The Wire is an American television drama series set and produced in and around Baltimore, Maryland. Each season of The Wire focuses on a different facet of the city of Baltimore. They are, in chronological order: the illegal drug trade, the seaport system, the city government and bureaucracy, the school system, and the print news media.

In the years following the end of the series’ run, several colleges and universities such as Johns Hopkins, Brown University, Harvard Law School, Duke, UC Berkeley and Bowdoin have begun offering classes on The Wire in disciplines ranging from law to sociology to film studies. Phillips Academy, a boarding high school in Massachusetts, offers a similar course as well. In an article published in The Washington Post, Anmol Chaddha and William Julius Wilson explain why Harvard has chosen The Wire as curriculum material for their course on urban inequality:

“Though scholars know that deindustrialization, crime and prison, and the education system are deeply intertwined, they must often give focused attention to just one subject in relative isolation, at the expense of others. With the freedom of artistic expression, “The Wire” can be more creative. It can weave together the range of forces that shape the lives of the urban poor.” University of York’s Head of Sociology, Roger Burrows, said in the The Independent that the show “makes a fantastic contribution to their understanding of contemporary urbanism”, and is “a contrast to dry, dull, hugely expensive studies that people carry out on the same issues”.

It would be typical of me as a Conservative to say that people have choice, they can get out and better themselves. However, if you watch The Wire and realize it’s more than a made for TV drama but a deep look into social classes, drugs, and political corruption you begin to understand how trapped people become and realize they can’t just leave.

Watching The Wire you’ll begin to understand that very young children are indoctrinated and become products of their environment and even good politic work and crime prevention can’t solve the problem because it’s epidemic. When you add the corrupt political environment, the lies and deceit from elected officials and corruption in the law enforcement area it becomes all too real that a systemic problem encompasses all facets of life.

Which brings me to now former mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, new Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama. Chicago is larger than Baltimore, the city in The Wire, but that only makes the problem of urban life much larger.

Yesterday Rahm Emanuel was sworn in as Chicago’s 46th mayor and he had a great deal to say, much of it was blatantly false. (Emphasis LC’s)

“Our city’s financial situation is difficult and profound. We cannot ignore these problems a day longer,” Emanuel told thousands of people gathered in the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park — which Mayor Daley spent $475 million to build.

Chicago is facing an annual structural deficit of $1.2 billion including unfunded pension liabilities yet Daley used $475 million dollars to build a new park where one already existed. A park that creates the impression to visitors that Chicago is a gem on the lake with a beautiful skyline and wonder sites to see. It’s true, Chicago is a great place to visit. I worked and lived in and around Chicago for over 25 years.

“I fully understand there will be those who oppose our efforts to reform our schools, to cut costs and to make government more effective,” Emanuel said. “Some are sure to say, ‘This is the way we do things — we can’t try something new. Those are the rules — we can’t change them.’ … So when I ask for new policies, I guarantee, the one answer I will not tolerate is: ‘We’ve never done it that way before.’ Chicago is the city of ‘yes we can’ not ‘No we can’t.’ ”

Emanuel used the word “change” so many times I thought Obama was speaking. Chicago has had plenty of “change” especially in their school system with new superintendents arriving and promises of reform to make it all better. It’s only gotten worse and much of the inner city school problem begins at the core of the inner city family and the hopeless environments the youngest children develop their social outlook and behavior. If you don’t tackle the economics, create environments for good jobs without unions forcing their criteria on business, if you don’t tackle the drug trade and dealers as if their belong to al-Qaeda, the young minds that enter any school system are already polluted. Their finished in many cases before they get started because the cancer in their neighborhoods is the gangster supplying the drugs and running the drug trade.

Emanuel told city workers, city residents and business owners to expect to sacrifice.

“Today, I ask of each of you — those who live here, and those who work here; business and labor: Let us share the necessary sacrifices fairly and justly,” Emanuel said. “If everyone will give a little, no one will have to give too much.”

Sound familiar? Is it any wonder Rahm Emanuel was Obama’s right hand man in the White House? How’s all that sacrifice working for America? Get ready Chicago!

“We are a much greater city because of the lifetime of service that Mayor Daley and first lady Maggie Daley have given us,” Emanuel said. “Nobody ever loved Chicago more or served it better than Richard Daley. Now, Mr. Mayor, and forevermore, Chicago loves you back.”

Of course Emanuel wasn’t going to tear into Richard Daley personally, praising him and his work while discussing what a mess Chicago is in. How does one reconcile the hypocrisy?

“As some have noted, including Amy, I am not a patient man,” Emanuel said. “When it comes to improving our schools, I will not be a patient mayor.”

Emanuel praised Daley’s tenure:

“A generation ago, people were writing Chicago off as a dying city. They said our downtown was failing, our neighborhoods were unlivable, our schools were the worst in the nation, and our politics had become so divisive we were referred to as Beirut on the Lake.

“When Richard M. Daley took office as mayor 22 years ago, he challenged all of us to lower our voices and raise our sights. Chicago is a different city today than the one Mayor Daley inherited, thanks to all he did. This magnificent place where we gather today is a living symbol of that transformation,” Emanuel said.

So what’s the problem Mr. Emanuel? Why so much talk of change, the killing of children, the poor schools, the huge deficit, the crime, the drugs, the neighborhoods, the finances, on and on and on the need for change and “Yes we can” mantra. It’s your thinking and Obama’s lies that are dragging America down and further eroding the cities of this country. It’s the corruption, the politics, the lies with an attempt to sugar coat it with flowery speeches or tough talk.

Barack Obama’s strategy isn’t about empowering teachers and communities. It’s about increasing the federal government’s authority over schools. Large cities like Chicago want federal money so they can waste in on pet projects and in the next election they will tell us the problem was deeper than we originally thought and we need another term in office to fix things.

Richard Daley left Chicago in great turmoil, the crime rate is overwhelming, the drug trade and gangs have turned much of the city into a war zone. Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama will continue their programs of control while asking all of us to sacrifice so they can fix the problems.

If you don’t clean up the streets, attack the crime, clean up the neighborhoods of the human garbage no matter what you do in the schools will not help. When damage children enter the schools and then return to their environments the cycle is unending and the hope these children should have becomes hopeless.

Daley, Emanuel, Obama all believe government is the solution but they can’t even clean up the system problems that plague society. I encourage you to rent and watch The Wire. It’s stressful, it’s frightening, it’s enlightening and although it’s a TV drama ask yourself why schools are using it to examine the sociological problems in society.

No child left behind? The children of the big cities are left behind each day while we socially promote, and struggle in a losing battle to teach polluted minds and damaged souls. If the politicians wish to clean up the mess they need to clean up government and the streets before they start telling us to sacrifice while they waste millions on parks and perks while the inner city war is where the battle begins and ends.

It’s all about institutional dysfunction, Indeed!

Liberally Conservative appreciates your comments that abide by our guidelines:

“This Department of Justice does not enforce the law in a race-conscious way,” declared Attorney General Eric Holder in a House oversight hearing yesterday. However, Politico reports about an exchange in the course of the hearing which indicates otherwise. Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), was questioning Mr. Holder regarding the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case, of which the department dismissed after Holder had taken over:

The Attorney General seemed to take personal offense at a comment Culberson read in which former Democratic activist Bartle Bull called the incident the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career.

“Think about that,” Holder said. “When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia–which was inappropriate, certainly that . . . to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people,” said Holder, who is black.

It is occasionally a valuable exercise to envision circumstances such as this particularly one in reverse. Imagine that in the course of defending himself against allegations of prejudice in favor of white people, a white attorney general referenced to whites as “my people.” Exactly what might we make of that?

I must confess that, for historically conditional factors, this kind of circumstance would be much worse. Despite the fact that civil rights laws safeguard every person, they were put into law to remedy ferocious and organized discrimination towards blacks. Therefore, it’s of specific significance that black Americans have the ability to have faith in the unbiased administration of justice.

However, to state it’s of specific importance would be to draw a difference of degree, not of kind. It really is crucial that every US citizen have faith in the unbiased governing and administration of justice. Holder realizes that, at the very least theoretically, or he would not have rejected that his department enforce the law “in a race-conscious manner.” However, when the attorney general talked of “my people” and intended merely a subset of Americans, it validated the suspicion of prejudice which he was attempting to counter.

“Holder noted that his late sister-in-law, Vivian Malone Jones, helped integrate the University of Alabama,” Politico reported. This is a genuine point of personal pride, however, in his official capacity Holder owes his allegiance to the nation in its entirety. If Holder approaches his position using the frame of mind that any group smaller than all Americans is “my people,” he’s the inappropriate individual for the position of Attorney General of the United States. Indeed!

Liberally Conservative appreciates your comments that abide by our guidelines:

Common Cause is an organization describes itself as:

“A nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to restoring the core values of American democracy, reinventing an open, honest and accountable government that serves the public interest, and empowering ordinary people to make their voices heard in the political process.”

Common Cause’s website bio of its president, Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, tells us that:

“Under Bob’s leadership, Common Cause is championing a number of critical issues and reforms, including the public funding of political campaigns at all levels, election reforms that make voting more accurate, secure and accessible, improved ethics at all levels of government, redistricting reform and a diverse and open media.”

Christian Hartsock of Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com writes that he recently took a two-day trip down to Palm Springs to attend an event called “Uncloaking the Kochs” hosted by Common Cause. Accompanied by his dear friend, former assembly candidate Alvaro Day, he traveled as an independent investigative journalist, and not in any official capacity on behalf of Big Government or Breitbart.com

Here is a nearly four-minute video you should watch demonstrating a Common Cause rally and their form of “civility.” A transcript of the video follows but you won’t believe your ears when you actually hear the statements.

First we hear from a twentysomething white woman holding forth:

“There’s a devastating influence in our country, and it’s coming from fear and anger and widespread misunderstanding of what’s actually causing the problems in our society. And I think that the racist Tea Party is one example of that, and it makes me feel ashamed to be an American.”

This is followed by clips of Hartsock’s other interactions with Common Cause ralliers, some transcribed below:

Hartsock: After we impeach Clarence Thomas, what do we do with him? Let’s keep it real.

Middle-aged white man with mustache: Put him in–put him in–put him back in the, um–put him back in the fields. I mean, he’s a scumbag.

Hartsock: Yeah!

Mustache: He’s a dumb sh– scumbag. Put him back in the fields!

Hartsock: But what about Alito?

Mustache: Alito should–Alito should go back to Sicily.

Hartsock: Yeah. But what about Fox News?

Mustache: Fox News? That’s a mis–misappropriation of the English language. There is no news on Fox.

Hartsock: So what do we do with them?

Mustache: Break Rupert Murdoch. Never–never give him a dime. I never turn on Fox, I never give a cent to Rupert Murdoch, and every day I vote with my dollars.

Hartsock: What do we do with Roger Ailes? What do we do with Roger Ailes?

Mustache: Roger Ailes should be strung up and–but, ah, I don’t know. Kill the bastard.

[Change of scene]

Hartsock: Justice for Anita Hill. What do we do?

Young woman with sunglasses and nose ring 1: We cut off his toes one by one and feed them to him. . . .

[Change of scene]

Hartsock: What do you say we do with Clarence Thomas after we impeach him?

Young woman with sunglasses and nose ring 2: Bad things.

Hartsock: Like what?

Nose ring 2: I dunno, ’cause I’m all about peace, but I would say torture.

[Change of scene]

Hartsock: [After] we impeach Clarence Thomas, what do we do with him?

MiddHartsock: And then what?

Squeaky: Start all over. Scalia, uh, who are the other a–h—s? I’m sorry.

Hartsock: No, it’s OK.

Squeaky: Yeah.

Hartsock: String ‘em up, eh?

Squeaky: String ‘em up.

Unidentified off-camera male voice: No Koch, no way!

Squeaky: Thomas–Thomas, his wife, Scalia, Roberts–oh my God!

[Change of scene]

Hartsock: After we impeach Clarence Thomas, what should we do with him?

Unidentified off-screen male voice: [unintelligible]

Young man with sunglasses: I don’t want to–

Young woman with unpierced nose: I can’t say that. I don’t want to be on camera saying that.

Hartsock: Saying what? You can say–you can say anything, we’re all friends.

Sunglasses: Hang him.

Here is a discussion with James Taranto and Jason Riley at the Wall Street Journal referencing Common Cause, Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas with issues and the Common Cause smear campaign:

Common Cause – Grassroots? NO – Bigots and Racists? YES – Indeed!

Liberally Conservative appreciates your comments that abide by our guidelines: