My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:
Thanks to the live stream from Court TV, I have watched dozens and dozens of hours of the trial of Darrell Brooks. It continues this week. I highly encourage readers to tune in for a few hours to watch Brooks in long form instead of in snippets of news story. The man is a monster.
Brooks has been charged with 76 crimes including 6 murders after he drove his car through the Waukesha Christmas Parade last year running down at least 67 people. He has chosen to represent himself which puts him in the position of questioning his victims, witnesses, and law enforcement personnel who had to clean up his carnage. Throughout the trial, Brooks’ utter lack of remorse, callous revictimization of people whose lives he has devastated, and mockery of the rule of law is infuriating.
I take comfort knowing that when Brooks is convicted and sentenced that Wisconsin now has truth in sentencing. Brooks will never be paroled by the likes of Governor Tony Evers and released back into our midst.
When Tony Evers ran for office with Mandela Barnes, he promised to cut Wisconsin’s prison population in half.
He has been working hard to keep that promise through his appointed chair of the Wisconsin Parole Commission.
[…]
In the gubernatorial debate hosted by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association between Governor Tony Evers and challenger Tim Michels last week, Evers prevaricated and evaded a question about his liberal support of discretionary paroles. First, Evers said that the governor does not control the Parole Board. Then he took credit for reversing the discretionary early parole of murderer Douglas Balsewicz and firing the Chair of the Parole Board.
Then he pivoted to talk about his support for more government spending on shared revenue. At no point did Evers commit to slow or stop the emptying of our prisons of murderers and rapists with discretionary paroles even though he bragged about his ability to do so.
Tony Evers is choosing to release violent criminals. He could stop it, but he is not doing so because he wants it to happen. He wants violent felons to be released into our communities because social justice politics is more important to him than victims and their families.
I’m not understanding how releasing felons from prison (violent or not), or erecting obstacles to their initial incarceration serves social justice in any manner. Are we still ignoring recidivism rates and pursuing the fantasy of rehabilitation? Where is there an upside for Evers?
Where is there an upside for Evers?
Votes…
Who are these potential voters?
I could be wrong, but felons don’t strike me as being diehard voters. If responsible civic participation was their thing they likely wouldn’t be criminals in the first place. The felon’s potential family members will show their gratitude by voting for Evers? Repeat offenders leave a large wake of victims. I should think the victim families would not show any such gratitude. I don’t see where this can even be a wash for Evers.
So what are they really up to?
A fine question that I do not know the answer to, my comment was a joke.
I usually try to find the motivations behind political moves and can often come up with a few decent theories, but I don’t get the real motivations here either.
Based on the current discussion with Randall on another post, my latest guess is that liberals are so out of touch with criminal mentalities that they think most crimes are committed in the name of social justice. As such, they deserve to be let out. It isn’t a good theory, but it is clear that police have generally been on the side of conservatives so it somehow makes sense that since criminals are their opposites, they must be liberal allies. I know that sounds ridiculously out of touch, but liberals are not commenting on the subject so who knows?
Democrats support criminal monsters.
Wizard asks: Who are these potential voters?
Lots of ‘em. All over the state. And you can bet none of theses signees, who are mostly representatives of larger groups, have been victims.
As to the Balsewicz issue, Phony nEvers appointed John Tate II, a Racine alderman who’s life experience consists of be an anti-cop social worker, to be the state parole board’s chairman (Tate was never confirmed by the legislature). As Owen noted, nEvers first claimed he had no control over the board and couldn’t do anything. Only after the victim’s family raised Holy Hell did nEvers request Tate reconsider, and after Tate rescinded the parole, nEvers asked Tate to leave, which he did. (Tate was shortly later named to be City of Madison’s “independent Police Overseer”, but a week after accepting he pulled out for some unknown reason).
Let’s be truthful. The only reason nEvers called for Tate to resign was because Tate was a Mendota-size stain on nEver’s re-election campaign.