Common Sense: Public life

Who says no one follows Twitter? Linda Sarsour’s tweets were deemed so hateful by the New York Post that its longtime national correspondent Andrea Peyser actually filed a column entitled “Taxpayers should not be funding this anti-American hate-spewer.” Linda is active in politics, close to Mayor de Blasio, and has been profiled in the New York Times. That makes her a public figure.

All too many people in public life find out a high profile can often work against you when you are not careful with your words. It seems that a lot of people — including more than a few elected officials — are now really focused on Linda Sarsour’s activities and statements. And they are more than willing to go public with their discomfort.

Certainly, she has her defenders, but one thing is for certain. Headlines like the one mentioned above in the New York Post are not a good thing.

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Okay. Last week I was wrong. I predicted the Mets would take the National League Pennant against the Cubs in five games. As we all know, they did it in four — 36 innings of play in which I would suggest that the Mets might have had only three or four bad ones. Now that is amazing.

Now it’s on to Kansas City against the Royals, and the Mets are more than capable of winning it all. The Mets in six is my prediction.

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In pretty much anyone’s memory, the Democrats have only controlled the New York State Senate for a total of two years: 2009 and 2010. In just those two years, they did an enormous amount of damage. One of the worse pieces of legislation they passed became a central player in the terribly tragic story of the taking of a police officer’s life last week.

In 2009, over the unanimous objection of what was then a New York State Senate Republican minority, the Democrats created the diversion policy that played a key role in allowing Tyrone Howard, the accused murderer of  Police Officer Holder. back on to the streets, despite being arrested 28 times. At the same time, the Democrats in the State Senate voted to reduce mandatory prison sentences for many drug offenses and eliminate minimum sentences for others. And, of course, the Democrats who controlled the Assembly also had to approve this legislation with then-Governor Paterson signing it into law.

State Senator Marty Golden (whom I serve as chief of staff) was very vocal at the time in opposition. Republican Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis — who was not in the legislature at the time — has also strongly expressed her annoyance with the action by the legislature. Both in the name of public safety are calling for the repeal of this bad law and for the passage of a number of bills that are supported by law enforcement professionals. And both strongly believe we must return to allowing stop, question and frisk.

So the next time someone says, when it comes to public safety, liberals and conservatives both want safe streets, remind them that the liberals have, when allowed, been replacing strong public safety laws with their own ideas, with often bad results.

Jerry Kassar is the chairperson of the Kings County Conservative Party. He is a longtime community activist who has served as an officer or member of many organizations. He works for the state of New York.