Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender. said, “Yes, I mean, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors, and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege. Because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done.”

Why are big-blue-city police chiefs almost always appointed? I think that it’s to prevent them from investigating the political corruption of those who appoint them. The corruption must be blatantly obvious after all these decades of one-party rule. It would be very tempting for a directly elected sheriff to go after that. It’s hard to imagine a better spring-board to higher office than putting a bunch of political grifters in jail.

So, in general, the inner-city voters will not “throw the rascals out” because they worry more about their government benefits than their bad and corrupt police forces, and the big blue politicians will not give up their “power of appointment” because they want to stay out of jail. Letting the voters choose their police chiefs directly would break up this corrupt cycle.

If you have a different explanation, I would be interested in hearing it, but it will have to explain why the big blue cities — almost always — seem to end up appointing their chiefs of police rather than directly electing them.

I’ve never noticed the quality of policing was improved by putting it in the hands of an elected official. Sheriffs generally are in charge of local jails, court security and enforcing court orders. Some are also in charge of police patrols, generally in exurbs, small towns, and rural areas with little violent crime. Much less challenging that core city policing.

I think you’ll find very few municipal governments who have much to do with welfare policy apart from the housing authority and shizzy youth employment schemes. Even in core cities, less than 5% of the households are billeted in public housing.

In the big blue cities, the voters elect the mayor, perhaps council members, etc., who consult political VIP’s from the police union, democrat campaign contributors, etc., and then appoint someone as head of the police. If something bad happens, they can blame him and appoint someone else. The local voters have little to no direct control over who heads up the police.

Why do those same voters keep electing the same politicians when they are unhappy with the police? The political establishment, speaking very broadly and generally, are always offering them the same poisoned choice: Re-elect us and be sure about your welfare checks and we get to run the police, or elect others and suffer the consequences. They vote for welfare because they for sure need the income, and only the relatively unlucky end up involved with the police.

Why do the mayors, etc., arrange to choose the police chief? After all, if the voters elected a sheriff directly, that’s one less headache for them and everyone benefits from a well-run police force. Ah — that’s the problem, isn’t it. A sheriff responsible to no one but the local voters could investigate and convict all the corrupt local politicians, all the way up to the mayor and beyond. So, there will not be any locally elected sheriffs in those big blue cities until …..?

What those Minnesota blue politicians talking about defunding the police are probably thinking about is actually defunding the police — so no one will be able to investigate them — then collecting a last round of gigantic scams from the local budget and getting the hell out of Dodge. There will be an incredible mess left behind but everyone will have more important things to worry about than local political corruption.

Replace the “defunded” police with locally elected sheriffs, and some good may come out of this mess.

Half declared they were serious about leaving the country. Ireland was the preferred destination, hipper than Canada I guess. But — you may have heard this story before — they never did.

My point: “Defunding the police” may sound like a blood oath today but will melt away like a light spring snow on a sunny afternoon when it comes time to do something. A few token budget cuts might be enacted, but nod, nod, wink, wink, restored quietly with hidden bookkeeping.

He must be quite alarmed because he had sworn off Facebook some time ago.