Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Memetrics
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktIt being Boxing Day in the UK and a Friday for the rest of the world, there is no European markets open and no Asian markets to follow our own. So the US is pretty much dead today, despite being officially open. I posted this mainly to avoid having to despoil the Merry Christmas post with a link to Matthew Yglesias.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Vox and Matthew Yglesias demonstrating that there is seemingly no limit to the depths of his stupidity. He wants to eliminate the annual, post-Christmas seasonal downturn in employment by simply creating a second Christmas in the Spring. No, really. I’m not exaggerating and he’s not kidding..
We ought to add a second Christmas sometime in the spring to keep us permanently in a quasi-boom.
http://www.vox.com/2014/12/24/7433715/christmas-economic-miracle
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Something with religious undertones perhaps? That emphasized rebirth maybe? I’m just spitballing here.
I thought progressives don’t like consumerism?
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If he actually believed this then he is a silly, silly man.
“I thought that when Dodd-Frank started, that the banks would not succeed in influencing it, having lost all the prestige they lost,” he told a crowd of several dozen at the Washington, D.C., think tank. “Boy, was I wrong.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-REB-29646
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I don’t know if anyone on here actually uses the PPACA exchanges for their health insurance, but here’s an overview of the tax filing provisions:
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Interesting comment from this thread: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/27/1350559/-Voters-don-t-know-the-deficit-is-shrinking-or-that-deportations-have-soared#comments
* [new] IT’s a Far More Daunting Problem Than Creating (4+ / 0-)
the Constitutional system was in the first place.
The free press concept is so stupid it’s not even wrong. Along with speech and religion freedom, these 3 freedoms of assertion surrender the entire foundation for civilization to global warlords. It is the most dangerous blunder in all of democratic system design.
I wonder, if we had an enumerated general Right of the People to Know, if a knowledge right as simplistically stated as our assertion rights would enable society to intervene in the public square in ways to disrupt the pure propaganda nature of corporate free press, and implement policies that would create a dominantly factual public commons.
The American approach is so extreme and so wrong and so revered, even more than the governing system, that I couldn’t imagine a major advance happening here.
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy…. –ML King “Beyond Vietnam”
by Gooserock on Sat Dec 27, 2014 at 02:28:11 PM PST
Yup, free speech ruins Democracy.
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And the right to know ultimately means the right to know what Gooserock (or whoever is bemoaning the need with for “factual truth” to be brought to the rubes) considers truth. In my experience.
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JNC, I have been thinking about the War on Drugs, and something I read recently put it together for me with the current state of police interactions with black inner city men.
Black inner city violence has decreased far more slowly than general violence levels. In fact, the disparity between black inner city violence and violence everywhere else in America is often measured by a factor of ten or more.
Segregation is clearly not the driver, as America is far less segregated than it was in 1960, and truly segregated neighborhoods were enforced by law in Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Austin, and other cities until after mid century – but they are not, now.
The driver, it has been forcefully argued, (see Imprisoning Communities – How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse, by Clear, Todd R.) is the War on Drugs. It has essentially criminalized a disproportionate number of inner city black males and sent them to prison, for non-violent offenses, and returned them to the street as violent offenders. It has encouraged the diminution of civil liberties through aggressive search and arrest. It has raised a Prohibition level of gang violence, but specifically in these inner city areas. It has made the police the armed camp against the resulting “criminal” drug wave and it is the ultimate cause of the depth of police vs. black mutual violence.
I put it to you that decriminalization of drugs and a declaration of an end to the War on Drugs would lead to a normalization of police relationships within inner city black communities within ten years.
If you have not realized this aspect of the WoD, I ask you to consider it now. If you think the incidence of violence within these communities is not related to drugs as a criminal enterprise, I ask you to think about it now. If you think police have no justification for reacting more violently and more fearfully in black inner city neighborhoods and if you think police overreactions against blacks are not caused by the infection spread by the WoD, then you will be doomed to view this through the racial lens and not see it for what it obviously is – the utter failure of a multi trillion dollar policy that undermines everyone’s civil liberties but that invented a violent criminal class in the poorest of neighborhoods.
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Scott, KW, and LMS, this WoD analysis also speaks to your recent conversation. The WoD is an anti-libertarian government policy and is probably an example of what Scott and Kev mean when they say more govt leads to more police power. OTOH, it is not a traditional American “liberal” policy, but rather a “law and order” conservative policy. So LMS thinks “wait a minute” when Scott equates increased enforcement authority with liberals.
Surely this is easy to see.
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Mark:
So LMS thinks “wait a minute” when Scott equates increased enforcement authority with liberals.
The problem, of course, is that I never equated anything with “liberals”. In my original, to which lms was actually responding, I simply said that “The more control the government tries to exercise, the more interaction the police will necessarily have with people.” Later I even explicitly acknowledged that liberal policies weren’t solely to blame, while adding that “any political ideology that consistently seeks to expand government power to control increasing aspects of individual life is doing much more to facilitate a police state than, say, one which promotes a small, much less all-encompassing government.”
I stand by both statements, regardless of whether or not drug laws are traditionally seen as conservative or liberal.
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Scott, I have no problem with your formulation, but I think I stated LMS’s implicit reaction.
Is that correct, Lulu?
Scott, my posing the WoD as an archetype for more govt=more policing should have made it crystal clear that I agree with your generally stated proposition.
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Mark:
Although my original was not intended to call out liberalism in particular, I think it might be an interesting exercise to see what kind of political ideology actually does tend to hold power in places where excessive police violence is seen as a particular problem. Anecdotally I would guess that most of these problems occur in urban settings, and I would also guess that most cities are dominated by Democratic politics. Certainly that is the case in the biggest cities…NYC, Chicago, LA, DC. (Of course, correlation does not mean causation.)
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/12/american_achiever_of_2014__sarah_palin.html
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I didn’t actually have much to say one way or another. I primarily was objecting to Scott’s assertion about government control in our lives, which he generally seems to blame liberals for. I think specifically when it comes to law and order issues conservatives have just as much for us to thank them for.
Personally, I think we have become too much of a law and order society for my taste.
I don’t really have time right now to delve too deeply into the issues surrounding the deaths of either the petty criminal or the police officers. Both are devastating I think.
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lms:
I primarily was objecting to Scott’s assertion about government control in our lives, which he generally seems to blame liberals for.
I do generally blame liberals more than conservatives, but that aside I don’t understand your objection to the basic claim, which has nothing necessarily to do with any ideology, and seem to me a pretty solid, even obvious, claim. The more control the government tries to exercise, the more interaction the police will have with the people.
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I didn’t disagree with that to my knowledge. I don’t have time to go back and look at the thread again. All I was thinking was “There goes Scott again, blaming liberals for every ill in the world”.
I really should just keep my mouth shut as my life is utter chaos right now and I don’t have the time to delve very deeply into any of the conversations here. I generally don’t even read any of links anymore but did happen to read the one that jnc put up that day.
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lms:
I don’t have time to go back and look at the thread again.
Here’s a recap:
lms: A chilling commentary.
Scott: All the more reason to advocate for less, not more, government regulation of daily activity. The more control the government tries to exercise, the more interaction the police will necessarily have with people.
Eric Garner wouldn’t have been arrested (and in the process killed) if not for the tax on cigarettes and the government’s decision to aggressively pursue those who avoid it by buying/selling singles.
lms: Scott, I’m sorry but I think you’re stretching the truth a little with the “The more control the government tries to exercise, the more interaction the police will necessarily have with people.”
Perhaps I’m wrong but I don’t really believe the “police state” is only a product of liberal policies.
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Scott, whenever you mention “more government” you’re referring to liberal policies in my experience. I believe the greater police interaction with citizens isn’t just because of liberal policies. That’s the only point I was trying to make. I must not have made it very well if Mark didn’t really get it either.
Personally, I blame “The War on Terror” for a lot of this as well as “The War on Drugs”. And as I said, I think there are entirely too many laws regarding petty offenses that the police have no business worrying about. I think they should stick to the big crimes and not worry about some poor wanna be criminal selling a couple of cancer sticks on the sly. Who really gives a shit if it’s not happening on a grand scale? The fact that the guy died because of it makes it even worse and doesn’t do the cops any favors if they want respect from citizens.
We have friends who are cops and this kind of thing really damages their image and of course now that there have been retaliation killings they’re all a little more jumpy……………..GREAT.
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lms:
I believe the greater police interaction with citizens isn’t just because of liberal policies.
As I said, I agree that liberal policies are not solely to blame.
Personally, I blame “The War on Terror” for a lot of this as well as “The War on Drugs”.
How so? I do think the drug laws are a particular problem, although they had nothing to do with the two most recent events that have prompted this discussion. (The NYC circumstance was the result of tax laws.) But in what way has the war on terror contributed to friction between police and the people, particularly in the inner cities?
And as I said, I think there are entirely too many laws regarding petty offenses that the police have no business worrying about.
NYC’s “broken windows” policy has largely been credited with transforming the city into a much more livable place. The enforcement of petty crimes seems to be a highly effective method of helping to prevent the “big” crimes. My problem isn’t with the enforcement of laws against small crimes like petty theft, which really shouldn’t be tolerated, but rather with laws that drive otherwise legitimate activity – like buying and selling goods/services – underground and into the realm of criminals.
BTW, I can personally attest to the positive transformation of NYC under Giuliani and Bloomberg from what it used to be like. Unfortunately De Blasio will likely reverse the trend and make the city increasingly unlivable again. His supporters will get what they deserve, I suppose.
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Scott
As I said, I agree that liberal policies are not solely to blame.
Okay, but I didn’t know (or beieve) that when I first made my comment.
But in what way has the war on terror contributed to friction between police and the people, particularly in the inner cities?
Just off the top of my head, as I don’t have time to find any substantiating material, I think the police are more militarized than previously which I don’t think is a particularly good idea for inner cities when the threat is not terror driven. I think there is more suspicion between citizens and police officers. I have a good friend who is a retired cop and I think he would agree with me based on our conversations.
NYC’s “broken windows” policy has largely been credited with transforming the city into a much more livable place. The enforcement of petty crimes seems to be a highly effective method of helping to prevent the “big” crimes.
I’ll have to take your word on that one and the various mayors. I think labeling young people as criminals for minor offenses starts a process of lack of forward momentum for them. But perhaps I’m looking for ways to shrink the prison population by wishful thinking. I think poverty, ignorance and desperation turn people into criminals and it’s a bit of a self-perpetuating journey once it starts. But I don’t really know anything concrete, it’s just something I think about.
Now I’m out again. I have a big day at the gym and then another day trying to figure out what to do with my sister…………. 😦
Hope you have a Happy New Year!
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lms:
I think the police are more militarized than previously which I don’t think is a particularly good idea for inner cities when the threat is not terror driven.
That is probably true, but I am not sure it is related to the WoT. I think the militarization of the police has been occurring for a long time. (I suspect the War on Drugs has been a much bigger driver of this than the WoT.)
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