Looks like Fegruson, MO might be back in the news shortly. A Grand Jury is soon expected to release its decision as to whether criminal charges should be filed against Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson for the August 9, 2014 shooting and killing of 18 year old Michael Brown by Darren. The Washington Post reports that the testimony of six local residents to the Saint Louis County Grand Jury who eyewitnessed the shooting, along with physical evidence collected at the scene, tend to confirm Wilson’s version of the story (i.e., that a physical struggle between Wilson and Brown ensued while Wilson was in his police vehicle, during a stop by Wilson to warn Brown and his companion not to walk in the middle of a busy street; Brown tried to take Wilson’s gun from him during the struggle; Wilson’s gun was discharged during the struggle, but did not hit anyone; Brown and his companion then ran from the vehicle while Wilson recovered his weapon and then got out and ordered them to stop; Brown stopped, but then starting moving towards Wilson without any sign of surrender — i.e., no “hands up”; and Wilson then raised his gun and discharged a volley of shots at the approaching Brown, hitting him at least 6 times including in the forehead, thus killing him).

If the Post report is true, then the likeihood of a “no-bill” (whereby the Grand Jury lets Wilson off) must be taken seriously. Local officials thus fear that there could be significant protests and possible disturbances once again in Ferguson as a result. There is no doubt that many in the African American community, including a majority of its leaders, will be upset if Wilson walks away without any sort of punishment. To repeat the obvious, many African Americans have had upsetting and arguably disrespectful interactions with police in their lives, and thus well remember the many incidents reported in the press over the past decade where unarmed black community members were killed by law enforcement (e.g., Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Wendell Allen, etc., with very many others not making the national news). The Ferguson situation is just another lightening rod for their angst and frustrations.

However, there does appear to be a valid argument that Officer Wilson was mostly doing what he should have been doing (other than perhaps the final barrage of close-range shots  »  continue reading …

I was driving to work the other day, and morning person that I am, I had the radio tuned to the Bloomberg financial station. By 7 AM, I’m ready for some insightful and stimulating comment on the state of business, the markets and the world economy. (Bloomberg is after all about money, but Bloomberg media does do a pretty good job of covering politics and social trends in addition to its primary focus on the business of making money).

As I rolled down Ridgewood Avenue in Glen Ridge, it was time for Bloomberg View, and this day it was Megan McArdle‘s turn. Ah yes, good old Megan (she’s actually rather young), the rising star of economics-oriented punditry. I remember back when she cut her teeth writing an occasional “rational economic thinking” piece for The Atlantic. I find that Ms. McArdle’s thoughts have generally been worth a read or listen, and I take my hat off for her being one of the few female pundits embracing market theory and financial trends.

During my ride to work, Ms. McArdle was taking on Chris Hayes of MSNBC, specifically a recent article he published in the uber-liberal Nation magazine which compared and in some ways equated global warming with slavery. Mr. Hayes’ bottom line was that slavery was such a crime against humankind that society had to eviscerate billions of dollars worth of economic value (i.e., the investment of the plantation owners in their armies of slaves, and the huge profits that they earned by using them) . . . despite the fact that this radical seizure of economic value would have a tremendously disruptive effect on the regional economies of the South (and secondarily on the industrialized North, too). In the same fashion, society would now have to destroy a tremendous amount of economic value by prematurely ending the use of fossil fuels, because of the great crimes that global warming will soon have (and possibly is already having) on the human race (to say nothing of the many other living species and the overall living ecology of planet earth).

Ms. McArdle found this logic to be a bit “inapposite” – i.e., Mr. Haynes did not hit the nail on the head, after all. Slavery was a horribly  »  continue reading …