The headline smacks of parody: “Council Black, Latino and Asian Caucus To Call for End to Senseless Assaults and Gun Violence Plaguing New York City.”
The clever set-up made the temptation to read the full e-mail irresistible, so I plunged ahead, scanning for the punch line. Then I got punched. This was no joke.
It was an official press release from the City Council, a serious expression of outrage about rising crime in black and Latino neighborhoods. With shootings up 7 percent over a year ago, the 26 members of the caucus, a majority of the 51-seat council, were holding a press conference to demand that bad guys stop being bad guys and that, if they don’t behave, somebody should do something.
The Monday event at City Hall got very little press attention because there was no man-bites-dog news. I beg to differ.
The event marks a seminal moment in modern New York. The consequences of demagoguery don’t come any faster and can’t be any more obvious. Those are ingredients not just of news, but also of scandal.
Here’s the scoop: The lawmakers complaining about crime in their neighborhoods included many who had demonized the most successful police force in America, demanded an end to stop-and-frisk despite record low crime, and passed a law allowing people to sue individual cops if they believed they were stopped improperly.
And now they are surprised that crime is rising. Or maybe they are shocked — shocked — that violent criminals, absent aggressive policing, really are violent.
To call the council members hypocrites doesn’t do justice to their offense. Their foolish policies are killing and wounding — literally — the very people who elected them. There oughta be a law against that.
Instead, there is only democracy, which grants voters the right to make bad choices. It is a right too many voters exercised last year.
It would be an act of decency if the council members admitted their mistake.
Fat chance.
While they repeated their call to hire 1,000 more police officers, that’s an empty gesture.
Why add more cops if you’re just going to handcuff them? What would they have the cops do — stand around and wait to get shot?
It was bad enough that, back in the days of high crime, some uniformed cops were forbidden from arresting drug dealers they witnessed in action. The restrictions earned them the disgraced moniker of “blue flowerpots.”
The anti-cop caucus would make them “blue targets” for trigger-happy punks. Even then, the council would find a way to blame the cops for getting shot.
This much is clear — the animating impulse of the council caucus is anti-blue, regardless of the races involved. One of its members, Ydanis Rodriguez, a northern Manhattan Democrat, vigorously defends the arrogant Occupy Wall Street protestor who was convicted of violently elbowing a cop in the eye during her 2012 arrest.
The protestor, Cecily McMillan, is a white college graduate, while the injured cop, Officer Grantley Bovell, is black.
Yet after McMillan was found guilty of criminal assault and sentenced to just three months in jail this week, Rodriguez claimed she was “acting within the guidelines of this country’s Constitution.” He urged Mayor de Blasio to investigate a decade of “cases of protesters sentenced to jail time for assault,” saying many of the convictions were unjust.
Right — hit a cop and walk away because all cops are not only presumed guilty, they are guilty. Never mind the video showing McMillan crouching before jumping up to elbow Bovell in the left eye.
This is prejudice, plain and simple. Stripped of its social-justice gibberish and official embrace of anarchy, it is, like all bigotry, based on stereotypes and a refusal to admit facts.
The remainder of Rodriguez’s absurd statement in defense of McMillan captures his bias.
“The Constitution encourages protest, free speech and a redress of grievances in cases where the government is not properly serving the public interest,” he said. “This is what Cecily and so many others sought to do; so for any to end up in jail is a travesty from which our country suffers even more.”
Beware, New York. This is your government at work.
Obama’s maddening VA duplicity
In the contest to see who can claim to be the most incensed over the Veteran’s Administration’s callous indifference to injured and sick vets, President Obama leads the race. If only he would lead the race to get to the bottom of the outrage.
The VA secretary, Gen. Eric Shinseki, told Congress that the allegations of hospital workers in Arizona cooking the books to make it seem as if no vet had to wait longer than 30 days for appointments made him “mad as hell.” Days later, a White House aide said Obama was “madder than hell.”
Is anyone out there “maddest in hell?”
More to the point, when is Obama going to answer questions in public about reports that some patients died or committed suicide after being ignored by the agency?
Although Obama in 2008 talked about substandard care for vets, the White House now claims the president knew nothing until he read about the accusations in the press.
That’s strange. Fox News reported yesterday that the American Legion found a 2010 memo from a top VA official that referred to “inappropriate scheduling practices” as “gaming strategies.” It said they were designed to make it seem as if patients were getting attention when they were not.
One example included in the memo, Fox said, involved clinic workers creating and then canceling appointments, but claiming the patients canceled the appointments. That would absolve the clinic from failing to see patents within the target of 30 days.
If that’s true, “madder than hell” isn’t mad enough.
Ho-Humming mate
The rumor mill is spinning, the excitement is intense — Gov. Cuomo is close to naming a running mate.
Ho hum. In truth, the speculation is a guessing game about someone who, if elected lieutenant governor, will be standby equipment and barely seen or heard from again. End of story.
As GM goes, so goes the… Never mind
Another day, another giant recall by General Motors. This year alone, it has asked consumers around the world to return 15.2 million cars and trucks for safety repairs, the Financial Times reports. That is 50 percent more than the total number of vehicles the company sold last year.
The situation gives rise to a twist on VP Joe Biden’s claim in the 2012 campaign: General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead.
A friend suggests the truth requires a 2014 update: GM is dying and al Qaeda is expanding.
Fogettable Chris
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is taking heat for failing to say the word “Israel” during a speech to a Jewish group. No surprise there. He gave the keynote address at the 2012 GOP convention and barely mentioned Mitt Romney. Sometimes, he just forgets.