If all politics are local, then nothing is more local that what happens to our homes and to those of us neighbors. Louisvillians are scared about their homes being robbed during broad daylight. The common law definition of burglary specifies that the criminal break into and enter the home at night time. This current rash of break-ins, however, occurs between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. It is this brazenness that has put people on edge.
It was inevitable, really. Our unemployment has hovered around ten percent for two years now. That figure does not begin to count the people who would like to return to work, people who have given up looking and certain races and ages for whom the rate is actually much higher.
Recessions cause crime to increase. Those of us old enough to have lived through previous recessions know this. Here's what is different: the Obama recession -- though we are told it ended in the Recovery Summer -- shows no sign of abating, even after two long years.
Those voters who have jobs are scared that they will lose them. Voters who own a home worry that its value has dropped so far that they could not sell the house if that becomes necessary. People are afraid to spend because they don't know, for example, if their taxes will go up 20 percent on December 31 when the Bush tax cuts expire.
And now those homes -- for many, their largest asset -- no longer feel safe even during the day due to the rising number of thefts. Increasingly desperate people are taking increasingly desperate risks, attempting more audacious crimes.
Here's an example from Louisville's East End. Last week, a senior citizen was out walking when she noticed an unfamiliar, dilapidated car with its trunk open, backed up to a neighbor's garage. This neighborhood had experienced a half dozen daytime break-ins recently, so she called the woman of the house on her cell to see if they were having work done on the home. They were not. The man of the house -- also a senior citizen -- then raced home. The criminal abandoned the pile of goods he was about to steal and took off. The home owner tried to chase the car. It got away, but police now have the license number.
The bad news is that this foiled crime was unnconnected to the previous thefts in the neighborhood. This is no longer a situation of one brazen robber, but rather a pattern of conduct that is being repeated all over the East End, and perhaps all over the 3rd Congressional District.
John Yarmuth did not cause the break-ins, of course. But he has voted for a system of policies that have prolonged and exacerbated this recession. People are desperate -- so much so, that they take the extraordinary risk of robbing homes in neighborhoods and at times of day when senior citizens are walking their dogs and young mothers are pushing their babies in strollers.
The policies of Yarmuth, Reid, Pelosi and Obama have contributed to a lawlessness that has boiled over into neighborhoods unused to such conduct.
It should be noted that the elderly woman who spotted the break-in while out walking -- she has put a big Todd Lally sign in her yard.
And that house where the robbery was foiled -- there is now a "Repeal Yarmuth" sign in the yard. That senior citizen who chased the robber is backing Todd Lally.
Nothing energizes a voter like fear caused by failed government policies passed by clueless elites.
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