Month: July 2021

Virtue-Signaling Mayors Get Amnesia On Campaign Trail After ‘Defund The Police’ Results In National Murder-Fest

Virtue-Signaling Mayors Get Amnesia On Campaign Trail After ‘Defund The Police’ Results In National Murder-Fest

After spending much of 2020 indulging leftist cries to ‘defund the police’ in the wake of the George Floyd murder and other police-related incidents, liberal mayors and mayoral candidates have made a whiplash-inducing about-face in the wake of a historic crime wave sweeping their cities.

As Politico (!?) notes, “Homicides and shootings are up and the number of cops is down in cities from Atlanta to Seattle. Crime, as a result, is dominating the discourse in mayoral races — driving candidates to talk about beefing up police patrols and bolstering depleted departments’ ranks.“

“When I talk to people, they’re scared,” said Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore – who’s running against Kasim Reed for mayor. “We have seen and experienced on a daily basis crime that we just haven’t seen before. People know that something has to happen — and they know the first responders to a crime situation are police officers.”

It’s a far cry from the calls to “defund the police” that took center stage in these cities just last summer. But the sobering reality of rising gun violence and flagrant theft is changing the conversation, pushing candidates to get tougher on crime in Democratic-leaning cities.

Meanwhile, New York Mayoral Candidate and retired NYPD captain Eric Adams handily won the Democratic nomination last month on his pro-policing message vs. his progressive rivals who favored shifting funds away from the police.

Eric Adams

Politico also notes a “wholesale shift on policing in Seattle,” where the majority of the City Council supported a plan to slash the police department’s budget by 50% following cries to defund the police. Now, one year later, homicides and gun violence are on the rise while the SPD now has a “staffing crisis” on its hands due to a record number of officer departures. Unsurprisingly, none of the mayoral candidates vying to replace Mayor Jenny Durkan is outright backing defunding.

So it was all just political pandering. Shocker.

City Council President M. Lorena González, a top contender for mayor, supported those calls last year but has since distanced herself from them. In forums, she now talks of fully funding the department’s staffing and hiring plan while also investing millions in community-based “harm reduction systems.” González, who said she’s lost family members to gun violence, is also calling for “common-sense local regulations of guns.”

The top-polling candidate heading into the August primary election, former Seattle City Council president Bruce Harrell, has struck a balance between a “strong public safety presence” and promises to “change the culture of the police department.” Now, after a weekend of violent shootings that left four people dead and seven injured, Harrell, who had already pledged to create a cabinet-level position to coordinate the city’s response to gun violence, is calling for more officers. -Politico

These people…

“You don’t hear as much talk about it — even around the country — about defunding the police,” said candidate Lance Randall, who is black. “You hear people talking about accountability, dealing with certain officers. But the term ‘defund the police,’ I’m not hearing a lot of it anymore. Candidates have backed off of it.“

“A lot of people realize now that even though we brought to a head this issue with unarmed Black people, people of color getting killed, we also understand we still have to have police protection,” Randall continued. “Let’s not make our Black communities unsafe with this approach of taking money from the police department and putting it in our communities, and the police won’t respond.”

According to John Jay College assistant professor Christopher Herrmann, who specializes in crime analysis, “A lot of it is pandemic related — it’s unemployment meets financial crisis or food shortages, housing inequality, health care issues,” adding “And all that leads to all these mental health stressors, increased conflict with people.”

Herrmann notes that while overall crime is ‘actually normal or down,’ there have been “significant increases” in homicides and shootings nationwide – having started rising last summer into the ‘defund’ frenzy, and “never kind of went down.”

In Washington DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser reversed course and announced that she plans to ‘re-fund’ the police by adding 170 officers to the city’s force amid a surge in violence and several high-profile shootings across the city.

DC Mayor and vocal BLM supporter Muriel Bowser

“Right now, I have directed MPD to use any overtime necessary to meet our public safety demands,” Bowser, a Democrat, wrote in a statement. “But we know that is not a complete solution or the right long-term solution. We also know we need all of our officers to be fresh, rested, and in the best position to make good decisions – and that requires having a full force to meet all of our community’s needs.”

Bowser is a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has pushed for defunding the police in favor of community policing and funding social justice organizations. 

Last year, the city council voted to defund the police department by shifting $23 million out of its budget in a move that Bowser publicly opposed. 

Homicides in the city hit a 16-year high in 2020 and local media outlets reported in April of this year that 2021 was on track to be even deadlier. Earlier this month, gunfire broke out near the Washington Nationals baseball stadium causing players and fans to flee the area in a chaotic scene that drew national attention. –Fox News

In Atlanta, candidate Moore made combating “out-of-control” crime ranging from rapes to gun violence a centerpiece of her platform against Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms back in January. In May, however, Bottoms announced that she wouldn’t seek reelection.

“You can’t just let crime spiral out of control while you’re waiting for your approaches to work in supporting programs and activities to help people,” said Moore, adding “You’ve got to do both at the same time.”

Moore’s opponent, former two-time Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, is also campaigning on a pro-police platform.

“I’m going to build a bigger police force. I’m going to spend more money than we have ever spent on training,” said reed, adding that it will take “balance” to get things right. “It’s not as much tough talk as it is an array of solutions that, while it may not sound as sexy as ‘defund the police,’ it is a global approach that really does touch on multiple aspects of crime.”

In Minneapolis, however, Mayoral candidates Sheila Nezhad and Kate Knuth are both campaigning on a platform which would support a plan to dismantle the city’s police department in the wake of the George Floyd murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer last year. The plan would replace the MPD with a ‘Department of Public Safety’ which would combine the city’s violence prevention and emergency response functions and “allow us to dramatically reduce — and maybe sometime in the future — no longer need law enforcement officers as part of the department,” according to Nezhad.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey speaks at a press conference about public safety on April 19, 2021 in St. Paul, Minn. | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

More than 200 officers have already left the Minneapolis Police Department in the year since one of their own killed Floyd. But Frey — who, like Nezhad and Knuth, is a Democrat — sees that as a negative that could hamper the city’s ability to respond to 911 calls, shootings and domestic violence incidents.

Frey is holding fast to what he calls a “both-and approach” to public safety. That means “deep structural changes” to the department — like overhauling its use of force policy and sending more mental health responders and social workers on calls — while still keeping up the number of cops. -Politico

Read the rest of the report here.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/29/2021 – 14:25

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Washington Post: Olympic Surfing Is Embedded In American Imperialism

Washington Post: Olympic Surfing Is Embedded In American Imperialism

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

My column today discusses new claims that the Second Amendment was the product of slavery and how “racism seems to be the most common denominator of today’s political controversies.”

The media relishes work that explain how common practices or traditions are really relics of repression. The Washington Post this week illustrates this trend with the outrage du jure. Many (including myself) have been thrilled in watching the new Olympic competitions of surfing, including Hawaii’s Carissa Moore who won gold. Moore used the victory to celebrate her state’s long and cherished history of surfing. 

However, The Washington Post  did not let such moments to pass without a familiar reframing. It published Texas A&M professor Thomas Blake Earle who explained that we are enjoying a sport shaped by American imperialism. It is not virtual signaling but virtual shaming of others. So enjoy but remember to be ashamed.

Earle is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University studying American politics and the environment.  He has a history of reframing public debates in racialized terms. He previously denounced the rollback of Obama-era coal limits (which I also criticized) by writing that the change was “less about energy than about white masculinity.” It could also be about a difference in viewpoints on the environment, a long-standing divide in the country. I long opposed Trump’s environmental policies are environmental, not masculine, mistakes.

His column shows how easy it is to reframe issues for public shaming – and easy publication. Earle explains that the popularity of surfing is due to “centuries of U.S. imperialism.” However, a closer review of his evidence leaves you in what surfers call “the mush.”

Surfing is, of course, most associated with the Hawaiians who like Moore are deeply and legitimately proud of their association. The sport, as Earle notes, immediately awed outsiders like the surgeon on the British Captain James Cook’s ship The Resolution who wrote he “could not help concluding that this man felt the most supreme pleasure while he was driven on so fast and so smoothly by the sea.”. That was in the late 18th century, long after the establishment of this sport on the island. However, surfing is traced back to as early as 200 CE . . . in what is now Peru.

That does not make it easy to reframe the entire sport as another example of oppression or racism. Earle accomplishes this by noting that Calvinist missionaries did not approve of surfing. That is not surprising. Calvinist in the late 18th and early 19th century did not approve of a wide array of practices inside and outside of Europe. Calvinists in Europe moved to limit dancing, gambling, and other pursuits. Thus, it is hardly surprising that they did not take to naked Islanders on wooden surf boards.

Earle faced another dilemma. While missionaries did not approve, surfing was later embraced by Americans and the media. The spin however is easy. They were supporting this traditional Hawaiian sport to bring Westerners to the Island to colonize the island. Done. Surfing is the product of American imperialism and your column is eagerly run in the Washington Post.

While Earle agrees that surfing is “thrilling” to watch, it is important to do so with a sense of guilt and self-loathing:

[T]he Olympic movement has faced criticism for corruption, scandals and the tacit endorsement of governments that regularly violate the human rights of their citizens.

The history of surfing similarly shows that the sport is embedded in a history of imperialism. Surfing, much like the Olympics itself, would not exist as it does independent of how nations use sports as a tool of international relations.

The column captures much of what we have been discussing in relation to the dominant narratives on campuses and the countervailing intolerance for dissenting views on issues that touch on racial justice or social inequities. Theories like Earle’s are readily advanced in publications and conferences while those who oppose them are often ostracized or shunned. To question a claim like modern surfing is a product of imperialism is to declare yourself as a reactionary.  The article however shows a common failure of analysis where loose correlation is treated as causation.

There are often valid historical points of reference. Surfing was opposed by some missionaries and it was later supported by some figures eager to highlight Hawaiian culture. However, that does not mean that the sport is the product or a relic of imperialism. During the 19th and 20th Century, there was an exponential rise in international travel.  Foreign correspondents highlights exotic practices and cultures.  Earle focuses on the second half of the 19th century when there was an increase in American investment in Hawaii. He is certainly correct that corporations began to exercise huge power over the monarchy and, in 1898, there was a coup with the assistance of the Marines.

However, what does that have to do with surfing? Well, that is where correlation is enough. Earle notes how figures like Alexander Hume Ford wanted to increase investment in the island and he quotes historian Scott Laderman who noted “when [Ford] found surfing and the incomparable thrill it represented, Ford found a lure for drawing white immigrants to Hawai’i.”

Ok, putting aside the question of relying on this one figure and observation, the highlighting of a native sport does not mean that modern surfing is somehow the product of American imperialism. It does not mean that imperialism is any more relevant to the sport than monarchial rule. Many cultural practices have become more popular from exposure to the world at large. For example, Japan is famous for kabuki and its cuisine. Both became draws for tourism after interactions with the West but they are not products of imperialism despite the defeat and occupation of the country after World War II. They were preexisting cultural norms or practices that became international sensations.

Various traditional sports took hold and entered the Olympics due to their inherent value as sports, not the role of occupations or imperialism. Karate, tae kwon do, judo, and other sports are obvious examples. Consider for a second if figures like Ford did not publicize the thrill of surfing. Would surfing not have become popular in countries ranging from Australia to South Africa? Of course not. Great sports like great ideas tend to be replicated.

Moreover, Earle does not mention that surfing was already popular outside of Hawaii. Indeed, it is believed to have started with Polynesians outside of Hawaii. This included surfing cultures in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. Indeed, Earle mentions the surgeon on The Resolution but does not mention the accounts from other ships to Tahiti, including one in 1767 as well as on Cook’s first voyage with The Endeavor to Tahiti.

Moreover, Peru has claimed to have independently developed surfing based on pre-Inca Moche pottery.  Such conflicting facts are ignored because they interfere with the narrative. Surfing was likely to be embraced by the wider world as information and travel increases — just as kayaks may have started with the the Inuit, Yup’ik, and Aleut but eventually took hold around the world.

That however would just leave people enjoying the sport without identity or national guilt. Instead, the real thrill is found in claiming that”the sport is embedded in a history of imperialism.” So “while we may marvel at the athletes riding waves at the Games, this history will also be on display.”  Or maybe … just maybe … it is a great sport and what is on display is athleticism at its purest and most graceful state.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/29/2021 – 14:05

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Readers Really Like Indexes

Earlier today, I solicited comments about the value of book indexes. The responses were overwhelming: readers like them!

Here are a smattering of the emails:

Regarding book indexes, I still use them, especially for academic books and textbooks. Those books are typically the ones I am least likely to use in electronic form. Physical still beats electronic for the rapid sort of flipping back and forth I find myself doing. And an electronic index is imperfect for the same reasons indexes are still done by a real person–a simple word search may not return relevant information I can find with an index. So I am pro-index.

I don’t generally use an index upon reading a book for the 1st time if I’m reading it cover to cover. However, if a book is really good or thoughtful, I will often keep the book as a reference.  In utilizing a book as a reference this is when an index is most useful due to the fact that I’m sometimes likely to forget where some significant passages or discussions are located.

I use them all the time, in fact, when I read books for professional purposes, and sometimes even for entertainment purposes. In several respects, they are more efficient than simple searching for a word in an e-book (e.g. – the index can give you a page range and sometimes can distinguish insignificant casual references from more in-depth discussion). And, obviously, they are essential if you are using a print book, rather than e-book. Many people still prefer the former. I myself do, for most professional purposes.

Before reading a book, I “preview” it by reading the covers, reading the Table of Contents, reading any Foreword and/or Introduction, and scanning through the index.  By previewing it, I get an idea of who the author is (if I’m not already familiar with him/her), and where the author’s argument is going.  It also tells me whether I want to read just certain chapters, read the whole book, or not waste time reading it at all. I like indexes because they help to tell me what subjects are important to an author, who they mention and how often, and sometimes the breadth of research the author has done.

I still like physical books, and even on a kindle the search feature can be annoying, but you make a reasonable point about the reduced value of indexing now. If search gets good enough to replace what I described above, maybe your argument about expense and paper will carry the day.

The wisdom of the crowds has spoken.

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Readers Really Like Indexes

Earlier today, I solicited comments about the value of book indexes. The responses were overwhelming: readers like them!

Here are a smattering of the emails:

Regarding book indexes, I still use them, especially for academic books and textbooks. Those books are typically the ones I am least likely to use in electronic form. Physical still beats electronic for the rapid sort of flipping back and forth I find myself doing. And an electronic index is imperfect for the same reasons indexes are still done by a real person–a simple word search may not return relevant information I can find with an index. So I am pro-index.

I don’t generally use an index upon reading a book for the 1st time if I’m reading it cover to cover. However, if a book is really good or thoughtful, I will often keep the book as a reference.  In utilizing a book as a reference this is when an index is most useful due to the fact that I’m sometimes likely to forget where some significant passages or discussions are located.

I use them all the time, in fact, when I read books for professional purposes, and sometimes even for entertainment purposes. In several respects, they are more efficient than simple searching for a word in an e-book (e.g. – the index can give you a page range and sometimes can distinguish insignificant casual references from more in-depth discussion). And, obviously, they are essential if you are using a print book, rather than e-book. Many people still prefer the former. I myself do, for most professional purposes.

Before reading a book, I “preview” it by reading the covers, reading the Table of Contents, reading any Foreword and/or Introduction, and scanning through the index.  By previewing it, I get an idea of who the author is (if I’m not already familiar with him/her), and where the author’s argument is going.  It also tells me whether I want to read just certain chapters, read the whole book, or not waste time reading it at all. I like indexes because they help to tell me what subjects are important to an author, who they mention and how often, and sometimes the breadth of research the author has done.

I still like physical books, and even on a kindle the search feature can be annoying, but you make a reasonable point about the reduced value of indexing now. If search gets good enough to replace what I described above, maybe your argument about expense and paper will carry the day.

And this quote is a gem:

“Sir Frederick Pollock used to say that a man who would publish a book without an index ought to be banished ten miles beyond Hell where the Devil himself could not go because of the stinging nettles.” Roscoe Pound, Book Review, An Introduction to Legal Reasoning. by Edward H. Levi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949. Pp.74. $2.00, 60 Yale L.J. 193, 200 (1951)

The wisdom of the crowds has spoken.

 

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CFA Exam Pass Rate Crashes To A Record Low Of Just 25%

CFA Exam Pass Rate Crashes To A Record Low Of Just 25%

In what should come as a surprise to nobody watching the current state of financial markets, the CFA pass rate for its Level 1 exam has tanked to an all-time low of 25%.

If it isn’t clear from meme-stock mania or the Shiller PE approaching 39x that fundamentals don’t matter anymore, perhaps the Chartered Financial Analyst Level I exam pass rate can make it clear.

The atrocious 25% pass rate is down from 44% for those who took the exam in February. The 10 year average pass rate is 42%, according to Bloomberg. About 26,000 candidates took the exam. 

The CFA Institute was quick to dispel the notion that the May test was any more or less difficult than past tests. CFA Institute spokesman Matthew Hickerson said: “The degree of difficulty of the May Level I exam was consistent with previous Level I exam administrations, and this is the case whether we look back to paper-based testing or computer-based testing, which we introduced in February this year.”

“While some impacted candidates were able to pass, we believe the stop-start nature of the deferred candidates’ studies is reflected in the overall passing rate,” the Institute commented, noting that Covid had thrown a wrench in the gears of “the normal timeline of test taking and preparation”.

The average candidate studies for about 300 hours per CFA level. 

But maybe they need more help than that. Hey – we know a couple of Chinese tutoring services that recently just became non-profits…

Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/29/2021 – 13:45

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Cuomo Warns, Hysterically, That New York Schools Will Become ‘Superspreaders’


Cuomo

While urging “dramatic action” to fight the Delta variant of COVID, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned Wednesday that “schools can become superspreaders, and in September it will happen.”

Telling parents fearful about sending their kids back into school buildings that their classrooms “will” become superspreader events is a counterproductive way to overcome the massive amounts of learning loss that remote K-12 students, who are disproportionately minority and poor, have faced during the pandemic, particularly in the Democratic-voting polities where school closures and distance learning are more prevalent.

Cuomo’s messaging is particularly confusing based on what we know about school infectiousness in New York City, home to 71 of the 117 zip codes that the governor has targeted for having comparatively low vaccination and high infection rates. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Department of Education submits students and staff to regular COVID testing, which has continued during the city’s “Summer Rising” program, attended by around 200,000 students. And the current positive test rate is close to non-existent.

Of the 21,684 tests administered to Summer Rising participants between July 6 and July 22, all of 28 came back positive. That’s a rate of 0.13 percent. The rolling average over the past seven days is just a tick higher: 0.16 percent.

The results are even more striking when you focus on the ostensible beneficiaries of the city’s requirement (and the Centers for Disease Control’s new recommendation) that all vaccinated people in schools wear masks: unvaccinated kids under age 12. Of the 28 positive tests in New York during that span, 15 were students and 13 were teachers or staff, despite students receiving 2.3 times more tests. So the positive test rate among students in New York City this July has been 0.01 percent. The governor is warning about a possible wave of superspreader events among a population whose current prevalence of infection is a thousand to one.

The Delta variant, which is increasing case loads in all 50 states, has advanced earlier and further in other highly vaccinated countries, most notably the United Kingdom. So what have we learned about kids, schools, and infectiousness there? Here’s an observation last week from U.K. pediatric infectious disease specialist Alasdair Munro, derived from this government study:

It is reasonable to assume, and make policy plans around the fact, that kids in schools will be infected at rates higher than 1,000 to 1. The Delta variant is more transmissible, and it is currently (and unsurprisingly) ripping through the unvaccinated population first. But as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has pointed out, there has been no observed difference between the lethality and proportional demographic effects of Delta and the original virus. And unvaccinated kids in New York City remain the age cohort with the lowest infection rate, while unvaccinated kids in the United States are the group least likely to be hospitalized or die.

Some people are defending on grounds of vaccine encouragement the hysterical-sounding pronouncements from Cuomo and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who on Wednesday made the alarming and evidentiarily unsupported statement that of “every 20 vaccinated people, one or two of them could get a breakthrough infection.” But in addition to sowing confusion and making vaccination seem less rewarding, this scaremongering is already having negative impacts on the urgent priority of getting kids back in schools full-time.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, whose fingerprints have been all over closures and evidentiarily unsupported school restrictions in such cities as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., reacted to the CDC guidance Wednesday by saying, “So the bottom line is, we’re going to keep kids safe, we’re going to keep our members safe, we’re going to try to open up schools, and we’re going to move through this political battlefield.”

Italics mine, to indicate foreshadowing.

Cuomo’s “superspreader” comment, and the likely discouragement it will provide those who are hesitant to send their kids back to school, will come as a deep disappointment for those who have argued that in-person schooling is an urgent priority. As recently as last November, those ranks—at least on paper—included Gov. Cuomo himself.

“Medical research as well as the data from Northeastern states, from across the country, and from around the world make clear that in-person learning is safe when the appropriate protections are in place, even in communities with high transmission rates,” said Cuomo, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Delaware Gov. John Carney, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker in a joint statement that month. “In-person learning is the best possible scenario for children, especially those with special needs and from low-income families. There is also growing evidence that the more time children spend outside of school increases the risk of mental health harm and affects their ability to truly learn.”

That was the correct take last November, last July, and this July as well. If and when school districts, mayors, and governors screw up a third year of public schooling due to their inability to assess risk, they should be systematically hounded out of office.

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$250/Day Fine for Displaying “Fuck Biden” Sign at Home Dropped, Thanks to ACLU of N.J.

Rebecca Panico (NJ.com) reports:

Roselle Park voluntarily dismissed its case in Superior Court on Tuesday against a borough homeowner who hung anti-President Biden flags with the f-word on her fence.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey was representing the homeowner, Patricia Dilascio, and her daughter, Andrea Dick, in their appeal to Superior Court in Union County. A municipal court judge earlier this month ruled the homeowner had violated a local obscenity ordinance and ordered them to remove the signs with the f-word—or else pay a $250-a-day fine.

Glad to hear it; I copy below what I wrote about the case two weeks ago.

[* * *]

NJ.com (Rebecca Panico) reports (and includes the photo above):

Roselle Park Municipal Court Judge Gary Bundy ordered the Willow Avenue homeowner to remove the signs with profanity within a week or face a $250-a-day fine….

“This is not a case about politics. It is a case, pure and simple, about language,” Bundy said. “This ordinance does not restrict political speech. Neither this town or its laws may abridge or eliminate Ms. Dilascio’s freedom of speech. However, freedom of speech is not simply an absolute right. It is clear from state law and statutes that we cannot simply put up the umbrella of the First Amendment and say everything and anything is protected speech.” …

The ordinance prohibits displaying “any obscene material, communication or performance or other article or item which is obscene within the Borough.” It defines obscenity as material that depicts or describes sexual conduct or lacks any serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

But Cohen’s wearing his “Fuck the Draft” jacket was protected speech, and it’s hard for me to see how the signs here are anything but. To quote Justice Harlan’s opinion in Cohen,

First, the principle contended for by the State seems inherently boundless. How is one to distinguish this from any other offensive word? Surely the State has no right to cleanse public debate to the point where it is grammatically palatable to the most squeamish among us. Yet no readily ascertainable general principle exists for stopping short of that result were we to affirm the judgment below. For, while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual.

Additionally, we cannot overlook the fact, because it is well illustrated by the episode involved here, that much linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas capable of relatively precise, detached explication, but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated. Indeed, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter has said, “[o]ne of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures—and that means not only informed and responsible criticism but the freedom to speak foolishly and without moderation.”

Finally, and in the same vein, we cannot indulge the facile assumption that one can forbid particular words without also running a substantial risk of suppressing ideas in the process. Indeed, governments might soon seize upon the censorship of particular words as a convenient guise for banning the expression of unpopular views. We have been able, as noted above, to discern little social benefit that might result from running the risk of opening the door to such grave results.

It is, in sum, our judgment that, absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display here involved of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense.

On top of that, if the news story is correct that the defendant was being prosecuted solely under the “obscenity” ordinance, that ordinance just doesn’t apply here: It defines “obscene” using the normal legal definition, rather than the lay definition that often covers vulgar words. Under that definition, the speech must basically be pornographic, appealing to the “prurient interest” in sex and depicting or describing sexual conduct; the word “fuck” here doesn’t qualify; to quote Cohen again,

Whatever else may be necessary to give rise to the States’ broader power to prohibit obscene expression, such expression must be, in some significant way, erotic. It cannot plausibly be maintained that this vulgar allusion to the Selective Service System [or, in this case, to President Biden -EV] would conjure up such psychic stimulation in anyone likely to be confronted with Cohen’s crudely defaced jacket.

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Cuomo Warns, Hysterically, That New York Schools Will Become ‘Superspreaders’


Cuomo

While urging “dramatic action” to fight the Delta variant of COVID, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned Wednesday that “schools can become superspreaders, and in September it will happen.”

Telling parents fearful about sending their kids back into school buildings that their classrooms “will” become superspreader events is a counterproductive way to overcome the massive amounts of learning loss that remote K-12 students, who are disproportionately minority and poor, have faced during the pandemic, particularly in the Democratic-voting polities where school closures and distance learning are more prevalent.

Cuomo’s messaging is particularly confusing based on what we know about school infectiousness in New York City, home to 71 of the 117 zip codes that the governor has targeted for having comparatively low vaccination and high infection rates. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Department of Education submits students and staff to regular COVID testing, which has continued during the city’s “Summer Rising” program, attended by around 200,000 students. And the current positive test rate is close to non-existent.

Of the 21,684 tests administered to Summer Rising participants between July 6 and July 22, all of 28 came back positive. That’s a rate of 0.13 percent. The rolling average over the past seven days is just a tick higher: 0.16 percent.

The results are even more striking when you focus on the ostensible beneficiaries of the city’s requirement (and the Centers for Disease Control’s new recommendation) that all vaccinated people in schools wear masks: unvaccinated kids under age 12. Of the 28 positive tests in New York during that span, 15 were students and 13 were teachers or staff, despite students receiving 2.3 times more tests. So the positive test rate among students in New York City this July has been 0.01 percent. The governor is warning about a possible wave of superspreader events among a population whose current prevalence of infection is a thousand to one.

The Delta variant, which is increasing case loads in all 50 states, has advanced earlier and further in other highly vaccinated countries, most notably the United Kingdom. So what have we learned about kids, schools, and infectiousness there? Here’s an observation last week from U.K. pediatric infectious disease specialist Alasdair Munro, derived from this government study:

It is reasonable to assume, and make policy plans around the fact, that kids in schools will be infected at rates higher than 1,000 to 1. The Delta variant is more transmissible, and it is currently (and unsurprisingly) ripping through the unvaccinated population first. But as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has pointed out, there has been no observed difference between the lethality and proportional demographic effects of Delta and the original virus. And unvaccinated kids in New York City remain the age cohort with the lowest infection rate, while unvaccinated kids in the United States are the group least likely to be hospitalized or die.

Some people are defending on grounds of vaccine encouragement the hysterical-sounding pronouncements from Cuomo and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who on Wednesday made the alarming and evidentiarily unsupported statement that of “every 20 vaccinated people, one or two of them could get a breakthrough infection.” But in addition to sowing confusion and making vaccination seem less rewarding, this scaremongering is already having negative impacts on the urgent priority of getting kids back in schools full-time.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, whose fingerprints have been all over closures and evidentiarily unsupported school restrictions in such cities as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., reacted to the CDC guidance Wednesday by saying, “So the bottom line is, we’re going to keep kids safe, we’re going to keep our members safe, we’re going to try to open up schools, and we’re going to move through this political battlefield.”

Italics mine, to indicate foreshadowing.

Cuomo’s “superspreader” comment, and the likely discouragement it will provide those who are hesitant to send their kids back to school, will come as a deep disappointment for those who have argued that in-person schooling is an urgent priority. As recently as last November, those ranks—at least on paper—included Gov. Cuomo himself.

“Medical research as well as the data from Northeastern states, from across the country, and from around the world make clear that in-person learning is safe when the appropriate protections are in place, even in communities with high transmission rates,” said Cuomo, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Delaware Gov. John Carney, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker in a joint statement that month. “In-person learning is the best possible scenario for children, especially those with special needs and from low-income families. There is also growing evidence that the more time children spend outside of school increases the risk of mental health harm and affects their ability to truly learn.”

That was the correct take last November, last July, and this July as well. If and when school districts, mayors, and governors screw up a third year of public schooling due to their inability to assess risk, they should be systematically hounded out of office.

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American Postal Workers Union Opposes Mandatory Vaccinations “At This Time”

American Postal Workers Union Opposes Mandatory Vaccinations “At This Time”

Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) has said that it opposes mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, amid reports that the White House is considering so-called vaccine passports as a condition of employment for federal employees.

The union, which represents over 220,000 postal workers, released a statement late Wednesday saying that while it will encourage postal workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, it is “not the role of the federal government to mandate vaccinations for the employees we represent.”

“Issues related to vaccinations and testing for COVID-19 in the workplace must be negotiated with the APWU. At this time the APWU opposes the mandating of COVID-19 vaccinations in relation to U.S. postal workers,” the statement said.

The APWU released its statement a day after President Joe Biden said that the White House is considering mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for all federal workers.

“That’s under consideration right now,” the president said Tuesday when pressed on the issue on a trip to McLean, Virginia.

Biden suggested that those who are yet to be vaccinated are “sowing enormous confusion.”

“We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated, and they’re sowing enormous confusion,” Biden said.

“And there’s only one thing we know for sure, if those other 100 million people got vaccinated, we’d be in a very different world. So get vaccinated. If you haven’t, you’re not nearly as smart as I said you were.”

The president is set to deliver remarks on COVID-19 at the White House on Thursday afternoon.

The Department of Veterans Affairs will be the first major federal agency to roll out a COVID-19 vaccination mandate on its employees. It cited the rise in the highly contagious Delta variant in the United States and veteran safety.

Meanwhile New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday said that all state employees would either have to get vaccinated, or face regular testing.

“President Biden is reported that he’s going to announce soon that all federal employees must be vaccinated or get tested. New York State is doing the same,” the governor, a Democrat, said during a virtual meeting.

“It’s smart. It’s fair. It’s in everyone’s interest,” Cuomo said, noting that he’s coordinating with state unions to implement the vaccine requirement by Labor Day.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also announced on Monday that all city workers would have to either be vaccinated or face weekly testing. California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a similar measure hours later.

Critics of the measure argue that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the United States have not yet received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration pending the safety and efficacy results of the ongoing phase three trials.

Vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are currently being administered in the United States under emergency use authorization (EUA), meaning that vaccine manufacturers aren’t held liable for any injury, including death, that their COVID-19 vaccine may cause.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/29/2021 – 13:24

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3j4D40W Tyler Durden

$250/Day Fine for Displaying “Fuck Biden” Sign at Home Dropped, Thanks to ACLU of N.J.

Rebecca Panico (NJ.com) reports:

Roselle Park voluntarily dismissed its case in Superior Court on Tuesday against a borough homeowner who hung anti-President Biden flags with the f-word on her fence.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey was representing the homeowner, Patricia Dilascio, and her daughter, Andrea Dick, in their appeal to Superior Court in Union County. A municipal court judge earlier this month ruled the homeowner had violated a local obscenity ordinance and ordered them to remove the signs with the f-word—or else pay a $250-a-day fine.

Glad to hear it; I copy below what I wrote about the case two weeks ago.

[* * *]

NJ.com (Rebecca Panico) reports (and includes the photo above):

Roselle Park Municipal Court Judge Gary Bundy ordered the Willow Avenue homeowner to remove the signs with profanity within a week or face a $250-a-day fine….

“This is not a case about politics. It is a case, pure and simple, about language,” Bundy said. “This ordinance does not restrict political speech. Neither this town or its laws may abridge or eliminate Ms. Dilascio’s freedom of speech. However, freedom of speech is not simply an absolute right. It is clear from state law and statutes that we cannot simply put up the umbrella of the First Amendment and say everything and anything is protected speech.” …

The ordinance prohibits displaying “any obscene material, communication or performance or other article or item which is obscene within the Borough.” It defines obscenity as material that depicts or describes sexual conduct or lacks any serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

But Cohen’s wearing his “Fuck the Draft” jacket was protected speech, and it’s hard for me to see how the signs here are anything but. To quote Justice Harlan’s opinion in Cohen,

First, the principle contended for by the State seems inherently boundless. How is one to distinguish this from any other offensive word? Surely the State has no right to cleanse public debate to the point where it is grammatically palatable to the most squeamish among us. Yet no readily ascertainable general principle exists for stopping short of that result were we to affirm the judgment below. For, while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual.

Additionally, we cannot overlook the fact, because it is well illustrated by the episode involved here, that much linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas capable of relatively precise, detached explication, but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated. Indeed, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter has said, “[o]ne of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures—and that means not only informed and responsible criticism but the freedom to speak foolishly and without moderation.”

Finally, and in the same vein, we cannot indulge the facile assumption that one can forbid particular words without also running a substantial risk of suppressing ideas in the process. Indeed, governments might soon seize upon the censorship of particular words as a convenient guise for banning the expression of unpopular views. We have been able, as noted above, to discern little social benefit that might result from running the risk of opening the door to such grave results.

It is, in sum, our judgment that, absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display here involved of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense.

On top of that, if the news story is correct that the defendant was being prosecuted solely under the “obscenity” ordinance, that ordinance just doesn’t apply here: It defines “obscene” using the normal legal definition, rather than the lay definition that often covers vulgar words. Under that definition, the speech must basically be pornographic, appealing to the “prurient interest” in sex and depicting or describing sexual conduct; the word “fuck” here doesn’t qualify; to quote Cohen again,

Whatever else may be necessary to give rise to the States’ broader power to prohibit obscene expression, such expression must be, in some significant way, erotic. It cannot plausibly be maintained that this vulgar allusion to the Selective Service System [or, in this case, to President Biden -EV] would conjure up such psychic stimulation in anyone likely to be confronted with Cohen’s crudely defaced jacket.

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