David McElroy

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker committed a mortal political sin Sunday. He dared to tell the truth when that truth didn’t reflect well on his own political party. Predictably, the party establishment was not pleased.

In case you don’t know what the story was about, it’s really fairly simple, but you’ll need a bit of background. There are investment companies called private equity firms which raise money from investors and then spend the money to either invest in early-stage private companies or else find struggling firms to turn around. They place big bets on companies they believe have potential, some new firms and some old firms. When they buy or invest in older companies, though, they’re generally struggling companies that would otherwise go out of business, so their job as investors is to provide investment money and insist that management (usually new management) restructure the business to return to profitability.

It’s not especially complicated and it’s fairly mundane in the business world. Many startups couldn’t happen without investment from this kind of company, and many poorly managed failing businesses would simply go out of business if this kind of company weren’t there to invest and restructure. Normally, nobody talks about these companies other than people in the business world. It’s different this year, though, because Mitt Romney was a long-time partner in a major private equity firm called Bain Capital — and Democrats have decided to make that a campaign issue.

Keep Reading

As you scared of the police? If you’re a white middle-class suburbanite, probably not. If you live in certain lower-income parts of the country, though, you’re probably terrified at times. If you’re not scared, you should be.

The New York Post published video Monday that shows a New York City police sergeant threatening a group of men in Brooklyn. (You can watch the video below.) He tries to intimidate them with his gun, but he makes it clear that he doesn’t mind a little bit of criminal activity.

“You guys are hustling or whatever, I ain’t got no problem with that. Listen . . . do your thing,” he said. “But when I come around and I speak, you f–king listen. Tell your boys.”

The video of Sgt. Lesly Charles was recorded by a man in the group, apparently on a smartphone. The city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board is investigating the video, but if this is like most instances of police misconduct, it will result in a slap on the wrist, if anything. After all, they’ll say, he had good intentions. He was trying to protect us.

At one point, Charles makes it clear that he considers himself above having to follow rules. He tells a man in the street near a car, “This is my street. All right? If you got to play tough, that’s your problem. … I do whatever the f–k I want.”

Inside a restaurant, the officer got tougher and more graphic.

Keep Reading

It was a year ago today that the world was supposed to end, according to California radio preacher Harold Camping. Of course, when it didn’t happen, he suddenly found new evidence in scripture to support his revised calculations and said the end would come five months later. That date also passed without the world ending.

It’s easy to make fun of a nut such as Camping — and I did my share last year — but there’s a lesson here for anyone who’s so certain of the accuracy of his own beliefs and predictions: Any of us can be wrong. Certainty doesn’t make a person right — and dogged determination to stick to a prediction or position might just mean the person is arrogant and stubborn. (Unfortunately, strident confidence in error is rewarded in politics, while thoughtful candor is punished.)

How did Camping and his followers go so wrong? I’ll never know. Anyone who knows the Bible know that there’s nothing there to make a reasonable person believe he can predict the end of the world. Anyone who tries is simply bringing his own assumptions (and his own arrogance) to bear in order to come up with a date that isn’t there. (If you want to get a heated argument going, ask people from certain Christian groups to get together and compare notes about what’s going to happen when the world ends. Then hide the breakables and get out of the way.)

On the rare occasions when I could get away with disagreeing with my father when I was a kid, he would tend to say, “Well, you just think you’re right.” That statement always puzzled me. Obviously I thought I was right or I wouldn’t hold whatever position I held. Isn’t that true for all of us?

Keep Reading