Displaying the typical OBOT lack of either knowledges or logic.

Benedict Arnold was an AMERICAN HERO before he bacame betrayed George Washingotn and the US.

Are you really so “F” ing stupid you do not know what that RACIST jerk said about Whites and the United States?

Try getting your head out of you butt!

Hahahaha. That’s a good one.

My friend Betty is 42, divorced, two kids, dead broke. Her “choice” was the scumbag husband she married. Oh, wait, he wasn’t a scumbag 15 years ago. But he lost his job & got depressed. Probably clinical but avoided talking to anyone. They split up. He’s supposed to pay support but doesn’t. Betty lost her job last year when her company folded. In our small city, there aren’t a lot of jobs right now; unemployment has more than doubled. She could move, but her ex is here and she’d have to give up the kids to him. Some choice. Bought a house in 2006. Didn’t lie but did stretch. Neighborhood is middle class bland but nice, good schools, good neighbors. I bet she’s underwater bigtime. So, couldn’t sell. She’s not extravagant. Kids don’t have the latest stuff. She’s running out of savings and there’s pretty much no place to cut back except to stop paying the mortgage.

I don’t see a lot of choices to be poor for her – it just happened. Unemployment ran out, though she might get on board with the extension. She doesn’t have a college degree but she’s not stupid. She is very attractive and frankly her best bet is to find a guy who’s not a scumbag who will take her along with the kids & other baggage.

I think your anecdotes are pretty well evidenced by non-anecdotal data.

It is very difficult for any of us to see outside of our own ‘paradigm.’ I might recall being told I had to make and keep appointments when I was young, but I suspect I learned the lesson largely by example rather than by direct instruction. So, to me it just seems obvious that this is what one does, while it is not at all obvious to someone of a different background.

Similarly, it was unquestionable to me as a young person that all kids go to the dentist, but when I was in college I met a local girl who had never been to a dentist in her life. I met her in the emergency room, where she had turned up because an abscessed tooth had become too excruciating to ignore. Most of her teeth were rotten-looking. I was just dumbstruck that her parents had never seen to any dental care for her or her siblings.

Someone up thread noted that our society ‘acts’ too late to stop criminality. I was thinking this the other night, with reference to Mill. We have their whole younger lives to set them on the road to reasonable lives. But to a great extent, we prefer to jail them when they are adult and dangerous.

Good luck. I find that, not unlike “nature” and “nature,” some effects of “nutture” are indelible.

I have learned to put down any liquid refreshment before I read one of your comments. My nose and keyboard are both much happier. :-)

Ah, Reverend Wright. This guy hated America so much that he voluntarily served in the Marines and the Navy during the Vietnam era.

Besides, everyone associates with “racist” people in some way. It’s not that big of a deal.

Andrew J. Lazarus: You know, if an Angel appeared and said we could pay $1 in taxes for schools and crime would go down 20% or $10 in taxes for prisons and crime would go down 10%, an awful lot of commenters here would choose the prisons, just so that… well, I can’t quite figure out just so that… fewer colored folks on the streets?

You really want to compare how much school spending has exploded over the last 50 years compared to prisons? It would be beating a dead horse to factor in results of same…

The problem with the ‘class mobility’ issue is the same problem with drawing a ‘poverty line’, ideologues want to use relative numbers instead of absolute. For instance, the question isn’t whether a child born in poverty has an X% chance of owning a home or getting a college education- the question has to be, what are his chances of gaining wealth relative to Bill Gates. Class warfare is everything.

What if an angel landed on your shoulder and offered to make everyone in America 20% richer, but the top 1% became 200% richer. Or, everyone in America could be 10% richer, and the top 1% become 20% poorer? Pick your answer and i’ll tell you which party you vote for. Redistribution isn’t about raising the lowly so much as stamping down the rich.

Jmaie: I don’t know if they want to or not, but class mobility did decline over the last 29 years.I’d be interested how class mobility is defined and measured. A source would be appreciated.

You could start here.

I am, on very rare occasions, wrong and this may well be one of them. As I only read the one “Laura” post. It is the one I commented on.

SO LAURA, I am SORRY and I apologize to you for my error.

As far as my supposedly attempting to “WIN friends” just where did I say I was trying to do that?

IF I were interested in “winning friends” I could not be totally honest. I’d not tell people I am an Agnostic Atheist Activist.

Or say anyone who does not know the Iraq War is both fully justified & a very necessary part of our war on terror are too lazy to get the facts and/or too dumb to be able to understand them.

I would not call Obama “ODUMA” & say his 160 IQ proves:

“A persons IQ is like a mans penis because it is not how much you have, rather it IS how effectively you use it.”

Nor would I say, Oduma’s words and actions prove his judgement skills are terrible by the low life scum he choose to have as close friends. As they include a White and America hating Racist preacher, a felon as well as two TERRORISTS, he more than proves he has no integrity.

150+ documented lies prove Oduam is a liar!He’s dishonest as well as being slick talking con man who uses NLP on his audiences. And his own words in his own books prove he is a Racist.

Anyone who disagrees with what I said about Oduma, just prove they are just a fact denying, Uniformed, Loony Tune OBOT.

So Loki13, How is this for making friends?

loki13: if Laura is a liberal, then, geez, I must be somewhere to the left of a hippie in a Che t-shirt playing hacky sack at a “save the whales” rally. i think i need to scrub my brain.

Good luck. I find that, not unlike “nature” and “nature,” some effects of “nutture” are indelible.

geokstr: Actually, I’m quite aware that nurture is very important in anyone’s development. But we’ve heard over and over and over that our Community Organizer in Chief was apparently unaffected by his immersion in Marxist philosophy his entire life and is really just a moderate.

I’m pretty sure Irving Kristol and David Horowitz were exposed to Marxist philosophy for many years. Then there’s William Murray, son of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who is an outspoken believing Christian these days.

If you are a Marxist, you really don’t hire Larry Summers (who once worked in the Reagan administration and helped advise Russia on its conversion to a capitalist economy in the 1990s) as one of your advisers.

Are they concentrated by gender? Are men and women equally likely to be the victims, or perpetrators, of crimes? If not, shouldn’t this also be a disparity for the government to rectify?

Neil C. Reinhardt: So LAURA, If you disagree with Obama, you are a “racist” and if you disagree with some others as Andrew has, it means he “hates” them?With logic like yours, you must be a liberal.Liberal ideas, are what MOST rational intelligent people GROW OUT OF as theygain in experience and knowledge.

This is a GREAT way to WIN friends and INFLUENCE people.

(on a personal note, if Laura is a liberal, then, geez, I must be somewhere to the left of a hippie in a Che t-shirt playing hacky sack at a “save the whales” rally. i think i need to scrub my brain.)

1. So LAURA,

If you disagree with Obama, you are a “racist” and if you disagree with some others as Andrew has, it means he “hates” them?

With logic like yours, you must be a liberal.

Liberal ideas, are what MOST rational &
intelligent people GROW OUT OF as they gain in experience and knowledge.

—————

2. Finding means of Reducing Crime and Incarceration IS SIMPLE! (As well as being relatively easy)

STOP arresting and incarcerating people for doing things which NEVER should have been illegal in the first damn place!

A. LEGALIZE PROSTITUTION

Or course, the religious robots will have to overcome their baby and childhood programming to understand this one.

In countries where Prostitution IS legal, they have LESS STD rates! And they also not only have LOWER sex crime rates, they have LESS crime overall.

They have Lower Unwanted pregnancy rates and thus, less unwanted children. Unwanted Children equal less crime as many them later go on to lives of crime.

FYI Some 14 years after the passage of Roe/Wade, all the crimes committed by teenagers took a very significant drop & has remained lower than it was before Roe / Wade.

B. LEGALIZE MARIJUANA!

The ONLY reason Marijuana was made
illegal in the first place was due to a conspiracy
involving an assistant director of the “revennoors” (Prohibition agents) who did not want to lose his power and three rich guys who wanted to earn more millions than they were already earning. (Greedy Bastards)

The “Gov. man” was Harry Argersinger
who became chief of what is now DEA. The rich guys were Hurst, De Pont and Mellon.

You see, damn near EVERY THING used
to make paper, ropes sails & cloth were made out of Hemp. Du Pont chemical had found a way to make paper out of trees. Hurst had MANY very paper hungry
Newspapers and magazines.

Guess who Hurst’s and Du Pont’s banker
and who would earn LOTS of money by
keeping their business?

It was Mellon.

When Du Pont told Hurst how he could both save a lot of money by using paper and ean money by buying lots of trees to then sell do Du Pont and others who would
use the Du Pont process to make paper.

ONLY hemp was still legal, So Hurst launched an “yellow Journalism” attack on it.

Telling lie after lie after lie about it. They use racism against Mexicans and Blacks and even got anti-hemp movies made.

Plus, they got to some Congressman . There was perjured testimony by the chairman of the sub-committee lied by saying AMA supporting the criminalization of it when the AMA was against making it illegal.

So as a result we have all kinds of people who lives have been ruined and others killed all due to this very stupid law. And we have some 400,000 people in jail which cost us many millions, if not billions of dollars each and every year.

Marijuana has been studied for over 450 years. There is NO WAY marijuana is as bad for people as cigarettes, pipes cigars chewing tobacco or liquor! ALL of which are legal.

Some 900 people a year die from taking aspirin while NO one dies as a direct result of smoking and/or eating marijuana. In fact, there is NO recorded case in the history of the world where anyone has died from it.

And it is ILLEGAL? TOTALLY STUPID!

Bottom Line?

Anyone who thinks marijuana should be illegal is either ignorant to sufficient facts and information about marijuana or they are just too stupid bo be able to fully comprehend what the facts mean.

ChrisTS says:

geokstr: So, you mean like, if both a child’s parents are full-on Maxists, and his grandmother who raises him is a Marxist, and his beloved mentor from his entire formative teenage years is a card-carrying member of the CPUSA, and by his own admission he seeks out Marxist professors in college, and loves his pastor who preaches a theology based directly on Marxism at him for 20 years, this might actually have some effect on him, his ideas about life, and his behavior, as he grows older?Wow, thanks, never thought I’d see anyone admit it.

Actually, jokster, I would not be that surprised. Of course, depriving him of adequate health care and of adequate early-life stimulation, surrounding him with no other visible options at all [quite apart from what Mom, Dad, and Grandma say], and otherwise limiting the child’s options and possiblities to an all-marxist world would probably be most effective.

And you are surprised to learn that environment affects kids, why?

Actually, I’m quite aware that nurture is very important in anyone’s development. But we’ve heard over and over and over that our Community Organizer in Chief was apparently unaffected by his immersion in Marxist philosophy his entire life and is really just a moderate.

I’d be interested how class mobility is defined and measured. A source would be appreciated.

Absolutely. We are on the same page. I believe we have to be very honest in confronting the problems the poor face. I still believe that we can end poverty, but it will require a huge effort.

The man in the house rule was enforced rigidly and viciously when I was a poverty lawyer in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Watts and Venice. I specialized in welfare cases for a while, which, as I revealed in the comments on Orin Kerr’s recent post entitled “Response to Delahunty’s ‘The Fourth Amendment Goes to War,’” is part of the reason I came to have my conversations intercepted by the FBI as part of its national security warrantless wiretap of the Black Panther Party headquarters and to be the subject of Nino Scalia’s last opinion as a circuit judge before he went on the Supreme Court, Ellsberg v. Mitchell. One of my welfare clients was a woman who was herself a prominent member of the Black Panther Party and who was married to a prominent Party leader. Some of my clients told me of scurrying around their homes desperately trying to cover up any sign of a male presence in the home before the welfare authorities arrived for an in-home inspection. They also told me of hiding the new toaster, the new play pen, the new anything that their mates had bought for them, in justified fear that they would be disqualified from receiving benefits. Some of them had entirely separated from their male partners for fear someone would report them for having a man in the house.

These women were pioneers of a sort in a slowly evolving tragedy. They had every incentive to become dependent on welfare, they had every incentive to cut off contact with the fathers of their children, they had every incentive to engage in sex with men to whom they were not married and did not live with. They were the matriarchs of generations of daughters and grandaughters and so on who were themselves to become dependent on welfare. Meager as welfare benefits then were, some of them had children in order to get welfare benefits and some of them had more and more children in order to get higher welfare benefits. The welfare system fostered a generational disease: dependence on welfare. It’s quite apparent that, deliberately or not, the welfare system was designed to perpetuate welfare dependence and thus its own continued existence. War on Poverty funds were funneled to the poor as a substitute for wages traditionally earned by the father (though women were increasingly entering the labor force). Precious few funds were used for constructive programs that would have helped lift the poor out of poverty and into productive jobs.

At the same time, it must be said that there were precious few opportunities to get off welfare or to avoid welfare dependence in the first place. Many of these women had dropped out of school very early because of pregnancies or because of lack of interest in continuing to attend truly appalling schools. They had absolutely no skills making them employable. There were no job training programs available. There were no jobs available for them even if they wanted to work, and many of them did.

The habits and lifestyle that welfare dependence fosters are passed on from one generation to the next. Before I knew her, my living partner for the past 20 years, Priscilla, worked for a while in the late 1970s as a job developer for the California Department of Unemployment, renamed officially and optimistically as the Employment Development Department. She tried to find jobs for the unemployed and even the unemployable, mostly for women who were threatened with losing all their welfare benefits if they did not find a job.

Priscilla found a job for one young woman, Judy, a 19-year-old welfare-receiving mother who lived with her child, her brothers and sisters and her mother, also a welfare recipient, in the projects, Avalon Gardens, on Avalon Boulevard by 88th Street, just south of Watts. Judy was desperate to work; she liked the money she earned. But one day the employer called Priscilla to complain that Judy was repeatedly late to work. Although it was not part of her job, Priscilla visited Judy’s home.

What she found out shocked her. Judy had never had to get up on time for anything before. Her family had never had to get up on time for anything. They all just got up when they woke up. They had never disciplined themselves to get up at a certain time. Priscilla bought Judy an alarm clock, and presto, Judy turned up at work on time. This little intervention produced a change in Judy which saved her job. But the intervention was crucial. The generational habit would have remained unchecked but for the intervention. The last Priscilla heard of Judy she was running her own business in South Los Angeles, a successful child care center. But Priscilla was unable to find jobs for many women despite considerable efforts.

Priscilla, a black woman herself, was shocked because she had lived a relatively sheltered life in what was then a middle class neighborhood. Her grandmother, who raised her along with her mother, prohibited her from going anywhere east of the Harbor Freeway. So one weekday afternoon I took Priscilla to Watts to show her where I had worked. When we reached Watts, Priscilla commented on the large number of people on the streets on a weekday. She suddenly realized it was because no one had a job.

This generational dependence on welfare and the lifestyle it produces are not limited to blacks and Latinos. The same problems exist among poor whites.

These are anecdotal stories, but they are my and my partner’s experiences. I still live among the poor. Most of the people in the apartment complex in which I live receive benefits of one kind or another. I am very fond of my neighborhood and, indeed, most of the people who live in South Los Angeles. I remain hopeful that poverty can be eradicated.

Mark, it’s one thing to point out that something has happened, another thing to say that it happened as a result of the policies of group X, and a third thing altogether to say that group X meant for it to happen. Which is what Andrew said.

Agreed.

If you disagree with Obama, you are a “racist” and if you disagree with some others as Andrew has, it means he “hates” them?

With logic like yours, you must be a liberal.

Liberal ideas, are what MOST rational &
intelligent people GROW OUT OF as they
gain in experience and knowledge.

It IS possible to both reduce the stress of being parents & better equip more children by using a TIME and MANY PEOPLE PROVEN technology called “Baby plus”

Mandate ALL pregnant women on welfare MUST, starting in their 17th to 18th week of pregnancy, use a “Baby Plus” for one hour at a time twice a day and separated by a 12 hour period.

While there will be the cost of furnishing the initial “Baby Plus’s” to each mother in the PRIMARY groups, as they can be used over and over and over again, the costs to supply them would be reduced.
You could also charge a deposit which would only be returned IF the “Baby Plus” was returned in a good condition.

AND

You also really PUSH the hell out of it on TV, the internet, TAX Break laws, etc. so mothers not on Welfare would want to use it.

Make it so ALL AMERICAN PARENTS know, THEIR children, when compared to children whose mothers did use a “Baby Plus, WILL be at a real disadvantage both in school and in life.

As I said, LESS parent frustration and BETTER equipped kids equal LESS crime and a BETTER world.

“Baby Plus” had been very effectively used for at least TEN years when I saw a Discovery Channel one hour documentary on it. And it was over ten years ago when I saw this program.

There have been OVER 100,000 babies born to mothers who’ve used Baby Plus. And all of the mothers who have used on one child, used in on all succeeding ones.

Babies who are born after being exposed to Baby plus ARE

A. STRONGER

B. MORE COORDINATED

C. LEARN FASTER

D. SMARTER.

PLUS,

THEY CRY AROUND 90% LESS

AND they SHARE TOYS!

Even if using it did not do the first four items, I would want my wife to use it JUST for the last two!

Andrew J. Lazarus: You know, if an Angel appeared and said we could pay $1 in taxes for schools and crime would go down 20% or $10 in taxes for prisons and crime would go down 10%, an awful lot of commenters here would choose the prisons, just so that… well, I can’t quite figure out just so that… fewer colored folks on the streets?

Andrew, what do you base this on, other than your apparent hatred for people who don’t share your political views? Do you have to demonize people you disagree with? It almost seems as though you don’t dare to have views that differ from other people without those other people being evil. Everything isn’t the good guys v. the bad guys.

…Mark, it’s one thing to point out that something has happened, another thing to say that it happened as a result of the policies of group X, and a third thing altogether to say that group X meant for it to happen. Which is what Andrew said.

NOW I will have to rewrite and post the rest of it which will take some time.

NOW I will have to rewrite and post the resop of it which will take some time.

Now while some may think this is really “Out of the Box” and perhaps “nutty” many others will not.

I submit a majority of open minded and smart people who take the time to really carefully consider & research the following, WILL end up agreeing with me,

As A & B below ARE TRUE, it equals less people in jail which equals less money spent on crime prevention, welfare, etc.

A. Some (a little) crime is caused by the frustration children cause their parents as all parents are just not equipped to handle it. So the parents do stupid things like beating the hell out of each other.

Reduced the stress of parenting and you reduce any crime it may have caused.

B. Children who are better mentally and physically equipped to succeed in life commit not only LESS crime, they add

Andrew, do you think that Republicans want to reduce class mobility?

I don’t know if they want to or not, but class mobility did decline over the last 29 years.

Just sayin…

geokstr: So, you mean like, if both a child’s parents are full-on Maxists, and his grandmother who raises him is a Marxist, and his beloved mentor from his entire formative teenage years is a card-carrying member of the CPUSA, and by his own admission he seeks out Marxist professors in college, and loves his pastor who preaches a theology based directly on Marxism at him for 20 years, this might actually have some effect on him, his ideas about life, and his behavior, as he grows older?Wow, thanks, never thought I’d see anyone admit it.

Actually, jokster, I would not be that surprised. Of course, depriving him of adequate health care and of adequate early-life stimulation, surrounding him with no other visible options at all [quite apart from what Mom, Dad, and Grandma say], and otherwise limiting the child’s options and possiblities to an all-marxist world would probably be most effective.

And you are surprised to learn that environment affects kids, why?

I witnessed the start of the welfare industry first hand as a poverty lawyer in Watts and later Venice. The War on Poverty money was not spent on long-term programs that could have improved living conditions and the life prospects of the poor. It should have gone to fund day care programs, pre-schools, elementary and high schools, job training programs and housing, employment and health programs. Very little went there.

Not to mention pre & post natal care,and [more specifcally] housing not in hideous towers in the middle of nothing, housing with encouragement towards ownership, incentives for marriage and Dad sticking around, etc.

ChrisTS says:
…adults are largely though not entirely the products of their childhoods.

So, to use the dumb binary of ‘nature/nurture,’ it’s both, and most current cogsci indicates that the effects of nurture on nature are significant. This is true even when we are not speaking of the effects of ‘environment’ on the brain…

Children are not impervious to their surroundings.

So, you mean like, if both a child’s parents are full-on Maxists, and his grandmother who raises him is a Marxist, and his beloved mentor from his entire formative teenage years is a card-carrying member of the CPUSA, and by his own admission he seeks out Marxist professors in college, and loves his pastor who preaches a theology based directly on Marxism at him for 20 years, this might actually have some effect on him, his ideas about life, and his behavior, as he grows older?

Wow, thanks, never thought I’d see anyone admit it.

Visitor Again: I witnessed the start of the welfare industry first hand as a poverty lawyer in Watts and later Venice.The War on Poverty money was not spent on long-term programs that could have improved living conditions and the life prospects of the poor.It should have gone to fund day care programs, pre-schools, elementary and high schools, job training programs and housing, employment and health programs.Very little went there. The schools in the inner city were terrible then and they are terrible now.Only the very brightest and most diligent students stand a chance of getting a decent education.It is difficult to get out of the poverty rut if one does not have the proper education.I cannot believe that there are still people around who regard the poor and the victims of violence as losers.Then again, there are psychopaths who are genuinely incapable of having any regard for other people.

So the punchline is that liberalism needs even more money to work? Who would have guessed that! If you want re-calibrate your political views with empiricism, start with this entry here of the excellent blog D-Ed Reckoning and then work backwards. Plentiful graphs make the job sweeter. A taste:

[T]he results are:

R = 0.06 (there is a very weak association between total school expenditures and the performance of low-SES students)

R2 = 0.0036 (there is a very poor fit between the data)

P = 0.20 (the results are not statistically significant)

I put the trend line in the graph, but there is such a poor fit between the data and the predicted score (the trend line) that the slight downward slope of the trendline is misleading.

Interpretation: I calculated the average score for all PA students on a per school district basis to be 60.7 in 2005 with a standard deviation of 13.1. I also calculated the average score for low-SES students to be 43.0. this represents a large achievement gap of 1.36 standard deviation. As you can see from the graph, it didn’t matter whether the school district was spending $8,000 or $19,000 per student, the performance of low-SES remained unchanged with a large amount of variation between high performing districts and low-performing districts across the board. At today’s funding levels, I’d say that resources are not an issue. Especially, when you consider that, at least in PA, school districts with lots of (>50%) low-SES students are funded just as well as school districts with few (<10%)…

You never know. His answer might be more along the lines of counterinsurgency operations (COIN) similar to those used in Iraq. We have loads of military personnel coming back trained in and with knowledge of the Anaconda strategy. Similar pressures all along the criminal supply chain could do wonders for actual crime incidence.

What you are saying is that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…. and you are absolutely right.

So we need to pick up the apples, and take them to different trees. 15yo and pregnant? We take the child and raise it in an orphanage. 25yo and 5 kids by 5 men and all in poverty? Fine, take the kids away — raising kids like that is per say child abuse.

Orphanages are very underrated.