Political Quotes

“Madam President, I have come to this floor before for the same subject, but I now come to express my concerns once again about the rise in crime in America. Now I want to express what that rise in crime means for everybody if we don't stop it. If we don't act soon, and don't reverse the trend of tolerating crime, a generation of Americans will see the greatest cities fall once again into decay. We have seen it before, and it is not something that we want to see again. To stop it, we must allow the police to enforce the law and demand that prosecutors do their job. A couple of generations of Americans have now grown up not knowing how dangerous some of our biggest cities used to be. The two that come to mind are New York and Washington, DC. First, let's look at New York 20, 40 years ago. When asked what they think of Times Square in Manhattan, most younger Americans would probably say that it is a tourist trap. But it wasn't always that way. In the 1970s, Times Square was an open sore, filled with adult theaters, drugs, and rampant crime. Back then, the New York City subway looked like something from some dystopian horror movie. In other words, you avoided New York City subways if you could. Now, let's turn to Washington, DC, in the late 1980s. Its decay could almost be traced back entirely to one person. Just a few blocks from here where we are standing right now, a drug dealer named Rayful Edmond ran the most notorious crack cocaine operation in the country.…”