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THE VILLAGE CHOICE - Volume 4, Issue 26
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Manhattan Libertarian Party
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Jul 07, 2005 21:58 PDT
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THE VILLAGE CHOICE
A Weekly Rundown of News, Views and Events Affecting Freedom in NYC
Volume 4, Issue 26 * July 8, 2005
THE VILLAGE CHOICE is brought to you by the Manhattan Libertarian Party.
http://www.manhattanlp.org
In this issue:
* Play poker while protesting police!
* The high cost of housing dead people!
* Arrested for breaking a law that doesn't exist!
* Your calendar of pro-freedom events!
* Much more!
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* News Bites *
No Poker, No Peace
Libertarian candidate for Public Advocate Jim Lesczynski announced today
that the No Poker, No Peace Penny Poker Tournament will be played at the
entrance to One Police Plaza beginning at 6:00 p.m. on the evening of
Thursday, July 14. The tournament, which will be preceded by a 5:30 p.m.
press conference, will protest the NYPD's recent raid of two popular
Manhattan poker clubs and the wrongful seizure of $100,000 in players'
money. On May 26, the NYPD Vice Squad raided the Play Station poker club
on Union Square and the Players Club on the upper west side. In addition
to confiscating $100,000 from the tables at the two clubs, the police
arrested 39 employees. Although it is not illegal to play poker for
money, it may be illegal to "promote" gambling.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/154904/index.php
DHL Rolls Over
One of the world's largest package delivery companies will stop
delivering cigarettes to individual consumers nationwide under an
agreement with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Audrey Silk of
New York City Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment said the
actions are simply boosting an illegal market for cigarettes in which no
one asks a consumers' age. The measures deny consumer choice, because
some brands are only sold out of state. "When the product is legal, who
are you to say I can't order it?" said Silk, who's also a Libertarian
candidate for New York City mayor. "He's attacking one consumer class
trying to buy a legal product and strong-arming the common carries into
going along with his campaign to keep cigarettes out of adult hands."
http://tinyurl.com/dz7fn
Hotel of the Dead
The city paid hotels nearly $200,000 to house dozens of AIDS patients -
even though they were dead, some for as long as two years, a bombshell
audit revealed this week. City Comptroller William Thompson's office
found that the Human Resources Administration paid $182,391 to a dozen
single-room occupancy hotels for 26 individuals with HIV/AIDS. One
problem: Those AIDS victims didn't need the rooms because they were
dead. Overall, the comptroller said, $2.2 million in questionable or
improper payments, from 2002 to 2004, were made by HRA under the city's
emergency AIDS-housing program.
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/49585.htm
Phony Law, Real Jail
An anti-begging law ruled unconstitutional in 1992 has since been used
in more than 1,800 arrests and prosecutions statewide, a Daily News
analysis of court data found. The arrests, 71% of them in New York City,
resulted in hundreds of people being held in jail while awaiting court
hearings. Some of those arrested on charges they had loitered for the
purpose of begging were ultimately sentenced to jail time on a charge
that was supposedly no longer on the books. Hundreds more were the
subjects of outstanding arrest warrants based on the charge.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/324573p-277471c.html
====================
* Rant of the Week *
Closing the Door on Political Correctness
by Jim Lesczynski
In the Lower East Side neighborhood where I live, an intruder beat a
woman and tried to rape her in the laundry room of her co-op building
last week. Fortunately, another woman came along, and her screams scared
the attacker away. The co-op is just across the street from mine, and my
wife and daughters often visit friends in that building, making the
attack too close to home for all of us.
Security cameras caught the attacker on tape, and that led to a
suspect's apprehension a few days later. But the cameras caught
something else almost as unsettling. The attacker did not have a key to
the building, yet well-meaning but misguided residents held the door
open for him to let him in. This prompted a memo from the co-op
management company reminding all shareholders about the importance of
not allowing anyone into the building who they do not know personally.
One might think that would be the end of it. A hard-learned lesson would
sink in, and the residents would know not to hold the door open for
strange young men. Curiously, however, several of my neighbors-who I
believe are representative of the larger population-have raised issues
with the no-strangers policy. On our online community bulletin board,
they "confess" to having held the door for old ladies and mothers
pushing strollers-even when they didn't know the grandmothers and
mothers in question. "I now am torn about what I would do if I see a
mother with a carriage who I do not know... but I bet I would hold the
door open," one neighbor worries.
Another neighbor concurs. "Who you hold the door for really is a tough
one. In general I hold it for everyone."
That's quite the dilemma. Close the door on every stranger, including
seniors with pushcarts and mothers with strollers, and you are a cad.
Open the door to all, and you let in the next would-be rapist.
Allow me to propose a modest but apparently radical solution to this
puzzle. This proposal will not only make my neighborhood more secure
and more polite, but it will probably work in your neighborhood as well.
Even if you have a doorman or live in a single-family home, you can
apply this solution to other areas of human interaction where
conventional approaches have failed.
The answer, my friends, is good old-fashioned discrimination. Profiling,
if you prefer.
No, I'm not talking about racial discrimination. I mean using the good
sense each of us was born with to detect unambiguous context clues and
make a hasty judgment.
Knowing who to hold the door for is easy if you refuse to indulge in
politically correct rubbish. Old lady in a walker? Of course you hold
the door, even if you don't know her. Young punk? Let the door slam in
his face. Mother pushing a carriage? Let her in, whoever she is. Crazy
homeless guy? Door slam.
Sure there's a chance that the young punk is harmless and lives in your
building, but don't take chances. If you hold the door for the old lady
you don't know, you're not taking any chances. Trust me on this one.
The all-or-nothing approach is the same mindset that makes random
airport security checks so intolerably stupid. Everyone from the
Transportation Security Administration agents to the passengers knows
perfectly well that it's a waste of time to pull the middle-aged lady in
a pantsuit out of the line and make her remove her shoes. Just stop the
charade, leave her alone, and everyone will get through the line faster.
One might argue that it's one thing for private individuals to
discriminate, but the government has a special obligation to treat all
citizens equally. I would agree. That is one more reason-beyond the
general incompetence common to most government agents, to say nothing of
the 4th Amendment violations-to privatize airport security. Let the
individual airlines take responsibility for deciding who is a security
risk and who isn't. Unlike the federal government, the airlines have a
powerful profit incentive to ensure that their customers are both safe
and not mindlessly inconvenienced. If the airlines want to spend less
time grilling little old ladies from Pasadena and more time questioning
surly young men from Detroit, that's their business. If the airlines
abuse the situation and alienate customers, competitors will carve a
profitable niche catering to the young and surly.
There are small signs of progress against dangerous political
incorrectness. After the assault in my neighborhood, while the suspect
was still at large, the newspapers described him as 5-10, about 200
pounds, and wearing a cast on his right arm. They wouldn't mention his
skin color, of course, but they did reveal the color of his arm cast. It
was red.
===================
* Upcoming Events *
Monday, July 11, 10:30 p.m.
"The Libertarian Alternative"
A Libertarian political talk show
Time Warner Cable Ch. 34, RCN Cable Ch. 110, MNN Ch. 1
http://www.libertarianalternative.org
Tuesday, July 12, 12:00 p.m.
Rally to Fix the Patriot Act
In front of the New York Public Library (41st St. & 5th Ave.)
http://www.nycbordc.org
Wednesday, July 13, 6:30 p.m.
Manhattan Libertarian Party monthly meeting
Guest speaker: Tom Woods, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to
American History
Business meeting starts at 6:30; guest speaker at 7:30
Ukrainian East Village Restaurant, 140 Second Avenue
http://www.manhattanlp.org
Thursday, July 14, 6:00 p.m.
No Poker, No Peace Penny Poker Tournament
Protest the poker club hijackings
One Police Plaza
http://lesczynski.blogspot.com/2005/07/no-poker-no-peace.html
================================
* Manhattan Libertarian Party Honor Roll *
Benefactors (have given at least $1,000 to the MLP in 2005)
Ron Moore
Victor Niederhoffer
Founders (have given at least $500 to the MLP in 2005)
Your Name Here?
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* News tips, rants and events wanted! *
Help us improve THE VILLAGE CHOICE. Send news bites, rants and event
announcements to village-@manhattanlp.org. Please include a web
link whenever possible. We will occasionally consider broader topics,
but our strong preference is for items pertaining to freedom (or the
lack thereof) in New York City.
THE VILLAGE CHOICE is edited by Jim Lesczynski.
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If you're offended by anything in this newsletter, you're obviously a
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See you next week!
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