So what happened? No consensus exists. Favored explanations among criminologists include the collapse of the crack cocaine trade, a shrinking youth population, and a better job market, but none of these theories perfectly fit the data. The spread of New York–style policing and increased incarceration are better, but by no means exclusive, explanations for the national crime drop.
Another possible explanation she doesn’t mention: Kevin Drum’s pet theory that it’s due to the decline in the use of leaded gasoline.
I think it’s probably multi-factorial so looking for one silver bullet isn’t particularly useful.
Something else that goes unmentioned: it doesn’t support the idea that greater poverty and unemployment will lead to more violent crime.
If Sharyl Attkisson’s story can be taken at face value, it paints a picture of intolerable government intrusion. If the Congress isn’t all over this, what’s the cure?
I am shocked, shocked to see governors acting politically in the face of the risks, whatever they may be, posed by Ebola in this country. This morning there seems to be a pitched battle between those who think the governors of New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia have acted injudiciously or prudently. At least they’re taking steps to mitigate risk.
That, I think, is one of the factors missing in the discussion of the conduct of Dr. Craig Spencer, the young physician who, after returning from a volunteer stint with Doctors Without Borders treating Ebola patients, tooled around New York before showing symptoms that he’d contracted the disease: did Dr. Spencer act to mitigate the risk he posed to others? This is a subject to which I’ve returned again and again here: different people have different perceptions of risks and rewards. These perceptions are not right or wrong; they are merely different and that should be taken into account. IMO doctors of medicine have a very different perception of risk than non-physicians.
BTW, I’m old enough to remember when skepticism rather than credulity was the hallmark of science. Those were the days! The word science is derived from the Latin word for knowledge. In the absence of greater knowledge as, for example, why several orders of magnitude more people are being infected by Ebola in West Africa than in any previous outbreak, I’m not quite sure how we can characterize what we think we know about the outbreak as science. There are just too many unknowns.
How do you mitigate the risks posed by Ebola? My view continues to be that the best way for us to mitigate those risks is by aiding Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone with public health problems that have grown beyond their ability to manage. We’ll need to act quickly. The virus is operating in those countries on virus time rather than U. S. federal government time. And it’s indifferent to the elections that take place here in a week.
I am astonished that James Sherk can write about reduced labor demand without mentioning either automation or offshoring or increased labor supply without mentioning immigration.
How in the heck can you write about wage stagnation without mentioning most of the factors contributing to wage stagnation?
The general election will be held one week from tomorrow and much of the suspense will be over, except in the run-off states. Although I have been predicting that Democrats will hold the Senate for the better part of the last year, I now doubt that will be the outcome. It’s not just the Republicans’ advantages—the favorable election map, a midterm, the midterm of a president of the opposite party’s second term. It’s that I just don’t see the Democrats rallying to overcome those advantages as I thought they would.
As things look today after the elections a week from Tuesday Republicans are likely to hold 49 seats outright. Two seats are toss-ups (Colorado and Kansas) and are likely to go into run-offs (Georgia and Louisiana). When the dust has settled the Republicans will take an additional two seats, Colorado and Louisiana which will give them control of the Senate.
The more interesting question is what they’ll do with control of the Congress and on that subject I have no idea. I would hope that the new Republican leadership would be gracious in victory as I hope the president would be gracious in defeat but, sadly, I think that both of those are long shots.
What do you think the outcome of the November elections will be? Which party will control the Senate? If it’s the Republicans, what will they do and how will the president respond?
The Department of Transportation will conduct a review of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has been criticized for its handling of the Takata airbag recall this past week, as well as other recalls this year, a senior administration official told ABC News.
The airbags, made by Japanese auto supplier Takata, are blamed for at least three deaths and more than 100 injuries.
“The roll out of the safety advisory by NHTSA was not optimal, but what is most important right now is that a NHTSA-led investigation uncovered a very serious defect,” a DOT spokesperson said. “Impacted vehicle owners should have their cars immediately checked by their manufacturers. This investigation is far from over and we will leave no stone unturned in the interest of public safety.”
Regulators had allowed a recall limited to areas of the country with “high humidity,” but some lawmakers are now calling for an immediate nationwide recall of millions of potentially faulty airbags.
“There needs to be a real overhaul of the National Highway Transit Safety agency,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., one of the lawmakers who has criticized the limited recall.
“These exploding airbags can be killers,” he said. “They literally have killed people.”
So far there have been at least four deaths and how knows how much injury and destruction as a consequence of the airbags and NHTSA’s phlegmatic response is clearly attributable to the cozy relationship between the agency and the automobile industry. as Sen. Blumenthal, quoted above, asserted.
Regulatory capture was a factor in the Gulf Oil spill. It is so prevalent it would make a good topic for a specialized blog rather than just a post or two. It is not benign. It has resulted in the deaths of Americans and the destruction of property and the wrecking of lives. As Sen. Blumenthal noted it is not a problem that can be solved by increasing the sizes of the budgets of the agencies involved or by expanding their power. It requires a change in culture.
Military competition between China and the United States will not be the only struggle in Asia. China and India observe each other warily across the Himalayas and in the Indian Ocean. China and Japan are not only planning for conflict but maneuvering their forces against one another in the Western Pacific. Additionally, Japan and South Korea are developing capabilities to project power in response to other contingencies, which can possibly be seen as mutually threatening. The nations bordering the South China Sea are enhancing their ability to defend their maritime claims against China, but some have long histories of mutual mistrust.
The picture I have painted of what is likely to happen if China continues to rise is not a pretty one. Indeed, it is downright depressing. I wish I could tell a more hopeful story about the prospects for peace in Asia. But the fact is that international politics is a dangerous business, and no amount of goodwill can ameliorate the intense security competition that sets in when an aspiring hegemon comes on the scene in either Europe or Asia. And there is good reason to think China will eventually pursue regional hegemony.
I think that the situation is actually somewhat bleaker than the one he portrays. I think the greatest likelihood of a nuclear exchange is between Russia and China, India and Pakistan, or India and China, with the first two being far more likely.
Illinois has the worst public pension debt in the country. Its bonds have been downgraded so far that it faces the highest borrowing cost of any state. The nonpartisan Civic Federation says the state’s huge backlog of unpaid bills will grow this fiscal year, lamenting “a return to unsustainable fiscal practices.”
In a recent survey, Illinois got an “F” for “small business friendliness.” Moody’s Analytics predicted that this year it will have the lowest rate of job growth of the 50 states.
Quinn has taken commendable steps to improve the fiscal outlook, like trimming the state payroll, closing prisons and making the state’s required contributions to pension plans. But by raising the state personal income tax rate to 5 percent from 3 percent and the total corporate rate to 9.5 percent from 7.3 percent, he chilled an economic climate that was already locked in a polar vortex.
In its latest report, the Tax Foundation says Illinois’ state and local tax burden is the 13th heaviest in the nation, and Quinn would keep it that way. Having sold most of the income tax increase as temporary — on Jan. 1 it is scheduled to fall to 3.75 percent, one-fourth higher than the previous rate — he now proposes to make it permanent.
Actually, that only scratches the surface of Illinois’s problems. Illinois has the worst or second worst state contribution to education of any state in the union. It has the worst net rate of new business formation. It has the worst net level of outmigration. It has the third highest percentage of homes with negative equity, “underwater”. The only two states with high percentages, Nevada and Florida, had large runups in housing prices prior to 2007, something Illinois did not experience.
He summarizes the choice that faces Illinois voters:
A Rauner governorship, which could lead to a war with the legislature and public employee unions, would be a gamble on an unknown quantity. With Quinn, by contrast, Illinois voters know what they would be getting — and not getting.
Maybe they will be content to extend a dismal status quo that he seems unable to transform. Or maybe they will embrace the approach of Mae West. “Between two evils,” she said, “I always pick the one I never tried before.”
Something equally distressing is that the only complaint about Rauner that the Quinn campaign is airing in its negative ads against Rauner is that he utilized legal means to become rich. That’s not only feeble and one-sided but dangerous.
At a Democratic rally in Massachusetts, Hillary Clinton’s attempt to attack “trickle-down economics,†resulted in a spectacularly odd statement.
Clinton defended raising the minimum wage saying “Don’t let anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs, they always say that.â€
She went on to state that businesses and corporations are not the job creators of America. “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs,†the former Secretary of State said.
The emphasis is mine. Without further qualification that remark is prime idiocy. When you rule out businesses as job creators there’s only one candidate left: government. Like most big businesses government at all levels hasn’t been a net job creator for decades.
What did she mean? What does she really think? We may never know.
Update
At Bloomberg Politics it’s been pointed out that Ms. Clinton’s statement above contradicts statements in Hard Choices. Clearly, the author of Hard Choices disagrees with Sec. Clinton’s assessment.
The Watcher’s Council has announced its winners for last week.
