By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

Ever since the killing of George Floyd America has been consumed over the policing of inter-city communities, but virtually no attention has focused on how these cities are governed.

The leaders of U.S. cities consistently place the problems they face at the feet of President Trump.  The media either by incompetence or blind loyalty to the Democratic Party fails to report or ask U.S. city mayors why these problems persist considering all these cities have been run by Democrats for decades.  Atlanta as an example has not had a Republican mayor since 1879.

Almost all of these Democratic controlled cities have a strong-mayor system of governance.  This means the mayor and the city council have direct control on who is appointed and serves on many boards and commissions.  This includes city school boards!

Before the killing of George Floyd, cities across America have enacted bail reform with New York State overhauling its bail law in April 2019 which reduced the number of crime’s judges can set bail for.  Here is a full listing of all the crimes which fall under the bail reform law recently passed in New York State.

WCBS-TV (CBS 2) Urban Affairs Expert Mark Peters regarding bail reform, “They eliminated bail but they never put in the safeguard we need of allowing a judge to assess dangerousness and the result is we’ve got some glaring loopholes that will go into effect,”

Peters continued, “So someone can walk up to someone on the street punch them in the face and if they haven’t done lasting physical injury there’s no bail available… they’ll be let out that day they can go punch someone the next day.”

In the recent months since Floyd’s death the Democratic Party’s progressive wing has been trying to defund city police departments by substantially reducing the law enforcement budget.

Not only are cities and states defunding police departments they are currently releasing prisoners because of the coronavirus.  Now states and cities have begun passing bail reform, Democrats have continued to demonize law enforcement, then add the de-fund police department movement, we are now witnessing the substantial increases in crime.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr delivered remarks during the announcement of Operation Legend which stated, “On one recent weekend in Chicago, more than 60 people were shot – 14 of them fatally.  The murder rate in Chicago is up 48 percent over last year.  In New York City, where the mayor has agreed to strip $1 billion from the police department, the murder rate is up 25 percent.  Murder is up 42 percent in New Orleans.  Albuquerque, New Mexico, had a record 82 homicides last year and is on pace to exceed that record this year.  In Kansas City, there have already been 100 homicides this year, a 40 percent increase from the same time last year.”

Many of these cities have been run by Democrats for decades; the policies they have enacted have had a severe impact on the black and Hispanic communities they intended to help.  But this isn’t the only issue facing American cities!

At his contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing Barr stated, “At the same time, I think it would be an oversimplification to treat the problem as rooted in some deep-seated racism generally infecting our police departments. It seems far more likely that the problem stems from a complex mix of factors, which can be addressed with focused attention over time.”

Barr continued to comment, “When a community turns on and pillories its own police, officers naturally become more risk averse and crime rates soar. Unfortunately, we are seeing that now in many of our major cities. This is a critical problem that exists apart from disagreements on other issues. The threat to black lives posed by crime on the streets is massively greater than any threat posed by police misconduct. The leading cause of death for young black males is homicide. Every year approximately 7,500 black Americans are victims of homicide, and the vast majority of them – around 90 percent – are killed by other blacks, mainly by gunfire. Each of those lives matter.”

As crime spirals out of control, many district attorneys and aspiring candidates have benefited and continue to benefit from the generous donations from liberal billionaire George Soros organization.  Both Soros and other liberal organizations have sought to reshape the criminal justice system by implementing progressive socialistic reforms.

Soros sponsored district attorneys have either released or openly stated they will not prosecute any rioters who have damaged or destroyed property, or committed acts of violence during demonstrations.  These same Soros backed district attorneys have emphatically stated they will not prosecute anyone for quality of life crimes such as petty theft offenses.

San Francisco, New York and Seattle are an example of this new wave of district attorney’s, and as a result crime has skyrocketed in these cities.

These newly elected district attorneys have begun to initiate no-bail for almost all crimes, advocating for lower incarceration rates for most crimes, and are cracking down on police misconduct.   In New York City, recent changes by the city council dictate how an arrest can be made and how forceful the officer can be in making an arrest.  If an officer violates this new change they can be criminally prosecuted, this has led to substantial drops in criminal arrest and a massive increase in crime.

These new district attorneys who have been bankrolled by Soros have instituted practices that have sharply reduced prosecutions and incarcerations, but the net result violent crime has skyrocketed.

Soros, through the Justice & Public Safety PAC and other groups, has been spending millions of dollars on prosecutorial races in recent years, with a number of beneficiaries making headlines since their elections.

One example is the City of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, received substantial funding by Soros for her campaign. This drew national criticism after her office decided to bring felony charges against Mark and Patricia McCloskey.  This was after the McCloskey’s defended themselves from hundreds of protesters who broke through an iron gate where signs clearly stated “No Trespassing” and “Private Street,” and were openly hostile to them.

Another high-profile prosecutor who has been backed by Soros in the past is Cook County, Ill. State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Foxx drew national attention when she dismissed all charges against actor Jussie Smollett, who had been accused of faking a hate crime against himself.  The case was re-opened by a special prosecutor appointed by a Chicago judge who then filed new charges.

The Soros campaign is to re-shape the criminal justice system, by radically overhauling local district attorney offices and by electing progressive prosecutors.  For example, Soros has accomplished much of this in cities such as electing San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin who has advocated and supported the movement to defund the police.

Other District attorneys who are part of Soros strategy are Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner and Suffolk County, Mass., DA Rachael Rollins, located primarily in Boston have received substantial support.

Unfortunately this doesn’t make the news and Democrats never mention this or are asked by a complicit media!  Without safe neighborhoods you will never have economic development, but Democratic socialistic polices over the years have made the lives of black and Hispanic families worse not better.

The surest way out poverty is a solid education; unfortunately all the attention has been on policing in the inner-city neighborhoods.  With all the focus on policing, literally nothing has been done about the state of the dysfunctional U.S. public education system.  This despicable failure has led to an enormous educational achievement gap in black and Hispanic children who often attend public funded city schools; this is because these children and their parents have no other choice.

Far too often the rallying cry has been that “Black Lives Matter,” but if this is the case why do black and Hispanic children have the most dismal educational achievement gaps?

As I learned in my youth from my father who never achieved education beyond the 5th grade, he instilled in his children that the surest way out of poverty is get a solid education.   One only has to exam the National Assessment of Education Progress and the dismal progress of black and Hispanic children.  Over 70% of black and Hispanic children cannot do English or math to grade level.  The media fail to mention this or press Democrats on this issue since they have controlled the major U.S. cities for decades.

If you look across America at the cities of St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Newark, Buffalo and Philadelphia all of them are governed by liberal Democrats.  If one does just a basic internet search they would find that many of these cities haven’t had a Republican mayor in over sixty some years, with some dating back to the late 1800’s.

Don’t expect the educational opportunities for black and Hispanic children to get better under a Biden administration, or that their schools will improve if Joe Biden becomes president.

The Democratic Party has sealed its fate by aligning itself with the powerful teachers union who oppose any and all charter schools or any form of school choice for black and Hispanic children who are forced to attend chronically failing schools.

According to Opensecrets.org almost all of the teacher’s union’s donations go exclusively to Democratic candidates and liberal causes.

The Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force double downs its strong unwavering support of the status quo by reinforcing its commitment to public schools, and its strong opposition to charter and private schools.

In the unity task force document its states, “we have learned that there must be guardrails on them if they are to receive federal funds.”  Biden and Democrats don’t want “guardrails” they want to use any mechanism they can to prevent the expansion of charter schools no matter that black and Hispanic families favor them and are retaining from them.

This unity task force document put out by Biden contains this proposal: “Require that federal funding for charter schools in any district be conditioned on a district’s review of the financial and academic impact of a new charter school or a charter school that wants to expand on that district or neighborhood. The Education Department would have the ability to deny federal funding for charter(s) if the district’s analysis shows that it is (1) financially distressed or (2) the charter would systematically under-serve the neediest students.”

A Federal Department of Education staffed by appointees of Joe Biden would find every conceivable metric, use every bureaucratic mechanism to withhold any federal funds for charter schools, and severally weaken if not eliminate any existing charter schools.

Wall Street Journal Deputy Editor Daniel Henninger remarked, “The outlook for school-choice programs would be more dire. These programs, which depend on private philanthropy from liberals and conservatives, have been a godsend for inner-city parents desperate to get their kids out of chaotic public schools and into explicitly values-conscious Catholic schools—such as the Partnership Schools system in New York City and Cleveland—or Jewish and secular private schools.”

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, recently announced the closure of 20 Catholic schools, now these students will have to attend the dysfunctional New York School system.  As these students re-enter the New York School system, they will be facing a system where only 30% of black and Hispanic children are able to do English or math to grade level far below their white or Asian peers.

An example of the impact of charter schools verse public schools, the Manhattan Institute reported that on the 2018 exams, the percentage of New York City charter students who scored proficient or better exceeded the average for all other public schools in the state by 12.8 percentage points in ELA and by 15.8 percentage points in math.

Jason Riley a Wall Street Journal columnist and Manhattan Institute Fellow wrote that with the majority of students returning for the 2019-20 school year, the majority of the students can’t do basic reading or math, according to state standardized test results released last week. And the numbers get even more depressing when broken down by race and ethnicity. Black and Hispanic students make up 67% of the system, while whites and Asians are about 15% and 16%, respectively. Only 28% of black students passed the math exam, versus 33% of Hispanics, 67% of whites and 74% of Asians. On the English exam, the passage rates were 68% for Asians, 67% for whites, 37% for Hispanics and 35% for blacks.

Democrats routinely sound the alarm of income inequality and racial injustice, but their own education and economic polices contribute to the low educational achievements of black and Hispanic students.

Black families loved the District of Columbia scholarship program that originated in 2003 with federal funding that gave scholarships to low income children in Washington D.C.  This scholarship covers the tuition and other expenses at private schools.  One of the first official acts by President Obama was to allow this scholarship program to expire in 2009; it was reauthorized under an additional government program but was eventually defunded in 2011.

It’s ironic that Obama ended this scholarship program that would allow low-income mostly black children to receive a scholarship to attend a private school when his two children have attended the most prestigious private schools in both Chicago and Washington D.C.  I guess private schools are good for Obama and his family just not yours!

Even Joe Biden was able to send his children to a prestigious private Catholic high school where the tuition was close to $29,000 per year. Private school was good for his children but for black and Hispanic children you have to attend the failing public American school system.

Once he assumed the presidency in 2017, President Trump reversed Obama’s policy on the D.C. scholarship program.  The disturbing aspect Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser consistently spars with Trump but she is never asked why is that over 70% of black students cannot do English or math to grade level?  Considering the last Republican mayor of Washington D.C. was in 1910.

Crime isn’t the only problem facing American cities, dysfunctional socialist Democratic polices that perpetrate failed educational achievement for black and Hispanic children.  Democrats are never asked this nor has the media reported on the failure of urban American cities that have been run by Democrats for decades.

Democrats always claim systematic racism such as Stacy Torres an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, San Francisco who wrote a commentary in CalMatters on the chasm of two cities Alameda and East Oakland.  One prospers and the other sinks in misery.

Torres states “East Oakland reflects systemic racism that harms residents’ health with polluted air, food deserts, violence, inadequate health care, substandard housing and toxic stress. Such structural inequities cause higher rates of asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart and lung disease, increasing the risk of Covid-19 complications and death.”

What Torres doesn’t mention nor does the media follow up on is that Oakland has been governed by Democrats for the last 56 years.  Maybe one needs to ask Democrats why do your polices keep black and Hispanic families enslaved to a lifetime of poverty?