Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
4d ago
The most recent meta-analysis I've seen on lead-crime was this, which as I read it suggests that lead likely was responsible for somewhere between zero and one third - closer to zero in the most rigorous studies - of the crime surge.
Anthony Higney, Nick Hanley, and Mirko Moro, “The Lead-Crime Hypothesis: A MetaAnalysis,” University of Glasgow Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine, Discussion Papers in Environmental and One Health Economics series, no. 2021–02, Feb. 21, 2021.
And as for the abortion explanation, my understanding was that the Freaknomics guy's study was pretty convincingly critiqued here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=270126
YMMV, of course.
Supah_Schmendrick
6d ago
Any attempts to use more police enforcement and harsher punishments and whatever will just make the problems worse, for you as well as for the people you're talking about. We've seen that through decades of 'tough on crime' policies.
Do we know this? I thought the general consensus was that "tough on crime" policies like NYC's vaunted "broken windows" efforts, while expensive and not as world-shaking as initially billed, did drastically cut down on street crime and enable the revitalization of the city. I thought that the general consensus was that the harsh policies adopted in the 80's and 90's were a major factor in the plunging murder rate in the U.S., which only started upticking again after the recent racial brouhahas (Ferguson, Minneapolis, etc.) put the kibosh on aggressive policing of the poor and disproportionately black communities where most serious crime crawls up out of.
Supah_Schmendrick
13d ago
The thing that makes this a national story is that Mr. Ballard, through the fictionalized version of his life that is "Sound of Freedom," one of the major cultural figures held up as virtuous and good by Team Red. Thus, it is imperative in the kulturkampf that Team Blue knock him off his pedestal or prove him to be bad in some way, lest Team Red be able to convince people that Reds can be virtuous, or that it is virtuous to be Red. That's what's driving amplification of this story in higher-profile news networks/through non-Red social media networks. Obviously Reds, Mormons, and Utahns have their own reasons to care about this - their idol has feet of clay / adultery is something they care about, etc.
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
Theres corroborating testimony grom one of his business partners, plus other statements by Hunter from the laptop complaining that Joe took half of what other family members made, including Hunter.
Additionally, we know from Hunter's Chateau Marmont prostitute binge that he and Joe shared a joint bank account - Hunter overpaid the prostitute and then started getting frantic calls from the Secret Service about why VPOTUS's bank accounts were transferring tens of thousands of dollars to shady escort services.
Further, we also know that Joe didn't disclose $5.2 million in income that cant be explained by known income sources (salaries, etc.).
Its all very suggestive.
Supah_Schmendrick
26d ago
that there is no evidence of democrats having tried anything like changing the actual vote totals or storming the capitol building
(1) Lying to create "Russia-gate," including lying to FISA courts in order to ensure that Trump campaign officials' phones were being tapped.
(2) Impeaching Trump over his attempt to investigate what we now know was actual quid-pro-quo corruption in which Ukranian oligarchs paid Joe Biden's son to have Joe Biden leverage U.S. foreign policy to prevent their prosecution.
(3) Rioting outside the White House including setting the next-door church on fire.
(4) Organizing 51 intelligence officials to falsely claim that the Hunter Biden laptop - which the FBI had possessed for over a year previously and knew to be genuine - "bore all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation" in a successful attempt to interfere in the 2020 election.
(5) Organizing social media censorship of stories connected to the Hunter Biden laptop.
and, actually most importantly for the 2020 election:
(6) funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars in ostensible "COVID-relief funds" through private donors to election officials in Democratic-controlled swing-counties, who then proceeded to use almost none of the funds for COVID-relief purposes, and instead used it to hire Democratic activists to run partisan get-out-the-vote operations, and in some cases effectively privatize the actual conduct of the elections themselves:
"Trump won Georgia by more than five points in 2016. He lost it by three-tenths of a point in 2020. On average, as a share of the two-party vote, most counties moved Democratic by less than one percentage point in that time. Counties that didn’t receive Zuckerbucks showed hardly any movement, but counties that did moved an average of 2.3 percentage points Democratic. In counties that did not receive Zuckerbucks, “roughly half saw an increase in Democrat votes that offset the increase in Republican votes, while roughly half saw the opposite trend.” In counties that did receive Zuckerbucks, by contrast, three quarters “saw a significant uptick in Democrat votes that offset any upward change in Republican votes,” including highly populated Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb counties."
Hemingway, "Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections," Ch. 7
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
downtown Baltimore, for example, is going to be a shithole
Except it wasn't for over a hundred years. Perhaps the understanding of "civil liberties" which obtained during those times was better? E.g. Miranda is a comparatively-recent innovation which correlates with a significant reduction in police efficacy, particularly among those with prior felony records (Leo, 1996). Since multiple-recidivists are responsible for a vastly disproportionate share of the crime in society, including large numbers of un-reported crimes (Farrington et. al. 2021), Miranda's effect on public order - particularly in high-crime and low public order communities where cooperation with law enforcement is significantly depressed - is probably undersold by the subsequent literature.
It takes effort and incentives to create a high-trust, orderly society that can have nice things like beautiful and civilized city centers.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
The "Biden is a zombie" meme is overhyped since he's always had a verbal tic that makes him seem befuddled, which Republicans like to claim is dementia when it's actually just a pre-existing condition.
Watch Biden's VP debate against Paul Ryan from 2012 back to back with any current Biden speech. It's not a pre-existing condition. The dude's old, and has lost more than a few mph off his fastball.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
As President, it matters less what that particular person thinks, and more how much risk they're willing to swallow. There's no shortage of bright-spark admin-law scholars and lawyers who can come up with wild schemes to accomplish just about any policy in any direction - the question is, does the decisionmaker at 1600 Pennsylvania have the guts - and the cat-herding skills - to actually pick something and push forward with it?
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
It sucks. You know what makes suck-y feelings go away, at least for a little while? Delicious unhealthy foods. Not trying to justify it, just explaining the vicious cycle.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I'm a (comparative) walrus, and let me tell you, I also shame myself. I avoid mirrors, going out, clothes shopping, and photographs, because just seeing my face makes my gorge rise.
The problem is that the shame turns into a ball of self-hatred and impotent rage in my gut and does not effectively spur me to take effective action; feeling bad about myself makes me more likely to turn to unhealthy foods for a hedonic bump-up, rather than hedonically-unsatisfying but long-term productive things like home cooking (yes I know home cooking can be delicious but I do not derive joy from the process and am currently marginally unskilled, so there's a learning curve that needs to be overcome) and exercise (which is painful, sweaty, and only reminds me how much less capable my body is now than it used to be).
Instead of shame, I need to find an emotional motivator which is a more effective spur to action rather than just recrimination.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I would agree that some of this is going to come down to the fact that a functional alcoholic that does odd jobs is a lot more likely to be able to keep a shack in a holler than afford a condo in San Francisco.
Eh not necessarily. A big chunk of the legal profession is pretty fucked up, often including abuse of one or more substances (prescription pills, alcohol, illegal narcotics, you name it) and still manages to hold down a job at Manatt, or whatever.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Why do you assume they would? People are dumb and don't pay attention to what's in their chicken nuggets - suddenly they're going to turn into savvy consumers when it comes to doing complex chemistry calculations to determine correct dosing, and batch testing to ensure that the product isn't being stepped on or cut with fentanyl as it often is currently?
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Population growth? What population growth? California is shrinking and the U.S. has flat-lined. And yet still housing prices go up.
We are allergic to actually counting the number of immigrants in this country. We're probably undercounting the population by around 20 million, which would definitely be enough to put upward pressure on housing costs.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Meanwhile, there are lots of countries with essentially zero drug use. . . . China . . . [doesn't] have drugs. And unlike the Prohibition Al Capone memes, [it] also ha[s] very few if any gangs.
I doubt this, given that China is a major producer of fentanyl. I find it very hard to believe that the Chinese megacities don't have their (albeit probably smaller) share of strung-out junkies and losers. There's no magic property of Chineseness that protects against drug abuse or opioid addiction - ask Lin Zexu!
Similarly, I find it hard to believe that there isn't significant organized crime in China, even particular to drug manufacture. Instead I would expect that, in a society without strong rule of law norms and heavily dependent upon petty corruption and personal connections, the crime would just have a blurrier relationship to official power than it has here in the U.S.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
A lot of the gateway cities which are now completely indistinguishable from any other part of the generic LA sprawl - Norwalk, Artesia, Cerritos, Cypress - which connect LA to Orange County were unincorporated farmlands as recently as the mid 50's. That's to say nothing of the further reaches of the San Fernando and Simi Valleys. That was all agricultural or undeveloped as recently as the 70's.
Also a lot of the housing stock in heavily-immigrant communities is oversubscribed; lots of people try to save on housing expenses by cramming multiple families or large numbers of young men together into a 2- or 3-bedroom house or condo, sleeping in shifts or otherwise living cheek-by-jowl in time-honored tenement-immigrant style.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
They lived in most of the neighborhoods in south-central LA - Inglewood, Hawthorne, South Gate, Bell, Compton, North Long Beach, etc. After the 60's riots most of these areas became heavily black, and now, after a lot of really nasty, but largely unreported interethnic conflict, they are mostly (with a few exceptions) latino.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I mean, there's a difference between saying "legislating from the bench sucks and shouldn't happen" and unilateral disarmament in kulturkampf lawfare. I don't think it's hypocritical to say "in an ideal world there would be no need for weapons" but still own and train with a gun if you live in a high-crime area, and this is similar.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Yes, and what this shows is that a lot of people aren't utilitarians.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I think you'd have to be basically Buddha to stop doing that. Every snap emotional impression - every "eww" or "woah!" - is a miniature moral judgment; deeming something good/beautiful/impressive or bad/repulsive/piddling.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Money is not freely convertible into the things that make schools conducive to learning, nor is there one set of things that works for educating all types of people. Some people will learn if you just let them loose in a room full of books and things to tinker with. Others need to be proverbially chained to the desk and smacked with rulers, Prussian/Irish Nun style.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I mean pent-up demand for any new housing in an economically-productive area; I postulate the fact that they're housing units on the market in west-side LA (in the case of his Venice example) is much more important for driving demand than their character as "missing middle" or whether or not neighborhoods are walkable, serviced by transit, or otherwise Urbanist-ideology-approved. People happily pay out the nose for studios or "shared living" dorm spaces with no transit, a mile walk to the nearest grocery, and no dedicated parking, just because it's a place to live.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
any sort of mixed-use residential/commercial developments that do get built are typically very high-class and quite desirable.
Where permitting and regulatory regimes are complex, slow, restrictive, and carry significant ongoing costs (i.e. mandatory set-asides for "affordable" units) for those few projects that do get approved, developers are highly incentivized to make all new construction as high-class and high-cost as possible in order to maximize return per unit; they can set their own price because pent-up demand is so high, and face little competition from other new builds to drive down cost.
That's the reason mixed-use projects in major cities are so "high class and desirable" - not any inherent property of the type of units being built.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I was unclear. Acceptable to the customer-institutions who are deciding on what to have built; not to the institution of the architectural profession. Apologies for that.
Alcohol is generally treated as special because of the powers given by section 2 of the 21st amendment - if a state constitution grants counties the authority to declare themselves dry, that would be a pretty clear application of section 2. But given that SCOTUS has ruled that the dormant commerce clause still applies to alcohol notwithstanding the 21st amendment (e.g. Granholm v. Heald (2005) 544 U.S. 460 and Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas (2019) 588 U.S. ----) there's probably some wrinkles here that I'm missing.
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