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Heather Long gets a promotion

Heather Long first came to my attention when she was an economics reporter for CNN. She wrote, on September 16, 2016:

Problem: Most Americans don’t believe the unemployment rate is 5%

by Heather Long | September 6, 2016 | 3:18 PM EDT

Heather Long

Americans think the economy is in far worse shape than it is.The U.S. unemployment rate is only 4.9%, but 57% of Americans believe it’s a lot higher than that, according to a new survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

The general public has “extremely little factual knowledge” about the job market and labor force, Rutgers found.

It’s another example of how experts on Wall Street and in Washington see the economy differently than the regular Joe. Many of the nation’s top economic experts say that America is “near full employment.” The unemployment rate has actually been at or below 5% for almost a year — millions of people have found jobs in what is the best period of hiring since the late 1990s.

But regular people appear to have their doubts about how healthy America’s employment picture is. Nearly a third of those survey by Rutgers believe unemployment is actually at 9%, or higher.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has tapped into this confusion. He has repeatedly called the official unemployment rate a “joke” and a even “hoax.”

There’s more at the original.

I noted, at the time — in a post that is locked up, with so many others, in a file that’s stuck in my server somewhere when I got this site ‘fixed’ from some real technical problems — that what Americans believed, that unemployment was “actually at 9%, or higher,” was correct, if you looked at U-6 rather than the ‘official’ U-3 unemployment rate.

    • U-1: Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force
    • U-2: Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force
    • U-3: U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)
    • U-4: Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers
    • U-5: Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
    • U-6: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.

NOTE: Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.

The August, 2016 U-6 rate was 9.6%, which I said was right in line with American’s perception of it. Interestingly enough, with the current ‘official” unemployment rate of 4.8%, U-6 currently stands at 8.5%, while we have employers going begging for workers.

As it happened, Miss Long followed me on Twitter not due to any of my brilliant economic articles, but because I responded to one of her sunset over Manhattan Twitter photos with one of sunset between the olive trees in Tuscany. Hey, I’ll take that.

Search and rescue volunteer, Nate Lair, drives a boat through downtown Beattyville after heavy rains led to the Kentucky River flooding the town and breaking records last set in 1957. March 1, 2021
Alton Strupp / Louisville Courier-Journal

In February of 2017, while still with CNN, Miss Long wrote a series about Beattyville, Kentucky, a place called the “poorest white town in America” from 2008 to 2012. While I don’t live in Beattyville, I do live in the next county over, and my nephew, Nate Lair, lives outside the town and is a volunteer fireman and rescue worker there.

I did get some photos of the Beattyville Wooly Worm Festival last Saturday!

My younger daughter wanted me to get the baby goat. I didn’t.

But I digress.

One of the things I really liked about Miss Long was that, in reading her articles, I couldn’t tell what her political positions were. From a few of her tweets concerning the Defiant Girl statue, facing down the bull on Wall Street, I could tell that she was a strong supporter of more women moving into the financial and technical fields, but whether she is a Democrat or Republican (or independent), liberal or moderate or conservative, I really do not know. To me, that’s the mark of a good journalist, as opposed to journolist.[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading

That’s about to change:

    Heather Long to join Washington Post Opinions as editorial writer and columnist

    By WashPostPR | Monday, October 25, 2021 | 12:10 PM EDT

    Announcement from Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, Deputy Editorial Page Editors Karen Tumulty and Ruth Marcus, and Manager of Editorial Talent and Logistics Nana Efua Mumford:

    We are delighted to announce that Heather Long will be joining the Opinions section as an editorial writer and columnist, focusing on economic policy, the future of work and other topics. This is something of a homecoming for Heather, who was deputy editorial page editor of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., when the paper won a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for writing about the Penn State/Sandusky child abuse scandal.

    Since joining The Post in 2017, Heather has reported and written brilliantly on how economic trends and policies — and more recently, a pandemic — affect real people across the country. In 2020, she helped coin the “K-Shaped Recovery,” and in 2021, she recognized the “Great Reassessment of Work” taking place as the deep psychological impact of the pandemic caused people to quit jobs, retire early and seek something very different in their careers. She has won two SABEW “Best in Business” awards and twice been a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for breaking news.

    As a member of the Post editorial board, Heather will become the lead writer on economics, business, inequality, labor and related issues, taking the place of Charles Lane, who assumed chief foreign-policy duties when Jackson Diehl retired in August. On our op-ed page, she will join Catherine Rampell (recent winner of first prize in commentary in the Online News Association awards), Megan McArdle and Helaine Olen to comprise one of the liveliest economic teams anywhere. In time we hope to take full advantage of Heather’s proven broadcasting skills as well.

    Heather grew up in Virginia and Pennsylvania, graduated summa cum laude in Economics and English from Wellesley College, earned two Master’s degrees as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and worked at an investment firm for a couple of years before joining the Patriot-News from 2009 to 2012. She was an opinion editor and columnist for The Guardian in 2013-2014 and senior reporter and editor for CNN from 2014-2017.

    Heather is finishing some reporting projects and hopes to join us Dec. 1.

And thus I will be able to discern whether Miss Long is a liberal or conservative, and how close to the ends of that spectrum she is. But even if it turns out that her political views are rather far from mine, knowing that she actually understands business and economics, will have me continuing to pay attention to what she writes. My congratulations to her.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Let’s go, Brandon!

Regular readers of this site — both of them — know that I use f(ornicate) rather than another word beginning with an ‘F’ when that other word seems appropriate. The also know that I use the formulation [insert slang term for the rectum here] to describe myself, and others, when the seven letter word is appropriate.

And it’s more than just how I write; that’s usually how I speak as well. A (somewhat) good Catholic boy, I actually do try to limit profanity. But I’m also a strong proponent of freedom of speech.

    Biden’s critics hurl increasingly vulgar taunts

    By Ashley Parker and Carissa Wolf | October 23, 2021 | 6:00 AM EDT

    BOISE, Idaho — On a quiet street south of downtown Boise, Michael Dick has festooned his front yard with homemade signs, including a large yellow placard that facetiously thanks President Biden for a growing list of grievances — $4-a-gallon gas, inflation, Afghanistan, covid-19. In capital letters in black marker, Dick, 59, recently added “dead civilians” and “dead U.S. soldiers” to his bill of particulars.

A photo of this appears in the Washington Post original.

    In another part of town, alongside a “No trespassing” sign, Michael Schwarz, 60, used black spray-paint to scrawl “Joe Blows” across an electric-pink poster board.

    And that’s mild compared to the sentiments some people — largely in conservative areas — are expressing in their front yards and on the signs they lug with them to greet Biden as he travels the country.

    On Wednesday, when the president visited Scranton, Pa., he was greeted at the corner of Biden Street by a woman holding a handmade “F— Joe Biden” sign, with an American flag as the vowel in the offending word. And back in Boise, Rod Johnson, a retired gunsmith, has hung a blue flag from the roof of his home that reads “F— Biden.” Underneath, in smaller letters, he added, “And f— you for voting for him!!”

Sadly, Lackawanna County, in which Scranton is the largest city and county seat, did give a majority of its votes to Joe Biden, 61,991 (53.58%) to 52,334 (45.23%) to President Trump, which wasn’t too much of a surprise, given that the odious Hillary Clinton also carried the county in 2016, a year in which Mr Trump won the state overall.

There’s more at the original, and the authors do make something of an attempt to note that Mr Biden is hardly the only American President who has been subjected to coarse insults:

    Boos, jeers and insults are nothing new for politicians, especially those who reach the White House. Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as Trump, were all heckled, weathering protests along their motorcade routes and at some of their events. At one 2011 fundraiser in Los Angeles, a heckler called Obama the Antichrist; “F— Trump” graffiti adorned some walls in Washington.

President Bush was burned in effigy uncounted times, and the credentialed media treated it as normal, though the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Editorial Board described armed, but still peaceful, protests and the hanging of Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) in effigy as the work of “a bunch of armed thugs.”

As you’d expect in The Washington Post, the writers have decided to blame President Trump for what they see as increased vulgarity directed at Mr Biden. Perhaps that’s the case, in public signage and chants, but were they not paying attention to online communication and posts while Mr Trump was in office?

    Then there are the chants. In early October, a “F— Joe Biden!” cry broke out among the crowd at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway. Kelli Stavast, an NBC Sports reporter, was interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown live on air at the time, and she quipped, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go Brandon!’”

I’ve wondered: did Kelli Stavast really think that the crowd was chanting, “Let’s go, Brandon,” was she simply trying to suggest that what was background noise for her interview wasn’t the vulgarity that people heard to protect NBC Sports, or was she really trying to hide from the viewers the sentiments of the crowd at Talladega? Was it her original, or was it suggested to her, through an earpiece, from a director?

Regardless of what is the actual case, I absolutely support “Let’s go, Brandon!” as a substitute for “F(ornicate) Joe Biden!” And the chant, and expression, has caught on; it’s really a great meme.

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The cannibalism of the left They are eating their own!

I am not normally a fan of Andrew Sullivan, but he’s definitely got one thing going for him: he is a strong defender of freedom of speech and of the press, and he is willing to say what he thinks regardless of potentially being ‘cancelled’ by the left.

The Betrayal Of Our Gay Inheritance

How has the new trans left come to resemble the old religious right?

Activists hold banners and placards as thousands attend the Reclaim Pride march in London on July 24, 2021. (Guy Smallman/Getty images) Click to enlarge.

by Andrew Sullivan | Friday, October 22, 2021It was, as it turned out, a bit of a non-event. The walkout by transgender Netflix employees and their supporters to demand that the company take down and apologize for the latest Chappelle special attracted “dozens,” despite media hype.

But the scenes were nonetheless revealing. A self-promoting jokester showed up with a placard with the words “We Like Jokes” and “We Like Dave” to represent an opposing view. He was swiftly accosted by a man who ripped the poster apart, leaving the dude with just a stick, prompting the assailant to shout “He’s got a weapon!” Pushed back by other protestors, he was then confronted by a woman right in front of him — shaking a tambourine — and yelling repeatedly into his face: “Repent, motherfucker! Repent! Repent!”

“The scenes”, huh? While the image at the right was not taken at the “bit of a non-event” Mr Sullivan describes, it is the image that he chose to illustrate his article. While I do not normally use images from articles like that, in this case it falls under Fair Use guidelines, because it illustrates my point: Mr Sullivan is, himself, pointing to an image which is not going to gather a lot of support for the homosexual or transgender rights he supports, not among people who don’t already support such. While London can be a city of clowns when it comes to the anti-establishment population, the image Mr Sullivan chose is not one which is going to persuade a lot of normal people that homosexuals and transgenders are, themselves, normal, but which will leave people thinking that they are a bunch of clowns.

Remember, Mr Sullivan’s column is published on Substack, which means that he chose the image, not Substack editors.

Of course, if there are Substack editors, and they chose the photo to illustrate the article, then Mr Sullivan just might blow his top, because it wholly undercuts his positions.

This is the state of what’s left of the gay[1]As noted in The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not use the word “gay” to refer to homosexuals or homosexuality, but we also do not alter quotations from other people when … Continue reading rights movement in America. Judgmental, absolutist, intolerant, and hysterical, it looks to shut down speech it dislikes, drive its foes out of the public square, compile enemies’ lists of dangerous writers, artists, and politicians, and cancel and protest anything that does not comport with every tiny aspect of their increasingly deranged ideology.

The generation that now leads the movement does not seem to know the actual history of the gay rights movement, or the centrality of free expression to gay identity. They also seem to have no idea of the history of the movement against gay rights. Because if they did, they might be shocked at the ironies involved.

Anti-gay forces, hegemonic for centuries, were just like these trans activists. They were just as intent on suppressing and stigmatizing magazines, shows, and movies they believed were harmful. They too targeted individual artists and writers for personal destruction. They too believed that movies and comedy needed to be reined in order to prevent social harm. They protested in front of movie theaters. They tried to get shows canceled. And if you’d marched in any gay demo or Pride in the 1990s, you’d always be prepared to confront a grimacing Christianist yelling “Repent! Repent!” in your face.

In the 1990s, living in the relatively, though not thoroughly, conservative Hampton Roads region of Virginia, I never witnessed a homosexual rights march, so I certainly never saw what Mr Sullivan was claiming happened happen. But even if it did, it would not have been the marchers’ supposed-to-be allies who were doing so.

This was never, ever the spirit of the gay rights movement in the past. In fact, it was America’s guarantee of free expression and free association that made the gay rights movement possible. It was the First Amendment, and the spirit of the First Amendment, that was easily the most important right for gays for decades.

It’s also what allows the ‘transgender’ rights movement possible, but the ‘transgendered’, like much of the rest of the left, don’t like it when people exercise their freedom of speech to challenge their movements. We have already noted that Twitter, and the left in general, do not like Freedom of Speech. When it comes to the subject of ‘transgenderism,’ Twitter has already banned ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering.’[2]‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; … Continue reading The New York Times, which so strongly defended its right to Freedom of Speech and of the Press in New York Times Co v United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), gave space in the OpEd section to Andrew Marantz to write “Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence.” Mr Marantz, while exercising his First Amendment rights, clearly does not like the unregulated speech of others. The Times had earlier given OpEd page space to ‘transgender’ activist Chad Malloy to claim that Twitter’s ban on ‘deadnamimg’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promotes the Freedom of Speech.[3]Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their … Continue reading

And now? Twitter, Facebook and other social media are censoring or altering posts which question COVID-19 vaccinations and vaccine mandates, and sometimes suspending if not wholly banning people from their sites for pushing such views. The freedom of speech and of the press are under attack from the left, the people who used to be its most strident defenders.

As I noted in the beginning, I am hardly a fan of Mr Sullivan, or the homosexual and ‘transgender’ rights movements, but in this case, he is right: freedom of speech is too precious a thing to lose, and too necessary a right for all of our freedoms, and our individual liberty in general. It is a far less dangerous thing to allow those with whom we disagree to have their say than it is to allow the suppression of speech and ideas; to allow that is to allow other people, if they gain power, to suppress our own speech and ideas.

References

References
↑1 As noted in The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not use the word “gay” to refer to homosexuals or homosexuality, but we also do not alter quotations from other people when they use it.
↑2 ‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by sex-specific terms referring to his biological sex rather than the sex he claims to be.
↑3 Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names and biological sex.
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Lexington shooter arrested A previously convicted felon with a gun; imagine my surprise

On October 10th, we reported on a double shooting on Endon Drive in Lexington, one in which the assailant fled.

Marlon Griffin. October 19, 2021. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Now a suspect has been busted: 23-year-old Marlon Griffin was identified by Lexington Police Officers the following day due to witness identification and video surveillance which caught the entire incident on tape. He was arrested by Lexington Police at a Motel 6 on October 19th.

Of course, the Lexington Herald-Leader declined to print Mr Griffin’s mugshot, but in searching the jail records, I found not just the one in the photo to the right, but two more, dated December 20, 2016 and April 18, 2017. He’s been a very naughty boy!

The mugshot taken on December 20, 2016? That was just three months and two days after he had turned 18; if Mr Griffin has a juvenile record, it is not publicly available.

The current charges against Mr Griffin are:

  • Assault, 1st degree (One count);
  • Assault, 2nd degree (One count);
  • Wanton endangerment, 1st degree (Five counts); and
  • Possession of a handgun by a convicted felon (One count).

How, I have to ask, could Mr Griffin had a firearm? As a previously convicted felon, it would have been illegal for him to purchase one, and we know that gun control laws work, right?

The newspaper declined to print Mr Griffin’s mugshot, but note: he is a previously convicted felon. I get it: the McClatchy Mugshot Policy says that publishing mugshots can harm people charged but never convicted, but Mr Griffin is a previously convicted felon.

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The government spying on bank accounts isn’t going after billionaires; it’s going after Trump voters!

My good friend William Teach noted this article:

    Biden admin backs down on tracking bank accounts with over $600 annual transactions

    by Sarah Kolinovsky and Trish Turner | Tuesday, October 19, 2021 | 5:37 PM

    The Biden administration on Tuesday backed down on a controversial proposal to direct the IRS to collect additional data on every bank account that sees more than $600 in annual transactions, after widespread criticism from Republican lawmakers and banking industry representatives, who said the tax enforcement strategy represented a breach of privacy by the federal government.

    Instead, the administration and Senate Democrats are proposing to raise the threshold to accounts with more than $10,000 in annual transactions, and any income received through a paycheck from which federal taxes are automatically deducted will not be subject to the reporting. Recipients of federal benefits like unemployment and Social Security would also be exempt.

    The IRS would collect the total sum of deposits and withdrawals from bank accounts with more than $10,000 in non-payroll income. Information on individual transactions would not be collected. . . . .

    The changes would exempt millions of Americans from the reporting requirement, and help the IRS target wealthier Americans, especially those who earn money from investments, real estate, and other transactions that are more difficult for the IRS to track.

    “Under the current system, American workers pay virtually all their tax bills while many top earners avoid paying billions in the taxes they owe by exploiting the system. At the core of the problem is a discrepancy in the ways types of income are reported to the IRS: opaque income sources frequently avoid scrutiny while wages and federal benefits are typically subject to nearly full compliance. This two-tiered tax system is unfair and deprives the country of resources to fund core priorities,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Teach didn’t use the illustration that accompanied the article, but I will, under Fair Use guidelines, because it illustrates the true nature of the proposed surveillance, which the reporters actually recognized, even if they didn’t say so. It isn’t a measure to go after millionaires and billionaires, but after the poorer people who like to deal in cash.

$10,000 in annual transactions is nothing; that would include everybody but the most destitute. What they are looking for is waitresses depositing tips received in cash, commission salesmen who have to do their own taxes, and any businesses that take in cash for payments. The idea that this is going after landlords is ridiculous: they normally get paid via checks, and that becomes documentation. The ‘billionaires and millionaires’? Their tax returns get closely scrutinized, if not completely audited, every year.

Investment income? Almost always in the form of checks or electronic fund transfers.

Of course, the solution to this is simple: if you receive cash, keep it in cash, and spend it in cash.

Let’s imagine, say, a pole building company, that charges you $10,000 to build a garage. You ask if there’s a discount for cash, and the owner says, “Sure, it’ll be $9,500 for cash.”

So, you pay the guy the $9,500 in cash, and he pays his workers for eight hours on the books, but the overtime in cash. Still looks good to the Infernal Revenue Service, right?

But now, he’ll have two choices:

  1. Not accept cash, charge $10,000, plus 6%, or $600, in additional sales tax, and pay his workers entirely on the books, or
  2. Take the $9,500, and pay the workers entirely in cash. He’ll have to be careful that his expenses can be covered by other jobs that are on the books.

Good for the government. The guy who has to pay $10,600 for a garage he could have gotten for $1,100 less? Not so much.

This isn’t any measure to go after billionaires; they aren’t buying things with cash or paying people in cash. Their accountants are paying with checks or EFTs, their businesses being paid with checks or EFTs.

Of course, much of President Trump’s support came from the less well off voters, the people who are far more likely to deal in cash, to pay cash, to ask for discounts for cash. The Democrats are going after Trump voters!

Mr Teach wrote:

    The fact sheet says, “Imagine a taxpayer who reports $10,000 of income; but has $10 million of flows in and out of their bank account. Having this summary information will help flag for the IRS when high-income people under-report their income (and under-pay their tax obligations). This will help the IRS target its enforcement activities on those who are actually evading their tax obligations—decreasing costly and burdensome audits for the vast majority of taxpayers who pay what they owe.”

    Yes, but, it will mean banks have to report your private financial data to the IRS. It won’t say what you purchase, just the overall cash flow.

For the government to delve into your personal finances to see if you are cheating on your taxes, they must have ‘probable cause.’ This surveillance is now going to flag income from which taxes have not been previously deducted as probable cause, when it is nothing of the sort; no one can know whether this stuff will be reported as income on tax forms until the person’s taxes are actually filed, and, in fact, no crime can have been committed until those taxes have been filed.

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Irony is so ironic Wesleyan University professor uses First Amendment, and the internet, to argue that Second Amendment should be regulated by 1791 technology

Under what conditions did newspapers labor following the American Revolution? From Wikipedia:

Many of the papers, however, which were kept alive or brought to life during the war could not adapt themselves to the new conditions of peace. Perhaps only a dozen of the survivors held their own in the new time, notably the Boston Gazette, which declined rapidly in the following decade, The Connecticut Courant of Hartford, The Providence Gazette, and The Pennsylvania Packet of Philadelphia, to which may be added such representative papers as the Massachusetts Spy, Boston’s Independent Chronicle, the New York Journal and Packet, the Newport Mercury, the Maryland Gazette of Annapolis, the Pennsylvania Gazette and The Pennsylvania Journal, both of Philadelphia. Practically all were of four small pages, each of three or four columns, issued weekly. In 1783, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first American daily. The next year, the Pennsylvania Packet was published three times a week, and the New York Journal twice a week, as were several of the papers begun in that year. There was a notable extension to new fields. In Vermont, where the first paper, established in 1781, had soon died, another arose in 1783; in Maine, two were started in 1785. In 1786, the first one west of the Alleghenies appeared at Pittsburgh, and following the westward tide of immigration the Kentucky Gazette was begun at Lexington in 1787.

Conditions were hardly more favorable to newspapers than during the recent conflict. The sources of news were much the same; the means of communication and the postal system were little improved. Newspapers were not carried in the mails but by favor of the postmen, and the money of one state was of dubious value in another. Consequently, circulations were small, rarely reaching a thousand; subscribers were slow in paying; and advertisements were not plentiful. Newspapers remained subject to provincial laws of libel, in accordance with the old common law, and were, as in Massachusetts for a short time in 1785, subject to special state taxes on paper or on advertisements. But public sentiment was growing strongly against all legal restrictions, and in general the papers practiced freedom, not to say license, of utterance.

As we have previously noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer, established in 1829, is the third oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States, exceeded only by the New York Post, established 1801, and the Hartford Courant, first edition in 1764.

Newspapers and books were rare in the late 18th century, with the news often slanted, and a lot of inaccuracies published, especially as the sources of news were more distant.

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

What became our First Amendment, which stated that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” was passed by the First Congress on September 25, 1789, and submitted to the states for ratification. It, along with the other nine amendments now referred to as the Bill of Rights, became part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791.

Now comes Jennifer Tucker, an associate professor of history at Wesleyan University, in an OpEd published by CNN:

Now that guns can kill hundreds in minutes, Supreme Court should rethink the rights question

Opinion by Jennifer Tucker | Updated 7:31 AM ET | Wednesday, October 20, 2021

This fall, the US Supreme Court will decide New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Kevin Bruen, a case that may result in vastly expanded rights to carry firearms in public. In doing so, the Court will need to grapple with a key question that, until now, has been left unanswered in the Second Amendment debate: Are there any limits to the type of firearm that can be carried outside of the home?

Dr Tucker has erred from the first paragraph: that is not the question before the Supreme Court. Rather, under the Sullivan Act of 1911, New York state has required permits to carry firearms outside of the home, and has given localities discretion on the issuance of such permits, and New York does not issue permits for self-defense unless the applicant can demonstrate a non-speculative need for such; a neighborhood simply being unsafe is not sufficient. The case before the bar is one which holds that such discretion is not constitutional.

In the pivotal 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller — which recognized the Second Amendment as an individual right to own a gun at home for self-defense — the Court admitted the existence of different categories of weapons, while conceding that “dangerous or unusual weapons” could be regulated. But it did not define what constitutes a “dangerous or unusual” weapon, nor recognize that there are different degrees of danger within the category of firearms.

Dr Tucker continues to document the increased lethality of firearms since the flintlocks of 1791, holding that the Court must take that into account and limit our Second Amendment rights accordingly. You can follow the link to read her arguments yourself.

But, to me, there’s an obvious irony. Dr Tucker is using the virtually instantaneous world-wide transmission of her views in an effort to persuade people, while the ‘press’ the First Amendment protects was only that of poorly printed and locally sold and distributed newspapers. If she believes that the Supreme Court should recognize and take into account changes in firearms technology and thus limit our right to keep and bear arms, would not her arguments also apply to the freedom of speech and of the press? There were no microphones and amplifiers for public speech in 1791, nor photography, nor the ability to publish the photos which did not then exist. There was neither radio nor telegraph to transmit information over long distances, no television, no CNN, and no internet. Using her own arguments, the government ought to be able to regulate and restrict all media save the four-page newspapers available in 1791.

One could argue that there’s a qualitative difference, that freedom of speech and of the press cannot kill anyone, while firearms can. That, frankly, is nonsense: al Qaeda, Da’ish, and all sorts of other groups which bear us only ill will have used the internet, have used social media, have used modern communications to set in motion acts which have directly killed people. Modern communication has served to radicalize people into Islamist ideas, to turn people who may have been leading vaguely unsatisfying lives into monsters who only wish to kill others.

It isn’t even just the Islamists. People have been using the internet and modern communications to vilify Israel, to persuade (purportedly) intelligent Americans to anti-Semitism through constant attempts to turn Americans against Israel. People have been using the internet and modern communications to inspire racial hatred, to try to frustrate law enforcement, to make martyred saints out of thugs and convicted felons — and I refer not only to George Floyd, but Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and others — and to encourage anti-social and risky behavior, including the ‘hook up’ culture and the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases.

Sure, I’m conservative, and have my biases in that direction, but the left make the same complaints, about the internet being used to promote conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections and COVID-19 and vaccine mandates . . . and they have actively been trying to censor such things. The left have been trying to ‘cancel’ people like comedian Dave Chappelle and Harry Potter author J K Rowling for not being fully on board with ‘transgenderism.’ Virtually every credentialed media source in American, in referring to Richard Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services who claims to be female and goes by the name ‘Rachel’, and his recent promotion to Admiral in the United States Public Health Service, and anyone who challenged the cockamamie notion that he is female, or used the masculine pronouns to refer to him, would be subject to whatever scorn and ‘cancelations’ the left could muster.

Using Dr Tucker’s logic, the United States could regulate such communication, by the left and the right, virtually out of existence, and she is using that First Amendment protected media of broadcast and internet transmission to spread her ideas. The good and highly educated professor doesn’t even seem to have recognized the irony of her position.
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The Patricians like Will Bunch really don’t understand reality

It was the photo accompanying the column by The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch that really caught my eye. Mr Bunch, very much a leftist who has “some strong opinions about what’s happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government,” according to his own Inquirer biography blurb, lamented that so many of the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators of 2020 were well-off white people:

Black Lives Matter marches of 2020 were surprisingly white and educated. Is that why results have been so mediocre?

We’ve never seen anything like the George Floyd protests that gained momentum 16 months ago — but that could be exactly why progress has stalled.

By Will Bunch | Thursday, October 14, 2021

Megan McNamara (right), 19, of Wayne, walks up Lancaster Avenue during The Main Line for Black Lives protest in Wayne, Pa. on June 4, 2020. David Maialetti, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. Over the next weeks, as the world watched the video of his death, the reaction was stunning and without precedent. Literally millions who saw the images of Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck felt it was impossible to remain silent.

But what was most remarkable about the June 2020 marches was how far they spread beyond Minneapolis and other big cities with histories of police brutality. In Norfolk, Nebraska, a small overwhelmingly white town of 24,000, some 300 people gathered on a street corner to voice their outrage. A march in a city with similar demographics — Sioux City, Iowa — triggered a confrontation with pepper-spraying police. In the Philadelphia suburbs, thousands of mostly white people — some pushing babies in strollers — marched down Lancaster Avenue through affluent Main Line suburbs, carrying signs like “White Silence is Violence.”

“I was shocked to see so many white kids out here,” Walter Wiggins — a 67-year-old Black man who’d been attending protest marches in his native D.C. since his parents took him to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington — told the New York Times, at a protest that researchers confirmed was majority white. “Back then, it was just Black folks.”

That remarkable spring, the same phrase was on many people’s lips: The world had never seen anything quite like this. And yet, more than 16 months later, the world also hasn’t seen dramatic changes from a global protest movement in which it is estimated some 15 to 26 million Americans took part by marching in solidarity.

Emphases in the original, and there’s much more if you follow the embedded link.

Normally, I don’t include photos from the Inquirer, due to copyright concerns, but this one, I believe, is an exception under Fair Use standards. It is just wildly amusing that Mr Bunch, or, more probably, an editor, selected a photo not just of white marchers, but of a red-headed, extremely fair white woman, showing off plenty of skin on that warm June day, to illustrate Mr Bunch’s point about so many BLM marchers being white. 🙂

Mr Bunch is disappointed that few of the radical police reform measures were passed, and that while some police department budgets were cut, most departments not only had their budgets restored, but “budgets for traditional policing are actually increasing.”

Why? Well, one reason might be that the homicide rate in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia continues to skyrocket. As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, October 14th, the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there had been 435 murders in the City of Brotherly Love, tied for the eighth highest year on record, with 2½ months, 78 days, left in the year. The city is seeing an average of 1.5157 homicides per day, which, if that average holds, works out to 553 dead bodies littering Philly’s mean streets in 2021.

While the Police Department’s figures do not break down the victims by race, The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, reported that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings. If there has been a serious uptick in the number of white victims this year, the Inquirer hasn’t reported on it.

The visceral, extreme reactions to the Floyd video, which inspired the rallying cry of “Defund the Police” amplified by a news media that prefers shorthand over nuance, ran into more complicated views on crime and law enforcement in the neighborhoods where — unlike for many of the marchers — policing is a day-to-day issue. Ground Zero has been Minneapolis itself, where in the immediate aftermath a supposedly veto-proof majority of city councilors pledged to end policing as we know it, to be replaced by a new department of public safety.

That hasn’t happened, in part because of pushback from middle-class Black homeowners concerned about rising crime. Last month, the Minnesota Poll of city residents found that while police reform is generally popular, a whopping 75% of Black Minneapolis voters do not want to see fewer police officers (the comparable number for white voters is 51%).

That’s hardly a surprise:

Surge in Minneapolis violence includes over 900 rounds fired from automatic weapons in 2021

by Jay Kolls | September 30, 2021 | 8:39 PM CDT | Updated: 10:21 PM CDT

The Minneapolis Police Department updated the Minneapolis City Council with new violent crime statistics Thursday, and the numbers show violent crime — including gun crimes — has continued to rise throughout the first three quarters of 2021.

Scott Wolfert, an MPD crime analyst, told city council members that 503 people have been injured by gunfire so far this year, which is an increase of 26% over last year. Homicides are up 16%, robberies are up 5% and aggravated assaults are up 2.6%, but the biggest surge has been the number of rounds fired by automatic weapons.

“So far, in 2021, there have been 78 ShotSpotter activations of automatic weapons with 935 rounds detected,” Wolfert said. “Compared to this same time in 2020, there were just five activations for automatic weapons and only 42 rounds fired through the end of September.”

Wolfert said the total number of detected gunshots fired so far this year is 20,611 — which is a 28% increase from 2020. And, Wolfert said, there have been 355 carjackings, up 35% from this time last year.

There have been 75 homicides in Minneapolis through October 15th, a city of 429,954, and puts the city on pace for 95 murders for the year. At the current pace, the city would see a homicide rate of 22.10 per 100,000 population . . . a rate which makes Philadelphia laugh, and say, “Hold my beer!”

Philly’s homicide rate stands at 34.49 per 100,000!

North Water Street near Clearfield Street, Google Maps streetview.

This is North Water Street, near East Clearfield Street in North Philadelphia, and if you click on the image to enlarge it, you’ll see how some Philadelphians have to live, with their rowhouses barred in, to protect themselves from intruders and thieves. Mr Bunch noted how the BLM protesters were overwhelmingly white, and overwhelmingly college-educated. The simple fact is that the BLM protesters mostly did not live where the crime problems are most serious, and it’s easy to be for fewer police when your contact with the police is almost exclusively in getting a speeding ticket rather than reporting a robbery, a break-in, or a shooting.

Mr Bunch concluded:

But the crisis that inspired the George Floyd protests — U.S. killings by police officers — has hardly abated. The Washington Post tracker of such deaths shows 654 so far in 2021, at a pace only slightly lower than previous years. After 16 months, it seems reasonable to ask: If the largest protest in American history only barely moved the needle, what on earth would?

Really, 654? As of October 15th, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, there have been 639 homicides in the Windy City alone, and Chicago’s homicide rate of 29.93 per 100,000 population is lower than Philadelphia’s.

Mr Bunch, who to judge by his Inquirer photograph, is very much a white man himself, laments that so many of the BLM protesters of 2020 were white, and wonders if that has contributed to the lack of movement toward their professed goals. But it also points out that Mr Bunch is himself quite probably very insulated from the way most black Philadelphians live their lives. A 1981 graduate of Ivy League Brown University, he’s lived the elitist’s urban dream, ten years a reporter for New York Newsday, and, for the past 26 years, with the Inquirer/Philadelphia Daily News. I don’t know his address, and wouldn’t publish it if I did, but it seems unlikely that he lives in Kensington or Strawberry Mansion or any of the other combat zones of the City of Brotherly Love.

We have noted it so many times: black lives really don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, given that the newspaper barely reports on them when a black person is killed. We have previously noted what I called the racism of the Inquirer, and have noted, many times, that unless a murder victim is an ‘innocent‘, someone already of note, or a cute little white girl, the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news.

It’s easy to be a liberal when, to paraphrase the words of Robert E Howard, your life isn’t nailed to your spine, and, unless he has chosen to live near 52nd Street in West Philadelphia, Mr Bunch’s life clearly is not. If he did, he would be gobsmacked by the reality that working-class Philadelphians, white and Hispanic and black and Asian live with, every day. He just might have a different perspective if he lived and moved among the people he claims to champion.

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The Patricians really, really don’t like the plebeians! The peasants are revolting!

The New York Times, always ready to help the elites, gives OpEd space to Republicans of the past.

    We Are Republicans With a Plea: Elect Democrats in 2022

    By Miles Taylor and Christine Todd Whitman[1]Miles Taylor (@MilesTaylorUSA) served at the Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, including as chief of staff, and was the anonymous author of a 2018 guest essay for The Times … Continue reading | Monday, October 11, 2021 | 5:00 AM EDT

    After Donald Trump’s defeat, there was a measure of hope among Republicans who opposed him that control of the G.O.P. would be up for grabs, and that conservative pragmatists could take back the party. But it’s become obvious that political extremists maintain a viselike grip on the national G.O.P., the state parties and the process for fielding and championing House and Senate candidates in next year’s elections.

    Rational Republicans are losing the G.O.P. civil war. And the only near-term way to battle pro-Trump extremists is for all of us to team up on key races and overarching political goals with our longtime political opponents: the Democratic Party.

    Earlier this year we joined more than 150 conservatives — including former governors, senators, congressmen, cabinet secretaries, and party leaders — in calling for the Republican Party to divorce itself from Trumpism or else lose our support, perhaps by forming a new political party. Rather than return to founding ideals, G.O.P. leaders in the House and in many states have now turned belief in conspiracy theories and lies about stolen elections into a litmus test for membership and running for office.

    Breaking away from the G.O.P. and starting a new center-right party may prove in time to be the last resort if Trump-backed candidates continue to win Republican primaries. We and our allies have debated the option of starting a new party for months and will continue to explore its viability in the long run. Unfortunately, history is littered with examples of failed attempts at breaking the two-party system, and in most states today the laws do not lend themselves easily to the creation and success of third parties.

There’s more at the original, but in the fourth paragraph, Mr Taylor and Mrs Whitman admit the real problem about which they complained in their third. “Rather than return to founding ideals, G.O.P. leaders in the House and in many states have now turned belief in conspiracy theories and lies about stolen elections into a litmus test for membership and running for office,” they complained, but they next lamented that “Trump-backed candidates continue to win Republican primaries.” Their real problem? The plebeians are simply not voting the way the Patricians tell them they must.

Populism is a name for a kind of political movement. Populists usually try to make a difference between common people and “elites” (meaning usually, top classes of people) . Populists may think of wealthy people or well-educated people as belonging to the class of elites. Populists may also call those who have been working in government for a long time “establishment” and count them as elites too.

According to Wikipedia, Miles Taylor, net worth roughly $2,000,000:

    grew up in La Porte, Indiana, where he was an Indiana state debate champion, and graduated valedictorian from La Porte High School in 2006. While in high school, he served as a page in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. He received a Bachelor of Arts in international security studies from Indiana University Bloomington, which he attended as a Harry S. Truman Scholar and Herman B. Wells Scholar. As a senior, he received IU’s inaugural Presidential Student Internship and was a recipient of the Elvis J. Stahr Award given to the university’s top few graduating seniors. Taylor received an MPhil in International Relations from New College, Oxford, which he attended as a 2012 Marshall Scholar.

Clearly, Mr Taylor, who is only 33 years old, grew up with some privilege. As for the description of him as a “lifelong Republican,” Mr Taylor donated $85, “when (he) was a completely broke college student”, to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. His ‘explanation’ of that is completely disingenuous:

    I’m proud that I spent that $85 because even though I was gunning for John McCain, and John McCain’s been a lifelong personal hero of mine, I wanted to be able to tell my kids that if Barack Obama got elected president, that in some way I supported the first Black president of the United States. Of course, I knew I was going to oppose him on policy issues, and I did that. I was a big McCain supporter.

Oh, good grief! That’s an explanation?[2]Full disclosure: in 2008, I switched my party registration from Republican to Democrat, so I could vote in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary against the odious Hillary Clinton. That meant, alas!, … Continue reading

According to Wikipedia, Mrs Whitman, net worth at least $9,470,000:

    born Christine Temple Todd in New York City, the daughter of Eleanor Prentice Todd (née Schley) and businessman Webster B. Todd. Her parents were involved in Republican politics,] and both the Todds and the Schleys were wealthy and prominent New Jersey political families. Her mother’s family were among the first New Yorkers to move to what became Far Hills, New Jersey, which became a popular suburb for wealthy, moderate Republicans. Her maternal grandfather, Reeve Schley, was a member of Wolf’s Head Society at Yale and the vice president of Chase Bank. He was also a longtime president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. Christine’s father amassed a fortune from working as a building contractor on projects including Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall. Webster used his wealth to donate to Republican politicians, and became an advisor to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Her mother Eleanor served as a Republican national committeewoman and led the New Jersey Federation of Republican Women.

Yeah, that’s a pretty Patrician background, too. Worrying about having food on the table at suppertime was not one of her problems.

For Mr Taylor and Mrs Whitman, the problem is simple: they consider themselves to be leaders of the Republican Party, but Republican voters do not seem to be willing to follow where they would lead. Their complaint that Republican “leaders in the House and in many states” are going along with “Trumpism” is a complaint that elected Republicans are going along with what their constituents want. What, the elected leadership, following the wishes of those who voted for them? Heaven forfend!

Mr Taylor and Mrs Whitman want to get rid of the influence of former President Trump, and to do that, they are urging people to vote for Democrats. But voting for Democrats has a real cost: it puts Democrats in office, and that means pushing the Democrats’ policies. Sunday’s headline in The Washington Post said, “Liberal Democrats have become the mainstream of the party and less willing to compromise with dwindling moderates.” Even the (purported) moderates in the House are going along with the socialists’ progressives’ plans, if only slightly nibbling at the edges, and only Senators Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) are preventing a massive, ‘progressive’ plan from being passed. Elect more Democrats, and a bill festooned with benefits for unions and welfare for the well-to-do get passed. The authors would accept ‘progressive’ policies which would seriously damage our republic, grant greater opportunities for fraudulent voting, destroy all state restrictions on abortion as well as having the taxpayers pay for abortions, and destroy our economy just to get rid of the influence of a 75-year-old man who eats absolute junk.

I have news for them: even if Donald Trump dropped dead today, the populist voters he has energized will still vote for Republican primary candidates who espouse policies similar to his.

Mrs Whitman and Mr Taylor wrote about, as a “last resort,” “starting a new center-right party.” This is where they truly fail: Republican voters tired of a “center-right” party under the younger President Bush, and rejected a “center-right” party not only under the other presidential candidates during the 2016 primaries, but in the TEA Party revolt of 2010 and Republican primaries subsequent to that. They want a truly conservative party, not a ‘moderate’ — moderate meaning: caving in to the left on too many issues, the old go-along-to-get-along Republican Party under Hugh Scott and Everett Dirksen — one.

    For disaffected Republicans, this means an openness to backing centrist Democrats. It will be difficult for lifelong G.O.P. members to do this — akin to rooting for the other team out of fear that your own is ruining the sport entirely — but democracy is not a game, which is why when push comes to shove, patriotic conservatives should put country over party.

The most important vote that any member of Congress casts is his first of the session, the one which sets the majority control of the chamber. It matters not how ‘centrist’ a particular Democrat is, if he is going to be voting for someone like Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer to control the chamber, his vote is for the devastation of all that conservatives hold dear, a vote for enacting the agenda that the Post called to now be the “mainstream” of the Democratic Party. That is very much the wrong thing to do.

References

References
↑1 Miles Taylor (@MilesTaylorUSA) served at the Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, including as chief of staff, and was the anonymous author of a 2018 guest essay for The Times criticizing President Donald Trump’s leadership. Christine Todd Whitman (@GovCTW) was the Republican governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001 and served as E.P.A. administrator under President George W. Bush.
↑2 Full disclosure: in 2008, I switched my party registration from Republican to Democrat, so I could vote in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary against the odious Hillary Clinton. That meant, alas!, voting for Mr Obama in that primary. After the primary, I quickly changed my registration back to Republican, and of course I voted Republican in the general election. I have never given as much as a single penny to a Democratic candidate.
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Killadelphia

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is only updated Monday through Friday,[1]With Monday, October 11th being a government holiday, Columbus Day, it is possible that the website will not be updated until Tuesday. during “normal business hours,” so it still states that ‘just’ 427 people have been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year, but The Philadelphia Inquirer has the story of the killing of at least the 428th:

    A 13-year-old boy was fatally shot on his way to school in North Philly, police say

    The victim, whom police did not immediately identify, was shot once in the chest on the 3100 block of Judson Street just after 9 a.m., police said.

    by Chris Palmer and Anna Orso | Friday, October 8, 2021

    A 13-year-old boy was fatally shot on his way to school Friday morning in North Philadelphia, according to police and School District officials — another bleak example of how the city’s ongoing gun violence crisis is leaving a record number of young people dead or wounded.

    The victim, whom authorities declined to identify, was shot once in the chest on the 3100 block of Judson Street just after 9 a.m., police said. He was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about 20 minutes later.

    Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said detectives believe the boy and several other young people had been sitting in a car parked on the block when at least one gunman walked up and fired shots into it.

    Lunette Ray, 86, heard the shots — at least 10 — right outside her house. She peered out the window and saw several boys jump out of a vehicle and run away. One was severely bleeding and fell in the street. She called 911.

There’s more at the Inquirer’s original. A photo in the article shows a maroon PT Cruiser sitting parked on North Judson Street at the intersection with West Clearfield Street, with bullet holes in the windshield. However, the Inquirer’s headline, that the victim was “on his way to school” appears to be misleading:

    Vanore said some neighbors said the car had been parked on the block for “quite awhile,” so it was not clear if any of the people inside had been able to drive it.

If the victim was shot “just after” 9:00 AM, it would seem that he wasn’t actually on his way to school. The Rhodes Elementary School website states that “All students must be in homerooms by 8:45 am each day.”

This was a targeted killing, though it is entirely possible, and perhaps probable, that the murdered boy wasn’t the intended target, that someone else in the vehicle was.

We have frequently noted that the inquirer only covers homicides when the victim is an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl. At least someone in that vehicle wasn’t exactly an innocent, but I have to ask: just what were “several” young people doing sitting in a parked car, at 9:00 AM on a school day? Many things could be speculated, which I will leave up to the reader.

Chris Palmer and Anna Orso, the article authors, perhaps accidentally, stepped away from the Inquirer’s position that it’s all about guns:

    Carl Day, an antiviolence advocate and pastor whose church is two blocks from where the shooting took place, said, “We should be stirred up right now, all of us.” The killing is a mandate for adults in the community, he said, to reach out to more children and teenagers and provide alternatives to violence.

    “We in this community and in this zip code need to put all hands on deck,” he said. “We have to let our youth know this doesn’t have to be life. This world is so much bigger than what they think they see in front of them.”

Pastor Day spoke a truth that the #woke of the Inquirer’s newsroom don’t want to hear, that the problem of homicide in the City of Brotherly Love isn’t about guns, but about bad people, about people who think that killing others is perfectly OK, that killing other people is a reasonable and logical thing to do, for whatever reasons they have. The current generation of kids in Philly have already been lost; it’s going to be up to the next group of parents to start bringing up their children in a manner in which they don’t see killing as a reasonable thing to do, and don’t see drugs as a smart thing to take.

It’s a pretty sad thing to note that murder and death are common risks for 13-year-olds like the victim in this story, but the reality is that they are, and they are due to the aggregate behavior of other teenagers in neighborhoods like North Judson and West Clearfield Streets. The victim in this story may or may not have been doing anything wrong, but enough of his peers have been, and are, that the danger is created for all of them.

References

References
↑1 With Monday, October 11th being a government holiday, Columbus Day, it is possible that the website will not be updated until Tuesday.