XPost: alt.niggers, alt.politics, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: fecal.colored.apes@splcenter.org   
      
   pothead  wrote in   
   news:t1ti3m$38pqv$2@news.freedyn.de:   
      
   > Use progressives for target practice.  Nobody will miss them.  Pieces   
   > of shit.   
      
   On Tuesday, the entire city council is up for re-election in party primary   
   races.   
      
   Only a few districts enjoy robustly contested races — and one of them is   
   Lower Manhattan, from Wall Street to Chinatown.   
      
   It’s a rare opportunity to assess whether moderates can wrest control of   
   local politics from far-left progressives.   
      
   Usually, council members are elected every four years, along with the   
   mayor. This time, thanks to redistricting, council members face the voters   
   just two years after their recent election.   
      
   That’s good, because voters have a chance to look at prospective lawmakers   
   without being overwhelmed by a larger mayoral race.   
      
   But it’s also bad, in that not many people are paying attention, and   
   turnout might not exceed single digits.   
      
   One place where voters have a motive to pay attention is District 1.   
      
   The tip of Manhattan up to Houston Street (with a couple of sections   
   carved out for other candidates) has endured traumatic upheaval.   
      
   Just take the news from the past week.   
      
   Tuesday, an e-bike battery fire in Chinatown killed four elderly tenants   
   living above a repair shop.   
      
   A day later, an assailant stabbed a 35-year-old man to death in Washington   
   Square Park in the middle of the afternoon, undeterred by pre-summer   
   crowds. (The park, in the old district, is slightly north of the new   
   district, but still a key recreation area for district voters.)   
      
   These five deaths were all failures of progressive ideology.   
      
   Progressives have refused to properly regulate deadly e-bike batteries, as   
   they’re afraid doing so will hurt poor workers.   
      
   They’ve also refused to support a crackdown on drug sales and use in the   
   park.   
      
   The numbers illustrate the change in downtown’s fortunes: Felony crime in   
   the three police precincts that overlay the district, though down since   
   last year, remains 22% higher than in 2019.   
      
   In addition to big crimes, the district is plagued by hundreds of illegal   
   marijuana stores, plus retail theft that is forcing legitimate businesses   
   to close: Misdemeanor larceny (as reported) is up by nearly two-thirds   
   since before the pandemic.   
      
   Then, there are the things the city wants to purposely do to the district,   
   chief among them, build the world’s tallest municipal jail, as part of the   
   de Blasio-era four-borough jails program.   
      
   The district’s current councilman, Christopher Marte, is a first-termer   
   who diligently subscribes to the progressive playbook.   
      
   Even as most Manhattan council members have dropped out of the council’s   
   progressive caucus, repelled by its defund-the-NYPD stance, Marte has   
   remained.   
      
   In a recent NY1 debate, when asked whether the NYPD should enforce the   
   city’s no-smoking — including no-pot-smoking — laws in Washington Square   
   Park, Marte couldn’t give a straight answer, saying “I think it’s   
   working.”   
      
   And he opposes a high-rise jail downtown — only because he opposes all   
   jails.   
      
   He wants to close Rikers without providing an alternative.   
      
   Contrast these positions with those of Susan Lee, a former paralegal and   
   grant-application writer who has the most straightforward common-sense   
   answer on the jail: Rebuild Rikers as a modern jail complex.   
      
   “Breaking up Rikers into four borough-based jails isn’t going to solve the   
   culture” of failure at Rikers, she says. She wants to “rebuild” and   
   “reimagine” Rikers, with dedicated mental facilities and a training   
   program for inmates to equip them for reentry into society.   
      
   She’s also clear on quality-of-life issues, telling me that, although   
   people worry about serious crime, what most upsets them is deterioration   
   in quality of life.   
      
   When she talks about smoke shops and e-bikes riding on sidewalks, she gets   
   a flood of responses, with voters saying “the quality of life has   
   deteriorated so much that they compare it to the 1980s.”   
      
   Lee was crystal-clear in her debate answer on a law against lighting up in   
   Washington Square Park: “It needs to be enforced.”   
      
   As was the third candidate in the race, Ursila Jung.   
      
   Jung, a public-school parent, mostly focuses on retaining school choice,   
   but she, too, had the obvious answer on non-stop smoking in Washington   
   Square Park: As parents, “we need to enforce it 100%,” she said.   
      
   Lee and Jung both want more NYPD foot patrols, to deter shoplifting and   
   hate crimes.   
      
   With two alternatives to ideological progressivism, this race will serve   
   as a test of the ranked-choice voting system.   
      
   Jung and Lee have cross-endorsed each other, meaning that as voters rank   
   their choices in order of preference, they’d like voters to pick each   
   other ahead of Marte.   
      
   With the risk reduced of two moderate candidates cancelling each other out   
   reduced in this way, the election will mostly serve as a test of whether   
   voters are paying attention.   
      
   https://nypost.com/2023/06/25/city-council-primaries-testing-progressives-   
   stranglehold-of-nyc/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)