Lecture from a fish

There is more to be learned about algae by watching a suckermouth Plecostomus adhering to the glass of one's home aquarium than we are taught by example about principles of constitutional law adhered to by many appointed judges on every level.

Their credentials imply scholarship and fitness to rule wisely, even if it goes against the grain of their own agendas, but many are ideological mercenaries whose seats on the bench are largely contingent upon partisan loyalties and track records. 

They keep their rubber stamp in a secretly sewn pocket in their black robes. Maybe the term "Your Honor" should be retired and replaced by "Your Hackness.”

A layman with no legal training or prophetic powers can predict with 100 percent accuracy how most judges will rule on cases based not on evidence and testimony, but rather by region of jurisdiction and the biases of whomever appointed them. That's especially true when the issue is one of the bedeviling and controversies that are breaking up the country. 

Still, the process must be respected. We are a nation of laws. Equal justice under the law. Just as science fiction often becomes true science eventually, so can these sacred precepts devolve into starry-eyed folklore.

"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime,” said Stalin's police chief. Our supreme,  appellate and district circuits have their own homespun corollaries. It crosses party lines. And it is no longer limited to court systems. Entire elective bodies, from Congress to city councils to school boards, often move the goal posts of the playing fields of their authority in order to score their agenda.

And they get away with it.  

Those who execute the law have become its executioners. Interpretations of absolute laws, such as those protecting all students on college campuses, have made those guarantees elective and discretionary. Such legal equivalence is akin to moral equivalence. They defeat law and negate morality. From the Ivy League to CUNY, "the poor student's Harvard.”

And speaking of CUNY, all New Yorkers should wildly applaud the proposed "Pay Up" legislation proposed by State Senator John Liu and State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.  Finally, after many decades, serious action is being taken to correct a screamingly unfair and illogical property tax break that private and lavishly endowed Columbia University and NYU have enjoyed at the expense of our 25 public colleges in the city.

The New York State Constitution gives those two schools, where annual tuition is around $90,000, tax breaks that spare them the estimated $327 million they would have to pay if, after miraculously passing two legislative sessions in Albany, the bill was approved by voters. Those two colleges practically own Morningside Heights and Greenwich Village.  

They have disrespected their communities and sucked on the public teat for too long.  

Their portfolios have a value that rivals some industrialized nations. Yet as they continue to profit and profiteer from the taxpayers' involuntary charity, subsidies to CUNY have been cut and tuition raised for its students, most of whom are much poorer than the average Columbia and NYU student's family. Even if that were not the case, New York City's taxpayers' public money should fund New York City public institutions first and foremost.

And exclusively.

"We can't live with them, and we can't live without them.” Who is "them"? Lawmakers, perhaps. 

Somebody has to codify the trappings of an orderly quasi-civilized society. Locally, we have a City Council, which has enacted many laws that are enlightened but others that are outlandishly surreal. The latest is the proposed "How Many Stops" Act. Under the guise of promoting transparency and oversight, it will hogtie police officers and render them effectively immobile.  It is a prescription for enforcement non-productivity.

They would be required to memorialize in writing practically every interaction with the public, no matter how insignificant. This will be time-consuming and serve no legitimate purpose. It will not diminish abuses and the record-keeping mandates would be unenforceable in the field.  Together with the abolition of "qualified immunity,” it will crush officer morale and needlessly put them on the defensive.  

It will discourage initiative and result in intervention-avoidance. It will create the illusion of accountability, but actually impede it because the job default to a "go through the motions" CYA position.

The City Council has also insinuated itself into the hot-button issue of rules for street vendors.   For tens of years, until two years ago, there was a hard cap on the number of street vendor licenses. In 2021, a few hundred were added for the around 20,000 New Yorkers who earn their living by that means to scrap for. A black market has allegedly arisen.

New proposals would decriminalize offenses, further lift the cap and then abandon it altogether. Sounds a bit like our Southern Border policy.

These vendors are a mainstay of our city and work honestly and hard and often in a harsh environment. They deserve our support. My gut is to go all-out in support of them. But let's not be like one of the judges I described, bending the law and common sense to accommodate their own wishes and affinities.  

What about the owners of brick-and-mortar shops who compete with the vendors but must pay exorbitant taxes to do business? With this in mind, several common-sense and imaginative ideas are being pursued by Council members.

As the New Year rapidly approaches, it is traditional among dunderheads to indulge in resolutions about how they will reset their lives or the world.  I'm too entrenched in self-sabotage to bother with personal healing, but I've got some curmudgeonly thoughts on a variety of matters.  Both, as usual, involve exploitation.  

People who are not authorized, but park anyway in spaces set aside for the disabled because as triathletes they are too lazy to walk a few steps or wait until a space becomes available, should be levied draconian penalties. I suggest a thousand dead presidents for the first violation.  

For me, the closest thing to a resolution is a pet peeve. Several pertain to the advertising industry that is so subtle yet heavy-handed in the way their sales pitches are implanted into our subconscious.  

Have you noticed the use of trigger words like "trinity" or "Bible" in the promotion of insurance and products like patriotic survivalist accessories? It's supposed to throw us off our guard and make us feel they must be decent because their entrepreneurship is part of their ministry. They'll pimp anything for a buck.

We've got to rein in the industrial psychologists they use as consultants.

And can't the feds do something about the thousand words of disclaimers that appear on the bottom of the screen for around three seconds in minus two-hundred font during an advertisement for a new medication with a laundry list of fatal side effects? Oh well, they've thereby satisfied a legal stipulation.

While we wait for our legislators, regulators and courts to return from their extended vacations, there are little things we can each do to make things more livable. First, we can swear off starting a sentence with the word "So.” And then we can renounce the annoying quirk of asking ourselves our own question and then answering that same question with one's own prefabricated response, thereby completely controlling the conversation.

It's not exactly "rules for radicals,” but it would be my guilty pleasure seeing a stylistic upgrading, particularly when the discourse is malicious.

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