TERROR FART SHUTS SEVENTH AVENUE : PANIC IN NEW YORK

NEWS FLASH

Reason, Commerce, Justice and Free Beer has just learned that authorities in New York shut down a major city thoroughfare after a Muslim allegedly farted.

Details remain sketchy. It is not known who farted, nor whether the fart constituted "use of weapons of mass destruction" under applicable federal anti-terror laws. It is not even known whether the fart caused any appreciable damage to the surrounding area.

Nonetheless, officials are not taking any chances. Deputy NYPD Police Commissioner B. Leonard Pfurzfinder called the alleged terror fart a "serious attempt" to sow chaos in New York. He warned the public to "keep your eyes and noses open for flatulating Muslims."

Mr. Pfurzfinder gave a press conference shortly after the incident: "I wish to confirm that the Police Department--in cooperation with State and federal law enforcement--have closed Seventh Avenue following the reported emission of terrorist intestinal gas near 35th Street. At approximately 7:45 AM today, a woman named Cathleen Summers passed a man with a long black beard wearing a skull cap and a long white gown. According to Ms. Summers, 'he looked like Osama bin Laden.' As she passed the man at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 35th Street, Ms. Summers heard a very loud noise. 'It was definitely a fart,' she said. Within a moment following the noise, Ms. Summers also smelled a rancid odor in her vicinity. 'It must have come from the fart,' she told responding officers. She also mentioned that pedestrians gasped in horror when they smelled the fart; they fled in all directions. Pandemonium ensued. One man collapsed from inhaling the fumes. Another man said the 'sound of the fart' broke his iPad® digital reading device. Ms. Summers also reported that the bearded man did not panic after the fart; he surreptitiously moved away down 35th Street."

Mr. Pfurzfinder continued: "We are fortunate that no fatalities resulted from the fart. But we cannot let our guard down. Considering the evidence before us, we must conclude that this fart constitutes a serious terrorist attack on American soil. True, the fart did not cause much damage. But it shows that there are men who look like Osama bin Laden in the United States who can emit toxic odors. Worse, it shows that men with beards and white gowns can infiltrate major American cities, eat gas-producing foods and subject everyday Americans to deadly flatulence. We can be glad that no Americans died in this brazen gas assault on New York City. But we must painfully acknowledge that the War on Terror--especially gaseous fart terror--is far from over."

Mr. Pfurzfinder stressed that Americans must do their part to battle terrorism in all its forms: "We salute Ms. Summers for immediately calling authorities after she heard and smelled the enemy fart. And we also salute Ms. Summers for recognizing that suspicious activity is not always visible. In fact, terrorism does not just affect the eyes; it affects all the senses. Since 2001, the NYPD has admonished New Yorkers to report suspicious activity with the slogan: 'See something; say something.' But that admonishment does not encompass all possible terrorist threats. Terror does not limit itself to visible phenomena. As this case shows, terror can be heard and smelled, too. In that light, we hereby modify our slogan to include all the senses: 'See something, hear something, smell something, taste something or feel something--say something.' Although we recognize that some New Yorkers may report things that do not turn out to be terror threats, we believe that the extra caution is worth it. An old woman, for instance, may feel a spider crawling on her neck while she sleeps. She may believe she is under tactile terrorist attack. She might even call police, wailing: "I felt something, so I'm saying something." Yet fielding a few misguided 911 calls is a small price to pay to avoid another 9/11."

Concerning the general terrorist threat level, Mr. Pfuzfinder elaborated: "We are on edge. Within the last two weeks, Muslim agents have tried to blow up Times Square. In the ensuing days, authorities closed down Times Square several times after citizens reported 'suspicious packages' on various street corners. Those packages turned out to contain ham sandwiches, bottled water and cheap novels; but the threat remains. It remains true that Muslims want to kill us. Today's fart incident represents yet another attempt to target America this month. We are in the crosshairs. The Muslims not only want to destroy significant targets in spectacular attacks; they also want to wreak panic by dispersing toxic farts among everyday people who just want to get to work in the morning. That is truly terrifying--and we are working to stop it."

Mr. Pfurzfinder did not specify how the NYPD plans to address farting Muslims in the future. Still, Republican lawmakers in Washington, D.C. quickly jumped on the news.

"Today's incident in New York just goes to show that President Obama is not doing enough to stop terror," declared Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). "This is the price we pay for the President's misguided decision to 'understand' Muslims. We cannot afford to understand these people. They want choke us on the nastiest farts you can possibly imagine. We cannot have a 'dialogue' with people who are out to drown us in farts. Put simply, we need to stop talking and start attacking Pakistan, which is where this fart guy is probably from. If we don't, the next fart is going to really hurt somebody."

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) echoed Mr. Cornyn's call for increased action against Pakistan. "I have it from reliable sources that al-Qaeda is training operatives to produce massive amounts of flatulence in their own bodies. They call it 'the natural approach.' CIA infiltrators have shown me shocking pictures of masked men sitting in desert training camps eating goat cheese, falafel, kebab and raw onions in terrifying amounts. We are blind to the truth if we assume that this New York fart suspect did not receive al-Qaeda digestive terror training in Pakistan. That is why we must attack Pakistan now. I refuse to see a single American killed by a fart we could have prevented."

In a statement on the issue, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) shied away from foreign policy assertions. "No matter what we do abroad, I say we need better domestic legislation to punish Muslims who fart. I have already drawn up a draft bill that expands the definition of 'weapons of mass destruction' to include 'the intentional, reckless, negligent or inadvertent expulsion of intestinal gas by a person who is a Muslim, however slight or inaudible.' Ignorance is no defense. I define 'Muslim' as 'any person not a Christian' or 'any person with a suspicious looking beard, unless he is from Texas; but such exception does not apply to African-Americans with beards, or any female, regardless of State residence or race.' If we enforce this law, we will bring digestive terrorists to justice and protect Americans."

President Obama's Attorney General--Eric H. Holder, Jr.--urged a more circumspect approach to the Muslim fart menace. "Our investigation into this matter has just begun. We still need to determine whether the man who farted did so with terroristic intent. This is a legal inquiry: Only farts expelled with a specific intent to terrorize are currently forbidden under existing law. This administration is committed to law. We refuse to indulge speculation. We also refuse to yield to public hysteria surrounding the incident. Until we have reliable evidence, we cannot commit to prosecuting this suspect as a terrorist. For the moment, he is simply a 'person of interest' who farted on Seventh Avenue on May 17, 2010. We understand that our approach may disappoint those who assume all Muslim farts to be terror farts. But respect for the rule of law--and for basic fairness in the administration of justice--dictates that we assemble all the facts before we conclude that digestive terror occurred in New York today."

Rush Limbaugh denounced Holder's statement as "rubbish:" "When a Muslim farts, it's terror. I don't give a shit what the law says."

New York's Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg emphasized that Muslim farting is not good for the city economy. "The thing that upsets me most is that this fart closed down Seventh Avenue. There are a lot of really big stores and businesses on Seventh Avenue, including Ernst & Young and roughly 75 Starbucks Coffee houses. This fart caused people to miss work and lose out on pay. It also caused people to refrain from shopping and going to Starbucks. That is not good for New York. So whether or not we conclude that this Muslim emitted a terror fart, he has already terrorized New York's economy. And I don't like it when corporations can't do business."

At present, investigators are searching high and low for the man who allegedly farted near Ms. Summers this morning. Officials expect to reopen Seventh Avenue sometime this afternoon, depending on the FBI's determination that residual Muslim fart fumes have sufficiently dissipated to permit vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

President Obama issued the following statement after receiving word about the incident: "Our hearts go out to the families and to those affected. We will not tolerate digestive terror and we will not shirk our responsibilities. We are a resilient people. No matter how thick the fart cloud that hangs over us, we will persevere."

NAUGHTY BAILED-OUT BANKERS ARE ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

Советские Решения Современных Экономических Проблем в Америке Обамы

(SOVIET SOLUTIONS TO CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC PROBLEMS IN OBAMA'S AMERICA)

By : Mr. Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, Member, Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Commissioner, National Office of Internal Affairs (NKVD)(1938-1945); Senior Investigator, People's Commissariat to Eradicate Spies, Traitors and Unpatriotic Defeatists Uncommitted to the Public Good (1934-1948); Close Confidant to Joseph Stalin (1926-1953); Orchestrator of Soviet Wartime Production (1941-1945); Manager of Undesirable Population Relocation Program to Central Asia (1941-1951); People's Prosecutor against Lithuanian, Polish, Latvian, Estonian, Ukrainian, German, Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, Slovak and Yugoslavian Traitors and Capitalist Counter-Revolutionary Troublemakers (1938-1953); Pistol Enthusiast and Marksman; Executed 1953; Resurrected 2010.

I am here in America at the request of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Mr. Ben Shalom Bernanke. This Mr. Bernanke--Jewish capitalist intellectual counterrevolutionary though he may be--is a capable man. He understands that your country is in grave danger. He knows that the American economy is teetering on the brink. Most importantly, he understands that traditional "American" methods will not return your country to prosperity. That is why he called me.

Let me briefly summarize my conversation with Mr. Bernanke. He said that the United States is now suffering from a "persistent recession" that has resulted in massive unemployment. He attributed this "recession" to unregulated banking practices and large-scale greed among large financial firms. He also informed me that government has begun playing a much larger role in private financial affairs. He even said that government has paid billions to private banks in order to prevent them from failing. I believe I say this correctly: Your government "bailed out" the wealthiest capitalist pigs in order to allow them to continue loaning money to everyone else.

I applaud America's new commitment to government intervention in the economy. Although it does not come close to the Soviet example, it nonetheless represents a step in the right direction. In Stalin's Russia, we regulate everything. There is no private property. The State owns the banks. If a miserable little banker gets out of line, we shoot him and bury him in an unmarked grave. We even shoot his children and wife. That's how we regulate bankers in Russia. True, this frightens bankers. But it also prevents them from defrauding the people. Sometimes pistols are more effective than laws.

I understand that your country is not the Soviet Union. Mr. Bernanke informed me, however, that these ungrateful bankers have actually taken government money and used it to pay their own bonuses. Additionally, they have thumbed their noses at the very government that saved them from ruin. Mr. Bernanke told me that "something must be done" about these devious, greedy bankers. He asked my advice on the subject.

I am happy to lend my expertise in dealing with your banking problem. First off, let us understand the situation. Your government has taken an unprecedented step to rescue private banks from their own capitalist follies. It has actually given State money in order to prevent them from failing. In return, government can expect allegiance from the banks. In essence, "bailed-out" banks are no longer private. By taking government money, they have subjected themselves to government regulation. They have ceded their private nature. As such, they must listen to your orders. If they don't, they must suffer serious consequences.

Yet now the bankers act as if they never took your money. Worse, they have used your money to invest in the evil New York stock market, where they earned spectacular profits. Rather than return the money to you, they have insolently awarded themselves monstrous bonuses and sent their children on European vacations. They have renovated their villas and hired high-priced prostitutes for week-long champagne orgies at sultry Caribbean hideaways. They have purchased long yachts, "cigarette boats" and Bentley automobiles. They have gallivanted on million-dollar ski trips. All the while, they have refused to hire more workers or act in the public good. To the contrary, they have done little but enrich themselves. They are having the time of their lives--all thanks to government funds.

I share your disgust with these ungrateful outlaws. I am pleased to offer my assistance in "regulating" them. They are Enemies of the People.

We must increase our regulation efforts. Your country must cease relying on "laws" and "procedures" to tame wayward bankers. You will only stop naughty bankers by adopting Soviet-style banking regulations. Bankers are ruthless pirates by nature. Ruthless pirates only understand one language: Brutality. If America wishes to rein in these pirates, it must start regulating with pistols.

Let me explain what I mean by "pistol regulation." As Commissioner of the Secret State Police in the Soviet Union, I became an expert in the craft. Here’s how it works: Once I identify an enemy of the People, I quickly dispatch agents to his home at about 4:30 AM. Generally, most people are either asleep or just waking up at that time--even ambitious capitalist pigs like your wayward bankers. They are in no position to resist ten armed police agents. Most surrender without a fight. In fact, very few ever know we're coming. We investigate in secret.

Once taken into custody, my agents bring the enemy to a secret building with no windows. There, a State security agent informs the enemy why he is an enemy, then tells him to explain himself. This is just a formality: Nothing he says will save him. Basically, it just gives us an opportunity to have a good laugh while the man pisses himself, falls on his knees and begs for mercy. After we've laughed enough, we bring in an officer who says he has judicial power to pronounce sentence. He gravely tells the enemy that he has been found guilty of treason, at which time several armed guards take him into another dimly-lit room. They push the enemy face first against the wall, then shoot him in the back of the head with a pistol like this one:

After that, the guards clean the blood, skull fragments and brains off the floor, remove the body and send it off for cremation. Then I release a press statement describing the enemy's crimes against the people. I close the statement by noting that the "dangerous enemy" has "faced justice for high treason."

Now, once your naughty bankers know that they may face "pistol regulation" for squandering State funds, they will think twice about buying new homes and throwing lavish dinner parties. In fact, some might even invest their money in public projects or--God forbid--hire some people. As you can see, "pistol regulation" carries two benefits. First, it eliminates bad behavior, like embezzling public money. Second, it encourages good behavior, like reducing unemployment. After all, no one wants to get that knock on the door at 4:30 AM. Bankers start behaving much better once they notice that their greedy colleagues aren't in their offices anymore.

You have made a wise decision to enlist my help in regulating your financial industry. You understand that your traditional "American" methods will not impress these rapacious profit-hounds. To the contrary, your entire constitutional system--with its burdensome right to counsel, "independent judiciary" and "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" procedure--favors the accused. Worse, when the accused has money--as these bankers do--it is even more difficult to convict them. Even then, it takes years for appeals to pass. Plus there's a chance that banker-friendly judges will free their pals. Under your laws, you can't even execute these piratical bankers for their offenses.

This is simply unacceptable: You need Soviet "pistol regulation" or these dogs will walk all over you with "procedures."

Still, you can do it. You have already made an unprecedented step by allowing the government to intervene in the economy. Now, you must take the next step by holding bailed-out bankers to their bargains. If a banker takes government money, he must do as the government says. No more can you tolerate their ingratitude. It is not just embarrassing. It is bad for the country.

To that end, I will do my part to hunt down these criminals. Their lawyers and cash bribes will not stop my agents from putting bullets in their brains. I have wide experience sniffing out wrongdoing; nothing escapes my notice. We will work together to send a simple message: "If you take government money, you had better not use it to pay your own bonus."

I will find every banker who scoffs at government regulation. Believe me, they won't be scoffing after my agents show up at their swanky penthouses at 4:30 in the morning. In fact, they'll be crying, begging, moaning, wailing, pissing and shitting themselves. A few will get angry and shout. But my men will pistol-whip them until they behave.

Enough talking. Let's get to work. We have an industry to regulate. And we have Enemies of the People to eliminate.

EXPLAINING AMERICA'S RACE PROBLEM : RACE RIOTS

AN ESSAY

Two weeks ago, I visited St. Louis. I had never been there before. I grew up in Connecticut and I've spent most of my adult life in New York City. I lived and worked in Chicago for several years; I did not find people's attitudes all that different from people's attitudes in New York. For the most part, I liked Chicago. But before moving there, I had heard stories that it was "segregated" and "had a race problem." These stories gave me a preconception that everyone in Chicago was a racist and that it was "very white and conservative."

My experience contradicted all these preconceptions. Chicago is an extraordinarily Democratic city. Although it is 800 miles from the Atlantic, it is surprisingly cosmopolitan and progressive. New Yorkers are wrong to think it is a "sleepy, backward Midwestern town." Much to the contrary, it is as vibrant a place as you will find anywhere outside the Five Boroughs. And most Chicagoans are ferociously liberal: Republicans don't stand a chance in city government. True, the city is unashamedly corrupt. But benignly so. Sometimes people just like things the way they are, as long as everyone gets a nice paycheck. "Hey, who cares as long as no one gets hurt and everybody wins?" That's how it is in Chicago.

Does Chicago have a "race problem?" To answer that question, I don't think it's fair to single out Chicago. Every American city has a "race problem." Black people do not generally live in wealthy neighborhoods in any American city, and black people commit proportionately more poverty-related crime than whites in all urban areas. This is a "national issue." It holds true in Chicago. The city is economically segregated, and that means it is also racially segregated. Blacks live on the South and West Sides because it is cheaper than the North Side, where most whites live. Blacks do not live on the South and West Sides because government ordered blacks to live there; they live there because they are too poor to live in the white areas. Contrary to Justice Thomas' outrageous assertion, blacks do not live in ghettoes because they made "innocent private decisions including voluntary housing choices." See Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S 701 (slip. op. at p. 51)(Thomas, J., concurring)(2007). For the most part, they have no choice.

New Yorkers mistake these economic realities for official racial discrimination. But the same thing happens in New York. New York is just as segregated as Chicago; white New Yorkers just see more black people on the street. Economic reality makes it impossible for blacks to live on the Upper East Side and downtown Manhattan, not governmental racism. While blacks might walk the streets in "white areas," they likely do not live there: They just took the subway. The same thing is true in Chicago's "white areas" : They just took the El.

In short, "race problems" exist in every American city, not just Chicago. Economic realities translate into racial realities. Government might not legislatively discriminate against blacks as it did a century ago. But private actors can achieve the same result simply by competing in the free market. Blacks stand at a material economic disadvantage in the United States. They cannot compete for housing, goods and services at the same level as whites. Thus, it is possible for cities to become "segregated" simply by action of "everyday commerce." This is generally what happens in northern cities like New York and Chicago.

I had all this in mind when I landed in St. Louis. I thought St. Louis would be like Chicago; after all, they are cities at opposite ends of the same State: Illinois. But this was no northern city. St. Louis was different. Whites lived in sprawling, palatial, mansion-like structures with gates and lush lawns. Just blocks away, blacks lived in dilapidated row houses with boarded windows. I stayed in a hotel with a steel fence and guards. All the servants were black. All the guests were white. White folk frolicked by the pool. Black folk trudged around outside the fence.

This was more than just economic segregation. This was real, social segregation. The great, unspoken reality in St. Louis was that black folk knew their place and white folk lorded over them. Unlike New York and Chicago, blacks did not even show up in places reserved for whites. They stayed home. They did not have a subway to get around, anyway.

Then it dawned on me: St. Louis was a southern city. I had never really seen a southern city. I did not like it at all. While New York and Chicago might guiltily acknowledge their "race problems," St. Louis had a "race problem" and didn't seem to mind it at all. After all, this was just the "way things were supposed to be." In New York and Chicago, everyone knows racism exists. But very few people acknowledge it publicly; they just let private commerce do its work. In St. Louis, by contrast, racism is just assumed. That jarred me.

Why did this jar me? After all, I routinely write about America's continuing racial woes. I am usually the first to point out that we do not live in a postracial society, and that racial problems in America encapsulate everything wrong with American civilization. But it is one thing to theorize and read about these problems; it is quite another to see them up close. Put simply, race problems exist in the United States because they are the poisonous legacy of slavery and State-sponsored discrimination. Not that many generations have passed since the law called black men "chattel property," and even fewer have passed since it was considered "good and legal" in the South to murder black men without trials for perceived offenses against "the social order." No matter how much we learn to be "politically correct" about these issues--and even to rue the conduct of our ancestors--this evil legacy lives on. And it undermines any claim that we live in a Nation of principle.

Racial problems in the North and the Midwest are relatively recent phenomena. They are essentially the "third chapter" in the history of racial intolerance in America after slavery and Reconstruction in the South. I did some reading and discovered that St. Louis was the first "northern" city to which southern blacks migrated in the early 20th Century. At that time, State-sponsored discrimination made life in the South virtually intolerable for blacks. While they might have been "legally equal" on paper, white mobs (some included judges and prosecutors) lynched hundreds every year. To escape life in southern society, many blacks looked north. St. Louis was right up the Mississippi River from the Deep South.

But their problems did not disappear once they arrived in St. Louis. They did not receive a warm welcome from ostensibly "progressive" northern whites. To the contrary, European immigrants and their descendants in St. Louis resented the idea that these "black interlopers" were stealing their jobs and "fraternizing with white women." After America entered World War I in 1917, tensions reached a boiling point. After factory owners began hiring blacks to replace white workers called off to war, white mobs marched on black neighborhoods. The Governor called in the National Guard, but in many cases the troops joined the mob and helped terrorize the black population. Over a three-day period, white mobs killed several dozen blacks and burned down their whole neighborhood. The police basically stood by and let the violence happen, tacitly supporting the white mob's position.

Something similar happened in Chicago two years later. As was true in St. Louis, thousands of blacks settled in Chicago in the early 20th Century. After World War I, thousands more returned from Europe to compete for jobs in the city. Whites and blacks informally agreed to "live in their own neighborhoods." They even respectively agreed not to use parts of the Lake Michigan beachfront reserved for the other race. But in 1919, a black boy dared to go swimming in "white waters." Several white boys threw rocks at him and he drowned. A dispute broke out between blacks and whites on the beach. When the police arrived, they arrested angry blacks rather than the white boys who threw the rocks. This led to rioting. As was the case in St. Louis, white mobs did the damage. They marched into black neighborhoods and burned almost everything in their path. They were just waiting for the opportunity to vent their anger about losing jobs to blacks. And as was true in St. Louis, the police tacitly supported the rioters by refusing to intervene against them.

I use these two examples to illustrate why we still have a "race problem" in the United States. Although they both took place 90 years ago, I think they have genuine relevance to modern urban issues involving race. For one, I find it perversely interesting that we call these disturbances--and others like them--"race riots." Who is the aggressor in a "race riot?" Who is the victim? In both St. Louis and Chicago, blacks were undeniably the victims, while the whites were the aggressors. Yet the term "race riot" implies that a "race" starts a riot. In American discourse, the word "race" generally implies "African-American." For deeply troublesome reasons, the word "race" conjures black men in the white mind. It conjures the perennial, uncomfortable, uneasy racial legacy that has remained with us since the Civil War and before. But in these "race riots," blacks did not cause disturbances to protest their inferior social standing. Unrest may well have been justified in the circumstances. Yet it was whites who caused the disturbances. And why? For economic reasons, and for "pride:" They did not like the idea that blacks threatened their jobs, swam "on their beaches" and "mixed with their women." These are not very noble reasons to riot.

This is not to say that blacks have not begun racial disturbances in our history. In 1992, for instance, black mobs rose up to protest the Rodney King police brutality verdict. But in that case, they did not severely damage white neighborhoods. They likely wanted to, but in the end they wound up burning their own property and some Asian-owned property. No matter who suffered injury, however, blacks rioted because they perceived a serious injustice, namely: that a supposedly "neutral" justice system failed to deliver justice against white police officers who visibly brutalized a black man on videotape. In this sense, "black-launched" race riots differ from "white-launched" race riots. Blacks riot to protest manifest injustice and betrayed principle. Whites riot to protect their jobs and bloodlines.

Race riots offer a revealing glimpse into the reasons why we still contend with smoldering "racial problems" in the United States. There is always tension between blacks and whites, not least because blacks know they stand a much lower chance to succeed in the free market system than their white counterparts. This resignation to failure has everything to do with the same destructive legacy that supported slavery and motivated the northern race riots. These are institutional problems that persevere over the generations, no matter what "legal adjustments" government makes. The fact that authorities generally stand by and let race riots occur--or, worse, join them--only reinforces black cynicism about their place in American society. If the police and courts tacitly condone lawlessness against blacks, how can we blame blacks for believing that the law does not stand for them?

Racism lives on in America because the law cannot touch it. It lives in men's minds. It finds expression in intrinsic social values that resist generational change. Law cannot change minds; it can only plunder pocket books and imprison bodies. Nor can law excise deeply-entrenched values. Racism smolders every day in every American city. Serious pressures--whether economic or ideological--bring the smolder into a flame: Race riots.

Throughout American history, we have seen the same pattern. Race riots honestly tell us what each race thinks and assumes about the other without subterfuge or pretense. Unlike language, violence is never subtle.

BEATING ROBBERS : HOW TO KEEP YOURSELF AND YOUR PROPERTY SAFE FROM VIOLENT CRIME

CRIME WATCH

By : Mr. G. Chadwick Klauenberg, Esq., J.D. (University of Pennsylvania Law School 1980), Former Chief of Police, East Orange, New Jersey (1985-2005); Published Author, Can’t Thug This : Hoodlum Management in 21st Century Urban America (New York Times Bestseller List), a Best-Selling Self-Defense Handbook; Amateur Chef; Property Owner (residence and beachfront properties).

We live in a violent society. For those who inhabit cities in the United States, crime is a very real danger. Murderous gangs roam the streets. Discharged and undiagnosed psychiatric patients threaten to push innocent commuters before onrushing subway trains. Con artists defraud hard-working men and women with fanciful yarns. And thousands of petty thieves mill through the streets every day, picking pockets, stealing, looting, robbing and swindling.

It is essential to know how to deal with crime. But today I do not write to call for greater enforcement against criminals. I leave that to legislators and executive officials in State government. Rather, today I write in order to inform the public about an important skill: How to keep yourself and your property safe from violent crime. Today, we are not talking about theories and abstractions. We are talking about real-life, practical skills that will prevent you from being the next police statistic.

Let’s face it: Many criminals want your property. They want your wallet, your watch, your Gucci handbag, your billfold, your cash, your family amulet, your car and even your furniture. Criminals are not like you or me. They do not work, make money, pay taxes and buy things at Wal-Mart®. No, they have separated themselves from society. Unlike us, they acquire money and property by violence, scheme and coercion. Everybody wants property in our society. Yet there is a legal way to do it. Criminals don’t follow the legal way.

It is illegal to steal and rob. As law-abiding citizens, we find it appalling that some people commit violence in order to obtain property. But that does not alter the fact that many people do it. For that reason, we must be prepared to deal with robbers and thieves. They are out there. They see our property. They want it. And they are ready to hurt us to take it from us. Put simply, we must be on our guard.

I have written many articles about self-defense and practical crime prevention. I always take a practical approach. I do not try to explain social trends and the reasons “why” criminals become criminals. I do not rationalize criminal behavior, nor do I make excuses for criminals, like blaming bad schools, bad parenting and poverty. Rather, I try to keep law-abiding citizens—like you—safe from hooligans. It does not help a robbery victim to understand why her assailant is a hooligan; it helps to prevent the hooligan from attacking in the first place. Hooligans are hooligans. In my book, that fact doesn’t change. And it makes no sense to debate it.

Let’s talk robbery. We must always fear robbers. They lurk everywhere. At this very moment, some thug may be sitting in a car outside your townhouse, observing your daily routine. He may be looking at your clothes, your briefcase and even the grocery bags you carry on the way home from work every night at 9 PM. He may be looking at your house and guessing that you have quite a lot of property. He may be plotting the right moment to ambush you and take your wallet. Put simply, robbers are everywhere. As long as you have property, robbers will try to take it from you.

I was a police chief for 20 years. Before that, I went to law school. From both a legal and law enforcement perspective, I know a thing or two about robbers. My knowledge can help you avert robbery. Robbery has a legal definition. In the law, behavior either fits the definition or it doesn’t. You can legally avoid robbery if you know what robbery actually means. When you understand what robbery actually is, you can take steps to make it impossible for a criminal to rob you.

At common law and in most State law, robbery is “the taking of personal property from a person by force or fear.” That means a person can rob you with a toy gun because he creates “fear” in order to take your personal property. It also means no one can rob your house, or your tree, or even apples from your tree, because those things are “real property,” not “personal property.” “Personal property” is “anything that is movable,” like a watch, a wallet, a pocket-knife, a painting or a jar. Apples are movable, too, but they are an exception to the rule because they come from trees, which are not “personal property.” There has also been some debate whether a mobile home is “personal property.” But let’s not get too philosophical; in most cases, a robber doesn’t want your trailer or your apple orchard.

No matter the circumstances, robbery cannot occur without “property.” A criminal cannot legally commit robbery without “taking property.” From a practical perspective, this means you can completely avoid robbery by refusing to carry, own or otherwise lay claim to property. Consider this: If you own nothing and go about naked on the street, you cannot be robbed. Legally, no criminal can rob you if you are naked, penniless and possess nothing. Now, if you were naked and had a rope around your neck, a criminal could rob you by threatening to kill you unless you gave him the rope. But again, you can avoid that situation by simply owning or possessing nothing at all, not even a rope. Property is the key to robbery. Without property, you cannot be robbed. Thus, refusing to own or possess anything is the best defense against robbery.

Other crime prevention advocates recommend lesser measures to prevent robbery. They offer advice such as “don’t go out by yourself;” “watch your belongings;” “stay away from bad neighborhoods;” and “don’t show off expensive goods.” Yet these are half-measures. They do not make it legally impossible to suffer robbery. Rather, they still allow robbers an opportunity to commit robbery. If you “don’t go out by yourself,” yet still own property, a criminal can rob you because there is property available to “take by force or fear.” Similarly, even if you don’t “show off expensive goods,” a criminal can still rob you because you have “expensive goods” (which are “personal property”) to take “by force or fear.” It doesn’t matter whether you conceal it; if you have it, someone can take it. In sum, then, these measures may reduce the chance that you will suffer robbery. But they do not render robbery legally impossible.

Wouldn’t you rather make it impossible for a criminal to rob you? A 0% chance of robbery is preferable to a 10% chance. The only sure way to make robbery legally impossible is to stop owning or possessing property. No matter how much you conceal or protect your property, a determined robber always has something to “take by force or fear.” But if you are naked, broke and destitute, you have nothing that can be robbed. The minute you obtain property you are subject to robbery. Why increase your risk? Just don’t own anything; it will render robbery a hollow threat.

Law teaches us many things. Many people think that the law does not provide practical solutions to real problems. But here we see that the law allows us to effectively prevent crime. By understanding what robbery actually means, we can stop robbers before they even obtain the legal opportunity to violate our property rights. Let robbers try to rob you. If you are naked and own nothing, you are completely safe.

Now, a would-be robber might get angry when he discovers you have nothing to “take by force or fear.” In that case, he might attack you with a weapon or his fists. If you are a woman, he might try to sexually assault you. In fact, these chances increase if you are naked on the street. Nonetheless, none of these criminal acts would be robbery. They might be rape, or murder, or attempted rape, or attempted murder, or assault, or sexual assault or battery. But they would not be robbery because the criminal has no “personal property to take.”

Let the law work for you. The law is not just a post hoc remedy intended to deter future criminals from violating your rights. It is a proactive tool. You must merely understand what the law requires before setting off on your daily routine. I have dedicated my life to preventing crime. We can prevent crime by understanding legal definitions. That is why I say to you: If you know what robbery actually means, you can make it impossible for anyone to rob you. Just refuse to own or possess anything.

This is not an absurd recommendation. How can we call a solution absurd if it completely prevents a potential problem? In my opinion, a solution that completely removes the possibility of a problem is a winning solution, not an absurd one. To that extent, heed my advice. If you wish to forever free yourself from robbers, simply give up all your property and live penniless—and naked—on the street. If you do that, you will literally have no “personal property” to “take by force or fear,” not even tattered old rags.

Just imagine how good you’ll feel knowing you can’t be robbed. If someone puts a gun in your face while you’re naked and broke, let him say: “This is a robbery.” You can confidently say: “No it isn’t. I cannot legally be robbed.”

STOP THE INEFFICIENCY : IT'S TIME TO PRIVATIZE PUBLIC SERVICES

INSTALLMENT # 1 : LAW ENFORCEMENT

By : Mr. A. James Meinecke, M.B.A. (Harvard Business School), President and CEO, Tailor-Targeted Systems Solutions (TTSS), LLC, a Delaware Limited Liability Company; Former Director, Blackwater USA, a consulting agency specializing in private security solutions and diplomacy (1997-2004); Former Chief, Atlanta Police Department (1988-1997); Board Member, The Free Market Society (2001-present); Publisher Laissez-Faire, S’il Vous Plait, an informational newsletter serving America’s corporate boards.

Americans want safe streets and safe workplaces. They don’t want to worry about crime and terrorism on their way to work. They want their children to be safe when they use the Internet and email. Americans also want to know that guilty people are being investigated, captured and punished. America trusts its law enforcement personnel to accomplish these tasks. For decades, government-run American law enforcement kept pace with the criminals.

But we can do better. For a long time, America has trusted Federal, State and local government to enforce its laws. Americans elect representatives to pass laws criminalizing certain conduct. They then rely on Executive agencies—such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State police and local police forces—to corral anyone who violates those laws. Although Executive agencies generally do a fine job investigating, interrogating, prosecuting and punishing criminals, they face a key limitation: They are public servants. And public servants never do a job as well as competitive, motivated private contractors.

Here at Tailor-Targeted Systems Solutions LLC, we want to help America. Specifically, we want to make public services more efficient by cutting the “public” out of “public services.” As effective as State law enforcement efforts may be, imagine how much more effective they would be if private enterprise competed for better ways to catch criminals. The simple truth is that government employees do not have an economic incentive to pursue criminals. They receive low pay and generally enjoy few avenues for financial advancement. No matter how hard they work and how many drug dealers they arrest, they get the same $29,578 a year. Additionally, they have a monopoly on their jobs: They do not feel pressure to introduce better solutions to existing problems. After all, there are no rival police departments to keep them on their toes. We believe that America deserves better. When it comes to catching criminals, we think efficiency comes first.

Many people think that certain government functions should not be private, including law enforcement. These people think that government agents should investigate crime because crime is a public concern. They think that police officers should not be loyal to their own economic interests, but rather the “public good.” In essence, this argument boils down to loyalty: To whom should police officers be loyal? Yet this argument misses an essential point. Namely, it forgets that law enforcement aims to efficiently stop crime, not vindicate the popular will. If it came between stopping ten rapes and vaguely fulfilling “the popular will,” I think every American would say that stopping ten rapes is more important. Complacent State officers cannot stop rape as effectively as dedicated private contractors with an economic interest in stopping rape. When law enforcement professionals have no personal economic stake in stopping crime, they have no reason to be efficient. That is why we must privatize law enforcement. We owe it to our children. If we want safe streets, we must change the way we look at loyalty.

Police officers would do a much better job if they knew they would profit from stopping crime. According to popular understanding, police officers pursue crime because they care about the public good. But the public good pays no bills; money does. If our police officers received a special bonus for every crime they prevent—or for every suspected criminal they catch—we would provide a meaningful incentive for our law enforcement personnel to protect us. In this sense, we propose a corporate model for law enforcement. Rather than requiring “loyalty to the State” from our policemen, we should make them loyal to a private law enforcement company. That company, in turn, would contractually pay them a higher salary than the State, plus bonuses for effective criminal management. When people have real economic incentives to get a job done, they do it much more effectively than someone who receives a discouraging flat rate serving “the public good.” In our view, when police officers have an economic motivation to stop crime, they will stop it much more efficiently than they would “serving the public good” for minimal pay. For example, a police officer would much more willingly investigate a dangerous drug ring knowing he might receive an extra $4,000 per arrest than he would if he knew he would receive nothing more than the usual $29,578 a year for zealously investigating the drug ring. He could use that $4,000 to pay medical bills, car notes or credit card debt. He could use the extra money to buy consumer goods or invest in the stock market. At the same time, he would benefit the public by stopping drug crime. Put simply, when people have an economic reason to do something, they take more chances and get jobs done more effectively than they would without the incentive. That is why we must privatize police forces. Public loyalty does not protect our children. Only private loyalty does.

There is no reason why so-called “traditional public services” should not compete in a free market system. The fact that “traditional public services” are so important only supports the argument that private enterprise should provide them. After all, police services are essential to the community. Private enterprise would provide them more efficiently than the State. In that light, Americans should embrace private solutions to traditionally public services. Private police can catch twice as many criminals as public police in the same time. Results are results. When Americans get better results from private enterprise than public services, they will never go back to public services. Additionally, private enterprise must always stay fresh. There will always be a competitor striving to take a company’s place in the market. In that light, competition will make private businesses even more efficient crime stoppers. After all, if a new police company catches more criminals than the old one, the old company will lose its contract. That will force the old company to invent new, more effective crime control measures to keep pace. All the while, the public benefits. When police forces compete for contracts, the criminals lose and the public wins.

Competition among private police forces will not just reduce crime. It will also drive down costs. Unlike inefficient public police forces, private companies will always need to stay ahead of the curve and deliver results. They will have to stop more crime more quickly than their competitors, all for a competitive price. By competing for contracts, private companies will ensure that taxpayers only pay market rates for law enforcement services, not inflated subsidy rates. If a company can’t cut the mustard, it will lose its contract to a company that can arrest more criminals for less money. This is just the way business works. Yet under the public model, if the police force fails to stop crime, it still costs the same amount. This is not just inefficient. It is also expensive and wasteful. This is why we must privatize our police forces. It will not just stop crime and protect children; it will cost less, too.

Private police forces will pursue criminals much more effectively than public ones. Under the public model, police officers always wear uniforms and other “official, State insigniae.” While this adds a special “government aura” to law enforcement, it also gives criminals far too much warning. They can easily run away whenever they see a uniformed policeman approaching, or they can say: “Put the drugs away; here comes a cop car.” Put simply, public police forces stick out like a sore thumb. And when criminals get away, the public suffers.

Not so under the private model. Private police officers are not really “officers” at all. Rather, they are “employees.” As such, they do not wear uniforms. They do not drive marked cars. They look like regular guys on the street. Criminals will never know whether a law enforcement company employee is nearby, ready to arrest them. This is much more efficient than tipping criminals off by wearing ostentatious silver badges and military-style uniforms. When law enforcement goes private, criminals will start looking over both shoulders. And when criminals are scared, they will not rape women, rob banks or murder children.

Private police employees enjoy another key practical advantage over public police officers: Namely, they are not bound to respect any “constitutional rights.” Public police forces are “State actors.” As such, they must follow the United States Constitution and various State constitutions when investigating and prosecuting crime. This drastically impedes their effectiveness, because constitutions interpose “individual rights” that bar highly efficient crime control practices. By contrast, private law enforcement employees face no such limitations. When they set out to arrest a criminal, they do not need to worry about “warrants,” “probable cause,” “reasonable suspicion,” “privacy,” “the Fourth Amendment,” “Miranda warnings,” “Due Process” or other elaborate judicial fantasies. Rather, they can arrest whomever they please, whenever they please. If they need to tap a phone, they tap it. If they need to search a house, they search it. If they need to wring a confession from a suspect, they wring it. In short, criminals have no refuge when facing private law enforcement employees. And all this adds up to safer streets and safer children.

We should not shrink from privatizing our police forces. We owe it to our children. When it comes to any service, the best solutions are private. Private employees with an interest in success do a job much better than poorly-paid bureaucrats who just want to see 5 o’clock and a pension. Just look at the DMV to see public servants at work. Would you trust your wife’s safety to a DMV employee? Of course not. Yet these people are your police officers. Vigorous private enterprise gives Americans their most cherished goods and services, from medicine to fast food. There is no reason why we should not trust private enterprise to give them something as vital as protection from criminals. Additionally, when we privatize police forces, we will open a whole new employment market, boosting job growth and income levels across the country. Enterprising men and women will study to become law enforcement employees. They will learn to make a decent wage catching criminals. The solution is obvious.

We can do it. America deserves more from its law enforcement professionals, not lackluster donut-eating and clockwatching. We must move away from the idea that only government can do certain jobs. As a Director at Blackwater USA, I showed that privately-employed soldiers could do a better job than the U.S. Army in the field. If private enterprise can wage war in Iraq, it can also protect Americans against dangerous criminals at home. And it can do it more efficiently, too. When employees stand to make more money for doing a better job, everybody wins.

We deserve efficiency. We deserve better pay. We deserve solutions that work. That is why we must bring private enterprise to law enforcement.

DINKINS FOR MAYOR : VOTE FOR THE NEW YORK YOU REMEMBER AND LOVE

MAYOR'S MINUTE

By : Mr. David N. Dinkins, Former Mayor of New York City (1990-1993); Professor, Columbia University (1998- present); Democrat; Urban Planner.

Since 1994, many people say that New York City has changed for the better. New skyscrapers dot the skyline. Tourists flock from all over the country and the world to watch Broadway shows and visit art museums. Despite a perceived downturn after 9/11, the real estate market is booming. Investment in the city is at an all-time high. Money is everywhere; there are more banks than grocery stores. Police are everywhere; people feel safe. Thanks to two successive Republican administrations in New York, even folks from Kansas feel right at home in Manhattan.

This all may sound great. But try renting an apartment these days. You need $15,000 in ready cash, plus sterling credit and 10 character references. Try getting a job these days. You need to have four advanced degrees, plus 10 years’ specialized work experience in the securities industry. Try finding a local market. You’ll probably wind up at a K-Mart.

What happened to the New York you remember and love? It’s all gone. It’s all just a bunch of banks, Starbucks coffee houses, luxury development high-rises, high-end souvenir shops and ritzy boutique pet grooming salons. No more urine-drenched subways, graffiti-smeared trains or litter-strewn empty lots. If you go to the East Village these days, you won’t see heroin needles, crack vials or hoboes huddling around blazing garbage cans. No, you’ll see rich white hipsters in sunglasses sipping latte and licking 10-dollar ice cream cones. If you’re an artist, you can’t even rent a roach-infested dump on Avenue A anymore. You need millionaire parents, a guarantor and a savings account to even get near a crappy tenement studio.

Put simply, you’ve been priced out. You can’t afford to live in this New York.

As a lifelong New Yorker, I am committed to reversing this trend. New York used to be scary, and so did New Yorkers. We didn’t used to wear $1000 outfits and walk small dogs on safe streets. No, when I was mayor, we used to dodge bullets and yell across the street: “What the fuck you lookin’ at?” Hey, we might have contended with criminal youth gangs on the corner and stepped over human excrement at the Port Authority Bus Terminal back in 1991, but at least we could afford our apartments. We might have had to fight off bottle-wielding crack addicts every day in 1991, but at least we could get a regular job without five character references.

Sure, the city might have been scary back in the old days. But boy was it more fun. You can’t even get fast sex in Grand Central Terminal anymore without some snoopy Republican city health inspector writing you a summons. You can’t jump turnstiles in the subway anymore; the police can actually track your Metro Card. You can’t smoke marijuana in Washington Square Park anymore; they deployed about 500 cops to make sure “everyone behaves.” Put simply, New York used to be unique, dangerous, smelly, irrepressible, uncompromising, mean, defiant and just plain exciting. Now it’s just populated with boring trust fund beneficiaries who made it no different than Columbus, Ohio. Have you looked at the subways lately? People actually feel safe underground these days. The train cars are clean and modern-looking. There aren’t any urine puddles on the seats, garbage mounds in the stations or muttering mental patients running though the trains anymore. Commuters actually feel safe going to work. They no longer fear roving hoodlums armed with bats, pistols and chains. They just go to the bank, work, get bonuses at Christmas and pay $5,500 a month in rent for a lousy cookie-cutter two-bedroom on 76th Street.

I have a word for all these Johnny-come-latelys: Safe, schmafe. You boring-ass commuters priced everyone out. You transformed New York from an electric, progressive, semi-criminal showcase into a sleepy bourgeois enclave. I have only one thing to say: It’s time to bring back the real New York: The New York you remember and love.

I can’t bear to see the city prosper like this. If prosperity means $10,000 a month for an apartment, you can stick your prosperity where the sun don’t shine. If prosperity means evicting Sal’s Old-Time Italian Pizzeria so a bank can move in I say: “Hell no.” I stand for better times. I stand for the old New York. I stand for low rents and litter. I stand for public sex and urination. I stand for crack, heroin and crystal meth. I stand for 2500 murders a year, not this weak 600 a year shit. And I stand for a New York where anyone can get an apartment in Manhattan, not just British noblemen, bank presidents and frumpy heiresses from South Carolina with impeccable credit. Put simply, I will give New York back to the real New Yorkers. If you love New York, you will vote for me in 2009.

I have a real plan to save New York from its descent into mediocrity and boredom. If elected, I promise to make New York look, sound and smell like it did in 1991. That means eliminating all these boring luxury high-rise developments. New York must be New York for everyone again, not just yuppies with six-figure incomes and big Christmas bonuses. I promise to forbid builders from constructing these overpriced, inaccessible faux-brick condos with nice lobbies and doormen. When I’m mayor, I promise to build only flophouses and broken-down tenements. I promise to build scary-looking brick project buildings and gray government offices. To combat prosperity, I promise to raze sanitized new constructions and transform them into vacant lots. I further promise to release petty criminals and mental patients onto the street. I will allow them to live in those lots. Last, I promise to fill every vacant lot with garbage, broken bottles, empty beer cans, dead animals, brick piles and sharp metal objects. Additionally, I promise to permit delinquents to graffiti every bare wall adjacent to the lots. In short, I promise to make New York accessible to all New Yorkers again.

New York smells too good these days. It is time to save money by cutting public sanitation and garbage collection. In my day as mayor, you couldn’t walk down the street without whiffing stale urine, rotting garbage and generally horrible scents wafting from every alley and trash heap. That odor gave New York character. I am committed to making New York smell like New York again. By cutting trash collection in half, I am confident that we can save Manhattan from smelling like a perfume parlor. Rather, we can make it smell like 1991 again: Like an oppressive, overpowering mixture of urine, human waste, discarded old food and decomposing, wet garbage. Needless to say, these measures will also boost rat and cockroach reproduction. When I was mayor, New York was open to everyone, including roaches and rats. It’s time to make New York accessible to everyone again, including our scurrying mammalian and six-legged friends. The time for economic, sanitary and social discrimination is over. If that means some folks from rural Pennsylvania won’t charter a bus to come see Phantom of the Opera this summer, I respond with an old New York saying: “Who gives a fuck!”

It’s also time to stop discriminating against the homeless. For the last 15 years, Republican mayors have engaged in a deliberate program to push the homeless from public view in Manhattan. They thought that homeless people made tourists, commuters and foreign travelers uncomfortable, so they forced them from Manhattan. This was unjust. In my New York, we do not imply that anyone is “better” than another person, homeless, mad, smelly, bizarre or otherwise.

I pledge to make New York accessible to everyone. That includes shit-stained bag ladies and maniacal cross-dressing mental patients who expose themselves to teenage tourists on Broadway. It is no excuse to say that “homeless people embarrass visitors.” Homeless people are people, too. They have a right to get drunk on sidewalks and lay down outside theaters like everyone else. They might not live like commuters and tourists. But that does not give government a right to treat them like the trash they sleep in. Put simply, I promise to treat all New Yorkers equally, and I promise to reverse the Republican policy favoring tourists and commuters over the homeless. In my New York, beggars, Italian tourists, black guys from Brooklyn white kids from Idaho and CEOs are all the same. No one gets special protection when I’m in charge. And no one gets forced to move simply because they are “different” from everyone else. No one gets forced to move because they “embarrass” visitors. I don’t care if beggars smell like slime and wear capes made of garbage bags. They are New Yorkers. They are vital members of our urban community.

We must also combat growing cleanliness and moral propriety in New York. For years now, Republican mayors have waged war on graffiti, porn shops, dirty bookstores, dance halls and nude dancing clubs. They harshly punished graffiti artists and used zoning laws to eject certain “immoral” businesses from neighborhoods. This, in turn, made neighborhoods more “desirable,” allowing greedy landlords to inflate already high rents to dizzying levels.

This is unacceptable. In my New York, I promise to bring dirt, grime and smut back to the streets. Who wants another bank branch? Who wants another Gap or Banana Republic outlet? And who the hell wants another Red Lobster, Outback Steakhouse or Disney-themed restaurant on 42nd Street? When I’m mayor, I will drive these overpriced shops from our neighborhoods. I will allow graffiti artists to befoul and stain every front door and bare wall all over the city. I will allow litter. And I will allow sex shops, dirty movie theaters and nude dancing clubs to open back up for business in prime Manhattan locations. I don’t care if they do business within 400 feet of a school. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the moral fortitude of commuters’ children. When I’m mayor, life will be dangerous, disgusting and exciting again. If that means there is a nasty bookshop right next door to a school, so be it. If that means suburban weekenders have to dodge pimps, hustlers and tramps on 42nd Street rather than clowns advertising a Mickey Mouse show, so be it. This is New York, after all, not Orlando. It ain’t all fun and games.

New York has become too safe. When I was mayor, people were afraid to leave their homes. Juvenile gangs, junkies, hired killers and insane people prowled the streets and the subway. We used to have ten murders a day. People didn’t want to move here. Visitors steered clear. Those brave enough to visit avoided the subway like the plague. When I was mayor, the subway system was run-down, dark, soiled, dangerous and antiquated. It smelled so bad you almost needed to wear a mask. Thugs and panhandlers rampaged through the trains, bothering commuters and harassing visitors.

Yet today, people are not afraid to leave their homes. Visitors think it’s “cool” to come to New York because they have nothing to worry about. There are no more roving gangs. It no longer smells like urine and people ride a first-rate subway system with brand new cars. Even Finnish people carrying cameras and maps feel safe enough to ride the “3” train uptown these days.

Some say that safety has helped New York. I say it has ruined New York. What good is to be safe when safety makes you spend $5,000 a month in rent for a shitty apartment? What good is a safe, clean, friendly subway system when it costs $2.25 a ride? In my view, safety made New York boring and expensive. Now that people think “New York is safe,” every last rich trust funder wants to be here and gets Dad to lay out $25,000 for a security deposit.

I promise to end this disgrace. The only real way to make New York New York again is to end safety. To do this, I promise to cut the NYPD in half. That will give roving gangs, street hustlers and bat-wielding nuts the breathing room they need to start terrifying visitors and trust fund kids again. It will also give vagrants, vagabonds and vandals the breathing room they need to destroy property, steal fixtures, break windows and scatter garbage all over the streets and subways. Additionally, I promise to command the NYPD to cease investigating “quality-of-life” offenses. From now on, officers will not issue summonses for failing to pick up dog droppings, urinating on the sidewalk or engaging in lewd acts in public parks. From now on, officers will not pursue underage drinking or turnstile jumping. I promise to make life in New York an exciting “free-for-all” bursting with crime, alcohol, art, homelessness, odor and threatening real-life drama on every corner. Before long, visitors will be scared to even step into Central Park in broad daylight.

In short, I promise not only to make New York dangerous again, but also to encourage a carnival atmosphere in which “anything goes.” There was a time when it was dangerously fun to walk the Manhattan streets. After 15 years under Republicans, however, New York scarcely feels like New York anymore.

It is time to turn back the clock. Let us join together to bring back the New York we remember and love. Let us make New York accessible to everyone again. Let us bring back the smells, the crime, the graffiti, the litter, the porn shops, the insane beggars, the murders, the drugs, the sleazy dance halls, the dive bars, the sex shops, the low rents, the local diners and the mom-and-pop stores. Together, we can wake New York from its boring slumber to drive out the chain stores and banks. Together, we can make the city dangerous, frightening, intimidating and disgusting again.

If we work together, we can once again proudly scare the shit out of every tourist and make every commuter flee in panic every afternoon.

I love New York. How about you?

LET'S RETHINK THE FOURTH AMENDMENT

By : Special Agent Frank L. Fahnding, Search & Seizure Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C.

In the workplace, we constantly encounter annoyances that make life difficult. During our professional lives, we contend with bothersome supervisors, challenging accounts, deadlines and broken vending machines. We deal with demoralizing performance reviews, late nights and lost weekends. These things come with our jobs because circumstances change. That’s life. And we must strive to adapt.

But all these workplace challenges pale in comparison to the institutional difficulties I face as a law enforcement professional. I have a responsibility to root out child molesters, murderers, car thieves and stock market fraud artists. We all want to catch these scumbags. Yet I can’t do it. Why? Simple: The United States Constitution. To be more precise, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Never before has a single sentence both permitted so much crime and made my job so difficult. I would rather deal with a fire-breathing bitch who castrates me daily at the office than to live one more day with this hateful piece of constitutional text.

To catch criminals, you must find evidence. Evidence proves people guilty. That’s just how our system works. In most cases, you know if a guy is guilty if he dresses a certain way, acts a certain way, talks a certain way or if he has something to hide—or gain. But for certain reasons unknown to me, our Nation created a justice system that requires the government to find evidence to prove people guilty. It is not enough to look at a gang member and say: “Oh yeah, it was him; just look at the prison tattoos, the bandana and the torn jeans.” No, you need to call up some witnesses who swear under oath that they saw the guy pull out a knife, smack an old woman in the face and take her lunch money. If you can’t do that, you need to find the knife, find the lunch money and ask the old woman if “this is the man who did this to you.” As you can see, this is a tough business, because it is rarely easy to scrape up evidence.

Our Fourth Amendment makes the job even tougher. It provides: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath of Affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Now, I don’t speak 18th Century early American English, but this basically means that you can’t search people or places without “probable cause” or a “warrant.” It also means you can’t arrest people without “probable cause” or a “warrant.” You have no idea how difficult this is. Do you know how inconvenient it is to get a warrant? I receive tips about drug dealers all damn day, yet I can’t tell you how many times they have escaped while I try to get a goddamned warrant. Other times, my agents haul crooks into the station for robbery, then some ACLU lesbian barges in claiming we had “no probable cause” and I have to turn them loose. Or a kid says his scoutmaster has nudie pictures on his computer, so I send over some agents to take the computer. Before you know it, some bright-eyed Harvard Law grad shows up at the field office waving the Constitution in my fucking face telling me we “live in a police State.”

What a royal pain in the ass. I’m just trying to do my job and clean up the streets. Nobody likes killers, robbers, child molesters, terrorists, fraud artists, hustlers, pimps, vagabonds, ne’er-do-wells, drunks, hobos, bail-jumpers, parole violators, hit-and-run drivers, anarchists, thugs, deadbeats or gangsters. Yet I can’t effectively jail these assholes because the Fourth Amendment makes me assemble “probable cause” before I can arrest them. Do you know how much crime I could stop if I could just search people at random? Do you know how many drunk drivers I could catch if I could just arrest everyone at a bar with a parking lot? Do you know how many children I could protect if I could watch everyone’s computers at all times, then arrest anyone who logs onto a porn site? Do you know how many drugs I could get off the street if I could just walk into anyone’s home without waiting for some egghead magistrate to give me a warrant? Look, I know who the bad guys are. Let me do my job and arrest them. I can’t be bothered with all this legal mumbo-jumbo.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you’re going to say: “The Fourth Amendment protects fundamental liberties by requiring governmental officials to assemble evidence before invading citizens’ liberty.” Well guess what? I don’t care about criminals’ liberty. I know a child molester when I see one, and if that means knocking down some doors and performing a couple groundless strip-searches every now and then, by God I’m going to do it. Protecting children means we sometimes need to yield our precious “privacy.” That’s what the critics do not understand. The Fourth Amendment does not guarantee “privacy.” It just forbids “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Frankly, I don’t care about your privacy. If you want to have sex or masturbate, there’s nothing in the Constitution that guarantees you a private place to do it. Go ahead and roll the dice. I’m looking for the bad guys. There is nothing “unreasonable” about that, is there? If you ask me, no search or seizure is “unreasonable” if it is intended to find bad guys. Screw your privacy. I have children to protect.

If we really want to stop crime, we must rethink the Fourth Amendment. Back in 1787, our Founding Fathers had a clear vision in mind when they wrote the Amendment. They wanted to stop British troops from rifling through colonists’ homes and frisking them on the street. Well, we don’t live under British occupation anymore. And the Framers would be horrified to see how modern-day rapists, thugs and drug pushers use the Fourth Amendment to bail themselves out of trouble. The Fourth Amendment was intended to stop the British army, not the American police. Yet this is precisely what has happened. Today, every American police force must sit around waiting for warrants while criminals run rampant across the countryside, terrorizing old ladies, children and handicapped invalids. Our Framers would never have approved this result. I say it’s time to put the law first. It is time to stop defending criminals. And it is time to make my job easier.

During the 1930s, Germany greatly reduced crime by abolishing constitutional liberty guarantees. The German government achieved an unparalleled degree of social tranquility by permitting police forces to do their jobs without interference from courts, lawyers and civil liberties groups. In Germany, private citizens could make private complaints to the police, and the police could make arrests based upon those complaints. They could also freely search suspects’ homes without warrants, then question the suspects based upon the search. In almost every case, they won convictions. Crime plummeted. The German government understood that if someone acts suspiciously, he is probably a criminal. It made no sense to wait for a court to issue a warrant; a swift arrest did the job without the red tape. This is exactly what we should do in America. If we want to really stop drug dealers and smut peddlers, we must abolish constitutional guarantees that shield criminals. Crime in Germany was low in the 1930s because the German government did what had to be done to stop criminals. We can learn from their example.

Privacy fosters crime. True, everyone relishes the idea no can watch them at particular times or in particular places. But criminals exploit privacy to conspire, plot, terrorize, swindle and bag narcotics. The Fourth Amendment perpetuates privacy and protects it. In so doing, it aids the wicked and punishes the good. As a society, we should be less solicitous about criminals and more attuned to the people. The People want less crime, not more. Because the Fourth Amendment leads to more crime, I believe we should abolish it. After all, we live in a democracy. Shouldn’t we give the people what they want once in a while? By abolishing inane warrant requirements, probable cause burdens and expensive lawsuits that penalize police for investigating criminals, we will stop crime before it happens. By eliminating privacy, we can sniff out crime before it becomes crime. Good citizens have a right to know what suspicious citizens are up to. That is why we must completely rethink the Fourth Amendment.

I have a dream that we will one day live in a country that punishes criminals rather than protects them. I have a dream that the police will one day have the power to collect information about all citizens without fearing lawsuits or legal sanction. I have dream that law enforcement officials will have the power to listen in on any suspicious phone conversations without waiting for a magistrate to find “probable cause.” I have a dream that our Nation will protect our children, not allow molesters to withhold evidence from prosecutors and courts. I believe that we can reduce crime in America. We must merely have the courage to abolish outmoded constitutional text. We can do it. We can protect the children. I know that every good citizen would be perfectly willing to cede his privacy in order to stop crime and to protect the children.

There are some things in life more important than privacy. We all want to live in a safe society. We revile murderers, robbers, thieves, pickpockets and stock market pirates. Don’t we have a right to effectively pursue these pernicious evildoers? I believe we do. And by abolishing the Fourth Amendment, we will allow law enforcement professionals to effectively protect us all from them.

On that happy day, my job will be easier. When I can do my job without difficulty, you will sleep better at night—unless you hear a knock at your door at 3 AM. But never fear: Even if you are under investigation, remember that you are doing your part to protect the children. You want to protect the children, don’t you?

YOU CAN'T ESCAPE THE POLICE -- OR THE EXECUTIVE

AN ESSAY

In law school, I loved Constitutional Law because it addressed issues larger than mere property ownership. It provided insights into American history and American values. It also revealed our government’s intricate structure, as well as the theories intended to preserve that structure. When the Framers drafted the Constitution in 1787, they had only one thing in mind: To ensure that Americans did not live in an absolute monarchy.

As a law student, I did not have time to consider the historical context to my studies. I simply tried to memorize the catchphrases and verbal formulas needed to correctly analyze questions on an examination. Thankfully, however, I had enough intellectual curiosity to recognize that something much larger was afoot in constitutional doctrine. These cases, I thought, discuss monumental questions about government, power and civilization that have persisted for centuries—and in many different countries than the United States. After law school, I readjusted my mind away from pure legal doctrine. I freshened my legal knowledge with my background in history, language and literature. With time, I began to truly understand Constitutional Law.

In 1787, Americans did not want absolute monarchy because they saw that unchecked executive power can subjugate a society. During the colonial period, royal agents roamed at will in North America, levying taxes, conducting searches, suppressing political dissent and throwing people into prison without charges. By constitutional text, the Framers clearly delineated between legislative, executive and judicial authority. Any power delegated to one branch could not be exercised by another branch. Article I specifically listed Congressional powers, and they far outnumbered executive powers. Benjamin Franklin so loathed executive power that he proposed a two-branch government. He thought that a Congress and a Supreme Court would be sufficient. In the end, the Framers agreed on a three-branch system, confident that the executive would remain in check.

But has the executive remained in check? And why were the Framers so wary about the executive? Even during law school, I saw the reason. Executive power is ominous because it is uncertain. The Constitution simply says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Article II, § 1. There is no further definition. Later in the text, the Article II tells us that the President shall be the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,” Article II, § 2, and that he “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Article II, § 3. What can we infer from these cryptic words? We see first that the President has “the” executive power. Second, we see that the President controls the military. We can infer that the military, then, is under executive control. We begin to see the nature of executive power: It is armed force. The executive is the guy with the guns. This accords with historical understanding. Absolute monarchs in Europe wielded absolute power because they controlled the armed forces. If someone did something they did not like, they simply crushed them with military power.

He who controls the army generally controls everything. This has been true since Greco-Roman times. Roman emperors could never count on lasting power without the army behind them. In medieval times, lords dominated their lands because they had armed knights to intimidate their rivals. And in the era of early European nation-states, Kings kept power by marshaling large national armies that could crush dissent. The Framers knew this history well. They knew that in England, absolute monarchs with absolute executive power could do much more than crush dissent. They could alter a nation’s religious beliefs, summarily punish “undesirables” and keep people imprisoned without charge. They could penalize speech simply because they disagreed with its content. Apparently, the Framers thought they could create a “tempered” executive that would maintain military control without using it to tyrannize the population. They trusted the Constitution’s divided structure—as well as human reason—to prevent individual Presidents from running amok. They also put their trust in something that seems archaic to us today: An oath. Incoming Presidents must publicly declare: “I solemnly swear [to] faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Article II, § 1, Clause 7. Lesser executive officers must make a similar oath “to support the Constitution.” Article VI, § 3.

Are oaths and hypertechnical textual niceties enough to keep executive power in line? I have often marveled at this Nation’s ability to keep the constitutional order. After all, a ruthless President could easily use his military power to fatally undermine the supposedly “coequal” Congress and Supreme Court. After all, in practical terms, what could stop the President from ordering the army to take over the Supreme Court if it rendered a decision he did not like? True, another court would say he needs to show cause for “seizing” the justices under the Fourth Amendment, but if the President controls the executive, who will execute the law against him? Courts would merely breathe hot air in his direction. Without force, legal pronouncements mean nothing. Cf. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, Introduction to Legal Doctrine, § D (“The law is bound up with the authority to compel.”). Perhaps military officers would refuse to carry out such an order. But military officers are executive officers loyal to the President. If a President were truly ruthless, he would simply put guns in the faces of anyone who stood in his way. Only his “oath” prevents him from doing exactly that.

We do not yet live under an executive dictatorship. But that is not to say that the executive has not amassed enormous power in our everyday lives. Because executive power is so fluid, it can easily spawn new subsidiary organizations to do its work. In 1787, the Framers mentioned only the “Army and Navy” as executive weapons. In the intervening generations, however, the executive has added new weapons to its arsenal.

In both the federal government and in every State, executive institutions have organized police forces. I wrote several months ago that modern-day uniformed police forces were nonexistent in the 18th Century. Monarchs used “constables” and “magistrates” to carry out individual arrests and investigations. There was no generalized “social surveillance” or “patrolling” as there is now. Monarchs also used their constables and magistrates to summarily detain people without charge. The Framers were keenly aware of this and recoiled from unjust detention practices. Reformers in both America and France associated imprisonment with the “excesses of sovereign power” and “arbitrary royal decision.” Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975), p. 119. But in the 19th Century, executive power introduced “centralized police” to carry out a whole new program of “[searching for] criminals, urban surveillance and political supervision.” Id. at p. 213. This was a new development, because unlike the old royal magistrates, these police forces concerned themselves with “minuteness of detail,” creating a “permanent, exhaustive omnipresent surveillance” through “thousands of eyes posted everywhere, mobile attentions ever on the alert.” Id. at pp. 213-214. Executive intrusion into everyday life, then, ceased to be arbitrary or sporadic. Through modern police practice, such intrusion became systematic.

Modern police power does not just supervise; it also collects information about everyone and everything. Foucault noted that 19th Century police forces assembled “immense texts, reports and registers” that compiled a “permanent account of individuals’ behavior.” Discipline and Punish, at p. 214. In this light, we see that the executive controls far more than brute military force. It also controls an insidious surveillance apparatus that obtains knowledge about almost every citizen. The Framers could not have foreseen this development. Yet it has undeniably increased executive power, for increased knowledge inevitably leads to greater political authority. The Constitution’s text can do little against modern police practices, because the text dates from an era when such practices did not exist. The industrial revolution introduced monumental social and philosophical changes, including the social tendency to more scrupulously “discipline” individual citizens as “parts” in an efficient new industrial economy. But these changes postdated the Constitution. Without core constitutional text to constrain them, executive practices grew freely to accommodate the new society.

I mention all this to underscore how powerful the police can be. This troubles me, because I know—as a matter of constitutional law—that no governmental branch should wield excessive power in relation to the other two. Modern police power translates into increased executive power. Modern police power was largely unknown to the Framers, and the Constitution serves as a poor check upon it. The Framers did not live in a world where uniformed executive deputies roamed the landscape exercising executive power over every citizen within their view. True, one may argue that constant executive power vindicates the legislative will because it leads to more rigorous enforcement. But enforcement carries a price. After all, the People created the Constitution on the understanding that their individual rights would be protected. Overly zealous police authority creates untold opportunities for government to violate those rights. It also creates an aura of suspicion between government and the individual, because police authority constantly watches individuals with a view to “catching wrongdoers.” No one likes to be watched, especially when he knows that the observer is scrutinizing every action for signs of “illegality.” Worse, the modern police officer has enormous discretionary power. It is his call whether or not to arrest someone for something he sees. That is genuine executive power: One man decides—without consulting a court—whether another man goes to jail. If he is in a good mood, he may look the other way. If he is not—or if he simply does not like the man he watches—he may decide to lock the “suspect” up. Just as in Henry VIII’s time, one man’s bodily liberty and comfort depends upon the whim of another man.

In America, we do not live in a true “police state.” But we do live with an executive that enjoys far more power than was originally intended. To illustrate just how dangerous modern police forces can be, consider the German example. Recently, I learned that in early Nazi Germany a massive power struggle took place between Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goering for control over Germany’s local police forces. Although we tend to think that Hitler had absolute control over Germany’s executive power from the moment he seized power in 1933, in fact it took several years for him to consolidate his enforcement apparatus. Without controlling all local police forces, the Nazis could not implement their horrific surveillance and detention practices. To literally spy on, arrest and detain people, the Nazis needed armed men with “the appearance of legal authority.” Himmler understood that, and he knew he could increase his own political power by consolidating control over the police. By 1935, he absorbed all local police forces under SS control, which in turn allowed him to investigate, arrest, detain and “legally kill” people at will. Put simply, without a comprehensive police force, the Nazis could not have perpetrated their atrocities. The police knew where to find people and where to arrest them. They had all the information they needed.

Although such excesses could not happen in America today under current law, this example shows how dangerous the police can be in a modern state. If applied to the wrong ends, police forces can make any citizen “disappear.” They have the information. They have the brute force. And they have the “legal authority” to carry out a tyrant’s wishes. In other words, they have the capacity to allow executive domination over society. They are a miniature “civil army” that stands ready to make war on any private citizen. In America, we can only trust that principled judges and elected officials will faithfully interpret the Constitution to protect us from unbridled executive power. Even then, judges stand at a disadvantage, because—as Hamilton said—they have only “reason,” not the “purse or the sword.” Federalist No. 78. The executive has the sword; and in unscrupulous hands, the sword beats reason.

During President George W. Bush’s presidency, America flirted with executive excess. Although the Framers could not have foreseen the power of modern police forces, they did know that executive tyranny depends on arbitrary detention. That is why they specifically safeguarded the “writ of habeas corpus” in the Constitutional text. Article I, § 9, Clause 2. Basically, any detained person may demand to know the legal reason why he is being detained. He may submit a “writ” to the person detaining him, which requires the jailer to tell a judge the exact legal authority authorizing detention. If there is no legal authority authorizing detention, the prisoner must be released. Habeas corpus puts a premium on individual liberty, and it forces the executive to follow written law when it detains people. After all, the worst tyrants detain people for no reason other than personal whim. Under habeas corpus, that is not allowed. Nonetheless, during the “War on Terror,” President Bush repeatedly detained suspects without charge, hearing, or access to counsel, sometimes for years on end. Even a generally conservative Supreme Court recognized that this represented a dangerous increase in executive power because it directly violated constitutional text. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004); Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006); Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. __ (2008). Still, the Court could not categorically agree that Bush acted wrongly. They never reached anything approaching consensus on detainees’ rights. Dissenting justices even went so far as to say that the President could summarily jail anyone on his own authority as long as he tendered a “national security” reason or afforded some “modified” hearing process.

Bush’s actions set a bad precedent for executive power. As we have seen, executive power is hard to define and even harder to contain. Once an executive institution implements a practice without criticism, it is impossible to take it back. It “becomes” executive power. By manipulating public fears about national security, Bush managed to circumvent a core constitutional protection for all Americans. The Supreme Court’s reaction to this usurpment left much to be desired. The executive is strong enough to sustain itself even if the Court does not intervene against it. But when the Court is partially complicit in executive excess, it irretrievably damages individual liberties.

In short, Bush added another weapon to the executive’s considerable arsenal. We should fear the executive because the executive has guns, wiretaps, roaming investigators and the power to detain. In coming years, we can only hope that the American people act to curtail some of this accumulated executive authority. Still, the executive does not lightly relinquish its powers. Why should it? Can an “oath” really stand up to armed men? Will the People deny executive authority if the executive trumps up “national security” fears? In the final analysis, we live under a limited government of separated powers. But when one branch has overwhelming practical and institutional advantages over the others, can we really trust it to protect us? Perhaps I exaggerate slightly to make my point, yet my point remains: There is nothing but tenuous principle to defend us against executive tyranny. We have already acquiesced in many abuses. A truly unscrupulous executive has the weapons to sweep away any opposition, judicial or legislative. All he needs is an “emergency” to rally frantic public support.