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Patrick to Punks: Pull Your Pants Up!

My newspaper has kicked neophyte pol Deval Patrick around the block for idiotic moves right out the gate such as his lavish inaugural, leasing a Cadillac, using a State Police helicopter as a taxi, spending tens of thousands to re-do the Corner Office, proposing tax hikes and throwing the influence.  Old school tax-and-spend limousine liberal, who’s even embarrassing the hacks of the Masschusetts Legislature.

But today, he’s singing our tune:  

As the city struggles to deal with seemingly out-of-control youth crime, Gov. Deval Patrick has called on grownups to take responsibility for kids . . . and tell them to pull their pants up!

Patrick’s tough-love message came along with proposed spending cuts that critics say will harm anti-gang programs.

“I realize it’s a different time; it’s not the ’50s any more,” Patrick said yesterday, after addressing the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

“But every once in a while, when that adult says, ‘You know what? You’re not supposed to come to work with your pants down there’ . . . even when that kid rolls their eyes, they hear you. It gets through,” Patrick said.

Patrick, who grew up in a tough part of Chicago’s South Side, spoke during his gubernatorial campaign last year about a neighbor who used to discipline him and his friends as if they were her own children.

Yesterday, he urged adults to “starting acting like that unfamiliar kid is your own kid.”

His pull-up-your-pants philosophy showed instant results on the street with the low-slung jeans crowd yesterday.

“No way!” said 14-year-old Corey Prissey, when asked if he’d listen to adult guidance. But moments later, reflexively, he hiked up his low-riders.

There’s some squawking about the cuts to anti-gang programs. 

“It would be totally devastating to lose this money,” said Lew Finfer of the Massachusetts Communities Action Network, which is pushing the Legislature to restore in the upcoming state budget $11 million for programs run by law enforcement and community groups to combat bloodshed. “We’re in a period of continued gang violence that cities still have not been able to get on top of.”

Finfer praised Patrick’s proposal to hike summer job cash by $2 million and to fund the hiring of 250 more cops statewide, however.

Patrick’s public safety secretary, Kevin Burke, said that while the administration would have preferred to keep the grants, they were an unfortunate casualty of the $1.2 billion budget deficit. However, the cut “does not preclude thoughtful, fruitful discussions” with the Legislature about increasing anti-gang funding,” Burke said.

When you gotta cut, you gotta cut.  And as we’ve learned, you can throw all the money you want at a problem.  But if you don’t start with the basics, a little pull-your-pants-up love, you might as well just set a match to it.

Little more of that in the Middle East could go a long way.  The Arabs supposedly are a proud people, and not unlike Boston’s Roxbury and Dorchester, they are allowing a few thugs and punks call the shots. As in Boston, a big part of the problem is people who won’t talk to the cops.

Where’s the shame, and the personal responsibility? 

Topics: Boston

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:21 am on Thursday, March 29, 2007

2 Responses to “Patrick to Punks: Pull Your Pants Up!”

1. RebeccaH Says:
   March 29th, 2007 at 10:39 am

   Where’s the shame, and the personal responsibility?

   That got drowned out by the Self-Esteem Movement.

2. rightwingprof Says:
   March 29th, 2007 at 11:57 am

   The only anti-crime programs you need are to throw criminals in prison where they belong. If these are like the ones I’m familiar with (creative fingerpainting, music therapy, and other such manure), there can’t be enough cuts.

   Was that insensitive? Oh my.

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