People know about affirmative action in universities, medicine, etc, but what about in government?
What does it mean when constituencies are more worried about their politicians looking like them than performance?
Here's the story of Eddie Jordan, New Orleans DA, 2003-2007 🧵
Jordan was at first a federal prosecutor. He oversaw the prosecution of Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards for corruption.
At the same time, he refused to prosecute politician Cleo Fields, even though the FBI had him on video stuffing $25K from Edwards into his pocket
Why prosecute Edwards and not Fields? We may never know.
In 2002, Jordan was elected District Attorney of Orleans Parish.
Two weeks after taking office, his first priority was to fire 43 employees, of which 42 were white and 1 was Hispanic.
He went on to hire 68 people in their place, 92% of them black. https://t.co/4WdHMH8HB7nola.com/news/crime_pol…
Those who were fired included the majority of his investigative staff. The effects were described as "catastrophic." The blacks that replaced them had little or no experience.
Under Jordan, New Orleans would have the highest murder rate in the nation. https://t.co/zoLoPAhxzDnytimes.com/2007/10/31/us/…
Jordan was sued, and the fired employees were awarded $3.7 million.
Jordan couldn't pay the verdict, and the city wouldn't bail him out. It got to the point where the fired white employees were going to be able to start seizing the furniture of the DA office to get their money.
Jordan therefore resigned in disgrace.
Employees of his office described a lack of office supplies like paper clips, phone lines that didn't work, and a DA who rarely showed up to work.
His only priority was apparently replacing white employees with black ones.
Under Jordan, in 2003 and 2004, the conviction rate for murder and attempted murder in New Orleans was 12%, compared to 80% nationwide. Again, this was in a city that was leading the country in murder. https://t.co/GDk3ac82g7csmonitor.com/2007/0118/p01s…
Days before his resignation, a New Orleans man robbed a liquor store. As it turned out, he had been "visiting" Jordan's girlfriend at the house that they shared, and then returned there after he was done.
As was usual in New Orleans, charges against the man were never pursued.
After resigning in disgrace, Eddie Jordan returned to private practice.
Last time he was in the news, it was for allegedly slipping an envelope with drugs in it to his client while in court. https://t.co/gCHFgvj4BUnola.com/news/crime_pol…
It's important to note that Jordan maintained support throughout the black community while all this was going on. It's possible he would have been releected if he hadn't resigned after bankrupting his office with the civil rights lawsuit.
In July 2007, the community came out in support of Jordan, even after the civil rights lawsuit and years of neglecting to prosecute violent crime. What the NYT described as a "vociferous" black crowd denounced other politicians who tried to hold him accountable.
The story of Eddie Jordan is the story of the American inner city.
Racial voting leads to corrupt and incompetent politicians, who only feel pressure to give their constituents jobs.
Those they hire are incompetent, but that doesn't matter. As long as whites aren't in charge.
It's particularly tragic because the constituents are of course worse off. Eddie Jordan didn't hire that many people! There aren't enough city jobs to uplift black communities. And the whole city suffers from a high crime rate and government incompetence.
But that doesn't matter. Racial voting is psychological, not a matter of group self-interest. It's actually self-destructive.
This is the mistake white racialists make. "They look out for their own, we should do the same."
Yeah, look at how well that's worked out for them.
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The selection of JD Vance can be seen as a triumph for the Tech Right. I explain where they came from and what makes them different from others in the GOP. They're socially liberal, anti-egalitarian, and ultimately for dynamism and progress. 🧵 richardhanania.com/p/understandin…
Ironically, there is a group of leftists who saw this coming. They came up with the acronym TESCREAL, which is so ugly that it's actually catchy. The leftists paying the most attention knew that tech elites were different from other elites in academia and journalism.
If you believe in technology and progress, it's going to put you in conflict with the ruling class if it doesn't believe in those things. In most societies that may be religious authorities. In the modern West, it is wokes, driven by an egalitarian vision that discounts progress
The time Israel sent a commando team into downtown Beirut that assassinated three high-ranking members of the PLO and got out. The team was led by Ehud Barak.
Westerners hate Israel because it fills them with a sense of inferiority by showing that heroism is still possible.
Stop and read about the Entebbe Raid, after a plane was hijacked and taken to Uganda. The Israelis secretly flew a team from Suez to Uganda, slaughtered the Palestinian terrorists, their German allies, and Idi Amin’s soldiers, bringing almost all of the hostages home alive.
What were the Palestinians doing during this time? They had their own version of heroism. They were blowing up synagogues, killing random Jews all over the world, massacring flight crews, and getting the Gulf Arabs to pay them ransom money.
Fascinating analysis of the trendiness of baby names.
Since the 1960s, the endings of names rise and fall together, especially for boys. The fates of Mason, Jackson, Grayson, etc are all linked.
What names sound good to parents depends on subtle signals they’re not aware of.
This is associated with the decline of traditional names. The lesson here is people really feel the need to conform on a very deep subconscious level! If they don’t conform to tradition, they’ll look for arbitrary signs of trendiness.
But you don’t want to conform too much. So names that are too common get scratched off the list, while you need to pick a name for a boy or girl that sounds right in the current year.
Why not beginnings of names then? Makes the choice too conscious?
Time Magazine in 1958: Blacks are 10% of the population in 1,551 cities but commit 60% of violent crime. Northern mayors consider this their biggest problem and are afraid to talk about it. Black leaders blame racist law enforcement.
Black problems didn’t start with LBJ.
Time in 1958: NAACP tries to get people not to talk about black crime. Many whites are uncomfortable about the subject, and newspapers go out of their way not to mention a crime suspect’s race.
Time: Many blame poverty, but poor immigrants don’t commit crime like blacks do.
Change a few words around and this whole thing could’ve been written today. The media wouldn’t publish it of course but nothing has changed in 66 years!
Since October 7, many of us have been asking how we can be better allies to Israel.
I explain that what Israel needs is not better PR, or "hasbara," but pushback on narratives that are hostile to civilization itself, which Israel represents. richardhanania.com/p/article-in-t…
Israel doesn't have an "optics" problem because the rest of the world hated Israel before this war, and one can see this in the obsessive focus on its flaws compared to everything else in global politics. The problem is with Israel's existence.
There are three pillars of anti-Israel hate
1) Anti-western sentiment 2) Third worldism 3) Classic antisemitism
Unfortunately for Israel, it's the one place where all these ideological orientations converge.