HOW’S THAT DEFUNDING THE POLICE WORKING OUT FOR YOU? Explaining the Great 2020 Homicide Spike. Progressive politicians and journalists are pretending the nationwide surge in shootings and murders was due to the pandemic, as in this ridiculous NPR report. But numbers don’t lie. The spike was clearly due to the decline in “proactive policing,” which was caused by the war on cops that started with the George Floyd protests.

THE NEW URBAN FLIGHT: Remotely Competitive. As workers abandon office buildings in New York and San Francisco, they’re collecting relocation bonuses from small cities and moving into apartment buildings designed as “remote work hubs.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE LOWER EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Secretary of Ethnic Studies. President Biden’s choice to lead the Education Department has a thin record—except in one trailblazing area.

A Practical Wish List for Joe Biden. Some doable libertarian ideas from Reason’s writers and editors.

CRIME, LIKE ANTIFA, IS JUST AN IDEA: Soft on Crime. A Biden administration policy of weak policing and lax prosecution would be a disaster for the nation’s cities.

TRAINING RED GUARDS: Spoiled Rotten. Students at a private school in New York City — tuition $44,000 a year —  launch an anonymous social media campaign denouncing their teachers as “racists” and “oppressors.” And the school’s director surrenders, of course.

JOEL KOTKIN: Making America California. Now that Californians are filling top spots in the Biden administration and Silicon Valley is an arm of the Democratic party, they’ll be working together to ruin the rest of the nation’s economy — and impose California’s new version of feudalism.

JOURNALISTS AGAINST FREE SPEECH: The New Censors. When I wrote in 2019 about journalists’ new antipathy to free speech, it seemed bad enough that they were targeting rivals in their own profession with advertising boycotts and smear campaigns that led to conservative journalists being fired and banished from social media. But since the Capitol riot, they’ve gone beyond “de-platforming” individual heretics. Now they want to eliminate the platforms, too.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: Words of Division. Cloaked in an appeal to unity, President Biden’s inaugural speech hit all the expected themes of racial resentment and blame.

STEVEN MALANGA: Crime and Diminishment. If crime keeps rising and the social order distintegrates, New York City’s 30-year economic miracle will likely go with it.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR: On Regulating Big Tech. Donald Boudreaux critiques Richard Epstein’s argument for using common law to force Big Tech to respect the First Amendment. Boudreaux says market competition is still the best way to protect the First Amendment.

AND WHAT RACE GRIFTERS WON’T ADMIT:  What Martin Luther King and Others Wrought.

What is most remarkable about the American civil rights movement, perhaps, is how little bloodshed took place, despite the passions that it raised. The Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, lists the names of only 41 people martyred in the cause of equal rights between 1954 and 1968.

That is an astounding fact. Never in human history has so deep a national divide involving racial, religious, or ethnic groups been healed so quickly and at such a low cost in lives. For comparison, as many as 2 million people died in the violence that accompanied the transformation of the British Raj into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India in 1947.

But the Left, stuck in the past, and always looking to belittle the United States and its accomplishments, insists that the country remains “systemically racist.”

Today’s “anti-racism” movement is one more demonstration of the March of Dimes Syndrome, named after the institution that did not go out of business after its mission (conquering polio) was achieved. It found new diseases to combat. For the Al Sharptons of the world, acknowledging progress against racism would be a career killer, so to stay in business they must ignore facts and foment new hatred.

A CONTRARIAN TAKE: Is the Great Deplatforming of 2021 an Assault on Free Speech? No, says Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, but he wants to see a more decentralized Internet and thinks the solution is relying on protocols, not platforms.

IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM: The 10 Worst Helicopter Parenting Hysterias of 2020.

THE PROFITS OF DOOM: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society? In 1995, Kevin Kelly, a cofounder of Wired, challenged Kirkpatrick Sale to a $1,000 bet. The Luddite-loving doomsayer was predicting that society would collapse by 2020.  Kelly, inspired by the economist Julian Simon’s bet against Paul Ehrlich, got him to put his money where his doom was. Now, despite a biased referee, the better prophet has collected his winnings.

BIDEN’S PLAN FOR HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT: Feel Good Now — Pay Later. Biden’s stimulus is a feel-good populist measure that will ultimately harm the most vulnerable people in the American economy.

MAD AS HELL: Americans Are in Full Revolt Against Pandemic Lockdowns. Across the country, restaurants and other businesses are defying lockdown orders, as J.D. Tucille reports. But politicians aren’t about to give up their newfound powers easily, as  James Bovard points out in his essay, “Covid and The Rise of Cage Keeper Democracy.”

JOHN TAMNY: Will 21 Club’s Demise Finally Awaken People to New York City’s Slow Suffocation?

HEATHER MAC DONALD: White Supremacy in Tutus. Classical ballet has largely escaped the revisionist destruction that hit the opera and theater stages years ago. But no more: Diversity and bias obsessions come for Swan Lake. 

LEAVING CALIFORNIA: Flight of the Icons. Anti-business policies are driving flagship firms and young residents out of California. Once the ultimate land of youth, the state is now aging faster than the rest of the nation.

Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that he would never start Facebook in today’s California. Yet he seems unconcerned about the fate facing smaller firms. His foundation gave millions to Proposition 15, a measure that would have increased property taxes on businesses and was opposed by most legacy businesses, and particularly by minority-owned firms. In a letter to Zuckerberg, the business owners noted: “Unlike Facebook, restaurants, dry cleaners, nail salons and other small businesses can’t operate right now and many may never open again. The last thing they need is a billionaire pushing higher taxes on them under the false flag of social justice.”

Not to be outdone, New York City has been chasing people out of town by stifling housing and industrial development. Many are  crossing the Hudson River to Jersey City, which built seven times more housing per capita as Manhattan last year.

UPDATE: Headline link was incorrect before. Should be working now.

ANOTHER REASON FOR ALUMNI TO STOP GIVING: What’s Up, Doc?  Northwestern University hastens to cancel Joseph Epstein for advising Jill Biden to drop her favorite honorific. How dare he question a doctor of education?

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s good to see the weight of our journalistic and academic establishments being brought to bear to protect the self-esteem of a rich, powerful white woman.

FREE THE MARKETS: How to Fix Capitalism. Why do half of younger Americans want to live in a socialist country? It’s not just because of the nonsense spewed in schools, says Edward L. Glaeser.

Over the past 40 years, insiders have increasingly captured the American economy—from homeowners opposed to new housing construction near them to incumbent firms that benefit from the overregulation of employment to interest groups that have transformed the federal government into the equivalent of a pension system with a nuclear arsenal. The young are usually outsiders; the bill for the insiders’ triumph has been laid in their laps. The Covid-19 pandemic reinforces this dynamic. Middle-aged teachers, protected by powerful unions, Zoom their classes from the comfort of their homes, and students get lost in the shuffle. The mortality risk of the disease to the young is tiny; yet they are told to give up the freedom of their youth to protect the rest of us. . . .

What many young people today don’t realize is that socialism is a machine for empowering insiders.

Capitalism, from its inception, was designed for outsiders, but it’s been corrupted by politicians and special interests. To make it attractive again to young outsiders, Glaeser proposes restoring four fundamental freedoms.

FOR A HAPPIER NEW YEAR: The Gratitude Diaries.  Janice Kaplan’s latest podcast offers tips for overcoming the brain’s negativity bias (which will help you forget 2021).

NEWS YOU CAN USE FROM REASON: The Ultimate 2020 Libertarian Gift Guide.

APPALACHIA ON FILM: Criticism for the Sake of It. Lefty critics have attacked the film (as a proxy for the Trump voters they despise), but Ron Howard’s adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy has remained one of the most watched movies on Netflix — and deservedly so.