As Calif. AG, Kamala Harris threatened parents of truant kids with jail time

As Calif. AG, Kamala Harris threatened parents of truant kids with jail time

What kind of president would Kamala Harris make? If history is any indication, she would be a tyrant but one happy in her work. A video from 2010 that has resurfaced shows Harris gleefully relating a story about threatening parents with jail time if their kids skipped school.

Making sure children receive a proper education should be a priority of government, but AG Harris’s prescription for dealing with truancy is a tad extreme. “I believe a child growing without an education is tantamount to a crime,” she told a crowd at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. “So I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy. As a prosecutor in law enforcement, I have huge stick. The school district as a carrot,” she bragged. “Let’s work together in tandem … to get those kids in school.”

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Poor Minority Families Targeted

Viewers were quick to point out that those most vulnerable to Harris’s over-zealous application of the law were low-income minority families. Another clip bears this out, as Harris is seen describing how she brought charges against a single homeless mother of three kids.

Harris may have been smiling when she recalled her prosecutorial abuse, but she wasn’t joking. In her inaugural speech as California Attorney General, she proclaimed, “We are putting parents on notice. If you fail in your responsibility to your kids, we are going to work to make sure you face the full force and consequences of the law.”

Jim Geraghty of the National Review points out that sometimes child truancy is not in the parent’s control. “Maybe there’s something in the water out here in Indian Wells, but am I soft on crime if I think a situation of a student’s chronic truancy probably needs a social worker, and not the state AG or local DA threatening to put the parents in jail?” he wrote. “How much teen truancy occurs with parental consent?”

Couldn’t Keep Her Own Office in Order

It’s remarkable to see Harris joyously working to jail parents who weren’t keeping an eye on their teenagers while recent reports suggest that as AG she ignored an accusation and lawsuit alleging sexual harassment by a top aide in her office.

That complaint involved “gender harassment” perpetrated against her aide’s former executive assistant, along with allegations that she was forced into “demeaning behavior.”

The case ultimately led to a $400,000 settlement and the resignation of that aide who had been described as one of Harris’ closest professional confidantes. Yet, the 2020 hopeful has feigned ignorance of the entire affair.

Harris doesn’t even know what one of her own confidantes is doing to women in her own office, but she thinks she has a right to jail parents for the things they might not know their children are (or aren’t) doing? The hypocrisy is strong here.

Cross posted at the Mental Recession

Rusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss is editor of the Mental Recession, one of the top conservative blogs of 2012. His writings have appeared at the Daily Caller, American Thinker, FoxNews.com, Big Government, the Times Union, and the Troy Record.

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