Ultra-Quickies: Maybe NYC Deserves What It’s Getting

     At least, one might conclude thus from this episode.

     Manhattan, whose “official” name is New York County, was once known as “the place so nice you have to say it twice.” And for a brief time – the Giuliani and Bloomberg years – it lived up to that designation. No longer.

     Have I mentioned that I favor making rape a capital offense? Well, I do. Time was, it was a hanging crime just about everywhere in the West. But don’t expect the black racialist mouthpieces to cotton to the idea – and they have more influence over the de Blasio Administration than anyone else in the Big Apple.

The New Abnormality

     New York Post columnist Bob McManus has penned a piercing indictment of the de Blasio and Cuomo Administrations:

     You say you didn’t like stop-and-frisk? Well, how do you like duck-and-cover?

     Stop-and-frisk was a front-line NYPD safe-streets policy for two decades. So was broken-windows policing. As were the flying squads of anti-crime cops. They’re all gone now. Perhaps you think New York is better off without them?...

     This new darkness isn’t a random, natural malevolence — unpredictable, unavoidable and thus demanding no accountability. It’s the result of a deliberate unstitching of arguably the most sophisticated and successful anti-crime strategy ever implemented in this nation....

     All that is history now. The de Blasio administration dismantled a winning strategy, one element at a time, and the results are clear: New York is not Chicago — 77 shot, 14 dead over the holiday — but it’s careering in that direction.

     New York, city and state, has been hard at work disassociating crime and punishment for some time now — and bragging on it.

     Please read it all. McManus allows that the policing practice of stop-and-frisk was “Imperfect and prone to overzealous application.” Indeed, it was Constitutionally dubious, but made mandatory by other Constitutionally dubious ordinances that infringe on the law-abiding citizen’s right to go armed. Those ordinances guaranteed that the law-abiding citizen would be unarmed, whereas one already minded to break the law would carry whatever armament he thought he could get away with. Stop-and-frisk was the response to that imbalance...and in the context of New York City, it worked.

     The rash of shootings and other felonious crimes has been made possible by the termination of stop-and-frisk, in combination with New York’s hostility to private firearms and the Cuomo Administration’s removal of bail requirements for those accused of “non-violent” offenses.

     Chessplayers will tell you: a bad decision will often give rise to other bad decisions...to “justify” them. In the argot of the game, “one lemon leads to another.”

     The deep thinkers who hailed de Blasio’s and Cuomo’s moves are strangely silent just now. Regret for the policies that have elicited such carnage? None. Expressions of responsibility for the deaths and other losses? None. As Glenn Reynolds has observed, “The left is always blaming its enemies for people’s deaths, but never takes responsibility for the people it kills.” Nor is there much chance that the pernicious policies will be reversed; politicians don’t often allow that they’ve erred.

     Extortionate taxes and fees, stifling regulations, intrusive state and local governments, a welcome mat for illegal aliens...and a complete lack of citizen security. This is the Empire State in the year of Our Lord 2020. It’s why I’m preparing to get out.

     Yet Andrew Cuomo has been mentioned in connection with the presidency. It is to laugh.

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     The Declaration of Independence states explicitly that governments exist to secure the people’s rights: “to effect their happiness and safety.” Maybe the political elite tried to squelch our celebration of the Independence Day just behind us because there was too great a danger that we would remember that passage. It’s worth a spot of thought. Why pay taxes or observe a plethora of laws and regulations if there is no increment to our happiness and safety – indeed, if the net consequence is both less happiness and less safety? Not too long ago, the worthy Ace of Spades had a few thoughts of that sort:

     The cops have decided to make us each fight for our own lives.
     There is no help coming but self-help.
     So what the fuck do you expect us to do? Just... go along with any street vigilante who decides to subject us to an involuntary, physically-coerced struggle session?
     Just say, "Ah well, the permanent brain damage I suffer from this savage gang-assault is a small price to pay for the cause of ending White Supremacy?"
     Fuck you. That's false imprisonment -- and people are allowed to use a reasonable amount of force to free themselves from it.
     This is getting very dangerous. People have no choice but to resort to self-help -- force -- to defend themselves, and they're going to start doing so.
     And don't count on having a lot of SJWs on the jury to convict them for defending their lives.

     I’ve been saying this – typically with regard to the ongoing race war – for some time. If the Big Apple precedes the rest of the country in this manner, I suppose it will just be another “first” for the City That Never Sleeps. But I don’t expect New York City to be alone in this for long.

     If you reside in a major American city, this is reality for you right now. If a major American city is within an hour’s driving distance of you, you don’t have long to wait. Prepare yourselves.

Ruled By Criminals Part 2: Your Papers, Please!

     Everyone has secrets, right? Everyone has done something he’d rather that others never know. And everyone has motives that are, on the odd occasion, less than perfectly praiseworthy.

     But ought we to allow high officials and government agencies to have secrets? To allow people with power over you to have secrets seems illimitably dangerous. Governments and those within them wield coercive force. They claim immunity from penalty for the use of that force, under a notion that goes back to the days of the absolute monarch: “sovereign immunity.”

     Of course, in the Land of the Formerly Free, that immunity vanishes if it turns out that the official had exceeded his authority, or had used it for venal purposes. Such instances expose the official to the same sort of indictment and trial that a commoner would face. However, as long as the official can credibly claim to have been honestly mistaken – perhaps misled by others with lower motives than his – he’ll get away with just about any infamy. The same goes for cops.

     What endangers the corrupt or tyrannical official beyond all else is his paper trail. If there are records that would expose his corruption or tyranny, he will take pains to conceal them – to destroy them, if it lies within his power. The possibility of having them officially classified as secrets is often his best defense.

     And what have we here?

     Joe Biden’s sexual assault accuser, Tara Reade, is calling for the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee and former senator to authorize the University of Delaware to release locked-away staff records pertaining to his 36 years in the Senate.

     In interviews this week, she said these records may contain the official complaint form she filed after Biden allegedly sexually assaulted her in 1993.

     “I’m calling for the release of the documents being held by the University of Delaware that contain Biden’s staff personnel records because I believe it will have my complaint form, as well as my separation letter and other documents,” she said Tuesday to Fox News.

     “Maybe if other staffers that have tried to file complaints would come to light — why are they under seal? And why won’t they be released to the public?”

     How can we permit evidence of a sexual assault – a United States Senator’s digital penetration of an unwilling woman! – to be “sealed away” for any reason? What’s the rationale for “sealing” paperwork that lodges complaints against powerful officials? Isn’t this the exact reverse of the rule of law?

     Yes, I’m laughing too.

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     Of course, the antiquated notion that no one is above the law fell into desuetude some time ago. These days “the rule of law” is merely a bit of rhetoric one side of an argument occasionally finds useful as a bludgeon or a distraction. It has no real force when a member of the political elite comes under public scrutiny.

     Remember Barack Hussein Obama’s success at concealing all record of his years at Columbia University? Assuming he was ever there in reality, that is. No one who was there during his supposed years in attendance could remember him at all: not professors, not staffers, and not classmates. His matriculation records would have been of great interest to the public…but Columbia claimed it could not release them without Obama’s assent, which (of course) he withheld.

     Perhaps this only works in one direction. When Obama first ran for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, his initial Republican opponent was Jack Ryan, a man of many achievements and sterling character. However, Ryan had one weak point: he’d once been married to starlet Jeri Ryan, she of the impressive bosom and minimal acting talent. The two had gone through a contentious divorce. The records of that divorce were sealed by mutual consent under a judge’s order, to protect their children from a barrage of innuendo…but Obama’s handmaidens in the Illinois press persuaded a judge to open them. The consequences included Ryan’s withdrawal from the race and the unaccomplished and relatively unknown Obama’s election over emergency replacement Republican candidate Alan Keyes.

     It appears that some public figures have a right to conceal their records that others lack.

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     The degree of evil that occurs under official seal cannot be accurately known. It can only be estimated from what manages to seep out through those seals. While that’s a greater amount today than ever before, we cannot reliably infer from it how much (or how serious) remains safely concealed. There may be little or there may be much.

     All of it, whatever its volume or magnitude, rests on the notion that a public official is allowed to keep secrets the rest of us could never manage to conceal. Under that scheme a man who was for 36 years a United States Senator, the chairman of several important committees including the Senate Judiciary Committee, and is now a major party’s nominee for the presidency, just might get away with rape. To thrust your fingers into the orifice of an unwilling woman is rape; be in no doubt about it. If records of Tara Reade’s complaint against Biden still exist, they would constitute nearly irreproachable confirmation of the event. But we are being denied all knowledge of them.

     Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee vacillates over whether it must offer the American electorate Joseph Biden as its candidate for the most powerful office in the world. Stay tuned.

     (For further criminality behind a veneer of public service, see this tale of the FBI’s deliberate entrapment of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, and the subsequent concealment of the evidence that would exonerate him.)

Quickies: A Few Gedankenexperiments

     Hold on tight, Gentle Reader: we’re about to go adventuring. Linda’s citation below has charged my capacitors, and I feel a great need to discharge them. So here we go.

     First: Imagine that, by techniques of investigation and correlation that are effectively beyond reproach, a government were to determine that all the crime in its jurisdiction was being committed within a single, well defined sector. ALL the crime, not just most of it. Where would that government be best advised to send its police assets? Would there be any rationale for spreading those assets evenly over its entire jurisdiction?

     Second: Imagine that by the irreproachable techniques mentioned above, the government were to determine that all the crime in its jurisdiction was being committed between certain hours: say, between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM. How would that government be best advised to schedule its police assets? Would there be any rationale for distributing those assets uniformly around the clock?

     Third and most upsetting: Imagine that by the irreproachable techniques mentioned above, the government were to determine that all the crime in its jurisdiction was being committed by persons of a particular race or religion. How would that government be best advised to allocate its investigative assets? Would there be any rationale for investigating persons of all races / religions?

     Go ahead: call me whatever names you have in mind. Get it out of your system. They really do slide right off my back. But the challenge is yours to answer those questions. And I have one more:

     Fourth: Imagine that by the irreproachable techniques mentioned above, the government were to determine that a majority percentage — i.e., more than 50% — of the crime in its jurisdiction was being committed within a single sector / between certain hours / by a particular race or religion. How would that affect your answers to the challenges above? Would your answers change if the percentage was 60%? 70%? 80%? 90%?

     I await your thoughts.