Category Archives: Law

UPDATED: "Rational Profiling: Cabbies Do It Too"

Affirmative Action, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Law, Race, Racism

So I wrote in a column so titled on June 2, 2006:

“According to the authors of ‘Streetwise: How Taxi Drivers Establish their Customer’s Trustworthiness’ (TLS, May 12), it transpires that in deciding whether to ‘stop for a fare,’ cabbies give preference to ‘whites’ over ‘blacks.’ But they also select older over younger passengers; women over men; individuals over multiple passengers, wealthier over poorer; callers over hailers; and ‘friendly and calm over aggressive and agitated.’ As it is in the taxi driver’s economic interest to refuse ‘as few fares as possible, they can no more be guilty of racism than they are of reverse sexism or ageism because they prefer older and female passengers,’ say the authors.”

“Since there is no way of knowing whether those passengers the drivers screened out were in fact dangerous, it’s difficult to assess the effectiveness of these strategies. Still, not even the most ardent rights-violator would dare suggest cabdrivers be penalized for their prudence. For one, it could cost the driver his life.”

And it did. “Chilling video released yesterday by police shows a life-and-death struggle between a gunman and livery driver moments before the thug shot the cabby in a botched robbery in Queens.
The dramatic confrontation was caught on a surveillance camera installed in the gold Chevy Impala being driven by Trevor Bell, 53, in South Ozone Park on Saturday night. Bell was critically wounded in the attack. …”

“The head of the New York State Federation of Taxi drivers is encouraging racial profiling,” reports ABC.COM:

“Sometimes it’s good that we are racially profiled, because the honest to God truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics,’ Fernando Mateo said.”

The law, of course, proscribes the life-preserving measures advised by Mr. Mateo. These poor cabbies are expected to throw open the cab door to the Grim Reaper himself.

UPDATE: As you can see, Mateo, the man advocating racial (or rational) profiling, is a member of a minority as well. The victim, I believe, is black

Insider Trading Laws = Information Socialism

Business, Criminal Injustice, Economy, Fascism, Law, Political Economy, Regulation, South-Africa, The State

The following is from my new column, “Insider Trading Laws = Information Socialism,” now on WND.COM:

“It’s easy to be thrown off scent when trying to divine the vague, ill-defined, unconstitutional laws under which the Securities and Exchange Commission hunts for corporate prey. Suffice it to say that the SEC operates with the understanding that competition in capital markets must proceed from a level playing field. All investors are entitled to the same information advantage irrespective of effort and abilities.

In a word, information socialism.

In their latest efforts to bring ruin to capital markets, SEC blood hounds have ensnared some of the country’s most powerful hedge-fund firms. Indictments are replete with SEC cloak-and-dagger.

There is a Don, ‘Don Chu,’ which is how the accused, Don Ching Trang Chu, is called. A co-conspirator is ‘CC-1.’ And a cooperating witness: ‘CW-1.’ The companies violated, allegedly, are Atheros Communications, Inc. (‘Atheros’), Broadcom Corporation (‘Broadcom’), and ‘Sierra Wireless’—aka ‘The Tech Company.’

… Then there is the ‘The Firm.’ … The ominous entity at the center of the investigation. ….”

The complete column is “Insider Trading Laws = Information Socialism,” now on WND.COM.

Some of you are waiting for, and have been asking about, the publication of Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa. The wait is worse for South Africans who are in the thick of the events my book documents and analyzes—Into The Cannibal’s Pot is a Burkian polemic, steeped in history, reality, fact, and the classical liberal political philosophy.

When I completed the book some months back, the number of Boers murdered was just over 3000. The death toll now stands at 3,756.

The manuscript is currently under consideration. If all fails, fear not (with your help), someone will see to it that the true story of the New South Africa (“Rambo Nation”), as detailed in Into The Cannibal’s Pot, is told. Not everyone inhabits the solipsistic universe in which most American “writers” (and publishers) are mired. Five magnificent men (as writers, thinkers, and human beings) have returned high Praise For The Cannibal. Thank you; you know who you are.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Arizona Attrition?

Conservatism, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

So the Arizona immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070, may be working: “A new study suggests there may be 100,000 fewer Hispanics in Arizona than there were before the debate over the state’s tough new immigration law earlier this year.”

“BBVA Bancomer Research, which did the study, worked with figures from the U.S. Current Population Survey. The study says the decline could be due to the law known as SB1070, which partly entered into effect in July, or to Arizona’s difficult economic situation.” [TIME]

The bigger issue is one I reminded readers of in “Mass Immigration ‘End Of Days’ Scenario” still looms. Mark Krikorian does the dues too:

“[C]ontinued mass immigration guarantees the doom of conservatism (as I spell out in detail in my Encounter Broadside on the subject). The cause of limited government cannot succeed in the long term, even if the GOP does somewhat better among Hispanic voters, so long as the federal immigration program continues to admit a million-plus newcomers a year. And the overwhelming Hispanic preference for Democrats is not something that can be addressed with tweaks to immigration policy — even if such tweaks would do any good, which evidence suggests they wouldn’t.”

The fact is that mass immigration is inevitably made up of the relatively poor, who in a modern society will make disproportionate use of taxpayer-funded services (the majority of families headed by a Mexican immigrant, for instance, use at least one welfare program, even though the overwhelming majority have at least one worker in them). Therefore, the conservative message of smaller government is simply not going to resonate with a large share of immigrant voters, and may, in fact, repel them. What’s more, the huge majority of immigrants, not just Hispanics, are eligible for affirmative-action quotas as soon as they set foot in the United States, making it harder for them to embrace the party opposed to such benefits. On top of that, Hispanic immigrants, and even more their children, are more likely to have children out of wedlock than native-born Americans, another factor drawing them away from the Right and toward the Left.”

UPDATED: Poignant Crime-&-Punishment Comments From Dr. Petit

Crime, Criminal Injustice, GUNS, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Private Property

“Closure is a term invented by imbeciles” was one. I offered a precis of this particularly heinous case of home invasion (“all burglars are home invaders”) in the post, “You’re The First Line Of Defense For Your Family.” Even better were the biblical, ten-commandments comments of Dr. Petit’s father-in-law, which are not yet online (please send them along if you find them).

UPDATE: “Jennifer Hawke-Petit’s father, Reverend Richard Hawke, told reporters, ‘There are just some people who do not deserve to live in God’s world,’ in reaction to the death penalty sentencing.” Via Inside Edition.

It would be a great blessing if one of the Petit relatives or friends took up self-defense and Second-Amendment activism. Someone very close to me in South Africa watched two men enter his home on a Sunday afternoon, when the family was beside the pool, relaxing. He saw his wife flee, as in slow-motion. He rushed to the safe, where the gun had been kept. Then aimed at the invaders and yelled, “Get the hell out of my home.” They fled like the cowards they were. From then on, this man has carried his piece on his ankle. (The family also needed therapy.)

The sadistic letter the Connecticut killer and rapist Joshua Komisarjevsky wrote from prison makes clear that this is just what he and his accomplice, Steven Hayes (placed on death row today), needed.