MDE: FROM THE ARCHIVES
This is a post from Saturday, but I wanted to leave it at the top for part of today.
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After reading Bill Bennett's horrible comments on abortion and race I was reminded of similar comments made by Tony Bouza, who was a DFL candidate for governor in 1994.
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Hatch calls Bouza hypocrite on crime -
Says ex-police chief talks tough, writes liberal
In the most negative attack thus far by a candidate in Minnesota's gubernatorial primary, DFL hopeful Mike Hatch on Thursday denounced former Minneapolis Police Chief Tony Bouza as "hypocrite" on issues of crime and punishment.
Quoting liberally from "The Police Mystique," a book that Bouza wrote after serving three terms as police chief of Minnesota's largest city, Hatch accused his rival of talking tough about crime during the campaign, despite advocating an extremely liberal philosophy toward criminals in his book.
Bouza doesn't take organized youth gangs seriously and doesn't believe that people who commit property crimes should be punished, Hatch said at a St. Paul news conference, where his candidacy was endorsed by state Rep. Steve Wenzel, DFL-Little Falls, the author of several major laws on crime and sentencing.
"I think the people of Minnesota deserve to know what Tony Bouza really thinks - what he's written on the subject of crime," said Hatch, a former DFL Party chair and state commerce commissioner. "He is taking us for `gullible Midwesterners' when he talks about giving us straight talk on issues. There are fundamental differences between Tony Bouza and myself regarding economic philosophy and crime. I hope that in the last month of this campaign, we can focus on these fundamental issues."
Bouza described Hatch's attack on him as "a desperate act, an attempt to shoot the front-runner" in the race for the DFL gubernatorial nomination. A recent Star Tribune/WCCO-TV Minnesota Poll showed Bouza narrowly leading a tight field of three DFL candidates, including Hatch and the party's endorsed candidate, state Sen. John Marty of Roseville.
"I have always been very tough on crime, in reality, in the trenches," Bouza said. He cited a 60 percent increase in street-crime arrests while he was police chief, and he took credit for creating a gang unit and police decoy unit during his stormy tenure.
But Hatch denied that he was simply taking aim at the leading candidate.
He decided to go after Bouza's public pronouncements on crime because the former police chief is trying to "masquerade" as the DFL's law-and-order candidate, he said.
By advocating capital punishment and stringent gun-control laws, Bouza is pushing the "hot buttons" on public perceptions of crime, Hatch said.
But, Hatch said, Bouza argued in his books that crime is the end result of a capitalist society run rampant, which causes an underclass to rebel, and that the way to deal with property crimes is to use probation and restitution, not punishment.
"His books indicate that the root cause of property crime is poverty" - a scenario in which the `have-nots' steal from the `haves,' Hatch said.
In fact, Hatch said, many property crimes are perpetrated by poor people against poor people.
"The increase in property crimes is the direct result of a society which has failed to value accountability and personal responsibility," he said.
Hatch also attacked Bouza for describing abortion in his writings as a "crime-prevention tool" that effectively reduces the number of potential street criminals.
"While I support a woman's right to make her own private decisions regarding abortion," Hatch said, "I totally reject and oppose any concept that abortion ought to be considered as a law-enforcement technique or as a form of social cleansing."
Bouza doesn't deny making the statement about the effects of abortion on crime, but he says it was an observation, not an endorsement of abortion as a racist and genocidal approach to controlling crime.
The U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States, has "resulted in 250,000 abortions among young teenage women who typically give birth to children who frequently are among those who cause serious problems for society," Bouza said Thursday.
"If half of them were male, that means that as many as 125,000 young men who might have been at very high risk of becoming street criminals did not in fact become criminals. I never advocated genocide or a racist approach." Source: Star Tribune, August 5, 1994
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After reading Bill Bennett's horrible comments on abortion and race I was reminded of similar comments made by Tony Bouza, who was a DFL candidate for governor in 1994.
##
Hatch calls Bouza hypocrite on crime -
Says ex-police chief talks tough, writes liberal
In the most negative attack thus far by a candidate in Minnesota's gubernatorial primary, DFL hopeful Mike Hatch on Thursday denounced former Minneapolis Police Chief Tony Bouza as "hypocrite" on issues of crime and punishment.
Quoting liberally from "The Police Mystique," a book that Bouza wrote after serving three terms as police chief of Minnesota's largest city, Hatch accused his rival of talking tough about crime during the campaign, despite advocating an extremely liberal philosophy toward criminals in his book.
Bouza doesn't take organized youth gangs seriously and doesn't believe that people who commit property crimes should be punished, Hatch said at a St. Paul news conference, where his candidacy was endorsed by state Rep. Steve Wenzel, DFL-Little Falls, the author of several major laws on crime and sentencing.
"I think the people of Minnesota deserve to know what Tony Bouza really thinks - what he's written on the subject of crime," said Hatch, a former DFL Party chair and state commerce commissioner. "He is taking us for `gullible Midwesterners' when he talks about giving us straight talk on issues. There are fundamental differences between Tony Bouza and myself regarding economic philosophy and crime. I hope that in the last month of this campaign, we can focus on these fundamental issues."
Bouza described Hatch's attack on him as "a desperate act, an attempt to shoot the front-runner" in the race for the DFL gubernatorial nomination. A recent Star Tribune/WCCO-TV Minnesota Poll showed Bouza narrowly leading a tight field of three DFL candidates, including Hatch and the party's endorsed candidate, state Sen. John Marty of Roseville.
"I have always been very tough on crime, in reality, in the trenches," Bouza said. He cited a 60 percent increase in street-crime arrests while he was police chief, and he took credit for creating a gang unit and police decoy unit during his stormy tenure.
But Hatch denied that he was simply taking aim at the leading candidate.
He decided to go after Bouza's public pronouncements on crime because the former police chief is trying to "masquerade" as the DFL's law-and-order candidate, he said.
By advocating capital punishment and stringent gun-control laws, Bouza is pushing the "hot buttons" on public perceptions of crime, Hatch said.
But, Hatch said, Bouza argued in his books that crime is the end result of a capitalist society run rampant, which causes an underclass to rebel, and that the way to deal with property crimes is to use probation and restitution, not punishment.
"His books indicate that the root cause of property crime is poverty" - a scenario in which the `have-nots' steal from the `haves,' Hatch said.
In fact, Hatch said, many property crimes are perpetrated by poor people against poor people.
"The increase in property crimes is the direct result of a society which has failed to value accountability and personal responsibility," he said.
Hatch also attacked Bouza for describing abortion in his writings as a "crime-prevention tool" that effectively reduces the number of potential street criminals.
"While I support a woman's right to make her own private decisions regarding abortion," Hatch said, "I totally reject and oppose any concept that abortion ought to be considered as a law-enforcement technique or as a form of social cleansing."
Bouza doesn't deny making the statement about the effects of abortion on crime, but he says it was an observation, not an endorsement of abortion as a racist and genocidal approach to controlling crime.
The U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States, has "resulted in 250,000 abortions among young teenage women who typically give birth to children who frequently are among those who cause serious problems for society," Bouza said Thursday.
"If half of them were male, that means that as many as 125,000 young men who might have been at very high risk of becoming street criminals did not in fact become criminals. I never advocated genocide or a racist approach." Source: Star Tribune, August 5, 1994
2 Comments:
And to think, John Marty got the nomination and was soundly roundhoused by the Moderate-Liberal Arne Carlson.
Yes, because comments made over a decade ago about something different by someone no longer in political life is CERTAINLY equivalent to what Bennett said. You can find something better than this, can't you?
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