May 4, 2015

Fox's Chris Wallace apparently got the memo with the GOP's latest talking points for the week on Baltimore. It's amazing how Wallace sounds exactly like his fellow Fox host Eric Bolling, or House Speaker John Boehner, isn't it? You can give them credit for one thing. Once they get their marching orders they all fall in line like a bunch of lemmings.

Here's one everyone could see coming a mile away as soon as Rep. Donna Edwards' name appeared as one of the guests on this weekend's Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE: OK. Well, let's talk about that, because whenever have you riots, people talk about the underlying conditions. And there's no question that Baltimore, the city of Baltimore, has serious problems. Let put them on the screen.

The violent crime rate is four times the national average. Unemployment in Freddie Gray's neighborhood in Baltimore was 21 percent. Seventy-two percent of eighth graders score below proficient in math.

Now, a lot of people, frankly, conservatives, have pointed out that Baltimore has not had a Republican mayor in 50 years. Is it unfair to say that the liberal policies have failed the city of Baltimore?

EDWARDS: No. I think it's unevenly spread. I mean, I would say, for example, with our schools, just prior to the Freddie Gray incident, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was actually prevailing upon our Republican governor to release money for school funding.

When you have schools that are operating in the 20th century, and we're trying to prepare our children for the 21st century, even those children know they are not educated in the right way. I think that that is a baseline for how we can revitalize communities so that it's not -- we're not investing in economic development only in the areas where we get tax abasements but we're investing in other areas in the community, our small businesses and our education system and job retraining.

WALLACE: But, Congresswoman, if I may, it's not a matter of money. One of the things that we learned this week is Baltimore spends the third highest although per capita on its public school. Baltimore was already spending plenty on public school and the schools were still lousy.

EDWARDS: Well, I mean, there's uneven spending in the public schools. And I would say to you -- I mean, even the school that let out where the riots first began, there was a student who was interviewed who said, I'm looking at a book that's 20 years old. How does that prepare her for the 21st century?

So, I think we have a lot of questions to ask. They're not just -- they're not questions that are only for Republicans. They're questions for Democrats and Republicans about where we're going to make investments in our communities so the only investment we make isn't on the back end on law enforcement.

Never mind decades of trickle-down on your head right wing economic policies that have impoverished their parents and bad trade policies that have shipped jobs overseas, and a race to the bottom on wages and union busting. No, let's blame liberals for what's wrong in our cities because we have Democratic mayors. Never mind how many of them are dealing with the economic policies of their Republican governors.

Nice "fair and balanced" act you've got going there Wallace.

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