Today was Election Day, and at the top of the ballot here in New York City were the candidates for our next mayor. For the fifteen or twenty of us here in Gotham who would prefer a relatively conservative hand upon the helm, there was a fellow by the name of Joe Lhota — while for the other eight million or so there was Bill DiBlasio, a towering, open-borders Marxist with whom I disagree on everything except our city’s latitude and longitude. He will almost certainly win, which is a very bad thing.
Down the ballot I voted for an assortment of other comparatively conservative candidates who will surely lose; I also gave assent to my neighbor Bernard Graham’s elevation to the State Supreme Court. (Bernie’s an intelligent, sensible man, I think, and it is hard for me to imagine that he is anything but fair and reasonable on the bench. No doubt many of those whom he has ruled against will disagree, but that’s just in the nature of things.)
There were also some referenda. One of them proposed to extend the retirement age for judges from 70 to 80. I was all for that: the more geezer-wisdom in our jurisprudence, and the more living memory of the way things used to be in America, the better, I say. (I also had in mind what sort of replacements Bill DiBlasio, once he begins his Long March through the city’s institutions, will be finding for any judges who retire. I wish I could have voted for them to remain on the bench until death, or beyond.)
Another referendum proposed to allow casino gambling in some poor upstate areas. I dithered about that one a bit.
On the plus side, the casinos will bring a lot of business to these penurious districts, employ thousands of people, and sluice a generous flow of simoleons into the public fisc. Also, the libertarian in me feels that it is better, ceteris paribus, for the State to let people engage in business ventures instead of stifling them.
On the other hand, gambling is a dangerous vice, and those who practice it are often those who are least able to bear its toll. The gaming industry also waters a shady garden of auxiliary peccancies: loan-sharking, drug-dealing, prostitution, racketeering, and so on. The “traditional” conservative in me feels that for the State to encourage all of this fosters moral and social decay, and preys on the misery of the weak.
So: here we have an issue that clearly pits libertarians against traditional conservatives. Having sympathy for both ideologies, I found myself conflicted.
What say you, readers?
7 Comments
Well, either way you vote on the casino issue is going to be a gamble . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Damn Jeffrey beat me to it.
You’re conflicted about “loan-sharking, drug-dealing, prostitution, racketeering, and so on.”?
If you don’t let the new Mayor have his hobbies, to keep him distracted, you’ll just end up with more asinine legislation you know! (On advice from my lawyer who hates defending me against libel, yet again – With the prostitution, I meant his ‘use of’ the service rather than his ‘offering’ it. Whilst I can almost guarantee his willingness to sell his soul for whatever a fashionable lobby-group demands, I must state for the record I have no personal knowledge as to whether he has a penchant for wearing leather, and including ‘whips and hand-cuff services’, at the time. Despite the rumours).
I don’t have issue with gambling as long as everyone else isn’t expected to pay for the ‘picking up the pieces’ of lives ruined by personal choice to engage in such ‘enterprises’ (You’re homeless because you bet your twin-wide on baccarat? Tough titty!).
As for the ‘spin-offs’? Assuming Mayor/police/prosecutor/judges aren’t gaining ‘unearned rewards’ then they will be dealt with by the law, as should be (I’m conflicted about drug-dealing, arbitrarily designated ‘illegal’ drugs, and prostitution, a choice for the vast majority apparently as being better than minimum wage jobs, though. Maybe that’s because I regularly have colds, being strip searched with a runny nose is ‘so’ unhelpful, and I’m ‘aesthetically challenged’ so even my ex-wife wouldn’t unless I paid her).
Oops, or is it Jeffery? (or did I just fall for more of his intentional wit – again?).
You aren’t ‘of colour’ are you Jeff, with the strange name/spelling? I have to be excused any unintended offence as I’m British and we struggle with all your American strange double Christian name, made-up, copied-off-a-cereal-box-because-it-sounded-nice, Junior, and ‘the 3rd’ names at times.
Everyone else will, of course, be expected to shoulder the extra load. (Everyone else still pulling the cart and not already in it, that is, which is a dwindling number.)
I am burdened with two odd names — “Horace” and “Jeffery” — because I was named after paternal and maternal grandfathers: James Horace Hodges and Henry Jefferson Perryman, respectively.
Life is a crapshoot . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
HJH,
I was named “Chaim” after two of my four great-grandfathers, both of whom were named “Chaim” (my parents chose efficiently to comply with their tradition of only one given name). When we emigrated from the American Occupation Zone in Germany to the US, my parents specified “Heinrich” on my Green-Card application form. They didn’t think the American authorities would comprehend the Hebrew name “Chaim”.
Once in the US (New York City), my parents allowed me to unburden myself of the Germanic name, and I chose to anglicize my name to “Henry” (my alternative consideration was “Harry” because Truman was then President).
Sometimes, life is deterministic …
If you are interested, the whole story (all of it true) is divulged where I explain how I acquired my nickname “TheBigHenry“.
Thanks, TBH, that was interesting.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *