Monday, December 28, 2009

Sauce for the gander?

If the Bloomington, IN Daily Cat Box Liner is a bunch of godless commies for their Hoosier CCW database, why no condemnation for the New York Post article?

Let's try to be a little ethically consistent here, folks.

18 comments:

Mikee said...

In a may-issue state, it is necessary to know who exactly is getting issued to, by the government, since it uniformly turns out to be politically connected individuals such as large donors, celebrities, government employees, and union members rather than the woman with the abusive ex-boyfriend or the shop owner who works late.

In a shall-issue state, everyone who meets objective published criteria gets their permit/license. Knowing who the individuals are is not material, compared with knowing what the criteria are.

In other words, may-issue is government corruption encoded in law, and it is useful to know what corrupt individuals are taking advantage of it.

Tam said...

That is a good point.

I'm not sure it changes my mind, but it's something to think on.

Ian Argent said...

I'm on Mikee's side on this one - damn sure I want to know who and how much they paid to get a permit in a may-issue locality. If nothing else, so that I don't have to overpay...

WV: phonsunc - as in "we tried to call USS Dallas, but the phonsunc"...

Anonymous said...

So those people who work with the bad system to exercise their civil rights should have scorn heaped upon them by those that don't or can't work the bad system?

That sounds suspiciously like the rumblings of class warfare.

Then again, the reality that may-issue is not 100% corrupt is a bit of a problem with "outing" permit holders.

Is it innocent until proven guilty, or guilty until proven innocent? The party line seems to be guilty until proven innocent. That's certainly not something I'm interested in supporting.

Hunsdon said...

Nope. Wrong. Sorry. Don't buy it.

With all my usual prefatory explanations: I could be wrong, maybe I'm just a loon, other religions, cultures, peoples, places and times may look at this differently, but . . .

People in may-issue states are people too. People with pull and swag in may-issue states are people too. If I lived in NYC, and had the pull and the swag, you're betting right that I'd use pull and swag to get me a permit.

I'll agree with Mikee that may-issue is government corruption encoded in law . . . but then, most government corruption is encoded in law.

Some kind of very vague reference to how you have to have pull and swag to get a permit? Sure---no problem with that. A hard hammering about how "an investigation conducted by the Catbox Liner reveals that the average permit holder in NYC is worth in excess of xxx kilobucks" is fine. Naming names? That ain't fine.

Look, Howard Stern wants to say on XM/Sirius "I gots one and you don't neener neener neener" that's cool with me---that's blowing your own cover. But any .gov agency ain't got no business telling who's who.

Wrong is wrong. Rights are rights.

kahr40 said...

I'm kinda curious about the criteria the Post used on who to out and who not? I noticed a couple of left leaning actors, musicians, and a certain Senator from NY left off their list.

Ed Foster said...

Sadly, even the N.Y.Post, with arguably the best editorials in the country, still has lower level doofii who graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism.

Go Cossack! Although, Mikee makes a really good point, one that should be addressed. In New York, self defense is a privilege reserved for the privileged. Or their flunkies.

Trust me on this. I was born there, and I have an uncle and three cousins retired from the NYPD. Every Mafia Don is surrounded by permit holding goons, some of them flat out sociopaths.

And "they" have the pull to get numerous transgressions by said goons written off or reduced to misdemeanors and buried with small fines.

It's Byzantium rewritten by Damon Runyon, and it is a disgrace.

New York politics has a bit more of a turnover than the People's Republic of Chicago, but only at the top. The place has good cops, but lousy supervisors. Why?

Because supervisors and Chiefs have to stop being cops in that environment, and start becoming politicians.

The occasional LaGuardias or Giulianis come and go, but the Democratic machine that really runs the place never misses a beat, and the only place I can think of that could compare to it in utter cynicism would be Saigon in the late 60's.

But the courts are the heart of the problem, and the political appointees who do the judging always back their bosses.

It's not America, not even close. Was it Cole Porter who said "New York is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there"?

Stranger said...

Well, for starters, the NYC system is a straight permit purchase system. The cost varies according to your "social position," so criminals and their sons, prominent pols and entertainment industry figures get by cheap.

But the guy at the mattress store that's been held up six times in a week? That takes a lot of palm grease.

And Bloomers would not have it any other way.

Stranger

Will Brown said...

I wish to address one point of apparent inconsistency in Mikee's comment above:

"In a may-issue state, it is necessary to know who exactly is getting issued to, by the government, since it uniformly turns out to be politically connected individuals ...

In a shall-issue state, everyone who meets objective published criteria gets their permit/license. Knowing who the individuals are is not material, compared with knowing what the criteria are."


If it is acceptable, even necessary, to publish the characteristic's (if not the specific identities - and I don't agree with that quibble) of license recipients as a means of placing a check on corruption, then it is equally the case in either class of jurisdiction.

In the actual event in IN, there were several examples revealed of individuals receiving licenses they didn't qualify for, but no detectable pattern of corruption as being the cause. Absent some other at least as equally effective a mechanism, widespread public notice of the entire - and, if it still need be said, legislatively mandated - public record seems the most cost effective and least personally intrusive means of confirming the continuing honesty of the process.

If greater transparency in government is held to be the cure for legislative ills generally, how about a little consistency when it's your (clean, it should be noted) laundry on display?


w/v: abler; I wish ...

Will Brown said...

And, just to pre-empt one obvious howl of objection, I recognise the conflict between my 10th Amendment rights and 1st Amendment rights.

I confess I don't have a glib (or any at all, really) answer to this issue. I'm not happy deferring judgement to Solomon (or his near contemporaries in Judicial Dresses), but I acknowledge my own biases call my judgement on the matter into question too.

Best I have to offer is that we acknowledge the conflict and couch our arguments around that reality.

Matt G said...

I actually buy into Mikee's argument as well, to some extent. Also I can't help but think of how stories like this bring to light the elitist nature of the approval system:

"'Andrew Madoff did apply for a permit to have a gun in his home, and that was well over six months ago,' Martin Flumenbaum said. 'He has not heard anything -- one way or another -- from the NYPD.'

The NYPD is required by law to approve a gun permit application within six months or explain why it was rejected."

Ed Foster said...

And remember, after the 6 months (or longer, I know somebody who waited 18 months), the $200 fee you paid goes to the Patrolman's Benevolent Fund, if you get the permit or if you don't.

HTRN said...

Something to keep in mind - there aren't that many carry permits in the city, only about 1300 or so in a city of 8.3 million.

And Ed's comments about jumping through hoops is an understatement - I know what someone I know go through to get his, and they liked to use things like "You don't meet criteria" and then refuse to explain why. You have to submit financial records to "prove" you meet the 1000 dollar a day cash requirement, and they use it to try and deny everything. He had to demand what was missing, and that he'd bring it down there that day, before they finally relented.

alath said...

Wrong is wrong. Rights are rights.

After chewing and cogitating, I have to agree with this. May-issue is a wicked, evil law. But wicked evil policy - such as publishing permit holders - is no remedy for wicked, evil law.

Anonymous said...

I don't view this so much as outing the list off those who have permits, as a case of the paper exposing the hypocrisy of the system. I think it is quite fair to ask in a may issue state, is this guy getting special treatment?
We all know the answer, but at least they are reporting the what is obvious, rather than completely towing the line.

Schmidt said...

A wild guess.. NY Post is Murdoch's, and he's a good guy, right?

Schmidt said...

for the record.. publishing CCW holders' list is several kinds of nasty.

I'm fairly sure that in Czech Republic, it wouldn't fly. It's probably criminal to do so here. I'll check.

Anonymous said...

So Is it better then that the connected get special treatment in NYC, and everyone ignores it? Do we have to be so bound up about news papers outing permit holders that we give up one questioning the system in place in NYC?

It becomes much harder to argue for change without using examples of just how the system is biased against ordinary citizens.

For example if we enjoin ourselves from talking about who has a permit and who doesn't we can't argue that Dianne Feinstein is a hypocrit. Pointing out this double standard by the gun banners creates an opening to discuss the issue further with people who otherwise might side with them.


All I am saying here is that there is a difference between printing a wholesale list of permit holders and picking an example to illustrate a point in an article.