Author: Crowhill Report

Last night we did a fun episode on Chivalry.

I’ve had a few interviews already about Krehbiel v. Brightkey, including the Feb. 9 edition of the Pro America Report podcast.

Today I’ll be on KZIM at about 9:45, and Chosen Generation Radio at about 10:30.

Governments have to have emergency powers. That’s one of the reasons we have governments. When something crazy happens, the government is best suited to address it.

But there has to be review, and the emergencies need to end.

There’s been a bad trend over the last few decades of unchecked government power. The Patriot Act was certainly part of this. The 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force is another example. It went on and on. The President could just bomb people on relatively slim pretexts.

Various government actions in response to the pandemic took this to a new level. Some governments acted responsibly, but some were making crazy rules with no review or oversight. Remember when Governor Whitmer banned stores from selling garden seeds?

How many of these emergency laws have been repealed? What kind of precedents have been set? Who is reviewing all of this?

Our northern neighbors have been heading in a bad direction for some time, and it seems Trudeau wants to accelerate the decline. He’s invoking emergency powers to interfere with protesting truckers’ bank accounts.

I don’t know if that is or isn’t as outrageous as it sounds, but it would be nice to believe somebody was keeping Trudeau honest. Maybe the legislature could step in. Maybe a court could ensure the truckers’ rights aren’t being violated.

But that’s not the way it’s been going. It seems as if we’ve been on a world-wide slide towards autocracy, with a mostly complicit media playing along.

Trash pickup is getting a little more complicated these days. They have rules about what you can throw out, what kind of bag it has to be in, etc., which has motivated me to make periodic trips to the county landfill.

My expectations were very low. First, these are government workers who probably aren’t paid a whole lot, and second, people who work in jobs that have special requirements (no, dummy, this kind of whatsit goes over here) tend to be assholes.

I’ve been very pleasantly surprised.

They station a guy out on the lane that leads to the scales to sort out people (like me) who just have a car full of regular junk. They tell you what goes where, and send you past the line of commercial vehicles.

That’s very nice. They didn’t have to do that, but it makes the trip so much easier.

Also, everybody is cheerful and helpful. Astonishingly so. They offer to help you carry things, and they don’t act like petty bureaucrats, who like to pick and criticize.

They also have a big emphasis on safety — which is very important. Most people don’t realize how dangerous it is to handle garbage. There’s sharp stuff, nasty chemicals, and all sorts of hidden threats.

I’ve been there three times now, and I love it. Not only am I getting junk out of my house, but the professionalism and courtesy of the staff put a smile on my face.

Let’s say you’re a judge, and you know that the county’s Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) officer is going to be monitoring all your decisions for a racial bias. If, for example — once everything is averaged together — you set bail higher for one group than for another, you’re going to have some explaining to do.

You know that every case is different — that you take lots of factors into account, and that race has nothing to do with your decisions. But you also know that the brain-dead DIE officer is going to assess all your decisions through that one lens.

You do everything you can to be fair, but it just so happens that in your jurisdiction, the people who come before you from Group A are more trouble than the people from Group B. They’re more likely to get arrested. They’re more likely to skip bail. They usually have priors. They’re often in gangs. They often don’t have jobs, and most of them are drug addicts. Consequently, the average bail you set for people in Group A is always higher than the average bail you set for people in Group B. It has nothing to do with the group they’re in. It has to do with their individual cases.

This is a looming crisis for you, and you know it.

Then somebody from Group B comes before you. The evidence against him is questionable. He has a job. He has no priors. He should get a very minimal bail.

But if you stick it to him — if you give him an unreasonably high bail — that makes your numbers look better.

I have no doubt this kind of thinking is in the back of every judge’s mind, and this is one of many reasons that “diversity” is BS.