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crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies

The Middle of the Beginning of the End

Presidential powers, pardons, marijuana

President Biden’s decision to pardon everyone federally convicted for a simple marijuana possession is not the true beginning of the end of the federal war on drug-​taking people.

In 2018, the federal government legalized certain products with cannabinoids derived from hemp. That’s something, even if the feds still ban buying and selling marijuana.

On the other hand, for years many states have been legalizing pot, inspiring the federal government to somewhat slacken enforcement of its own pot ban — sometimes.

These developments constitute the beginning of the end for the federal war on drug-​taking people.

Call Biden’s gesture the middle of the beginning. That it won’t be rapidly followed by full federal legalization of unapproved drugs or even marijuana is shown by the objections of other politicians.

Senator Tom Cotton laments that Biden is “giving blanket pardons to pot heads — many of whom pled down from more serious charges.”*

The argument would be equally valid if it were illegal to blow soap bubbles and some people had pled down from a charge of smashing windows to a charge of blowing soap bubbles. Granted, plea deals are often horrible, wrongly abetting the guilty and hurting the innocent. So reform the plea-​deal regime. 

But don’t criminalize non-crimes.

The real impact? The White House admits that “while no-​one is currently in prison for ‘simple possession,’ a pardon for those who have convictions could allow better access to housing or employment.”

Call it a half-​start at the middle of the beginning of the end.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Another lament is that Biden’s pardon is just cynical election-​eve politics. Well … let’s have more such pandering to the people; it seems the only way to get good policy from bad politicians. 

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crime and punishment insider corruption national politics & policies

Thin Blue Nonsense

Justice, thin blue line, Themis, scales of Justice

What did Vice President Mike Pence learn from the Trump years?

Perhaps, that his 2016 ploy to ratchet up his career backfired … when his running mate actually won?

Thank goodness, he followed normal procedures in January 2020, rejecting then-​President Donald J. Trump’s pleas to send back to the states the Electoral College slates. 

In a recent speech at St. Anselm’s College, the former Vice President advised fellow Republicans not to overreact to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s raid on Trump’s Mar-​a-​Lago residence. Mr. Pence insists that Republicans “can hold the attorney general accountable for the decision he made without attacking the rank-​and-​file law enforcement personnel at the FBI.”

That sounds about right, until you read the rest of Pence’s remarks. “The Republican Party is the party of law and order. Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”

Has Pence lost “the plot”? The FBI has a long history of abusing the rule of law. While leaders are rightly blamed — J. Edgar Hoover used his agency to create a vast spy-​and-​blackmail network — they have not worked alone to do flagrantly unconstitutional things. After all, remember in October of 2020, the Bureau made headlines foiling a plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor. The plot was concocted by multiple agents, who worked mightily to entrap members of a citizen militia into going along with it.*

Pence surely remembers that the FBI agents who conspired against the Trump administration were breathtakingly partisan, lying and concocting documents to perform what amounts to an attempted coup d’etat. 

It’s not a “law and order” outfit if its most consequential actions illegally serve partisan political purposes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* These G‑men and G‑women were consenting adults — consenting not only to the politics of such entrapment, but also to engaging in sexual acts to get their way. 

Note: Two defendants in the Michigan conspiracy case are now being retried, after the jury in their first trial could not reach a verdict.

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folly nannyism property rights

Vandalized, Scandalized

grafitti, San Francisco, crime, law

Store owners have another reason to get the heck out of that derelict-​enabling and increasingly unlivable town, San Francisco. The city fines businesses for the crime of being vandalized by graffiti artists.

This form of harassing property owners is nothing new, but the city had temporarily reduced enforcement during the pandemic.

The policy is unjust in at least two ways.

First, there should be no fines for being hit by graffiti-​vandals. It’s the vandals who should be punished, not the victims. Moreover, as Reason magazine points out, “Unlike accumulated trash, noise, or other standard nuisances, graffiti isn’t inherently offensive.”

Rather, it is the city that is being offensive by treating an owner’s property as if it were its own and penalizing owners if their property lacks the appearance that the city ordains.

Second, even granting the legitimacy of requiring property owners to clean up the graffiti, the policy as imposed is abusive. Businesses are being fined repeatedly for graffiti that they don’t magically remove at lightning speed and that the vandals, undiscouraged, simply slap back on anyway.

“I can’t even count,” Michael McNamara, manager of the restaurant Above Ground (now closed), told the San Francisco Chronicle last year. “The paint dries and you deal with another one.” The city had dunned Above Ground with at least three $300 bills for the graffiti.

Rewarding destructive behavior while punishing those whose way of work and life makes civilization possible is no way to run a city — but it is a way of running the good people out of town.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Starbucks Gets Out

Starbucks, coffee, violence, crime, safety

Though not a fan of Starbucks’s often obtrusive lefty politics, I sure like its beverages, such as the glorious Flat White. I’ll take a venti.

Thankfully, it appears that trendy politics has limits. Despite the company’s support for a Marxist organization that riots and rampages in the name of racial justice (I won’t name names, but the initials are BLM), CEO Howard Schultz is reluctant to tolerate crime that makes it unsafe to sell lattes.

In leaked video of an internal meeting, Schultz says he’s shocked “that one of the primary concerns that our retail partners [employees] have is their own personal safety.”

One way Starbucks will cope is by giving managers authority to do things like limit seating and close bathrooms. Employees will also be trained in conflict de-​escalation and dealing with “active shooter scenarios.”

And Starbucks will close “not unprofitable” shops in areas where risks to employees and customers are most severe. This means closing 16 stores in which people feel unsafe because of crime and open drug use. The closures are taking place in such bastions of crime nurturing as Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington DC.

More shutdowns are to come, Schultz said, adding that “governments across the country and leaders, mayors and governors, city councils have abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime.”

Starbucks has — all companies have — every right to escape the resulting lawless conditions. 

Were they also to abstain from doing anything to promote such conditions, that would be whipped cream on top.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

The Long Road Back

San Francisco, homeless, crime

Decades of wrongheaded policies have eroded San Francisco’s once much-​vaunted charm. 

These policies include onerous burdens on building construction; lax attitudes toward homeless folks’ tent cities and public excretory practices; and a green light for sundry criminal activities, including broad-​daylight theft.

The green light flashed statewide in 2014, when Californians passed Proposition 47, giving looters much less to worry about if caught stealing less than $950.

Remove a disincentive and you wind up with a huge incentive: thugs were emboldened; folks on the margin between criminality and civilized peace went the wrong direction.

In San Francisco, they were further emboldened when voters installed Democrat Chesa Boudin as district attorney in 2019. At least the election was close.

A recent recall election wasn’t so close, with some 61% voting to oust him.

In the cause of abetting criminals, DA Boudin did everything but serve as getaway-​car driver.

Right away, he fired several prosecutors, and The Epoch Times reports that soon “more than 50 prosecutors, support, and victim services staff had either been fired or had quit their jobs over Boudin’s progressive agenda.”

The agenda included ending cash bail, slashing incarceration rates, routinely releasing repeat offenders.

Although it has lost a lot, San Francisco still has piers and fog and that famously twisty road, Lombard Street. Residents have a ways to go to emerge from their ideological fog and perhaps must travel an even twistier road to reclaim their city.

By getting rid of Boudin — and three pretty rotten school board members in another recent recall election — San Franciscans have taken the first steps back to something like sanity. Which always makes next steps easier.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fifth Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights

The War Against Cash Carriers

Gretchen Whitmer, MIchigan, asset forfeiture, theft, crime

Michigan’s lawmakers and governor seem determined to remind us that history is no nonstop march into the light.

In the Great Lake State, the latest confirmation is a return to virtually unrestricted legalized cash-​grabbing at the airport, reversing halfhearted reforms of several years earlier.

After those reforms were enacted, a traveler had to be toting in excess of $50,000 before officials a Michigan airport could be “justified” in confiscating his cash on a mere suspicion that it is associated with a crime.

But now, because of legislation just signed by Governor Whitmer, the threshold has been knocked down to $20,000.

Maybe you must be naïve to carry so much cash where police and other functionaries can easily get at it, but as Dan King of the Institute for Justice observes, you don’t have to be a criminal. And traveling with cash is not a crime.

Around the country, innocent persons have often run afoul of civil forfeiture laws that let authorities steal money earned by others without any showing that the money is ill-gotten.

With help from organizations like Institute for Justice, people who make the mistake of traveling with substantial cash — to buy a truck, open a bank account, whatever — just might get their money back after spending months in the courts. 

And suffering much anxiety. 

For the officials who cause the anxiety, both the thefts and any temporary judicial setbacks amount to just another day at the office.

This is open thievery by the State, turning cops into robbers.

Opposing it is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom

Injustice By Quota

arrests, quotas

Let’s say there are 100 murders — in a certain city in 2021. How many arrests for murder should there be in that city that year?

We can’t know in advance. Setting lagtime aside, consider the other factors. Some of the killers may have killed more than once. Some of the murders may never be solved. Some honest arrests may prove to be mistaken. We can only say: “As many arrests as possible, so long as persons are arrested for murder only if and when there is good cause to do so.”

Properly, one establishes sound criteria for making arrests and good investigative procedures. Not quotas. The same principles apply to every kind of arrest.

“Yes, Paul Jacob. But all this is bleedingly obvious. Why go on about it?”

Alas, what is really basic common sense to you and me apparently clashes with the desire of some within and without police departments for “proof” of effective results. Proof like total number of arrests. (Of course, in a police state, you might arrest half the population, far exceeding any quota, and still get lots of crime.)

The errant fondness for arrest quotas is at least being ended, almost, in Virginia, where the governor has signed legislation to prohibit Virginia agencies and police departments from using them.

I write “almost” because the legislation does not include a ban on quotas for traffic tickets, which are like being half-​arrested. Tickets are one way municipalities make money.

Well, maybe we can all just stop driving.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Oberlin Must Pay

Oberlin College, bakery, racism

Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, helped students defame a local business, Gibson’s Bakery, as “racist.”

The two organizations were not strangers, however: Gibson’s Bakery had an agreement with Oberlin to provide baked goods to the school.

It all began when a black Oberlin student shoplifted wine from the bakery. When an employee acted to stop the shoplifter, the thief and two others attacked the employee.

The assailants were arrested. The shoplifter and the others later pled guilty.

But instead of protesting against the thief and his thuggish cohorts, Oberlin students turned against Gibson’s … for acting to stop the theft. College officials helped students conduct their protests and later issued an official statement expressing gratitude “for the determination of our students and for the leadership demonstrated by Student Senate” in launching the protests and smear campaign.

The college also suspended its contract with Gibson’s Bakery.

Oberlin College said that it would consider resuming the contract if Gibson’s agreed to drop charges. In a legal filing, Oberlin asserted that the bakery’s “archaic chase-​and-​detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests. The guilt or innocence of the students is irrelevant to both the root cause of the protests and this litigation.”

I guess protecting private property and defending ownership rights is “archaic” — it being so much more progressive to let thieves carry on their thievery.

But that’s not the law of the land. At least yet. A state appeals court has upheld a judgment against the college of $31 million — compensatory damages plus legal fees.

Progressives’ race-​based undermining of property rights has lost — for now. Crime still doesn’t pay. And socialists can be reined in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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That Other October Surprise?

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Harken back to those heady days leading up to Election 2020, when six men were arrested for a scheme to snatch Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer from her home.

As with other October surprises, the case was immediately politicized. 

“Democrats on Thursday made it clear they felt President Trump was at least in part to blame for an alleged scheme to kidnap the governor of Michigan,” government-​subsidized NPR noted, “citing the president’s divisive rhetoric that has often found support among white supremacists and other hate groups.” CNN used the phrase “domestic terrorist plot” in relating presidential challenger Joe Biden’s laying of blame against Donald Trump.

Six men were charged in federal court with directly conspiring to nab the governor. Two have pled guilty to the federal charges, but on Friday the trial ended very differently for the four other would-​be abductors.

“A federal jury acquitted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and deadlocked on the counts against two others,” reported The Washington Post, “apparently agreeing to some degree with defense claims that FBI agents entrapped the men in a violent plot shortly before the 2020 election.”

“The Whitmer kidnapping plot,” Reason’s Robby Soave explained months ago, “was extensively directed and encouraged by agents of the government.” 

This was not just a bungled prosecution.* This was the result of a wrongheaded and dangerous policy that, instead of lawfully monitoring suspected criminals to prevent violence, actively nurtures and encourages crimes. 

And breaks the story in early October of an election year.

Sure, I know the government is here to help — but even “domestic terrorists”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “Suffice it to say,” Soave wrote about the FBI’s handing of the case, “it’s very hard to tell the cops from the criminals in this matter.” For instance, “the government’s star witness, FBI Agent Robert Trask, was fired by the agency after beating his wife following an orgy at a swingers party.”

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Amazon Retreats from Anarchy

CHAZ, Seattle, crime, progressivism

It turns out that hating on big business while shedding crocodile tears for street criminals and the homeless can have negative consequences.

Seattle, Washington, which in recent years has become increasingly “progressive” with job-​killing minimum wage rate hikes, openly socialist city council members, and a whole mess of bizarre pro-​crime policies, is of course driving businesses (along with decent citizens) out of the city limits.

Amazon, the giant, uber-​successful Internet business announced, last week, that it will “relocate office staff in downtown Seattle due to a sustained uptick in violent crime,” wrote Thomas Kika for Newsweek. And “other businesses in the area” are continuing coronavirus lockdown policies by sticking “with remote work for the same reason.”

Government’s first job is law and order. There’s a case to be made that all other state tasks are decidedly optional, and those other jobs that muck up the first job should be chopped.

Progressives don’t get that.

But speaking of “chopped” — remember CHOP and CHAZ? These were the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest and Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone insurrections of the city’s infamous 2020 “summer of love,” where for weeks on end “protesters” took over the streets and kept out the police and generally behaved like anarchist revolutionaries. It was all very disorderly, yet city officials apologized to-​and-​for the movement for the longest time — presumably because the “protesters” sounded so righteous in standard leftist manner: apparently lacking any arguments against this kind of thing. 

The occupied, autonomous, dangerous inanity was finally stopped, but the rise in vagrancy and crime continues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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