Sickening Headline On Daily Mail Article Regarding Dad Of Kid Who Fell Into Gorilla Enclosure
They rarely cease to amaze at The Daily Mail, headlining a story, "it emerges father has a lengthy criminal history."
People make mistakes. Sometimes criminal mistakes.
What I care about is who you choose to be and work to be after those mistakes.
But The Daily Mail, in their constant rush to bottom-feed, posts this about the dad. From Laura Collins, bottom-feeding for The Daily Mail from Ohio:
Criminal filings against Dickerson stretch over a decade and include burglary, firearms offences, drug trafficking, criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and kidnap.
Okay, yes, these are apparent facts about him, but they are relevant how to this zoo incident?
And then they come around to now:
But in numerous pictures posted on Dickerson's Facebook site in recent years he appears to have turned his life around to become the proud father of four.Indeed, the majority of his postings to the social media site are updates of his children and his working life.
In others pictures he has uploaded his friends congratulate him and Michelle on the birth of their fourth child last January.
Cleveland based Dickerson is from Atlanta, Georgia and studied at Cuyahoga Community College, Ohio and now works as a sorter at a Cincinnati industrial equipment supplier.
Good for him (and for his family). Not easy to turn your life around like that after you've gone strongly in one direction.
As for the death of the gorilla, I think it's terribly sad. It is possible the gorilla was trying to protect the little boy, but I am no hairy primate expert -- nor are most of the people sneering that they shouldn't have shot the thing.
Human life, obviously, has to take priority, and they apparently couldn't use a tranquilizer dart because it takes too long to take effect (and might've angered the gorilla).
I'm the first one to criticize parents for loud, ill-behaved brats out and about, but we also don't know what, exactly, happened here.
And the truth is, parents are human, and sometimes have a moment where they fail to keep an eye (or a leash) on their child.
The mother wrote on Facebook after the incident:
Soon after the incident, Michelle Gregg, the mother of the boy, posted a message on Facebook saying: 'I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers today. What started off as a wonderful day turned into a scary one.'For those of you that have seen the news or been on social media that was my son that fell in the gorilla exhibit at the zoo. God protected my child until the authorities were able to get to him.
'My son is safe and was able to walk away with a concussion and a few scrapes... no broken bones or internal injuries.
'As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids. Accidents happen but I am thankful that the right people were in the right place today.'
Even if these parents were irresponsible to some degree, lambasting them -- especially after all the father has accomplished to turn his life around -- seems to be more about the lambasters feeling good about themselves than any "positive punishment" of the family.
via @FManjoo and @NickTJacob
How "The Great Society" Harmed Blacks
Mychal Massie writes at WND about how the welfare state, a legacy of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," laid ruin to a good bit of black America:
First, The Great Society:
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964-65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice.
Great! Except...it caused a vast, uh, public assistance problem. James Piereson writes in The Weekly Standard:
Between 1964 and 1969, for example, a period of expanding economic opportunity, the welfare rolls in New York City tripled from around three hundred thousand to more than a million people because the mayor and community activists saw an opportunity to take advantage of the new availability of federal funds. Those numbers on public assistance stabilized at a million or more until the 1990s, when reform efforts succeeded in paring back the rolls. What happened in New York City occurred throughout the country: Welfare rolls multiplied, and so did crime, disorder, broken families, dysfunctional schools, and out-of-wedlock births. The unraveling of America's cities largely took place within a few years in the late 1960s, corresponding to LBJ's time in office. Ronald Reagan once remarked that "In the '60s, we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won." That statement may have been an exaggeration, but it also contained an element of truth: The scores of burned-out, crime-ridden, and bankrupt cities in America today must be counted as part of the legacy of the Great Society.
Massie lays out what was not so great for blacks about The Great Society:
In 1964, Republicans - led by Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill. - were responsible for the Civil Rights Act, which overturned 80 years of Democratic opposition to ending race-based and gender-based inequality. It was intended to provide all peoples, regardless of race and/or, sex, the right to service in all public facilities, and banned the unequal application of voter requirements insuring all the right to vote. Sexual consideration pursuant to employment could only be considered where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification for the job.The Act should have ended there - allowing society to advance the conditions on its own - but it didn't. Reducing the requirements for positions that had been male-dominated circumvented the sexual component of the Act. The end result was/is that we now have women performing certain jobs for which they may have passed an exam only because of relaxed employment qualifications - making it a job for which they are not qualified.
...I argue that the racial discrimination component of the bill wasn't circumvented by ignorance and intrusion. It wasn't the best-laid plans of man run amok. It was the further implementation of a Wilsonian-Roosevelt-Kennedy template for socialism, vis-à-vis the Great Society Initiatives.
On one level or another, the Great Society Initiatives were harmful to all, but no group was harmed more than blacks.
The Great Society theme was the foundation of Democrat Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign. Republican candidate Barry Goldwater called for reducing the size of government. But Johnson's not-so-veiled "government will take care of you" agenda cemented the decline of American civilization - especially for blacks and the elderly.
...When Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, 82 percent of blacks lived in married, two-parent households; 40 percent of blacks were small-business owners. In little more than three decades after said signing, blacks went from a legacy of Booker T. Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, to Al Sharpton, Suge Knight, Jesse Jackson and Maxine Waters.
The charity state -- the constant state of dependence on government -- sends independence out the window.
Or as X puts it, "black accountability" was replaced with "anger, hatred of whites and a refusal to embrace modernity."
via @mark_j_perry
Kinkoo
It's a Swiss clock with a link loose and a fondness for a spanking or two.
College Has Become Somewhat Indistinguishable From Nursery School
There are no juice boxes or mandated nap times, but Nina Burleigh, in her Newsweek cover story on "The Battle Against Hate Speech," lays out how college has become Tattleville against speech anybody finds (or claims to find) the least bit uncomfortable.
As I've noted, claims of being "microaggressed" are a way to unearned power over others. They're also a way to join a group -- of fellow victims -- and to be au courant.
Some of the craziness Burleigh details:
During his 18 years as president of Lebanon Valley College during the middle of the past century, Clyde Lynch led the tiny Pennsylvania liberal arts institution through the tribulations of the Great Depression and World War II, then raised $550,000 to build a new gymnasium before he died in 1950. In gratitude, college trustees named that new building after him.Neither Lynch nor those trustees could have predicted there would come a day when students would demand that his name be stripped from the Lynch Memorial Hall because the word lynch has "racial overtones." But that day did come.
When playwright Eve Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues, which premiered in 1996 and has been performed thousands of times by actors, celebrities and college students, she probably did not foresee a day when a performance of her feminist agitprop would be canceled because it was offensive to "women without vaginas." And yet that day did come--at Mount Holyoke, one of the nation's premier women's colleges.
As professor friends of mine have discovered, there is little a person says that can't be deemed a speech crime, since the definition of a speech crime is now merely anything that is offensive to anyone else. Or can creatively be determined to be.
Even a free speech lecture series, started by a liberal student, isn't immune to the end of the free exchange of ideas -- which, by the way, is how we build and strengthen our own viewpoints (or, if we're open-minded, perhaps change our minds at least a little):
Until it was squashed by administrative decree, Williams College sophomore Zachary Wood headed up an on-campus lecture series called "Uncomfortable Learning." Wood, an African-American who grew up in one of the poorer neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., is a self-described liberal, devoted to learning and books. He liked inviting controversial speakers, usually from the political right, to challenge young progressives cloistered in a collegiate utopia at one of the nation's great small liberal arts institutions.Last year, though, Wood encountered the limits of free speech at Williams. First, he invited Suzanne Venker, an anti-feminist author and lecturer. After a campus and social media outcry, Wood's fellow "Uncomfortable Learning" leaders disinvited her and then, to avoid further shaming on social media, resigned from the organization.
How is this preparing students for life in a world without speech policing at every turn? Um...
Graduates of the Class of 2016 are leaving behind campuses that have become petri dishes of extreme political correctness and heading out into a world without trigger warnings, safe spaces and free speech zones, with no rules forbidding offensive verbal conduct or microaggressions, and where the names of cruel, rapacious capitalists are embossed in brass and granite on buildings across the land. Baby seals during the Canadian hunting season may have a better chance of survival.
This is, I would venture, doing one positive thing: Making it more attractive to hire older workers who are starting over instead of millennials starting out.
My assistant now and my assistant before her are/were both of the starting over school, and I highly recommend considering older workers.
It's Called Dating, Not Baiting: A Male Feminist-As-Sucker Story
Rather sad man-as-willing-sucker dating story in the LA Times.
Giorgio Selvaggio writes the first-person piece in which he makes a classic mistake -- taking a woman who's a total stranger out for a pricey dinner.
The headline: "How I found out she was only using me for free dinners and drinks."
If you're a man who's tried (or considered trying) online dating, chances are you've worried you might meet a woman looking to use you for a free expensive dinner. It seems trivial in comparison to what women have to worry about when they filter through men on dating sites, but it's still a concern, and it still happens to the best of us.I'm a high school teacher and a freelance writer, but I'm also the son of a Michelin-awarded restaurateur. My online dating profile doesn't mention my dad's accomplishments, but in moments of insecurity, I've been known to name-drop in order to keep the woman interested.
Ugh.
He takes a woman out to dinner on the first date (bad idea, see below). Yes, he dropped $130 plus tip on her -- on a near total stranger -- on a writer/teacher's salary.
Granted, he did hear from her again: as she was going on a date with some other dude to his famous dad's famous and pricey restaurant (Valentino's in Santa Monica).
And then there was this -- the saddest pussyman two paragraphs:
I had so many questions for her, like why she expected expensive dinners and bottles of wine if she "didn't take it seriously," but I thought asking would be in poor taste. So instead I just wished her good luck too, and in the end I didn't even get to do that because my number had already been blocked.Some men, frustrated after not getting a second date or not getting any action on the first, will wrongly accuse women of "just dating for the free meals." I'm not that man. If a woman doesn't want a second date, it's not my business why, and I don't know her well enough to hurl those kinds of accusations. I also don't really mind if women are out there using men for free meals, because there are plenty of men out there using women for other things, and in the end our job is to learn from our experiences and spot the red flags so we aren't the one getting used.
Dude should be reading my column and books.
As I write in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," first dates should be three things:
2. Short
3. Local
Here's that passage from my book:
First dates should be cheap, short, and local.
On the first date and maybe even the second, you should meet for coffee or happy-hour drinks for an hour or two--at most. This helps keep things from going too fast (a big source of misery and resentment) and keeps the guy from needing to shell out much money. Also, if a date turns nightmarish, it will at least be a Hobbesian nightmare: nasty and brutish but also short.
And there's more:
Even if a man is very wealthy, his investment on the first few dates should be more symbolic than substantial. In fact, so there isn't a terribly imbalanced initial investment, it's important that the first few dates be moderately priced--the sort where the point is getting to know each other over a coffee or a couple of drinks, not introducing the woman to the limit on the man's American Express Platinum Card.
And a note for the ladies who are not golddiggers:
When a guy who isn't exactly a Mr. Moneybags is treating a woman to dinner, he'll be afraid of looking cheap, which will make him easy prey for every waiter upsell in the book. A woman needs to be the one to lead with the frugalities, such as, "Tap water is fine for me," when the waiter proposes the $112 bottled water, collected from dew that fell off angels' wings.
And back to poor Giorgio, here's a clue. He calls himself an "amateur feminist author."
As for why men become "feminists," I would venture it's typically for the reason men do most things: To get pussy.
Unfortunately, while women claim to want men who are -- ugh -- feminists, the truth is that many women have contempt for them and just end up taking them for a ride...complete with capuccino and a pricey dessert.
Giorgio needs a set of man balls and the instruction book on how to use 'em.
Actually, my prescription for Giorgio is this: that, for three weeks, Giorgio act like a man -- the way men were before some got the bright idea to get on the Feminism As A Supposed Highway To Pussy track -- and see where it gets him.
Just guessing, but I think he'd have fewer dinners that merely lead to a big bill and a side of humiliation.
Lout
Oafylinks.
The Latest Man-Avoiding Dumbass Vagina Trend
It's the "yoni massage," getting your vagina a massage, reports Samantha Allen at The Daily Beast:
Why pay someone $300 to touch your vagina when you can touch it yourself? That's the question that San Francisco Bay Area OB/GYN and writer Dr. Jennifer Gunter would ask anyone who is thinking about dropping a few Benjamins on a tantric "yoni massage."...yoni massages do involve the same exact kind of sensual touching that most women find necessary to have an orgasm. Sarah Ratchford, who tried getting one for Cosmo, described having her labia majora rubbed, then her clitoris, and ultimately, the inside of her vagina, G-spot included. It's not unheard-of for women to climax during these sessions, as one masseuse named Isis Phoenix confirmed to Women's Health. But if that's true, then good sex or masturbation should also do the trick.
"Yes, massaging the lower genital tract is pleasurable," said Dr. Gunter. "Physical stimulation in that area is how most women achieve orgasm. However, most women do this with a partner or--if they don't have a partner or don't care to have one at the moment--they use their hands or a vibrator."
I loved this:
Phoenix told Women's Health a tantric yoni massage can "cleanse" you and help you release emotions that are "stuck" in your vagina.
I just get a unattached garden hose, get it in position, and give a yell or two: "Anger, you little bitch. Get the fuck out of there right now!"
How cool that it's that easy to save $300!
P.S. What this really is is "Let's pretend this isn't sex work!"
Cries Of Entrapment
Robert Spencer asks a good question -- in response to claims of entrapment: the notion that "overzealous FBI agents pushed poor innocent Muslims into taking part in a jihad plot that otherwise would never have existed."
If undercover agents approached you and tried to entice you into joining a murderous jihad group, how hard would it be to convince you to do it?Speaking strictly for myself, I have absolutely no worries of ever being entrapped in this way; there is simply nothing, under any circumstances, that anyone could say to me to convince me to blow anyone up or behead anyone. And so if someone showed up and started trying to cajole me into doing so, I would find him irritating, but I wouldn't even come close to doing anything that would enable anyone to portray me as guilty of anything. Law enforcement agents were not to blame and cannot justly be held accountable for these men's choices.
These increasingly common charges of entrapment should be seen for what they are: yet another attempt to divert attention from the ugly reality of Islamic jihad activity in the U.S. and around the world, and to place the responsibility for jihadist misdeeds upon non-Muslims -- specifically the ones who are trying to thwart the jihadists" plans. After 9/11, we were assured again and again that the vast majority of Muslims in the U.S. and worldwide were peaceful, and sincerely condemned such violence perpetrated in the name of their religion. Yet nearly fifteen years later, we still have yet to see a sincere and effective effort within mosques to expose and report those who hold to the beliefs that led to those attacks.
On Islam and terror from TROP:
Islam does prohibit killing innocent people. Unfortunately, you don't qualify.Although many Muslims earnestly believe that their religion prohibits the killing of innocent people by acts of terrorism, the truth is certainly more complicated. This is why Muslims on both sides of the terror debate insist that they are the true believers and accuse the other of hijacking Islam. It is also why organizations that commit horrible atrocities in the name of Allah, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, receive a significant amount of moral and financial support from the mainstream.
In fact, the definition of "terrorism" in Islam is ambiguous at best. And the definition of an "innocent person" in Islam isn't something that Muslim apologists advertise when they say that such persons aren't to be harmed. The reason for this is that anyone who rejects Islam by refusing to convert is not considered to be innocent according to Islamic teaching.
...Even within the Islamic community there is a category of Muslims who are also said to bear guilt - greater, even, than the average non-believer. These are the hypocrites, or "Munafiqin," whom Muhammad referred to in the most derogatory terms. A hypocrite is considered to be a Muslim in name only. They are distinguished from true Muslims, according to the 9th Sura, by an unwillingness to wage (v.81 , 86) or fund (v.121) holy war. The Quran says that true believers fight and are harsh to unbelievers (v.123).
The Muslim terrorists who frequently kill "other Muslims" in the name of Allah do so believing that their victims are Munafiqin or kafir (unbelievers). This is a part of Sharia known as takfir, in which a Muslim can be declared an apostate and then executed for their role in hindering the expansion of Islamic authority. (A true Muslim would go to paradise anyway, in which case he or she could hardly be expected to nurse a grudge amidst the orgy of sex and wine).
In addition to the murky definition of innocence, there is also the problem of distinguishing terrorism from holy war. Islamic terrorists rarely refer to themselves as terrorists but usually say that they are holy warriors (Mujahideen, Shahid, or Fedayeen). They consider their actions to be a form of Jihad.
Holy war is commanded in the Quran and Hadith. In Sura 9:29, Muhammad establishes the principle that unbelievers should be fought until they either convert to Islam or accept a state of humiliation under Islamic subjugation.
Rinky
Icylinks. Icycoldbeer.
"Extremely White" Is A Color
Full disclosure: It is possible that I'm related to the supposed Cherokee Senator, Elizabeth Warren -- possibly through the Cherokee ancestors in my family who lived along the German-Polish border (that is, until they emigrated to Detroit around 1900).
Maggie Haberman wrote (back in 2012) at Politico that supposed Cherokee Senator, Elizabeth Warren was playing it all clueless about the "minority" background (the one that she was clearlydragging around everywhere with her like Linus dragged his blanket in Peanuts):
Elizabeth Warren has pushed back hard on questions about a Harvard Crimson piece in 1996 that described her as Native American, saying she had no idea the school where she taught law was billing her that way and saying it never came up during her hiring a year earlier, which others have backed up.But a 1997 Fordham Law Review piece described her as Harvard Law School's "first woman of color," based, according to the notes at the bottom of the story, on a "telephone interview with Michael Chmura, News Director, Harvard Law (Aug. 6, 1996)."
The mention was in the middle of a lengthy and heavily-annotated Fordham piece on diversity and affirmative action and women. The title of the piece, by Laura Padilla, was "Intersectionality and positionality: Situating women of color in the affirmative action dialogue."
"There are few women of color who hold important positions in the academy, Fortune 500 companies, or other prominent fields or industries," the piece says. "This is not inconsequential. Diversifying these arenas, in part by adding qualified women of color to their ranks, remains important for many reaons. For one, there are scant women of color as role models. In my three years at Stanford Law School, there were no professors who were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995."
...She has said she had no idea Harvard was billing her that way or how the school found out that her family claims Native American heritage. She learned of it first from the Herald story, she said.
And it's possible Warren didn't see the Fordham story.
But the Fordham piece takes the description of Warren by Harvard Law beyond the boundaries of the Massachusetts school. Warren had described herself as a minority on a law professors' listing for several years, ending in 1995. She has said she wanted to meet people like herself, but stopped when she realized that's not what the listing was for.
She has pushed back hard on suggestions she got her job based on her heritage, and her backers have noted a 1995 Crimson piece, from the year she was hired, makes no mention of her background.
William A. Jacobson writes at Legal Insurrection:
It's hard for Warren to respond on the Cherokee issue in any meaningful way. She refused in late June 2012 to meet with a group of Cherokee women who traveled to Boston to speak with her.It was an issue she assiduously evaded during the 2012 campaign, other than to have her staff accuse people who exposed the truth (like me), of being "right wing extremists."
Here is the truth. Liz Warren has no Native American ancestry. A Cherokee genealogist studied all her family lines, and there is no Indian history.
The so-called 1/32 Cherokee blood was a false claim, and now is an urban myth.
The fact is that, while there may have been some rumors or stories in her family, Warren never lived as an Indian, never embraced that identity, never helped Indians or associated with them, and didn't even claim Indian status when she registered with the Senate. The only time in her life that Warren fully embraced her supposed Native American identity was in a law professor directory used for hiring purposes when she was in her mid-30s and starting to climb the law school ladder, eventually landing at Harvard Law School.
I've often wondered why Warren never challenged Hillary. If Bernie is doing well, Warren would have crushed Hillary. But Warren chose not to run for some reason -- I'm guessing that there is something out there in her Oklahoma history relating to the Native American claim that she doesn't want coming out, but that would destroy her credibility on the issue. It's something that would take deep opposition research, the type that only people like the Clinton's have access to ... and may already have.
So Trump is onto something. It doesn't absolve Trump of any of his own faults and issues, but it does put Liz Warren's core political problem in play again. And that's important, because if Hillary gets into legal trouble, Warren will be one of the names suggested to parachute in to save the party.
via @instapundit
Blinky
A millisecond story.
Divorcing People Who Should Not Be Given "Spousal Support" Include Millionaire Hollywood Actresses
Amber Heard and Johnny Depp are divorcing.
Amber Heard is a Hollywood actress, making movie star money, not some poor washerwoman who won't be able to keep a roof over her head because her husband will no longer be in the picture.
They have no children -- so it isn't like her ability to earn was compromised by years of stay-at-home mommyhood.
Yet it appears she's asking for "spousal support."
From CADivorce:
Spousal support is the term used for payments from one spouse to another after a divorce for the purpose of maintaining the former spouse's standard of living during the marriage. The term "alimony" means the same thing as "spousal support."
Amber Heard's net worth is estimated to be approximately $4.5 million while Depp is reportedly worth $400 million.
They were married for 15 months. The guy owns an island. Okay, does that mean she will suffer terribly if she does not live in island-owning standards?
Or that this level of wealth should be continued?
Drones Over Homes: Where Should The No-Fly Zone Begin?
Welcome to the wild, wild high-tech West.
A question from the WSJ:
Drones are coming. Regulations are evolving. Should you be allowed to prevent drones from flying over your property?
Here's A Lady Who Isn't Whining About Microaggressions
Hermina Hirsch, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor, sang the national anthem at the Detroit Tigers game this past Saturday, reports Beth Darby at The Patch.
It was a dream of Hirsch's to do this.
Hirsch and her family were sent to live in a ghetto in Czechoslovakia in 1944 and were later imprisoned by the Nazis in World War II concentration camps. She was 17 at the time....The camp where Hirsch had been imprisoned was liberated on Jan. 21, 1945, and Hirsch hitched rides to get back to her birthplace, her granddaughter, Andrea Hirsch, told WWJ.
After a year in a sanitorium to regain her health, a cousin set up a blind date with Bernard Hirsch, her now husband of 69 years. They moved to the Detroit area in 1953, and are longtime Tigers fans.
...Singing before thousands, she told WWJ at the time, didn't faze her at all.
"If I lived through the concentration camp, it couldn't be that bad," said Hirsch, who regularly sings "The Star Spangled Banner" to open Holocaust survivor meetings in the Detroit area.
Lunkey
Quaker Oafies.
Tattling To Daddy: Not How An Adult Woman Deals With Behavior That Makes Her Uncomfortable
But that's become how it works -- how women (typically) can go after men (typically) -- and have unearned power over them.
A new case in this mode comes from UC Berkeley.
Like this law professor who's now out of a job, I'm a hugger.
I try to ask first, or sense whether someone will be uncomfortable, but people I can recall hugging: A homeless guy, Nathaniel, who passes by my street; the manager at the Pico Trader Joe's; my boyfriend; my friend Kate; and Nancy Rommelmann and two other writers I saw recently. (I'm not getting out much, due to writing this book, my column, and a talk, so my hugging is mostly Gregg and my dog these days.)
Well, this professor, Sujit Choudry, at UC Berkeley law school, would sometimes hug his assistant and/or kiss her on the cheek.
As Ashe Schow writes at the WashEx, "This was unacceptable to her."
What was there to do but -- yes! -- report the guy to UC Berkeley.
Hello? No indication that she ever did the adult thing -- tell the guy or at least find a way to get out of the contact. Here -- I'll give you an example:
There was a guy I'd see infrequently at events who kind of creeped me out -- not only would he hug me; he'd give me a wet kiss on the cheek. Kiss is fine. Wet kiss -- yuck. So I started telling him I had a cold. Easy-peasy. No need to tattle.
If I had more frequent contact with him, I would have said something. But I saw no reason to perhaps hurt his feelings. I found a way to stop the saliva transfer without doing that.
Schow continues:
A settlement was reached and Choudhry was punished. But when the school came under fire for the accusation -- and UC President Janet Napolitano herself came under fire for mishandling sexual misconduct complaints -- Choudhry was subjected to a new, second round of punishment and investigations.Choudhry resigned in mid-March after the second investigation was launched. Had he not, he could have faced being fired.
There was some he said/she said, with his accuser, Tyann Sorrell, saying he did the huggy kissy five to six times a day.
Choudhry said he did so no "more than once or twice a week."Sorrell gave UC Berkeley the names of two witnesses, but those witnesses backed up Choudhry's account.
...Despite this, Choudhry expressed "sincere and deep remorse for the stress and unhappiness that he caused." His sanctions included a 10 percent pay cut for the year, paying out-of-pocket for coaching related to workplace conduct, a written apology to Sorrell and monitoring from those who investigated him.
Amazing, huh? A guy -- whose name suggests that his family didn't exactly come to the country eons ago on the Mayflower -- achieves to the degree where he's at Berkeley law school. And an assistant can bring him down -- not because he raped her or harassed her, but because he would greet her with affection.
And again, if you have an issue with somebody's hugs, I understand.
However, we used to require adult women to act like adult women -- after women in the women's movement fought and fought to be treated like equals.
Oh, what a rollback -- one that will not, in the long run, be good for women. (If I were a man -- one who didn't want to have to fight off some false accusation or a lawsuit -- I'd sure prefer to hire a man.)
Believe The Camera
Luckily for this British taxi driver, there was a camera installed in his taxi to "believe."
He was accused of sexual assault -- when nothing beyond the normal parameters of a taxi ride went on -- and could have lost everything, reports the Hull Daily Mail:
"If it wasn't for my CCTV I could have lost everything," he said. "I would have lost my job which is my living, I could have lost my house. Thankfully, I have got a rock-solid marriage and my wife knew she was lying, but someone else might not have been so lucky."
The absolutely criminally rotten woman who accused him -- Claire Emma Carr, 20, from west Hull -- got only a 12 week jail sentence.
I'm for those who falsely accuse people of crimes being imprisoned for the amount of time their victims would have gotten -- plus paying restitution for the falsely-accused's pain, suffering, and legal fees.
Just think about the horror this guy went through. It could be the stuff heart attacks are made of.
About the "believe the victim" mantra, Barbara Hewson explains at Spiked why this is not justice:
Exhortations to 'believe the victim' miss the point. A legal system that shrinks from testing witness credibility robustly is not an authentic system of justice.
But, most cavalierly, in the WaPo, feminist writer Zerlina Maxwell argues for injustice as the status quo:
Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.
That accused person will likely be a man. If you are not for equal rights and justice for men, you are not for equal rights and justice at all. You are for special rights under the guise of calling for equal rights, and you are a person who makes our society worse for your being in it.
Mink Links
Furry handcuffs all around!
Angelina Jolie Hired As A Prof At London School Of Economics
As Emma Batha, of Thompson Reuters Foundation, reports:
Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie is to join the London School of Economics (LSE) as a visiting professor on a new masters course on women, peace and security, the school announced on Monday.
In other news, I will be taking over as chief scientific officer at CERN, and powering the Large Hadron Collider with burning hatred for people yelling into their cell phones in public places.
The Little Brats Of Privilege On College Campuses
The real privilege is being able to attend a university in America in 2016.
I realized this back when I went to school. My parents paid for the University of Michigan, where I went for three years. Then, to do my final year of college and graduate from NYU, I wrote my way to a scholarship plus worked day and night in New York to pay the expenses beyond what Michigan would have cost.
I feel very lucky -- and privileged -- to have parents willing to do this and to be able to make the rest happen myself.
Today, students don't feel privileged enough simply being in college; they have to demand special privileges beyond that.
It's kind of amazing. While sneering at "white privilege" at every turn -- the accepted racism that can be hurled at white people simply for having white skin -- these oversized tantrumming toddlers on campus want special dispensations at every turn.
Take the kids who spend their time getting arrested instead of educated.
And believe me, I'm all for protesting -- but there are tradeoffs. If you aren't willing to make them, well, don't be whining about the costs and demanding special treatment.
From a New Yorker piece by Nathan Heller, one of these campus brats, Zakiya Acey, complains that he is actually expected to take his exams...and horrors...in the form they are given!
But not to worry -- he can get his special privileges, but -- horrors again -- he has to you know, ask:
"Like, the way the courses are set up. You know, we're paying for a service. We're paying for our attendance here. We need to be able to get what we need in a way that we can actually consume it." He pauses. "Because I'm dealing with having been arrested on campus, or having to deal with the things that my family are going through because of larger systems--having to deal with all of that, I can't produce the work that they want me to do. But I understand the material, and I can give it to you in different ways. There's professors who have openly been, like, 'Yeah, instead of, you know, writing out this midterm, come in to my office hours, and you can just speak it,' right? But that's not institutionalized. I have to find that professor."
Note that he subscribes to the consumer model of education, expecting the college to treat him like Target, as a shopper of educational products.
via @jbarro
All The Little Neo-Victorian Ladies: How Campus Speech Squashing Policies Hurt Women
The women's movement has become a movement backward -- fast.
Feminism now involves women demanding to be treated as eggshells, not equals.
This is especially true on campuses.
Women buy into the SJW-driven idea that they are too frail to speak up and debate the issues or simply haul off and tell somebody who's offended them, "Hey, shut up, buttlint." (Or maybe something classier or more to the point.)
This -- increasingly -- leads them to be helpless to talk back.
No probski! Because college now prepares them for -- yes, prepares them to tattle.
To The Man. Like it's nursery school, not a university.
At SpikedOnline, Ella Whelan notes that all the censorship is holding women back. And guess who supports that censorship? It's a "significant proportion of female students."
Sad -- pathetically so.
Whelan writes:
All of this is done in the name of cleansing campus of 'demeaning' representations of women.Women's autonomy has been hugely undermined. Forget the in loco parentis restrictions of the Sixties - female students today aren't even trusted to hear a racy joke without falling to pieces. The FSUR found that 33 per cent of universities and students' unions have 'zero tolerance' policies prohibiting jokes, cat-calling and even 'inappropriate sexual noises'. Women aren't even trusted to conduct their social lives without rules and regulations.
These protective measures treat women like children, incapable of handling the trials and tribulations of adult life by themselves. And all of it has been fuelled by contemporary feminism, which paints campus as a uniquely dangerous place for women and promotes the bizarre idea that the first step towards gender equality is women insisting they are vulnerable. This is, of course, nonsense. For all the fearmongering about campus rape culture, universities are among the safest places in the country. But in a climate where cat-calling is conflated with sexual assault, and rude jokes are considered traumatising, female students are constantly being encouraged to see themselves as perennial victims.
As Whalen puts it, just when women have the world at their feet, they're being encouraged to think of themselves as fragile and unable to defend themselves -- even verbally.
With so many women behaving this way, who's hurt? Strong women who are lumped in with the rest and are often probably seen as both too fragile and emotionally volatile to hire.
Democrats Doing Their Part To See That Entry-Level Employees Are Replaced By Entry-Level Robots
At Pajamas Media, they quote Ed Rensi, the former CEO of McDonald's:
"If you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry -- it's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who's inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries," Rensi told Fox Business. "It's nonsense and it's very destructive and it's inflationary and it's going to cause a job loss across this country like you're not going to believe.""It's not just going to be in the fast food business," Rensi continued. "Franchising is the best business model in the United States. It's dependent on people that have low job skills that have to grow. Well if you can't get people a reasonable wage, you're going to get machines to do the work. It's just common sense. It's going to happen whether you like it or not."
Linkey Kong
Sound effects sold separately.
The Ugly Racism Of Indicting White People For Being White -- And The Ugly Backlash It's Causing
I've always loved that Martin Luther King statement about judging people by the content of their character.
Yet, increasingly we see the "white privilege!" sneer used to pre-punish white people -- for merely existing with their white skin.
It seems to lead to a backlash from some uglier sectors of society, with an increase in ugly groups like KKK chapters in recent years.
It seems that all of this indictment of white people for being white is fueling White Nationalism, writes David Marcus at The Federalist:
From 2014 to 2015, the number of active Klu Klux Klan chapters in the United States grew from 72 to 190, a massive increase for a group so closely associated with hatred. Along with these organized efforts, social media has given a dangerous new platform to white supremacists.One of the key components to the success of this racism is the almost-daily parade of silly micro-aggressions and triggers.
The "white privilege" sneers have done a great job undoing Martin Luther King's thinking as the prevailing idea of how we should all live together. Marcus explains:
A big part of the reason white Americans have been willing to go along with policies that are prejudicial on their face, such as affirmative action, is that they do not view themselves as a tribe....What is new is the direct indictment of white people as a race. This happened through a strange rhetorical transformation over the past few years. At first, "white men are our greatest threat" postings tended to be ironic, a way of putting the racist shoe on the other foot. They were meant to show that blaming an entire race for the harmful actions of a few individuals is senseless.
...One can teach against white supremacy by encouraging students to treat everyone as equal, or at least as individuals not defined in important ways by their race. Privilege theory does not allow for this approach. It demands that differences be front and center and that we always consider a person's race in considering him. This focus on "valuing differences" over "the colorblind model" unlocked the door to the white supremacist revival that today's anti-white rhetoric has kicked open.
...This brings us back to John. What got him "worked up" about privilege theory was not that he'd have to compete for jobs with minorities. He was upset at having to confess guilt for events he had no control over. Many whites feel this way. Moreover, many resent the pedagogical transformations that their history and culture are undergoing. White historical figures once held in too high esteem have swung the other way into utter disrepute. Also, the histories of no other peoples are being held to these lofty standards.
Mohandas Gandhi's racism, the Black Panthers' vicious murders, and Santa Anna's barbarism are understood within the context of their positive contributions. Increasingly, white Americans perceive that Columbus, Jefferson, Jackson, and many other core white historical figures are consistently brought down a peg in order to decentralize whiteness in history. This assault on their history has a deeper impact than many on the Left are aware of, or willing to admit.
via @CathyYoung63
Link Market
Free market linkeralism.
Just Like Homework For Your Kindergartener, Sexual Harassment Training Doesn't Work -- And May Backfire
The Real Evil HR Lady, Suzanne Lucas, compares sexual harassment training to homework assigned in the lower grades:
The principal flat-out admitted that all the research showed that homework in the lower grades was worthless for the student, but that they assigned it because the parents wanted it....What about the corporate harassment training? Well, the purpose of that is financial. If John harasses Jane and your company hasn't done any sexual harassment training, Jane's lawyer is going to use that as a way to prove that your company allowed this type of behavior.
So, we hold our training to be able to stand up in court and say, "We did everything we could." Saying you did something sounds a whole lot better than saying "We know training doesn't work, so we did nothing." A jury is going to hear "We don't care about sexual harassment." The purpose of the stupid action? Covering our corporate rear ends.
The reality is, doing something isn't always better than doing nothing.
Jack Robinson reports at HREOnline that esearch has found that sexual harassment training can backfire, leading to a backlash in males.
I'd be pissed as a woman because I find it infantilizing. I want men to joke around with me and I want to joke around with them. If I'm offended, I'm not a helpless baby bird; I'll say something. (I'm unlikely to be offended.)
Robinson reports that other research has found that sexual-harassment training mostly inspires fear among workers.
Yes, that's the kind of workplace you really want -- one where your workers are afraid to say anything or be creative, lest they lose their jobs over it.
"Govt" Is Just Another Word For "Bend Over": Parma, Ohio, Charges Residents Who Collect Rainwater On Their Property
I thought this had to be a joke.
In Parma, Ohio, a city on the southern edge of Cleveland, if you put out a plastic barrel -- on your own property -- to collect the rain that falls out of the sky, you'll need to pay $31.
Bob Sandrick writes at Cleveland.com:
Residents wanting to install a rain barrel in their yards will have to pay a steeper fee than what was originally believed.The fee is $31 for one barrel, $32 for two, $33 for three and so on.
Last week, the Sun Post reported that it would cost just $1 to install a rain barrel.
That was based on a reading of a rain-barrel ordinance that City Council approved May 7. The ordinance established regulations for rain barrels.
If you live in Parma and you voted for anyone on the City Council who voted for this, you are not a sentient being who should be allowed to vote (or cross the street without being leashed to a competent adult).
As commenter paradisoch wrote on the Cleveland.com post:
Unfortunately, now the city will have an excuse to send people on your property to see if you have an authorized rain barrel; people don't own their property, they are merely tenants of the state.
via Joe Wahler
Walid Shoebat On Why He Thinks Egypt Air Flight 804's Crash Was Terrorism
Shoebat, a former Muslim terrorist, now an ex-Muslim and a Christian, explains about drowning as a fast-track to salvation:
In Islam, it is not only the warrior in battle who is considered "martyr." Hardy's theory is most likely true (I do not trust the aviation experts from Muslim nations). The pilot, Mr.Shah, on MH370, as well as Muhammad Shakeer of Egypt Flight 804, were designing a meticulous plan, not just on how he weaved through all the detection, but he must have meticulously considered his fate: drowning....And it is here that we come to the source, the mind, the theology and from our own experience as x-terrorist. It is difficult for westerners to comprehend the mindset unless they've been there and done that and sat in class in Bethlehem where our Muslim Brotherhood teacher Sheikh Zacharia would tell us of the benefits of dying drowning. In Islam, most Muslims know (which most westerners are oblivious to), when a Muslim dies by drowning, he is automatically considered a "martyr" and is perhaps why Shah, like Shakeer of flight 804 "landed" on water. Death due to an impact on a building spoils the recipe where Muslim passengers would lose that status. Under the classification of martyrdom in Islam, it clearly states:
"... he who dies of a stomach disease is a martyr; and he who is drowned is a martyr." [Sahih Muslim].Many of the silly comments I get, comes mostly from naive Americans who ask "why kill Muslims on board"? This is rather a stupid question, especially when these Americans who ask have witnessed 911. The pilots in the Muslim view are actually doing their passengers a favor. They are assuring their salvation since they died by drowning, all who drown are "martyrs" and are assured paradise.
...Listen up, no airline, especially an airline in a Muslim nation, wants travelers to think that the most entrusted individual, the captain, would kill his passengers. This would be more devastating than a bomb planted via access to restricted areas of Charles de Gaulle airport. This way they get to blame the French.
...With the Egypt Air flight 804, Osama Abdel Basset, the captain in charge of the air hospitality in Egyptian Air says it all: "The Captain Mohammed Shakeer, the pilot of that fateful flight" had organized a "last supper" knowing he is "about to die":
he called on his colleagues before the incident a few days to lunch at his house hinting that the end is near, the end of his life that is, and that he is ready to meet his maker and gave his farewell. He was bidding them [his friends] farewell with words that came out of his mouth for the first time in his life"
Stink
Smellylinks.
Peak Trailer Trash
Mobile home in Malibu's Paradise Cove sells for a record $5.3 million.
More listings in Paradise Cove mobile home park.
Years ago, I thought I'd get really clever and buy a place there.
Right. Here's what you get for $600K.
Here's a real bargain -- $575K for 750 square feet...plus "space rental" (the land use) for $1164 a month.
Gregg likes to joke that the only home I could afford in LA would come with its own street gang.
Progressive Thugitarianism: Shutting Down Conservative Campus Speakers
First, for anyone dropping by here for the first time, I am not a conservative.
I'm a fiscally conservative small-government advocate, but socially libertarian -- for legalizing drugs and prostitution, for getting the state out of marriage (but very much for gay marriage), pro-choice (though I find abortion, especially after the first few weeks creepy and troubling), and I stand for all sort of other things that many social conservatives don't agree with or approve of.
However, whatever your views and regardless of whether I think you're right or appallingly wrong, I support -- and defend -- your right to speak them.
I find it most disgusting -- and dangerous and troubling -- that so many progressive students think and act like the way to debate a speaker whose views they disapprove of is to keep that speaker from speaking.
It happened yet again at Cal State Los Angeles. Jennifer Kabbany writes at The College Fix:
Young America's Foundation on Thursday filed a lawsuit against California State University Los Angeles, accusing the public university of censoring a conservative speaker's guest lecture there by not stopping raucous and aggressive students from blocking the entrances into the theater, effectively shutting down the event.The lecture did take place after conservative Ben Shapiro managed to enter the theater on the sly, but the February talk took place before a very sparse audience as both entrances -- back and front -- were blocked by the rowdy student activists who locked arms and refused to let people by, video and eye-witness accounts show.
The lawsuit was filed with help from the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom. It alleges school leaders violated the First Amendment rights of the Young Americans for Freedom student club, which hosted the lecture, titled: "When Diversity Becomes a Problem."
Personally, I think that "diversity" has become a convenient and government-supported form of discrimination.
However, there's a way to express that, and it is by debating the speaker in the question and answer period, writing editorials, postering campus, and inviting speaker with opposing views.
It is particularly sad that liberal students founded the Free Speech Movement back in the 60s but have come full-circle, and are now behind what is effectively the un-Free Speech movement, which is to say, thugitarianism.
RELATED: Stanley Kurtz with a plan to restore free speech on campus:
First: Colleges and universities ought to adopt a policy on freedom of expression modeled on Yale's Woodward Report of 1974, which identifies ensuring intellectual freedom in the pursuit of knowledge as the primary obligation of a university.Second: Colleges and universities need to systematically educate members of their community in the principles of free expression.
Third: "A university administration's responsibility for assuring free expression imposes further obligations: it must act firmly when a speech is disrupted or when disruption is attempted; it must undertake to identify disruptors, and it must make known its intentions to do so beforehand."
Fourth: College and university trustees must monitor administrators to ensure that they promote and defend freedom of expression.
Fifth: Colleges and universities ought to adopt policies on institutional political neutrality based on the University of Chicago's Kalven Committee Report of 1967.
"Stepping Stone Housing" Should Be Legal
There's this well-intentioned cabbageheadedness from the well-to-do about housing -- demanding high-quality housing for people short on money. It has to be of a certain size and have certain amenities, blah, blah, blah.
Well, how lovely -- except for the fact that this probably often leads to unaffordable housing and/or no housing at all for people who really need it.
Emily Washington posts at Market Urbanism about the need for low-quality housing:
Last week I wrote a post highlighting how important it is for major cities to have places for low-income people to live. Without the opportunity to live in vibrant, growing cities, our nation's poor can't take advantage of the employment and educational opportunities cities offer. My post offended some people who don't think that reforming quality standards is a necessary part of affordable housing policy. On Twitter @AlJavieera said that my suggestion that people should have the option to live in housing lacking basic amenities is "horribly conservative."Multiple people said that my account of tenement housing was "ahistorical." They didn't elaborate on what they meant, but they seemed to think I was suggesting that tenements were pleasant places to live, or that people today would live in Victorian apartments if such homes were legalized. On the contrary, I argue that in their time, tenements provided a stepping stone for poor immigrants to improve their lives, and that stepping stone housing should be legal today.
Historical trends provide evidence that people born into New York's worst housing moved onto better jobs and housing over time. The Lower East Side tenements were first home to predominantly German and Irish immigrants, and later Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants. The waves of ethnicities that dominated these apartments indicate that the earlier immigrants were able to move out of this lowest rung of housing.
...Those advocating greater government support for housing seemingly embrace ahistorical accounts of previous and current public involvement in housing. Rather than leading to better housing for the poor, the most common outcome has been the elimination of residences deemed inadequate by politically influential people. In 1934 in an early slum clearance project, one of the dreaded "lung blocks" was demolished to make way for Knickerbocker Village, public housing for middle-income workers. The rental rate was more than twice that of a typical tenement, leaving the displaced tenement residents to search for housing they could afford as reformers razed it.
She explains in her previous post:
Today's housing reformers are using the same fear mongering about microapartments that Jacob Riis used over a century ago, saying that they lead to neighborhood overcrowding and that they are rented by undesirable people. Because a person in the lowest income decile has a higher living standard in every category of goods than a person in the lowest income quintile did 100 years ago, today's low-quality, market-rate housing would be of a better standard than the tenements that helped fuel the progressive movement....Tenements provided housing that met a qualification that both Hertz and Jacobus stress; it was conveniently located and provided residents with easy access to jobs. Both writers point out that affordable housing is not only a regional issue, but that low-income people need to be able to live within a reasonable commute of the jobs that will allow them to improve their standard of living. Low-quality housing is key to achieving this goal.
This question was asked in the comments on the post at the top:
What would low quality actually mean today? Would it mean damp, mouldy apartments, or would it mean small, spartan ones?What would a half-boarding house with ensuite bedrooms be considered as?
Commenter anonymouse writes:
Most likely, just pretty small units crammed into a renovated and reconfigured older building, maybe with living spaces added in attics and basements. Something like a Boston triple decker, but with 6-8 units (each 2 bedroom gets split into a 1 br and a studio, and another studio or two added in the basement). You can go even further into smaller units, maybe as small as 200 sq ft, with a small bathroom and shower and a kitchenette with mini-fridge, induction hot plate, and microwave, and single sink for the whole unit. It would make sense as student housing, and would probably actually be higher quality than cramming 4 or 6 college students into a shared house.
My stove works but my oven has probably been out since my landlord put it in. (I don't cook; I heat.) I could do just fine with a hot plate and a microwave, plus, in France, I've often stayed in the old "chambre de bonne" -- the maid's room, with the bathroom down the hall -- to save a few bucks.
Whether to do that should be the choice of the renter, not that of bureaucrats.
via @Overlawyered
Linkierama
It's either a movie theater or a roller derby.
Getting Hi
"I said hello to somebody already this week."--my introvert boyfriend, weighing whether to go to an event this afternoon.
Some Sick People Are Seeing This Photo As Sick
@CathyYoung63 calls it "Very revealing re: gender-based double standard."
It's a father holding his terribly sick son in the shower. When I read that, I teared up over what a beautiful image -- and act -- of fatherhood it is. The kid was throwing up, feverish, and besieged with diarrhea, and the father was trying to keep his fever down and letting the vomit and poo just rinse off of both of them as it came.
Photo credit, the mom, Heather Whitten:
The BBC posts:
This photograph of a father holding his son in the shower has been shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook in the last fortnight. But over the same period it's also also been taken down by the social media platform more than once before ultimately being reinstated each time. Why?In some ways the picture appears to show a fairly everyday scene. A dad cradling his severely sick child in his arms. Except in this instance, they are in the shower and both naked. The picture was posted on social media by the photographer Heather Whitten who lives in Arizona in the US. It shows her son Fox and her husband, the boy's father Thomas Whitten.
For many viewers the image is a touching portrait of parental care and affection. The reason that father and son were naked was because Fox had Salmonella poisoning for which he would soon after be hospitalised.
"Thomas had spent hours in the shower with him, trying to keep his fever down and letting the vomit and diarrhea rinse off of them both as it came," Whitten wrote in her post accompanying the photo.
"He was so patient and so loving and so strong with our tiny son in his lap... I stepped out and grabbed my camera and came back to snap a few images of it and, of course shared them."
But for some people the image is inappropriate at best and at worst has undertones of paedophilia. Whitten has been surprised by this reaction and was shocked when people posted negative comments about what was for her a beautiful moment.
"There is nothing sexual or exploitative about this image," she wrote in the initial post. "I was taken aback by how many people missed the story or didn't even look past the nudity to find the story."
The double standard that's revealed -- in people who thought it was exploitative -- is revealed in how the response was "overwhelmingly positive" to a mother, naked, holding her sick son in the shower. (At the link.)
Note that neither of these photos reveal even as much as you'd see at the beach.
What they do reveal is the ugliness in some people and a lack of understanding of what healthy, loving fatherhood is.
Plenty of adults, I'm sure, would like to go back in time and have their parenting mirror the little guy's who's in the shower with his daddy.
Sotomayor's Stupid And Disgusting Call For Slave Lawyers
Beyond how completely anti-liberty it is to require people to provide pro bono services, think about the sort of service people forced into it might provide.
I, on the other hand, got pro bono legal work from a crazy, civil liberties-crazed Sicilian-American mofo. Marc Randazza worked tirelessly on my case, along with a bunch of his associates, whom he had to pay, along with his overhead, while not earning money himself for his work.
This is the kind of legal work you want -- whether pro bono or for pay. And P.S. Pro bono isn't free -- Randazza paid for the work for me by working for his more well-heeled paying clients.
Not understanding what it takes for somebody to do great, good, or even just adequate pro bono work betrays a lack of understanding of people and their motivation. It is thinking that is beyond unbecoming in a Supreme Court justice, but hey, meet Sonia Sotomayor.
Ilya Somin writes at Volokh about Justice Sotomayor's misguided advocacy of "forced labor" for lawyers -- in order to expand legal services for the poor:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Monday that all lawyers should be required to provide pro bono legal services."I believe in forced labor" when it comes to improving access to justice for the poor, she said during an appearance at the American Law Institute's annual meeting in Washington. "If I had my way, I would make pro bono service a requirement."
Sotomayor made the comment in response to a question from institute director Richard Revesz about the dearth of legal services for low-income individuals.
Imposing forced labor on lawyers (or anyone) is a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which forbids "involuntary servitude" as well as slavery.
I think this is right on:
Fortunately, there are other ways we can increase the availability of legal services to the poor. As economist Clifford Winston has demonstrated in a series of articles for the liberal Brookings Institution, we can greatly reduce the cost of legal services (including for the poor) by deregulating the legal profession. As he demonstrates, we don't need to limit the right to provide legal services only to people who have spent three (very expensive) years in law school, and passed a hypercomplex bar exam that requires takers to memorize thousands of tidbits of information, most of which have little relevance to actual law practice. This is especially true of relatively simple services needed for many everyday legal transactions and cases.
Duckylinks
It's the World Wide Webfoot.
Grow A Pair, Ladies -- Or Don't Play In The Big Media Leagues
Because men evolved to prioritize beauty in a woman (features which are indicators of health and fertility), any woman in the public eye is going to get comments about her looks.
Even women not in the public eye get evaluated by how they look.
For example, a tiny loser of a man who owes me money (but prefers to focus on other subjects) called me "wrinkled" the other day. This is pretty hilarious, because if there's one thing I'm not, it's wrinkled. I've been wearing the best French sunblock for decades, and I've barely left the house for a year and a half anyway, because of this book I'm writing. Still, it was sort of amazing to witness his best attempt at a low blow. (Which, by the way, didn't distract me a bit from the fact that the deadbeat owes me money.)
Anyway, the subject of this post is the BBC News deputy director, Fran Unsworth, telling female reporters they need to "harden up" and ignore web trolls.
Bravo. Finally, a woman telling other women that they should do something besides curl up in a little ball and sniffle about "male privilege." Or sue somebody.
Patrick Foster writes at the Telegraph/UK:
Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC's political editor, was the target of sexist abuse last week, in an online petition that called for her to be sacked from the corporation...Ms Unsworth said she had not spoken to Kuenssberg, but added that women needed to become hardened to criticism about their appearance.
She said: "There's an element of how we possibly have to harden people up to it a bit, give them techniques about how they might deal with it. You need to disassociate yourself from it to some extent if you're the victim of it, so how can we help people do that?"
It's my feeling -- from witnessing women's reactions online -- that many women have gotten used to being infantilized and treated like victims, and don't expect to need to steel themselves or defend themselves.
Me? I've been on the web and been a public figure for quite some time and I've been attacked a lot. Sometimes by a mob. You want to play in the public leagues, you'll get some shit.
It's not fun; it can be upsetting; but I want to be here, so I deal...like by not looking at my Wikipedia page or GoodReads reviews (from all the women who think it's just horrifying that I would suggest women treat a man who asks them out with dignity, even if they aren't interested in him). I know...the horror!
via @CathyYoung63
Male Privilege: It's Electric! And Not In A Good Way
Men tend to be the risk-takers of the species and also tend to spend more time outside -- both in jobs and in outdoor activities like fishing.
This is why "every person killed by lightning in the United States this year has been male" and lightning "strikes men way more frequently than women."
Lulu Chang reports at Bustle:
In the past eight years, an astounding 80 percent of those killed by lightning strikes have been men. And according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lightning has killed more men than women every single year since 1968. And while awareness of the dangers associated with lightning have greatly decreased fatalities, men are still in the higher risk group.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has provided a partial explanation for this discrepancy in a recent study that examined the main activities people were engaged in when struck by lightning. Topping the list was fishing, which led to 26 of the 238 deaths that occurred between 2006 and 2012. Also among the culprits were such sports as soccer and golf, and other recreational activities like camping and boating.
No, it's not that the penis acts as a lightning rod, though it's probably a bad idea to whip it out outside while in the middle of a big thunderstorm.
via @SteveStuWill
Linkiecake
No idea who Patty ran off with.
Identity Politics Are Race Hatred In A Che Shirt
...Or in a hemp hairshirt for the white people who practice them -- maybe because they believe in them, but maybe also as a form of virtue signaling or a way to be on the side that seems "cool."
David French writes at NRO:
I can't recall the first time I heard the phrase "white male" hissed as if it were some form of particularly vile insult. I know it happened in law school, where it was used as a short-hand way of saying that I should be silent, that my views were not welcome. Over time, I learned that, to a certain set of people, there was something positively wrong with being white. "We" were the great privileged oppressors of history. And "we" were the great privileged oppressors of the present.Our law schools are, in many ways, incubators for the identity politics that dominate the social-justice Left. For those soaked in progressive identity politics, skin color was a stand-in for virtue. It was impossible for a black person to be racist; it was impossible for a white person not to be. Any in-depth discussion of history had to acknowledge past injustice.
Here's the problem: Progressives don't like to admit this, but identity politics work as the mirror image of white supremacy -- compressing the extraordinarily rich and complex histories of nations, continents, and cultures into one characteristic: skin color. For the white supremacist, white people are natural-born victors. For the identity-politics leftist, white people are natural-born predators.
...But actual history belies the stereotypes. To take just one hot-button example, the history of slavery since the colonial era is not just a history of Europeans and white Americans enslaving Africans. It's of Africans enslaving Africans, of Africans enslaving Europeans, and of Arabs enslaving Africans (and that's just a partial summary). Yes, brown people enslaved white people by the millions: Should Americans of North African or Turkish descent check their privilege and believe their wealth was built on plunder?
It's also highly insulting to smart, talented people "of color" to shove them into the victim slot -- forcing them to be judged by their skin color as somehow needing more of a leg up.
Also, what divides children from opportunity is poverty, not skin color. Poor kids -- of any color -- should be the ones we help attend college. Yet, it's kids of the "right" color that get the help or the most help.
And let's be honest about a big reason for growing up in poverty -- single parenthood. Growing up with just a single mother instead of a family is another big divider from opportunity and from the stability a kid needs for "self-regulation" and other essential personality traits. But fixing that is more complex than just blaming white men, and it involves no glory for Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or any of the Mini-Als and Mini-Jesse's coming up.
French has a good point here:
There is nothing wrong with being white. There is nothing right with being white. And there is something bizarre about being proud of past accomplishments (or repentant of past failures) based merely on sharing a skin tone with unrelated prior generations. It is far more enriching -- and humbling -- to learn of our own individual histories.I prefer to speak in terms not of pride, but of gratitude. How can I be "proud" that my relatives came over on the Mayflower and stood with Washington at Valley Forge? I had nothing to do with those achievements and would be hard-pressed to demonstrate the same courage. Instead, I'm grateful -- deeply grateful. And I'm grateful also for the history of my nation and culture -- a nation that through great effort and enormous sacrifice cultivated and preserved principles of individual liberty and human freedom that have benefited billions of human souls.
He's right. And I realize it's how I see those in my family. I'm amazed at how my great grandfather came over from some peasant shithole in Eastern Europe, collected metal scrap from the trash in Detroit, supporting his family and sending my grandpa to Wayne State University, where he became a doctor, serving families around him in Detroit.
When I think of this, and think of the hardships some people have -- of any color -- like those who need to work in fields, picking vegetables, I think I'm a little bit silly to be complainypants about my work week, which for some time, has been without end.
(I'm writing my next book for my publisher, plus writing a big talk I'm giving in November, and writing my column, which is science-based and takes a fuckton of time -- and I'm grateful as hell that I get to do these things.)
via @stevestuwill
"Send In The Clowns!" Like That'll Make You Forget That The TSA Clowns Are Delaying You Into Missing Your Flight
Passengers are missing their flights by the thousands because of the long lines of passengers waiting to be scanned and groped by the repurposed mall food court workers providing pretend security. (Passengers waited up to three hours at O'Hare.)
The explanation you usually see for this is that they are understaffed.
(And gee, who could have predicted that more people would be traveling in, say, June than February?)
I saw a video with a rumor that they have been staging slowdowns. I haven't seen any proof of that, but boy would I love to find some.
Anyway, back to the clowns -- the NY Post Editorial Board writes that the airports are trying to make passengers feel better about spending hours and hours standing in line:
You're stuck in an airport security line that's just not moving, seemingly a mile from the scanners, worrying whether you'll make your flight and if you have any hope of getting on the next one.Relax, here comes a mime to entertain you! No, wait, it's a "comfort animal" . . .
Yes, they're adding insult to injury: Airports across the nation are hiring "entertainers" to calm the crowds left seething by Transportation Security Administration bungling.
Musicians in Atlanta, miniature horses in Cincinnati, "therapy dogs" at scattered other hubs and, yes, clowns in San Diego. (You just know some air-rage case is going to assault one of those clowns.)
At Chicago Business, Megan McArdle notes that the number of passengers at O'Hare isn't up all that much, yet screening lines were running "at least 90 minutes."
As far as I was able to tell from where I stood, all the scanners seemed to be operating, making me wonder what, exactly, extra people would have done, since no matter how many staffers you assign, only one person can pass through each checkpoint at a time. Besides, the number of passengers is not actually up at O'Hare airport that much, according to the latest numbers I could find.So I tend to place more credence on the second explanation: The TSA has slowed down screening after last summer's humiliating failure to detect almost any of the contraband in a security audit. I was fortunate enough to have enrolled in TSA Precheck, which had a blessedly short line. Nonetheless, I spent more than 20 minutes waiting to get through.
...But this is the essential logic of bureaucracy. The TSA will suffer terribly if a terrorist slips through with a bomb -- or even if the auditors make it through with a fake bomb. On the other hand, what happens to them if there are long lines? Not much. They've got to be there for eight hours, so why should they care if we are too? This is why government agencies tend to be much more attuned to remote risks than the real and persistent costs they impose on the rest of us.
First and foremost, the degradation of our civil liberties and of any notion in the public that we should stand up for them.
McArdle does the economic analysis:
A rational cost-benefit analysis might well dictate that it's better to accept some higher risk of threats than to accept the lines. O'Hare runs something in the vicinity of 150,000 domestic passengers a day through its domestic operations. Even valuing the time of all those passengers at minimum wage, a 90-minute line costs more than $1.5 million in lost value. Now, OK, some of those people didn't wait that long, but call it $1 million. Call it $500,000. Then multiply that times many days, many years. Even with an absurdly low value on the time of the passengers, that's hundreds of millions in costs -- at just one of our nation's many airports.But that's not how political and bureaucratic logic works. If the TSA loosens up its screening procedures to the point where almost everything gets through, the lines move -- but then there's not really any point in having the TSA.
Which is a conversation worth having. This security theater since Sept. 11, 2001, has probably done less to deter terrorists than the reinforced cockpit doors and passengers' new awareness that a hijacking could end in fiery death rather than, as security expert Bruce Schneier likes to say, "a week in Havana." There's a reason that the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber were subdued by their fellow passengers.
Moreover, even if the TSA does help us perfectly harden airplanes against attack -- well, as Paris demonstrated, you don't need to get on an airplane to kill a lot of people. Terror attacks can always shift to softer targets -- like, for example, vast airport security lines where hundreds of people are forced to stand crammed into a very small space. It would be a much better use of our money and time to invest in catching terrorists before they get to their target.
And she guesses like I do:
I'd bet that in the next six months, the TSA will be rewarded for the longer lines by having its budget and headcount increased.
Here's the line at Midway...looks to be about a half mile long.
Here's some of the disgusting abuse that goes on -- searches, sans probable cause, of people only guilty of needing to travel for business or wanting to visit grandma.
And here's how easily the TSA's scanners can be defeated -- thanks to Jonathan Corbett.
Linkity Splitsky
Like a banana splitsky without the bananas.
The Super Market: Why Selling Sex Should Be As Legal As Selling Pencils
Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski write at Cato on their market-based view (and mine), "if you may do it for free, you may do it for money":
Most people now agree we should have a market-based economy. But, they say, certain things ought to be kept off the market. We may buy and sell pencils, food, football, and education, but it is wrong to buy and sell sex, kidneys, pregnancy surrogacy, standing-in-line services, or bets on terrorist attacks.We disagree. The central thesis of our book, Markets without Limits, is that anything you may permissibly do for free, you may permissibly do for money. There are things you may not sell, such as child pornography, human slaves, or nuclear weapons, but only because you may not have these things in the first place. In special cases, we can't sell certain things to certain people--e.g., I should not sell you a baseball bat when you're in a murderous rage, even though baseball bats are the kind of thing that may be bought and sold. Otherwise, everything is fair game.
Critics of commodification--of the process of putting things that were not previously for sale on the market--have produced an impressive array of objections to buying and selling various goods and services. These include:
1. Exploitation: Buying and selling certain goods--such as sex--might take pernicious advantage of others' misfortune.
2. Misallocation: Buying and selling certain goods--such as "free" tickets to "Shakespeare in the Park"--might cause the goods to be distributed unfairly.
3. Corruption: Buying and selling certain goods--such as violent video games or pornography--might cause us to have bad attitudes, beliefs, or character.
4. Harm: Buying and selling certain goods--such as naming rights for children--might harm people.
5. Semiotic: Buying and selling certain goods--such as kidneys--might express wrongful attitudes, or violate the meaning of the good in question, or might be incompatible with the intrinsic dignity of some activity, thing, or person.
A tweet in response from neuroethologist Dr. Dennis Eckmeier:
@DennisEckmeier
Legalizing these things would give incentive for human trafficking and systemic exploitation of the vulnerable.
The reality: Why exploit if sex for money is legal?
Take all the violence that accompanied Prohibition.
Nobody's dying for basement gin these days -- when you can get a six-pack at the corner 7-Eleven.
The authors advise, "Critics: Make Sure Your Complaint Is Actually about the Market":
We say that there are no in-principle moral limits on markets. So, for example, consider "slaves for sale," or "murder for hire." Neither of us endorse a market in such things. But, of course, neither of those things are wrong because of some fact or feature about markets. The wrong of slavery is captured by the removal of the autonomy of a human being who is entitled to that autonomy. It would be wrong to make a gift of slaves, as sometimes happened in the past. The wrong of killing a stranger is that it's an instance of wrongful killing. It would be wrong to kill a stranger for free, or as a gift to your friend. In these cases, it is not the "for sale" part, nor the "for hire" part that makes slavery and murder wrong. It is the slavery and the murder itself.These are examples of things that money should not buy. But they have nothing to do with markets as such.
They ask this:
Can you find an example of a good or service that is permissible to have, use, or exchange for free, but not for money? If so, then move to step two: Is your objection to the market design-insensitive? That is, is there no way of designing a market in that good or service that overcomes your objection? If so, then you have proven us wrong. Otherwise your objection is not an objection to markets in a thing, but an objection to a market with these or those specific features.
Here's a link to my previous post on why you should be allowed to get cash for your kidney, that is sell your kidney. (Not allowing this causes a shortage in transplantable organs -- though that isn't the only argument. It's your kidney; it should be yours to sell.)
via @SteveStuWill
"May I Fuck Your Brains Out Now?" American Law Institute Votes Against Turning Much Of Adult Sex Into A Crime
"The American Law Institute is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law."
Bradford Richardson reports in The Washington Times:
In a rebuke to a feminist idea that has migrated from college campuses to mainstream culture, an influential legal group overwhelmingly rejected Tuesday a provision that would have endorsed an "affirmative consent" standard for the purpose of defining sexual assault.In a voice vote at the American Law Institute's 93rd annual meeting at the Ritz-Carlton, Washington, D.C., the vast majority of an estimated 500-member crowd declined to amend the Model Penal Code to define sexual consent on an affirmative basis.
The MPC is a leading guide for state legislatures to follow when standardizing their penal codes. One of the items up for debate at the annual meeting was how to define "consent" in the context of sexual assault.
Standards of affirmative consent, which generally require parties to affirmatively and continually vocalize their willingness to participate in a sexual encounter, have mostly germinated on college campuses, as well as in a few states in some contexts, including California and New York.
The ALI's consideration of such a standard has been met with much internal and external criticism.
A group of 120 members wrote a public letter denouncing the proposal, arguing affirmative consent improperly shifts the burden of proof onto the accused when charges of sexual assault are levied. By forcing the accused to prove the near-impossible -- that a sexual encounter was vocally agreed upon at each stage -- affirmative consent standards deny the accused due process rights, the letter said.
It also would ruin sex for consenting adults and/or turn it into a weapon to be used to take away people's freedom -- not necessarily because they sexually assaulted anyone but because they were accused of it and couldn't prove they'd asked for permission at every turn.
I don't know about you, but I used to joke about that, that if a guy says, "May I kiss you now?" the answer is no.
My boyfriend, a few hours after meeting me, walked me to my car and grabbed me and kissed me. It was very sexy and very romantic -- and would be illegal under the proposed change in the laws.
Linksapoppin!
There was a bear -- or was it a man in a bear suit?
Who's Preying On Whom?
This is a story of the older-man professor and the younger-woman aspiring writer -- but it's like many similar stories in other professions and arenas.
In a world in which women are being schooled to see themselves as men's victims -- even when a man has done nothing wrong -- my author and professor friend Susan Shapiro takes a more honest and accountable view in New York Magazine.
"Are you okay?" I asked my 22-year-old smart, pretty student Debbie last spring during office hours. She often had questions about class or the ambitious book she was working on. But tonight she'd rushed over -- still in a minidress, high heels, heavy eyeliner, and lipstick -- upset about a bad experience she'd just had with a famous older novelist now teaching at my alma mater, whom she'd befriended on Facebook. "What happened?" I asked, worried.She nervously combed her long, dark hair behind her ears. "He wanted me to be his date for this fancy award ceremony tonight. I was excited, got all dressed up. It was fun. But then he asked me to go home with him. Gross. I said no way."
"What did he do?"
"Nothing. I got the hell out of there. It was creepy. There was another girl there he was flirting with."
All the harassment, sexual-assault, roofie, and rape cases in colleges across the country were not distant news. Many of my students had shared similar sordid encounters, which scared me. I'd sent several distraught women to school authorities, to the police to report crimes, to therapists, and to editors who'd published their stories. Because I was a female professor and outspoken women's-rights advocate who'd championed Debbie's work, I knew she wanted me to be angry on her behalf, toe the conventional feminist line, take her side, see her as an innocent victim, and call the guy a harasser -- or worse. Yet this time, I couldn't.
"I'm confused," I said. "Why go on a date if you weren't attracted to him?"
"I admire his writing. And I hoped he'd blurb my book," she admitted. "But that doesn't mean I was going to bed with him."
"Of course not," I told her. "Yet his proposition -- and taking no for an answer -- sounds fair. We don't have to vilify every man on the planet with a functioning libido."
"Wow," she said. "You're taking this so personally."
She was right. It wasn't her actions that troubled me. I feared I'd done what I was accusing Debbie of doing when I was her age. She didn't know that I'd had an affair with an older professor and tried to make him the villain. The truth turned out to be more complex.
...Now, after two decades in a happy union, I've learned I can be a feminist who loves men and marriage. This involves not lumping all men into the enemy camp, or labeling someone "sexist" or "predatory" just because they express desire.
In retrospect, my professor was not a Svengali seducing an innocent rube -- or a skirt chaser abusing his position, like other infamous men in the news. I was never victimized. He was a gentleman who'd postponed our romance until I was no longer in his class. I'd been a consenting adult who'd actually initiated the relationship. I'd wanted him, went for him, got him -- and his connections. When he'd pushed for more, I set the limits I needed to, and not all that gently. Then I published a book telling my side of the story.
Ultimately, he might have been more of a victim than I was.
This is an essential bit:
Amid debates of older men harassing, seducing, and manipulating female students and subordinates, it was tempting to see myself as the innocent prey and injured party, another young, impressionable protégée manipulated by a powerful man. Yet as easy as that narrative would be on my ego, it wouldn't be psychologically accurate.
And this is another essential bit:
We each harness whatever power we have to get ahead, whether overtly or subconsciously. I'd once been a hot 22-year-old using my looks to fuel my ambition. Yet here I was, wishing my students would own their roles in this clichéd, coquettish game while I hadn't been honest either. I suddenly saw how I'd deceived myself years earlier. If my professor was drawn to my youth and beauty, I'd been enticed by his experience and status, which I wound up usurping. It was a trade-off I'd chosen, a barter that launched me, benefitting me most in the long-run.
Sex Talk For Muslim Women
In The New York Times, Mona Eltahawy tries to find equivalence outside the Muslim world for how Muslim women are treated in regard to sex:
Many cultures and religions prescribe the abstinence that was indoctrinated in me. When I was teaching at the University of Oklahoma in 2010, one of my students told the class that she had signed a purity pledge with her father, vowing to wait until she married before she had sex. It was a useful reminder that a cult of virginity is specific neither to Egypt, my birthplace, nor to Islam, my religion.
Um, if Oklahoma girl's daddy finds out she and her boyfriend are doing it, I don't think he or her brother will bludgeon her, drown her, or light her on fire.
Oh, and the author uses the PC "In Afghan culture," but this is about Islam's dictates:
...A wife is her husband's property; a daughter is her father's property; a sister is her brother's. It is the men in a woman's life who decide whom she will marry, and by running off with someone else Zakia was not just defying their will but stealing what they viewed to be rightfully theirs.
Lippy
Mouthylinks.
Believing In Big Government Doesn't Work Out So Well When You Need A Colonoscopy
Hope and change. You'd better hope some doctor will get a fever and change his mind about not taking Obamacare.
In The New York Times, Elizabeth Rosenthal writes about a bunch of Manhattan women -- Obama and "Affordable" "Care" Act supporters -- who can't get doctors appointments:
AMY MOSES and her circle of self-employed small-business owners were supporters of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act. They bought policies on the newly created New York State exchange. But when they called doctors and hospitals in Manhattan to schedule appointments, they were dismayed to be turned away again and again with a common refrain: "We don't take Obamacare," the umbrella epithet for the hundreds of plans offered through the president's signature health legislation."Anyone who is on these plans knows it's a two-tiered system," said Ms. Moses, describing the emotional sting of those words to a successful entrepreneur.
"Anytime one of us needs a doctor," she continued, "we send out an alert: 'Does anyone have anyone on an exchange plan that does mammography or colonoscopy? Who takes our insurance?' It's really a problem."
So, Mrs. Moses, who "previously had insurance," but had her old plan cut by our "If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor" President, now still has insurance; she just can't find any doctors who take it.
Because I'm in an HMO, I still have insurance; but Obamacare has made my monthly cost and my deductible high, so, like Mrs. Moses, I can't get the breast MRIs I'd been ordered to have every two years or a colonoscopy. (I just take the mail in poop test and hope I don't get cancer.)
Mrs. Moses, like others with Obamacare, finds that she is a second-class patient. Belief in the benevolent power of big government is better when you don't actually need anything out of it.
A NYT commenter in Texas, SKM, has his or her eyes opened:
The way the plans are listed on healthcare.gov is exactly backward. Rather than allowing me to select my preferred doctor and deductible, and then showing me which plans fit those needs, I had to prowl through dozens of plans with the meaningless "bronze," "silver," and "gold" designations, not knowing if the doctors I've been seeing for years were participating in them.I work in User Experience design, and this is exactly the sort of presentation I would expect from an industry that isn't interested in what I need -- only in what they want to offer me.
And here, another commenter, m.pipik, in New York:
I am willing to pay more for better insurance, but I can't. The ACA 4 levels of insurance are meaningless. They don't offer 4 different levels of service. You get the same tiny network you just pay more or less out-of-pocket. I'd rather pay less for a more catastrophic plan--I'll pay for my doctor visits myself.Finally, why can't I negotiate my own payment with my doctor? Let her get the insurance reimbursement and I'll pay the difference. Every time I go to a doctor that isn't in the plan, the insurance company pockets their fee for that visit.
Dream on, baby.
via @instapundit
Petraeus: Say Mean Things About Islam And Muslims Might Blow Us Up
Charlie Hebdo's staff wrote and cartooned in-your-face stuff about various religions, but you didn't see some priest or Chaim LeChaimette run in there with a Kalashnikov.
Yes, Islam does command the death of those who insult Islam -- but that doesn't mean we should do as Petraeus suggests, and remake our country as a place where you can't say anything "inflammatory" about Islam.
This doesn't make us safer -- it just speeds us along to a less free (and thus more endangered) society.
The Muslims who are attacking us aren't doing it because we're mean; they're doing it because Islam commands the death or conversion of "the infidel" and the installation of The New Caliphate around the globe. (Gay, an atheist, or a woman? It won't go well for you.)
WaPo op-ed by Petraeus, printed by the Chi-Trib:
I have grown increasingly concerned about inflammatory political discourse that has become far too common both at home and abroad against Muslims and Islam, including proposals from various quarters for blanket discrimination against people on the basis of their religion.Some justify these measures as necessary to keep us safe -- dismissing any criticism as "political correctness." Others play down such divisive rhetoric as the excesses of political campaigns here and in Europe, which will fade away after the elections are over.
I fear that neither is true; in fact, the ramifications of such rhetoric could be very harmful -- and lasting.
As policy, these concepts are totally counterproductive: Rather than making our country safer, they will compound the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens. As ideas, they are toxic and, indeed, non-biodegradable -- a kind of poison that, once released into our body politic, is not easily expunged.
Setting aside moral considerations, those who flirt with hate speech against Muslims should realize they are playing directly into the hands of al-Qaida and the Islamic State. The terrorists' explicit hope has been to try to provoke a clash of civilizations -- telling Muslims that the United States is at war with them and their religion. When Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster the terrorists' propaganda.
At the same time, such statements directly undermine our ability to defeat Islamist extremists by alienating and undermining the allies whose help we most need to win this fight: namely, Muslims.
Again, Islam commands the death, conversion, and/or enslavement of "the infidel." Oh, and that's sexual enslavement, if you happen to be a nubile young non-Muslim woman. Islam says you will be a sex slave.
Discussing this isn't the problem.
Islamic doctrine is the problem.
The Quran not only calls Muslims to submit to Allah, it also orders them to subdue people of other religions until they are in a full state of submission to Islamic rule. This has inspired the aggressive history of Islam and its military and demographic success in conquering other cultures.
And this from Petraeus is wrong:
Again, none of this is to deny or diminish the reality that we are at war with Islamist extremism -- a fanatical ideology based on a twisted interpretation of Islam.
What's incorrect is the interpretation of Islam by "moderate Muslims." There is no room for moderation in the Quran. It is said to be the word of Allah, infallible and unquestionable.
Next?
More Petraeus:
Demonizing a religious faith and its adherents not only runs contrary to our most cherished and fundamental values as a country; it is also corrosive to our vital national security interests and, ultimately, to the United States' success in this war.
Um, 'scuse me, but isn't one of our most cherished and fundamental values as a country the right to free speech? I support yours and will defend it, even if you want to "demonize" me people and causes I care about.
As long as you're just speaking, and not calling for violence, have at it. That is what this country is about.
Islam, however, is a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion that -- I'll say it once more -- calls for the death or conversion of the infidel and the imposition of the Islamic state, globally.
This will not change because a bunch of people put on interfaith breakfasts. Nor will it change because we'd rather think of Islam as something other than the danger to free societies, gays, lesbians, women, apostates, and atheists it is.
You should be able to go to dinner or a concert in Paris without getting gunned down for Allah. You should be able to make it through the work day at your office at 1 World Trade Center alive and not be one of thousand of people murdered -- people who were guilty only of arriving at work on time.
And the reason we have to say this is something that -- very, very much -- needs to be discussed. Without holding back in language or thoughts. That only enables those looking to destroy us and our society.
than live on my knees."
Stephane Charbonnier
(1967-2015)
Linkerdome
Has anybody seen my rollerskates?
Hillaryspeak On Her Email Scandal: Jake Tapper Translates From The Weaselese
Marvelously.
For example, there's Hillary Clinton's contention that her use of private email server was "absolutely permitted."
Tapper translation: "She says that because she permitted herself."
via @FrankLuntz
Gee, Why Is College So Expensive?
Here's my college dorm -- after a $56 million renovation.
Kellie Woodhouse writes in the Ann Arbor news from 2012 about the once-grim Alice Lloyd dorm I lived in back in the 80s at the University of Michigan -- which should now be renamed Alice Luxe:
"It looks like a hotel compared to what it was before," Peters said.And it's true. With glass-walled meeting and conference rooms, flatscreen televisions tucked in the corners of hallways and 45 types of chairs scattered throughout the roughly 560-bed dormitory, Alice Lloyd is now one of the most-coveted residence halls on campus.
...Although many college graduates have stories of living in older, less flashy dormitories, colleges are now competing with one another to provide a top-notch residential life experience.
"It is a serious contender for the overall quality of a student's experience," U-M housing director Linda Newman told AnnArbor.com last year.
Not to worry, kids -- you'll pay for it later, with crushing student loan debt that's a little hard to pay off with that barista job.
Of course, part of what you're paying for is the administration. Glenn Reynolds has noted this:
And according to a 2010 study by the Goldwater Institute, administrative bloat is the largest driver of high tuition costs. Using Department of Education figures, the study found administration growing more than twice as fast as instruction: "In terms of growth, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America's leading universities increased by 39.3% between 1993 and 2007, while the number of employees engaged in teaching research or service only increased by 17.6%."Colleges and universities are nonprofits. When extra money comes in -- as, until recently, has been the pattern -- they can't pay out excess profits to shareholders. Instead, the money goes to their effective owners, the administrators who hold the reins. As the Goldwater study notes, they get their "dividends" in the form of higher pay and benefits, and "more fellow administrators who can reduce their own workload or expand their empires."
But with higher education now facing leaner years, and with students and parents unable to keep up with increasing tuition, what should be done? In short, colleges will have to rein in costs.
When asked what single step would do the most good, I've often responded semi-jokingly that U.S. News and World Report should adjust its college-ranking formula to reward schools with low costs and lean administrator-to-student ratios. But that's not really a joke. Given schools' exquisite sensitivity to the U.S. News rankings, that step would probably have more impact than most imaginable government regulations.
Of course, oodles of government money and government meddling that led to risky loans -- like the sort to aspiring but unqualified homeowners -- encouraged the administrative bloat and the luxury and the rising tuition that made it possible.
As Paul Campos lays out in The New York Times about the administrator bloat at one college:
An analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 -- a 221 percent increase.
Yes, there are now more administrators than full-time faculty members at Cal Poly. And maybe in a number of colleges.
Who's serving whom?
(I think that's become pretty clear.)
Leggy
Spiderylinks.
McGruntaughey
A compilation of the weird noises Matthew McConaughey has made in movies and TV shows.
Yes, only the intellectual finest here at advicegoddess.com.
What Does Donald Trump Stand For? Everything!
Donald Trump is like a giant rummage sale, in how there's something for everyone.
Just like at a giant rummage sale, you might find old Nazi artifacts -- next to the antique menorah dealer.
Andrew H. Malcolm writes in the SacBee:
He's non-interventionist. He's for free trade, but not this free trade. He's pro-life and pro-Planned Parenthood. He's a big believer in eminent domain, but government seizure of private property even with compensation is conservative anathema.In November, Trump thought a $7.25 minimum wage was too high. This month it's not high enough. He's been all over the board on taxes, too.
What many people won't admit, I think, is that they're voting for a showman. This guy:
"Unbelievable!" indeed.
University Of Michigan's Job Was Not To "Embrace" My Sexuality
It was to turn out a person who knew a few things and could put together a reasonable argument.
At Campus Reform, Elias Atienza writes about a student, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo junior Erica Hudson, complaining about tuition -- who goes on to her biggest complaint:
Her most damning criticism, though, relates to Cal Poly's alleged failure to sufficiently embrace her homosexuality."I'm lost because I'm at a university that hardly acknowledges, or cares for, my queer existence, as reflected in our curriculum, campus climate, and administrative support," she laments. "Lost attending a school that claims to care for diversity, but shows little-to-no meaningful support in facilitating a diverse learning environment, and either tolerates hate-filled opposition to diversity or allows it to be swept under the rug."
She made her complaint in an op-ed for the Mustang News.
I forgot to add this to the post last night, but I will now:
The level of coddling and care expected by students at -- at a university! -- is truly out of hand.
It's an entirely age-inappropriate and institution-inappropriate view.
Students actually expect universities to be surrogate parents, punishing other students for mean language, telling them what they can and can't say, and having concern for their sexual identities, among other things.
Sorry, are we supposed to treat gays and lesbians (and whatevers) like I do: like they're like everybody else, as in, not defined by their sexuality. Or...are we supposed to notice their sexuality and treat them differently because of it?
Today's university: Everybody wants to be special but not because they did anything; just because that's how they were raised and that's what they're told they're entitled to.
Linkmo
Tickle me.
The Future Ruin Created By The Campus Anti-Free Speechers
It is truly amazing that we need to have Enlightenment values resold to us, but we very much do.
What people don't understand is that the speech squashing is an important shortcut -- it's a way for people to have unearned power over others. This means that they don't really have to accomplish anything; they -- ideally -- have to be the right color and identify as victimized, or they have to be in the movement to force others to conform to the speech codes (which means taking on a measure of self-loathing for being white -- or especially, white and male).
Earned power comes the hard way.
And sure, some people are born richer or prettier or a color that makes things easier. My mother told me I'd have to work harder, being Jewish, because some people would hate me for it. I did that; I didn't whine that I should get a handout or have things made easier. In fact, if anything, my mother's comment to me made me the driven, hard-working person I am today, and I'm grateful for it.
About the current campus speech squashing, Michael Bloomberg and Charles Koch write at the WSJ:
Across America, college campuses are increasingly sanctioning so-called "safe spaces," "speech codes," "trigger warnings," "microaggressions" and the withdrawal of invitations to controversial speakers. By doing so, colleges are creating a climate of intellectual conformity that discourages open inquiry, debate and true learning. Students and professors who dare challenge this climate, or who accidentally run afoul of it, can face derision, contempt, ostracism--and sometimes even official sanctions.The examples are legion. The University of California considers statements such as "America is the land of opportunity" and "everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough" to be microaggressions that faculty should avoid. The roll of disinvited campus speakers in recent years continues to grow, with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education identifying 18 attempts to intimidate speakers so far this year, 11 of which have been successful. The list includes former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who is scheduled to give the commencement address at Scripps College this weekend. Student protests have vilified her as a "genocide enabler" and 28 professors have signed a letter stating they will refuse to attend.
Colleges are increasingly shielding students from any idea that could cause discomfort or offense. Yet without the freedom to offend, freedom of expression, as author Salman Rushdie once observed, "ceases to exist." And as Frederick Douglass said in 1860: "To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker."
When a professor last year decided to write online about the trend toward intolerance on campuses, he did so under a pseudonym out of fear of a backlash. "The student-teacher dynamic," he wrote, "has been reenvisioned along a line that's simultaneously consumerist and hyper-protective, giving each and every student the ability to claim Grievous Harm in nearly any circumstance, after any affront."
We believe that this new dynamic, which is doing a terrible disservice to students, threatens not only the future of higher education, but also the very fabric of a free and democratic society. The purpose of a college education isn't to reaffirm students' beliefs, it is to challenge, expand and refine them--and to send students into the world with minds that are open and questioning, not closed and self-righteous. This helps young people discover their talents and prepare them for citizenship in a diverse, pluralistic democratic society. American society is not always a comfortable place to be; the college campus shouldn't be, either.
Education is also supposed to give students the tools they need to contribute to human progress. Through open inquiry and a respectful exchange of ideas, students can discover new ways to help others improve their lives.
I love this WSJ commenter, Addison Gardner, who wrote:
The only speaker assured of an openminded reception, today, is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who'd be greeted with cheers and a hotel fruit basket.
via @adamkissel
Don't Vote, Dipshits
There's this notion that we should get every warm body in America out to the polls.
Uh, not so fast.
Yesterday, I posted this:
Finally, if your news comes from the tiny trending bits on the sidebar of Facebook, you're about as informed politically as my desk lamp, and I ask that you not vote.
On a related note, here's a 2004 piece by my late friend Cathy Seipp, "Thank You For Not Voting":
Forget Janet Jackson's breast. The media message I found really annoying during the CBS Super Bowl broadcast was Jennifer Lopez's public service announcement - which viewers can enjoy all through this election year on CBS's sister network MTV - urging young people to vote. At 33, which is not that young, Lopez only recently registered to vote herself via the Rock the Vote website, according to Us Weekly. That's still less awkward than the situation fiance Ben Affleck found himself in during the last election. Affleck, who'd worked on getting out the youth vote in 2000, began saying in interviews that he was thinking of running for Congress. So the Smoking Gun website did a Board of Elections check and found that the actor hadn't voted in 10 years.I asked the Smoking Gun folks what Affleck's reaction was to that. "We get this email from the spokesman," the site's co-founder Daniel Green responded, "and he says something like, 'Well, Ben tried to vote on election year, but there was a snafu at the voting booth - a bureaucratic snafu.' We said, 'The guy wasn't registered to vote! You can't vote if you're not registered!'"
Voting is a privilege as well as a right and if you don't vote, you should be ashamed of yourself. But the reason you should be ashamed of yourself is that not voting is lazy and idiotic. Should the lazy idiot constituency be encouraged to influence society even more than it already does? This is the paradox (and the problem) that hangs over these do-gooder media campaigns to get out the youth vote, which heat up every election year. But I don't see how the crotch-grabbing antics that now seem integral to the Viacom brand encourage an informed electorate. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him turn off the MTV.
...Celebrity opinions about why we should vote are equally adolescent. "We ultimately aren't celebrating democracy here," Madonna said on the Rock the Vote website a few months ago. "Anybody who has anything to say agains the war or against the president or whatever is punished." Punished? How? And for speaking out against the war and the president or for just, you know, whatever?
You may recall that Madonna got a lot of grief when she draped herself in an American flag for a Rock the Vote ad, urging fans to vote even though it turned out she herself had never bothered. But although you could call her silly and careless for that lapse, it's probably unfair to call her - or Ben Affleck - irresponsbile. As those who saw Truth or Dare may remember, Madonna's understanding of politics is so limited that she considers Canada a fascist country. Why should she vote?
Let's hand it to the 18-to-30-year-old set: They do seem responsible enough to know when their deep ignorance of the issues means they should stay home on election day. So to them I say: Thank you for not voting. Because one of the rights in a free society is the right to be stupid, and I wonder how the nation is better off when people who don't read newspapers are encouraged by their TV sets (via all these nannyish public service announcements) to start acting as if they're making an educated choice.
In the eternal words of Marge on The Simpsons, "One person can make a difference. But most of the time they probably shouldn't."
The Real Arab Grievance Against The Jews? That They Exist
At Gatestone Institute Fred Maroun, "a left-leaning" Lebanese Arab based in Canada, posts:
Anti-Zionists often repeat the claim that before modern Israel, Jews were able to live in peace in the Middle East, and that it is the establishment of the State of Israel that created Arab hostility towards Jews. That is a lie.Before modern Israel, as the historian Martin Gilbert wrote, "Jews held the inferior status of dhimmi, which, despite giving them protection to worship according to their own faith, subjected them to many vexatious and humiliating restrictions in their daily lives." As another historian, G.E. von Grunebaum, wrote, Jews in the Middle East faced "a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms."
The right to exist as an independent state
Zionism stemmed from the need for Jews to be masters of their own fate; no longer to be the victims of discrimination or massacres simply for being Jews. This project was accepted and formally recognized by the British, who had been granted a mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations. The Arab world, however, never accepted the recognition formulated by Britain in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and it never accepted the partition plan approved by the United Nations in 1947, which recognized the right of the Jews to their own state.
The Arab refusal to accept the Jewish state's right to exist, a right that carries more international legal weight than almost any other country's right to exist, resulted in several wars, starting with the war of independence in 1948-1949. The Arab world still does not today accept the concept of a Jewish state of any size or any shape. Even Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace agreements with Israel, do not accept that Israel is a Jewish state, and they continue to promote anti-Semitic hatred against Israel.
...As Arabs, we complain because Palestinians feel humiliated going through Israeli checkpoints. We complain because Israel is building in the West Bank without Palestinian permission, and we complain because Israel dares to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists. But how many of us have stopped to consider how this situation came to be? How many of us have the courage to admit that waging war after war against the Jews in order to deny them the right to exist, and refusing every reasonable solution to the conflict, has led to the current situation?
Our message to Jews, throughout history and particularly when they had the temerity to want to govern themselves, has been clear: we cannot tolerate your very existence.
Yet the Jews demand the right to exist and to exist as equals on the land where they have existed and belonged continuously for more than three thousand years.
In addition, denying a people the right to exist is a crime of unimaginable proportions. We Arabs pretend that our lack of respect for the right of Jews to exist is not the cause of the conflict between the Jews and us. We would rather claim that the conflict is about "occupation" and "settlements". They see what radical Islamists are now doing to Christians and other minorities, who were also in the Middle East for thousands of years before the Muslim Prophet Mohammed was even born: Yazidis, Kurds, Christians, Copts, Assyrians, Arameans, and many others. Where are these indigenous people of Iraq, Syria and Egypt now? Are they living freely or are they being persecuted, run out of their own historical land, slaughtered by Islamists? Jews know that this is what would have happened to them if they did not have their own state.
The real Arab grievance against the Jews is that they exist. We want the Jews either to disappear or be subservient to our whims, but the Jews refuse to bend to our bigotry, and they refuse to be swayed by our threats and our slander.
Who in his right mind can blame them?
Linkito
A new kind of taco.
Hey, Campus Crybullies: How To Take A Joke, By Woody Allen
This provides a nice little cognitive training session for the mini-thought authoritarians on campus.
Pete Hammond writes at Deadline Hollywood that Woody Allen said he wasn't bothered by the joke about him at the opening night of Cannes. That joke:
During the pre-show introducing Allen's opening-night film Cafe Society on Thursday, Lafitte during his remarks said of the writer-director, "You've shot so many of your films here in Europe and yet in the U.S. you haven't even been convicted of rape." The remark drew gasps from the crowd.
From another post at Deadline by Mike Fleming Jr:
The gasping crowd probably couldn't decide if the comic was insulting Allen, or merely insulting Roman Polanski.
When Hammond talked to Allen:
When I asked him about the joke during a press luncheon today at Cannes' Nikki Beach, Allen said that he is a comic, and that he would never tell another comic what he or she can or can't say.
Refreshing. And for the record, we really have no idea whether Woody Allen is guilty of anything.
It's None Of The Government's Business If Facebook Hates Conservatives
Hates -- or whatever Facebook's management might think of conservatives and news that swings right.
The story is that the bits in Facebook's trending news didn't include those that are right-swinging.
Gizmodo's Michael Nunez writes:
Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network's influential "trending" news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site's users.Several former Facebook "news curators," as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially "inject" selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren't popular enough to warrant inclusion--or in some cases weren't trending at all. The former curators, all of whom worked as contractors, also said they were directed not to include news about Facebook itself in the trending module.
In other words, Facebook's news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional imperatives of the corporation. Imposing human editorial values onto the lists of topics an algorithm spits out is by no means a bad thing--but it is in stark contrast to the company's claims that the trending module simply lists "topics that have recently become popular on Facebook."
Facebook denies the allegation.
Of course, the government had to get it's sticky claws into this.
In The New York Times, Nick Corsanti and Mike Isaac write that John Thune, a Republican and chairman of the Commerce Committee, demanded answers from Facebook as to whether they did suppress articles from conservative sources.
In a letter, the chairman, Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, asked Facebook to describe the steps it was taking to investigate the claims and to provide any records about articles that its news curators had excluded or added. Mr. Thune also asked directly whether the curators had "in fact manipulated the content," something Facebook denied in a statement on Monday."If there's any level of subjectivity associated with it, or if, as reports have suggested that there might have been, an attempt to suppress conservative stories or keep them from trending and get other stories out there, I think it's important for people to know that," Mr. Thune told reporters on Tuesday.
Again, I think it's none of the government's fucking business. First Amendment, anyone? Apparently not well-understood by a powerful standing U.S. Senator.
Finally, if your news comes from the tiny trending bits on the sidebar of Facebook, you're about as informed politically as my desk lamp, and I ask that you not vote.
Cookie
Linkiechip.
Maybe The #He Doing All the Emotional Abuse Is A #She
There's a new hashtag on Twitter.
For the uninitiated, hashtags are little messages, sans spaces, with a little # sign at the front that people stick in their tweets, allowing themselves to feel they're doing something meaningful, part of a meaningful action group -- but without having to do anything more than tap a few fingers on the keyboard.
The latest hashtag is this:
#MaybeHeDoesntHitYou
Maybe "He"? Just "He"?
As soon as I saw this, I was reminded that men are also victims of domestic violence and emotional abuse, but the difference is, men are told that they should laugh it off or at least shrug it off.
This is the case even institutionally, in how there are help centers for domestic abuse that serve only female clients.
The story on the hashtag is in the Telegraph/UK.
A new hashtag on Twitter hashtag is raising awareness of emotional abuse in relationships.#MaybeHeDoesntHitYou was started by Dominican-American writer Zahira Kelly, who had no idea it would go viral.
She told the BBC that she just wanted to help people to "suss out damaging situations."
"Abuse is often seen as very cut and dry, and only physical. For several years now on social media, on a daily basis I've talked about many different forms of abuse and what they look like," said Kelly.
The thousands of tweets, using the hashtag, aim to raise awareness of the signs of non-physical abuse.
Twitter users are listing examples of emotionally abusive behaviour, such as "#MaybeHeDoesntHitYou but he manipulates you and controls you."
Yeah, well, maybe she does the same thing. As an advice columnist, I hear about this, though men tend to complain less (and probably don't always even identify abuse as such), so I would guess that I've heard about it less than it happens.
The thing is, if you're truly for equal rights -- and not special rights under the guise of equal rights or just a special platform for whining -- you care about anyone's rights that are violated, and not just those of people who are female.
Oh, and check out some of the signs of abuse they list on the Telegraph site, like:
1) They make you feel bad about yourself
Plenty of women do that to men.
But frankly, somebody who puts up with that has not just a problem partner but a problem self, in that they don't take action in their best interest.
But it's a lot less sexy to blame lack of personal responsibility than "the patriarchy," huh?
Oh, and guilty:
2) They control your social life and the way you dress
Introvert boyfriend, arriving with me to a party: "Do we have to go inside?"
Also, there are articles of clothing Gregg has that I have threatened to, uh, melt.
Should we take out a hashtag on me?
Make Austin Uber-less!
Matthew Feeney writes at Cato about Austin's regulations for Uber and Lyft to have fingerprints as part of their driver background checks:
This is a disappointing result, especially given that fingerprinting is, despite its sexy portrayal in forensic TV shows, not a perfect background check process and needlessly burdens rideshare companies.
Due to this regulation (and others -- see below) Uber and Lyft have pulled out of Austin -- making Austin less attractive in light of how an increasing number of people are giving up their cars and using ride-sharing services.
From the WSJ's Gary Fields and John R. Emshwiller from 2014:
Many people who have never faced charges, or have had charges dropped, find that a lingering arrest record can ruin their chance to secure employment, loans and housing. Even in cases of a mistaken arrest, the damaging documents aren't automatically removed. In other instances, arrest information is forwarded to the FBI but not necessarily updated there when a case is thrown out locally. Only half of the records with the FBI have fully up-to-date information."There is a myth that if you are arrested and cleared that it has no impact," says Paul Butler, professor of law at Georgetown Law. "It's not like the arrest never happened."
And guess what -- as Feeney writes:
Uber and Lyft do carry out background checks via third parties that look at court records and sex offender registries in order to determine whether a driver applicant meets their criminal background requirements, which are often stricter than those that govern taxi driver applicants. In fact, Austin is one of the cities where Uber's and Lyft's safety requirements are more stringent than those imposed on taxi drivers.As R Street Institute's Josiah Neeley has explained, Austin doesn't prohibit taxi driver applicants who have been convicted of "a criminal homicide offense; fraud or theft; unauthorized use of a motor vehicle; prostitution or promotion of prostitution; sexual assault; sexual abuse or indecency; state or federal law regulating firearms; violence to a person; use, sale or possession of drugs; or driving while intoxicated" to work as taxi drivers provided that they have "maintained a record of good conduct and steady employment since release."
In contrast, Uber and Lyft disqualify driver applicants if they have been convicted of a felony in the last seven years. Uber and Lyft also include features that make drivers and passengers safer than they would be in traditional taxis.
Rideshare transactions are cashless. This removes an incentive for thieves to target rideshare drivers. Taxi drivers, who make a living out of picking up strangers, on the other hand can be more reliably assumed to be carrying cash than rideshare drivers.
In addition, both the rideshare driver and passenger have profiles and ratings. The rating system provides an incentive for riders and passengers to be on their best behavior.
Taxi lobby, anyone? It's how government-backed cartels force out competition, writes John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist.
By the way, as Davidson reports, it wasn't just fingerprinting being required. Other requirements;
"Trade dress" for rideshare vehicles, restrictions on where drivers can pick up and drop off passengers, and an onerous data reporting scheme.
Davidson notes:
It shouldn't have to be spelled out, but of course Uber and Lyft drivers own their own vehicles, unlike cabbies, which means they already have to clear several regulatory hurdles like having a driver's license, vehicle insurance, and current inspection and state registration. Creating a separate license for them would be redundant, just like most occupational licensing schemes are. If you're street-legal, then you should be able to give anyone a ride, whether it's a friend or someone who hailed you on an app. If there's one thing we shouldn't try to recreate for a new generation of app-based, on-demand companies like Uber and Lyft, it's the archaic, collusive model of the taxi cab business--especially not under the pretense that doing so is in the best interests of the drivers, the riders, or the public.In addition to being corrupt, the taxi cab business model simply isn't equal to the demands of a large city like Austin.
Oopsy!
I'll be in Austin for a psych conference next year, and this sure affects where I can stay.
Also, if I move out of California at some point -- not that I'm looking to do that -- I'm sure not going anyplace where there's no ridesharing service.
Other cities should think of that before they act similarly.
Oh, and those who die or or injured in drunk driving incidents should give a little hat tip to those in Austin who were behind or voted against repealing this measure -- if they still have an arm to raise and/or the ability to raise it.
Breakup Realism
More in my book, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck." 
Luber
Greasylinks.
Discount Military Maverick
Today's Deal: Up to 50% Off Military and Tactical Boots -- for men and women.
Pet pee detector light! Just $5.25 -- 42 percent off.
Cage for small rotten children or dogs. (Also considered a "dog crate.") $55.17 instead of the regular price, $159.99. Oh, size: 42 Inches by 28 Inches by 31 Inches.
Search Amy's Amazon for items not linked here. Your purchases help support my work on this site, at no cost to you! And they're all much-appreciated!
How Sadly Far We've Come On Campus Free Speech
Camille Paglia posts her talk at HeatStreet on how -- and why -- the modern campus is at war with free speech, and what to do about it.
Now a new generation of college students, born in the 1990s and never exposed to open public debate over free speech, has brought its own assumptions and expectations to the conflict.As a veteran of more than four decades of college teaching, almost entirely at art schools, my primary disappointment is with American faculty, the overwhelming majority of whom failed from the start to acknowledge the seriousness of political correctness as an academic issue and who passively permitted a swollen campus bureaucracy, empowered by intrusive federal regulation, to usurp the faculty's historic responsibility and prerogative to shape the educational mission and to protect the free flow of ideas. The end result, I believe, is a violation of the free speech rights of students as well as faculty.
What is political correctness? As I see it, it is a predictable feature of the life cycle of modern revolutions, beginning with the French Revolution of 1789, which was inspired by the American Revolution of the prior decade but turned far more violent. A first generation of daring rebels overthrows a fossilized establishment and leaves the landscape littered with ruins. In the post-revolutionary era, the rebels begin to fight among themselves, which may lead to persecutions and assassinations. The victorious survivor then rules like the tyrants who were toppled in the first place. This is the phase of political correctness -- when the vitality of the founding revolution is gone and when revolutionary principles have become merely slogans, verbal formulas enforced by apparatchiks, that is, party functionaries or administrators who kill great ideas by institutionalizing them.
What I have just sketched is the political psychobiography of the past 45 years of American university life. My premises, based on my own college experience at the dawn of the counterculture, are those of the radical Free Speech Movement that erupted at the University of California at Berkeley in the Fall of 1964, my first semester at the State University of New York at Binghamton. The Berkeley protests were led by a New York-born Italian-American, Mario Savio, who had worked the prior summer in a voter-registration drive for disenfranchised African-Americans in Mississippi, where he and two colleagues were physically attacked for their activities. When Savio tried to raise money at Berkeley for a prominent unit of the Civil Rights Movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he was stopped by the university because of its official ban on political activity on campus.
The uprising at Berkeley climaxed in Savio's fiery speech from the steps of Sproul Hall, where he denounced the university administration. Of the 4000 protestors in Sproul Plaza, 800 were arrested. That demonstration embodied the essence of 1960s activism: it challenged, rebuked, and curtailed authority in the pursuit of freedom and equality; it did not demand, as happens too often today, that authority be expanded to create special protections for groups reductively defined as weak or vulnerable or to create buffers to spare sensitive young feelings from offense. The progressive 1960s, predicated on assertive individualism and the liberation of natural energy from social controls, wanted less surveillance and paternalism, not more.
...In short, free speech and free expression, no matter how offensive or shocking, were at the heart of the 1960s cultural revolution. Free speech was a primary weapon of the Left against the moralism and conformism of the Right.
Oh how things have changed.
Where she thinks the speech repression comes from -- and I think she's right:
Today's campus political correctness can ultimately be traced to the way those new programs, including African-American and Native American studies, were so hastily constructed in the 1970s, a process that not only compromised professional training in those fields over time but also isolated them in their own worlds and thus ultimately lessened their wider cultural impact. I believe that a better choice for academic reform would have been the decentralized British system traditionally followed at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, which offered large subject areas where a student could independently pursue his or her special interest. In any case, for every new department or program added to the U.S. curriculum, there should have been a central shared training track, introducing students to the methodology of research and historiography, based in logic and reasoning and the rigorous testing of conclusions based on evidence. Neglect of that crucial training has meant that too many college teachers, then and now, lack even the most superficial awareness of their own assumptions and biases. Working on campus only with the like-minded, they treat dissent as a mortal offense that must be suppressed, because it threatens their entire career history and world-view. The ideology of those new programs and departments, predicated on victimology, has scarcely budged since the 1970s. This is a classic case of the deadening institutionalization and fossilization of once genuinely revolutionary ideas.
Amazingly, a Goya, "Naked Maja," was said by a female prof to create a "hostile workplace."
The instructor claimed that she was protecting future women students from the "chilly climate" created by the Naked Maja. But in a later published article about the controversy, she revealed that she herself was uncomfortable in the presence of the painting. She wrote, "I felt as though I were standing there naked, exposed and vulnerable." I'm sorry, but we simply cannot permit uncultivated neurotics to set the agenda for arts education in America.
Her solutions are also wise -- but guess what, nobody's overturning anything that will end the juicy data netherworld jobs of all the PC studies now in colleges:
To break through the stalemate and reestablish free speech on campus, educators must first turn away from the sprawling cafeteria menu of over-specialized electives and return to broad survey courses based in world history and culture, proceeding chronologically from antiquity to modernism. Students desperately need a historical framework to understand both past and present.Second, universities should sponsor regular public colloquia on major topics where both sides of sensitive, hot-button controversies are fully discussed. Any disruptions of free speech at such forums must be met with academic sanctions.
Third, it is my position, stemming from the 1960s sexual revolution that ended campus parietal rules, that colleges and universities must stay totally out of the private social lives of students. The intrusive paternalism of American colleges in this area is an unacceptable infringement of student rights. If a crime is committed on campus, it must be reported to the police. There is no such thing as a perfectly "safe space" in real life. Risk and danger are intrinsic to human existence.
Barbering License Up To Date? Orlando Cops Sent SWAT Team To, Uh, Check
It's what I call policing creep -- the way cops have started using extreme force even in situations where there might...might...be a minor violation.
Radley Balko writes in the WaPo about an example of this -- SWAT raids on Orlando barbershops by the Orange County Sheriff's Office:
The raids were basically fishing operations for drug crimes and to recruit confidential informants. All of the raided shops were black- or Hispanic-owned. The problem is that, because they were fishing expeditions, the police didn't have enough evidence to obtain a warrant. Instead, the police asked an occupational license office to send along an inspector. Voila! These were no longer drug raids. For the purposes of the Fourth Amendment, they were now officially licensure inspections that just happened to include armored cops storming the businesses as if they were harboring an ISIS sleeper cell.
A bit from one of the raids:
Plaintiffs [Reginald] Trammon, [Jermario] Anderson, and [Edwyn] Durant were in the barbershop when the officers stormed in. The officers directed Anderson and Durant to present their driver's licenses for identification, and Inspector [Amanda] Fields instructed Anderson to retrieve his barbering license from his work station. Trammon and Anderson, who were in the process of cutting customers' hair, were then immediately patted down and handcuffed with plastic zip ties. Anderson was handcuffed by a masked officer, and Trammon was restrained by two deputies who were not wearing masks. Sometime after Trammon was handcuffed, he informed the officers that he was in possession of a concealed firearm for which he had a valid concealed-weapons permit. The officers patted him down to retrieve the weapon and located the permit without incident.[Police Cpl. Keith] Vidler, who was the supervisor on the scene, admits that he ordered deputies to detain Trammon. When Trammon argued to one of the officers that he had done nothing wrong, the officer responded, "It's a pretty big book, I'm pretty sure I can find something in here to take you to jail for." Durant, though told to "sit down and shut up," was not handcuffed and was eventually permitted to leave the shop.
More:
I've since posted about incidents in which SWAT teams were sent to raid someone suspected of credit card fraud and a woman involved in an ongoing zoning dispute with the local government. Of course, we've also seen hundreds of SWAT-style raids on people in the medical marijuana business, even though they pose little threat to police or the public. There have also been SWAT raids on doctors and patients suspected of crimes involving prescription painkillers, even though, again, there's little reason to think these suspects are dangerous. Last year, a spokesperson for the St. Louis County, Mo., police department told a local TV station that all felony warrants there are now served with SWAT teams, regardless of the crime.So a level of force once reserved for hostage situations, bank robberies and active shooters is now being used on low-level drug offenders, people suspected of white-collar crimes, people who have unkempt property and to make sure the local bar is properly labeling its beer. Keep in mind, too, that anyone who happens to be in these homes or businesses at the time of the raid gets subjected to the same terror, fright, and abuse as the suspect or business owner.
This is abuse, under the color of law, sometimes sans probable cause -- in the cases of regulatory checks via SWA. And as Radley notes, in this case, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit came to the conclusion that "a criminal raid executed under the guise of an administrative inspection is constitutionally unreasonable."
However, not all courts come to this conclusion, and it's sick that police overreach seems to be spreading. These raids are dangerous and often unconstitutional, and they have no place in what we think of as a free society.
Linkshee
Bansheelinks.
Oxford Understands That The Real World May Prove Too Ouchie For Today's Students
From The Daily Mail, Sanchez Manning and Charlotte Wace write that Oxford undergrads studying law are being are being "trigger"-warned before lectures on cases involving violence and told they can leave if they fear the content will be too "distressing."
But some staff are unhappy with treating students as such fragile creatures.Law lecturer Professor Laura Hoyano last week ridiculed the concept when she jokingly warned any students from 'a farming family' that she was about to discuss a case involving foot and mouth disease.
Last night, Prof Hoyano said: 'We can't remove sexual offences from the criminal law syllabus - obviously. If you're going to study law, you have to deal with things that are difficult.'
When reruns of "Prime Suspect," the great detective show with Helen Mirren, comes on -- do they take to their beds for days, or is it just school work that provides them with all the trauma?
Oh, and how do these poor dears manage to ever walk past a newsstand without collapsing?
The reality is, if things are so terribly disturbing to you that you cannot function, you need to learn to deal with them rather than expecting the world to transform to be ouchless for you.
But the reality is, very few people are so traumatized by things that have happened to them that they cannot function; these "triggered" students are choosing to be emotionally infirm as a way to be socially "in style" and get attention.
This is covert narcissism, not real trauma. And for those who have real trauma, there's an institution that can probably help you, but it isn't one where the employees are professors. Come back to college when you, with the help of your psychiatry team and exposure therapy, get that perpetual ouchie patched up and healed.
via @CHSommers
Tidy Whitey
More highly practical advice here, in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
The Overwhelming Kindness Of Late-Stage "Sexism"
I love to flirt with old coots. They love it, too, which is why I love it.
And how sad for the coming generations of old coots, since flirting is on its way to becoming a sex crime.
However, there are still some who think as I do -- and act like it, too.
My friend KateC, who is fun and a half and doesn't care about all the things she's "supposed" to, posted this on Facebook:
Went to eye doctor; got into elevator with old guy with a walker. When we got to his floor, he said "Do you mind if I get out first?"I said " No prob, I can check out your butt."
He laughed.
When I wrote to her to ask for her okay to post this, she wrote back:
He was trying pretty hard to stand tall and be "manly," and I'd guess he was around late 80s.I think men also feel invisible as they age, and it's hard to get used to the idea that no one will evert flirt with you.
To youth of today, maybe I seemed "creepy" but just wait -- age will catch up with them, too.
Although I'd have said it to any guy of any age, probably.
I love Kate.
She is, as she put it -- recalling an 80-something guy who hit on her at Trader Joes -- "catnip to the codgers."
Lola
Linkie at the Copa.
Cash For Kidneys
It's my feeling that you should be able to do what you want with your body -- whether it's getting high or selling off a piece of it.
Not allowing people to sell their organs, even if they want to do it, causes a shortage in transplantable organs. Sally Satel writes about this at AEI:
[A] theoretical objection to compensating donors is the notion that it will "commodify" the body and thus dehumanize the rest of us, let alone the person who gives his kidney in exchange for "valuable consideration." Yet with proper respect for donors and informed consent, it strikes me that careful engagement in financial arrangements is far less distasteful than allowing people to suffer and die.
Jason Brennan posts at Bleeding Heart Libertarians about how many people believe "for profit" kidney sales are wrong, out of the notion that people who save lives should not be profiting from it.
But, wait -- as Brennan asks: "Does it imply that competent and skilled surgeons (firefighters, nurses, police officers, EMTs, etc.) who are just in it for the money, or who are significantly motivated by personal gain, ought not take the job?"
And he gives a variation on Singer's "drowning child" thought experiment:
Three toddlers are drowning in three different pools. In the first case, a person says, "I value the toddler's life for it's own sake, and I am willing to save the child without getting a reward." In the second case, a person says, "I am willing to save the child only if I make a small profit. $10 will do it." In the third case, a person says, "I am not willing to save the child myself-I can't be bothered to do so, because I don't care enough about other people. However, I think the idea of saving a child for profit is evil. So, in addition to not saving the child myself, I'm also going to make sure that person 2 doesn't save the child for $10 either."The first person is the most noble. The second person isn't noble, but at least he's willing to help people for money. The third person, it seems to me, is vile and rotten. He uses moral language, but he is himself a morally contemptible figure. He refuses to help a child himself, and also, at the same time, stops less than fully virtuous people like person 2 from saving children.
Many opponents of kidney sales strike me as being like person three.
He notes that he's given a talk on Markets without Limits to perhaps 2,700 people, and none of them had said they'd be willing to donate a kidney -- while expressing outrage that people might be paid for doing so, rather than simply doing it to help.
Perhaps donating a kidney out of altruistic motivation is nobler than selling a kidney for profit. But, even if we grant that, it still seems that a person who is willing to save a life for money is (all other things equal) better than a person who is not willing to save a life, either for money or out of the goodness of her heart. "I won't save a life that way, and no amount of money could get me to do it" seems to me an admission of deep moral depravity. "I won't help, even for money," is a badge of dishonor.Of course, there are other objections to kidney sales besides the one I'm considering here. People think kidney sales involve exploitation, the misallocation of resources, coercion, etc. But, as Peter and I show in our book, these are at worst contingent problems that could easily be regulated away in a legalized kidney market.
Interestingly, the person I know who did donate a kidney -- Virginia Postrel (who's written about this) -- is libertarian and the former editor of Reason. She gave her kidney to American Enterprise Institute scholar Sally Satel, whose piece on kidney donations I linked above.
And obviously, as Sally notes, there would need to be safeguards:
Donor protection is the linchpin of any compensation model. Standard guidelines for physical and psychological screening, donor education, and informed consent could be formulated by a medical organization, such as the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, or another entity designated by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. A "waiting period" of three to six months could be built in to ensure the prospective donor has ample time to think it through. Monitoring donor health post-transplant is important as well. One idea is to provide lifetime health insurance, through Medicare or a private insurer for the donor. He would receive annual physicals, routine medical screening, and long-term follow-up in addition to standard health coverage. A federally sponsored registry of donors could help us study long-term outcomes for donors and vendors and take steps to remedy physical or psychological difficulties that arise.
Oh, and in case you were thinking of making the argument that the cash market for kidneys hurts the, uh, free market, here's Sally again:
While private contracts may seem unfair because only those with means will be able to purchase directly, poor people who need kidneys would be no worse off--and, very likely, considerably better off--than under the current system. First, a stranger interested in selling a kidney is unlikely to give it away for free to the next person on the list (only 88 donors last year made such anonymous gifts); thus, few poor people would be deprived of kidneys they would otherwise have gotten voluntarily. Second, anyone who gets a kidney by contract is removed from the waiting list, and everyone behind him benefits by moving up. Third, private charities could offer to help subsidize the cost for a needy patient or pay outright.
via @stevestuwill
"Diversity" Programs Damage College For Black Students
Imagine having your on-campus identity be how victimized you are. Just intuitively -- that can't be good. And I would think it would be demeaning to black students who are high achievers.
Well, researchers Jonathan Haidt and Lee Jussim write in the WSJ about the diversity initiatives on campuses -- and the harm they are likely to be doing, particularly to black students:
We are social psychologists who study the psychology of morality (Haidt) and the causes and consequences of prejudice and stereotypes (Jussim). As far as we can tell, the existing research literature suggests that such reforms will fail to achieve their stated aims of reducing discrimination and inequality. In fact, we think that they are likely to damage race relations and to make campus life more uncomfortable for everyone, particularly black students....Of all the demands made to university presidents--for a comprehensive list, from some 80 schools, see TheDemands.org--the most common is that universities admit more black students and hire more black faculty. Sometimes a specific target, like 15%, is mentioned, to mirror the proportion of blacks in the U.S. population. But what will happen if these targets are met using methods that increase the importance or value of individuals' tracking each other by race?
...Another common student demand is to commit money to programs and departments devoted to specific ethnic or identity groups. Such centers may provide many benefits, but will expanding them advance the protesters' stated goal of reducing feelings of marginalization?
In a 2004 study designed to examine the effects of "ethnic enclaves," a team of social psychologists led by Jim Sidanius (now at Harvard) tracked most of the incoming freshmen at the University of California, Los Angeles. They measured attitudes in the week before classes started and surveyed the same students each spring for the next four years. The study allowed the researchers to see how joining an organization based on ethnic identity changed students' attitudes.
The results were mostly grim. For black, Asian and Latino students, "membership in ethnically oriented student organizations actually increased the perception that ethnic groups are locked into zero-sum competition with one another and the feeling of victimization by virtue of one's ethnicity." The authors also examined the effect on white students of joining fraternities and sororities and found similar effects, including an increased sense of ethnic victimization and opposition to intergroup dating.
One solution they propose:
In their book "All That We Can Be" (1996), the sociologists Charles Moskos and John Sibley Butler describe how the U.S. Army escaped from the racial dysfunction of the 1970s to become a model of integration and near-equality by the time of the 1991 Gulf War. The Army invested more resources in training and mentoring black soldiers so that they could meet rigorous promotion standards. But, crucially, standards were lowered for no one, so that the race of officers conveyed no information about their abilities. The Army also promoted cooperation and positive-sum thinking by emphasizing pride in the Army and in America.Universities should consider a similar approach. Race would become less powerful as a social cue if schools shifted their attention away from the raw numbers of students in each category and focused instead on eliminating the gaps between the races, as the Army did.
And another:
Universities also need to steer discourse about these issues in a positive and cooperative way. Leaders should remind students constantly that diversity is challenging and that bringing people together from so many backgrounds and countries guarantees that there will be frequent misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Handling diversity well thus requires generosity of spirit and an attitude of humility. Instead of focusing on microaggressions, our campuses might talk about blunders, misconceptions and self-righteousness--and about civility and forgiveness. As Martin Luther King Jr., put it in 1957: "We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love."
Here's a guy from the WSJ's comments:
Pranav Venkatraman
I find most perplexing black students' demand that universities hire more black professors.I just can't see any reason why professors' demographics would impact achievement in classes. As my name reveals, I am an Indian American male. Although I have yet to have one class with a professor sharing my ethnicity, I have done well for my past six semesters. At no point in my academic career did the race, gender, sexual orientation, et al. of my professor impact my performance.
Selected examples: In mathematics, I earned the same grade, an A, in Linear Algebra, which was taught by a young black Brazilian immigrant, as I did in Differential Equations, which was taught by an elderly white American male. In classics, I earned an A in Roman Law, taught by a white women in her thirties, and I earned an A in Greek Literature, taught by a white man in his sixties.
The only criteria for hiring faculty ought to be their expertise. Their race ought to be irrelevant.
And then there's this:
Randee Kuehler
"But the inequalities arise long before high school, and they won't disappear in college until we close the gaps in the entire K-12 system."Let's go back even further. One of the most conspicuous problems, the proverbial elephant in the room, is the lack of cohesive family structures and a subsequent lack of male role models in our most blighted minority communities. The problems instilled by the community itself are rarely addressed as THE major cause lower academic performance. Before blaming others for the problems faced 18 years down the road, there needs to be a long hard community self-assessment and intervention. Colleges are not going to solve the problems of a dysfunctional community.
Linkedknee
Get your link transplants here.
Remember Free Speech And Free Association?
Free speech has been under assault at campuses across America, and now, free association is being dragged over to give it some company, starting at Harvard.
Robby Soave writes at Reason that Harvard will punish students who join single-sex final clubs -- Harvard's unofficial version of fraternities and sororities -- by making them ineligible for Rhodes and Marshall scholarships:
They will also be prohibited from holding leadership positions in official campus organizations, and on sports teams.Faust framed the decision as a necessary step to combat "forms of privilege and exclusion at odds with our deepest values."
Hmm...one might say that our "deepest values" are the constitutional kind, like the right to free association.
"The College cannot ignore these organizations if it is to advance our shared commitment to broadening opportunity and making Harvard a campus for all of its students," she said, according to The Harvard Crimson.The decision to go after the finals clubs is partly a response to Harvard's sexual assault task force, which labelled the organizations a threat to public safety--even though the overwhelming majority of reported rapes at Harvard took place in the dormitories.
Pre-crime -- coming soon to campuses across America.
By the way, it's so cute that they included sororities in this -- surely as a decoy for how this allows them to discriminate against all those nasty men (and especially those nasty white men).
And get this -- about this initiative:
It's also stunningly impractical. Harvard's unofficial clubs are, well, unofficial. They don't need to keep members' lists. Many of them are quite private.The administration now has the difficult and Orwellian task of creating a committee that will enforce the new policy. To be effective, it will have to investigate students it suspects of joining disfavored secret clubs.
Harvard is a private organization, and is entitled to place as many ridiculous limitations on students' lives as it wants. But it doesn't get to discriminate against students who join finals clubs while simultaneously touting itself as an institution that respects liberal values.
Campus free speech defenders theFIRE.org ask that we all email Harvard President Drew Faust to urge her to reverse this illiberal mandate. (They make it really easy with an auto-send form that pops up -- please consider doing it.)
via @adamkissel
How Disgusting Are The Licensing Laws?
Melissa Quinn writes at The Daily Signal that it takes 300 hours and a bunch of money to become a shampooer in Tennessee:
In Tennessee, not only do natural hair braiders need to attain a license, but those shampooing hair in their shops--known officially as shampoo technicians--do, too.The Tennessee Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners defines a shampoo technician as a "person who brushes, combs, shampoos, rinses and conditions upon the hair and scalp," and the state began requiring shampoo technicians to attain a license in 1996.
To get a license, aspiring technicians must pay a $140 fee to the state, complete at least 300 hours of education in a course on the "practice and theory" of shampooing, and must be at least 16 years old.
A 2015 catalog of coursework from the Franklin Academy lists tuition for the shampoo tech program at $2,700, which doesn't include the $400 required book and kit, or the $100 in application and registration fees. The Franklin Academy is a nonprofit institution based in Cleveland, Tenn., that trains those seeking licenses in cosmetology.
"The curriculum is burdensome, expensive, and totally irrelevant to what they want to do," Boucek said. "The fact they'll specify what kit you must buy and that you have to go to school shows they're concerned about making the individuals spend money that benefits the schools and limits competition, which is what you would expect from a statutory regime that is designed to benefit existing market participants."
Loved this guy's remark from the comments section over there:
Bryan Bockhop
300 Hours? That's because the instructions on the bottle say "Lather; Rinse; Repeat." They don't say when to stop.
And check out this steaming wheelbarrow, also from the comments on the Daily Sig piece:
The Hair Experience
Actually, lice and their eggs ARE very hard to see. As a salon owner in Tennessee, 300 hours is not too much to ask for someone to get for a shampoo license. People who do not know about the hair industry think it's easy and for dumb people who can't find a real job. It's not, actually. I have a master's degree in law. And I'm a proud hairdresser and owner. There are MANY scalp conditions and diseases that can spread like wildfire among families if somebody doesn't know what they're doing behind the chair. I had to get 1500 hours of cosmetology education, which took about 10 months. So why would someone complain about getting only 300?
As a salon owner in Tennessee, this person has a vested interest in keeping out the competition.
How about I get the choice as to whether I get shampooed by somebody unlicensed -- and whether I get to eat unpasteurized cheese on the way there? Too much government, too much crony capitalism.
via @adamkissel
Minked In
Furrylinks.
Email To A Campus Speech Criminal
A male professor I know was accused of making a student feel "unsafe" because he supposely used unfeminist terminology and body language.
He felt the accusation was bullshit -- that the notion he did anything wrong or damaging is unfair and unwarranted -- and he is right. (He told me what happened.)
A bit from my email exchange with him that he appreciated:
It is impossible to win as a man. And by win, I mean get out unscathed. Absolutely anything that they say is wrong is wrong, and they can interpret anything to be wrong.
More that I wrote him later:
It is not about you in the slightest. It's like getting hit in the head by a tennis ball. It happens because you're walking near the tennis court when it bounces off the edge of somebody's racket. The tennis ball hasn't noticed, "Hmm, there's some guy who deserves a bonk in the head!"In this case, three things happened to allow this to happen: You were white, male, and there.
How crazy are things on campus? Unless you have friends who are profs, it's hard to believ. Here, from Peter Hasson at SeeThruEdu, sharing a belief is now reported as a "hate crime."
As the war on free speech and hurt feelings drags on, we've now reached the point where professing one's faithful Catholic beliefs can get one reported to and investigated by campus police - even at a Catholic university.Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles is one of many schools to have a "Bias Incident Response Team" (BIRT). The name explains the purpose of the BIRT pretty well - responding to "bias incidents."
One campus employee at LMU is currently under investigation for the "hate crime" of telling a student that only two genders exist - male and female. It's worth noting that her statement is perfectly in line with Catholic Church teaching. (LMU is a Catholic university, if you take their word for it.)
As reported by The College Fix, "Both the police and the university's Bias Incident Response Team are investigating the stated belief that only two genders exist, male and female, as a hate crime."
Three students, one of whom identifies as "gender neutral," reported her. One student, Cosette Carleo, claimed the employee was guilty of "denying transgenderism." This at a Catholic university.
I'm not Catholic and I don't believe in god, but how many "genders" you think there are is your business.
This is what we merely used to call an "opinion," and not any sort of thought or speech crime.
But the crazy is spreading. From the Hasson link above:
Nevertheless, on college campus after college campus, feelings run the show. How else do campus cops become the solution to hurt feelings? Because its not just at LMU.Last November, the University of Missouri instructed students to "call the police immediately" if they encountered "hurtful speech."
Yes, the whole world is devolving into one big nursery school. DLM! (Diapered Lives Matter!)
You're Male, So You're Wrong. Of Course.
And -- sorry -- no amount of feministy activity or even wild pandering can change that.
In April, frats at Northwestern University observed Sexual Assault Awareness Month by hanging out banners calling for more awareness -- banners with messages like "This is Everyone's Problem" and "Theta Chi Stand Against Sexual Assault."
They were rewarded with this message in the campus paper from Jessica Schwalb:
"A congratulations is hardly in order, however. Conversations about sexual assault within fraternities must continue beyond a single month of awareness or solitary presentation from Sexual Health and Assault Peer Educators or Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault. Fraternity men must hold friends accountable or else their banners are just cruel reminders that attempts to change sexual culture in fraternities are purely symbolic."
From Inside Higher Ed, the men pussified themselves compliantly in the wake of Schalb's criticism:
On Monday, Northwestern's Interfraternity Council announced that it would discourage chapters from hanging the banners in the future, and that it would create a four-year sexual assault education program for fraternities. "We recognize now how this campaign may have been emotionally triggering for survivors, and we want to make a deep, genuine apology for anyone that may have been affected," the IFC's executive board said in the statement. "This was not our intent, but it is our fault for not being cognizant enough and not considering how it might affect others in our community."
The word "triggering" now triggers me, in that it makes me want to vigorously slap any person using it to deem their mental state too fragile to, say, read The Great Gatsby or hear a barely dirty joke.
There's a terrific post on that by J.M. Dunkelheit at TriggerWarning.us:
It is understandable that someone might have "triggers" following a traumatic event or due to some serious phobia. But what these self-styled social justice activists are doing isn't simply accommodating triggers; they are cultivating them. The whole point of trauma is that it is a problem that needs to be overcome. If you were to suffer a physical injury, you would go to an emergency room and have it fixed. You would have that head wound sutured, or that broken arm put in a cast. In Social Justice Land, however, people are doing the equivalent of sticking a retractor into a wound and keeping it open forever.Do people in general need trigger warnings? Most likely not. Consider evolution. Consider how we got here at all. Our ancestors had to fight off saber-toothed tigers, withstand viciously low temperatures, and run for miles on end hunting large game. How is it that your ancestral mother or father could deal with all of these dangers, but you need a trigger warning because reading a Greek myth might mess with your amygdala?
Many of the "trigger" reactions people want to be protected from are normal human emotions that we should be having. When I was a teenager, studying the Holocaust, I did, yes, feel my skin become cold and my heart beat too fast while reading about the things that the Nazis did. But here is what's important to note: this is a healthy, appropriate reaction that people should be having. People are supposed to feel horror when faced with atrocities. People are supposed to associate certain things, such as violence and mutilation, with a visceral sense of: "Oh my god, what the hell, NO." Without this response, we would all be psychopaths.
There is a place for stress-free, emotionally undemanding activities. If you want to come home from work and sit at the computer and do nothing but discuss pop culture and post pictures of puppies and kittens, go ahead. But when someone desires the whole world to be a "safe space," there is something wrong with their reasoning. The world at large is not a yoga studio, or a sensory room.
In fact, a researcher who studies grief, George A. Bonanno, explains in his book, The Other Side Of Sadness, that humans are, by and large, resilient. We evolved to bounce back.
As Dunkelheit puts it:
Our ancestors didn't fight off sabertooth tigers so we could whine about how the words fat and skinny were oppressive.
Northwestern via Charlotte Allen
The "Shut Up!" Tool Of "Islamophobia"
At Quillette, Jeffrey Tayler lays out how the left betrays the most vulnerable with the notion that if we criticize Islam, we are ugly and horrible bigots:
Those who deploy the "stupid term" ... "Islamophobia" to silence critics of the faith hold, in essence, that Muslims deserve to be approached as a race apart, and not as equals, not as individual adults capable of rational choice, but as lifelong members of an immutable, sacrosanct community, whose (often highly illiberal) views must not be questioned, whose traditions (including the veiling of women) must not be challenged, whose scripturally inspired violence must be explained away as the inevitable outcome of Western interventionism in the Middle East or racism and "marginalization" in Western countries.Fail to exhibit due respect for Islam -- not Muslims as people, Islam -- and you risk being excoriated, by certain progressives, as an "Islamophobe," as a fomenter of hatred for an underprivileged minority, as an abettor of Donald Trump and his bigoted policy proposals, and, most illogically, as a racist.
Islam, however, is not a race, but a religion -- that is, a man-made ideological construct of assertions (deriving authority not from evidence, but from "revelation," just as Christianity and Judaism do) about the origins and future of the cosmos and mankind, accompanied by instructions to mankind about how to behave. Those who believe in Islam today may -- and some do -- reject it tomorrow. (Atheism has, in fact, been spreading in the Muslim world.)
Calling the noun Islamophobia "sinister," Ali A. Rizvi, a Canadian Pakistani-born physician and prominent figure among former Muslims in North America, told me via Skype recently that the word "actually takes the pain of genuine victims of anti-Muslim bigotry and uses that pain, it exploits it for the political purpose of stifling criticism of Islam." In fact, denying Islam's role in, for instance, misogynist violence in the Muslim world, said Rizvi, is itself racist and "incredibly bigoted, because you're saying that it's not these ideas and beliefs and this indoctrination [in Islam] that cause" the "disproportionately high numbers of violent, misogynistic people in Muslim majority countries, it's just in their DNA."
Also, remember that Islam claims jurisdiction not just over its followers, but over us all, with a message directed to humanity as a whole. Which means Islam should be susceptible to critique by all.
Lurkie
Linkie slinking around the corner.
A Place To Put Your Annoying Relatives
At night, at least. Today's Deal at Amazon is on an airbed. Built-in pillow and electric pump.
$45.58 regularly; today only, $29.88 -- a 34 percent savings.
Give them something to read while they're on it -- my book, "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
And to buy items not in my links, Search Amy's Amazon. All of your purchases are very-much appreciated.
Where's Glinda? The Wizard Of Presidential Race WTF
I keep hoping this blonde lady in a shimmery dress will wave her magic wand, wake me up, and say, "No, dear. It's just a dream" -- about Trump, Hillary, and everybody's everybody's old crazy Jewish uncle being the current presidential candidates.
Why Socialism Is So Beloved In Academia -- And Why Its Belovers Are So Wrong
The people I know who are most passionate and grateful to live in a democracy and under a (more) capitalist system are those whose families escaped from the USSR, Romania, or Cuba.
The College Fix interviewed a Romanian-born academic, Professor Florin Curta, "one of the world's most distinguished scholars in medieval history and archaeology - and is co-founder of the University of Florida's medieval and early modern studies center, where he directs its certificate program."
He talks about growing up under a communist regime and the rise of socialism in America, and his observations are similar to those of my other friends from Cuba and the Eastern bloc:
Tell us about growing up in communist Romania. What was the quality of life?Curta: Stores were completely empty. There was no food. There was a black market where you could buy some things, but obviously at much higher prices. Besides the fact that there was no food, every now and then electricity would be cut off in the apartment, at a sudden moment in time. You would not know when and for how long. Sometimes there was no running water at all, and there was no warm water at all. We're talking about life in an urban environment, we're talking about an apartment, not one or two, but thousands in which people lived in such conditions. I was in college in that time, and I remember actually studying in the library with gloves on my hands because it was so cold. So not a happy place.
Socialism appears to be a popularly embraced ideology in American academia. Why do you think this is? What is so tempting about this mindset?
FlorinCurtaCurta: I think that there's an idealism that most people in academia, specifically in the humanities, share. We live in an era of ideological morass, especially with the collapse of communism that has left no room for those idealists in the academic world. No matter how you can prove that system doesn't work, with an inclination to go that way perhaps because most people associate socialism with social justice, while the former is an ideology with concrete ideas and concrete historical experiences, while social justice is a very vague abstract notion.
You have to understand, the difference between ideas and facts is what is of major concern here. As my father used to say, it is so much easier to be a Marxist when you sip your coffee in Rive Gauche, left-bank Paris, than when living in an apartment under Ceaușescu, especially in the 1980s.
And about the high price of "free" education:
But what about "free college education for everyone," which is one of Sanders' campaign promises? Shouldn't people have access to free higher education?Curta: My answer to that is very simple. I went through 20-plus years of school in the old country, under communism, for free, but I had no food on the table.
Eekers! Ideas On Campus That Everyone Might Not Totally Agree With!
Jason L. Riley, who writes for the WSJ and speaks on campuses, got disinvited from speaking at Virginia Tech. Peter Wood and Rachelle Peterson write at NRO:
Riley had been asked to deliver the BB&T Distinguished Lecture at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business. But late last week he received an e-mail from the faculty member who arranged the lecture informing him that the head of the Finance Department, the J. Gray Ferguson Professor of Finance, Vijay Singal, had vetoed the invitation. We obtained a copy of this e-mail.Why? Mr. Riley, who is black, has attracted some negative attention since his publication in 2014 of Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed. Professor Singal feared that whatever controversy Riley had attracted so far would be amplified once he set foot on Virginia Tech's campus. He imagined there would be amplified controversy over Riley's speech because Virginia Tech is still reverberating from the last BB&T Distinguished Lecture, delivered by Charles Murray on March 25.
...What makes Jason Riley's disinvitation notable, though, is how little prompted it. No students threatened to protest his speech or wrote editorials denouncing his views. No one picketed the finance department. Riley's speech hadn't even been announced on campus. Mere fear of potential protest swayed Virginia Tech to cancel Riley's pending event.
Here's a terrific letter from Peter Wood, the president of the National Association of Scholars who wrote the NRO piece.
Within Wood's piece is a link to the letters letters from a professor, Douglas Patterson, first inviting and then disinviting Riley. Patterson didn't want to disinvite him; he was told he had to. I particularly appreciated this bit at the bottom:
When I told the department head that I wanted to invite you he didn't say much one way or the other. Later, he learned that you have written about race issues in the WSJ. He and others in my department are worried about more protests from the looney left if you were to give the lecture. I explained that if we allow ourselves to be intimidated by these people they win, and we lose. It was no use arguing, their minds were made up. Fear of a possible protest is more important than free speech or the values that a university is supposed to stand for.
"Fear of a possible protest is more important than free speech or the values that a university is supposed to stand for."
I can't help but feel America may be screwed as a country.
*I mistakenly typed "Georgia Tech" instead of "Virginia Tech," originally, and I am very sorry about that! Not getting all sloppy on all of you -- just need a little more sleep.
Loopy
Roundylinks.
We Ladies Got Ourselves All This Liberation, But Now Some Of Us Are Thinking It's Maybe A Few Sizes Too Big
I'm not speaking personally in that headline -- but I understand that the benefits of independence also come with some costs.
Jessica Crispin has herself a wee whine about the "vulnerabilities" of being a single woman, writing at Boston Review about getting sick and having surgery before she knew anyone in Germany and having to call some guy she met at a party to come pick her up. As she put it to him on the phone:
"This is going to sound weird . . . ." But he was a war photographer, and he handled it well. "I once had to have surgery in rural Nigeria," he told me as he bundled me into his car.
I personally love experiences like that -- and had some wonderful ones in my 20s.
Crispin, on the other hand, is frownieface:
My story does not make me feel empowered. It makes me feel lucky. I was lucky that German law allows even uninsured people to obtain treatment at a price I could afford. I was lucky to have had surgery early enough to fix my problem. But with luck comes fear. What will happen if I get sick again? I'm back in the States, and I have health insurance, but even the insured face major financial hardship. And, even in the age of the Affordable Care Act, many still lack that safety net.In these conditions, are single women powerful or imperiled? Where Traister sees independence, I see vulnerability. Where she sees political and personal strength, I see women making do with limited options and difficult circumstances.
Um...and?
You could also marry some nice man in the midwest, pop out some babies, and stay at home and take care of them while he brings home the bacon.
But instead, more whinies:
But we have not done enough to replace the security and safety of the family with a social equivalent. Thus we are left with individuals solely responsible for their own care--and precarity.
It's called "having friends" -- and you have to create community; it isn't handed out to us by the government.
I write in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" about how a group of us -- Team Cathy, we called ourselves -- took care of my late friend Cathy Seipp when she was in her final year of her struggle with lung cancer.
She was divorced -- and so, officially, single. But she was never alone -- we all saw to that. And she earned us -- we were her friends, and we cared about her and she cared about us, and we came through when she got sick.
I also write about the death of communities in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," and how and why we need to rebuild our own -- now that we are living in these vast and transient societies, way too big for our "Stone Age minds."
One thing that doesn't get them built is whining about not having such a thing.
Oh, and something I'm a fan of is co-housing -- living in a group of, say, five houses or lofts with a central area that you can either join others in or not. I lived that way -- in a loft complex -- when I first moved to Venice, and if I could afford to build something like this, I would.
But back to the single ladies topic, all in all, a pattern I keep seeing in women now and feminism now is this notion, "Shit, we've got all this equality, and...helllp!...it's scarier and much more demanding than it was cracked up to be."
Anonymous "Ghost Squad" Hackers Have A Point On The "Cultural Appropriation" Bullshit -- And More
At IBTimes, Mary-Ann Russon reports that Anonymous's Ghost Squad group took down the Black Lives Matter website to make the point that "All Lives Matter" -- among other things:
Twitter user @_s1ege, one of the Ghost Squad members behind the attack, told HackRead: "We targeted the Black Lives Matter Movement. We have been watching several members of their movement hold racist signs and attack innocent individuals over cultural appropriation while speaking English."I, s1ege, started this operation after attacking the KKK [because] I realised the individuals in the Black Lives Matter movement were acting no better - some even promote genocide of the Caucasian race. This will not be tolerated. What angered me and the other members of Ghost Squad was that the leaders also do not speak on this topic. This was not the dream of Martin Luther King Jr, and should not be supported or promoted by any movement. All Lives Matter!"
Probably the kindest, most generous professor I know -- a person whom I've seen consistently be extremely supportive of grad students and others -- has been attacked in recent days for supposed misappropriation of "AAVE" (African American Vernacular English) when speaking to someone on campus.
The "crime"? Using common American slang.
This is beyond ridiculous, but now, on most American campuses, being a victim is the quickest road to power.
And victimization is whatever a victim says it is -- whatever hurts their feelz. As I explained to my friend in an email: "Absolutely anything that they say is wrong is wrong, and they can interpret anything to be wrong."
The notion that this professor is guilty of anything -- other than not speaking in constant fear of offending people -- is absurd.
And think about the effect of accusations like this -- accusations profs may get in trouble for debating in any way. As I wrote to my friend: "You are kind and helpful to students in a way so many profs are too busy and 'important' to be, and I hope you don't change that."
Loopy
Wackylinks.
When "Diversity" Means "White People, Keep Out!"
A young woman who is white, Samantha Niemann, is suing the Getty Foundation, "alleging she was denied an undergraduate internship with the institution because she is white," reports LA radio station, KFI:
Due to inquiries from potential applicants as well as internal and external discussions, several months ago the Getty modified the eligibility criteria for 2016 to state that applicants must be members of an underrepresented group, including but not limited to, those of black, Asian, Latino, Native-American or Pacific-Islander descent, according to the statement.The suit filed Friday states that in February 2015, Niemann `"was deterred from applying'' for the internship program and told that only black, Asian, Latino, Native-American and Pacific-Islander candidates were eligible.
A Getty Foundation representative confirmed to Niemann -- who is of German, Irish and Italian descent -- that she was disqualified from applying because of her race and national origin, the suit says.
Niemann was "well-qualified'' for the internship because she was a student at Southern Utah University with a 3.7 grade-point average, according to her court papers.
Of course, there's the question of whether "diversity" simply means skin color.
Maybe actual diversity means letting in a few of those evil Republicans or maybe nixing some black kid from Harvard for some kid of whatever color from some extremely unfashionable part of Kansas.
And maybe, just maybe, people should be chosen on merit and promise -- regardless of their skin color, sex, age, or anything else.
That's how I've always hired. Mainly because choosing otherwise is idiotic.
Think Of The Cost Of The TSA To American Business
Three hours of my time are incredibly valuable, and I would think those of you who aren't interns folding shirts in the wardrobe room at some magazine would say the same about yours.
But that's the amount of time the TSA thugs are taking to put all the passengers through their useless pretend security, reports Jad Mouawad in The New York Times.
And do note -- that's three hours of your time to stand in a Soviet-style line at the airport, not three hours of flying time or three hours of doing anything the slightest bit productive.
At Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, about 600 passengers missed their flights on March 25 because an inadequate number of screeners led to waits exceeding three hours, airport officials said. Brent D. Cagle, the airport's interim director of aviation, complained to the T.S.A., calling the episode a "fiasco.""This situation could have been avoided, had the T.S.A. had the proper staffing (or overtime budget necessary) to meet customer demand," Mr. Cagle wrote in a letter to the security agency. (T.S.A. officials denied that the wait had ever been that long, telling local reporters that it had been 75 minutes for a short time.)
This is so often what the TSA does -- just deny there was ever a problem.
T.S.A. officials say the main reason for the longer lines is an increase in the number of travelers this year."Where it starts is actually a volume issue," said Mr. Rasicot, who was previously a senior official with the United States Coast Guard, as was the T.S.A.'s administrator, Peter V. Neffenger. "It's really a good-news story. The economy is doing well, Americans are traveling more, and this equates with record numbers at our checkpoints."
Get this -- it's not like somebody woke up on Wednesday and there was news it was raining dollar bills in Cleveland, and all of American decided to board a plane.
What business recognizes that there will be a summer rush and thinks, "Well, we'll do absolutely fuck all to meet that?"
What's stunning is how much our country is starting -- slowly but surely -- to resemble the USSR, in how papers are demanded sans probable cause and in the contempt by bureaucrats for the rest of us.
Maybe it's just me, but the line at the airport (to get groped by "security" personal who'd otherwise be working in a mall food court) is starting to remind me of a Moscow grocery store from USSR days.
And check out the photo, revealing TSA genius: Pack 'em in for screening and make 'em sitting ducks -- like in Belgium.
A commenter in the know writes at the NYT:
InNJ NJ
Let's get rid of the TSA and go back to screening the way it was on 9/10/01.TSA claims they have only 42,000 screeners; their union claims TSA is authorized to have 48,000 but won't hire them.
Neffenger wants to send all new hires, 192 a week, to his "training academy" in Georgia for two weeks; then he wants to send all current screeners there for "retraining." How much are we paying for this most recent boondoggle?
100+ screeners leave the TSA each week. TSA claims it is hiring hundreds of new screeners. However, a quick perusal of USAJobs shows only 98 positions open, most of them at out-of-the way airports. None at any of the airports that experiencing horrible delays.
People are being suckered into PreCheck and finding they are not getting what they paid for. (BTW, @AskTSA claims that PreCheck enrollment "strengthen(s) aviation security.")
This whole mess is being orchestrated by TSA that wants more money out of Congress.
Our chain is being pulled yet again by the TSA, dear readers.
This guy also gets it:
ScottW, Chapel Hill, NC
This is all political theater. I have never been arrested, but even though the airlines knows my name and checks my ID, I have to be screened because I might be a potential terrorist? No probable cause to suspect I have done anything criminal, not even a reasonable suspicion, or even an inkling. I don't even own a gun. I am searched because I am human.The solution--when you buy a ticket you are allowed to bypass any screening unless there is a reasonable suspicion you are involved in criminal activity. With all of the billions spent on endless surveillance this should not be a problem--unless the surveillance system is all a hoax.
For those comforted by security lines and screening. TSA has a bad track record of finding contraband. Relying on them as a last line of defense in stopping criminal activity is foolhardy.
Focus airport screening on legitimate criminal targets and leave the rest of us alone!
Another:
Woof, NY
If you fly on your own private jet , you are excempt from the TSA altogether. Period.If the sprit should move you so, you could take off in a fueled up 757 and fly it straight into the new World Trade Center - with no checks No TSA .
How's that about a security hole?
One more:
AK Seattle
Maybe, just maybe, we could revisit this insane "security." Surely I can't be the only one who would be quite happy to go back to flying circa 2000?9/11 won't happen again - you can't take over a plane with box cutters anymore - people are thankfully smart enough to be willing to risk a little injury to prevent a hijacking. Let's go back to when a metal detector was sufficient. If someone wants to smuggle something onto a plane, they will succeed - the only purpose the tsa stupidity serves is to raise the bar so that only the dedicated will succeed.
Who here thinks we're the least bit safer from terrorist attacks?
Any person who has the chops to stay afloat in this comments section is smart enough to outsmart what passes for airport "security."
Luckily, the fact that you're commenting here suggests that you are unlikely to be a candidate for terrorism.
Munchkins
Itsybitsylinks.
Thug Cop Drives Dangerously And Tickets A Motorist For It
Cop gives the guy three tickets -- no front plate, tinted windows, and tailgating -- when the cop nearly caused an accident several times: by stopping short in the middle of a road and by then making traffic go around them as he bullied the guy under cover of his cop badge.
The cop is Officer Juan Velez -- and thank you Omar B. (the guy in the car) for bringing this out.
Clearly, the cop's interest is in anything but public safety. Officer Juan Velez is a power-hungry bully using his badge to get his power kicks.
An update on YouTube, on the video, from Omar B:
Update 1: (4/30/16)First of all, I'd like to thank everyone supporting me. I didn't know this video would get as much attention as it's getting. Because of that, I feel like I should bring up what happened after the 'traffic stop.'
On March 31st, I was eating with a friend at a local Zinburger. Afterwards, we were walking to my car and I was explaining to him what happened when the cop slammed on his brakes. A cop car happened to drive by us in the parking lot, and apparently, they overheard the conversation. The cop stopped the car, and confronted me. I don't know how coincidental it is, but the cop was Velez, and a partner.
The first thing he said was "what did you say?" At this point, I was thinking "This guy's a hot head," and tried to diffuse the situation.
We kept going back and forth, but the officer said, "if you were a man, you would say something to my face." The officer also said ,"you are a coward." At that point, he started backing up and I said "sir, you have a badge and uniform and represent the state of NJ, and you act like that?"
At that point, he reapproached me again, shoulders square within 2 feet of me. Safe to say it was uncomfortable. Again, he said I was a coward. I am confident he was trying to provoke me into saying or doing something thst would warrant an arrest, so I just repeated "I will see you in court," at which point I offered to shake his hand, but he just walked away.
I did not put this in the video because I didn't have proof of it, but I have initiated a case with internal affairs about a week after it happened. I also have a witness in my friend who will be involved in the investigation. The partner can also be asked if this happened, but I doubt he would be willing to speak about it.
Regardless, the investigator that I spoke to will be checking if Velez was on duty on the day and time in question, which I was accurately able to provide, along with the my friend's contact into.
via @JonathanTurley
If You Want To Eat Unpasteurized Cheese, It Should Be None Of The Govt's Business
If you and some buyer want to transact for it, why should the government be involved?
You know that the cheese you're buying from the farmer didn't have an FDA official standing over it or stamping it (which, of course, doesn't mean food that is so stamped is actually safe to eat).
Bayelin Linnekin writes at Reason that food freedom legislation is slowly advancing in a few states -- and passed in Wyoming. It was "the country's first formal food freedom law":
In Maine, a bill that would have allowed voters to amend the state's constitution--and which passed out of the state legislature but died in the state senate--was mostly great:"All individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to acquire, produce, process, prepare, preserve and consume the food of their own choosing, for their own nourishment and sustenance, by hunting, gathering, foraging, farming, fishing, gardening or saving and exchanging seeds, provided that no individual commits trespassing, theft, poaching or other abuses of private property rights, public lands or natural resources in the acquisition of food; furthermore, all individuals have a right to barter, trade or purchase food from the sources of their own choosing, for their own bodily health and well-being and every individual is fully responsible for the exercise of these rights, which may not be infringed."Colorado's bi-partisan SB 58 currently awaits the signature of John Hickenlooper (D). The bill, which passed the state senate unanimously, greatly expands permissible cottage food offerings and allows small farmers to sell their own chickens directly to consumers.
"Our goal with the Food Freedom bill was to reduce red tape on local farmers and producers, because Colorado places a high value on a thriving local economy--and healthy, farm fresh foods," said Colorado State Sen. Owen Hill (R), a bill sponsor, in an email to me this week. "SB58 makes it easier for farmers and producers to connect with consumers who are looking for local food options, and it opens the market for the first time in Colorado to allow small poultry producers to sell straight from their farms."
"Reducing barriers to help people grow their food and sell it locally is a win win for Colorado," said Colorado State Rep. KC Becker (D), another bill sponsor, also by email. "Locally grown foods and cottage foods are great for Colorado consumers, farmers, and communities. The interest in cottage and local foods is strong and growing in Colorado and I'm glad we could help that cause."
Here in California, in Venice, where I live, people joined a secret food coop -- selling raw food that farmers wanted to sell and they wanted to purchase, like unpasteurized milk and cheese. I've eaten unpasteurized cheese for eons in France, as have countless people, and I'm not dead -- and I've never gotten sick.
Well, armed government thugs came in -- like a SWAT raid on a drug den -- to raid them for the possession of...yes, raw dairy products. PJ Huffstetter writes in the LA Times from 2010:
With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.
"I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us because we're selling raw dairy products?"
People who want to buy those should have it be their business with the seller, and none of the government's.
Robbing From Money For Schools To Give Welfare To Stadium-Building Bajillionaires
Taxes for Michigan schools are being siphoned off -- turned into welfare for the wildly wealthy, as they are used to fund the construction of a new sports arena.
As @AliceDreger tweeted:
@AliceDreger
Yup, in Michigan we use school taxes to pay for pro sports arenas.
Ryan Felton writes in Metro Times/Detroit that taxes for the schools are being siphoned off as wel:
The owners of Little Caesars, Mike and Marian Ilitch, announced they would construct a new eight-story headquarters for the pizza empire in downtown next to their Fox Theatre. The Ilitch organization said they would be only the seventh corporate headquarters to locate in Detroit since 1950.It was an announcement meant to tie in with a new $450 million arena for the Ilitches' Detroit Red Wings to be constructed a block away. Both are expected to open around the same time in 2016-2017.
...That wasn't the only arena-related news last week.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette quietly issued an opinion that said state taxes for schools can legally be used to fund the arena's construction.
I love the terminology: that the funds can be "captured" -- kind of like limping gazelle is by a hungry hyena.
In his opinion released last week, Schuette said Michigan's DDA Act historically shows that school taxes can be captured under "certain circumstances." In the case of Detroit, school taxes are captured by the DDA before they're deposited into the School Aid Fund. So, Schuette wrote, that means "those captured school taxes were never dedicated to the School Aid Fund."Robinson, as expected, wasn't pleased. She told MLive's Emily Lawler, "Our first asset is our children, our priority is our children."
When state lawmakers debated whether to appropriate public funds for the project, some Republican legislators argued that $15 million was a pittance sum. If it was money to be used for grand economic development, they claimed, then it was worth diverting the taxes. (The Ilitches say the new arena will create 400 part- and full-time jobs, and the city will receive about $16 million in total income tax revenue.)
If stadiums are such a great deal, they can be funded privately.
But -- whoops -- they're typically only a great deal for those who own the team.
Here's a CBC report by Armina Ligaya:
The vast majority of studies done on the financial benefits of new sporting facilities by researchers not connected to any sport, league, or team have not found any economic boost for cities, experts say."Most of the independent research can't find any economic impact associated with either new arenas, new stadiums, or new franchises or large events," said Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Ma., who has been researching the economics of sport for more than a decade.
"So, building a new arena doesn't seem to have any effect on a city's employment, per capita income, hotel occupancy rates, [or] taxable sales."
Gregg Easterbrook in The Atlantic on how the NFL fleeces taxpayers:
Pro-football coaches talk about accountability and self-reliance, yet pro-football owners routinely binge on giveaways and handouts. A year after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the Saints resumed hosting NFL games: justifiably, a national feel-good story. The finances were another matter. Taxpayers have, in stages, provided about $1 billion to build and later renovate what is now known as the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. (All monetary figures in this article have been converted to 2013 dollars.)The Saints' owner, Tom Benson, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $1.2 billion, keeps nearly all revenue from ticket sales, concessions, parking, and broadcast rights. Taxpayers even footed the bill for the addition of leather stadium seats with cup holders to cradle the drinks they are charged for at concession stands. And corporate welfare for the Saints doesn't stop at stadium construction and renovation costs.
Though Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal claims to be an anti-spending conservative, each year the state of Louisiana forcibly extracts up to $6 million from its residents' pockets and gives the cash to Benson as an "inducement payment"--the actual term used--to keep Benson from developing a wandering eye.
So yes, great deal...a fantabulous deal -- for Mike Ilitch.
Linkita
You say tomato, I say banana...
Pantywaists At The University Of Michigan Boo Free Speech
Kathryn Blackhurst posts at The Blaze about a commencement speech former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave at my old alma mater, the University of Michigan:
Bloomberg continued, saying, "The fact that some university boards and administrations now bow to pressure groups, and shield students from these ideas through safe spaces, code words, and trigger warnings, is in my view a terrible mistake," as the crowd cheered. "The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations, not to run away from them."But some of the students offered a different response to his words as Bloomberg continued addressing the topic.
"A microaggression is exactly that, micro. But in a macro sense, one of the most dangerous places on a college campus is the so-called safe space, because it creates a false impression that we can isolate ourselves from those who hold different views," Bloomberg said. "We can't, and we shouldn't try. Not in politics, not in the workplace."
This time, Bloomberg's words were met with a mixture of boos and jeers.
I've joked about Ann Arbor (and U of M) that people used to protest everything but the grass in the cracks in the sidewalk.
And now -- yes, now they boo free speech and a world in which (horrors!) somebody might have a different opinion than the approved Social Justice Warrior credo.
University of Michigan: It's now a giant crib with pot and beer.
Mighty Morphin Power Jews
Kevin D. Williamson writes at NRO about what convenient scapegoats the Jews are for the left:
The Jews can be whatever their enemies need them to be. For Henry Ford and more than a few on the modern left, the Jews are the international bankers secretly pulling the strings of the global economy. As one widely circulated Occupy video put it: "The smallest group in America controls the money, media, and all other things. The fingerprints belong to the Jewish bankers who control Wall Street. I am against Jews who rob America. They are 1 percent who control America. President Obama is a Jewish puppet. The entire economy is Jewish. Every federal judge [on] the East Coast is Jewish."For those who learned at the feet of that old fraud Edward Said, the Jews are the colonialists, the European modernists inflicting capitalism and technology upon the noble savages of their imaginations. The Israeli Jews commit the double crime of insisting upon being Jews and refusing to be sacrificial victims. They were okay, in the Left's estimate, for about five minutes, back when Israel's future was assumed to be one of low-impact kibbutz socialism. History went in a different direction, and today Israel has one of the world's most sophisticated economies.
For the Jew-hater, this is maddening: Throw the Jews out of Spain, and they thrive abroad. Send them to the poorest slums in New York, and those slums stop being slums. Keep them out of the Ivy League and watch NYU become a world-class institution inspired by men such as Jonas Salk, son of largely uneducated Polish immigrants. Put the Jewish state in a desert wasteland and watch it bloom, first with produce and then with technology. Israel today has more companies listed on NASDAQ than any other country except the United States and China. The economy under Palestinian management? Olives and handicrafts, and a GDP per capita that barely exceeds that of Sudan.
The Arab-Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for that. Israel isn't my country, but it is my country's ally, and it is impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the Jewish state has done.
More on the Jew-hate-apalooza from Kale Privilege -- specifically on SJW Jew hatred:
I'm not one to see racism and anti-Semitism in everything, but I have to say, the only place where I've seen more blatant anti-Semitism than on Tumblr is Stormfront.The hatred of Jews on Tumblr within the SJ community is usually thinly veiled hatred of white people (which we all know, is fine, and if you're white and you have a problem with people saying you need to be exterminated, you're just racist!) but in fact, when Tumblr SJWs get on the subject of Jews, their hatred seems to exceed their hatred for whites. I have even seen it said (not on Tumblr, but on another SJ-oriented site) that there is such a thing as "Jewish privilege" which extends beyond white privilege-and that Jews are being handed law and medical degrees for no reason at all other than being Jewish.
One wouldn't expect this kind of bigotry from SJWs, especially toward an ethnic group that has been systematically killed and persecuted for thousands of years. We are sympathetic to the effects of slavery (as we should be!) but already, the Holocaust is ancient history, and it's OK to joke about it, comparing victims of this horrible genocide with thin runway models-and even going as far as to compare being on a fucking diet to being in a concentration camp (looking at you, "fat acceptance" movement).
Of course, this stuff doesn't persist when the SJ blogger is Jewish- but if the SJ blogger is a "POC" or anyone who considers themselves less privileged than the Jews (including someone who is just fat and white, and who feels that having to eat healthy is akin to being in Auschwitz), get ready for a Jew-hating-palooza.
It's odd that the SJWs are so quick to brand Jews as whiter-than-white and more privileged than regular ol' whiteys, when they are so eager to claim POC status for the Sami people, the Romans, and other ethnic groups who (for all intents and purposes) usually look white. SJWs have claimed that Cleopatra was Black, Beethoven was Black, and even that George Washington was Black. But the Jews? White devils. Don't worry about "making sense", people. The Jews are so white that they're EVEN WORSE than white people.
While they're hating the Jews, they should be very glad about one thing -- that the people in the explosive vests are not a bunch of Ashkenazis.
Luber
Filthy minded! No, it's like Uber for links.
Well, actually...
No stains on the couch, please.
