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Less Hate

hate crime, Seattle, statistics, propaganda,

Just how awful are Americans? Racist and sexist “hate crimes” are all said to have ramped up since the election of Donald Trump.

Wilfred Reilly took a close look, in Quillette, at the hate crime cases in Seattle, which had been reported as having increased “by 400 percent since 2012.” What he discovered throws cold water on the heated assertions. It turns out that “most of the situations contained in the 500-plus documented incidents for 2018 turned out not to be hate crimes at all.”

As you might expect, defining “hate crime” isn’t easy, and Seattle has “remarkably broad municipal hate-crime policies” which go far beyond “attacks motivated by racial or sexual animus.” Crimes relating to issues such as “marital status, political ideology, age and parental status” also count.

But for there to be a “hate crime” there must first be a crime. Looking for the “archetypal Seattle hate incident” in the data, what Wilfred Reilly found was “a mentally ill homeless man yelling slurs at someone.” What this really suggests is that Seattle has a homelessness problem.

Which it does.

Behind the panic? We see mis-reporting, based on a need for generating clicks, as well as mis-perceptions, often based on availability bias — where we judge trends by a few ready-at-hand examples, not with careful attention to full data sets.

The Quillette article does not discuss a more ominous possibility, where some folks yearn for the worst, the better to hate their political opponents. Though Reilly addresses this sort of hate-generated “hate crime” panic in his book, Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War, published earlier this year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

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Pedo Plane Perv

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If you are like me, you react to news about billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by trying to retain some composure. His recent arrest on sex trafficking charges was a long time coming, sure; and the accusations swirling around him are disgusting and alarming. But I try to remember that accusations still need to be proved. 

Further, most of us are so understandably exercised against pedophiles and the sex slave trade of minors that we can easily be manipulated by mere accusations. 

But the Epstein case sure looks the opposite, like he had been previously protected, not framed, by government insiders.

How so? Well, his previous plea deal regarding the “Lolita Express” “rape plane,” when compared to the swirl of accusations, seems awfully . . . light. And the evidence was illegally sealed.

Suspicious? Yes.

Which is why guerrilla publicity maven Mike Cernovich filed suit to unseal and make public the evidence in Epstein’s 2007 prosecution.

And that lawsuit is why the ground-to-a-halt gears of government justice eventually became unstuck, and new charges filed — based on old evidence.

This could be a hot potato in the upcoming election, for both President Trump and former President Clinton had relationships with Epstein. 

Clinton denies what recent reports confirm: that he was a frequent flyer on the “Lolita Express.” 

Trump once said Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do” — but later had a falling out with him. 

Newsweek chose to adorn its story with a photo of Epstein and companion next to Donald and Melania. And on Wikipedia, Bill Clinton’s flight log information was stricken, and a typically loopy Trumpian statement inserted.

Secret upper echelon pedo rings have so far just been rumor. Soon we may have facts. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Guilty. Guilty! Guilty?

justice, law, Mueller, innocence,

“No responsible prosecutor,” Alan Dershowitz writes in The Hill, “should ever suggest that the subject of his investigation might indeed be guilty even if there was insufficient evidence or other reasons not to indict.”

Don’t I know it.

The world-famous lawyer takes issue with the “statement by special counsel Robert Mueller in a Wednesday press conference that ‘if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that.’”* Dershowitz makes a good case that the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ principle requires the government not merely to refrain from imposing punishment before obtaining a lawful conviction, but also to hold back from punishing people by making loud public claims about their supposed guilt. 

Which brings to mind my own experience at U.S. Term Limits. In 1994, we ran radio ads and sent mail to citizens in two Oklahoma congressional districts and one in Kentucky. We did not urge a vote for or against anyone, but merely provided information on where the candidates stood. 

Yet, prompted by a complaint from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which prefers ignorant to knowledgeable voters, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) investigated.

As if to foreshadow current prosecutorial proclivities, the FEC abandoned its witch hunt after two long years. Relieved the agency’s harassment was finally over, I remember opening an Oklahoma newspaper and discovering a story headlined, “Term Limits Group Violated Law in State, U.S. Agency Charges.”

This problem goes well beyond Mr. Mueller and President Trump. Government agencies that cannot prosecute, should not persecute.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Dershowitz calls Mueller’s comments “worse than the statement made by then-FBI Director James Comey regarding Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

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Prisoners All

drug war, prison, jail, prohibition, ban, freedom,

The logic for drug prohibition is direct: to keep people from hurting themselves with recreational drugs, we must prevent them from accessing those drugs.

Voilà!

There are a number of things wrong with that, though, and one is this: governments cannot even keep illegal drugs out of prisons. 

In California, nearly 1,000 men and women overdosed last year in “an alarming spike in opioid use by those behind bars,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Steven Greenhut, writing in Reason, notes that confinement centers are “among the most tightly controlled environments on Earth, yet correction officials can’t figure out how to deal with dramatic spikes in the number of inmates who are dying from drug overdoses and alcohol poisoning.”

Doesn’t this make the prohibitionist “solution” absurd?

“If they can’t keep heroin off of death row,” Greenhut concludes, “then maybe they should rethink their ability to control the rest of us.”

There is a problem, here, though — it is easier to control “the rest of us.”

As with gun control laws, it is the law-abiding folks who fall in line. It is the edgier, less civic-minded people who tend to rebel. 

But the two issues remain distinct: generally lawful and level-headed citizens still need to defend themselves from criminals, but do not feel a need to take drugs that can be deadly even in innocent hands. Thus the War on Drugs seems a bit less obviously tragic than gun control.  

Which is why conceiving of the War on Drugs as unworkable prison policy writ large remains important.

Why would we want to make our society more like drug-ridden prisons?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Porn, Video Games and British Crime

Great Britain, British, England, knives, violence, freedom, surveillance,

British freedom is eroding. The attack comes from two directions.

First, there is the over-bearing police-state style, surveillance-everywhere government.

Second, there is the increasing violence.

Thing is, the justification for Britain’s mass surveillance, as well as for strict gun controls, was to prevent crime.

Oops.

So of course the Labour Party “shadow home secretary” Diane Abbott points an accusatory finger at porn and video games. These two influences may be “desensitising young people to vicious behaviour.”

Well, porn and video games are changing our cultures, on both sides of the pond. But in America, at least, the crime rate for the past two decades plumetted while video games and Internet porn have become ubiquitous, explicit and . . . admittedly, appalling.

Look elsewhere for the crime uptick.

The Brexit fiasco, with the Tory government messing up implementation of the 2016 referendum results, has surely increased, not decreased, tensions all around, as has immigration policy, the collapsing National Health system, and much more. But worst of all? The nanny state, treating citizens as childish subjects. The police arrest people for nothing more than saying mean or just edgy things online. 

If people cannot be free legally, they will take license — illegally. 

Previously, we heard about a rash of acid attacks: acid thrown in the faces of pedestrians. More recently, the headlines are about stabbings — after years of knife control, of government crackdowns on even kitchen knives.

Ms. Abbott places the primary blame for rising crime not on the above, however, but on poverty and malfunctioning education. Not mentioned? The possibility that taking away British citizens’ rights of self-defense may have the perverse (unintended?) consequence of increasing offensive violence.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment Popular property rights

Of Loot and Leverage

civil asset forfeiture, police, corruption, theft

Without a special kicker, why should police bother to do their jobs?  

The subject is civil asset forfeiture. This legal procedure makes it easy to take property from criminals. For the War on Drugs, civil forfeiture was so loosened as to allow police to take property from anyone . . . without due process.

No wonder citizens in a number of states have demanded limits upon the practice. 

But since police departments get to keep the loot they “interdict” — spending it on better cars, weapons, office furniture, plush employee lounges, drug-sniffing dogs — law enforcement personnel aren’t exactly always on board with citizens’ concerns.

Jarrod Bruder, South Carolina Sheriff’s Association executive director, defends the sorry practice, as quoted by Greenville News. He asks what, sans civil forfeiture’s profit motive, could be a cop’s “incentive to go out and make a special effort?” 

Dollars to donuts, this will not play well with those who distrust the police already. 

And note the biggest incentive police face: to take property away from innocent people. Easier pickin’s. No surprise, then, that in “19 percent of cases, there is no criminal arrest.”*

Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has suggested that President Trump take the confiscated billions from the accounts of drug kingpin El Chapo to “build the Wall.”

Genius? 

Regardless, this mere suggestion could add incentives for pro-Wall Republicans to go soft on civil asset forfeiture.

There is no point in being secure within our borders if we are not secure within our homes and wallets and cars and . . . any other place jeopardized by this police-state practice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*Blacks represent 71 percent of cases, while only 28 percent of the state population.

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Resisting Registration

Caldara, gun rights, 2nd Amendment, Colorado

Jon Caldara won’t register his guns. He also won’t remain silent about his refusal.

He has lots of company in Boulder, Colorado, with respect to the former, if not the latter, form of resistance — his unwillingness to compromise his right to bear arms.

The town recently began requiring owners of “assault weapons” to either ditch them or register them with the Boulder police. Owners choosing registration must submit to background checks “to ensure that the weapon holder is legally able to be in possession of the firearm.” If you pass, you get certificates acknowledging rightful ownership.

But if you lose the certificates, apparently you lose your ownership rights.

The city defines an “assault weapon” as a “semi-automatic center-fire rifle” or a “semi-automatic center-fire pistol” with various characteristics. In short, the target is “ugly guns,” as foes of gun control sometimes put it. (“Non-assault” weapon: papier-mâché weapon.)

Many Boulder citizens are quietly refusing to comply with the mandates. They “see this as a registry,” according to Lesley Hollywood, executive director of Rally for Our Rights.

Caldara, head of the Independence Institute, is speaking out despite the risk. Why? Because “somebody has to. . . . In this town that spouts tolerance for alternative lifestyles . . . when it comes to a lifestyle they don’t like, there is no tolerance . . . Tolerance means tolerating things you dislike, that you find scary.”

This idea goes even deeper than tolerance, though. It’s about “freedom” and “rights.” 

There is nothing frightening about Mr. Caldara’s unregistered guns, but much to fear from Boulder officials assaulting his rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom judiciary property rights

Property Rights vs. Absentee Frogs

frog, Supreme Court, property

When an assault on individual rights achieves a certain depth of irrationality, the Supreme Court is capable of common sense. Even unanimous common sense.

The 8-0 ruling in Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pertains to the desire of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate over 1500 acres of Louisiana land a “critical habitat” of the dusky gopher frog. The designation means that owners may not develop the land that they own in even the simplest ways without consulting with/begging permission from bureaucrats.

If a property owner has an actual right to his own property, the government cannot properly commandeer even one square inch of it to appease Lithobates sevosus. Give the creature a YouTube video and leave it at that.

But sevosus doesn’t even inhabit the so-called “critical habitat.”

The frog is not on the property!

This fact enabled Chief Justice John Roberts (not always clear on the meaning of words) the chance to emphasize that words have meaning. “According to the ordinary understanding of how adjectives work, ‘critical habitat’ must also be ‘habitat,’” Roberts clarified. “Only the ‘habitat’ of the endangered species is eligible for designation as critical habitat.”

Concurring, pundit George Will says that the decision represents “a recuperative moment for the court” and delivers “a chastisement of the administrative state, the government’s fourth branch, which is one too many.”

Is this ruling as thoroughgoing as it should be? No. Nevertheless, the decision is surely a victory for minimal common sense. Of which we could use more.

And more, also, of maximal common sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo credit: US Department of Agriculture

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crime and punishment moral hazard responsibility

Reforming Crime, Not Criminals?

fare evasion, fare-jump, crime, Washington, DC, D.C.

“The D.C. Council gave final approval this week to a measure decriminalizing Metro fare evasion,” The Washington Post reports, “paving the way for fare-jumping to become a civil offense punishable by a $50 fine in the District.”

Talk about stopping crime “in its tracks.” Jumping the turnstile won’t be classified a “crime.” Problem solved.

Nassim Moshiree, policy director for the local ACLU, declared it “a significant victory for criminal justice reform here in the District.”

Jack Evans argued, unsuccessfully, that scofflaws will quickly figure out the “civil citation . . . is largely unenforceable.” He added, “We have a big problem with fare evasion at Metro.”

Non-paying riders cost the bus and subway system in the nation’s capital $25 million annually. The worst bus route “has had 560,000 incidents of fare evasion since January, nearly 37 percent of its 1.5 million trips,” informs the Post.

Metro officials complained “that lessening the penalties would only exacerbate the problem and lead to more crime,” but supporters of the change posited that “decriminalization was an important step toward addressing disproportionate policing of African Americans who use the transit system.”

In recent years, according to a Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs report, “91 percent of Metro Transit Police citations and summons for fare evasion were issued to African Americans.”

“I’m sad that’s Metro’s losing money,” offered Councilmember Robert White Jr., “but I’m more sad about what’s happening to black people.”*

Penalties can be too severe or too severely applied. And enforcement can be racially biased. But stealing transportation services is a crime. Pretending otherwise is not a victory.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Is “that’s” a typo? Did the councilmember say, “that”? All I know is the quotation as I have it here is exactly as it appears online, in both text and headline, and also as it appeared in the dead-tree edition delivered to my home.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Riddle Us That

thought crime, blacklist, pc culture

“Riddle me this,” William Rainford tweeted during the big national #MeToo civil war over the Senate’s confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “Why would the accuser of Kavanaugh take a polygraph, paid for by someone else and administered by private investigator in early August, if she wanted to remain anonymous and had no intention of reporting the alleged assault?”

Dr. Rainford, Dean of the National Catholic School of Social Service at the Catholic University of America, was on a roll.

“Swetnick is 55 y/o. Kavanaugh is 52 y/o,” began a now-removed tweet about another accuser. “Since when do senior girls hang with freshmen boys? If it happened when Kavanaugh was a senior, Swetnick was an adult drinking with&by her admission, having sex with underage boys. In another universe, he would be victim & she the perp!”

Interesting questions. But for students at his university, enraging. Some were angered enough to walk out of class and demand his resignation.

Rainford was suspended and last week resigned as Dean.

Back in September, Will Rainford profusely expressed his contrition in a Cultural Revolution-style statement: “My tweet suggested that [Julie Swetnick] was not a victim of sexual assault. I offer no excuse. It was impulsive and thoughtless and I apologize.”

Strange, then, that media coverage of this case fails to even mention that Swetnick and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, have now been referred to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution for making allegedly false statements to Congress.

Swetnick and Avenatti can, however, expect to receive better treatment than an administrator in an establishment of higher education who dares ask unpopular questions that trigger progressives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

N.B. This edition of Common Sense is condensed from last weekend’s Townhall column by Paul Jacob.

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