Is a new war on cops erupting in America?

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Is a new war on cops erupting in America?

Anti-police rhetoric in focus amid recent attacks on law enforcement

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ANTI-POLICE RHETORIC IN FOCUS AMID RECENT ATTACKS ON LAW ENFORCEMENT

MICHELLE FIELDS: We have a war going on here in our streets against the very people who risk their lives to protect us. What’s happening is a lot of these police officers feel they can’t do their jobs. They’re not thinking about the issue at hand; instead, they’re thinking “how is this going to look on Twitter? How is this going to look on the news?” because that is how it has become. They can’t do their jobs without people constantly criticizing them for the way that they handle it. It’s also bad in terms of their danger. We’re saying that there’s a war on these people. People do not respect them. We have to remember, these are people that are risking their lives and making a sacrifice for them and their family to protect their community.

WAYNE ROGERS: There’s a war on authority. We have developed, somehow—and I don’t know how—in this country this hostility towards authority, towards police, towards school teachers, towards people who are in authority. Now I understand it in the black community because 70 percent of black kids are born out of wedlock. They don’t have a father figure, and they don’t have anybody to discipline them. I can understand that. I cannot understand it otherwise. When we think about things like this, the press is guilty of it, too. For example, Peggy Hubbard—people don’t talk about her. Do you know who Peggy Hubbard is? No, nobody here knows. She’s the mother of the 6-year-old who was shot randomly in Chicago last week. It’s just terrible.

JESSICA TARLOV: Peggy Hubbard, besides the great tragedy that she suffered, raised an important issue, and that’s black-on-black crime. That’s something that I think the Black Lives Matter movement—which has an important message for criminal justice reform in this nature—they’re also not speaking to the issue of black-on-black crime, which takes far more lives than police violence does. I know that Juan has been speaking to this issue, about how the Black Lives Matter movement can capitalize on making their message broader, and talking about systemic poverty, the totality of the black experience in America, the need for education reform.

JUAN WILLIAMS: This is so much a fabrication; I don’t even know where to begin. There was no connection between a few protesters in New York saying they want dead cops because they were so under siege in terms of the relationship between cops and minority communities in New York and some psycho who wanted to kill cops.

JONATHAN HOENIG: This is the next step of the angry, violent left. In the 90s it was the Earth Liberation Front; they were against industry. In the 2000s and more recently it’s been the Occupy movement, which is against capitalism. And this movement, if you want to call it that, I really think is against civil society. That’s what police are; they keep us safe. And I think they depict all police, and by extension all society, as illegitimate, as racist, as immoral. Their goal, I truly believe, is anarchy.

LABOR DAY DEBATE: UNIONS MAKING NEW PUSH FOR $15/HOUR MINIMUM WAGE

JONATHAN HOENIG: Prices are not arbitrary; prices for food, prices for housing, prices for stocks, and prices for labor…wages. They’re not based on whim, they’re not based on feeling; they’re not pulled out of a hat. They’re actually based on economic reality. The Labor Department knew this 80 years ago: the higher you raise the minimum wage, the more low-skilled jobs you destroy. What does that do? That discriminates against people just getting in the workforce. It kills their self-esteem; it kills their ability to build those skills to move up the economic ladder.

JUAN WILLIAMS: By the way, Eric, did you pay for that billboard, or did the big businesses across America? Sometimes if you’re out in the middle of the night at 4am you see these little old ladies at the bus shelters—they’re going to work and they don’t get much money, and they need to feed people. Those are people that deserve, in my opinion, to have a very basic minimum wage. It can vary from area to area.

MICHELLE FIELDS: We know what happens when you raise the minimum wage; businesses respond by cutting jobs, by cutting hours, and who it ends up hurting is the little old lady that you’re talking about. If you’re a business owner, you’re not going to have the little old lady. You’re going to hire the person with the master’s degree.

JESSICA TARLOV: Jonathan brought up a really good point, which is that we don’t invent these numbers out of anywhere. That is the problem, with the $15 minimum wage. That would be such an astronomical jump. But we do not economists have said cities have tried it out that if we go to $10.10 or $12/hour it won’t hurt jobs, it won’t hurt employment. 3 out of 5 small business owners favor this. 70 percent of Americans favor it.

WAYNE ROGERS: It’s a simple thing. In a free market system you bargain for things. You bargain for food, housing, labor the same way. A guy who is operating a numerically-controlled machine with a computer is not going to get the same wage that a guy is who’s sweeping up the floor. You just can’t afford it. So you can’t equalize everyone. You pay by skill level. Skill level demands a certain pay.

REPORT: PROFESSORS THREATEN BAD GRADES FOR SAYING “ILLEGALS,” “MALE” OR “FEMALE”

JUAN WILLIAMS: This is where you guys on the right have a great point to make. This is trying to limit people from honest debate and it’s wrong.

MICHELLE FIELDS: These professors believe in diversity when it comes to the color of one’s skin, but not when it comes to diversity of opinions. This is something that’s widespread. Most professors aren’t outright about their prejudices, but they certainly give students poor grades who don’t obey the PC police.

JESSICA TARLOV: I completely agree with Juan and Michelle. I’m just curious as to what we’re supposed to say instead of “male” and “female”. The “illegals” thing I understand; we can say “undocumented”.

JONATHAN HOENIG: Everything bad about today’s culture stems from the ideas and the philosophies being taught at America’s universities. These are the universities that traffic in white privilege, that don’t let you say “he” or “she”, that go with this “no gender” business, and they hate capitalism at every turn. That’s today’s universities.

WAYNE ROGERS: I just endorse what Jonathan just said. It’s simple.