Sunday, July 05, 2009

I'm gonna call this a symptom...

Six words that put our current governmental problems in a nutshell:
Marion "Cracklin'" Barry keeps getting elected.
That's right, there are enough voters in Washington, DC who are either sympathetic, apathetic, or just plain pathetic enough to ensure that a man who is a virtual caricature of a corrupt inner city politician, a man who in a more moral society would be horsewhipped from the public square by angry constituents, not carried into office by a plurality of eligible voters, remains the recipient of a government paycheck, despite a rap sheet longer than his resume.

23 comments:

Boyd said...

Fortunately for DC, these knuckleheads are no longer as widespread throughout the District. Back when there were enough of them across the entire city, Barry kept getting elected mayor.

His supporters aren't sufficiently numerous anymore, so he's confined to representing Ward 8 on the DC City Council. I suspect, however, Ward 8 will always have Barry representing them until he can't run for office for whatever reason.

Tam said...

Can he even legally vote for himself?

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

92% of the vote in ward 8. Ninety. Two.

Unknown said...

Criminals need representation in government, otherwise the system will ride roughshod all over them; "incarceration without representation", and all that. This is why criminals have civil rights and victims don't -- they have a more powerful lobby.

Still, this doesn't explain why criminals are found in public office at a large multiple of their natural rate of occurrence in the wild.

Carteach said...

I call it the system working. He is a proper representative for the kind of scum that would vote for him.
If we had a population of cannibal alien Dreen living in DC, then they could have their own rep too.

Matt G said...

It's good to have a good setup, after you find that "bitch set me up."

Anonymous said...

Embarrysing.

J, t R

IZinterrogator said...

I loved the part about how he was on probation for failing to pay his taxes, so when he failed to pay his taxes again, they just extended his probation. Seriously? What does the average citizen have to do to get on that crime/punishment plan?

Anonymous said...

I lived in DC from 1974 until Fall of 2008, This man is a scourge on The Nation's Capitol, he is the scum of the Earth, he plays the victim card and it does him well when he runs in a City in his Ward, where people are the poorest and mostly undereducated, time to put this sicko man where he belongs for good, at least out of politics and the spotlight, What a National Embarrassment to all the good folks in DC and yes, there are a few left!

Don said...

John Ross would say the guy probably represents a district where most of the voting populace is related to at least one habitual criminal--a son, a nephew, the family's unruly cousin. Ross wrote a pretty good essay once on why inner-city black voters opposed concealed carry and supported some specific gun controls, and his theory was that it wasn't about race, it was about their ability to picture what could happen to Cousin Billy.

It's not a thought without merit. Years ago a co-worker at a Ford dealership was discussing the case of a previous salesman who had lost the privilege of company cars for all by driving drunk the wrong way on the interstate and killing a van-load of college students.
"Yeah, that really woke me up, man," he told me, "but I mean, we've all done it. I've done it, you've done it, I mean--"
That's where I stopped him and told him I hadn't "done it." Ever. And that was a barrier to our understanding of each other, because his evaluation of the seriousness of what the man had done started from the basic foundation of his belief that driving that drunk was bad, and being unlucky enough to have someone die when you drove drunk was bad, but driving drunk was a rite of passage everyone goes through, and therefore not actually bad.

staghounds said...

And a truly held understanding of the world as a place where every single driver had driven drunk at least once.

HAVING SAID THAT, HE'S RIGHTER THAN HE KNOWS. THE MOST DIFFICULT THING ABOUT PROSECUTING A DUI CASE- AS OPPOSED TO A (sorry, lock on in error) child molesting or burglary, is that many jurors actually HAVE done the crime and see themselves in the defendant's place. The unspoken but difficult and necessary task is to convince the jurors that THIS drunk driving was different than theirs- as I often have said, that "I didn't drive THAT drunk."

Same problem with wife beatings, only many jurors have been uncomplaining victims too.

Anonymous said...

How much is enough? there is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?page_id=588

Douglas Hester said...

Ward 8 is Anacostia, where all of the projects are.

He'll never be voted out of office.

mariner said...

So what?

He's black.

WV: hylow

Tam said...

...and?

I assume you have a point, looming in the distance.

Anonymous said...

This guy is scum.
However, his "bros" keep him in office so (apparently) they apparently have no more scruples than this scum-sucker!

Anonymous said...

trash keeping trash elected. like they say "you can't fix stupid"

mts1 said...

"I believe in home rule, and you are entitled to all the lousy, crummy, graft-ridden government you are prepared to pay for." -- Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, March 6 2009, visit to Griffith High School auditorium.

And this is why places like Detroit, Gary, and D.C. will never recover until the people there change, and good luck on that. The officials have an I.Q. of 70 and are no more than street thugs because their voters are the same. It's a snake eating itself from the tail on up.

takomadc said...

The park police are the most criminal of all the DC police. there have been numerous complaints about their hiring and promotion practices as it relates to African Americans and women, they were called on this and were cited. Marion Barry had just returned from a date with this woman and was not stalking her. In fact Barrys date told the police not to say he was stalking her.
You should get out in the community /city and see why people like him instead of thinking that DC resident are knuckle heads. He has done more for the residents of DC than any other mayor and longtime DC residents know that. With all the gentrification going on in DC it is easy for a bunch of newcomers to voice unfounded rhetoric. Try looking at Cheney, Bush, and cleaning up Wall street before you open your pie holes.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Yeah, he did plenty to, er, for DC residents. At the expense of other DC residents, and federal taxpayers.

But I wouldn't expect someone from the People's Republic of Takoma Park to think that was evil.

Tam said...

"Try looking at Cheney, Bush, and cleaning up Wall street before you open your pie holes."

I used to have a little doll when I was a kid that said the same retarded things every time you pulled the string on its back. I often wondered what happened to that doll. I see it eventually learned to type.

Anonymous said...

He just obama writ small. As are thos ethat voted for him.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Tam for the win.