Thread: Clinton proposes 100,000 new police officers on streets

Clinton proposes 100,000 new police officers on streets

She promotes a $4-billion-a-year anti-crime package while visiting a rough Philadelphia neighborhood with mayor. In Indiana, Obama attacks big corporate salaries.

By Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
10:29 AM PDT, April 11, 2008

WASHINGTON -- New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, campaigning for president in a neighborhood of Philadelphia so rough the mayor said, "Osama bin Laden wouldn't last here," pitched a $4-billion-a-year anti-crime package today that would put 100,000 new police officers on the streets and help stem the tide of repeat offenders back into the country's prisons.

Claiming that her husband's administration "reduced crime to historic lows" in the 1990s, Clinton argued that "we have to get back to doing what we know works."

"I'm old-fashioned about that," she told a group at a YMCA gymnasium. "I think you should actually look for solutions to problems -- find out what works and execute. Enough with the talking, enough with the speeches, enough with the rhetoric."

Clinton said her program would include $1 billion for states that want to participate in anti-recidivism efforts through education, job training and drug rehabilitation. She also urged the end of the five-year term for crack users, who are disproportionately black, because the law punishes them more harshly than powder cocaine users, who are predominantly white.

"President Bush could have built on the successes of the 1990s," she said, but instead he "slowly but surely chipped away at all of the building blocks."

Mayor Michael Nutter, who has pledged to reduce crime in Philadelphia, where there were 392 homicides last year, introduced Clinton by saying many of his constituents were more worried "about al Gangster than al Qaeda."

While Clinton pitched anti-crime measures in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22, rival Barack Obama took aim at big corporate salaries. On day three of his four-day tour through Indiana, which holds its primary May 6, the Illinois senator called on Congress to pass legislation he has sponsored that would require corporations to give shareholders a non-binding vote on executive compensation packages.

"This isn't just about expressing outrage," Obama said. "It's about changing a system where bad behavior is rewarded so that we can hold CEOs accountable, and make sure they're acting in a way that's good for their company, good for our economy, and good for America, not just good for themselves."

Arguing that "something's wrong" when chief executives walk away from collapsed companies while workers lose their pensions, Obama said: "We need to do something to change it. We're going to make CEOs more accountable to shareholders, take away tax credits to companies shipping jobs overseas [and] roll back Bush tax cuts on wealthiest Americans."

Earlier today, Obama said that the current scheme of public financing of presidential elections is "creaky" and antiquated, as more and more Americans donate to individual campaigns via the Internet rather than through the $3 taxpayer check-offs to the public system.

"It is creaky and needs to be reformed if it is going to work," Obama told reporters this morning. "We know that the check-off system has been declining in participation, and as a consequence, the amount of money raised through the public finance system may be substantially lower than the amount of money that can be raised through small donations over the Internet."

No major party nominee has opted out of public financing since the reforms of the post-Watergate era. And Obama, who raised $40 million in March and has more than $234 million from about 1.3 million donors since his campaign began, said he would like some form of public financing to remain.

But this week he told supporters that his campaign has created "a parallel public financing system," setting off speculation about his intentions. Today he said he "wasn't trying to send a signal" about whether he plans to opt out of public financing if he wins the nomination.

"What I was trying to suggest was that through the Internet and the enthusiasm of this campaign, we've created a model for being able to compete at the highest levels of politics without being dependent on big-moneyed interests," Obama said. "And I think that's a real positive." Asked why he had not checked off the public financing option on his income tax return, Obama called it "an oversight" by his accountant.

Noting that if he "would like to see a system preserved," Obama said if he wins the nomination he plans to confer with presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) about "how to move forward in a way that doesn't allow third parties to overwhelm the system."

In response, the McCain campaign said it would hold Obama to his commitments. "We will always welcome an open discussion with Barack Obama, but he has clearly committed to public financing in the general election should he win his party's nomination, and we expect him to keep his word," said Tucker Bounds, a campaign spokesman. Referring to Obama's best-seller, Bounds added, "Any hedging or clever language from Sen. Obama seems more like something you would read in a predatory home loan, not the 'Audacity of Hope.' "

Elsewhere in Indiana, fire destroyed a Clinton campaign office in Terre Haute, where Fire Department spokesman John Gardner said two people escaped and that nothing so far indicated arson. "We're doing a full investigation on it like any other commercial structure fire," he said.

A volunteer firefighter driving past the building in a commercial district along U.S. 41 south of the city's downtown spotted flames on the roof shortly after midnight and warned those inside, Gardner said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 2184.story

100,000 more cops on the streets. Sounds good until it comes out to 1 more cop per county maybe? Who's going to pay for this? Are they going to go after illegal alien criminals or protect them as they are now?

Obama is clueless! He talks about not rewarding "bad behaviour" of CEO's, but it's ok to reward the illegal aliens and gangbangers, right? I say put the CEO's in jail and deport the illegals!

We wouldn't need 100,000 more cops if this country would follow its laws a deport ALL illegals.

Originally Posted by CindyB

We wouldn't need 100,000 more cops if this country would follow its laws a deport ALL illegals.

Yeah, at 30% of the crimes reported being done by illegals here-we wouldn't NEED more cops in my opinion...