New York City Votes To Remove Qualified Immunity From Police

By William Teach March 27, 2021 – 7:12 am

What is qualified immunity?

Qualified immunity is a judicially created doctrine that shields government officials from being held personally liable for constitutional violations—like the right to be free from excessive police force—for money damages under federal law so long as the officials did not violate “clearly established” law. Both 42 U.S.C. § 1983—a statute originally passed to assist the government in combating Ku Klux Klan violence in the South after the Civil War—and the Supreme Court’s decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1971) allow individuals to sue government officials for money damages when they violate their constitutional rights. Section 1983 applies to state officials, while Bivens applies to federal officials. Because damages are often the only available remedy after a constitutional violation has occurred, suits for damages can be a crucial means of vindicating constitutional rights. When government officials are sued, qualified immunity functions as an affirmative defense they can raise, barring damages even if they committed unlawful acts. (Qualified immunity is not, however, a defense to claims for injunctive relief.)

Interestingly, note that it was created by the judicial branch, not legislative branch. Also, notice that it applies essentially to all government officials.

That story in the tweet is probably one of the silliest, since it conflates NYC with New York State multiple times in the article, not just the headline. Layers and layers of fact checkers, eh? So, we’ll go to the CBS one noted

unintended consequencesThe New York City Council voted Thursday to end qualified immunity for police officers.

The decades-old protection has prevented officers from being sued or liable for misconduct.

New York is now the first city in the country to end qualified. The measure was passed as part of a package of police reform bills.

Critics argued scrapping the protection will make officers less aggressive in fighting crime, if they have to worry about lawsuits.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, however, said it “has been used to deny justice to victims of police abuse for decades.”

“Rooted in our nation’s history of systemic racism, qualified immunity denied Freedom Riders justice and has been used to deny justice to victims of police abuse for decades,” he tweeted after the vote. “It should never have been allowed, but I’m proud that we took action today to end it here in NYC.”

But of course they had to trot out the “systemic racism” talking point. How many officers will now retire from the NYPD by the end of the year? How many will leave the NYPD for other jobs? How hard will it be to replace those officers? How high will crime spike in a city where the crime is already spiking? Will it make New Yorkers pine for the “good years” of Mayor Dinkins? How soon will the rich and upper middle class white liberals abandon NYC to avoid the crime? And see businesses, which generate enormous tax revenue for the NYC, leave the city?

Certainly, there needs to be some reform to qualified immunity, because there are times when officers go to far and they know it. But, more often, the complaints are just people pissed off that they were arrested. Look at the case of Malaika Jones. We have her accusing two officers of all sorts of things, including racism and that they were chatting about where to tase her because she was pregnant. But, see, that’s her side of the story. She refused to sign the ticket, something very simple. She had been speeding. Sign it and be done. She refused to follow the lawful orders of the officers. And got tazed. And detained. And the courts showed a different story of what happened, rather than her fable. And the officers were shielded.

(The Skanner) Brooks’ arrest and the resulting uproar triggered two minor reforms: Individuals who refuse to sign citations are no longer subject to arrest; and “police department policy now restricts the use of Tasers on pregnant women to exceptional circumstances,” said Holmes.

See, while lots of outlets like to use this as an example, the law was clear: the officers were following the law, as passed by the city. In NYC, officers (those that haven’t left) will simply refuse to get involved, since they can now be sued directly and such, especially since we know that people just love to make up stories when they’ve broken the law, right? Notice, too, that the rest of the NYC government is still covered by qualified immunity. What, you thought that they would remove it for themselves for equity’s sake? Pfft.

Read: New York City Votes To Remove Qualified Immunity From Police »

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Minnesota Is “Urging” Residents To Not Drive As Much To Stop Climate Apocalypse

By William Teach March 26, 2021 – 3:00 pm

For the moment they’re urging. In the future? Well, let the inner authoritarian out

Fight against climate change could include goal to reduce driving in Minnesota
Legislators could put vehicle travel limits into law to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Minnesotans may be urged to put down the car keys in a new effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and fight climate change.

The House Sustainable Transportation Act would build more stations for charging electric cars and swapping batteries, push local governments to electrify their fleets and prod the Metropolitan Council to electrify all its buses by 2040, among other things.

It would also put into statute a new statewide goal to reduce vehicle miles driven by at least 20% by 2050. (snip)

Electric vehicles alone won’t get the state on track with legislated goals for cutting greenhouse gases, Hornstein told the committee. Transportation is the largest source of emissions, and electric vehicles are still less than 1% of new vehicle sales.

That’s because not that many people want, or can afford, EVs. Have the rich folks elected to the Minnesota House switched to EVs themselves? What about road miles for the state government?

“We have a long way to go, and driving less really is one of the key ways we can reduce greenhouse gases,” Hornstein said. “We are going to have to do things differently.”

By “we”, they mean you.

He also noted that it doesn’t make sense to ask people in rural areas to ditch their cars. Urban residents will need to curb their driving more than 20% “to make up for the geographic difference.” To make those urban reductions work, he said, everyone needs to be within a half-mile of reliable transit.

No, no, they certainly won’t attempt to force the peons into certain urban areas and restrict them from using their legally purchased property, right?

Regardless of the legislative outcome, the driving reduction goal is gaining traction at the state level. Last week, in its official response to the advisory council’s recommendations, MnDOT committed to adopting a preliminary goal of cutting vehicle miles traveled by 20% by 2050. The goal will be finalized after more work.

It’s a major shift for the state agency that has long tracked vehicle miles driven and indicated the need to drive less, but has never committed to something specific in writing. In an interview, MnDOT’s Sexton called a driving reduction policy goal an “important first step.”

“Implementation is something that we would need to work with partners to figure out,” he said.

As in, how do they make Citizens give up driving so much? Penalties? Fines? Requiring a tracking device on their vehicles?

Read: Minnesota Is “Urging” Residents To Not Drive As Much To Stop Climate Apocalypse »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach March 26, 2021 – 1:00 pm

…is a palm tree that will soon be growing in Canada due to carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Raised On Hoecakes, with a post on the latest Masterpiece cake SJW attack.

Read: If All You See… »

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Research Suggests America Has Too Many Guns Or Something

By William Teach March 26, 2021 – 10:30 am

America also has too many Karens willing to get in Other People’s business

America has too many guns to avoid outsize gun violence, research suggests

Gun violence is in the news again after back-to-back mass shootings in which two gunmen murdered 18 people in Boulder, Colorado, and around Atlanta. The two killing sprees broke a roughly one-year period with no high-profile mass shootings, but Americans were still dying of gunshots during the pandemic, and “at a record rate,” Reis Thebault and Danielle Rindler report at The Washington Post. “In 2020, gun violence killed nearly 20,000 Americans” and injured about 40,000 more, and “an additional 24,000 people died by suicide with a gun.”

Strange that most of the shootings occur in areas run by Democrats

The reason the U.S. has so much gun violence — and so much more than any comparable country — is pretty obvious, and maddeningly intractable: Americans own about 45 percent of the world’s civilian firearms. And they bought another 23 million in 2020, a 64 percent increase over 2019 sales.

How many of the lawfully purchased firearms were used in the commission of a crime, more particularly to shoot someone?

The U.S. “could reduce the death toll, perhaps substantially, if it chose to,” David Leonhardt writes at The New York Times. “It’s not just that every other high-income country in the world has many fewer guns and many fewer gun deaths. It’s also that U.S. states with fewer guns — like California, Illinois, Iowa, and much of the Northeast — have fewer gun deaths. And when state or local governments have restricted gun access, deaths have often declined,” according to research by Boston University’s Michael Siegel.

So, you know how Liberals say “we don’t want to take your guns, we just want some Common Sense gun control”? Well, that sure looks like they want to take our guns, does it not?

“There is overwhelming evidence that this country has a unique problem with gun violence, mostly because it has unique gun availability,” Leonhardt adds. “Many of the policies that experts say would reduce gun deaths — like requiring gun licenses and background checks — would likely affect both mass shootings and the larger problem,” he adds, but Republicans will safely filibuster any bill to enact such changes, suggesting that on a deeper level, “this country’s level of gun violence is as high as it is because many Americans have decided that they are okay with it.”

Many of the mass killers actually passed background checks. Dude in Colorado did, right? Notice that they now add in gun licensing, which would certainly mean making things so tough that few would be approved. But, consider, that’s all future things. If private legal ownership of firearms was such a problem, you’d know about it. Most guns used in crimes are illegally possessed. A DOJ report shows that 90% are illegally possessed. So, it really isn’t those who are law abiding that are the problem.

Read: Research Suggests America Has Too Many Guns Or Something »

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Your Fault: Oceans Being Fundamentally Changing The Structures Of Ocean Or Something

By William Teach March 26, 2021 – 8:30 am

All because you decided to take a fossil fueled flight on vacation and have an evil burger

Global warming is ‘fundamentally’ changing the structure of oceans, study says

Scientists are sounding the alarm over the impact climate change is having on the world’s oceans.

Sounds more like they are activists than scientists

In a new study published in “Nature” on Thursday, researchers examined 50 years of data and observed the manner in which surface water “decouples” from the deeper ocean. They concluded that the structure of the oceans covering the globe are becoming less stable at a much quicker rate than previously thought.

Water on the ocean’s surface is significantly warmer — and therefore more dense — than the deeper waters. According to the study, climate change is ultimately disrupting the mixing process, which helps store away most of the world’s excess heat and a significant proportion of carbon dioxide.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, the oceans absorb more than 90% of heat generated by greenhouse gases.

Glacier and ice sheets melted by global warming are also pouring into the seas, lowering the salinity of the upper layer and further reducing its density.

Have they compared this to previous Holocene cool and warm periods to get an understanding of the processes, which would let them know if this is unusual or the standard? Because there always needs to be a comparison to other times in order to make a judgement call, right?

“Similar to a layer of water on top of oil, the surface waters in contact with the atmosphere mix less efficiently with the underlying ocean,” said lead author Jean-Baptiste Sallee of Sorbonne University and France’s CNRS national scientific research center.

He added that while researchers are aware of what is occurring, that the “change has occurred at a rate much quicker than previously thought: more than six times quicker.”

“Previously thought”? That’s politics, social studies, or some other type of soft discipline, not science. Was it happening as fast during the Global Climate Optimum? How about the Roman Warm Period? What happened during the Little Ice Ace and Dark Ages, for comparison to cool periods? Is this unusual or not? Thinking this quicker is not the same as proving it. But, this is not about science, it’s about fearmongering.

Read: Your Fault: Oceans Being Fundamentally Changing The Structures Of Ocean Or Something »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 27 Comments | Trackback URL

COVID: Rutgers To Require Vaccination For All Students

By William Teach March 26, 2021 – 8:12 am

All sorts of pundits and news outlets had considered whether companies would require employees to get the vaccine in order to be able to work. Everyone forgot about schools

Rutgers University in New Jersey will require students to receive COVID-19 vaccine this fall

Rutgers University, New Jersey’s flagship state institution, said Thursday it will require COVID-19 vaccination for students before they arrive on campus this fall, possibly the first school in the country to announce a vaccine requirement.

The school plans to welcome back all students to its three campuses this fall. The requirement will apply to all residential and commuter students, though there will be limited case-by-case exemptions for religious or medical reasons. Students enrolled in fully remote programs will not be required to be vaccinated.

School officials said they were encouraged to require the vaccine for the fall after President Joe Biden declared earlier this month that all adults should be eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations by the end of May. (snip)

Vaccination will help play a key part in continuing to operate a safe campus and help return operations to a “pre-pandemic normal,” officials said.

“They need to get some sense of normalcy back in their lives,” Calcado said. “They need to experience the college experience. We really firmly believe that.”

The school wanted to announce the requirement now “so that we give all of our students and their families the opportunity to be able to make the right decision for themselves,” Calcado said.

A vaccine that would barely be on the radar right now without President Trump’s guidance with Operation Warp Speed, you know. Rutgers may well be the first school to make this announcement, and, with a student population of 71,000, it could be a big deal in tipping other schools into doing the same. But, um, what’s this

University faculty and staff are not required to get the vaccine, though they have been strongly encouraged to receive it during the rollout.

So, the students are required, but not the faculty and staff? What’s the reasoning behind that exclusion? No one seems to have an explanation.

As far as normalcy goes

Dangerous Covid-19 variants could mean all bets are off on the road to normalcy, expert warns

The evidence that Americans are gearing up for a return to normal life is growing apparent.

States are relaxing capacity restrictions for public areas and private gatherings. More school districts are reopening for in-person learning. Travel is increasing, with TSA data showing more than 1 million daily passengers in US airports for two consecutive weeks, the longest such stretch since the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns in early 2020.

However, many experts reiterate that Covid-19 is far from over. (snip)

With some states seeing rises of at least 10% in weekly average cases, according to Johns Hopkins University data, variants such as B.1.1.7 may lead to a greater risk of exposure and a potential stagnation in the fight against Covid-19.

“It tells us when we have a more contagious variant that all bets are off because it means that the activities that we thought were pretty low risk are now going to be higher risk,” CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday.

Fearmongering or the true reality? They’ve been doing so much doom and gloom for over a year that it’s hard to know which.

“In order for us to get to herd immunity even at this rate, it’s still probably going to take about five months, assuming we can convince fully 70% of the population to take the shot,” CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.

And what happens in 5 months when we get that herd immunity? How will the Elites continue to keep all sorts of restrictions active?

Read: COVID: Rutgers To Require Vaccination For All Students »

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Climahypocrite Matt Damom Says ‘Climate Change’ Will Impact Poor The Most

By William Teach March 25, 2021 – 3:00 pm

Let’s check in on Matt Damon, who has a net worth of over $75 million, a bit, shall we?

Damon’s 2012 movie Promised Land which attempted to villainize the natural gas industry, was produced “in association with” Image Media Abu Dhabi. That company was owned wholly by the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). According to the CIA World Factbook, UAE exported $166 billion of crude oil in 2013. UAE is also a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

And

The self-obsession was on display when he flew into Australia earlier this week on a private jet before entering privately funded quarantine in a compound at — where else but — Byron Bay, ahead of filming yet another of Marvel’s increasingly tendentious superhero films, but that’s standard Hollywood, despite the shrieks of outrage.

Just a few examples. But, you know what? I actually sort of agree with him on this

Matt Damon: Climate change will most impact ‘the poorest people’

In a new interview, Oscar-winning actor and water equity philanthropist Matt Damon said the link between climate change and water scarcity will deepen over the coming years and predominantly impact the world’s most impoverished communities.

When asked about the connection between climate change and water scarcity, Damon pointed to low-income people in developing countries. Currently, 2.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water.

“Those are the people that we’re dealing with, those are the people that we’re trying to reach, and those are the people who are going to feel the effects of [climate change] more than anybody,” says Damon, who co-founded the nonprofit organization Water.org in 2009 and WaterEquity in 2017.

“It’s always going to fall to the poorest people on Earth to bear the brunt of these things more than anybody,” he adds. “That’s the connection.”

He’s correct that it will fall on the poorest, because they will be even more boned by all the Cult of Climastrology policies they want passed. It will make them harder to live, as the cost of living will skyrocket. The cost of energy will skyrocket, and it will be harder to get it. Jobs will be scarce, and be harder to get for the poor. They will hose lower income farmers. The pain for the poor will just continue on and on. And roll up to the middle class.

Rich people like Damon, who won’t give up their fossil fueled private jets and 1%er vehicles, expensive big mansions, pools, fancy pants meals, etc and so on? It won’t affect them in the least, and they won’t give up their own giant carbon footprints. So, yeah, poor people will get hit hard, and Matt can continue living the same life.

Read: Climahypocrite Matt Damom Says ‘Climate Change’ Will Impact Poor The Most »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach March 25, 2021 – 1:00 pm

…is an area flooded from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is neo-neocon, with a post on Democrats not being as dumb as you think, they have a plan.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Kamala Harris Seems Upset That GOP Is Saying Democrats Want To Ban Guns

By William Teach March 25, 2021 – 10:30 am

Kamala is rated 7% by the NRA. She wants to do away with all private ownership of “assault rifles.” She supports massive restrictions on the 2nd Amendment. Democrats have stated that they want to take away the firearms from private citizens. They’ve openly talked about the “Australian solution”, the “UK solution,” the “New Zealand solution”

VP Harris tells the GOP to ‘stop pushing the false choice’ that ‘everybody’s trying to come after your guns’ after series of mass shootings

Vice President Kamala Harris told Republican leaders on Wednesday to stop spreading the “false choice” that “everybody’s trying to come after your guns.”

In an interview with “CBS This Morning” two days after a mass shooting in a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, that killed 10 people, Harris said that “it has to be possible that people agree that these slaughters have to stop.”

“And this is, again, reject the false choice of – and stop pushing it for sure – stop pushing the false choice that this means everybody’s trying to come after your guns,” she continued. “That is not what we’re talking about.” (snip)

The House of Representatives recently passed two bills that would close loopholes in the background-check system and make gun transfers between people without licenses illegal. One of the measures was supported by eight House Republicans.

What’s the false choice when Democrats say this is what they want? We could probably get some real solutions in place, but, we know that if Democrats get those two bills, plus a scary looking rifle ban (which never really worked last time), they’ll want more, especially when they make zero difference, because criminals don’t actually follow the law. And even Democrat moderates in the Senate are backing away from those bills

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence on Tuesday that Democrats were engaging in “ridiculous theater” and using mass shootings to take people’s guns away.

“Every time there’s a shooting, we play this ridiculous theater where this committee gets together and proposes a bunch of laws that would do nothing to stop these murders,” Cruz said. “What happens in this committee after every mass shooting is Democrats propose taking away guns from law-abiding citizens because that’s their political objective.”

Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, meanwhile, compared gun violence to drunk driving and gun owners to Muslims.

“We have a lot of drunk drivers in America that kill a lot of people. We ought to try to combat that too,” he said at the hearing. “The answer is not to get rid of all sober drivers. The answer is to concentrate on the problem.”

Why not go after the criminals who use firearms?

Is compromise possible? Republicans have gun control proposals too

…

“Thoughts and prayers alone are not enough. We need action,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said, echoing a line often used by Democrats after shooting tragedies. He called the House-passed bills “ridiculous theater” and said he and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, would reintroduce their own bill. They say their bill would target those trying to buy firearms who were banned from owning them by creating a federal task force to prosecute them. It would also allow for the hiring of more Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (ATF) agents and implement other measures to strengthen existing gun laws. The bill received a majority vote when introduced in 2013 but did not meet the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

That’s because Democrats filibustered the bill. The same thing they want to scuttle. Why not enforce existing gun laws? I have zero problem with requiring a background check on every gun sale. Of course, what follows is Democrats pushing for gun registration, because that’s the only way to make sure, right? And they’ll want to know how many people have and where they are. No. Crack down on criminals.

Read: Kamala Harris Seems Upset That GOP Is Saying Democrats Want To Ban Guns »

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NY Times Seems Pretty Upset That Riders Are Abandoning Public Transport, Which Hurts Climate (scam) Fight

By William Teach March 25, 2021 – 8:29 am

The NY Times was one of the ringleaders in pushing for COVID lockdowns, in everyone staying how, in isolating yourself from everyone else, in fearmongering contact with other people – I’m not saying that social distancing and no touching are not smart measures. They are. I do it. Don’t touch me, no handshakes, not fist bumps, stay back. The NY Times went way overboard in trying to scare people -, in pushing Government to lock people down (all while the Times’ employees were free to do their jobs), not too mention ignoring what Cuomo was doing in nursing homes. Plus, it was a pandemic. People started changing their behavior even before Government starting dictating all sorts of things, having seen what was going on in China, Italy, and on cruise ships.

And this whole worldwide pandemic is just so inconvenient for the Cult of Climastrology

Riders Are Abandoning Buses and Trains. That’s a Problem for Climate Change.
Public transit offers a simple way for cities to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but the pandemic has pushed ridership, and revenue, off a cliff in many big systems.

On the London Underground, Piccadilly Circus station is nearly vacant on a weekday morning, while the Delhi Metro is ferrying fewer than half of the riders it used to. In Rio, unpaid bus drivers have gone on strike. New York City subway traffic is just a third of what it was before the pandemic.

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, public transit is hanging by a thread in many cities around the world. Riders remain at home or they remain fearful of boarding buses and trains. And without their fares, public transit revenues have fallen off a cliff. In some places service has been cut, fares have gone up and transit workers are facing the prospect of layoffs.

That’s a disaster for the world’s ability to address that other global crisis: climate change. Public transit offers a relatively simple way for cities to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention a way to improve air quality, noise and congestion in the world’s busiest cities.

The last three, yes. Climate change? Scam. In a place like NYC, I prefer to use public transport. I took the train into NYC numerous times when I lived in NJ, and would take the bus or subway around the city. In the times since living in NJ, I’ve gone into the city several times while visiting NJ, and always on public transport. I want absolutely nothing to do with driving in. But, it’s about convenience, not saving the earth from climate apocalypse.

“We are facing maybe the most important crisis in the public transit sector in different parts of the world,” said Sérgio Avelleda, the director of urban mobility for the World Resources Institute and a former transport secretary for São Paulo, Brazil. “It’s urgent to act.”

But act how? Transit agencies that have been bailed out by the government are wondering how long the generosity will last, and almost everywhere, transportation experts are scrambling to figure out how to better adapt public transit to the needs of riders as cities begin to emerge from the pandemic.

Well, good luck with that. But, consider that they let people on airplanes, and seat them right next to each other (I’ll be hones, that was rather uncomfortable over Christmas, but, I wore long sleeves and made sure no direct skin contact), so, why not buses and trains? They don’t have to be packed. Just full seating. But, will people do that, especially when so many are basically locked down/being told not to travel except where necessary around the world in big cities?

The bigger challenge for all cities is to fix their public transit systems now so that passengers will return, said Mohamed Mezghani, head of the International Association of Public Transport. They could adjust peak hour service as telecommuting from home becomes more commonplace, expand bus only lanes that make commutes more efficient and comfortable or improve ventilation systems to ensure citizens that riding public transit is safe.

“Those cities that were investing, they will get out stronger,” Mr. Mezghani said. “People will feel more comfortable traveling in a new modern public transit system. It’s about perception in the end.”

What’s “a new modern public transit system”? It’s still buses and trains. Nothing else. And why would we need as many when so many are locked down, working from home, etc? Anyhow, there are good, real reasons to take public transport in big cities like NYC. The climate scam is not one of them. But, you know, this whole pandemic, with people losing their jobs, losing their money, lives upended, getting sick, dying, yeah, that’s so inconvenient for the Cult of Climastrology.

Read: NY Times Seems Pretty Upset That Riders Are Abandoning Public Transport, Which Hurts Climate (scam) Fight »

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