#bob mcmanus

[insidewarp]

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the nincompoopery of New York’s city council. Now along comes Upper West Side member Helen Rosenthal to crank up the stupid, declaring her appreciation of the vandalism last week of a statue depicting the globally famous photo of a U.S. sailor kissing a dental technician in Times Square to mark the end of the Second World War. “I appreciate someone recognizing that a random man grabbing a random woman is completely inappropriate,” said Rosenthal—having a #MeToo moment as she prepares to run for city comptroller. Presentism—judging past events solely by current standards—is usually mindless, opportunistic, and petty, but Rosenthal’s politicized ahistoricism is breathtaking even by these standards. The image, captured on August 14, 1945, by Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, brilliantly captured the joy that swept over Times Square, and the nation, as news arrived of Japan’s surrender, bringing to an end the most sanguinary conflict in human history. ... Whether Rosenthal is aware of the ignorance she radiates or is merely taking advantage of a random news event is a matter for herself and her conscience. She should be aware, however, that serious people think that she looks ridiculous. And by the way, vandalism of any sort always is to be condemned, never appreciated. Those who aspire to high office in New York shouldn’t have to be reminded of that.

Bob McManus,  Vandalizing History

https://www.city-journal.org/helen-rosenthal-times-square-statue

[gettothedancing]

"Segregated by Academic Achievement"

"The assertion, of course, allows him to gloss over how tens of thousands of his union teachers fail to prepare middle-schoolers for such high schools."

[arcticdementor]

Which is worse — ghost guns themselves, or a legal system that sets someone free three bloody times following arrests for building ghost guns?

Police say Edison Cruz of the Bronx has been trying hard to go to jail, which is not easy to do in New York City. He kept getting arrested and they kept letting him go and, so really, what’s an up-and-coming convict to do?

Kill somebody, police say. And shoot two innocent bystanders. With a “ghost gun” — a handgun assembled illegally from mail-order parts.

So, persistence does pay: After three previous ghost-gun-related busts — followed by two instant releases under New York’s insane bail laws and then a timely bail-out arranged by a Bronx “alternative justice” group — Cruz was free finally to make the big time.

He now stands accused of second-degree murder, manslaughter and weapons charges — a list likely to grow as authorities finish sorting the spare parts he allegedly used to build untraceable weapons.

As a hobby, police say.

That last should scare you. It’s not like New York needs a new source of illegal weapons.

Then again, which is worse — ghost guns themselves, or a legal system that sets someone free three bloody times following arrests for building ghost guns?

…

Ghost guns are the bugbear of the moment, because only a lunatic would defend them. And because it is much easier, and far less controversial, to blame them for New York’s blood-spattered sidewalks than it would be to bring the full force of the law down on the core problem — the trigger-pullers.

There is no hoarier cliché in the American conversation than “guns don’t kill, people do.” But its depressing ubiquity doesn’t make it any less true.

…

Mayor Adams seems to get this, sort of. He has undone a lot of the damage inflicted on the NYPD by his predecessor. Gun crime seems to have leveled off a bit — although it remains appallingly high compared to pre-pandemic levels, and the summertime-carnage season is rapidly approaching.

But even he seems caught up in the rhetoric of the moment. He’s constantly rattling on about ghost guns — and if his “end gun violence” tuxedo at the Met Gala the other night had a point, it was not aimed at the people who matter.

They would be the Albany establishment — Gov. Hochul and a legislative leadership responsible for the so-called “reforms” meant to lighten the burden on New York’s criminal class. And they persist in this mischief, despite poll after poll showing that crime is squarely atop the list of New Yorkers’ concerns.

[insidewarp]

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s school-integration task force just dropped its initial report—a multilayer cake of mostly impenetrable social-justice jargon, interspersed with a dangerous idea or two, and with a dismaying lack of emphasis on the enduring value of teaching children to read, write, and do numbers. In fact, the report represents a significant victory of show over substance, establishing “diversity” as the principal goal of public education in New York City while exiling accountability—teacher accountability, parent accountability, student accountability—to the ash heap.

Bob McManus

https://www.city-journal.org/de-blasio-school-integration-task-force

[insidewarp]

New York governor Andrew Cuomo is urging the exemption of mugshot photos and arrest booking information from public disclosure under New York’s freedom of information laws. This is understandable, given the impressive montage that might be made from mugshots of one-time Cuomo aides, advisors, and associates now on their way to prison, but it nevertheless raises serious civil-liberties issues around press freedom and public information—and it seems like yet another gubernatorial pander toward the Democratic Party’s crime-coddling Left.

Bob McManus

https://www.city-journal.org/cuomo-mugshot-ban