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Would You Boycott NYC?
New York City, USA – September 10, 2012: A Tractor-Trailer 18-Wheeler truck is seen as it makes a sharp turn from W.42nd Street onto 8th Avenue while pedestrians wait for it to pass as it heads northbound in West Midtown Manhattan. (JayLazarin/iStockphoto.com)
Longtime readers of my meanderings may remember that I spent some 14 years roaming across the country in an 18 wheeler following my retirement from the military. The idea was to see the country for awhile and experience as much as I could of the place I helped defend. I travelled through 47 of the lower 48 states and developed a working list of places I did and did not wish to re-visit in the future.
So when I heard about truckers planning to decline deliveries into the New York City area following the $355 million fine levied against Donald Trump for a crime which has produced neither victims nor proceeds, I have to ask myself what I would do?
Let’s first stipulate that the boycott effort will be easier for some professional drivers than others. Those who own their own trucks can as a rule decide which locations they will travel to, so they will have an easier time avoiding NYC. Company drivers have no such option, particularly as larger companies who can deliver freight at a reduced cost will fill in the void left by owner operators. An owner operator can point his truck in another direction and survive, while a company driver who refuses a dispatch will be out of a job. So the boycott will not be air-tight.
And to be fair, I should also point out that I never missed an opportunity to miss driving into NYC. It’s the place where good attitudes and good driving records go to die. It would be the greatest embellishment to say that local drivers habitually changed their minds as they swerved from one direction to another, because they hadn’t any.
One time, I had a delivery at some place or other on Park Avenue and I had to parallel park. The mental image of an 80,000 pound, 80 ft. long truck negotiating downtown traffic should be enough to have the reader reaching for a glass of bourbon. Now imagine having to back that beast and parallel park the truck and trailer curbside in the midst of all that traffic with an obstacle course of vehicles careening all around and you’ll want the whole bottle. I saw so many middle fingers during the tribulation that I wondered if there was a proctology convention in town.
To be honest, I did all I could to boycott NYC before it was fashionable. From bridge clearances that were inaccurately marked, to downtown truck route signs that were removed by local gangs so they could rob lost truckers, to incomprehensibly rude drivers who suffered from acute cranial rectal inversion, any trip assignment to the Big Apple was like playing Russian Roulette. To borrow a phrase from Mark Twain, to avoid being persecuted in that place is to be, “…as happy as a martyr when the fire won’t burn.”
The question remains, if I were a professional driver, would I join with other truckers in an embargo of NYC? Would I abstain from a city where innocent people are routinely brutalized by roving gangs of moronic goons who are released from jail before the arresting officer’s shift is over? Would I refuse delivery to a city where the hard-earned money of taxpayers is diverted from services for New Yorkers and spent on those whose singular achievement in life was to break into the country illegally while the State Attorney General instead uses her resources to go after Donald Trump for utilizing a very common practice in real estate circles that, to date, hasn’t been prosecuted? As business investor Kevin O’Leary explained on CNN:
So in this case, what I’m trying to figure out — and I’m not pro or con and I don’t care about the politics — is who lost money? Nobody. The bank got paid back the construction finance loan and a new building was built. If you’re gonna sue this case and win, you’ve gotta sue every real estate developer everywhere because this is all they do. This is what they do all day long, every day! So I don’t think this thing will ever survive appeal regardless of what the fine is. This doesn’t even make sense! … If you’re a real estate developer and watching this, you’re saying, “What is this? This is ridiculous!”
So absolutely yes, I’d join in the current trucker boycott if I could (I came off the road in 2018). Would I advise other professional drivers to do the same? Yes. And if the boycott somehow imposes discomfort on the good people of that city, I would remind them that as Barack Obama famously observed, “Elections have consequences.” After all, we’ve been suffering the consequences of the 2020 election for nearly four years now.
Published in General
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
Said no such thing.
And if he would be truly fortunate if the law was written to go after just him as making an appeal on a Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 claim would make life easier for both him and SCOTUS.
It isn’t like you didn’t know what you were getting with him. He’s long been known as a guy who refuses to pay his bills. That and the two dozen cases against him for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act and another 200 liens against his properties for non-payment. He may not have been asking for it but he is and always has been his own worst enemy.
You really don’t see the problem with this case? You are comfortable just ascribing karma and just carrying on? You think the rest of us are exempt from this “aberration” in law?
What he heck are you talking about?
In this case, he paid all his bills.
Not good enough for you though.
A clear case of evil but you refuse to see it because you hate Trump.
Has it coming.
You are totally willing to destroy the rule of law to get Trump \.
Of course he is!
EJ has nothing to offer to win. Just bash Trump. Every loss is Trump.
Trumpity Trump Trump@!
Conservatism Inc has failed over and over and over. But they blame Trump, not their own issues.
It is all on us for daring to be unhappy that people like him don’t listen to our needs.
There’s plenty wrong with it. I’m on the record as saying that these cases were less about convictions and more about nominations. And they’ve had the desired effect.
What amazes me is the amount of people who think this is new and an “aberration.” We are talking about the same city that gave rise to Tammany Hall and let that organization rule from 1789 to well into the 1960s. (Although FDR heavily contributed to its demise both as governor and president.) But suddenly everyone acts as though Trump is somehow in a unique situation and that throwing stuff at the wall like small trucking strikes is going to clean things up. With the ineffectiveness Trump and his handpicked team of lawyers have shown he’s ill-equipped to fight this.
In the immortal words of Andrew Breitbart: So?
Either you are disturbed by the State of New York essentially issuing a bill of attainder to confiscate hundreds of millions of dollars from an individual just because they don’t like his face, or you’re not. And if you’re not, that’s fine. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and yada yada yada.
I still miss Andrew and the righteous rollerblades.
If Trump was convicted on a Bill of Attainder I must give extra props to Gov. Averell Harriman and the NY State Legislature for beginning proceedings when Trump was only 10 years old.
It has nothing to do with the law as written. It has to do with the law as it is being enforced. If they are seriously going after every business that values their assets as Trump did his when applying for a loan, then they are going after every real estate developer in NYC. But hammerhead Hochul has just confessed that this is a strictly political prosecution. You think that they’ll only do it this one time?
Yeah, . . . your little conspiracy theory gets more laughable by the week. But do keep pretending that this is all a ploy to get him nominated instead of what it really is: a ploy to get him jailed, impoverished, and/or dead.
Selective enforcement has always been a problem. It’s the same argument the NAACP made for decades.
That said, words do mean things. Throwing around charges of “Bill of Attainder” when none exists does not make one more sympathetic to the cause.
And so we return to the original argument of Dave’s post. How do you combat it and is a limited truck strike the way to achieve it? Expand the argument further and ask if Donald Trump is the man to accomplish it. (It certainly doesn’t help with the lawyers he hires.)
Everyone here wants reform but not everyone seems to be committed to the idea of achieving that in a “small d” democratic manner.
Again,
Can you show us where this has worked in the past 50 years?
There will be unintended consequences for this action.
How many real estate developers are going to shy away from NY (or any other state which has this kind of litigation)?
the boycott might be entrepreneurs going “John Galt” in blue states.
Absolutely none. See my comment earlier about how entrenched NY real estate is in the funding machine of the Democratic Party. Plus, you don’t even have to be American to play the game. One of the largest, if not the largest, is a British firm that uses that excuse to steer clear of all political parties.
Absolutely none, because Kathy Hochul has assured New York businesses that this is specifically targeted to one individual. That is, she admits it’s entirely political, and nobody else needs to fear.
An admission that should be enough to get all this thrown out. That is, if we actually had rule of law in this country.
Of course, one probably shouldn’t believe her assurances. Democrats are “testing the fences” to see just how far they can go with this stuff. And the more we let them get away with, the more they will abuse the system. After they murder Trump, they will move on to more targets.
Jonathan Turley responds:
And what part of the trial was Hochul responsible for? And since the quote came after a guilty verdict, that’s going to be a really, really hard sell in any court.
I’m not sure what you’re saying. Hochul made it clear this is political persecution. “Why are you okay with this?”
Which courts? Where? What judges? The rule of law is a joke. We have no rule of law in this country. The only rule is power. Having it and wielding it against one’s enemies.
You used the words “thrown out.” You tell me.
Edit: You tell me when, in any instance prior to Trump, a politician’s post-trial public comments have been used to overturn a verdict.
How about James’ pre-election (of her) comments/campaign promises that she was out to get Trump?
Prosecutor makes remarks about prosecuting people? That’s not prejudicial, that’s kind of a prerequisite for the job.
So James was running on being a general law and order candidate? There are a number of New Yorkers who would beg to differ.
She wasn’t AG yet, and had done no investigating. (Which, if she had, would have shown no victim etc, and hence no valid case.) Her intent was clear, Get Trump No Matter What.
What I’m saying is that someone running for the office of AG has more leeway in those kind of remarks because that is exactly what the job entails. If Hochul were to have said it that is completely different. State AGs aren’t like the Fed AG. Those offices are independent of the Executive Branch.
Weak response. It would have been better for your position not to have posted this at all.
It the remarks had been standard run of the mill “we are going to make sure that law breakers will be punished” I would agree. But to do a Beria (“show me the man and I will find the crime”) on Trump in your campaign is not kosher.
In the past I may have agreed with you, but SCOTUS made clear in Republican Party of Minnesota v White 536 U.S. 765 (2002), that restrictions on campaign speech for judicial candidates (prosecutors, AGs and judges) was unconstitutional. And since this wasn’t even a jury trial you’d be hard pressed to make the case that anything she said prejudiced the outcome.
So if a candidate says during their campaign “I intend to run for office so I can steal from the taxpayers” and then it looks like they stole from the taxpayers, the fact they announced their intent in advance would be irrelevant?
I read it differently, if the state government can gang up to attack a person they do not like once, why would they not use this power again.
For those that say Letitia James’ pre-election comments about Donald Trump violated ethics and damaged the rule of the law, what’s the call on presidential candidates that lead chants of “lock her up” or say on a debate stage about their opponents, “If I were president you’d be in jail?”
Or is that why he had to do nothing post-election to drain that swamp?