Tag: Bill de Blasio

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom

Action Ensued

snitch, DeBlasio, New York,

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio seemed proud of his new initiative. To fight coronavirus, he thinks — and he is joined by a whole lot of other people — that everyone should stay at home indoors. And wear masks, gloves, etc., when going out for essentials only. 

But since not everyone will cooperate, what to do? Apply social pressure, such as eye-​rolls and a few tsk-tsks? 

Well, not this Big Apple mayor.

Better get the police power involved!

De Blasio’s notion has been called a “snitch hotline.” In the spirit of “see-​something/​say-​something,” he asked New Yorkers to snap photos of the scofflaws:

Text the photo to 311 – 692
and action will ensue.

And boy, did he get responses!

Immediately.

The U.K.’s Daily Mail explains that “the service was inundated with prank calls, pictures of genitalia and memes likening de Blasio to Adolf Hitler.”

My favorite “meme” sports a photo of the Führer captioned “TO THOSE TURNING IN THEIR NEIGHBORS AND LOCAL BUSINESSES /​ YOU DID THE REICH THING.”

And while Stalin analogies might be more apt for the quasi-​commie mayor, Hitler references sting more.

John Nolte at Breitbart, referencing George Orwell’s 1984, called the responses “glorious” and “freakin’ awesome.”

The city closed down the hotline for a while to set up a filtering service before sending out leads to the police departments.

In New York City, as in most places in America, if you attempt to establish a Big Brotherish snitch-​line, you will get a free-​wheeling re-action.

Is this a great country or what?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
free trade & free markets

Towards a Genealogy of Policy

tenement, rent control, New York, de Blasio

If it seems like each new government program is more intrusive than the last, there’s a reason. That last one did not work as planned. So a new one gets concocted to fix its mess. 

The latest? New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has established a new enforcement bureau, the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, to sic a “new sheriff” on property owners.

“When a landlord tries to push out a tenant by making their home unlivable, a team of inspectors and law enforcement agents will be on the ground in time to stop it,” the mayor explained last week in his latest State of the City Address. 

And he means business, er, government: “we will seize their buildings, and we will put them in the hands of a community nonprofit that will treat tenants with the respect they deserve.”

Well, that cannot possibly go wrong!

But what was the earlier program that put New York in its current situation?

Look to a very old government program, rent control, which New York has suffered under since World War II. 

Rent control protects current renters from rate hikes and the like, sure. But it discourages the production as well as the maintenance of rental properties, which in turn limits supply and ultimately hikes rents for future tenants.

Perhaps even worse, it incentivizes the landlords to boot out tenants while it more than nudges tenants to dig in …  even when moving would otherwise make more sense. 

The market thus thwarted, the de Blasios then set up more laws and more policing … and antagonism ramps up another notch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
crime and punishment

A Learnable Moment

It used to be called “the Blue Flu.”

Cops, in the course of union negotiations, would deliberately slack on the job, or falsely call in sick (the “flu”) … just to get more moolah out of union contract negotiations.

Betraying a not wholly dissimilar epidemiology, New York’s finest have cut back on citations and arrests. According to a New York Times report, for “two consecutive weeks, New York City police officers have seemed to sit back, ignoring minor offenses and parking transgressions so completely that only 347 criminal summonses were written in the seven days through Sunday, down from 4,077 in the same period a year ago.”

This doesn’t seem union-​directed, but a spontaneous result of the brutal police shootings that followed mass protests against police abuse … and seeming support for the protester’s critique from true-​blue, left-​leaning Mayor Bill de Blasio.

There is much apprehension about the police laggardness, of course.

But there is some jubilation, too, as folks receive fewer parking tickets. It’s mighty difficult to park in the Big Apple; a lot of folks appreciate the reprieve, however temporary.

The rap on the NYPD — and for that matter, police across the country — has regarded over-policing: enforcing the rulebook so aggressively that it becomes harassment. That sort of policing is counter-​productive, leading to the current unrest, for instance.

Maybe we can learn something from this experiment in less policing.* We might discover that, in a lot of neighborhoods, less can be more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* According to recent reports, city government and police officials are trying to crack down on the breakout of police restraint. Regardless of future efficacy of these efforts, inquiry into the results of the inadvertent experiment remain worthwhile.

Categories
education and schooling insider corruption

Nixing Success

Newly elected New York Mayor Bill de Blasio made waves, recently. He nixed the establishment of two new charter schools and halted the expansion of another.

Widespread protest followed, with over ten thousand people showing up to express their frustration and ire. The charter chain under de Blasio attack, Success Academy, has been very successful increasing student test scores, and can boast a waiting list of five applicants for every school opening.

So why would the mayor be against them? What would make him so against this non-​radical form of education reform?

Well, de Blasio received the overwhelming support of teachers’ unions during his campaign for office. Teachers’ unions are no fans of charter schools, which gain some of their advantages by not being hampered by union contracts.

Sure, the mayor’s heavy-​handed slap at charter schools may simply be a political payoff to the teachers’ unions, but couldn’t there be something more to it?

Last May he directed his metaphorical guns at the head of the Success Academy, former New York councilwoman Eva Mosokowitz. “It’s time for Eva Moskowitz to stop having the run of the place,” he promised the United Federation of Teachers at a mayoral candidates forum. “She has to stop being tolerated, enabled, supported.”

Knee-​capping the less politically muscular charter school folks to please the immensely powerful public education unions is indeed classic patronage politics. But maybe de Blasio’s personal animus also shows his true colors, his commitment to undercut any successful competition to the governmental way of doing things.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

Unlimited Entitlement

“The political problems of liberal populism are bad enough,” Jon Cowan and Jim Kessler of the “centrist” group Third Way wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal. “Worse are the actual policies proposed by left-​wing populists.”

They’re warning Democrats not to push policies promoted by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Cowan and Kessler aren’t exactly Tea Party activists. Before Third Way, Cowan was Democrat Andrew Cuomo’s chief of staff at both Housing and Urban Development and then as Governor of New York. Kessler worked for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D‑NY) and as director of policy and research for Americans for Gun Safety.

Still, Warren and de Blasio are faulted for having a “‘we can have it all’ fantasy,” believing that, “If we force the wealthy to pay higher taxes (there are 300,000 tax filers who earn more than $1 million), close a few corporate tax loopholes, and break up some big banks then — presto! — we can pay for, and even expand, existing entitlements. Meanwhile, we can invest more deeply in K‑12 education, infrastructure, health research, clean energy and more.”

It’s “reckless” to ignore the looming financial insolvency of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (which is being dramatically expanded) warn these Third Way authors: “Sen. Warren and her acolytes are irresponsibly pushing off budget decisions that will guarantee huge benefit cuts and further tax hikes … in a few decades.”

In response, groups like Social Security Works, Progressives United and Progressive Change Campaign Committee are threatening any politician associated with Third Way not to dare challenge their hankering for unlimited entitlements forever.

Delusions die hard.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

Talking the Non-Talk

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech. It says Congress “shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” etc.

The Founders assumed that individuals might sometimes combine to pursue common ends. Indeed, the First Amendment also safeguards our right of peaceable assembly, often called freedom of association. Obviously, we have this right not only up until the moment we assemble, but also even as we are assembling — even as we constitute a group pursuing a common cause.

In light of this, the gnashing of teeth over the Supreme Court’s expanding — really, recognizing — the right of persons in corporations to exercise freedom of speech seems silly. The rights of an individual, whether to utter a political thought, buy an ad or shop for groceries, do not disappear when he formally cooperates with others. But some persons regard corporations as such as morally suspect, and therefore properly subject to special restrictions.

An example is Bill de Blasio, Public Advocate of New York City. His official website lists non-​media corporations that have not promised to gag themselves this campaign season. The website supplies the phone numbers of these companies so you can call to bemoan their offensive belief in reserving their rights.

Blogger Eugene Volokh has a different idea: Call de Blasio’s office to complain about his offensive belief in preemptive self-​censorship. The number is (212) 669‑7200. You can also send an email from the Public Advocate website.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.