Pamela Price, in a Martin Luther King Day speech, said “As your District Attorney, I will do everything in my power to be worthy of the justice-pursuing tradition that Dr. King embodied and be a drum major for real justice reforms which lead to public safety.”
Note the order of priorities there: “Justice reforms” precede “public safety.” In other words, no “justice reforms,” no public safety. And only Pamela Price, of course, can define“justice reforms”—and only she can determine when, if ever, they’ve been achieved. If she doesn’t think “justice reforms” have been accomplished, then by definition she will not pursue “public safety.”
Do you know Zeno’s Paradox? He was a Greek philosopher of the 5th century BCE. In his paradox, he points out the impossibility of a traveler wishing to walk to the end of a path. The traveler must first get halfway there. Before she can get there, she must travel one-quarter the distance. Before she can travel one-quarter, she must travel one-eighth. And then one-sixteenth, and one thirty-second, and so on, ad infinitum. This is proof that the traveler can never reach the end of the path.
The paradox is an absurdity, because we all know that the traveler will eventually reach the end of her path. The absurdity exists today in several forms when it comes to progressive thinking about crime. Consider the Negotiated Settlement Agreement with the Oakland Police Department. Robert Warshaw (who really has to go) and Judge Orrick can make it an infinitely-long process by constantly changing the goalposts; OPD can never achieve compliance because the “tasks” are constantly redefined. (“You didn’t fill out the form correctly.” “Now you’ve filled it out correctly, but it was the wrong version of the form.” “It was supposed to be in black ink.” “You got the date wrong.” “You didn’t include your middle name.” “You spelled your partner’s name wrong.” “First you said you bought a glazed donut, and then you said it was cinnamon.” Ad infinitum.)
Pamela Price similarly employs Zeno’s Paradox when she says that “justice reforms” must precede public safety. By defining “justice reforms” in such a way that they can never be achieved (according to Price’s definition), then public safety automatically becomes unachievable. This is by design: Pamela Price and other progressives don’t want public safety, because were it to be achieved, their political lives and careers would lose their reason for existing. As long as Pamela Price insists that more“justice reforms” are needed, she can ensure that crime and violence continue to plague us—and she can blame it on the “racism” that makes “justice reforms” necessary!
Call it Price’s Paradox. It’s a nice little scam.
Look, we really have got to give these scammers their walking papers: Price, Warshaw, the whole gang. First, they ruin our city, and then they use that ruination to convince gullible citizens to empower them so they can continue to ruin our city. That’s their game plan, folks. And speaking of Warshaw, if you’re as pissed off by Thao’s firing of Chief Armstrong as I am (and you should be!), please tell our Mayor to reinstate him immediately, and issue an apology for her insane act. Here’s her email address: officeofthemayor@oaklandca.gov
You might also consider signing this petition demanding that Chief Armstrong be immediately reinstated.
Steve Heimoff