Enjoy Your Labor Day!

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It's Labor Day, the last holiday of the summer.  And if you're like me, you're probably taking the opportunity to enjoy a nice warm day with family and friends.  Maybe a walk in the woods.  Maybe a dip in the lake.  Maybe a traditional cookout.  In large part it's just simple enjoyment of the blessings of life; and in part it's also a celebration of the remarkably widespread prosperity that America has brought to its citizens, even regular working people, that is unique in human history.

Or maybe you're a progressive.  In that case, you are probably spending your Labor Day overcome with guilt and shame.

Just a couple of weeks ago I took a look at progressive psychology as revealed in a letter to a New York Times advice column.  The letter writer, who signed him or herself "Whitey," claimed to be overcome with shame by the very fact of being "white":

I’m riddled with shame. White shame. . . .  I feel like there is no “me” outside of my white/upper middle class/cisgender identity.  I feel like my literal existence hurts people, like I’m always taking up space that should belong to someone else. . . .

Many commenters on the web read the letter and thought it had to be a parody.

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Is There Any Real Slum In New York Any More?

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Is There Any Real Slum In New York Any More?

Looking back you have to wonder what I was thinking, but I actually moved into New York City in 1975.  That was approximately the year when New York hit rock bottom.  It was the year that New York City kind-of defaulted on its debt.  Read the details of that episode in the New Yorker here.  The kind-of default was in October 1975, right between when I took the bar exam and found out that I had passed.  What was I getting into?

During the decade of the 1970s New York City lost more than 800,000 people in population, about 10% of the total, going from 7.89 million in the 1970 census to 7.07 million in the 1980 census.  The sharp decline in population meant that large amounts of housing became vacant.  The housing in question was concentrated in certain neighborhoods that were being rapidly overwhelmed by crime and abandoned by productive citizens.  Fires in these neighborhoods became pervasive.  This was the era of "Fort Apache, the Bronx" -- the title of a 1981 movie starring Paul Newman that memorialized that sad and dangerous time.  

The neighborhoods in question were what we would recognize as classic "slums," characterized by a combination of deteriorated housing stock, high crime, vandalism, and destruction that included pervasive arson.  You may recognize the names of some of these neighborhoods:  the South Bronx; Harlem and much of the Lower East Side in Manhattan; and, in Brooklyn, much of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, East New York and Brownsville.  Two of the very worst areas were the center of the South Bronx and the most eastern part of the Lower East Side of Manhattan (the area of Avenues C and D).  By the time the mid-80s rolled around, many of the buildings in these areas had been burned out and knocked down, replaced by vacant lots.  Even as the city revived in the 90s and 2000s, new private investment in these areas was minimal to non-existent.  The vacant lots persisted for decades.  Put simply, nobody would invest private money in these places.  It was seen as just too risky.

Which brings me to a couple of postings today at a site called New York YIMBY ("Yes In My Back Yard"). . . .

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A Closer Look At Our Over-Criminalized And Badly Slanted Legal System

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It's hard to think of any good that can possibly come out of the ongoing maniacal efforts to use the criminal law to overturn the results of our last election.  But here's the best I can offer:  At least we are getting a closer look than we usually get at our over-criminalized and steeply slanted legal system.  And maybe a few people are starting to pay attention.  We've let this monster get way out of control.  Can it be reined in?  Maybe a little.

If you are unfamiliar with this subject, you can get a lot of background by reading through my Archives under the tag "Phony Prosecutions."  There are about 60 posts there, covering everything from the extraordinary number of crimes (over 4000 just in the federal books!), to vague statutes, to shakedowns of legitimate businesses, to takedowns of political opponents, to prosecutorial coercion of witnesses, to misuse of civil asset forfeitures, and much more.  

The most recent post, just a couple of days ago noted that Michael Cohen had pled guilty to a violation of the campaign finance law because supposedly the payoff to Stormy Daniels constituted a campaign rather than a personal expense, and therefore Cohen's advancement of same constituted a campaign contribution in excess of the allowed limit of $2700.  However, under the same law, had the same payment instead been made with campaign funds contributed in accordance with the limits in a desperate attempt to avoid criminality, the payment could then just as easily have been prosecuted as misuse of campaign funds for a personal expense -- that's a crime too!  They've got you coming and going!  Everything is a crime! . . .

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Manhattan Contrarian Guide To Campaign Finance Law

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As a sophisticated observer of the political scene and reader of the Manhattan Contrarian, you undoubtedly know why we have strict and intricate campaign finance laws:  They are "to get money out of politics."  Or something like that.

Or are they really about protecting incumbents and putting roadblocks in the way of challengers?  Or, even worse, are they about giving partisan prosecutors some tools to take down inconvenient Republicans while Democrats get a pass?  I'll let you be the judge.

First, the basics of how this works.  Much of which, by the way, you can blame on the recently-departed John McCain, via the so-called McCain-Feingold campaign finance law of 2002.  One of his many mistakes in life -- but then, we all make mistakes.  The central provision of this campaign finance law is that contributions to "campaigns" for federal office are limited in amount, essentially to $2700 per election cycle for an individual or $5400 for a couple.  Obviously, for such a restriction to work, it must then be illegal for a "campaign" to pay "campaign expenses" from a source other than the funds contributed in accordance with the limits.  Equally obviously, since you have raised "campaign funds" for your "campaign" in accordance with strict limits and representations, it must be illegal to use the "campaign funds" for other than "campaign purposes."  And, to make this all work seamlessly, all "campaign expenses" over $200 must be reported and accurately described to the bureaucrats at the Federal Election Commission.  Needless to say, any violation of these rules is a crime.

So let's see how these rules get applied in a few recent examples:

Trump/Cohen . . .

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Things That Are Over -- Although Their Proponents Don't Admit It Yet

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Many things in this world end up failing miserably.  In the business arena, the capitalist system puts a mercifully quick end to thousands of seemingly good ideas that just don't catch on.  Do you remember the Edsel?  Or, maybe, the DeLorean?  Or the restaurant down your block that barely lasted six months?  But that's just capitalism.  In other arenas, particularly the political, failed ventures can continue long after they have failed and after the failure has become obvious to everyone who looks.  With vociferous backers and, generally, the coercive power of the state behind them, they can carry on and on, even though, in every real sense, they are over.  

There are lots of things out there that are over, but pretend not to be.  Perhaps some examples of this phenomenon may spring to your mind.  Many spring to mine -- this will be a good subject for a continuing series here at MC.  Let's get started today with a few easy examples. . . .

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Can The New York Attorney General's Office Be Rescued?

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You probably know that the population and economy of New York State are in long-term decline relative to the rest of the country.  For example, in the 1980 census New York had 17.6 million people, versus 9.7 million for Florida and 14.2 million for Texas; now in 2018 it is 19.9 million people for New York, 21.3 million for Florida, and 28.7 million for Texas.  For another example, back in the 90s New York had close to 9% of the nation's GDP; today it's under 8%.    

If you had to pick one factor as the most important cause of this situation, it would have to be the high taxes.  (Neither Florida nor Texas has an income tax at all.)  But taxes are not the only factor.  Don't underestimate the adverse business climate.  And at the top of the list of things contributing to New York's adverse business climate, we have the Office of the Attorney General.

At one time, the AG's Office in New York was relatively sleepy, particularly with most law enforcement jurisdiction vested in separately-elected county DAs.  In my lifetime up to 2000, none of the occupants of the AG's office ever was a serious contender for governor.  Then from 1999 to 2006 we got as AG the desperately ambitious Eliot Spitzer.  Spitzer figured out that he had at his command an old and vaguely worded securities-law-enforcement statute called the Martin Act, and that on threat of Martin Act enforcement, any bank would quickly pay a few hundred million dollars to avoid criminal prosecution.  After using that strategy and multiple shakedowns to keep his name in the news for years, Spitzer claimed the title of "sheriff of Wall Street," and rode that horse to become Governor in 2007 (a position in which he lasted barely more than a year).  Andrew Cuomo became Spitzer's immediate successor as AG, and next thing you know, he was governor too! . . .

So a new person will be elected to this office in November, with a primary in September.  Is there any chance that this ship can be righted?  The short answer is, the odds are poor.

The two leading Democratic candidates in the race appear to be Zephyr Teachout and Letitia James.  Teachout is a progressive professor at Fordham Law, who gave Andrew Cuomo a run for his money in a primary four years ago.  James is the current "Public Advocate" of New York City -- a job with essentially no real responsibilities, but which has been used in the past as a launching pad by ambitious pols, most notably Bill de Blasio. . . .

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