Markets in Everything
According to Politico, the American Conservative Union is
selling off endorsements to the highest bidder. Actually, that's too kind; this sounds more like an extortion racket:
The American Conservative Union asked FedEx
for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group's
endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided
with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.
For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that
included: "Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU's Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU's board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)"
The conservative group's
remarkable demand -- black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington
practice known as "pay for play" -- was contained in a private letter to
FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.
The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of
taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and
supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying
big money.
In the three-page letter asking for money on June 30, the conservative group backed FedEx. After FedEx says it rejected the offer, Keene signed onto a two-page July 15 letter backing UPS. Keene did not return a message left on his cell phone.
I'm skeptical of this, not because I feel that political groups are above selling their services, but because I'd be shocked if one of them was actually stupid enough to put it in a letter. On the other hand, crazier things have happened. I expect this will be a fairly major ongoing story during the August doldrums. I can't wait to hear what the ACU has to say. Developing . . .
More cops, less crime
In 2005, New York City, with a population of approximately 8 million, had 539 murders. Washington, DC, with a population of 600,000, had 195.
There are a lot of explanations one could offer for this, but one of the best ones is the prevalence in New York of beat cops. DC actually has more cops per citizen--one for every 153 citizens, versus one for every 210 in New York. But after almost a year in DC, I've still never seen a cop walking on the street. I see them frequently-ish in their patrol cars, but almost never walking around among the population.
To be fair, DC is less dense, so it's harder to patrol than New York--but New York had patrolmen long before it had skyscrapers. And increasing the number of police on the street is among the most effective ways to reduce crime--unsurprising, since even people with very poor impulse control are able to keep from committing crimes when there's a policeman standing right there.
The good news is, DC may be changing its policy. In the wake of a particularly bloody weekend, DCist reports that the city is putting more cops on the beat. The local blog spotted a beat cop a mere three blocks from my house -- on a weekday.
Don't you have something better to do?
James Joyner takes HuffPo to task:
Despite his resignation from the Senate, the Larry Craig story won’t die. Arianna Huffington spent her Labor Day wondering, “In the Age of Terror, Isn’t Busting Toe-Tappers an Insane Use of Our Law Enforcement Resources?”
Sometimes a clever title is used as a hook to attract reader attention but the article itself goes in a different direction. Not so here:
In the consensus judgment of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, the terrorist threat to our homeland is “persistent and evolving,” placing our country in “a heightened threat environment.” Given that chilling assessment, isn’t it the height of madness to use America’s finite law enforcement resources to seek out and arrest people for tapping the foot of a cute undercover officer in a restroom?
Does Huffington really believe that Sergeant Dave Karsnia of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Police Department have been sent to North Waziristan to look for Osama bin Laden had he not been on toilet duty? Or even that there was something he could have been doing to thwart a non-existent terrorist plot at the airport that day?
This is true, and in general this question, popular with bloggers on those thumb-sucking, phone-it-in kinda days, is pretty stupid. Local cops are, by and large, not going to be looking for terrorists whether or not they're prowling around looking for something you disapprove of.
That said, I believe that Minneapolis still has a crime rate. And as Steve Levitt has pointed out, putting more cops on the street is one of the best ways to fight crime. It's hard to think of a crime that isn't a greater threat to the public order than Larry Craig's twinklin' toes.
