HeyJackass! reports the preliminary yearend tally in Chicago as 734 homicides, 2,936 shot. I’m sure that Mayor Lightfoot is touting that as a significant accomplishment but, as the author observes, there have been 700 or more homicides every year of Mayor Lightfoot’s term. By my calculations that’s the worst tally ever when adjusted for population. By far the greatest percentage of both victims and perpetrators are black and the percentage is even worse when considered by black population. Chicago’s black population has declined substantially over the last several decades. It’s lower than it was 50 years ago as is Chicago’s total population.
Happy new year, Dave.
Wikipedia says this.
“In the new system, the role of cash payments will be eliminated and judges will determine whether detained individuals pose a risk if released. Pretrial release can be denied by a judge after a hearing, “when it is determined that the defendant poses a specific, real and present threat to a person, or has a high likelihood of willful flight.”[3]
So in our current system if the judge thinks you are a flight risk he sets bail high. In the new system he doesnt let you go. Only about 5% of crime is violent crime so I would expect that most fo those dont get let go, though judges let an awful lot of those out on bail, based upon whether they can pay and not, it looks like, the severity of the crime. Does it really make people safer to have a bunch of people who cant afford bail for non violent crimes while you let violent criminals out just because they can afford bail? (Did a quick perusal of literature on this and it looks pretty divided on whether evidence shows cash bail reduces either flight risk or increases safety.)
Given that people usually spend over 6 moths in jail before their trial what happens if you are innocent but cant afford bail?
Steve
One would think that Detroit ought to be a warning, not a role model.
America’s cities are taking on a tattered Third World look. The masses of homeless people, many of whom are mentally ill, rampant black crime, financial looting by Wall Street criminals, the flood of illegal aliens, most of whom are unskilled, and, of course, our endless wars of empire.
And the EU is much the same.
Russian and Chinese cities have none of our problems. Of course, Russia is authoritarian (but no more so than Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK or the EU), and China is a communist dictatorship (but not a communist economy). Moreover, Russia and China are ruled by patriots, whereas we in the West are ruled by parasites.
“ruled by parasitesâ€
You need to copyright that Bob.
I think that’s going to be a candidate screener for me from now on.
Is, has this candidate been a parasite?
Given that people usually spend over 6 moths in jail before their trial what happens if you are innocent but cant afford bail?
What happens to people put in jail, denied access to an attorney, occasionally beaten, have no bail set or trial date in the future, many in solitary confinement for not months, but for years!!!!! Somehow the plight of these J6 protesters, however, is ignored by those on the left, while progressive prosecutors are lobbying for and empathizing with criminals committing real crimes of violence on victims, who usually see deferred or no justice for the abuses incurred by these criminals.
Let’s hope provenance doesn’t saddle us with prosecutor Harris.
“…whereas we in the West are ruled by parasites.”
There is no mathematical equation to calculate freedom vs parasitic government, or a reasonably compassionate society vs a parasitic government. It is judgment.
But if you want to limit parasitic behavior, which is a natural byproduct of government, you will go wanting. The only thing you can do is limit the size of government. In addition to the economics, we have also seen the totalitarian proclivities of the big government types the past couple years.
Blandly waving away size of big government concerns with the fallacy of simply citing minarchists falls far short. I dare anyone to try to justify the size and intrusiveness of the current government. It is a huge poor allocation of resources – deadweight loss. A private entity would go bankrupt. But then, our government is, in fact, bankrupt. We are just beginning to bear the problems of the knock-on effects.
Read any Paul Krugman column. He rather clearly thinks the federal government is too small.
My own view is that government broadly is too large. The present problems are both that it’s doing things it shouldn’t (positive rights) and it doesn’t do what it does do as well as it should. We’re not getting enough bang for the buck. To expand on that first clause the federal government should stick to public goods using the technical definition (non-rivalrous and non-excludable) and should avoid private goods. Some of that is due to the normal problems with bureaucracies. Some of it is due to being mired in the 1950s. Some is due to a conflict of interests.
I am not concerned about the “size” of government which is definitionally subjective, but what the government’s roles are and how well it does them.
My short answer is that we don’t get sufficient value for our tax dollar, something that is undeniable if you compare the US to peer countries. I expect our federalized system to have comparative inefficiencies, but things have gotten way out of hand over the last half-century.
We get less health care for dollar spent, less education for dollar spent, fewer miles of road built for dollar spent, and fewer bridges built for dollar spent than any other developed country.