Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[millenwasmyfavorite]

Of course white poverty % far less than black poverty %. Is that really a question?

Race has zero to do with poverty. Unless you can't own property... because you are black? No accruing generational wealth through the most conventional means possible? How has that fared for American Indians? Not great on whole.

even when property ownership was available, it wasn't exactly conducive for long term investment prospects to own a dwelling where the wealthy (at the time, white) didn't want to live. Clearly the beginning of a pretty poor cycle.

Again, these are facts. Not all encompassing, not an eternal excuse, but pretending a 250 year head start is meaningless is laughable.

[iam416]

Of course white poverty % far less than black poverty %. Is that really a question?

Read what I wrote and quit ignoring the point:

If this is true, then if there are as many poor white folks as poor black folks then absolute numbers of, say, crime and murders ought to be the same. I wonder if they are

If this were all about poverty, as GJ suggested in the statement I quoted, then murder/crime rates would correspond to poverty rates. We have actually hard answers on whether or they do. Go look them up. Even if the run contra your infatalization bullshit.

[iam416]

You'd then have to control for racist cops. For some groups, some things are more illegal than others. Which is a shame, because it ruins what is otherwise an excellent point that I would like to see used to moderate the left.

First, my point was average. Your flattery suggests an ulterior motive that I suspect is laced with sheer evil. Second, I'm actually all in favor of nuance. But it really, really, really has to run both ways. You just can't say "black kids are more likely to get suspended than white kids" or whatever the particularly stat may be and then conclude PROBLEM!!!! You really can't just say "disparate results...racism!!!!" And you really can't just say "black single mother rates...WOW!" or whatever. Instead you get this back and forth where neither side wants to acknowledge that other side's stats help paint a more complete picture. Instead it's just DISPARATE IMPACT!!!! -- then, yeah, but IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!

Unrelated but related, Coates did a podcast with a National Review guy (here: https://www.nationalreview.com/blog/...einstein-show/). I think it's well worth a listen (as it actually altered my opinion of him a bit). But he makes a very strong case for nuance, at least when it comes to "negative" stats. I absolutely agree, but it has to run both ways. I mean -- it almost always should be the case with any stat outside of, say, winning 15 out of 17. That one is irrefutable, absolute and undeniable.

[hack]

Michigan in Ohio Stadium in 2016 got treated like a black guy on. A routine traffic stop by the refs. And we all know you'd field a team of six to ten eligible players if you hired Michigan's compliance department to handle that for you.

There are no "facts". Save for that humans are stupid and cannot have the debate that way. There will not be nuance.

[Ghengis Jon]

Turns out it has more to do with culture than it does income level, but if you want to discuss what a waste of 22,000,000,000,000 the war on poverty has been I'm down.

That's absolute nonsense. You give money to individuals and you risk creating dependency. You give money to groups specifically for job creation and you create self esteem, responsibility, productive members of society, infrastructure and tax revenue. Give a man a fish - teach a man to fish example.

It has nothing to do with culture. It has everything to do with opportunity and motivation. Only a bigot would claim otherwise. You can't look at black and white by color alone, or just being beneath the poverty line as a metric. The environment must also be considered. Being poor white living in a decrepit trailer out in the boonies is a lot different than having to live in an abandoned warehouse in a freakin' warzone.

[millenwasmyfavorite]

Read what I wrote and quit ignoring the point:



If this were all about poverty, as GJ suggested in the statement I quoted, then murder/crime rates would correspond to poverty rates. We have actually hard answers on whether or they do. Go look them up. Even if the run contra your infatalization bullshit.

Relax.

I'm not arguing that the issue is solely poverty or solely race. But suggesting race and poverty have nothing to do with each other is a joke. Acknowledging that doesn't auto-assign me the endorsement of stating they always have everything to do with each other.

I've already spoken to your point before you hopped in:
Blue collar crime almost always parallels poverty levels. Regardless of race. Yes? No?

Clearly, the black population is experiencing a crisis that exists regardless of other existing races: black on black crime outpaces Latino and whites by significant tics.

The point you are making is true, no posturing needed. But, I don't think it is super useful.

[iam416]

Blue collar crime almost always parallels poverty levels. Regardless of race. Yes? No?

I'm not sure what you're saying here. I mean, the first sentence is just not true (https://www.realclearpolicy.com/arti...ent_crime.html). In terms of homicides, it's not even remotely close to being true.

So, I mean, poor black folks are more like to commit murder (and, to a lesser extent, violent crime) than poor any other folks.

[Ghengis Jon]

Is the Tea Party dead? From the current edition of The Week.


Spending: How Republicans learned to love deficits

A growing tower of debt

During the Obama presidency, said Philip Klein in WashingtonExaminer.com, conservatives outraged by deficit spending launched the Tea Party movement to demand fiscal restraint. But now that Republicans have gained full control of the federal government, “they have chosen to repeal the Tea Party.” House Speaker Paul Ryan, President Trump, and other Republicans last week agreed with Democrats to blow up the budgetary spending caps that were the main legacy of the Tea Party movement, agreeing on a two-year spending binge that will force the U.S. to borrow $955 billion this year—nearly double last year’s $519 billion—and $1.15 trillion in 2019. Democrats get an increase in domestic spending from $539 billion to $591 billion, and Republicans get an equivalent bump in military spending, from $634 billion to $700 billion. With no Democrat in the White House, said Catherine Rampell in WashingtonPost.com, “Republicans have learned to love deficits.” But their flip-flop is “breathtakingly ill-timed.” We’re in the ninth year of an economic recovery, and should be paying down the debt we accrued during the recession. For Republicans to be boosting spending now, at the same time Trump’s “ignormous, plutocratic tax cut” sharply reduces federal revenues, is extremely reckless.

Republican priorities have changed, said Kevin Williamson in NationalReview.com. Under Trump, Republicans are pursuing their sincerely held “small-government goals through regulatory reform”—cutting red tape and bureaucracy—and by reducing taxes on businesses. That’s all well and good. But unless they want trillion-dollar deficits forever, Republicans need to face reality, and either make big cuts in spending or raise taxes to the vicinity of Sweden’s 60 percent rate. As Republicans well know, “there is no public appetite” for massive cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and other safety-net spending, said Jennifer Rubin in WashingtonPost.com. “If we want big government, we have to pay for it.” So why did Republicans just cut taxes by $1.5 trillion, mostly for the wealthiest Americans?

Don’t blame Trump alone, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. This is what Republicans always do when they occupy the White House. Under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, Republicans cut taxes for the rich and spent like drunken sailors. The moment Democrats regained power, Republicans howled about the “crushing burden” of debt and used it as a pretext to obstruct the Democratic president’s agenda. Republicans “never really cared about debt and deficits,” said Paul Krugman in NYTimes.com. The proof? They just voted “more stimulus to an economy with 4 percent unemployment than they were willing to allow an economy with 8 percent unemployment” in 2009. The only explanation for this fiscal madness is that “a Republican now sits in the White House.”

Democrats aren’t blameless for this “new era of big spending,” said Russell Berman in TheAtlantic.com. Yes, they secured billions for important programs—including children’s health insurance and the opioid crisis—but the whole challenge of two-party politics is to set priorities for finite funding. Right now the parties are simply “cracking open the federal piggy bank and divvying up the spoils” to further their separate agendas. No doubt about it—“the Tea Party is dead,” said former Tea Party leader Matt Kibbe in Reason.com. Trump and his followers don’t care about deficits, and neither do the cynical Republicans running Congress. That means it’s “trillion dollar deficits and red ink as far as the eye can see.”

[Dr. Strangelove]

Just scouring online today and it's pretty sickening. It's Sandy Hook all over again. The Parkland kids are 'crisis actors'; the whole thing was a deep state conspiracy to seize all guns.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Netanyahu appears to be in deepening trouble as a former aide has apparently agreed to a plea deal in exchange for testimony against his old boss in his bribery indictment

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-netanyahu-confidant-turns-against-him-in-dramatic-state-s-evidence-deal-1.5841162

[Dr. Strangelove]

Here's a copy of the full statement of offense against Alex van der Zwaan today (Manafort's former attorney). The plea agreement also indicates he's likely to be deported (not a US citizen)

Basically in 2012 he helped Manafort and Gates craft a report and PR campaign that gave justification for the imprisonment of anti-Kremlin Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko. He then lied to Mueller's team about his involvement and attempted to destroy evidence.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1036406/download

[Kapture1]

That's absolute nonsense. You give money to individuals and you risk creating dependency. You give money to groups specifically for job creation and you create self esteem, responsibility, productive members of society, infrastructure and tax revenue. Give a man a fish - teach a man to fish example.

It has nothing to do with culture. It has everything to do with opportunity and motivation. Only a bigot would claim otherwise. You can't look at black and white by color alone, or just being beneath the poverty line as a metric. The environment must also be considered. Being poor white living in a decrepit trailer out in the boonies is a lot different than having to live in an abandoned warehouse in a freakin' warzone.

Opportunity and motivation is exactaly why single mother birth rate jumped from 20% to 73%.

There is no greater factor for the contribution of generational poverty.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Democrats just took away the Kentucky 49th District (Louisville suburbs) from the Republicans by a 2 to 1 margin. The incumbent Republican, Dan Johnson, committed suicide after molestation allegations emerged. His widow was running to replace him...the Dem who won has represented the district in the past.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/14/a-lawmaker-accused-of-molesting-a-teen-killed-himself-his-widow-calls-it-a-high-tech-lynching/?utm_term=.22687adb851e

[Kapture1]

You'd then have to control for racist cops. For some groups, some things are more illegal than others. Which is a shame, because it ruins what is otherwise an excellent point that I would like to see used to moderate the left.

Other good point, seems like many on the left believe to their core that not only is America still a deeply raciat country, but that most white cops wake up each and every day just looking to throw young black men in prison for crimes they didn't commit, or killing them if the opportunity presents itself.

There is no evidence of this.

[Dr. Strangelove]

in 17 special elections so far in 2018, Democrats are running 28 points ahead of Clinton in those districts and 14 points ahead of Obama

For the entirety of 2017 they were 10 points ahead of Clinton and 7 points ahead of Obama.

https://www.vox.com/2018/2/20/17034262/kentucky-special-election-linda-belcher

In the past, special elections have been somewhat predictive of midterm performance

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/special-elections-so-far-point-to-a-democratic-wave-in-2018/