Breaking News: NYC Cop Saved by Civilians

by Nicholas Stix UPI has just reported that a New York City police officer who was being beaten by a man in the subway was saved by two men who happened to be in the vicinity. There was no word yet on the sex or ethnicity of the officer-victim, or on the ethnicities of the attacker and the heroes, respectively.

AOL's Feminists Strike Again

by Nicholas Stix Who can turn a porn queen into a “ditzy ingenue”? AOL, that’s who! And no, I’m not writing a hackneyed send-up of “Mame.” Anyone who is an AOL customer gets the company's "news" inserts and pop-up ads whenever he tries to read his e-mail. Thus, he lives in a world in which “ditzy ingenue” is a euphemism for “porn star,” as in the following passage about actress Heather Graham and her new, midseason replacement TV show. “How You Know Her: She became a star by playing a ditzy ingenue in the movie 'Boogie Nights,' and guest-starred on 'Scrubs' last season.” Graham played a ditzy porn “actress” in Boogie Nights, which was a touching movie (it really was!) about the 1970s' pornographic movie industry. No ingenues anywhere in the picture. Do any of AOL’s feminists know English? Much of the "content" AOL provides consists of what journalism legend George S. Schuyler would have called "moron fodder" -- worthless instruction by “experts” telling one that one is obliged to over-tip, tips on how to deal with an impossible boss, etc. Of course, the boss is a man, and the beleaguered employee -- or rather, in pc speak, "co-worker" -- is a female. (If the politically correct had any logic skills, they'd see that the violence they do to language solves many of their problems. If the man in question is a "co-worker," then he can't fire you. Only bosses can fire people. But since feminists and the other leftists dominating journalism have banished clear language about hierarchies -- boss/subordinate; employer/employee -- in favor of egalitarian euphemisms like "co-worker," while at the same time obsessing endlessly about problems that are central to hierarchical relationships, their writing is schizophrenic at best. If they've already neutered white male authority, how can they be having all these problems with authoritarian white males?) AOL's moron fodder stories are often written by females who I am sure think they are better than the work they do … but they're not. I don't know what is more important to AOL's Web editors: Showcasing moron fodder written by ditzy female "journalists," or showcasing the photos of female models that invariably accompany the stories. Unless it is a model posing as an evil boss, you won't see many pictures of white males in AOL's features. While white male bosses are portrayed as ogres in AOL's features, a female boss who really is an incompetent ogre will get powder-puff treatment. And so it was, last February when the headline "Shocking Ouster" accompanied some AOL “content” on Carly Fiorina, who had been fired by Hewlett-Packard, after serving almost six years as its Chairman and CEO. Carly Fiorina has the dubious honor of having destroying the collegial corporate culture carefully nurtured by firm co-founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard, in favor of a ruthless, bottom-line orientation that resulted in layoffs to over 10,000 workers; and of having rammed through one of the most misbegotten mergers in American corporate history with computer rival Compaq, costing HP and its stockholders billions of dollars. The only shock was that HP’s board of directors waited so long to can her. But Fiorina was a woman and a feminist, to boot, and so, feminists immediately pulled out their violins, and played, “If she were a man, they’d say she’s hero.” And AOL played the same song. In mid-December, AOL also ran a feature on Irish immigrant success story Lesley Wootton by a Dayana Yochim, “An Extreme Retirement Makeover.” The story has the teaser, “What does it take to go from $83 in savings to having more than $150,000 in the retirement kitty in less than two years? The financial equivalent to stomach-stapling and tag-team liposuction? Nope. It's a retirement regimen we can all follow….” “For more than 20 years, this Irish immigrant, her American husband, and their five kids scrambled to avoid financial disaster. At one point their family income was just $5,200 a year -- that's less than $15,000 in today's dollars. Lesley worked odd jobs, factory night shifts, waitressing -- anything she could do to bring in extra money while avoiding having to pay for day care. “Then, two years ago, it looked like it was game over. Lesley was 53 and recovering from a divorce. She had a negative net worth and just $83 officially earmarked for retirement. “The end? Not so fast. Today she is debt-free and sitting on a nest egg of more than $150,000. If Lesley sticks to her plan, she'll be a millionaire by age 67.” I read on, hoping to find out how Lesley Wootton had beaten the odds. I never did find out. Alleged journalist Dayana Yochim begins with clichéd dieting analogies (“Step on the Scale,” “Lighten Your Load,” “Purge the Hidden Carbs,” “Make sure you're getting all the right nutrients”) before dumping them for generic self-help/money clichés (“Elevate Your Game” and “Become a Lean, Mean Money Machine”). After all the mixed clichés, you still have no idea how Wootton made her money. But the folks at AOL, in connivance with The Motley Fool, are willing to sell you a subscription to their Get-Rich-Quick newsletter. The article links to a long second article, excerpt from the Get-Rich-Quick newsletter, with Lesley Wootten’s ten tips on how to get rich in two years. 1. Improve your job prospects. 2. Read great books about money. 3. Track spending. 4. Wean your kids off the gravy train. 5. Consider selling your house. 6. Telecommute. 7. Max out your savings accounts. 8. Save your marriage. 9. Reward yourself. 10. Slow down, but don't retire. Along the way, we learn that this woman, who had an income of $5,200, was able to improve her job prospects by going to college, where she was a Phi Beta Kappa. Later, she sold her house. Hello? The premise of both articles was that Wootton was broke, with five children to support. If the premise was honest, Wootton could not possibly have gone to college, much less bought a house, even if it was a “farmhouse.” And we don't want to go into the "gravy train." The anonymous writer is insulting the reader’s intelligence, but that’s the m.o. of moron fodder. Similarly, we know that Wootton’s success came only after her divorce, and that she had no savings. (My hunch is that she got the house in the divorce settlement, sold it, and turned it into her present bankroll. Which would mean that she didn’t do it alone, but rather with her ex-husband’s help. In any event, the writer is being dishonest, by setting up a scenario that would preclude the result she depicts.) So much for feminists respecting women’s intelligence. If you believe the sort of, um, stuff that AOL pushes on its customers, I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Miss Ingénue. She goes for $500 an hour.

Support VDARE!

by Nicholas Stix In this holiday season, you are being deluged by scam artists seeking to fleece you for what they claim are "charities." Have you gotten your yearly call, for instance, from the guy who claims to be collecting donations to give to the widows and orphans of policemen murdered in the line of duty? Ha! The guy on the phone is a low-paid flunky; over 90 percent of the money you donate goes to his boss, who is a crook and a creep who should be hunted down by real policemen and put out of business. (Our state and federal legislators are so busy passing pork barrel legislation, that it has not occurred to them to pass laws criminalizing phony charities. And so, crooks like the above-mentioned type continue to fleece the big-hearted.) But one legitimate, truly worthy organization that desperately needs your support is VDARE. This Web site, founded six years ago by the brilliant social critic, Peter Brimelow (author of, among other works, Alien Nation on immigration and The Worm in the Apple on the teachers' unions), is the site par excellence for news, analysis, and commentary on immigration into these United States. And it ain't too shabby on race, either. Why should you support VDARE? Glad you asked. for several years, VDARE was alone among major Web sites in banging the drum for immigration restriction. And it is still the best source for information on the attempt by President Bush and America's elites of the Right and the Left, to smuggle into law a stealth amnesty (aka "guest worker plan"). And it is the best source for information about the immigration bureacracy and the many de facto amnesty programs already in existence. VDARE is also one of the only sites on the Internet whose publisher actually pays his writers. And one of those writers is yours truly. so, if you think that my work is deserving of support, please hit this link to give to VDARE. Thanks in advance. One of the reasons why most of the material you read on the Internet is so godawful is that almost no one pays for material. And so, the typical Web "pundit" sits down in front of his pc and pounds out his "insights" in about ten mintues -- even less, if he's a fast typist. And who needs spell-check? (That begs the question: Why is most of the material one reads in newspapers and magazines that pay writers so bad?) But work that demands to be read takes time to research and write. Hours, days, weeks, even months. It takes Web searches; it requires buying and poring over sometimes expensive, out-of-print books; sometimes it takes costly Lexis-Nexis searches; and it may take calls to lawyers, flacks, politicians and victims. Very few people can afford to devote that sort of time and money to writing, and those who are independently wealthy generally demand, and get payment. (They're the ones writing the drivel published in newspapers and magazines.) And very few "professional writers" are willing to buck the conventional wisdom, Left or Right. Thus are we saddled with the likes of Tamar Jacoby and Jonah Goldberg from the Republican side, and Ellen Goodman and Frank Rich from the socialist side. None of the aforementioned writers will give you the truth about ... anything. Jacoby, in particular, has been lying about immigration and the possibility of immigration enforcement for years, in order to prevent Americans from doing anything to reassert American sovereignty and American law. Her goal in life is apparently to ensure that every upper-middle-class American family's "civil right" to illegal immigrant nannies, gardeners, and cooks; and every American corporation's "right" to low-wage Indian computer programmers remains inviolate. Some formerly orthodox neoconservative writers such as Heather MacDonald have in recent years come around to understand that illegal immigration is destroying America, but they might never have, had it not been for VDARE alone banging the drum for immigration restriction lo these many years. Peter Brimelow has published two of my articles since May, 2004, and they were two of my most important exposes on policing and multiculturalism ("'Disappearing' Crime" and "Diversity is Strength! It's Also ... Police Corruption." In his current fundraising appeal, Brimelow writes, "help feed starving young writers in fiscal 2005!" "It is amazing how little money it takes to get young people to take this risk—not a risk at all, really, but certain professional suicide, unless we can build VDARE.COM up as an alternative institution fast enough." [How nice to be referred to as "young" -- that hasn't happened in years!] "At various times this year, I’ve had to go slow paying writers—and also to turn aside the many new writers who want to appear on VDARE.COM. It’s deeply distressing, because just a little money means so much to them—and to their country. "Tonight, we post Tom Piatak’s summary of the War Against Christmas, Michelle Malkin, plus, of course, the blog. "Scroll down to the end, past Ms. Bevens’ picture—and when you pass the donate link, remember my starving young writers." There are only three business days left, and as Brimelow and the gang at VDARE point out, this year, due to the Katrina Bonus legislation, you get to deduct 100% of all charitable donations from your taxes. I thank you, and your nation will thank you -- sometime down the road.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah to my readers around the world! Nicholas Stix

Transit Strike in New York!

By Nicholas Stix At 3 a.m., Roger Toussaint, the president of the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU), representing 34,000 New York City subway workers and bus drivers, announced that his union has decided to strike against the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the state agency which administers the city’s subways and public bus lines. All subways and trains presently on routes will go to all stops and discharge passengers, before going out of service and on strike. The city’s last transit strike was in 1980; it lasted 11 days. New York State’s Taylor Law forbids all public service employees from striking. Roger Toussaint and other union officials could be jailed, and the union could be fined millions of dollars, both of which have happened in the past. Toussaint blamed the MTA, New York State Gov. George Pataki, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, both Republicans, for the strike. Toussaint had demanded pay raises ofr eight percent for each of the next three years, and for the pension age to be reduced from 55 to 50. The MTA offered wage hikes of three percent over the same period, with new workers having to contribute two percent of their salaries to their health insurance, and current workers paying higher co-payments for doctor's visits and prescriptions. The city has developed an emergency plan, permitting taxis and livery cabs to pick up riders at bus stops and to pick up multiple riders, practices that are usually forbidden, while imposing price controls on what drivers can charge. However, at the least, hundreds of thousands of the over seven million riders who daily depend on the MTA will be left stranded. At 3:25 a.m., MTA Chairman Peter Kallikow announced that he is filing contempt of court papers with State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, suggesitng that Roger Toussaint may be jailed, and clearly said that workers will be fined two days' pay for every day they remain out on strike.

New York's Grinch and His Reporter

by Nicholas Stix As of 3 a.m. Tuesday morning, New York city's first transit workers strike in 25 years is officially on! * * * What would you call someone who would destroy the Christmas of a city of eight million people, plus a few sundry million suburban commuters and shoppers, if the state authority that pays his members does not roll over for his "negotiation" demands, and sign a contract that would eventually bankrupt the city and state? The Grinch is better known as Roger Toussaint, the president of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), which represents all city subway workers and bus drivers, 34,000 in all. Toussaint, who leads the city's most militant union, had demanded raises of eight percent for each of the next three years, and to permit workers to retire at the age of 50 with a full pension. (Transit workers currently qualify for pensions at age 55.) The Metropolitan Transit Authority, the state agency that pays TWU workers on behalf of the citizens of the State of New York, offered raises of three, three, and three percent , but demanded that union workers stay on the job until they reach the age of 62, that all new employees contribute two percent of their wages towards their health insurance, something they never previously had to do, and that all current employees pay higher co-payments for dcotor's visits and prescriptions. TWU members speak of a supposed $1B MTA "surplus." But another four years down the road, the agency is projected to have at least a $1B deficit. The agency has not maintained infrastructure in recent years, and the current $2 subway and bus fare is in jeopardy of being raised yet again. The TWU is supported by other municipal unions -- the United Federation of Teachers, Patrolman's Benevolent Association, 1199SEIU, and even by a livery drivers' union, United Drivers of America, though the latter group has little control over New York livery drivers. (The livery driver's union head said that his drivers would not pitch in to help stranded riders, but it is unlikely he can enforce his vicious policy.) The MTA's Metro North workers, who serve suburban commuters north of the city in Rockland and Westchester counties, among other destinations, promised to engage in a sympathy strike. The source of the other unions' solidarity is no mystery: If the MTA blinks, they will demand contracts every bit as generous. When John Lindsay gave in to similarly exorbitant union demands 40 years ago -- then speaheaded by the Sanitation Workers' Union -- it eventually bankrupted the city, which ultimately fell under the financial control of the State of New York. Roger Toussaint does not give a hang about bankrupting the city and the state. And he has a special helper. WABC-TV reporter Nina Pineda has exposed herself as a shill for Toussaint. In tonight's delayed 11 p.m. broadcast, following Monday Night Football, at 12:26 a.m., Pineda said, "As [fellow reporter N.J. Burkett] said, this was never about money. This was about dignity and respect. "Rallyers ask the public to choose sides.... ""They want health benefits. They want a raise. And they want to secure these things for future generations.... "[Toussaint] was upset when Gov. Pataki waved his finger at workers like they were children." When people say "It isn't about money," it's always about money. At 1:05 a.m., Pineda was back, as her station, city-dwellers, and suburban commuters, all waited for Toussaint to stop torturing us and tell us if he would call a strike for the morning. Now she spoke not of "Toussaint," but simply of "the President," as if Roger Toussaint were the occupant of the White House. In my 47 years, I have never heard a reporter refer to a union chief simply as "the President." Gov. George Pataki hadn't wagged his fingers at the union; he had simply reminded Roger Toussaint that it is illegal for them to strike. New York's Taylor Law makes it illegal for any public workers to strike. That reminder that Toussaint would be committing a crime, is what "upset" him. Pineda neglected to inform her viewers as to the Governor's concern, or to so much as mention the fact that a strike would be illegal, and would result in millions of dollars of fines being imposed on workers. Pineda spoke of "the President" in statesman-like terms, saying that he is concerned that he not harm unions anywhere else in the country. Roger Toussaint is acting like the sort of communist union head one customarily sees somewhere like France or Italy, and Nina Pineda is acting like his personal flack, the taxpayers and paying riders be damned. (For those whose response is that the workers are also taxpayers, public employees do not contribute to the tax base; they only take from it. The tax base derives entirely from the private sector.) Contrast Pineda's work with that of reporter Dean Meminger at NY1, a usually far-left cable station that one wag dubbed "the All-Sharpton News Network." Meminger talked about the TWU's constant changes of notification, saying now that they would come down to speak in five minutes, and now in 15. "A terrible situation for people who have to get to work early this morning." NY1 also gave vent to angry commuters. It looks like Christmas has been cancelled this year for New York's taxpayers and transit riders. But a certain union head and a certain adoring reporter have much to celebrate.

Illegal Alien Pair Terrorize Midwest

by Nicholas Stix Have you seen Jorge Ibarra, 34, and Rosa Ramirez, 41? If so, do not call the Illinois State Police or even the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the aforementioned agencies will refuse to enforce the law. And don't contact the pro-illegal immigrant mainstream media. Rather, contact Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Oberweis, so he can catch them in the act, whatever the act may be. When Ike was president, it wouldn't much have mattered what the act was, since he understood that whatever an illegal immigrant did on American soil was, by definition, illegal. Today, as long as illegal immigrants don't kill anybody, the authorities generally refuse to arrest and deport them. And so, Dave Gorak, the executive director of the LaValle, WI-based Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration, reports in VDARE that Ibarra and Ramirez have been running around Illinois, talking workers at cleaning companies whose owners refuse to hire illegals, into secretly hiring them, and then fraudulently suing the owners, claiming the owners abused and cheated them. Thus did Ibarra and Ramirez, as Gorak reports, illegally work for Patmar Janitorial Services, a subcontractor who cleaned Oberweis Dairy Ice Cream Stores. One night in May, the owner of Patmar was driving by one of Oberweis' stores, and noticed a couple of workers whom he did not recognize, cleaning up. He fired them on the spot, then fired the worker who had secretly hired them, Eduardo Martinez. When Oberweis found out about the incident six months later, he dumped the subcontractor. It is not presently clear whether Martinez was in on the scam. If Gorak is correct, then Ibarra and Ramirez are not just illegal immigrants and the perpetrators of a nuisance suit, but guilty of criminal conspiracy to defraud and of tampering with an election, both felonies, since they are seeking with their fraud to cost Oberweis his chance to become governor. (They pulled the stunt because Oberweis was on the record as supporting the enforcement of our immigration laws.) Ibarra and Ramirez are aided and abetted by one Joshua Hoyt, the pro-illegal immigrant/anti-American head of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and the Chicago Workers' Collaborative (CWC). Far from helping immigrants, Hoyt/ICIRR's fraud probably cost some immigrants at Patmar their jobs when the company lost the Oberweis contract, and had less work to spread around. (But those would have been legal immigrants, who don't matter to Hoyt/ICIRR.) Ibarra, Ramirez, and Hoyt/ICIRR were also assisted by the Chicago Workers' Coalition, another pro-illegal group, which as the blog Freedom Folks reports, just happened by a suburban Oberweis store in the wee hours with a videocam, to film the 'exploited immigrant workers' hard at work. Finally, as Dave Gorak reports, Ibarra, Ramirez, and Hoyt were helped by Chicago Tribune editorial page editor, Bruce Dold, who posted an editorial ridiculing Oberweis, rather than the perpetrators. Come to think of it, if you see Hoyt engaging in any behavior of questionable legality (like, say, breathing), you should also contact the Oberweis for Illinois campaign. Ibarra and Ramirez may yet live to regret messing with Jim Oberweis. Dairyman Oberweis has a sense of humor, as evinced by his campaign slogan, "got guv?" (Got it -- "Got milk?") But don't try and make a fool out of him. In his statement on the affair, he says,

I will continue to seek the facts as they relate to Ms. Ramirez and Mr. Ibarra.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ibarra and Ramirez now found themselves dogged by videocams and investigators, as the hunters become the hunted.

Rosa Parks and the New York Times

By Nicholas Stix Two of the most celebrated photographs of the 20th century were staged. The first was the 1950 Robert Doisneau picture of a handsome young French couple "spontaneously” smooching, while the second was a 1956 photograph of Rosa Parks riding in a Montgomery, Alabama bus, a well-dressed, apparently 35-40-year-old white man (actually, he was only 28) sitting behind her. When it came out in 1992 that “The Kiss” (“Le Baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville,” known as “Le Baiser” for short – “The Kiss”), which depicted acting students/lovers Françoise Bornet and Jacques Carteaud, was staged by Doisneau, many people were disappointed. People had always assumed the picture was a spontaneous bus that Doisneau had luckily caught for posterity, an assumption which led to people paying millions of dollars to purveyors of a poster of “The Kiss.” The knowledge that “The Kiss” was staged threw into question yet again the legitimacy of much “spontaneous,” naturalistic photography. The story about the staged Rosa Parks picture, “Photo captured an era, but not a moment,” was written by Peter Applebome, from of all places, the New York Times. “Everyone knows her. No one knows him. “Except for Catherine Chriss, his daughter. And, like his identity, hidden in plain sight, unknown even to the veterans of that era still living, what's most telling about the real story of the black woman and the white man is how much of what we think we know is what we read into the picture, not what's there. “The man on the bus, Nicholas C. Chriss, was not some irritated Alabama segregationist preserved for history, but a reporter working at the time for United Press International out of Atlanta. He died of an aneurysm at age 62 in 1990. Mrs. Parks died at age 92 on Oct. 24, a few weeks short of the 50th anniversary of her refusal to give up her seat on the bus to a white man.” According to Applebome, the Parks picture is plastered all over New York City buses, and according to Catherine Chriss, it is everywhere else, too. “Over the past few years, she's been amazed at how ubiquitous the picture has become. “‘It's everywhere,’ said Ms. Chriss, whose family moved to Ridgewood [NJ] from California in 2004.’ Apple used it in their campaign, “Think Different.” A friend called and said she saw the poster on the bus, the whole bus. It's on the bus my daughter Alison takes to school now. When Alison was in second grade, her classroom had that border with African-American heroes and leaders, and there's the picture. She told her teacher that was her granddad up there. She didn't believe her." What strikes me the most about this story, is that it is a story at all. It had always been clear to me that the picture was staged, for the simple reason that the bus appears to be empty, except for the black woman and the white man. Those Montgomery buses filled up in a hurry. And what would have been the likelihood of someone sitting down, in an otherwise empty bus, next to a member of the opposite race? I find it disturbing that people would fall for such an undisguised photo op. For many years, the mainstream media perpetuated the Rosa Parks Myth, according to which she was a simple, tired seamstress, spontaneously opposing tyranny. They avoided mentioning the reality, whereby she was the longtime secretary of the local NAACP, a civil rights activist who had been trained by the communists at the Highlander Folk School, she was not tired, and her act of defiance had been carefully planned. It took conservatives to tell the true story over the years. Applebome or one of his editors appears to have read at least one of those conservatives. “And rather than a simple seamstress who dared to ‘Think Different,’ Mrs. Parks was a longtime NAACP activist, who went to the famous Highlander Folk School to learn about social change and lunched regularly with Mr. Gray, the civil rights lawyer.” All he left out was the communist part; you can’t have everything. That is not to denigrate Rosa Parks. The fact that her December 1, 1955 sit-down had been carefully planned does not mean that she was not a heroine. But it is odd that civil rights leaders and their “journalist”-flacks felt that they could not tell the truth about the incident. (Previous incidents had occurred, one of which involved a teenager named Claudette Colvin. However, the NAACP expressly rejected Colvin as their poster girl for equal rights, since she was notorious for her gutter mouth, and also happened to be unmarried and pregnant. Those were the good, old days, when the organization actually fought horrible injustices rather than supporting them, and had some basic moral standards. Today, the NAACP routinely embraces violent, racist, criminals such as the convicted murderer of four people, Tookie Williams, who was executed on Tuesday morning.) It was nice to see Peter Applebome honestly report a story on race, for once. It is too soon to conclude from that, however, that he intends to become a full-time reporter. Applebome’s biggest race story was, to my knowledge, his December 20, 1996 article on the Oakland Unified School District’s decision to teach black children in “Ebonics” (black vernacular and street slang). As I wrote in “Ebonics: Bridge to Illiteracy,” in the July, 1997 issue of Liberty magazine,

As it turns out, however, mainstream media accounts had, if anything, gone out of their way to conceal the radical nature of the Oakland scheme. In the New York Times' first report on the Oakland resolution, for example, Peter Applebome reported that "[u]nlike standard bilingual programs, courses would not be taught in black English" -- and this erroneous assertion by our newspaper of record was, inevitably, to have a tremendous influence on the subsequent debate…. The first resolution clearly states that black American kids speak an "African language," rather than English, and that they should be taught in both. In the resolution, the board "officially recognizes the existence ... of West and Niger-Congo African Language Systems ... as the predominantly primary language of African-American students"; Oakland schools are to provide "instruction to African-American students in their primary language." And a spokeswoman for the board, Sherri Willis, recently confirmed to me that Oakland schools will be teaching in ebonics. Willis added that she has received calls from educators across the country, who are interested in developing programs similar to Oakland's.

Thus did Applebome provide cover to the black supremacists on the Oakland school board. Maybe in 2045, he’ll write the truth about the Oakland “Ebonics” resolution. In any event, this time, for once, the Times screwed up and got it right.

Bye, Bye, Tookie: Murderer of Four Gets His Just Desserts

By Nicholas Stix Stanley “Tookie” Williams, 51, is dead, executed only minutes ago by the State of California at San Quentin prison. In 1979, Williams, one of the founders of the Crips street gang, murdered four people: Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Yang and Yee-Chen Lin. Williams murdered the four because they were witnesses to two of his robberies; he did not want any witnesses. At the time of the killings, Williams joked about the gurgling sounds one of his victims made as he died. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 1981. A small army of political activists, celebrities, wannabe celebrities, and one corrupt politician campaigned to persuade California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant Williams clemency, but Schwarzenegger refused, asking,

Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise? Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.

Williams’ supporters argued that he should be granted clemency and a new sentence of life without parole, instead of being executed. Their main argument was that he had turned his life around, in authoring children’s books that tell kids not to join gangs. Abortion supporter Jesse Jackson maintained that Gov. Schwarzenegger had chosen “death over life.” Williams’ lead attorney, Peter Fleming Jr., was angry at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying, according to Chicago Tribune reporters Vincent J. Schodolski and Rudolph Bush, "If Stanley Williams does not deserve clemency, what meaning does clemency have in this state?" Schodolski and Bush reported that USC law professor, Jody Armour, “said the governor's decision was largely a political one. ‘It would have been an act of great political will to grant clemency.’” Armour, who apparently does not take his irony supplements, was unaware that he had contradicted himself: Even by his own lights, the decision to clemency would have been “largely a political one.” But Armour’s claim is nonsense on stilts, anyway: Schwarzenegger was under no public pressure to execute Williams. Rather he was under tremendous pressure to grant him clemency. Some of the names who came out against execution were, in addition to Jesse Jackson, liberal former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, radical former California state senator, Tom Hayden, actor Jamie Foxx, rapper-ex-con-Crips member Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus), singer Joan Baez, alleged actor Mike Farrell, and even Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Those who supported the execution included, to my knowledge, no famous names. According to Jody Armour, the daily life of a black American consists of one insult, slight, harassment and injustice after another at the hands of whites. That is reportedly the thesis of his book, Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America. (I checked out Armour, to see whether I needed to refer to the good professor as he or a she; Armour is a privileged black man.) Armour wants the American legal system to be consciously racial. From that it would follow that he has no use for the 14th Amendment to the Constitution or the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act. Most of Williams’ supporters demanded clemency for him because he was black and guilty as hell. You will not see them rally against the execution of white prisoners, or even prisoners who appear to be innocent. Note too that the idea that Williams would receive “life without parole” is unrealistic. As long as a convict is alive, he may potentially receive parole and be freed. The moment Williams had received clemency, his lawyers and supporters would have begin their “Free Tookie!” campaign. After all, the identical arguments used for clemency on Williams’ behalf are routinely trotted out to seek parole for cold-blooded killers. In the American justice system, a jury must consider a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, before voting to convict. Many Americans mistakenly believe that the standard is “guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt”; however, Tookie Williams was guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Indeed, one can only imagine how many other murders and major felonies that he, as a co-founder of the Crips, was also involved in, for which he was never charged. Two possible exceptions to the rule among Williams’ supporters are liberal former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and Republican former Illinois Gov. George Ryan. Cuomo is opposed to the death penalty on general principle, while then-Gov. Ryan, facing prosecution for alleged earlier corruption on his part as Illinois Secretary of State, in 2003 granted clemency to everyone on Illinois’ Death Row, in order to enhance his image with the public and the media, and hopefully earn himself some clemency from jurors in his own trial. The only legitimate argument I know of against the death penalty, is the danger of executing an innocent man. But in the case of Tookie Williams, that argument is moot. As for clemency, given the heinous nature and quantity of Williams’ crimes, to speak of clemency would be obscene, even if he had confessed to his crimes, and expressed genuine remorse, as opposed to putting on an act. There is a place for such shows of remorse: If there is a God in Heaven, and Tookie Williams should meet his Maker, he can confess his guilt and express his remorse, in hopes of obtaining the ultimate clemency. Among Williams’ supporters outside the prison, one brandished a sign quoting Bob Marley’s “Redemption Son,”

How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?

Tookie Williams, a prophet? One Fox News reporter observed that in a crowd of approximately 2,000 outside of San Quentin, only one lonely couple supported the execution. They were roughed up by humanitarian death penalty opponents, while nearby cops did nothing. When Williams was pronounced dead at 12:35 a.m. pst, his supporters reportedly jumped up and yelled that the State of California had killed an innocent man. Most of the reporters who spoke after the execution sought to portray Williams in saintly terms – he didn’t resist, as if men about to be executed typically struggled. Adam Housley broke ranks by noting that Williams stared intently at the media, in an attempt, apparently, to intimidate them. If Stanley “Tookie” Williams did not deserve the death penalty, what meaning does the death penalty have in that state?

NY Times Uses “Big Lie” in Fight Against Death Penalty

Originally published on November 24, 2002 in Toogood Reports by Nicholas Stix In order to know what to expect from any "news story" or editorial in the New York Times on the death penalty, all you have to know is that the Sulzberger family, which owns the newspaper, and its editors, are unalterably opposed to capital punishment. The article will then follow the computer scientists' rule of GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. 'The death penalty is unjust, and must be abolished, or failing that, rendered practically inoperable.' Between the opening and the conclusion, the reader should expect to be abused via the withholding of essential details, and violations of logic. And so it is with the newspaper's Wednesday editorial, "Justice for Death Row," which calls on lame duck, Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan to commute to life the sentences of all of Illinois' ... death row inmates. The ellipsis is because the newspaper does not tell the reader how many inmates' sentences would be commuted, if the Timesmen had their way. What the Times does tell us, is that 13 men who were on death row, including one who was two days away from a date with the death chamber, have been exonerated, and that Illinois has executed 12 prisoners since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1977. "That's more than the 12 people who were actually executed. The co-chairman of a blue-ribbon commission appointed to study the system noted that it was unlikely that any doctor 'could get it wrong over 50 percent of the time and still stay in business.'" Those 13 exonerated men have names, and lives that are of value, independent of their function as political pawns for the New York Times and the anti-death penalty crowd. So, raise a glass out of respect to Joseph Burrows, Perry Cobb, Rolando Cruz, Gary Gauger, Alejandro Hernandez, Verneal Jimerson, Ronald Jones, Carl E. Lawson, Steve Manning, Anthony Porter, Darby Tillis, Steve Smith and Dennis Williams. The bad news is, that the Times – along with the unnamed co-chairman – fibbed. The Times misrepresented capital punishment in Illinois as a situation in which a defendant in a capital case has a 52 percent chance (13 out of 25) of being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die. The good news is, the true percentage of exonerated death row prisoners in Illinois is 7.5 percent. Public Information Officer Brian Fairchild of the Illinois Corrections Department told Toogood Reports, that 159 prisoners are currently on death row. Adding the 13 exonerated prisoners, that makes for 172 death sentences. In other words, Illinois gets it right not 48% of the time, as the Times portrays things, but 92.5% (159 out of 172) of the time. That is, to be sure, an imperfect record, but worlds apart from the Times' fiction. And the Times has not reported a single instance of a man being unjustly executed in the State of Illinois. The Times' editorial board's dishonesty in reporting the Illinois death row numbers was but a prelude to its violation of logic, in calling on Gov. Ryan to commute the sentences of all prisoners on death row to life sentences.

"But last month's hearings, which received wide attention across the state, appear to have slowed the momentum. The testimony, much of it from families of murder victims, was often heart-wrenching. But as effective as they were as a reminder of the pain that crime causes, the hearings did not refute the fact that Illinois's use of the death penalty is tragically flawed. Governor Ryan, who has made fairness in administering the death penalty a hallmark of his governorship, will end his tenure on a high note if he takes one last stand for justice and issues a blanket commutation."

When other people's pain coincides with the Times' house politics, the Times' editors are less patronizing. Murder isn't just about "the pain that crime causes" (read: 'We feel your pain'), but is the ultimate injustice that one person can commit. The death penalty is about justice. The Times speaks of Gov. Ryan's maintaining of "fairness in administering the death penalty," but this is yet more double-talk. In English, "fairness in administering the death penalty" means ensuring that the accused gets a fair trial with competent counsel, and in the case of a conviction, the chance to appeal his sentence, and the opportunity, should new, exculpatory evidence or procedural errors be discovered after conviction, for his execution to be postponed while his case is reviewed. Conversely, on West 43rd Street, there is no such thing as "fairness in administering the death penalty"; "fairness" lies in the abolition or crippling of the death penalty. Note too that for socialists, "fairness in administering the death penalty," is often a code for the illogical belief that, 'disproportionate numbers of blacks are condemned to death; thus the death penalty is unjust.' Human beings – whether as individuals or groups – do not act proportionately. The salient fact is not that disproportionate numbers of blacks are condemned to death, but rather that disproportionate numbers of blacks commit murder. What socialists are saying, ultimately, is that if enough blacks commit murder, then black murderers should get bonus points. By calling for the commutation of all death sentences in Illinois, the Times editorial board blurs the distinction between those who were rightfully convicted, and those who were not, and ignores the facts in Illinois. The Times editorial board simply opposes the death penalty everywhere, the facts be damned. And here we must return to the editorial's misrepresentation of capital prosecutions in Illinois. For if the reader can be conned into believing that state prosecutors get death penalty cases wrong more often than they get them right, the proposal that capital punishment be shelved starts looking pretty reasonable. The death penalty is serious business. When 13 men in one state alone are unjustly sentenced to die, even if that state's track record is over 92% correct, attention must be paid to death penalty critics – or at least, the honest ones. And the public deserves to hear serious arguments for and against the ultimate penalty. However, when zealots are willing to lie in order to end capital punishment, it just goes to show that they have not been paying attention.