Welfare And Violence

[Buffy]

While more than a little incoherent, I'll try to address some issues you raise (but seriously dude, drunk posting is not pretty).

 

Prefatory note: The following "facts" are so oversimplified that they're not really facts unless they are further defined very narrowly. I'll demonstrate that below.

 

Fact #1} Everyone is Racist.

I'd argue that we're genetically predisposed to tribalism, which actually has nothing to do with racism, but that Melanin does indeed make it simple to define a "tribe." Counter-example: the late 60's had large numbers of multi-colored/multi-cultural tribes tied together by a number of colliding cultural norms.

 

Now the fact of the matter is that humans are learning not to be racist. Oddly this is not because racism is considered immoral (in fact religious sources of morality are forces in society that actually promote racism through emphasis on tribalism!), but because it is recognized that it is more efficient for society to recognize that cultural differences are a bigger obstacle to cooperation than race is. It's simply a matter of survival to discount the measurably smaller importance of race in dealing with societal problems.

 

Fact #2} The Different Races are Different. It is not a simple matter of Melanin.

Well, different has to be defined, and you don't do any here. But I'll note that there are tremendous cultural differences among people who are all of a nice Northern European white shade.

 

Now the fact is that there are some differences between races, and racial intermixing (which has become far more acceptable) is heading in the direction of reducing those differences, but the differences are pretty minor compared to our social and societal tribal differences.

 

So the question is, yah, but so what?

 

Meanwhile it is Politikally Inkorrect to seek funding to examine possible inherent differences, since the Party Line is that there are none.

There has indeed been some resistance to such studies, but the fact is that since demographic information is almost always gathered (especially with medical/psychological but also increasingly with social studies), the data is getting easy to get to, and there is a lot of it going on.

 

The only place this becomes a problem is that when people who actually are actively promoting racism start to use it in misleading ways to show correlations that are really tied to other causes, we end up with cultural debates that are tribally selfish and harm society.

 

In this thread we see a great example of this in the desire by some like the fellow in the video in the OP trying to tie race to violence, when the clearer cause is a combination of poverty, availability of weapons and a decline in tribal resistance to social suicide.

 

Fact #3} While I believe that a Black Person is different from me—at least as different as a Bulldog and a Grayhound...I Like Black People.

 

However, I have a distinct preference for Black Women. I go to a Black Church and most of my Friends are Black.

 

Good for you! You should! It's good for society!

 

And I know from experience that Bulldogs and Greyhounds have no cultural resistance to getting it on and producing Bullhounds and Greydogs. We should follow their excellent cultural example!

 

So:

 

Fact #4} Yes, eventual complete Amalgamation of the two races via Miscegenation is a very real possibility.

Yep!

 

It is a shame, but I see no solution that respects our independence as Individuals.

We have evolved way beyond "individualism" and are social creatures. The move back to "YOYO" Libertarian-Anarchy is a gigantic evolutionary step backward. So amazing that you find folks like the Paul's (Ron, Rand, and Ryan) so actively promoting it as a political strategy.

 

Now as to the Second Amendment and all:

If I were asked to be the Advocate for The Human Race's Worthiness to Exist...In front of some sort of God-Like Jury, like in some SF or Phantasy Story...I would exhibit some of Smith and Wesson's revolvers made before the cutbacks in quality that started in the '80s. I'd have Colt Peacemakers, Pythons and Diamond Backs—as well as 70 Series 1911A1s...And like Howard Roark in "The Fountainhead" I'd simply say: "The Defense Rests."

 

We watched Star Trek:TNG "Encounter at Farpoint" last night (<LeonardPinthGarnell>Delightfully Bad!</LeonardPinthGarnell>), which of course has this "worthiness to exist" as it's theme, and as incoherent as you are here, your confusion is actually the thing we need to deal with as a society: If we do not move forward and further develop our society to resist the forces of tribalism and anarchy and selfishness, yah, we probably aren't worthy.

 

One of the nastiest things about Ayn Randian Libertarianism is that it divides and destroys society by promoting not only tribalism (John Galt), but of anarchic individualism (Howard Roark).

 

I do just fine disdaining the evolutionarily backward urges of both and condemning those who promote them as examples of virtue.

 

I'm also for background checks to keep firearms from folks with mental illnesses and felons including those who advocate armed revolution.

 

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds, :phones:

Buffy

[Buffy]

I really didn't mean to misdirect; I just disagree. I think the primary issues were federalism and defense. The fact that some southern states had other priorities is relevant, but I don't think it was primary to the documents.

Primary? No. Absolutely required for passage? Yeppers. Well documented in multiple places that this is the reason for "State" rather than "Federal" militia.

 

Now of course note that I'm a Hamiltonian Federalist myself. That's why I still register Republican. Unfortunately the parties have totally flipped on affinity for Federalism vs. States Rights. You can't make this stuff up.

 

This is news to me. I have done a lot of work with TANF in the last 3 years, and I never heard anyone refer to it as AFDC. That is indeed new information.

Actually it surprised me too, but apparently it is the case. Now your recent experience with TANF is indeed accurate: the policy wonks in the middle of it all call it TANF. Where the division is is among statisticians who have to deal with the discontinuity between the two programs in the face of the fact that both do almost the same thing, with slightly different provisions. Since folks that are looking for more general statistical info on "welfare" don't really care which acronym is used, AFDC has become shorthand, tolerated because the statisticians know that the folks who care about the distinction are going to be looking at the data at a far lower level. The data given was actually a rollup of state and TANF numbers for 2012 as far as I've been able to tell.

 

I really don't think that was Bill Bennett's intent.

I know: I think I was pretty explicit that this was unconscious on his part. I think Bill Bennett is way better than most of the RWNJ's out there, but he's still gone way right of where he was, and as a result he is susceptible to the conventions of tribal disdain associated with hostility toward blacks even if he consciously is good about railing against it.

 

Increasingly of course it's not just blacks but Muslims that are being targeted as "the other" and that's caught up some pretty liberal, scientific types: Michael Schermer had a down right bizarre rant the other day on Twitter about the need to profile all Muslims as potential terrorists.

 

Racism/tribalism has made an ugly comeback, and it's unwise to ignore even the unconscious expressions of it's instantiation in public life. I'm not calling him racist, I'm calling on him to think before he speaks next time. I hope he's worthy of the assumption of lack of intent that I'm granting him.

 

Au contraire. The IPAB (patient advisory board) was explicitly modeled on NICE in the UK. This board identifies procedures that are not cost effective. It does not identify procedures that just ineffective. NICE actually has a dollar number for the value of a life year. (I think it is 20k pounds). Ergo, if someone happens to think their life years are worth more than that, tough luck. NHS won't pay for it. And historically, the UK generally has restricted private practice so if NICE says no, you can't get it. This is not just information provision. It is an explicit step toward rationing through federal diktat. Palin was a little more colorful that I would have preferred, but not particularly far off of the mark. Don Berwick (previous CMS head) loved NICE. He was an explicit advocate for that approach.

That's not at all contrary to what I said about IPAB: it's "advisory". I mean think about it: how the hell are you as a consumer going to decide whether it's worth it or not to do those extraordinary measures? If the intent of Obamacare were to simply say "don't worry your little head about it, we already decided it's BAD for society to do this procedure and you just can't have it" why would they bother both doing the computations *and* provide an explicit mechanism for delivering the information?

 

The fact of the matter is that Obamacare goes out of it's way to preserve the existing system of private insurance and delivery of care (that's because it really came from Newt Gingrich and crew as a competitor to Hillarycare, well before Romneycare). In order to get to what you describe with NICE in the UK (which I will argue is a little hyperbolic: I have friends who are doctors in the NHS, and the stuff you're talking about not being covered is not what we'd call "normal procedures": no one's being denied normal care in the UK), you really have to descend into a "slippery slope" argument that's really getting off into the hypothetical weeds.

 

While there's certainly a significant minority who want Single-Payor WITH options for private supplemental plans (really, Medicare Part E (for "everybody") which has a well-established mechanism for supplemental insurance), no one is talking about implementing an NHS here, and quite frankly even the most liberal progressives would be happy with either a Public Option to provide some competition for the Health Insurance/Provider Oligopoly or simply breaking up that oligopoly to recreate an efficient healthcare market.

 

So odd that the solution to healthcare has everything to do with real market competition and not this crazy comfortable old-boys-network permitted by a total lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws. As a Republican, I'm not in favor of an NHS-style solution: I think we can do better than the UK, but you have to ask yourself why they're doing so much better than we have been.

 

 

Almost 70 years have passed since Friedrich Hayek predicted that Britain’s welfare state would put the nation on the slippery slope to Stalinism; 46 years have passed since Medicare went into effect; as far as most of us can tell, freedom hasn’t died on either side of the Atlantic, :phones:

Buffy

[Biochemist]

Primary? No. Absolutely required for passage? Yeppers.

I am note sure that "required for passage" even makes it meaningful. That just means it was a close vote. Any close vote has all kinds of stuff in it to get it passed (e.g., Obamacare). I don't think that means that the elements were even important, other than as horse-trading.

 

That's not at all contrary to what I said about IPAB: it's "advisory". I mean think about it: how the hell are you as a consumer going to decide whether it's worth it or not to do those extraordinary measures?

It is a bit of a stretch to call the IPAB just advisory. It has regulatory authority to preclude specific procedures. This is a LOT different than the independent advisory boards that many private health plans have. Because if you preclude it nationally, it is actually precluded universally. I don't believe a board can be that prescient.

 

The fact of the matter is that Obamacare goes out of it's way to preserve the existing system of private insurance and delivery of care........you really have to descend into a "slippery slope" argument that's really getting off into the hypothetical weeds.

Maybe. But the omnipresent effect of this sort of regulation is queueing. Not just denial of access, but restriction of access due to constraint on supply. It takes 2 years in Canada to get a hip (unless Canadians some to the US, and get one in two weeks).

 

While there's certainly a significant minority who want Single-Payor WITH options for private supplemental plans (really, Medicare Part E (for "everybody") which has a well-established mechanism for supplemental insurance), no one is talking about implementing an NHS here

This is probably worth a separate thread. The core problem with the "single payer" arguments is that most of them were some flavor of "Medicare for all". As of this year, Medicare is (conservatively) $43 trillion in the red. That is three times GDP for those of you who don't know how big that number is. If the advocates for a "public option" in the federal congress had actually proposed an NHS-like option (not a general solution, but an actual option), I suspect it would have received some real broad support. This is NOT "Medicare for all", but closer to "VA for all". In the VA (which I am actually quite fond of), the feds own the providers, and act to control costs like any private system. They actually limit some procedures (like any private system) and provide pretty good care. But the VA does NOT cost-shift to other payers (like Medicare and Medicaid do). A VA-like option would not really even require insurance, just eligibility. That alone would save at least 10% of total costs.

 

This is also a "little" like the FQHC network that exists unevenly in most states as well.

 

As a Republican, I'm not in favor of an NHS-style solution: I think we can do better than the UK, but you have to ask yourself why they're doing so much better than we have been.

FYI, I regard a federally funded option that avoids market disruption as conservative. But it is a stretch to suggest we are doing "better" than the UK. Many reference the fact that the UK costs about half (per capita) that the US does, with similar outcomes. But the really bad news is that they have ALWAYS been half. That means they have solved nothing: They are growing at the same rate that we are, and they are maybe 10 years behind. They achieve their gains mostly through limiting access (there are some real unit-cost issues too, but those are artifacts of Medicare mostly). The Brits (bless their little hearts)have the same problem we do.

 

Almost 70 years have passed since Friedrich Hayek predicted that Britain’s welfare state would put the nation on the slippery slope to Stalinism; 46 years have passed since Medicare went into effect; as far as most of us can tell, freedom hasn’t died on either side of the Atlantic...

Yes but Thatcher showed up and put a slight bend in that trajectory. :)

Edited June 4, 2013 by Biochemist

[Biochemist]

FYI, it really is great to chat with Buffy again, after a multi-year hiatus. Amazing woman, really.

Bio

[Racoon]

Way late to this Sociology discussion, So just a few quick question/comments here about "Racism", Blacks, Whites, Crime, and Poverty ...

 

Yes, absolutely Poverty is correlated to crime. So when people suggest Blacks are more likely to commit crime, end up in prison, or be on Welfare, we say it's because Blacks are impoverished at high rates and of lingering institutional racism... Fair enough.

 

So why is it then that there are 3 times as many White people living below the poverty line (36 Million out of 220 Million) than Blacks (9 Million out of 36 Million) in this country, Yet Crime Statistics DON'T reflect those Population and Poverty Numbers??

By Correlating Poverty to Crime, there should be ALOT more crime committed by Whites..??

I guess Whitey needs to 'step his game up', because as it stands Blacks commit approximately 46% of all crime, While Whites lag behind at 33% despite a population advantage of 180+ million.

 

In the end though, Asians have everyone beat... They barely commit any crime by comparison... :o And the Latinos are somewhere in that happily-ever-growing minority middle ground between Blacks and Whites.

 

 

Also Intersting tidbits: (I used this site for quick referrence, but the numbers can be backed up by all the official government crime statistic sites)

http://www.amren.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/2005-Color-of-Crime-Report.pdf

 

http://www.amren.com/archives/reports/the-color-of-crime/

 

•Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.

•When blacks commit crimes of violence, they are nearly three times more likely than non-blacks to use a gun, and more than twice as likely to use a knife.

•Hispanics commit violent crimes at roughly three times the white rate, and Asians commit violent crimes at about one quarter the white rate.

•The single best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of the population that is black and Hispanic.

 

Interracial Crime

•Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.

•Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.

•Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.

•Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes against whites than vice versa.

 

Gangs

•Only 10 percent of youth gang members are white.

•Hispanics are 19 times more likely than whites to be members of youth gangs. Blacks are 15 times more likely, and Asians are nine times more likely.

 

Incarceration

•Between 1980 and 2003 the US incarceration rate more than tripled, from 139 to 482 per 100,000, and the number of prisoners increased from 320,000 to 1.39 million.

•Blacks are seven times more likely to be in prison than whites. Hispanics are three times more likely.

 

http://a.myurl.in?http://www.fbi.gov/

 

http://a.myurl.in?http://www.usdoj.gov/

 

 

As wonderful as it would be to believe in the Political Correct Utopia of absolute Equality of all Races, Creed, and Ethnicity, there are unfortunately some inconvenient realities.

 

Its awful easy to to sit on a moral high-horse behind a keyboard with a glass of Pinot Noir in a cushy Anglo suburb, and berate those who have Real World experience and actually do believe that Blacks tend to be more violent and do believe in the Welfare stereotypes... :blink:

Edited August 18, 2013 by Racoon

[Racoon]

Shorter Ann Coulter: "If you don't count the n****rs, we have no crime in America!"

 

 

OK so here's just another latest example of Black crime.. Black on White,so you won't hear about it...

 

 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/oklahoma-teens-charged-shooting-australian-baseball-player/story?id=20014020

 

3 Black guys who were "Bored" just shot a white dude who was jogging by in the back for no reason...

So why didn't they describe the perps as being Black? (you have to look those things up because the MSM won't tell you)

Can you possibly imagine the media uproar if it was 3 white guys who shot a Black guy jogging by??

 

Where is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and all the other Race Baiters?? Straight up shootimng a guy for a "thrill" - no Zimmerman Stand Your Ground or anything..

 

These types of crime happen every week. And guess what?

They go out of their way to Not state Race, but You just know its Black people who did it.

Asian people, White people, don't do **** like this..(spare me/us the extremely rare , psycho on medication School shooting crime bit)..

No, Black people shoot other people all the time like this on a regular basis.

And as hard as that is to swallow for any white-guilt, self-hating Liberal to believe, all you have to do is read the paper daily or look around with your own eyes.

 

:rolleyes:

[Racoon]

Just to make my point clear here... as PC as you wanna' Be.

 

 

Here is a little Video. Does it Represent all Black Culture here in America?.. No, This is just West Palm Beach Florida! :unsure:

Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc.. make these guys look like Choir Boys..

 

I know its easy to "Talk" about Black crime.. Then another thing to See it with you own eyes..

 

Please.. Do NOT Watch This Video if You are Easily Offended!!! Its on Youtube. I suggest you skim thru it..

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5MGJ87hPGw

[Racoon]

Just another day...

 

 

 

Heres a better question:

Can anyone actually Prove Black people don't commit more crime?? :rolleyes:

Just wondering..

I hate to sound Un-PC and all like Racist or anything..But do people who site stats and philosophies actually understand what they are saying? or just trying to pretend to live in a perfect world?

Black on White crime has risen 18-20% since Trayvon Martin.. If you believe Mainstream Media reports. (its probably higher)

The targets? mostly Elderly and Women..

Edited September 6, 2013 by Racoon