Jts5665

SCIENCE IS REAL: The Failed Experiment of Covid Lockdowns: New data suggest that social distancing and reopening haven’t determined the spread.

TrendMacro, my analytics firm, tallied the cumulative number of reported cases of Covid-19 in each state and the District of Columbia as a percentage of population, based on data from state and local health departments aggregated by the Covid Tracking Project. We then compared that with the timing and intensity of the lockdown in each jurisdiction. That is measured not by the mandates put in place by government officials, but rather by observing what people in each jurisdiction actually did, along with their baseline behavior before the lockdowns. This is captured in highly detailed anonymized cellphone tracking data provided by Google and others and tabulated by the University of Maryland’s Transportation Institute into a “Social Distancing Index.”

Measuring from the start of the year to each state’s point of maximum lockdown—which range from April 5 to April 18—it turns out that lockdowns correlated with a greater spread of the virus. States with longer, stricter lockdowns also had larger Covid outbreaks. The five places with the harshest lockdowns—the District of Columbia, New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts—had the heaviest caseloads.

It could be that strict lockdowns were imposed as a response to already severe outbreaks. But the surprising negative correlation, while statistically weak, persists even when excluding states with the heaviest caseloads. And it makes no difference if the analysis includes other potential explanatory factors such as population density, age, ethnicity, prevalence of nursing homes, general health or temperature. The only factor that seems to make a demonstrable difference is the intensity of mass-transit use.

We ran the experiment a second time to observe the effects on caseloads of the reopening that began in mid-April. We used the same methodology, but started from each state’s peak of lockdown and extended to July 31. Confirming the first experiment, there was a tendency (though fairly weak) for states that opened up the most to have the lightest caseloads. The states that had the big summer flare-ups in the so-called “Sunbelt second wave”—Arizona, California, Florida and Texas—are by no means the most opened up, politicized headlines notwithstanding.

The lesson is not that lockdowns made the spread of Covid-19 worse—although the raw evidence might suggest that—but that lockdowns probably didn’t help, and opening up didn’t hurt. This defies common sense. In theory, the spread of an infectious disease ought to be controllable by quarantine. Evidently not in practice, though we are aware of no researcher who understands why not.

We’re not the only researchers to have discovered this statistical relationship.

When people say “follow the science,” ask them what science they’re talking about.

THIS SEEMS LIKELY:

FINALLY: Japanese company successfully tests a manned flying car for the first time.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Pilot landing at LAX reports ‘guy in a jetpack’ flying near plane. “The jet was flying at an altitude of 3,000 feet at the time of the encounter.”

HEH: Snopes Rates Biden’s Claim That 2+2=5 As ‘Mostly True.’ “The website’s 6,000-word defense/fact-check of Biden’s claim further pointed out that 80% of the answer was correct, and it’s only the one additional number that was a mixture of truth and falsehood.”

UPDATE: 2+2 Wars Explained.

Cathy Young — though lacking Cathy “mathbabe” O’Neil’s math credentials — takes a decent stab at explaining the 2+2 twitter flamewar, still going strong. Allow PTT condense it to the bare minimum for you: It’s all about the power. Dovlatov had noted that while the Soviet regime had no reservations about bringing down its iron fist on dissidents, what provoked particular butthurt was attempting to go on as though it weren’t there: “The Soviet government is a touchy lady. It is bad for the one who offends her. But it is much worse for the one who ignores her”.

2+2=5 is about power in the classic, banal, Orwellian sense. Those who followed the wave of retractions (and even pre-tractions!) could see where this was going, but somehow hope had lingered that integer arithmetic would remain safe. Not content with taking over the math organizations, the jackbooted goons had to go after math itself. In this regard, the present-day woke mob is more totalitarian and less pragmatic than their Soviet predecessors, who were content to leave mathematics (if not individual mathematicians) alone.

Much of the 2+2=5 power grab is being driven by a “Harvard-trained data analyst“, whose contribution to mathematical knowledge is exactly zero. To say that he plays the race card would be an understatement on the level of “that pimp can be an abusive boyfriend”. To see him humored and feted by prominent mathematicians is more than disheartening. And he’s not even the worst actor, by far.

Indeed.

Turns out that despite my frequent criticisms of the bed-wetters, they actually saved the whole world from dying. I know this because they’ve told me so on Twitter.

I pointed out that we can stop panicking because the despite the rising casedemic, the deaths and hospitalizations in places like New York have plummeted to near-zero. Like this:

That’s because of the lockdowns and the mandatory masks! the bed-wetters informed me. The pandemic is under control in places where the authorities took HARD ACTIONS!

Ahhh, I see. So that means in places that imposed HARD ACTIONS, like lockdowns and mandatory masks, the pandemic is under control, while in places that didn’t impose HARD ACTIONS, the hospitalizations and deaths must still be rising.

Well, Sweden didn’t impose lockdowns or masks. Let’s compare their COVID deaths to Italy and the U.K., which took HARD ACTIONS.

Hmmm, looks like the deaths in Sweden peaked a little later and then plummeted a little later, but the curve is nearly identical … except with fewer deaths per million people at the peak. That would almost suggest lockdowns and masks have little if any effect on how the virus spreads.

There are seven U.S. states that never issued stay-at-home orders. They’re the ones highlighted in yellow below. I also circled South Dakota because the state didn’t close any businesses either. It’s the least bed-wetting of all states. Notice the low death rate (the scale is deaths per 100,000 people).

Oh, yeah, sure! That’s because those states don’t have big cities!

That’s what the bed-wetters told me. Apparently they didn’t do well in social studies classes. Look at the states in the bottom half of the chart. Big cities in those states include Seattle, Portland, St. Louis, Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Oklahoma City.

Population density! We meant population density! the bed-wetters replied. South Dakota only has, like, 12 people per square mile!

The bed-wetters seem to think people in low-population states like South Dakota spread themselves evenly across the land. They don’t. I used to do comedy tours in those western states. You can drive for hundreds of miles and barely spot a house. Then you get to a city with actual people (and a comedy club). I know that’s how it is in those states, but I nonetheless checked the data on a U.S. census site. Here are percentages of the population in several rural/western states who live in what the census bureau labels as urban zones: 90% in Utah, 80% in Oregon, 73% in Nebraska, 70% in Wisconsin, 66% in Oklahoma, 64% in Iowa.

So yes, even in those low-density states, most people live in or near cities. And please refer back to the chart and tell me which BIG CITIES in Mississippi and Rhode Island explain their high death rates.

But you’ve got to look at Florida! Second wave! Second wave! Second wave! They never should have opened up the state in June, because look at the deaths! They should have stuck with HARD ACTION!

Yes, there was a summertime rise in COVID deaths in Florida. But thanks to the videos posted by Ivor Cummins, I’m aware of how the COVID curves are following the curves for seasonal flu outbreaks. So with that in mind, I looked up curves for flu and other respiratory infections for previous years in Florida. Here’s a chart showing the curves for several respiratory infections:

June begins around week 23 most years. So what do we see in this chart? Yup, we see summertime spikes (or a SECOND WAVE! if you prefer) for respiratory infections in Florida. That’s the usual pattern.

Here’s a chart showing visits to a medical provider for flu-like illness in Florida in 2009.

See that big second spike beginning in the summer? Once again, this is normal.

The seasonal flu curves for northern regions and southern regions aren’t the same. Southern regions show a spike in the summer months. That’s why summertime COVID deaths rose in Florida, and it’s why they’re rising in places like Peru and Brazil.

And by the way, Peru took HARD ACTION that was harder than almost any other country … which makes this headline interesting:

The country with the world’s strictest lockdown is now the worst for excess deaths.

Here’s a chart comparing deaths in Peru (world’s strictest lockdown) to deaths in Brazil, which didn’t take the HARD ACTIONS the bed-wetters insist saved the world:

Oh, yeah? Well, if Florida had a summertime rise because it’s in the south, how do you explain the fact that Italy didn’t get a big summertime rise too? Huh? Italy is south, ya know! Huh?

Gee, I’m sorry you didn’t do well in geography classes. Italy is in the south of Europe, yes, but it’s not south as far as the world is concerned. Look at a globe. Italy is at the same latitude as the New England states in America.  Rome, for example, is at the same latitude as Providence, Rhode Island. Florida, meanwhile, is at the same latitude as the Western Sahara in Africa.  The summertime rise in southern areas isn’t about failure to impose lockdowns.  It’s about latitude.

Lockdowns didn’t stop the spread of the virus. Masks won’t stop the spread of the virus (which is why scientists in the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway recommended against mandating them). So why can’t the bed-wetters just admit they were wrong?

Because when one of their Grand Plans fails to fix a problem – or even causes more harm than good – The Anointed never, ever, ever admit the Grand Plan was a bad idea.

As you know, I borrowed the term The Anointed from Thomas Sowell and his book The Vision of the Anointed. In speeches and blog posts, I’ve summarized Dr. Sowell’s description of how The Anointed interpret the failure of a Grand Plan. They always decide that:

• The plan was good, but people didn’t follow it correctly because they’re stupid
• The plan was good, but it was undermined by people because they’re evil
• The plan didn’t go far enough … so we need to do the same thing ONLY BIGGER.

Actually, Dr. Sowell added another interpretation I haven’t mentioned previously:

• Sure, the Grand Plan didn’t fix the problem … but without the Grand Plan, the problem would have been EVEN WORSE!

That’s what the bed-wetters are telling themselves now. One bed-wetter on Twitter recently insisted that without the lockdowns, the coronavirus would have killed 500,000 Americans. All hail the HARD ACTIONS taken by The Anointed for saving us.

And prepare yourself … they may still decide we need to do the same thing again, only bigger.

IMPOSSIBLE, I WAS TOLD THAT THIS NEVER HAPPENS: Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots.

A top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he’s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.

Mail-in ballots have become the latest flashpoint in the 2020 elections. While President Trump and the GOP warn of widespread manipulation of the absentee vote that will swell with COVID polling restrictions, many Democrats and their media allies have dismissed such concerns as unfounded.

But the political insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears prosecution, said fraud is more the rule than the exception. His dirty work has taken him through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and congressional races across the Garden State. Some of the biggest names and highest office holders in New Jersey have benefited from his tricks, according to campaign records The Post reviewed.

“An election that is swayed by 500 votes, 1,000 votes — it can make a difference,” the tipster said. “It could be enough to flip states.”

The whisteblower — whose identity, rap sheet and long history working as a consultant to various campaigns were confirmed by The Post — says he not only changed ballots himself over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — a critical 2020 swing state.

I hope that Bill Barr will have a lot of investigators on this between now and November.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON THE IN DEFENSE OF LOOTING AUTHOR WHO WAS FEATURED ON NPR:

Looters “get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free…. Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police.”

That seems to present looting as street theater with a message. It makes an argument. A terrible argument. We’ve heard that argument in words many times over the years, and most Americans reject it. We want to work and build wealth and enjoy our lives and we want the great mutual benefits of hard work and wealth. Osterweil’s looting is a switch from making the argument against property in words and to speak with actions — the destruction of property. But that doesn’t make the argument more convincing! It’s a nasty tantrum thrown because you can’t convince people with your ideas. Ironically, fortunately, it makes the argument for the other side.

Read the whole thing.

Related: From Roger Kimball: Meet the Democrats’ Newest Strategist.

DON’T ASK THEM ABOUT THE UIGHURS:

Related:

YOU WOULD NEED A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Antifa And BLM Are Begging People To Stop Posting Videos Of Riots Because They’re Getting Arrested.

IF YOU WANT TO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO ABANDON THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, ACTING ASHAMED OF WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS A GOOD WAY TO DO IT: Rutherford County Schools Tell Parents Not to Monitor Their Child’s Virtual Classrooms. “Officials at all county schools are asking parents to sign forms agreeing not to watch these virtual classes.”

The idea that this is about protecting “academic privacy” is absurd.

A police officer who allegedly kneed a suspect 20 to 30 times in the eye after the man had been restrained is entitled to qualified immunity and thus cannot be sued over the incident, a federal court confirmed Monday.

Charles McManemy, who law enforcement suspected was making a drug delivery, claims that Deputy Bruce Tierney of Iowa's Butler County Sheriff's Office violated his Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force after McManemy had surrendered with at least four cops already on top of him. Following the incident, McManemy says he suffered lasting damage in his eye with increased light sensitivity and "floaters." But while a majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that Tierney did indeed violate McManemy's rights, his suit "fails for a different reason: the absence of a clearly established right."

"McManemy must point to a case that 'squarely governs the specific facts at issue'" to prevail in withholding qualified immunity from Tierney, writes Circuit Judge David R. Stras. Such is the standard required by the legal doctrine, which shields public officials from civil liability: if a plaintiff cannot point to a near-identical scenario of police misconduct that has already been litigated and condemned in pre-existing case law, they may not sue the officer or officers who harmed them—even when the court finds the conduct in question violated their rights. 

Stras cites two 8th Circuit excessive force precedents—Gill v. Maciejewski (2008) and Krout v. Goemmer (2009)—that he says are different enough from what McManemy endured that Deputy Tierney could not have known his conduct was unconstitutional. Stras also ruled in favor of other deputies, who McManemy sued for not intervening. Of particular interest: Stras emphasizes that McManemy began resisting after voluntarily surrendering and laying face down on the ground; McManemy countered that he has a shoulder injury and was reacting in pain as he was handcuffed and tased. 

The Supreme Court created the "clearly established" standard in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982), cutting against Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, which previously allowed the American public to sue public officials when their rights were violated. While they still technically have that right, qualified immunity has made it considerably more difficult. Many plaintiffs, such as McManemy, are denied the right to bring a lawsuit if the "clearly established" threshold is not met. (Qualified immunity has no impact on criminal prosecution.)

Though it was theoretically constructed to protect civil servants from vacuous lawsuits, it has instead emboldened bad behavior. As I wrote earlier this month:

The legal doctrine has protected two cops who allegedly stole $225,000 while executing a search warrant; a sheriff's deputy who shot a 10-year-old boy while aiming at the child's non-threatening dog; prison guards who forced a naked inmate to sleep in cells filled with raw sewage and "massive amounts" of human feces; two cops who assaulted and arrested a man for the crime of standing outside of his own house; two officers who sicced a police dog on a surrendered suspect. That list is not exhaustive.

Writing in dissent, Circuit Judge L. Steven Grasz notes that it is, in fact, clearly established by current precedent that a needless show of force after someone has been overpowered is unconstitutional. "Viewed in a light most favorable to McManemy, the facts establish Deputy Tierney repeatedly—twenty to thirty times—kneed McManemy in the eye area after he was subdued and restrained," he writes. A jury, he says, could reasonably believe that the force occurred after the situation necessitated it. But McMenemy won't have a chance to present his case to any such jury, even though, as Grasz concludes, it has been "clearly established that gratuitous force" toward a subdued suspect "violates the Fourth Amendment."

In many other posts, I have credited BLM for bringing attention to police accountability issues but have criticized them for not doing the hard local work to start fixing things ("defund the police" and looting Apple stores both being, to my mind, equally ineffectual approaches).

My son made me familiar with Campaign Zero, which does seem to be doing the hard local work to change laws and union contracts.  They have state by state and city by city progress lists at passing key pieces of their reform agenda, model legislation, etc.  I also like the fact that while they acknowledge racism as part of the problem, they frame the issue more broadly as a general issue of police violence and accountability.  I don't agree with 100% of their program but as a libertarian I long ago got comfortable making common cause at less than 100% levels of agreement.

Their solutions page is really very impressive, and head and shoulders above most of the popular discourse I see on this topic.  here for example are subpoints under "End For Profit Policing", just one of their 10 action planks.  I love the links to actual model legislation where it exists.  This is how change will happen on this issue.

Police should be working to keep people safe, not contributing to a system that profits from stopping, searching, ticketing, arresting and incarcerating people.

POLICY SOLUTIONS

End police department quotas for tickets and arrests

Ban police departments from using ticket or arrest quotas to evaluate the performance of police officers

(Ex: Illinois law)

Limit fines and fees for low-income people

Pass policies requiring local governments to:

• ban issuing fines or arrest warrants for civilians who fail to appear in court for a traffic citation (Ex: Ferguson Policy)
• ban generating more than 10% of total municipal revenue from fines and fees (Ex: Missouri law)
• allow judges discretion to waive fines and fees for low-income people or initiate payment plans (Ex: Pennsylvania law)
• prohibit courts from ordering individuals on parole or probation to pay supervision fees and other correctional fees

Prevent police from taking the money or property of innocent people

Prohibit police from:

• seizing property of civilians (i.e. civil forfeiture) unless they are convicted of a crime and the state establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the property is subject to forfeiture
• keeping any property that has legally been forfeited (instead, this property should go to a general fund)
• participating in the federal Equitable Sharing program that allows police to engage in civil asset forfeiture

(Ex: New Mexico law)

Require police departments to bear the cost of misconduct

• Require the cost of misconduct settlements to be paid out of the police department budget instead of the City's general fund
• Restrict police departments from receiving more money from the general fund when they go over-budget on lawsuit payments

THIS IS PROBABLY WHAT GOT THE BEE SUSPENDED FROM TWITTER: Trump Drives Around Playing Mailbox Baseball In Latest Voter Suppression Scheme.

FLASHBACK: U.S. Woefully Unprepared for a Blackout Like India’s: Analysis.

Last week, India suffered two huge blackouts. Tuesday’s cut power to 370 million people; another one on Wednesday blacked out 670 million people, making it the worst blackout in the history of humanity.

Talking about this with a colleague, I said, “Don’t worry. That can’t happen here.” “Why not?” she asked. “Because we don’t have 670 million people,” I replied.

This wasn’t the comfort she was looking for.

Think resilience.

WHEN POLIS WAS ELECTED A FRIEND TOLD ME WASN’T A BAD PERSON, JUST DUMBER THAN DIRT. I DIDN’T BELIEVE HIM BUT HIS MILITATES TOWARDS THAT CONCLUSION. OTOH EVIL OR STUPID DOESN’T MATTER, HE MEANS TO DESTROY COLORADO:   Insane Model Means Colorado’s COVID-19 Policies Are Essentially Based On Tarot Cards.

Worse, no one in Colorado is reporting this. Let’s spread the truth, okay?

Even if Fashboots Polis has made it impossible to recall him during the “emergency.”
What he’s doing is stupid and dangerous.  And it’s time people know.

The post A Significant Number of Young People Have Contemplated Suicide Due to the Lockdown appeared first on The Bongino Report.

IF YOU’RE ASIAN, UNIVERSITIES WILL DISCRIMINATE AGAINST YOU, THEN PUNISH YOU FOR COMPLAINING ABOUT IT: University Of Pittsburgh Cardiologist Is Stripped From Fellowship Program After Criticizing Affirmative Action.

A cardiologist who was on the staff of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center was removed from a fellowship program after he published a paper criticizing affirmative action efforts, the University Times reported.

Norman Wang’s paper, originally published in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) on March 24 and later redacted by JAHA in August after it elicited blowback, stated that there “exists no empirical evidence by accepted standards for causal inference to support the mantra that ‘diversity saves lives,’” adding, “Long-term academic solutions and excellence should not be sacrificed for short-term demographic optics.”

That exact sacrifice is the highest value in higher education at the moment, and they just proved it again with this action.

Time to complain to the grantmaking agencies under Executive Order 13864.

As I observe it currently, the three strategies currently being taken by Progressives to increase police accountability are

1. Demonizing all police officers, good and bad
2. Making large cuts to police budgets and/or salaries
3. Looting Apple stores

I have lamented before that none of these approaches are likely to succeed at reforming police accountability or more broadly at helping black Americans.  Remember that while black Americans disproportionately come in contact with police and the justice system, they also are disproportionately victims of crime.  All the current approaches listed above are unlikely to improve the police and justice system but may make crime worse.

One of the seldom discussed differences between Progressives and libertarians in this country is their skill set for change.  Progressives are very good at creating a "moment" where everyone in the country is forced to look at an issue and potentially agree that change is needed.  Progressives can grab both the streets and the headlines.  But they often suck at the hard work making real change happen in a Democratic system.  They don't seem to have an interest in the drawn out 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offense needed to make reforms city by city.  Libertarians are just the opposite.  We suck at building mass desire for change -- we write 5000 word think pieces with lots of graphs but you don't see us in the streets.  But we can be good at actually getting change to happen -- I think of ALEC (which is really more Conservative than libertarian, but work with me here) and how it works.  Let's say we decide it would be a good thing to have legal authority and process to build private toll roads.  ALEC goes out there city by city and starts working the local government process.  It finds a location, no matter how small, where it makes progress and gets laws changed.  It then bundles this work into case studies and model legislation and takes it to other communities.

This is exactly the hard ground work that is needed to take the goodwill BLM has built up with the public and convert it to real change.  And, correct me if I am wrong, I have seen exactly zero interest out of anyone in BLM to do this -- it's all street protest and, among the richer folks, high-profile virtue signaling.

Walter Olson had a link on Twitter to an article my Mailee Smith that really gives one an idea how hard the local work is going to be:

Reformers are calling for broad changes. Many of the contemplated reforms—such as making it easier to fire problem officers—are meant both to protect citizens from police brutality and to protect the vast majority of police officers who serve honorably from having their reputations tarnished by the conduct of a few.

These efforts could prove meaningless, though, in states like Illinois that give public-employee union contracts greater power than state law. Buried deep in the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act, which gives collective bargaining power to police unions, is Section 15, entitled “Act Takes Precedence.” Section 15 explicitly provides that when a government-union contract conflicts with any other law or regulation, the contract prevails.

It would be unthinkable, in any other context, to permit an agreement negotiated by unelected third parties to trump state law—but that’s exactly what Section 15 demands. Illinois could enact the best police reforms in the nation, but those reforms won’t matter if they run contrary to a police-union contract.

Good God, this is awful.

Postscript:  There are a couple of added barriers, I think, beyond just skills and interest that keep Progressives from digging down into these issues

1. Public employees unions have always been a keep political bulwark of the Left, and I think folks on the Left struggle to challenge a public employee union
2. A cynical interpretation is that hard-core Progressives want to chuck democracy altogether, and thus see no reason to do the hard work of making change happen in a democratic system

Update:  One idea that has been raised by Progressive of late is unbundling the police force, taking social work or civil enforcement tasks from them into other groups.  These seem like approaches worth considering -- I always have wondered why traffic or parking enforcement have to be police functions.  However, this would not have addressed recent high-profile shootings that are driving a lot of the anger

FOR THE CHILDREN OR WHATEVER: Woke War on America’s No. 1 High School: Push to ‘Segregate by Race and Income.’

Last month, Suparna Dutta spent countless hours researching how her son could safely return to school this fall as a rising sophomore at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a sprawling campus of classrooms, laboratories and open spaces with names like “Gandhi Commons” and “Einstein Commons,” outside the nation’s capital here off Braddock Road. Little did she know that a secretive “task force” assembled by orders of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was quietly meeting to discuss legislating radical changes to the school that would threaten the very future of the school.

Unbeknownst to Dutta — and me, also a TJ mother — Virginia Secretary of Education Atif Qarni, a former teacher, met remotely on Friday, July 24, with a carefully curated list of Democratic lawmakers, state education officials and others in a “Diversity/Equity/Inclusion Group” to make recommendations to the Virginia State Legislature on how to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and low-income students at the state’s 19 Governor’s Schools, specialized public school programs with admissions requirements. The group met again on Friday, July 31, and last week on Friday, August 7, and is expected to issue its recommendations in the coming days.

In its final meeting last week, the group weighed several options that would gut TJ’s merit-based, race-blind admissions process and replace it with standards that they even admitted in their private meetings would essentially be race-based.

Plus: “They set their sights on the school’s mostly Asian and mostly immigrant student body and vowed to change the demographics of the school.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. New York Times: Kamala Harris Was Not A Progressive Prosecutor: The senator was often on the wrong side of history when she served as California’s attorney general. “Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.”

BREAKING: Hong Kong Crackdown: 200 Police Raid Newspaper, Arrest Beijing Critic Jimmy Lai.

TUTTO NELLO STATO, NIENTE AL DI FUORI DELLO STATO, NULLA CONTRO LO STATO: AOC Complains That Private Charity Exists, Saying Government Replaces It ‘In a Just Society.’

(Classical reference in headline.)

WE DON’T CALL IT AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD FOR NOTHING. In accordance with the prophecy:

HOW DO YOU KNOW THE URBAN INSURRECTION HAS FAILED? BECAUSE THE NYT, AFTER FLYING COVER FOR MONTHS, IS THROWING DEMOCRATIC MAYORS UNDER THE BUS: Abolish the Police? Those Who Survived the Chaos in Seattle Aren’t So Sure. What is it like when a city abandons a neighborhood and the police vanish? Business owners describe a harrowing experience of calling for help and being left all alone.

What follows is excellent reporting, a sign that the NYT can still do that if it wants to. But until today it hasn’t wanted to. The Democrats’ internal polling must be truly horrific. Excerpts:

Faizel Khan was being told by the news media and his own mayor that the protests in his hometown were peaceful, with “a block party atmosphere.”

But that was not what he saw through the windows of his Seattle coffee shop. He saw encampments overtaking the sidewalks. He saw roving bands of masked protesters smashing windows and looting.

Young white men wielding guns would harangue customers as well as Mr. Khan, a gay man of Middle Eastern descent who moved here from Texas so he could more comfortably be out. To get into his coffee shop, he sometimes had to seek the permission of self-appointed armed guards to cross a border they had erected.

“They barricaded us all in here,” Mr. Khan said. “And they were sitting in lawn chairs with guns.”

For 23 days in June, about six blocks in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood were claimed by left-wing demonstrators and declared police-free. Protesters hailed it as liberation — from police oppression, from white supremacy — and a catalyst for a national movement. . . .

Now a group of local businesses owners — including a locksmith, the owner of a tattoo parlor, a mechanic, the owners of a Mexican restaurant and Mr. Khan — is suing the city. The lawsuit claims that “Seattle’s unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public” resulted in enormous property damage and lost revenue. . . .

The Seattle lawsuit — and interviews with shop owners in cities like Portland and Minneapolis — underscores a key question: Can businesses still rely on local governments, which are now rethinking the role of the police, to keep them safe? The issue is especially tense in Seattle, where the city government not only permitted the establishment of a police-free zone, but provided infrastructure like concrete barriers and portable toilets to sustain it.

Plus:

Many are nervous about speaking out lest they lend ammunition to a conservative critique of the Black Lives Matter movement. In Portland, Elizabeth Snow McDougall, the owner of Stevens-Ness legal printers, emphasized her support for the cause before describing the damage done to her business.

“One window broken, then another, then another, then another. Garbage to clean off the sidewalk in front of the store every morning. Urine to wash out of our doorway alcove. Graffiti to remove,” Ms. McDougall wrote in an email. “Costs to board up and later we’ll have costs to repair.”

The impact of the occupation on Cafe Argento, Mr. Khan’s coffee shop on Capitol Hill, has been devastating. Very few people braved the barricades set up by the armed occupiers to come in for his coffee and breakfast sandwiches. Cars coming to pick up food orders would turn around. At two points, he and his workers felt scared and called 911. “They said they would not come into CHOP,” said Mr. Khan, referring to one of the names that protesters gave to the occupied Capitol Hill area. “It was lawless.” . . .

He had to start chipping in for private security, a hard thing to do when his business had already been hurt by the coronavirus.

But he considers himself lucky — and he was. Even weeks after the protests, blocks of his previously bustling neighborhood remained boarded up and covered in shattered glass. Many business owners are scared to speak out, Mr. Khan said, because of worries that they would be targeted further.

And:

A confusing array of security teams wandered around, armed with handguns and rifles. Some wore official-looking private security uniforms. Others wore casual clothes and lanyards identifying their affiliation with Black Lives Matter. A third group wore all black with no identifying labels and declined to name their group affiliation.

When a tall man in a trench coat and hiking boots walked over to question Mr. Khan, the man spread his coat open, revealing several pistols on harnesses around his chest and waist. He presented a badge on a lanyard that read “Black Lives Matter Community Patrol.”

His name is Rick Hearns and he identified himself as a longtime security guard and mover who is now a Black Lives Matter community guard, in charge of several others. Local merchants pay for his protection, he said as he handed out his business card. (Mr. Khan said he and his neighbors are now paying thousands of dollars a month for protection from Iconic Global, a Washington State-based private security contractor.)

But even the guy asking for protection money is appalled:

Mr. Hearns has had bad experiences with the police in his own life. He says he wants police reform, but he was appalled by the violent tactics and rhetoric he witnessed during the occupation.

He blamed the destruction and looting on “opportunists,” but also said that much of the damage on Capitol Hill came from a distinct contingent of violent, armed white activists. “It’s antifa,” he said. “They don’t want to see the progress we’ve made. They want chaos.”

Many of the business owners on Capitol Hill agreed: Much of the violence they saw and the intimidation of their patrons came from a group these business owners identified as antifa, which they distinguished from the Black Lives Matter movement. “The idea of taking up the Black movement and turning it into a white occupation, it’s white privilege in its finest definition,” Mr. Khan said. “And that’s what they did.”

So InstaPundit readers have known this stuff for months, but people who got their news from the New York Times are only now catching up. Advantage: InstaPundit! But the real question is why is the NYT breaking its relative silence now? Again, I think the polls must be awful, and they’re readying a Biden law and order pivot.