police did take their investigation to what they call "transients." I cannot claim credit for their good police work.
- The Brittany Zimmermann case remains an open investigation.
Let's examine the record
In Work!?#*! on April 10, I wrote:
Forget for a moment, if you can, the recent murders. Perhaps the vagrants are not responsible. I never said they were. The police have said they might be.
Let's talk about the intimidation and the harassment, the cursing and the stalking, the aggressive panhandling, the public urination.
In Not all Homeless on April 16, I wrote:
There are many, probably the majority, of male "homeless" -- many of whom you will never see on park benches downtown -- who are just trying to get by, to survive as best they can, without degrading the surrounding community.
But there is a significant subset of the homeless male population who are accosting people on the street, committing crime, polluting our public spaces. These are the people who have taken over Brittingham Park, who invade homes in the Bassett Street neighborhood, who intimidate West Washington Avenue, who litter Wisconsin Avenue.
In MacArthur Park, Madison, WI on April 21, I shared this eloquence with the masses:
My crusade is waged against those who celebrate the Brittingham Park squatters and Bassett Street neighborhood hakedown artists as "victims" and shame the rest of us for being insensitive, capitalist, racist, or what have you.
The closest I ever came was in linking the murder of Joel Marino was to note that his murder, by way of addressing the breakdown of public order, was "not far from Brittingham Park, the haunt of many juiced-up 'homeless' people." Fact. As for Brittany Zimmermann, in Fred Mohs is right about vagrancy on April 5, I wrote:
From early indications, her slaughter may have been at the hands of the predator population that city taxpayers are feeding and housing.
Note the two qualifiers: "From early indications" and "may." As even Lueders knows, police were actively rounding up the city's vagrants (whom they call "transients"), questioning them, taking DNA samples, and jailing some of them. To have not done so would have been dereliction of duty. Indeed, the young lady's case remains an open investigation.
Even in that post, the murders constituted but two dot points among a longer list of crimes and transgressions that included the torching of the cathedral, known to have been committed by a vagrant, and:
The countless incidents of threatening behavior, accosted citizens, vile language, and other befoulings of the public square.
Apologize, liberals
That the likes of Bill Lueders and Andy Olsen should even presume to take the high ground on law enforcement is hutzpah piled high and served raw on a Kaiser bun. Here is Blaska's Blog's non-negotiable demand: Blaska wants and apology from Luedes and Olsen.
Apologize, liberals. Beg forgiveness for your sins of commission and omission. Get down on your bloody knees and pray for my uncertain mercy. Wear sackcloth and Paul Wellstone's ashes and humble yourselves as unworthy sinners before an angry, Old Testament god. For your sins against the community are rank. Your offenses cry out to the heavens for punishment, harsh and unremitting.
Did either one of you ever:
- Alert decision makers to the growing problem of crime on Madison's southwest side? (Another murder went down June 29 on Tempe Drive.)
- Speak out against the degradation of our public spaces?
- Decry the virtual occupation of the downtown library? The takeover of the Brittingham Park Shelter and various laundromats and businesses? The squalor of the ill-named Peace Park on State Street?
- Protest the free-range shakedowns in the Bassett Street neighborhood? The aggressive panhandling, intimidation, fighting, public drunkenness, cursing, pissing, and stinking?
Did you support:
- Police Chief Noble Wray's call for 30 more police officers? (I suspect you both opposed it.)
- Anti-loitering ordinances sought by the Mothers of Allied Drive?
- Tommy Thompson's welfare reform, which seeks to break multi-generational dependency and is now supported by Barack Obama?
- Building more jail capacity?
And finally:
- What information have you that the Zimmermann murder has been resolved that you can rule out certain suspects?
- Would you have restricted the police from actively investigating the vagrant (transient) population?
- Have either of you written a single word of support for the police, ever?
An enabling environment
When Madison Police Lt. Joe Balles observes that "Madison has kind of institutionalized an enabling environment downtown for this transient population to grow unchecked," he is talking about the Bill Lueders and Andy Olsens of the ruling liberal hegemony.
By the way, Andy, the fact that vagrants, transients, and homeless (intersecting and overlapping but not contiguous groups) are "poor and politically powerless" is a circumstance of their own making, not mine.
"Poor and politically powerless" is victimology talk, fellas. It is the Get Out of Jail Free card issued by Lueders and Olsen, Brenda Konkel, Kristen Petroshius, Linda Ketcham, Patricia Schneider, and too many others. It is the mindset that enables self-destructive behavior by excusing away poor lifestyle choices -- choices that, as it happens, victimize all of us.
