Repeal Unnecessary Laws, But Quit The Ferguson Racism Libel

Crime, Law, Media, Politics, Race, Racism

The moron media, reporters like CNN’s Sara Sidner front-and-center, have framed the Ferguson Report released by the Department of Justice as offering conclusive proof of institutionalized racism. With pride can Sidner The Inciter tweet out praise for her impartial reporting, but that doesn’t make it so.

The Ferguson Report is the best of pseudoscience. Most in the media, Sidner for one, do not appear to have the wherewithal to understand that confounding variables are at play here: The reason blacks are more likely than whites to be stopped by law enforcement is that there are differences in rates of offense between blacks and whites (and Asian, by the way, who’re conveniently omitted from the “disparate impact” formula used by our racism-spotters, because they’re likely to commit fewer offenses than whites).

Not even Radley Balko’s plaintive account, illustrating the correlation between poverty and lack of compliance with the law, manages to make the case for institutionalized racism, as Megyn Kelly mindlessly called it.

Radley writes:

“These are people who make the same mistakes you or I do — speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time. The difference is that they don’t have the money to pay the fines. Or they have kids, or jobs that don’t allow them to take time off for two or three court appearances. When you can’t pay the fines, you get fined for that, too. And when you can’t get to court, you get an arrest warrant.”

All Americans groan under too many laws and regulations. The police and government see us all “as little more than sources of revenue.” Some of us find it harder to comply with these many, mostly-unjust laws.

Repeal unnecessary laws—and certainly laws criminalizing the use of drugs and their sale—but stop the racism libel.

With respect to the open season on cops in Ferguson, Missouri, it’s hard to fault Andrew C. McCarthy when he suggests the following about politicians:

When public officials signal to the mob that its anger is so justified that its criminal behavior, even if not exactly condoned, will be rationalized, minimized, or ignored, they are facilitating criminality. So of course they should be deemed contributorily culpable when the criminality happens.

What about members of a media-congressional complex who pose as impartial agents when they are in fact agents provocateurs?

Blessed Are The Burgerflippers

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Labor

By Myron Robert Pauli

So I see that Portland OR has raised the minimum wage to $15/hour and the rest of the state may soon follow.

Years back, I did some minimum wage work at a chemical-spectroscopy lab in New York – not particularly lucrative or enjoyable but it paid money. The company mostly hired college graduates from the Philippines (probably with some H-1 visa) because they were cheap. Not surprisingly, companies pay workers at little as they can get away with. Workers, in turn, are right to grumble and are free to seek out higher paying work (or at least better conditions – that lab was rather unsafe). Most people do not work for some great satisfaction – most jobs range from somewhat stinky to complete stinky. Who the hell wants to pick crops in the hot summer or climb up cleaning gutters in winter? Workers primarily work for one primary motivation – money.

The $15 minimum wage will be a boon to developers of automated burger-flippers. Not only do they not get the $15, the robots don’t need Social Security, W-2 forms, OSHA inspectors, Obomney-Rombama care, paid vacations, sick leave, and those other things that raise “overheads.”

Anyone who has studied the history of labor in the 19th or 20th Century should be aware of the Luddites who went around smashing machinery. I would not be surprised if some restaurants not only take reservations online but orders as well – press the steak icon and it will ask rare through well-done. This should not be too hard to code and people can pick up their orders cafeteria style. Or a robot can probably deliver the gourmet food to the table. The chef can be well paid, but who goes to the restaurant for the waitresses (excepting, perhaps, Hooters)? Four star pre-ordered robot delivered gourmet meals with profits shared between consumer and restauranteur.

However, let me put on my Samuel Gompers hat when it comes to the anti-worker rant of Jennifer Harris. First of all, workers have every right to be greedy and should be free to strike (but not destroy property or resort to violence) – with the flip side that the employer can find replacements. If I choose to “refuse” to be locker-room attendant for the Russian Women’s Volleyball Team for less than $1500 an hour, perhaps the team owner can find someone who will work for less pay!

The second point of Harris’ rant is how the troops are “getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day protecting your unskilled butt?” The first part about being shot in hostile environments is perfectly true. As to the second part: How are these “troops” protecting the butt of anyone, skilled or unskilled, other than the military brass and politicians who sent them in to be 21st Century IED-fodder? I know what benefits I get from the grocery clerk and the restaurant waiter and the guy who cleans my gutters. (Or from Edward Snowden.) Does the average American get protected when some troops “engage” Sunnis who are shooting at Shiites or Shiites who are shooting at Sunnis? Harris makes fun of “Sally McBurgerflipper” and “Johnny Fry-Boy,” but they enable Mom to save a day of cooking and let the brats play at the McSlides. What great “service” did anyone get out of Petraeus and that neo-con phony “surge,” other than some titillation concerning lover Paula Broadwell? Yet, “conservatives” deify Petraeus and sneer at the gardener.

In that sense, I can neither endorse the leftist desire to ignore the realities of labor markets, nor these rightists who extol senseless, pointless, endless killing over honest backbreaking work. Maybe the poor schlub mowing your lawn will motivate his kids to get a real education (not modern “liberal arts”), and that kid might invent a new “smart lawnmower.” Anyway, the poor shlub is doing honest work.

Blessed are the Burgerflippers – may they profit both themselves, their employers, and their customers for they are the Children of Peace.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

UPDATED: More Race Ridiculousness (Borat Had Better Be Careful)

Communism, Free Speech, Political Correctness, Race, Racism

Within the first year of the Red Terror reign, the Bolsheviks instituted a list of categories of subversives who would be made “a head shorter” in Trotsky’s “charming” expression, if caught talking out of turn or simply being who they were—kulaks, priests, White Guards, socialists, Mensheviks, peasants with a bad attitude, bourgeoisie, on and on. “Counterrevolutionary” speech could certainly make a man “a head shorter.”

While the cultural Marxism under which we labor today does not yet demand a man’s head—we don’t shoot, beat, drown, behead and starve people, as did the Bolsheviks–America’s Orwellian Ministries of Truth will strip the offending individual of everything he has.

Parker Rice’s life is just about ruined because he sang a nasty song while white. That’s all. Rice, who is “one of the two University of Oklahoma students expelled for their role in leading a racist chant,” did not defraud, steal, vandalize, beat, rape or murder anyone. He merely mouthed some ugly lyrics. Contrary to what university President David Boren claimed, Rice did not “threaten” anyone with his “racist behavior.” He just did a nine-second unfunny Borat number (as in “Throw the Jew down the well“).

In this Orwellian world, words speak louder than actions. A silly ditty, sung by drunken white youths, has elicited the unusual hysteria: “the university and the fraternity’s national chapter acted swiftly to shutter the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house. … the Greek letters sigma, alpha and epsilon have been removed from the frat house’s facade, the house will be closed as of midnight Tuesday and the university will board up the windows. …”

What next? Fumigation? Exorcism? The tearing of clothes? The rubbing of earth and ashes on the head? Dressing in sackcloth?

Close: prayer vigils, lamentation, marches … Read on and have a brown bag handy.

UPDATED (3/11): Borat Had Better Be Careful.

In case there was any doubt, we love “throw the Jew down the well,” by Sasha Baron Cohen, alias Borat. Genius.

See “Fun in Kazakhstan.”

Britain’s Best Bitch Flouts ‘The Tyranny Of Nice’*

Britain, Celebrity, Feminism, Healthcare, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture

Katie Hopkins: “I’m a woman of my convictions, I’ll say what I like and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to listen.” “I went to a convent. The sisters there said to never use the word nice, because it’s the worst word in the English language. I tend to agree.”

So do I.

Britain’s best bitch has gotten into trouble with the PC brigade in the US, too, for quipping that singer “Kelly Clarkson does look a bit like she ate her backing singers,” and that, during pregnancy, when “she took [up] eating for two … she decided to eat for 10.” And, “If you can’t find the fun in that, then more pity on you.”

“That’s not bullying,” laughed Hopkins at the Access Hollywood dumbfounded (and dumb) duo,”That’s a great line.”

Agreed (maybe not great, but certainly funny).

Hopkins added that “it’s her responsibility as a woman to tell others to get off their [vast] asses and stop costing her money (through the UK’s NHS, the socialized healthcare system, where, as with Obamacare, the healthy subsidize the unhealthy).

Viva Katie Hopkins for flouting “the tyranny of nice” (also a book by Kathy Shaidle).