Al Taubenberger had a press conference today to release a bold policy statement. Someone else's bold policy statement. That was first put out several months ago.
Ok. I'll ignore for now the fact that the most substantive policy idea to come out of the Taubenberger campaign is a plan that John Perzel introduced in September 2006. The plan itself is more of the same "lets go to Harrisburg to take care of our problems by begging them for money since they won't give us the authority to make laws of our own." Those tactics may have worked in the past, but if this past primary has shown us anything, it has shown us that the same, tired, old promises about being able to "go to Harrisburg" and "go to Washington" and get money out of them have worn a little thin.
So let's take a closer look at Taubenberger's statement:
The plan calls for 10,000 new police officers to be distributed throughout the state with 1,345 coming to Philadelphia. While many feel stricter gun laws are the answer to quell the violence, Perzel believes the current laws need to be enforced first.
“The same laws were on the books when our murder rates were a fraction of what they are today,” Perzel said. “More than 80 percent of the killings in southeast Pennsylvania are committed by felons who should not have possessed a weapon under current law. If we can just enforce that law alone, there will be a dramatic decrease in violence.”
Both Taubenberger and Perzel agree - putting more police on the streets is the only way to enforce these laws.
To me, if a candidate is putting a quote from another elected official in his press release to demonstrate his support for that official, it means that he agrees with everything in the quote. Therefore, Taubenberger does not support one-gun-a-month legislation. Yet, according to statements he's made before, including at yesterday's Union League Forum, he also doesn't support aggressive policing (a.k.a. "stop and frisk" or "stop, think, don't carry" or whatever it's being called today) to get guns away from those who can't legally carry them.
So what are those 1,345 extra cops going to all day? Stand on street corners and with buckets and signs that say put your illegal gun here?