Bloomberg Says Interpretation of Constitution Will ‘Have to Change’ After Boston
politicker.com
politicker.com
The terrorists want my life; its the government that wants my freedom. I'll keep my freedom, thank you, and take my chances with my life. My chance of being injured by terrorism is infinitesimal compared to the very real chance of losing civil rights and privacy I value.
As Patrick Henry said: "Give me Liberty, or Give me Death!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_cascade
They are just about exactly the wrong way to respond.
There are a few important facts about terrorism that should put our fear in context:
* Terrorists tend to be spectacularly inept.
* Terrorist organizations tend to collapse over time, through various combinations of frustration, attrition and overreach.
* The methods of terrorism tend to be highly ineffective at killing people.
On the same day that the Boston bombings killed three people, approximately 40 Americans country-wide were murdered for various non-terrorist reasons. Also on the same day, approximately 140 Americans died via guns (this includes suicides, which make up two-thirds of the total, and accidental deaths).
We can keep going: for example, approximately 85 Americans are killed every day in automobile accidents. My point is that the fear that we feel about terrorism is utterly disproportionate to the risk that we will experience it - especially compared to the kinds of things we rarely think about but really should worry about.
By no means do I mean to dismiss or demean or make light of the trauma, injury and death experienced by the people who experienced the Boston Marathon terror attack. However, it would only compound the tragedy if we allow such an event to transform our civilization from one that esteems liberty, autonomy and privacy into one that sacrifices those things for needless expedience.
Silly quibble- same difference, there are few things better for getting "panicky attention" than randomly taking lives or maiming people.
I agree with your other points.
Not really, it has nothing to do with being effective or loud, they go for the option that spreads the most terror... For example poison city water supply or send letter bomb. The flasher option here spreads less terror. The goal of a terrorist is to force political change though terror.
Imagine the fear and economic problems terrorists could create bombing the SF Bay Bridge, the BART trans-bay tube, or NYC subways. Those targets would be much easier and more economically damaging targets than commercial airplanes.
It's remotely small compared to your chance of dying in a traffic accident too [1], and we don't give up our freedoms for that.
Either people making cognitive bias misjudgements [2], or intentionally manipulating them.
[1]: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristics_in_judgment_and_dec...
"HN User 'mindcrime' Says Mayor Bloomberg Is A F%@#ng Idiot"
Seriously, what is the deal with this guy? The terrorists kill FAR, FAR fewer people in this country every year than lightning strikes, slips & falls in the bathroom, accidental drownings in one's own swimming pool, automobile accidents, cancer, heart disease, etc., etc., etc.
But because of a few anomalous events, as tragic as they may be, we're supposed to compromise the most basic, fundamental principles that define us as a nation? I don't think so.
Anyway, our government is far more of a threat to our freedom than any terrorist organization will be.
Government will use fear to slowly strip us of our rights. Why? Because it works really well.
He has already made the leap to assume we "Interpret" the US Constitution. It's a pretty clear document that needs little interpretation. We're supposed to amend it, not change are mind on what they really meant.
I'm not sure how many pressure cookers there are in the US, probably in the tens of millions at most. I can't find any data on how many injuries are caused by them, but there'd have to be 10-20 incidents per day for it to measure up to guns in terms of injuries per object.
The most common injury from a pressure cooker is a burn. There are about 100 burns requiring medical attention in the US daily (http://www.ameriburn.org/resources_factsheet.php) and it's unlikely that 25% of these are caused by pressure cookers given the wide number of causes of burns.
Are you suggesting we should ban those too?
It's time to admit they are no longer the basic, fundamental principles that define the nation, as they are continually being changed or taken away (i.e. Patriot Act)
What on Earth does he propose to do that we haven't already done, anyway? Strip search stations on every street corner?
Also, Bloomberg is still in office because he was able to change the term limits, which New Yorkers were against.
It's hard to beat a politician with a personal net worth of $27 billion.
personal note: I do not support the abolition of term limits or the imposition of soda taxes; but I do not think he is in power simply because he is wealthy.
He certainly isn't in power simply because he's wealthy, but having a bottomless war chest and a large media empire makes it much easier.
That still doesn't explain that if the people of New York are so against his policies why he can make them happen. I'll assume that New York is just like any other city and the mayor can't just do something because they want to. Don't they have city councilmen? Aren't they beholden to the masses? Can't they be elected out if the people don't like what is being passed? As for term limits, if he can get re-elected what does that matter? The people are still voting him in!
In any case it's still the fault of the people of New York.
Overall you're right, New Yorkers don't hate Bloomberg, he's done quite a bit that lots of people like. I certainly don't hate him, but I do have many problems with him.
The hard truth is that in an expanding security bureaucracy, the weak point becomes the bureaucracy; no need to sneak past security if you can sneak people into the security role who are on your side. Subversion is harder to do when the security bureaucracy is smaller.
The mayor of a major city like New York has influence far beyond his authority. His statements on a matter like this make a contribution to setting the tone and framing the debate nationally, and therefore have an effect on all of us, whatever we may think the people of New York "deserve."
But there's probably some other factors at play.
So, if you elected a guy that clearly is going to strip down your rights don't be surprised or outraged when it happens.
Then again, with generalizations like "that New Yorkers say" and assumptions like "if you elected a guy", I suppose my comment also applies to you.
Don't give him any more ideas. Be it sodium, sugar, tobacco, or terrorists, Mr. Bloomberg's first response is always the same: limit freedom.
...like Stop and Frisk?
In 2012, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 533,042 times
473,300 were totally innocent (89 percent).
How these people's heads don't explode is just beyond me. He has to be aware of what he's saying. Right?
Poe's law for politics.
Probably.
Which is much weaker than the original argument, facts be damned.
And it doesn't mean that it is invalid. The ideological basis for a lot of Islamist terrorism is Qutbism which is quite regressive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutbism#Qutbism_and_non-Muslims
The world is generally safer now than at almost any previous time, particularly for those of us that remember the Cold War and the early-mid 1980s, when even these measures weren't required to avoid mutually-assured destruction (MAD) by two super-powers and their proxies. The only people wanting to limit freedom are politicians in the pocket of those wanting to expand the myriad of security services of the state. This feeds into the projected paranoia of those citizens who fail to understand the true cost, chance, or opportunity of reducing terrorist activities. Of course there has to be an attempt to reduce terrorist activities, but its the internal processes and procedures in place currently between the myriad network of security services which need to be reformed drastically, not the further expansion of those security services or the reduction in freedoms.
Terrorism is an issue of public security, while before 1991 the Soviet Union (for the Western world at least) was an issue of national security. Issues of public security need to be treated as such, not over-inflated and treated incorrectly. This helps support the terrorists, not defeat them, as has been shown in almost every internal urban civil conflict in the past hundred years.
Lysander Spooner had it right 150 years ago:
"[T]he Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. ... But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain --- that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
[1]http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happi...
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein#.22Conspiracy_The...
"Don't listen to what this guy's saying, he believes in nudge politics. Don't listen to nudge politics, the people who came up with it like China-style propaganda."
From the other comments here, there's plenty of legitimate points against his arguments. There's no need to resort to cheap shots.
This press conference likely had absolutely nothing to do with the Boston bombing. In fact, yesterday he was busy announcing a new ice skating facility in the Bronx. But using history as a guide, once the Q&A started, the media hounded him for quotes surrounding the Boston situation b/c stories about ice skating rinks are "boring".
And then once the media got a couple quotes that fit their mold, they wove some story around it to meet their biased agenda. Simply strip out Bloomberg's quotes from the article here and see for yourselves: they're not all that incriminating. But read them in the context of the author's story, and whoa, watch out! We're about to lose all of our freedoms.
Look - I get it. Some of the thing Bloomberg have done overstep the boundaries of what some consider reasonable. And having open discussion on this is totally warranted. But reading the comments here you would think those who view NYC from the outside think we live in some totalitarian state. Nothing could be further from the truth, in fact. The city remains largely liberal from a social standpoint (and Bloomberg seems to be no exception). And in terms of diversity - whether it be religion, ethnic background, interests, etc. - you're simply not going to find a better melting pot.
So everybody please stop panicking for us - we're doing just fine. This is just some underpaid journo looking for a scoop and it seems she got more than a few clicks today courtesy of the alarmist HN crowd, so kudos to her. Now back to work.
I spent the first 18 years of my life in NYC. I still go back to visit family several times each year.
I can tell you that the only place in America where people are less free than they are in NYC is at the airports. Here are some things to think about:
1. The NYPD is basically an army. Sure, you have officers who are only armed with a handgun, but every time I have visited NYC in the past few years I have encountered at least one paramilitary team. We are talking about soldiers whose uniforms say "POLICE" standing guard in the village, or Times Square, or in front of a bank in some uninteresting neighborhood.
2. I carry a small pocket knife. When I went to NYC with it, I was stopped by the police, threatened with 2 weeks in jail, and then politely told to hide the knife so that a less "friendly" officer would not arrest me.
3. I was given a $50 fine for walking between subway cars while a train was sitting in a station.
4. I watched as dozens of cops closed in around a handful of protesters.
5. I have had the police tell me that either they will inspect my bag or I will not be allowed to ride the subway.
6. Cameras are confiscated or damaged at the Ground Zero memorial.
7. Even hunting rifles are hard to get permission to own in NYC.
8. Stop and frisk -- need I say more?
9. http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20100505//bikes-confiscated-...
10. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/01/republican-national...
Unfortunately, that is the city I have to move back to next year for a job. I am not particularly looking forward to it.
http://grounds-strategy.com/files/gender-and-voting.pdf
> after 9/11, women became much more concerned with national security issues. Today, a significant majority of women, 43 percent, versus 11 percent of men, believe that a member of their family could be affected by a terrorist attack.
Note that 43% + 11% is more than half the population; only 3000 people died in 9/11. That's 0.001% actually affected. Public perception of terrorism more accurately reflects the outcome of a full-scale nuclear war.
Mothers are extremely protective of their children (and this is not a bad thing) but when terrorism is reported in the news without also giving the context of the actual size of the event relative to the size of the population, it leads some people into a false sense of what risk their children really have. What the media outlets do, instead, is play into fears and make every attempt to keep these events as looking as scary as possible, because that's how they get ratings. Perhaps mothers with children are more apt to pay attention to this.
What is also interesting, and people here should try to consider this every once in a while, is that the comments on this site are almost exclusively young males. Most without children. So you won't hear things here from the mother-with-child perspective, which is a massive voting block.
Bad statistical reasoning is 150% of the problem here. ;)
A better question might be, why is this nonsense on the front page of HN?
I would suggest that that sentiment is far from universal.
It may seem outdated to you, but not to everyone else.
> why does no one ever bring up the idea of writing a new one?
The same reason people are generally better off making incremental changes to basically-functional mission-critical computing systems than tossing them out and starting from scratch.
“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”So sayeth Mayor Bloomberg, in the midst of a speech that explicitly proposes taking away another of our freedoms.