City beat: The NYPD’s Worrisome Future
Normally, there’d be “cause for optimism” about the NYPD’s future under new Commissioner Dermot Shea. But these are not normal times, laments City Journal’s Rafael Mangual. Over the past quarter century, New Yorkers enjoyed “continuous progress on crime.” During that time, officials — and most “New Yorkers themselves” — believed “the NYPD is a force for good, that jail and prison are legitimate responses to serious crime, and that prosecuting those who commit public-order or quality-of-life offenses” is “constructive and just.” Now, policymakers are pushing for “depolicing and decarceration.” And the NYPD faces “a growing chorus of antipolice rhetoric” and “an uptick” in “abuse and humiliation.” Shea’s predecessor left the city “safer” than when he took office. Yet as things stand, “this may be more than we can reasonably expect in the future.”
Impeachment take: Beyond the ‘Whistleblower’ BS
“As a constitutional lawyer, Rand Paul makes a good medical doctor,” jokes National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, confronting Paul’s claim that the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause means “the identity of the so-called whistleblower has to be revealed, lest President Trump be denied his constitutional rights.” It doesn’t, because impeachment is “not even a legal proceeding, much less a criminal trial.” On the other hand, notes McCarthy, the man in question “is not a whistleblower in the statutory sense” because his charges against the president aren’t covered by the whistleblower law — and, anyway, “the point of the law is to shield whistleblowers from reprisals (being fired, demoted, denied promotion, transferred to Anchorage, etc.) not from public identification.” It’s only after his Democratic ties were revealed that “it suddenly has become unpatriotic to utter his name.”
2020 watch: Bloomberg Doesn’t Stand a Chance
“Michael Bloomberg was a very good mayor of New York City,” David Marcus concedes at The Federalist. He was also “an effective manager.” But now the former mayor, who served three terms, wants to run for president as a Democrat. “Let’s be frank,” Marcus writes. “All the gold in Fort Knox could not get Michael Bloomberg elected president.” And there is “a simple reason for this,” says Marcus: “The man’s entire raison d’etre is an anti-fun agenda that slowly sucks the joy out of life and replaces it with cogs turning wheels in the factory of progress.” While Bloomberg may be a “better retail politician” than most would think, he’s just not cut out for our current political climate.
Conservative: Right Needs Climate-Change Plan
Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord and rollback of Clean Power Plan and other regulatory controls on greenhouse-emissions were warranted, argues conservative Jonathan Adler, director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law, at the Los Angeles Times. But Trump and “Republicans generally” haven’t “come up with an alternative approach.” Fact is, “meaningful climate mitigation” means “a dramatic transformation of the energy economy, both here and abroad” — and efforts to decarbonize the economy “must match this sort of transformation.” Trump has embraced “our profound obligation to protect America’s extraordinary blessings.” But such words “need to be matched by meaningful action.”
Sports desk: Teach Student Athletes Finance
Tim Ranzetta at the Washington Examiner welcomes news that the NCAA will soon let college athletes be paid, but “lost in the discussion,” he notes, is that the organization still won’t let them learn how to manage that extra income. That’s because it refuses to let student athletes use personal finance high school courses to qualify for college scholarships. As NBA player and now-financial adviser Chris Dudley points out, 60% of NBA players go broke within five years of retirement, and 78% of former NFL players have financial difficulties within just two years. Yet the NCAA’s policy of “not recognizing personal finance as a core course discourages students from taking it.” If the NCAA is going to let student athletes be paid, “then we can certainly also rethink this damaging policy.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board