Thursday, April 17, 2014

.001% have become criminally untouchable...,



democracynow |  Award-winning journalist Matt Taibbi is out with an explosive new book that asks why the vast majority of white-collar criminals have avoided prison since the financial crisis began, while an unequal justice system imprisons the poor and people of color on a mass scale. In "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," Taibbi explores how the Depression-level income gap between the wealthy and the poor is mirrored by a "justice" gap in who is targeted for prosecution and imprisonment. "It is much more grotesque to consider the non-enforcement of white-collar criminals when you do consider how incredibly aggressive law enforcement is with regard to everybody else," Taibbi says.

75 comments:

Dale Asberry said...

On "right brain" thinking nonsense.

Vic78 said...

North Carolina went a little crazy after that one got elected President. Governor Bev Purdue became a veto machine, the Koch Bros came in and fucked up their school system, tea billies took over, and Art Bell bought the state GOP. That'll set folks back a little.

Makheru Bradley said...

Who did not know that artists demonstrate more cerebral balance than sociopaths?

[Sociopaths are people who spend most of their lives in the left hemisphere of the brain – the destructive pole of excessive thinking. Such an orientation – when excessive – is the basis of evil in the society. Sociopaths have very limited ability to function with their right hemispheres. They rarely emote, nor do they experience empathy, and love. The gift of the left hemisphere is the thinking function, and in sociopaths, the thinking function is overdeveloped, it is all encompassing. Hence they are always in the process of employing their thinking in the service of their relationships. Thinking is a function of separation. It strives to separate, severing unity, relationality, and hence feelings. When one is stripped of feelings, one is not being contained and limited by the bonds of love and caring that chain our extreme behaviors and make us human. These very bonds foster moral and ethical attitude towards life, and society. Devoid of feelings, a thinking man is prone to become diabolical with daimonic functioning.]

http://madhusameer.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/sociopathic-men/

Dale Asberry said...

Where is the proof of this nonsensical assertion about sociopaths living in the left hemisphere? Just because someone else's magical thinking causes them to say so and then you quote it here doesn't actually make it a truth. Sociopaths don't experience empathy or love because they have the structural defect of missing white matter from both hemispheres in their prefrontal cortex. Sociopaths, in fact, do experience emotions typically as anger, disgust, and superiority. The problem is that they are unable to map understanding of their feelings to the feelings of others -- including other sociopaths. At that point, people become objects to be manipulated. Right-left hemisphere studies do not indicate hemispherical defects as a cause for sociopathy. Damage and defects in the prefrontal cortex studies, however, strongly indicate sociopathy.

Constructive_Feedback said...

[quote]Michelle Alexander is proven to be correct time and time again.[\quote]

A better measure of Michelle Alexander's "correctness" would be for her to explain why it is that even in areas where the Black community has voted for the incumbent executive, legislative and judicial establishment the Black incarceration rate has not gone down BUT the Americanized Black still support these officials.

Yet they still struggle for "social justice", even as they drive past their murder laden communities to the closet interstate on ramp on their way down to Sanford Florida.

Why look at budget cuts as evidence of love or hatred, but not the competency of an establishment force that controls the education, religion, entertainment, culture and OFENDEDNESS of a people to translate this into their DEVELOPmENT through the INSTITUTiONS that the people matriculated through.

Constructive_Feedback said...

Since money is being created out of thin air, $75 billion per month just to keep the image of a sound economy going, I am not sure why Taibbi is focused on the corporate criminals, playing them against the "People of color".

It seems to me that the greatest theft of valuables is coming at the hands of those who have The Least Of these to channel their Development Hopes into the Malcolm X Political Football Game of Opportunism, yet their Win for the team is actually a Loss as a growing portion of their standard of living is attached to the state sovereignty that is built upon funny money rather than increased organic competences that they have developed along the way.

Makheru Bradley said...

Bro. Feed, the focus of the New Jim Crow is the reason for the mass incarceration of Afrikan Americans:

"Crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the past few decades -- and currently are at historical lows -- but imprisonment rates have soared. Quintupled. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth."



I don't see the issue you're raising--neo-colonialism--having any impact on the correctness of Alexander's thesis.

Constructive_Feedback said...

AGAIN.
Mrs Alexander's supposition is that the 'New Jim Crow' / "Mass Incarceration" policies were enacted to DESTROY BLACK PEOPLE.


Today - MORE than at any other time in this nation's history IF you get arrested in a 'Mission Accomplished City' (Atlanta, Newark, Chicago, Philly, Dekalb County GA, Detroit, Memphis) YOU WILL BE PROCESSED through each step of the "Judicial System" by an ELECTED OFFICIAL who received 50% +1 of the BLACK VOTE.


Can we logically agree that BLACK PEOPLE must be in on the scheme to DESTROY BLACK PEOPLE via the CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM that FAVORABLE PEOPLE TO THEM now run?


Shouldn't we see massive DECREASES IN INCARCERATION in places like Detroit or Atlanta or Newark IF "New Jim Crow" was an accurate depiction of the motivations at hand?


SO TOO is it the case with the claims about "Black Student Suspension Rates".
At a time when there is a RE-SEGREGATION of schools - the claim that Blacks are being disproportionately suspended means that BLACK ADMINISTRATORS are making the call.


With regard to the claim that Black PRE-SCHOOLERS get expelled disproportionately - how many NON-BLACKS do you see in the average Pre-School filled with Black people?

Makheru Bradley said...

Bro. Feed, mass-racial incarceration is a product of US government policies, federal laws and state laws (War on Drugs, Three-Strikes, Mandatory Minimums, Crack vs Powder Sentencing Guidelines, etc.), which are executed at the federal, state, county, and city level. I assume you expect Afrikan American city officials to respond differently to these laws, but I don’t. The impact that President Obama’s increased funding of Byrne JAG had on Afrikan Americans in Durham being the most recent example:

[In Durham, civil rights attorneys say the city’s big award of stimulus-era Byrne JAG money has corresponded to a major rise in the city’s taste for targeting minorities for low-level drug offenses. The police department recently confirmed that, although whites account for a slightly larger share of the city’s population, blacks compose the “vast majority” of its dramatically ramped-up marijuana arrests. In the years since the large JAG award in 2009, the city saw steady increases in the share of black or Latino motorists subject to vehicle searches in which the police have no probable cause for action.]

Makheru Bradley said...

It’s nonsensical to you fine. More importantly, since Bro. Nulan is holding my rebuttal hostage, I’ll respond here. Over the years various organizations I’ve worked with have used public, private, personal, and miscellaneous streams of financial support. My experience shows that reliance on the public sector, as you suggest, is tantamount to welfare. It can create a culture of dependency, and when that stream dries up, or is not renewed for various reasons (political pressure, e.g.) those organizations suffer.

In 1972, as students, we began to provide material support for Samora Machel and FRELIMO who were engaged in armed struggle to liberate Mozambique from Portuguese colonialism. That May we organized an African Liberation Day demonstration to raise awareness of the armed struggles in Southern Afrika.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/washington_area_spark/8301684577/

Malcolm X Liberation University, which spearheaded this effort, received funding from various foundations and religious entities suddenly saw a sharp decline and eventually total elimination of that financial support. Our contacts on the inside reported that the State Department applied pressure to these groups because the US government was supporting Portugal and the white supremacist governments in Southern Afrika. Based my experience in the struggle, I would have to be a fool to believe that the government would fund me and like-minded people.

The group I’m currently supporting has decided that they will succeed on the basis of financial independence.

“If Bro. Makheru is sincere he has to constructively engage with law enforcement from a position of influence.” You speak as a person with limited experience challenging power. There are numerous ways to exert influence. In the 1990s in Charlotte there were a spate of police killings of unarmed Afrikan Americans, including a 42-year-old woman who was shot in the back of the head. The District Attorney ruled that each case was justifiable homicide. We organized a series of demonstrations in the streets and at city council meetings, primarily focused on demands for a police citizens review board which the city council eventually agreed to approve.

The thought process was that this board would serve as a deterrent to police brutality/killings. It did not, thus after the police killing of Jonathan Ferrell last September we demanded changes in the Review Board and the city council acquiesced.

http://bit.ly/1iuWp6N

You can have your grants. I’ll take mass-based social action.

Makheru Bradley said...

“If Bro. Makheru is sincere he has to constructively engage with law enforcement from a position of influence.” You speak as a person with limited experience challenging power. There are numerous ways to exert influence. In the 1990s in Charlotte there were a spate of police killings of unarmed Afrikan Americans, including a 42-year-old woman who was shot in the back of the head. The District Attorney ruled that each case was justifiable homicide. We organized a series of demonstrations in the streets and at city council meetings, primarily focused on demands for a police citizens review board which the city council eventually agreed to approve.

The thought process was that this board would serve as a deterrent to police brutality/killings. It did not, thus after the police killing of Jonathan Ferrell last September we demanded changes in the Review Board and the city council acquiesced.

http://bit.ly/1iuWp6N

You can have your grants. I’ll take mass-based social action.

Vic78 said...

CNu's talking about developing a better program than the Byrne grant. If you can come up with a program that works(something that benefits the community and the police force), you can write your own ticket. The system isn't good or bad, it just is. Government has made severe budget cuts over the decades, but they've been generous to the military and law enforcement; there's a lot of money for a creative cat to tap into.

ken said...

You really have to quit trotting out this idea that all races use illegal drugs equally. Its been long ago shown that offspring of single parent families will not do as well in school, more likely to see and be physically and sexually abused, and more likely to use and abuse drugs. No one today will argue children of traditional 2 parent families have children who abuse drugs equally to children of single parent families.
If you want to fight for legalizing illegal drugs that's a different argument.

Constructive_Feedback said...

[quote]I assume you expect Afrikan American city officials to respond differently to these laws, but I don’t. [/quote]


Makheru Bradly AND Brother CNu:


IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE CENTERPIECE OF MY ARGUMENT - you will misspeak as you have done in the quoted sentence above.


MY MODEL:
* PRESIDENT OBAMA IS ON STAGE along with his POLITICAL ALLIES and ENEMIES
(key point coming up)
* I AM LOOKING AWAY FROM THE STAGE INTO THE CONGREGATION WHO IS LOOKING AT OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!
***** I am watching how they act
***** Most importantly I AM WAITING TO SEE WHO WILL STAND UP AND WALK OUT OF THE SANCTUARY in the spirit of "NOT IN MY NAME!!!"
* I am looking up into the balcony at the NEWS MEDIA who are running the Audio/Visual effects for the entertainment of THE PEOPLE in the sanctuary and those who are watching the REMOTE RELIGIOUS BROADCAST from home.




Lets RECONSIDER your argument above.
I AM NOT FOCUSED ON IF "BLACK ELECTED OFFICIALS WILL FOLLOW THE "OPPRESSIVE LAWS"


I am looking at the ACTIVISTS to see if they have the capacity to PROTEST AGAINST THEM WHEN THEY DO!!!


We already saw that the Americanized Negro will STAY SILENT if the United States Imperialist Power attacks African nations (and Yemen). This occurs when someone is skillful like Obama to GIVE THEM SUFFICIENT DOMESTIC SOCIAL JUSTICE to pacify them - so when THE AMERICAN EMPIRE STRIKES OUT AROUND THE GLOBE they can make use of known PROPAGANDA CHANNELS that cater to them (MSNBC, The Root, The Grio, Slate, Think Progress, News One, HuffPo) to KEEP THE AMERICANIZED NEGRO'S FOCUS away from AFRICA and instead keyed in upon the MALCOLM X POLITICAL FOOTBALL GAME OF ATTRITION in America.


From this is it clear that THE AMERICANIZED NEGRO HAS ACHIEVED 100% EQUALITY.
He, like his White counterparts before him have shown that when it comes to ACTS OF COURAGE in defense of another soul who is DIFFERENT (racially or in a different geographical location) they will ALWAYS defend their provincial INTERESTS closer to home than to do anything to DISRUPT THEIR STABLE ACCESS TO THE ACCOUTERMENTS OF THEIR STANDARD OF LIVING)

Vic78 said...

You'd be surprised who's using or has used illegal drugs. The last three presidents have admitted to it. Those are middle class folks doing High Times growing conventions. We have functional crack smokers. Chances are good that judge throwing the book at some poor kid that got caught is a powder head.

ken said...

Do you believe children in 2 parent families abuse drugs equally to children in single parent families?

Vic78 said...

You really have to stop approaching issues from a conservative worldview. Where'd this shit about 2 parents come from? Makeru's argument was that drug use is common and you bust in with "two parent families make a difference!" The argument was about who gets caught up with law enforcement; social status dictates what you get away with.

CNu said...

Specifically, CNu's talking about identifying a black line officer sympathetic to the issue at hand. He/She needs to be in a command position, but it doesn't have to be the chief. Sitting down with said officer, and conceptually working through exactly what's wrong with the "lowest hanging fruit" mode of policing that is producing the disparate impacts that are causing pain.

That's a series of interviews. Then, you review the terms and requirements of a Byrne grant, you identify specific changes in the "lowest hanging fruit" mode of policing - you propose technical, procedural, and methodological changes and alternatives - consistent with what the grant funders are seeking - you identify yourself and other qualified concerned citizens, or the sympathetic line officer if he/she is so inclined in the roles the grant proposal requires to implement, administer, and evaluate the changes you propose - and then you submit the grant for funding.

If you get rejected, you'll get feedback on why. So you wash, rinse, repeat and improve your proposal until it's up to speed. Then the following year, and for the term of the grant's funding, you now control the flow of millions of dollars of federal funding into the police department with a high level of oversight authority to insure that the the funds are used consistent with what the grant proposed. Non-compliance with the terms of the proposal affords you access to federal intervention and oversight in the local department's operations.

There is indeed a lot of money, including Byrne money for a creative cat to tap into to positively improve the operations of the "system". To Vic's point, the system isn't good or bad, it's inert and entropic. The reason it tends toward "low hanging fruit" is because officers are lazy and risk averse. They don't want to enforce and work their quotas against target demographies that have access to the courts and know how to use them. They prey on ignorance, fear, and incompetence, because it's easier for them to do that than to go against people who know how to use the law to enforce their rights to be free of unwarranted search and seizure.

CNu said...

In general, whites use illegal drugs - depending on the drugs - at a rate 2-3 times higher than blacks. With some illegal and prescription drugs of abuse - those rates are many times higher. It doesn't matter whether there are two parents present or not, whites have always been the overwhelming majority users of illegal drugs in the U.S.

As a matter of anecdotal fact, the more affluent the two parent families are, the more illegal drugs their children are wont to use, and, higher quality (more potent) those drugs are likely to be. This is true of affluent two parent family offspring in both elite private and parochial schools. The prevalence of "minor in possession" offenses by the time kids reach their senior year in high school is quite shocking. A whole cottage industry appears to exist focused on helping kids defend/expunge their reputations so that they don't lose access to the types of selective colleges and universities that a "minor in possession" mark on their records would almost necessarily entail.

I support drug legalization because i believe in personal sovereignty and find the stupid violence associated with drug prohibition a tragic waste of human potential and cause of human suffering and misery all out of proportion with the purported harms that the prohibition pretends to protect us against.

CNu said...

lol, the Rev.Ken lives to foist his tiresome and played out two parent argument as though it could be realistically implemented - which is really the question begged here - and the one which reduces it to inane irrelevance. So, nod your head and agree that two parents are almost always better than one, and carry on with the on-topic grown-folks discussion about law enforcement policy and practice, social status, etc...,

Tom said...

Ken how many affluent 20something white kids do you know on the Upper East Side in Manhattan? They all "use illegal drugs." Or say 75% of them do.


Using enough to qualify as abuse, that's another issue, and maybe that's more like 10% to 25%, most of them functioning. Harder to say. But you're the one blurring that distinction anyway.

Vic78 said...

It's like the world was perfect back in the year 13whateverthefuck and everyone was married. Hell, I wish being married was the answer to all the world's problems. I'd preach the two parent gospel everywhere I go.

Tom said...

Well, right here he's using two-parent as a way to sneak in his racial angle on drugs.

Nakajima Kikka said...

This largely accords both with what I've read and my own personal experience with whites. They do seem to use an astonishingly large amount of illegal drugs of all kinds. It's downright scary.

CNu said...

I don't know if you've experienced the full Rev.Ken racial angle on the drug prohibition/War on Drugs, but in a nutshell, he puts it at the doorstep of the Congressional Black Caucus. I'm not going to attempt to reconstitute his arguments, but he's opposed to personal pharmacological sovereignty, a proponent of "lock'em up and throw away the key", and that in the final analysis, black folks should quietly accept this position without complaint black elected leadership sanctioned it into law at the outset of the crack epidemic.

Nakajima Kikka said...

Interesting point. I have noticed a strong tendency for whites to consider the use of illegal drugs to be a problem only to the extent that it impairs function at work (not necessarily at school, oddly enough). They often behave as if the anti-drug laws do not "really" apply to them. Maybe they're right.

Tom said...

Yeah, I think that's right about functioning. There aren't serious social penalties for failure to function at school, but there are grade penalties.


I don't know about the legal thing. I've always been scared that I could get arrested. People give me this weird look if I mention it, so I keep quiet.

CNu said...

So, I'm personally a veteran of 10,000 psychic "wars" going back to the early 70's and beginning in earnest at a conservative, christian, private independent school in about the 8th grade, and, I have a 20 year old daughter, veteran of an elite private independent school affiliated with the one I attended, and the levels of personal pharmacological sovereignty were exponentially worse during her 14 year tenure at that school than they were back in my day - so much so that I wouldn't allow my 14 year old son to attend this school - preferring the more disciplined attentions of a fine parochial school. Within months, we discovered to our horror and chagrin that the problem is equally bad at the parochial school, with the compensating counterbalance of fanatical catholic youth organization athletics, which athletic involvement we've encouraged with Pavlovian vigor.

As you might imagine, we're very candid about this issue, equally candid about the racial component of the issue, and countenance no authoritarian hypocrisy. My son has carefully observed the trajectory of kids with whom he's intimately familiar from elementary, middle school, and the neighborhood, and who regularly exercise their personal pharmacological sovereignty. Thus far, he's tried and subsequently evaluated and rejected all distractions. While I would scarcely call this issue "decided" - I believe he's pretty firmly established on the scholar-athlete straight edge path which served his sister so well in the belly of the beast.

Makheru Bradley said...

Full disclosure. I had no awareness of Byrne JAG before I read this article. Since I did not track Obama’s 2008 campaign promises, I did not know that he planned to increase JAG funding if elected. I doubt that the people who voted for him had any such awareness either. Since reading the article I have studied JAG grant process, eligibility requirements, and specifically how the funds are allocated in North Carolina. Based on the evidence uncovered by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, that jurisdiction is in violation of the Civil Rights Compliance of JAG. I have contacted the SCSJ regarding this matter.

The real issue here is the culture of law enforcement. We know from a 2013 study by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement that every 28 hours there is an extrajudicial killing of an Afrikan American.

http://freedomrider.blogspot.com/2014/02/modern-day-lynching.html

Everyone knows this is a national problem, even affecting (gasp) Kansas City.

http://bit.ly/1hTe7kJ

http://on.fb.me/1nfE01b

I think that it is an incredibly naive assumption to believe that the culture of law enforcement can be changed through federal grants. Interestingly, non-profit organizations are ineligible for JAG funds from the State of Missouri. Nevertheless, let them go forward and produce results which validate their beliefs.

Tom said...

Ok, so kind of a Rush Limbaugh thing.

Nakajima Kikka said...

I believe Ken and I ran the numbers on this whole 2-parent family thing on a different thread a couple of months back. Bottom line, the only racial group in the U.S. in which the majority of children are still raised within a 2-parent family is Asian-Americans, and even there more than one-third are not. For all other racial groups, the majority of kids are now raised in single-parent families.

Tom said...

I mean people who can't function, can't pay the mortgage, I think is what it boils down to. Hard to say. So many of my fellow majoritarians are borrowing and spending at an unsustainable rate anyway that it's hard to guess what's in their minds.

ken said...

People, the statement I was in opposition to, was this:

"even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth."


Now if we are going to embrace the idea that 2 parent families, or as I have seen around here, a strict father presence, has no effect on the outcomes of the child in regards to education, incarceration, drug abuse, physical or sexual abuse, then you're right. And I stand corrected.

CNu said...

It's an even more preposterous assumption to practice impotent protest which has shown itself worthless now for 50 years instead of direct engagement with the offending institution. For me it's a non-issue because I can pick up the phone and call my black chief of police at will, the KCPD is not locally governed, and my good friend(brother) and retired commanding officer currently serving as legislative liason is firmly convinced that the staunchly republican legislature is going to decriminalize in the next legislative session so as not to get left too far behind Colorado.

CNu said...

lol, I'll have to take your word for that - since I haven't listened to 30 seconds of the oxycontin king anytime over the past 5 years...,

Nakajima Kikka said...

ken, more is necessary than a 2-parent family. What's also needed is a sense of shame. Whites simply have little or no sense of shame when it comes to illegal drug use.

CNu said...

lol, now that you mention it, indeed I do recall that symposium. Which leaves me wondering about Ken's motives for clinging to and rehashing thoroughly discredited assumptions.

Makheru Bradley said...

And what is the result of 49 years of neo-colonial politics--I can pick up the phone and call my black chief of police. Kansas City and Charlotte, clearly do not have Black police chiefs because someone picked up a phone. Massed-based social action led to these incremental changes.

“There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.” --Michelle Alexander

Bro. Feed is correct on this point. We have more Black legislators, mayors, judges, police chiefs, police officers, etc., etc., and we have more Black people in jail than at any point in our history in the United States. Why, because these people are office holder, not power holders.

Since you and all of the smart people are results oriented, post the data which show how this “direct engagement” is influencing the culture of law enforcement.

Makheru Bradley said...

Of course Rev, I'm just making all of this stuff up.

[The report also said that data-driven policy management and performance tools like COMPSTAT, as well as federal grant programs, create pressure for high numbers of drug arrests, including those for pot. Notably, states managed to increase the cash they were spending on handcuffing pot smokers amid budget shortfalls and a drop in other crimes. That’s because police departments receive federal funding from programs like the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program, which use arrest numbers to determine which local police departments to back with the hundreds of million of dollars it distirubtes each year.

Because marijuana is so widespread, and often used in the open, busting people for it easier, quicker, and cheaper than investigating serious crimes. As cops struggle to meet numerical performance standards, minorities become fodder for cash incentives.

“Whenever federal funding agencies encourage law enforcement to meet numerical arrest goals instead of public safety goals, it will likely promote stereotype-based policing and we can expect these sorts of racial gaps,” Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the New York Times.]

http://bit.ly/QkoZ0x

Nakajima Kikka said...

Mass-based social action did, but since then most of the social and cultural institutions which enabled that were either eviscerated or outright destroyed. Moreover, the cultural outlook of the country has fundamentally changed into one that is oddly both hyper-individualistic and highly racialist at the same time. Add in the panopticon surveillence perspective of both the W and Obama Administrations and the result is that mass action to effect change can no longer be sustainably organized in the U.S. Occupy is a case in point.

Vic78 said...

It might be a case of epistemic closure. He can't help himself. All we can do is tell him not to use the blow dryer while he showers.

ken said...

I guess I like to have arguments where first of all the facts acceptable and accurate. Take for instance your assertion, if only Asians are the only group that the majority are raised in 2 parent families and even they are more than a third as you imply here, how is it that the latest figures in 2012 have children who live in single parent homes at 35%?

http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by#detailed/1/any/false/868,16/10,168,9,12,1,13,185,11|/432,431



Now Makheru makes a statement, everybody commits crime at the same rate, so if the arrest rates are different, than it must be white supremacy racism. And Craig says to challenge the original stat is a juvenile argument, instead lets accept the false premise and have an adult discussion about its unfair policies.


You make another false claim and now Craig, of course can't even rub the bottom of his chin and wonder about the facts, instead jumps right in to my motives because of your false facts have discredited my assumptions. Pretty adult stuff here.

Nakajima Kikka said...

ken, their definition of "single-parent" is "never married". A child can either be born into a single-parent family, or later become part of a single-parent family either through death or divorce (divorce being far more common). Arguably, divorce has a more negative impact on kids than out-of-wedlock birth.

Tom said...

Ken, you've spent a lot of time earning your reputation for misrepresenting the facts. Take some responsibility.

Ed Dunn said...

The issue with the single-parent/drug-use/Asia argument is that contrary to popular beliefs - there is not a lot of 2-parents households in Asia and most Asian parents do not see their kids all day working to build stuff for Wal-Mart stores. Also, even in 2-parent household, prescription drug abuse - the most popular drug use - is rampant. Back to Asia, the true differentiation would be government enforcement of illegal drugs (death penalty) of distributors where here in America, we see more focus on moving people with < 1oz of weed into the criminal justice system to pay probation fees to the county government, creating a financial incentive system.

ken said...

Did you know the numbers for marijuana incarceration?

http://learnaboutsam.com/the-issues/marijuana-and-whos-in-prison/

ken said...

"I support drug legalization because i believe in personal sovereignty and find the stupid violence associated with drug prohibition a tragic waste of human potential ...."


I am with you, I think it is also a great waste of money, to have to go to the doctor to have him ok a prescription. All drugs should be legal, but I wouldn't pass such a law until society signs off on the other side of the law libertarian part, which would be an understanding that natural consequences are a necessary natural control in how people will use drugs and should not be obstructed by government. (Charity would still be ok, because I would assume they will put accountability measures in place when they provide assistance.)

ken said...

Definitions: Children under age 18 who live with their own single parent either in a family or subfamily.
In this definition, single-parent families may include cohabiting couples and do not include children living with married stepparents. Children who live in group quarters (for example, institutions, dormitories, or group homes) are not included in this calculation.

Vic78 said...

So if someone has an overdose, fuck that guy he should've known better.

"I am with you, I think it is also a great waste of money, to have to go to the doctor to have him ok a prescription."

Think about what you've just said. Should we get rid of the FDA as well?

CNu said...

Sometimes it's better to just indefinitely suspend the pregnant pause and allow an exemplary moment of public befuddlement to simply parse itself.

If the mere fact that I can pick up the phone and call and collaborate with my black police chief doesn't mark a change in the culture of local law enforcement in Kansas City, then.....?

Now the fact that you don't know how to do that or possess the interpersonal rapport with yours to do that - is simply bad on you, isn't it?

Dale Asberry said...

lose their fathers because their fathers couldn't be bothered to find some way to reconcile their differences with their mothers


Um. No.


The problem isn't the fathers as much as the divorce industrial complex (divorce+child support+prosecuting attorneys+jail+government grants to enforce collections) making it easier for wives to dump the man, hence, 2/3 of all divorces are initiated by the mother. I also couldn't find any hard statistics but I'm aware of a not insignificant number of men initiating divorce as a preemptive measure to protect assets from free-wheeling mothers.

Tom said...

BTW, not to get defensive here, but I used the word "abuse" whether they were functioning or not. Characterize white folks however you like -- like all folks we're mostly a bunch of idiots -- just so you don't think what I posted here is an example of what you're talking about.

ken said...

I suspect it isn't the government that would be involved in measures to save the person from an overdose but businesses like hospitals and insurance companies.
And yes it is a great waste of money, to go to the doctor sometimes and charge a $150 doctor visit to fill a prescription for something I already expected to get. Nobody says you can't still go to the doctor, but why shouldn't one be able to do his own research and decide what drug might work. And this has nothing to do with the FDA, in fact I suspect the FDA would be a bigger part of labeling and supplying more information.

Vic78 said...

It's possible you're wrong in spite of your research. You really don't want to misdiagnose yourself.

ken said...

Interesting Dale, I never knew that before.... Based on the figures reported in Table 1, I calculated that women had initiated the divorce in 68.9% of all cases. In only 1 out of 25 datasets were men the greater initiators of divorce.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201311/are-men-or-women-more-likely-file-divorce
I wonder how far down that goes, for instance who decides lets not be together to raise this kid when the unexpected pregnancy happens.

ken said...

And it is possible a doctor will misdiagnose also. Looks like you and me swapped sides for this issue, you want to have policies directed by polls and the average uninformed citizen, and now here we are and you are fighting against average citizen to make decisions about his own health, while I jumped over to having the average citizen freely make choices.

Vic78 said...

We haven't swapped anything. The last post was about policies preferred by a majority of people being ignored. Do I have to explain why elected officials ignoring the majority of voters is a problem?

I'm not going to go into detail explaining why a person shouldn't diagnose one's self. Such an idea is too stupid to take seriously. You're being deliberately obtuse.

Vic78 said...

Okay, I give up. I'm going to keep it simple. There's a difference between the average citizen wanting elected officials to advance favorable policy goals and the average citizen being an elected official.

As for your healthcare, you want professional consultation. It'll be mayhem if average people could diagnose themselves and get the service just because they requested it.

Makheru Bradley said...

Nakajima-san, I agree with the gist of your argument, with one exception. I believe in the capacity of human beings to organize on a mass basis and bring about change. Obviously there has to be an on-going synthesis of new ideas and information, as Dr. Karenga says there has to be “receptivity to challenge and change in light of new and compelling evidence and circumstances.” We know that the centralized, charismatic-leadership model is no longer viable. The individualized-politic model has not worked. That’s what Black elected officials were supposed to be doing. The masses have to become self-conscious agents of their own liberation.

Occupy was the ultimate decentralized movement, and it failed. Perhaps it was too leaderless, and seemingly without clearly defined goals and objectives. I have never seen a movement, whose mere existence was interpreted by TPTB to be that serious a threat. Most of the participants were young white people, but class trumped race when it came to dealing with them. During the 2012 Democratic Convention I participated in the Occupy Wall Street South demonstration. I’ve been in a lot of marches and I have never been surrounded by as many police officers as there were during that march.

When the opposition has proven their adaptive vitality, tactics have to be equally adaptable. When a CMPD officer killed Jonathan Ferrell last September there is no doubt in my mind that some people called Chief Rodney Monroe to voice their concerns. Others organized mass-rallies to decry the shooting. Some people focused on changing the Citizens Review Board. Various tactics were in play. It’s ridiculous to be locked into one mode of action.

CNu said...

I beg to differ on this one brah..., tomorrow afternoon, I'll be at the Y doing my prison alumni association workout. Inevitably I'll have a conversation with the Hon.Bro.Bashir, and older Sunni Muslim brother who has been the victim of two unsuccessful knee surgeries and four unsuccessful spinal surgeries - none of which were necessary - and all of which were presented to him as the end of increasing morphine/oxycontin pain relief loads.

The brother would've been pain free 5 years ago on a strict gluten-free diet, as well as, had the better part of his diabetes abated. The allopathic house of pain that Galen built is largely predicated on treating what can be seen. What is not seen, what is more subtle in the body's anthropocosmic operations - is mostly unknown to or denied by allopathic medicine.

Trust me when I say I'm as deeply and thoroughly grounded in western science as it's possible to be, that baseline notwithstanding, I have direct personal experience of far too many of the dubious assumptions and limiting ranges of the allopathic discipline's scope and reach. Shiiiiiiiiitttt......, two billion of these human swear by Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine, both of which are millenia old, and both of which are founded on distinctly different assumptions about the fundamental operations of the anthropocosmos.

I am a firm believer in personal pharmacological sovereignty and really need look little further than the latest slew of pharmaceutical commercials to know that sum'n profoundly askew in the world of branded patent medicines http://www.drugwatch.com/side-effects/

http://youtu.be/h86Wk3dJyLM?t=48s

Makheru Bradley said...

Of course Rev, I'm just making this stuff up.

[The report also said that data-driven policy management and performance tools like COMPSTAT, as well as federal grant programs, create pressure for high numbers of drug arrests, including those for pot. Notably, states managed to increase the cash they were spending on handcuffing pot smokers amid budget shortfalls and a drop in other crimes. That’s because police departments receive federal funding from programs like the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program, which use arrest numbers to determine which local police departments to back with the hundreds of million of dollars it distirubtes each year.

Because marijuana is so widespread, and often used in the open, busting people for it easier, quicker, and cheaper than investigating serious crimes. As cops struggle to meet numerical performance standards, minorities become fodder for cash incentives.

“Whenever federal funding agencies encourage law enforcement to meet numerical arrest goals instead of public safety goals, it will likely promote stereotype-based policing and we can expect these sorts of racial gaps,” Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the New York Times.]

http://bit.ly/QkoZ0x

Constructive_Feedback said...

I have watched Taibbi's segment on "Democracy Now"

Here is how I see his role.

Talking about 'Ghetto Black People On Welfare" is not a sin IF you use them as a contrast to WHITE people in corporate suites.

While Taibbi's spiel appeals to the "New Jim Crow" believers it fails at the most critical level. As various Black community's suffer today from the threat of:
* State Law Enforcement being brought in to keep order (Newark, Chicago, Camden)
* Public Schools in crisis (Philly, Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis, Birmingham)
* An Unemployment crisis as past failures at market development and education for the people now converge...............

Taibbi says "IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT....ITS THE SYSTEM that is stacked up against you".

The truth is - THE SYSTEM that has grown wealthy thanks to the antics of these capitalistic financial services institutions are ALSO collecting billions of dollars in FINES from their transgressions in exchange for No Jail.

Taibbi should "Follow The Money" to see how the US Government/Justice Department receives these billions of dollars and what Justice Department programs it funds. We hear about how various police departments use drug confiscations to purchase all sorts of tactical gear. What does US Justice do with the cash?

We are made to believe that the 'Subprime Mortgage Scandal' brought down the US economy. The numbers don't substantiate that claim. (See "House Of Cards" )

Lehman Brothers indeed were over-leveraged. ($6 in loans for $1 in hard capital) Yet this country views the success of politicians and business leaders based upon the perceived GROWTH IN THE ECONOMY.

All the while the "People Of Color' that Taibbi frequently references in the segment are said to be marginalized by this same system. Taibbi can't bring himself to see that the "aggressive policing" that he condemns is a policy that is approved by BOTH BLACK MAYORAL CANDIDATES OF NEWARK - both who will receive 100% of the Black vote - as the reality of the crime crisis in their city cannot be disintegrated into abstract analysis.

CNu said...

lol, precisely why I recommended to Bro. Makheru that he engage with his local police department to devise a new and improved approach to policing and propose to the federal grant makers that they fund his approach because of its innovations.

Dale Asberry said...

One of the websites I looked at said that states with shared physical custody the ratio drops to 50-50 and the overall divorce rate drops to 45%.

Makheru Bradley said...

I assume I’m supposed to shout halleujah because only 95,000 people (roughly the total prison population of the UK per Wiki) are in state prisons for possession of marijuana. How many are in federal prison and local jails? However, Rev, if you noticed the focus of the article was on racial disparities in marijuana arrests. Why didn’t you post those stats?

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Marijuana#Total

Most of these arrests result in court costs, fines, and an arrest record, which we all know impacts employment opportunities. Mass racial arrests/incarceration, most recently facilitated by Barack Obama’s increased funding of Byrne JAG. is a critical element of the third cycle of white supremacy in America.

ken said...

I understand you total attention on disparity of racial law enforcement. And it does appear that black are 13% of the population and account for 30% of the marijuana incarcerations. And probably its close to the same proportions for fines and the rest. And as I said earlier, legalizing is another argument. So why aren't you harping on the same disproportions of incarcerations for blacks who get convicted of any crime. It appears to be about that same proportion of about 30%. It's disproportional and unfair enforcement against blacks in almost all categories of crime, look and see most categories blacks are targeted for incarceration around 30% of the time and are only 13% of the population.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-43



Why would you consider this acceptable, yet the disproportion of arrests for marijuana laws not?

Makheru Bradley said...

“Why would you consider this acceptable.” Rev. Ken, why would you think that I would consider any injustice acceptable? “Injustice anywhere (against anybody) is a threat to justice everywhere.” I am as outraged by what’s happening to Cecily McMillan as I am about the impact of Byrne JAG in Durham.

http://justiceforcecily.com/

Here is another aspect of Police State America: Debtor Prisons and Private Probation. It should be noted that, “most characteristics of probationers have remained stable since 2000: In 2012, more than half (54 percent) were non-Hispanic white, about a third (30 percent) were non-Hispanic black.” --bjs.gov

[In the face of strained budgets and cuts to public services, state and local governments have been stepping up their efforts to ensure that the criminal justice system pays for itself. They have increased fines and court costs, intensified law enforcement efforts, and passed so-called pay-to-stay laws that charge offenders daily jail fees. They have also begun contracting with “offender-funded” probation companies like Judicial Correction Services, which offer a particularly attractive solution: collection, at no cost to the court.]

http://bit.ly/1i7awRp

Tom said...

Vintage Ken. He'll tell us what Makheru's position is.


And Ken's method for that is explicitly "whatever Makheru hasn't explicitly denied lately." He walks us through that process.

CNu said...

You managed to get yourself "black" listed - well - that splains your reticence to engage along the lines of what I'm advocating. I will have my grants, I will work assiduously to avoid blacklisting, and keep every option on the table.

CNu said...

Not holding anything hostage Bro. Makheru - your comments are getting caught in a wordlist filter - which I neglected to check.

I have a mad hater calling me out by name and so I've filtered on my name. My apologies.

Hopefully this current eruption will abate before too terribly long.

Makheru Bradley said...

"I will work assiduously to avoid blacklisting, and keep every option on the table." Good luck with "every option on the table."

CNu said...

Luck is not a factor. Relationships are the means to the desired end. http://www.kclibrary.org/event/conversation-alvin-sykes

Good will exists at all levels, but one must vigorously seek it out in order to obtain its support and the resources that such support entails.

ken said...

Thanks Tom for your analysis, your input has been extremely informative, good stuff! However another point was being made that went past you and and maybe Mak, I am not sure if he avoided the point or didn't see it. The point is the other crimes have a person who files a complaint and charges. i.e stolen property, rape, assault, murder, check forgery, auto theft. The goods and the evidence are found on the person being arrested. Mak has not pushed for legalization for drugs, he has only pointed out law enforcement is being unfair and the thrust of his argument is that everyone does drugs at an equal frequency and amount; so it can only be because of unfair racial white supremacy law enforcement.

Now when we add to the argument, crimes that have a person filing charges and material or physical evidence, it is much harder to talk about "everybody does the action about the same, they're only going after one group" ideas. The reason the "everybody does it the same" can't be argued for other crimes is the solid evidence. You generally have a victim and then one who victimized. Those who argue for drug legalization consider one of the benefits to be less crime and violence. So most of have an understanding that much of crime is connected around the sphere of drugs, so it makes sense that drug convictions would be at about the same proportions as other crimes.

Tom said...

Same silly tactic again, now aimed at me as well. You take anything I didn't explicitly say in this comment thread, and you fill in the blanks. You're in charge of telling everyone what I know about that subject and what my opinions are.


Knock it off, it's childish. Make your point and let others make theirs.

woodensplinter said...

Did you know.... http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statistics

Amount spent annually in the U.S. on the war on drugs: More than $51,000,000,000



Number of people arrested in 2012 in the U.S. on nonviolent drug charges: 1.55 million



Number of people arrested for a marijuana law violation in 2012: 749,825



Number of those charged with marijuana law violations who were arrested for possession only: 658,231 (88 percent)


Number of Americans incarcerated in 2012 in federal, state and local prisons and jails: 2,228,400 or 1 in every 108 adults, the highest incarceration rate in the world



Proportion of people incarcerated for a drug offense in state prison that are black or Hispanic, although these groups use and sell drugs at similar rates as whites: 61 percent



Number of states that allow the medical use of marijuana: 21 + District of Columbia



Estimated annual revenue that California would raise if it taxed and regulated the sale of marijuana: $1,400,000,000



Number of people killed in Mexico's drug war since 2006: 70,000+



Number of students who have lost federal financial aid eligibility because of a drug conviction: 200,000+



Number of people in the U.S. that died from a drug overdose in 2010: 38,329



Tax revenue that drug legalization would yield annually, if
currently-illegal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on
alcohol and tobacco: $46.7 billion



The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that syringe
access programs lower HIV incidence among people who inject drugs by: 80 percent






















One-third of all AIDS cases in the U.S. have been caused by syringe sharing: 354,000 people

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