Opinion

Big Brother is fining you

This is the real “Law & Order,” as it works in the capital of the world in the 21st century.

In the city of New York, the people are divided into two separate yet completely unequal groups: the citizens, who are subject to laws, and the governing class, who are not.

Consider which of the following transgressions will earn you punishment from the municipal mandarins:

1) Putting two small tables on the sidewalk outside your cupcake shop;

2) Spotting an air-conditioner someone left out with the garbage, picking it up and putting it in your truck;

3) Body-slamming an innocent bicyclist off his bike. While serving as a police officer. Then falsely charging the biker with the crime of attacking you. And capping it off by crying wounded little sophomore-poetry-major tears at your trial.

Justice comes swiftly to true miscreants. Just ask public enemy Pam Nelson, owner of the Butter Lane cupcakery on East 7th Street. She placed two tables outside her shop, discovered she had thereby created an “illegal sidewalk café” and was promptly shut down by the police. Warned? Told to move the tables? No, shut down. This directly cost her several days of lost revenue and maybe an even worse loss of business reputation. If you see an official notice announcing an eatery has been shut down, your mind swims with visions of rat poo, and you never go back.

Fellow desperado Paul Lawrence of Middle Village, Queens, picked up an air conditioner a woman had placed on the curb for disposal (and even got her approval to take it away), then put it in his car. Immediately he fell victim to what sounds like an “SNL” sketch: the Sanit Sting. A sanitman had observed the whole wicked deed. He saw to it that Lawrence was fined $2,000, the car was impounded and Lawrence’s aunt was fined another $2,000 because she owned the car. It turns out it’s illegal to pick up refuse and take it away in your vehicle (though it’s legal to do so on foot).

A capricious law, overzealous enforcement, disproportionate punishment — it’s almost like these are political issues, no?

So our mayor quickly stepped in, and by stepped in, I mean, “Did nothing.” “Two thousand dollars is a pretty hefty fine, and I don’t know what law was broken,” Mike Bloomberg said, as though talking about the strange customs of someone else’s civilization. He showed no sign of taking any further interest.

The champion example of sound laws, underzealous enforcement and a complete absence of punishment, though, is Patrick Pogan. He became a YouTube superstar in 2008 when, as a rookie cop, he delivered a Michael Strahan-style hit on an unsuspecting biker during a rally, then lied that the biker was the attacker and was convicted of filing a false report (he was also inexplicably acquitted of assault). His judicial punishment for this: nothing. Even Pogan’s own lawyer had recommended community service.

Meanwhile, in The Bronx, the city’s parking Pogans — those who make sure that no one is above the law, except those who enforce it — were caught stationing city employees (at your expense!) to guard the privately owned vehicles of meter maids who were capering around the city bestowing tickets. Naturally, the meter maids don’t feed the meters next to their own cars. In Astoria, MTA employees were caught evading parking tickets by placing work vests on dashboards to signify: We’re all on the same team (wink, wink).

A signal moment of the Bloomberg era came way back in 2003, if you were paying attention. That’s when a bewildered 19-year-old Bronx man named Jesse Taveras was issued a ticket for sitting on a milk crate. The cops, Taveras said, told him to “blame Bloomberg.”

Government is the Blob — ever-expanding, heedless, randomly rolling over innocents that happen to get in its way. This isn’t just an abstract argument about “The Road to Serfdom” or “Leviathan.” It isn’t just a complaint about the federal government’s overreach.

The Blob is right here in New York, on your sidewalk, writing you up and using the money to hire more Blobocrats.

In a more recent sci-fi movie, “Inception,” sleepers wake up from one dream only to discover they’re in another, completely different one. New York has awakened from the nearly 30-year nightmare of unchecked lawlessness that began in the early 1960s — only to discover we’re in a tonally different dreamland of rampant statism.

It’s no longer the era of 2,000 murders a year, Son of Sam and “Escape from New York.”

Now we’re in the time of the Pogoons, the Cupcake Centurions, the Marshals of the Milk Crate. Bloomberg, when asked about such incidents, shrugs them off. Whaddya gonna do?

Twenty years ago, this newspaper ran a famous front-page headline that pleaded with then-mayor David Dinkins, “DAVE, DO SOMETHING!” Dinkins didn’t, though voters soon found someone who could.

Ending the crime spree, though, was a massive challenge. Ending city pettifoggery and holding municipal workers to the same standards as citizens isn’t.

Mike, do something.