D.C. Crime Bill: Pay People NOT to Commit Crimes

America’s going bonkers…contd.

The D.C. Council is voting on a bill Tuesday that includes a proposal to pay residents a stipend not to commit crimes. It’s based on a program in Richmond, California, that advocates say has contributed to deep reductions in crime there.

Under the bill, city officials would identify up to 200 people a year who are considered at risk of either committing or becoming victims of violent crime. Those people would be directed to participate in behavioral therapy and other programs. If they fulfill those obligations and stay out of trouble, they would be paid.

A reader wants to know what I think of such a bill. [Note: The bill did pass.]

Only in a society as crazy as ours has become, would such a bill see the light of day—and even make some sense, if you accept the absurd terms on which we now operate in this society.

Think about it. We already pay people not to work; it’s called welfare. We pay farmers not to grow crops; it’s called agricultural subsidies. We pay people not to plan for their retirement; it’s called Social Security. We pay people not to take responsibility for their medical care; it’s called Medicare, Medicaid or now Obamacare. The list goes on and on.

Leave it to places like Washington D.C. and California—two places where the growth of government goes on uncontested—to come up with a law to pay people not to commit crimes.

Any reasonable person can immediately sense the horrific injustice implied in such a law, although might feel powerless to identify it. One unspoken assumption of such a law? The criminal is not responsible for his or her actions. The criminal is a product of society, a victim of income inequality, a victim of racism, or the victim of all the other things the socialist majority (at least in California and D.C.) constantly claim people are victims of. Therefore, we must show them compassion by offering them bribes or incentives to act nicely.

Ironically, on this point, the law contradicts itself on its own terms. If you’re a helpless victim of society, then you’re not responsible for your choices in the first place, because your victim status renders it impossible for you to make choices. Yet the very same law rewards positive choices not to commit a crime. How can a poor, helpless victim of society both be capable of choice, and incapable of choice, at one and the same time? It’s just one more reason why leftist progressive socialism is not for the brainy, the intelligent or the critical thinkers; it’s only for the mindless.

This kind of law is no different from what we’ve done with Iran; we have bribed and paid them not to build a nuclear bomb. Of course, they continue to build a nuclear bomb, which they will absolutely use, or at least threaten to use, when and if they have one, because that’s what their intolerant, brutal religion has taught them to do, and that religion is in charge of their government. Ditto for ISIS, whom we also will bribe at some point, to please stop beheading, torturing and blowing people up, at least on our current foreign policy course.

The idea of bribing people not to murder, assault or steal from you is appalling to any reasonable person. But reasonable people also do not wish to be labeled racist or hateful, which will likely happen if you attempt to challenge such a law on its fundamentals. Because to challenge such a law, you have to make the claim that people are responsible for their actions. That’s the one thing reason requires, and yet our irrational lawmakers will never permit us to do.