It’s reminiscent of the days when it was all the rage to make every teacher, doctor and nurse a mandatory reporter of child abuse. It was done with the best of intentions, to remove the subjective component from the mix so that someone who didn’t feel a bruise was so bad as to be worthy of reporting could no longer hide behind personal feelings or experience. Report, or else. Report or you’re guilty too.

The problem of child abuse, it was decided, was sufficiently severe that any hint, any possibility, required an investigation. So what if the investigation was extremely unlikely to show any abuse. So what if the investigation removed a child from home, from family, which was often far more traumatic and dangerous than the slimmest possibility of harm. This was about child abuse. CHILD ABUSE! How could anyone doubt the seriousness of the problem. How could anyone believe that the combination of unlikelihood and trauma mattered more than ferreting out child abuse. Continue reading →

There are murders. There are shootings. They happened after the protests, riots and lootings in Minneapolis following the killing of George Floyd. Paul Cassell calls it the “Minneapolis Effect.”

The homicide spikes began in late May. Before May 28, Chicago had almost the same number of homicides as in 2019. Then, on May 31, 18 people were murdered in Chicago—the city’s most violent day in six decades. Violence continued through the summer. July was Chicago’s most violent month in 28 years. As of Sept. 1, murder is up 52% for the year, according to Chicago Police Department data.

What changed in late May? The antipolice protests that began across the country around May 27 appear to have resulted in a decline in policing directed at gun violence, producing—perhaps unsurprisingly—an increase in shootings.

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You can’t argue your way out of filthy streets. My old pal, Daniel, sent me an email the other day, after I’d written about the 160 business leaders of the Partnership for New York City writing Mayor de Blasio about the status of the City. Daniel thought I was being far too hopeful, that because New York had survived its problems in the past, it would survive again.

I drove around the city all day with my wife, and I believed the “NYC will survive this” since this started but I don’t know how much I believe it now. Certainly won’t turn into Judgment Day level apocalypse but I can’t understand what fixes this shit. Vaccine? Sure, I guess. How long will that take. How do you get people to pay 75/sf in midtown when crime is up. How do you fix crime without more revenues. How do you get more revenues without offering tax breaks? How do you get more breaks without more dollars in? It’s circular.

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It was sold as the usual lie on the twitters, a rosy tale of peaceful fighters for justice and a mean, bad judge.

They surely don’t appear to be rioting in the image, but then, the image was after the arrest. That doesn’t tell the story, any more than how wonderful and brave these warriors for equity may be. Assuming they are, that doesn’t mean they get to riot and destroy any more than miserable and cowardly folks. Continue reading →

The first night included the vandalism and destruction that a great many words have been murdered to excuse elsewhere, to no avail. The second was more peaceful. But there was a disconnect the first night. The call to the wild was that the cops killed another black man. That was all it took, since no one bothers to ask why it happened, as if there were any possibility that the cops couldn’t be the bad guys.

The guy with the knife wasn’t necessarily a bad dude, but a sick dude. Continue reading →

I’m That Guy who occasionally “corrects” someone who attributes social justice and critical race theory to liberals. I reply, “not liberals, progressives,” because there’s nothing liberal about it, at least from my perspective. Liberals support free speech and due process. Liberals believe in equality, not equity. Liberals stand for principles, not the ends justify the means.

Having fought too hard for these things all my life, I’ll be damned if I’ll stand idly by while the name that neo-cons fought so hard to sully is taken by the illiberals on the left. Of course, that doesn’t make me appreciated by the social justice warriors, particularly the baby lawyers and, even more specifically, the baby public defenders for whom anything shy of full-throated support of critical race theory make me a Nazi sympathizer. Continue reading →

Granted, it’s Skidmore, so it’s not as if the children are capable of deep thought, but still. What did art prof David Peterson do wrong?

The Petersons arrived at a little after 7 p.m., watched from the edge of the crowd as “Back the Blue” supporters and counter-protesters traded barbs, then departed to get dinner after about 20 minutes. Neither thought much of it.

But that brief and quiet presence at the rally infuriated some student activists at the Saratoga Springs school. They’re demanding that Skidmore College fire a professor who has taught at the school for 31 years.

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Business is terrible. But try surviving without it. The Partnership for New York City is a group that was once appreciated for its efforts to facilitate the business of business in NYC, but that was before capitalists became evil for not paying people enough, women and minorities affected most. It would certainly be far better without business, because jobs are awful and there aren’t enough of them.

Because businesspeople understand something that seems to elude a great many of late, PFNYC sent Mayor Bill deBlasio an open letter. They had no choice, as there’s no other mayor at the moment. Continue reading →

There was a time, a very long time, when stories about police beatings and killings were either buried or whitewashed, and so I did what I could to tell those stories because they were happening, needed to be known and represented critical problems that needed to be fixed. There were a few others who did the same, but not too many. And not too many cared.

It was a time when America was in fear, of crime, of terrorism, of whatever bogeyman was the worst thing possible that had to be stopped or the sky would fall. So the few of us were lone voices in the wilderness. Times change. Boy, do they ever. Continue reading →

As the defense lawyers for the four cops charged with the killing of George Floyd make their motions, a surprising voice appeared in opposition, buried deep in the bowels of the New York Times story.

Prosecutors rejected suggestions that Mr. Chauvin — or any of the other former officers — could shift blame away from the larger group.

“The defendants watched the air go out of Mr. Floyd’s body together,” said Neal Katyal, a special assistant attorney general who is part of the prosecution team, led by the office of Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general. “And the defendants caused Mr. Floyd’s death together.”

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