"The venerable liberal crusade for income equality is doomed. ... It's time to try a different strategy." https://xitter.cf/t.co/dxJKu4tXkc
Joined April 2009
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My old @NonzeroPods podcasts with @robertwrighter are here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… Archives of the Patreon Parrot Room podcasts [$] are here: nonzero.substack.com/t/parro… Parrot now resting.
Mickey Kaus retweeted
Obama was also making a serious, non-crazy point with the "cling" remarks, discussed at extra special length here slate.com/articles/news_and_…
Mickey Kaus retweeted
When progressives were trumpeting statistics claiming that New York was the safest it had ever been, I insisted the stats were misleading, and that Manhattan felt noticeably more dangerous, that scary encounters with crazy people were becoming more common and that encampments and junkies were everywhere on city sidewalks
It turns out what I said is true. Jessica Tisch’s hotspot policing has been extremely successful in reducing crime in the poorest and most violent precincts, but Mamdani’s edicts against public order policing and Alvin Bragg’s insistence on releasing repeat offenders means that crime is surging in Manhattan and reductions in shootings and robberies in the Bronx and East Brooklyn are masking declining public safety and order in Midtown, the Village and the Upper West Side.
Any time the statistics contradict the vibes, the vibes are the truth and the stats are a lie.
Felony crime in Central Park, ytd, is nearly 62 percent higher than in the year before the pandemic. Like many parts of NYC, Central Park is consistently less safe than it once was. Yet the city council and mayor are moving to take away dozens of pairs of Jane-Jacobs-style eyes on the street from the park -- the men and women slowly and continuously viewing the drive and paths from up high in a carriage, including into the evening and late-night hours. Ripping apart complex urbanism for fanatical special interests is rarely a good idea.
Mickey Kaus retweeted
"Nobody in charge seemed to care until now" -- yup
Hundreds of fake armed robberies. Thousands of fake victims. Two years in prison.
Parth Nayi ran staged stickups at gas stations, liquor stores, and coffee shops all over this country so foreigners could claim they were crime victims and get U visas.
Each of them paid him $5,000 to $30,000. Prosecutors say he pulled in at least $2 million in cash.
Here's what really gets me. The prosecutor only asked for 12 months. The judge had to go higher than the government did.
His fake victims made up a big chunk of a visa program that only allows 10,000 a year. Real victims got pushed to the back of the line by people who paid for a fake gun in their face.
Every one of those robberies meant a 911 call and cops racing to a scene that was pure theater.
So where are the thousands of people who bought their way in? Did they get deported, or are they still holding visas they paid for?
This is how the system gets gamed. Nobody in charge seemed to care until now.
justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/sub…
Mickey Kaus retweeted
Solution: More immigration!
I mean, Trump's Oval Office looks ridiculous, embarrassing. There must be 100 ways Obama could have made this point, in a funny way, without seeming to sneer a restaurant chain popular with the non elite. His speechwriters couldn't help it.
🤖 Made with AI
It's weird--Obama stumbles over the line, like he realizes it's a mistake but it's too late not to finish the sentence. Video here: reddit.com/r/SipsTea/comment…
Mickey Kaus retweeted
But to keep up this pace of decline in the illegal population, ICE needs to do sustained, nationwide, all-industy job-related enforcement, meaning some raids but also lots (LOTS) of payroll audits, to teach employers that the party is over.
Mickey Kaus retweeted
I'd like to think the Restorers who yearn to revive the old pre-Tump GOP consensus have turned against mass immigration, but I'm deeply skeptical. Start with the Bushes. Have they turned against mass immigration? Now everyone who worked for the Bushes. Now all the GOP squishes in the Senate. The drive for cheap labor and cheap virtue (where the GOP allegedly realigns politics by playing Abraham Lincoln for Latinos) is stronger than a few foreign-policy-oriented misgivings.
Post-Trump, the Right could splinter into five factions:
- the Restorers (those who yearn to revive the old pre-Trump consensus)
- the Hard Populists
- the Tech Accelerationists
- the Christian Nationalists
- the Catholic Solidarists
The one cause that can suture them together is concern about mass migration (each backs restriction for its own reasons and in a different tone).
The Restorers are learning that the children and grandchildren of post-1965 migrants are inimical to American exceptionalism and Israel.
The Populists and Christian Nationalists: self-explanatory.
The Tech Right: automation of all kinds will lessen the hunger for skilled and unskilled labor.
The Catholic Solidarists (which includes many non-Catholics): they oppose mass migration not on identitarian grounds, but for the sake of the economic common good and to protect the wages of bargaining power of native-born workers.
The upshot -- just as a descriptive, empirical matter -- is that the complex of issues around migration, assimilation, and social cohesion will remain the central priority of the broad Right well into the 21st century.
(Full essay in comments.)
Mickey Kaus retweeted
“The hard fact is that Nixon lacks taste”--Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 1960. (That was designed to win over skeptical Adlai voters, I believe. But class snobbery is still one theme of Dem politics and policy--eg. screw those hillbillies if they won't learn to code when migrants do their former jobs.)
Mickey Kaus retweeted
The science is settling
Mickey Kaus retweeted
Massive come from behind victory that's going to be shadowed with the Supreme Court's ruling and allegations of fraud.
Bolsonaro's party remains the largest in parliament
Brazil: Datafolha has projected that President Lula (PT, centre-left) will be re-elected.
#Brazil #Lula #Bolsonaro
The trouble with the "it's just a joke" line is that Obama IS a snob. People think they know that. He shouldn't emphasize that side of himself. Didn't he used to be careful not to?
“The hard fact is that Nixon lacks taste”--Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 1960. (That was designed to win over skeptical Adlai voters, I believe. But class snobbery is still one theme of Dem politics and policy--eg. screw those hillbillies if they won't learn to code when migrants do their former jobs.)