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Idiocracy

Nik said:
OldTimeHockey said:
But wouldn't the other side of that coin argue that crime rate has been decreasing quite steadily since 1990?

It has but it's been decreasing effectively everywhere regardless of police budgets or tactics or any sort of single data point.

There's also the questions around whether or not the reporting rate for crimes has dropped rather than the actual rate of crimes being committed - something that would continue to point to lowering public trust in the police.
 
bustaheims said:
Nik said:
OldTimeHockey said:
But wouldn't the other side of that coin argue that crime rate has been decreasing quite steadily since 1990?

It has but it's been decreasing effectively everywhere regardless of police budgets or tactics or any sort of single data point.

There's also the questions around whether or not the reporting rate for crimes has dropped rather than the actual rate of crimes being committed - something that would continue to point to lowering public trust in the police.

Wow...that suggests the perfect argument to use to pitch it to Trump and his supporters: if you complete defund and disband the police you'd have 0% arrest rate and have completely eradicated crime in the same way he wants to eradicate COVID. Sheer genius!
 
Nik said:
...As always it goes back to structural issues with capitalism. If a system is geared to produce "winners" and "losers" then you get what we get and you have a lot of poor, desperate people. Add systemic racism on top of that and, well, you get America. Any approach that doesn't radically rethink the current model of economic distribution is, at best, a band-aid.
I think that's hitting the fundamental nail on the head. The Great American Experiment is to see what happens when the single overriding goal of every individual is to out-compete and out-earn everyone else. A sort of economic Darwinism. It's long passed its tipping point and is in run-away mode and it's hard to envision an end to that which doesn't involve insurrection and rebellion.

The wealth gap in Canada is still not quite beyond repair and it will be very interesting to see how the next few elections play out. We've just spent 4 months digging a huge debt hole and the wealthy are the ones who are going to disproportionately pay that back over the coming years because otherwise we're rapidly going to go down the USA's path.

Capitalism and unchecked profiteering just isn't a sustainable model, nor is deficit spending. Somehow we're going to need to find a way to balance the books and I think people are in for a rude awakening about how that's going to affect their lifestyles and standard of living.
 
Hobbes said:
Wow...that suggests the perfect argument to use to pitch it to Trump and his supporters: if you complete defund and disband the police you'd have 0% arrest rate and have completely eradicated crime in the same way he wants to eradicate COVID. Sheer genius!

giphy.gif
 
Hobbes said:
Wow...that suggests the perfect argument to use to pitch it to Trump and his supporters: if you complete defund and disband the police you'd have 0% arrest rate and have completely eradicated crime in the same way he wants to eradicate COVID. Sheer genius!

highresrollsafe.jpg
 
OldTimeHockey said:
CarltonTheBear said:
I brought Ben & Jerry's response to George Floyd's murder earlier in the thread, today they explained what "defunding the police" means in one of the most concise (and delicious) ways I've seen:

https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1273979072713052161

While I have a hard time watching what is happening in society, I have a such a hard time with the concept of putting less money into funding police. I'll attribute that solely to my own short comings and old age. I see it as putting less money towards fighting crime. I know that's not what people are asking for, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. Again, my shortcoming. I'm certainly open to it being explained to me and I feel the article you posted helps a lot.

It?s the ?putting less money towards fighting crime? thing that seems to be tripping people up.  It?s the misconception of what fighting crime is.  So much of healthcare is designed around disease management but the real bang for our buck comes in disease prevention.  Spending more money on affordable food and then exercise programs to improve overall health has a far greater reach on public health than simply funding more coverage for insulin therapies for poorly controlled diabetics.

The same goes for crime.  You can spend endless amounts of money on arresting and prosecuting crime but you will get better return on your money by investing heavily in social programs that target the root causes of a lot of crime.

Looking at the mental health and drug abuse aspect simply because I have more first hand experience with it.  My average ER shift will have 2-3 individuals high on some form of methamphetamine because it is unfortunately rampant in our area.  We have one particular individual who from my last chart review had 146 ER visits in the last two years.  The vast majority as he was brought in for ?evaluation? by the OPP.  Seldom were these visits warranted but you had officers I?ll equipped to handle the combination of substance abuse and mental illness.  Replacing those officers with additional social workers to offer in the moment counselling and crisis intervention is a better model for dealing with these individuals.

We have officers who specialize in sex crimes, fraud, among other avenues.  Try to think of the defunding as more about creating more targeted enforcement strategies.
 
Nik said:
OldTimeHockey said:
But wouldn't the other side of that coin argue that crime rate has been decreasing quite steadily since 1990?

It has but it's been decreasing effectively everywhere regardless of police budgets or tactics or any sort of single data point.

Good point. Just trying to see both sides of the story. I check out social media in the morning and see a bombardment of posts from both sides of the argument and I'm just trying to educate myself.
 
Just an additional bit on U.S education.  In the 70's one of my best friends moved to Florida when his folks bought a horse farm there.  In early high school in Ontario, he was a D student, just keeping his head above water scholastically, I guess you could have called him a border line "dunce" (sorry for the negative label). 
After reaching the States  to finish his high school, he posted amazing results, attaining the height of 4th best student in the State..I don't think he changed his spots, just came from an amazing system to one that was........Their system seems to serve the lowest common denominator.
 
That story kind of suggests the opposite to me. Sounds like his previous education system was holding him back. You don't rise to 4th in the state because of lower standards.
 
There's a sharp demarcation between academic resources in the US for the "have nots" and the "haves", but to say that a D student in Canada is representative of the best of an entire U.S. state is simply ridiculous.
 
Even if that is true(and it doesn't sound true, states don't rank students) I'll go out on a limb and say one anecdote from 40+ years ago doesn't actually tell us a great deal about anything.

 
herman said:
https://twitter.com/russfischer/status/1274482662372077569
This is a fun read
https://twitter.com/aetherlev/status/1274726592481091587
https://twitter.com/UnrollHelper/status/1274747593050984448
 
https://twitter.com/Jsc_35/status/1275255059325030401
thread

https://twitter.com/ColoradoFight/status/1274051302306099200
Also this is... just rough. Trigger warning for those who have trouble watching kids get randomly killed by a lot of cops.

https://twitter.com/seywarddarby/status/1275242292295720960
 
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/steve-schmidt-donald-trump/index.html

"Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don't say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.
"When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don't use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We've never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.
"It's just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he's the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he's brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let's be clear. This isn't happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you're the most likely to die from this disease. We're the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk."
 

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