OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Wait. What?
The mayors of America’s cities small and large are holding a confab just two blocks from the White House but won’t enter its gates because the Justice Department wants them to fill out some forms.
Yep, the mayors, known collectively as the U.S. Conference of Mayors, gave President Trump the middle finger, and the absentee Democrats stood out because theirs were blue. In return, they risk him giving a swipe of the pen when he signs off on his infrastructure plan.
These are the mayors who claim they need to improve their cities’ infrastructure, but they’re no-shows.
They claim they want better roads, hospitals and schoolhouses.
They claim they need to put constituents, immigrants and not-so-desirables (i.e., illegal immigrants) to work on transit, airport, rail and bridge projects to pull in desirable revenue.
Yet, even though there are more of them and insiders at the Capital Hilton than the lone man who is president, they wimped out.
If they were scaredy cats who thought they’d get lost walking a short distance to the White House, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser could have strolled with them.
Oh, that’s right, Miss Bowser didn’t go either. She, too, takes offense at the sanctuary city stomp downs — albeit not because D.C. made the Justice Department’s 23-jurisdiction warning list.
As did New York’s Bill de Blasio, who didn’t want to go anyway. The Donald, a former Democrat, and Big Bill, a current Democrat, are not besties, and never will be.
As for the Big Easy’s Mitch Landrieu — president of the mayor’s group as his father, Moon, had been — he is ever mindful of how the levees broke and what still needs fixing in New Orleans. He said life will go on “with or without Washington’s help.”
Spoken like a good Democrat with a forked tongue.
“Local police departments don’t have the funding, training or equipment to fully protect our country from terrorists,” Mr. Landrieu said not long ago. “We need more police officers on the streets with tools to do both community policing and homeland security support.” In other words, state and federal dollars and support.
As the jack-in-the-box can be deliciously startling, politics can be deliciously bedeviling. The former led the mayors to immediately pounce on the breaking news from the Justice Department. The latter could leave the mayors in a devil of a predicament regarding their infrastructure to-do lists.
Now that the mayors have tied one hand behind their backs, the fight for federal dollars will be more difficult than they imagined.
⦁ Deborah Simmons can be contacted at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
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