New York Times columnist Michael Powell takes a detour in the midst of a column about the debate over "speed cameras" near New York schools to launch into tirade against Orthodox Jews.
There's a long and sorry history of false accusations during Passover (which this is) of Jews killing children. Mr. Powell veers awfully close into that territory. He quotes the mayor blaming two state senators for the deaths of children in traffic, then writes that both senators have a lot of Jews in their districts:
Senator Felder, too, has no use for cameras. He represents a district dominated by Orthodox Jewish voters, and his priority this session was to persuade the city and state to foot the bill to bus any child past 4 p.m., which in effect means mostly children who attend yeshivas. Mr. Felder and Mr. Golden succeeded in pushing through this legislation, which will cost the city $5.6 million this year.
As the state senators are not unreasonable men, they even offered to bargain: they might allow speed cameras if Mr. Bloomberg agreed to foot the bill for this busing program.
The mayor said no. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said no. But when his state budget emerged from behind closed doors in Albany it included this new and costly busing program.
The Orthodox, who are adroit at pulling the levers of power, and their political allies claim all children could benefit. But that argument is evidence-starved. The state paid for a pilot program this year, and city school buses have picked up 1,000 children — from 29 yeshivas and one charter school.
If anything is "evidence-starved," it's Mr. Powell's claim that the Orthodox "are adroit at pulling the levers of power." School vouchers? The Orthodox want them, and New York doesn't have them. Gay marriage? The Orthodox oppose it, and New York has it.
If it were any other minority group that the city was offering to bus to school but not bring home from school, the Times and liberals like Mr. Powell would be up in arms. How are the students supposed to get home? Hitchhike? Already they are paying for their own tuition while their tax dollars are being used to subsidize government-run schools they do not use. The government does not pay even for their education in secular subjects such as math or reading and writing English. No, the yeshiva parents are supposed to pay taxes without complaining to a state whose spending on government schools is among the nation's highest, while also paying tuition. And when they ask merely for their children to get a bus ride home the same way that other students do, the Times responds with a column accusing them of being responsible for the deaths of elderly and child pedestrians? Come on.
I have no experience with the speed cameras that Mr. Powell and the mayor defend, but I have gotten a ticket or two from the "red light' cameras that the column does also defend, and I can attest that, at least on the West Side Highway, they are a total racket. As the American Automobile Association of New York has written, those particular red-light cameras are ticket mills based on a yellow-light time that is half the time recommended by traffic engineers. The only way to avoid running red lights on that road (and getting a camera-generated ticket) is to slam hard on the brakes the moment a yellow light appears, even if you are already halfway through the intersection, risking getting rear-ended by the car behind you. To further complicate the problem, during rush hour the city deploys traffic police to wave drivers manually through the red lights at crowded intersections, encouraging drivers to ignore the very red lights that they will be ticketed for running once the traffic clears up. The entire scheme has nothing to do with traffic safety; it's about generating revenue for the city. Maybe Mr. Powell should write a column about that.
The next thing you know the Times will be claiming the American Automobile Association of New York is being manipulated by Orthodox Jews who want pedestrians to be killed by cars. Come on. If there's any constituency in the city that's concerned about pedestrian safety, it's Orthodox Jews — for at least one day a week, the Sabbath, plus quite a few other holidays, they are religiously prohibited from riding in cars or on public transportation, and they have to walk. The idea that they are more blameworthy than other groups for pedestrian casualties in New York is just bizarre.