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NY Experimenting With Its Will to Live
Justice Brandeis coined the phrase “laboratories of democracy” to describe how the outcome of a stupid policy in one state can be a lesson to the rest, rather than an injury to the entire nation. The current lethal experiments in the New York legislative “laboratory” make the Wuhan bioweapons virology lab seem like a paragon of public safety and good intentions.
A weirdly compulsory, conscienceless stupidity seems to possess the entire elected leadership. For example, the Speaker of the New York Assembly Carl Heastie, is very likely to have an above-average IQ. He holds a BS in mathematics and an MBA in finance. And yet, he delivers mind-numbingly stupid statements like this:
I just don’t believe raising penalties is ever a deterrent on crime.
If you just keep dealing with the penalties, what happens after people get arrested? You’re still worrying about what happens after something has already happened. -Source New York Post 4/2/24
Amazing.
Presumably, the newly arrived illegal invaders will continue to drain public resources until the brain-dead, but fiscally sound, legislative decision is made to make them full citizens and thus ineligible for continuing the absurdly lavish free ride they now enjoy. This will also provide a surge of stupidity-affirming voters, add to the chaos, crime, and ongoing assault on public resources–and more killings, including more dead cops.
Consider the tough coming future choices: After seizing Trump Tower and other high-end properties to be used for emergency illegal immigrant housing, how can the state recoup costs by selling property that no one will want to buy since squatters cannot be removed legally or politically? Will the governor need to be given emergency powers to seize persons and businesses with above-average incomes or net worth over $250,000 to prevent them from moving to Texas or Florida? Can the New York congressional delegation pull off a major financial coup with an annual multi-billion-dollar federal bailout to prevent collapse?
In the brilliant 2,000-Year-Old Man skits by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, the 2000-year-old man is asked about his favorite job. He said that it was being a doctor back in his caveman days. You find a guy laying on the floor, stick your finger in his nose and if he does not sit up and say, “Hey, get your finger out of my nose,” you declare him dead and collect a fee either way. With an unambiguous diagnosis looming, will New York sit up and object at some point?
Published in Immigration
If I live in NY and list my house for $200,000 can the state tell me its only worth $100,000 and bring civil suit against me for $1,000,000 for fraud? That’s what the Trump case sounds like to me.
Just questioning the wisdom of the AG and an idiot judge is probably a felony.
How much gooder and harder does it need to get before a majority of New York voters decide to change course?
Stupid people are much harder to convince of anything, and smart people seem to leave NY if they can.
Degrees from Harvard? That might explain it.
A weirdly compulsory conscienceless stupidity seems to possess the entire elected leadership. For example, the Speaker of the New York Assembly Carl Heastie is very likely to have an above-average IQ. He holds a BS in mathematics and an MBA in finance. And yet, he delivers mind-numbingly stupid statements like this:
After being on the streets as a police officer my take is that laws do not prevent crimes. Bank robberies, murders, rapes, and any other crime you can name would have ended long ago if that were true.
Laws are written to provide a consistent judicial process to deal with individuals that have committed crimes. Statutes contain elements to define a crime and include allowable defenses that may be presented in court to someone charged with a crime.
Cashless bail and the failure to prosecute crimes is no more than a social engineering process that creates chaos and anarchy.
I dunno, if the penalty is to cut off the thief’s hand, it seems a pretty strong deterrent. For one thing, it’s a lot harder for a one-handed thief to steal stuff . . not that I’m advocating for such punishments. But crime rates are lower in some countries where penalties are severe.
NY has broken the idea of property rights. You cannot have a modern economy without property rights.
Having plenty of experience getting fooled by the MSM on things that Donald Trump has supposedly said, taken out of context, I wanted to check to see if there is some missing context for Speaker Heastie’s remarks. The remarks are probably stupid regardless of the context, but I wanted to see if they were really mind-numblingly stupid, or just boringly stupid like most things politicians say. The OP gives a source, but that source is just an outrage piece that doesn’t have more and doesn’t give its own sources.
So I still can’t rule out the possibility that Heastie acknowledges that there are reasons other than deterrence for locking up criminals, such as you point out. If he’s just saying that increasing the mandatory minimum sentence for certain crimes from 3 years to 5 is not going to have much effect, he’s probably right. If he’s saying that it doesn’t pay to lock up criminals at all, that would take him well into stupid territory. But without knowing more context and without having a fuller quote, it’s hard to say.
De facto decriminalization does increase crime if for no other reason than repeat offenses would otherwise be reduced by incarceration of the offender. And clearly a statutory legalization of shoplifting creates perverse incentives.
You are correct that if a criminal is undeterred by a possible 5-10 sentence then an amendment to make it 7-15 is unlikely to have a deterrent effect. But if the combination of statutory changes and prosecutorial negligence reduce the risk to zero, that does have an effect.
Retired prison physician Theodore Dalrymple relates a conversation he had with a career burglar:
or this conversation with an imprisoned burglar:
I have read reports that while it is possible to turn first offenders away from crime, it is almost impossible to reform repeat offenders and the only reliable measure is to keep them in prison until they are middle aged.
The New York bar Association is bad, no account government. It is beyond terrible. People aren’t talking about this enough. The socialist AG should be in big trouble.
If there are no penalties for committing a crime, any crime, then why have laws? Which means we don’t need a legislature, “Carl”.
Fairly amazing, even for a politician with an education in what used to represent reality. I guess looking at cause and effect, the historical results of increases in incarceration and crime reduction, aren’t path of the math.
Particularly if prosecutors say they’re not going to prosecute crimes, like shoplifting. The resulting cause and effect is broadly and instantaneously evident.
This is part of the plan; they are interested in a modern economy, if by that you mean a capitalist system where individuals are in control of their own resources. They are interested in a command control economy where they determine all aspects of your life.
If it takes a little chaos (burn it all down) to get you there, that a feature.
It was interesting to note that, having decimated (in the correct use of that word!) the NYPD and handed Get Out Of Jail Free cards to thugs and creeps, the governor tested the proposition that frightened people will yield freedom in exchange for safety by sending the National Guard to search people’s bags in the subway.
If you permit/create enough chaos, normal people will demand order and won’t be nearly so picky about how it is imposed.
We make it easy by granting emergency powers to governors and presidents. Not so much chaos is required that way.
And despite all the complaining about governors’ and presidents’ abusive use of emergency powers during covid, even the right seems to have lost interest in reform. I haven’t heard a peep about it out of Trump or any of his hardcore followers.