A former Obama pollster named Cornell Belcher comically wrote a WaPo piece about how blacks have trouble getting cabs.  Shortly after, a revelation forced the WaPo to amend the article after its initial publication.  It seems that Belcher, who wrote this piece critical of cab companies, was actually paid by cab-competitor Uber to do so, and Belcher never disclosed that fact to the Washington Post! But since he is an Obama supporter, it was not seen as a major ethical problem.

Anyway, Belcher wrote about how, as a black man, he has trouble getting cabs.

Hailing cabs isn’t a matter of life and death, but it can negatively impact our overall quality of life, both economically and emotionally.

Funny how he should use the words "life and death."  Because it can be life and death if a cabbie picks up a passenger who robs and kills him.

I now must apologize in advance for writing what everyone knows: most blacks are not criminals.  Most whites are not criminals.  However, a much greater proportion of blacks are criminals than whites (for reasons that would require a whole separate article to explain!).  So if you invite a random stranger into the back of your cab, and he's black, statistically speaking, you have a much higher chance of being robbed or killed.

This isn't racism.  This is fear – fear for one's own life, based on very real statistical probabilities.  I suspect that if liberals like Belcher drove a cab, they would feel the same.

Sixty-six percent, or just about two-thirds of African Americans in Chicago agree that the city’s taxi drivers deliberately discriminate against them. By contrast, only 23 percent of whites say it’s likely that they would be ignored by a cab.

Whites get ignored by cabs?  That's news to me.  Could it be racism?  Maybe we need a study!

Anyway, for once, I have no doubt that this study is true.  I believe that blacks have more trouble getting cabs.  But whose fault is this?  The cabbies'?  They just want to protect their lives.

The real culprit in this are federal, state, and local governments.  They have been relaxing criminal laws for years.  Decriminalizing, reducing jail sentences, and plea bargaining.  The cumulative effect of all these has been to release and/or leave dangerous (usually) men on the streets.  And since, as we've established, black men are more statistically likely to be criminals than whites, it's only rational that cabbies would fear taking black passengers.

Now, imagine a world with really tough criminal sentences.  No early releases for "low-level" offenders.  Repeat offenders are locked away for decades.  Ninety-nine-plus percent of all people on the street, black or white, are not criminals.  In such a situation, there is no risk to taking black passengers, since in those circumstances, just about anyone who gets into a cab is not going to be a criminal.  Nearly all the criminals have been locked up.

My point is that if the federal, state, and local criminal justice systems did their job, cabbies would not fear taking passengers of any race.  Cabbies are not racists; on the contrary, they want and need fares in order to make money.  To turn down a fare is harming themselves; to do this, they have to really feel that their lives are at risk.

But the weakening of criminal prosecutions has also weakened our civil society.  We can no longer walk on the street in certain neighborhoods and feel that we can turn our backs on our neighbors around us.  It is this collapse of the civil society, caused by lack of criminal law enforcement, that is the reason why blacks have trouble getting cabs.

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.