Category: Race

Broken Window Theory of Financial Crimes

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Bill Black has a very interesting look at the “Broken Window” theory of law enforcement and how, and whether, it might be applied to financial wrongdoing.

For those of who are unfamiliar with the “Broken Window” theory of law enforcement:

James Q. Wilson was a political scientist who often studied the government response to blue collar crime. The public knows him best for his theory called “broken windows.” The metaphor was what happens to a vacant building when broken windows are not promptly repaired. Soon, most of the windows in the abandoned building are broken. The criminals feel little compunction against petty destruction because the building’s owners evince no concern for the integrity of their building. Wilson took social norms, community, and ethics seriously. He argued that as community broke down fewer honest citizens were active in monitoring and policing behavior. The breakdown in community was criminogenic – it led to widespread serious blue collar crime. He urged us to take even minor blue collar crimes and breaches of civility seriously and to demand that they be contained through social pressure and policing.

Wilson got a lot of credit for cleaning up New York City, where crime levels did drop, but they did elsewhere, so perhaps the theory is a bit overrated.

And it should be noted that Mr. Wilson specifically excluded white collar crimes.

I think that the operative word here is “white”.

As in pigmentation, and Wilson found “white crime” just fine:

In a book entitled, Thinking About Crime, Wilson argued that criminology should focus overwhelmingly on low-status blue collar criminals.

This book [does not deal] with “white collar crimes”…. Partly this reflects the limits of my own knowledge, but it also reflects my conviction, which I believe is the conviction of most citizens, that predatory street crime is a far more serious matter than consumer fraud [or] antitrust violations … because predatory crime … makes difficult or impossible maintenance of meaningful human communities (1975: xx).

I am rather tolerant of some forms of civic corruption (if a good mayor can stay in office and govern effectively only by making a few deals with highway contractors and insurance agents, I do not get overly alarmed)…. (1975: xix).

Wilson won’t say it, and cannot now, because he’s dead, and may not admit it to himself, but he’s tolerant of white collar, because “Broken Window” enforcement should only be used when it involves cops harassing poor people and/or minorities.

That’s why Wilson created a “get out of jail free” for the crimes of the upper class.

I’m inclined to believe that small crimes beget bigger crimes, and that this problem is worse among the privileged than it is among the poor and minorities.

As Prof. Black illustrates in his article, when the little things are let slide, you end up with things like liars loans, and blacklists of honest home appraisers, with executives engaging in wholesale looting of their own firms.

H/t Yves Smith.

Facepalm

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Just when you thought that New Jersey could not get any more pathetic, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s would have been cool with a referendum to give civil rights without regard to race:

The verbal feud over gay marriage in New Jersey got more personal Monday with Gov. Chris Christie firing a slang term [numb nuts] at a lawmaker, and a hero of the Civil Rights movement chastising the governor for a separate remark.

………
The issue also brought U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia to Trenton on Monday to take Christie to task for comments linking gay marriage to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.
Christie last week vowed to veto any gay marriage bill that reaches his desk. He instead called for the question to be put to voters in November.
“I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights, rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South,” Christie said after an event in Central Jersey.
Black leaders pounced. Newark Mayor Cory Booker said baseball great Jackie Robinson would not have had the opportunity to break the sport’s color barrier had the matter been put to a vote, and the mayor himself would not have had the opportunity, years later, to be elected to lead New Jersey’s largest city. Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said many felt the sting of Christie’s comment.
Gusciora, who is white, said Christie would have found allies in late Alabama Gov. George Wallace and late Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox, both segregationists.

This is what qualifies as a deep thought by the ‘Phants.

God, what a repulsive person.

So, He’s Either a Bigot or a Political Opportunist

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It turns out that signed off regarding the publication of the racist screeds in his newsletter:

Ron Paul, well known as a physician, congressman and libertarian , has also been a businessman who pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas, according to three people with direct knowledge of Paul’s businesses.

The Republican presidential candidate has denied writing inflammatory passages in the pamphlets from the 1990s and said recently that he did not read them at the time or for years afterward. Numerous colleagues said he does not hold racist views.

But people close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

“It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product. . . . He would proof it,’’ said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman.

The newsletters point to a rarely seen and somewhat opaque side of Paul, who has surprised the political community by becoming an important factor in the Republican race. The candidate, who has presented himself as a kindly doctor and political truth-teller, declined in a recent debate to release his tax returns, joking that he would be “embarrassed” about his income compared with that of his richer GOP rivals.

Well, if he was just cashing in on bigoted rubes, this actually is consistent with the basic principle(s) of  Libertarians, “F%$# you, I’ve got mine.”

Melissa Harris-Perry is a (Not Very) Useful Idiot

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And what’s more, she is an idiot who is inadvertently enabling racists to use coded speech to race bait.

You see,she is claiming that “white liberals” are losing faith in Barack Obama because they are all a bunch of racists, who require a black man to be Superman in order to get their support:

President Obama has experienced a swift and steep decline in support among white Americans—from 61 percent in 2009 to 33 percent now. I believe much of that decline can be attributed to their disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for them or the nation. His record is, at the very least, comparable to that of President Clinton, who was enthusiastically re-elected. The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.

You know, there is also the possibility that he’s just not doing a good job.

One indicator of this is that his favorability numbers are cratering among the Black community aw well:

New cracks have begun to show in President Obama’s support amongst African Americans, who have been his strongest supporters. Five months ago, 83 percent of African Americans held “strongly favorable” views of Obama, but in a new Washington Post-ABC news poll that number has dropped to 58 percent. That drop is similar to slipping support for Obama among all groups.

“There is a certain amount of racial loyalty and party loyalty, but eventually that was going to have to weaken,” said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University, who studies African Americans. “It’s understandable given the economy.”

So we have a 25% drop among AAs, and a 28% drop among whites.

And we have no numbers at all broken out for white liberals.

So Harris-Perry is full of crap, but that’s the least of it.

You see, every time we get this sort of sh%$ spewed at us, it allows the real racists out there, and there are a lot of them, to claim that there is no racism, and that it’s all just a code word for the liberal agenda.

Dr. Harris-Perry is clearly a big fan of Barack Obama, and she is clearly wants to explain away what other people see as his failings, but tossing about specious accusations of bigotry where no objective data serves to make any statements about racism that much less credible.

I know that it’s easier than answering things David Sirota’s statement that. “Racism isn’t responsible for the president’s drop in popularity. His right-wing policies are,” but it is intellectually bankrupt, and it serves the purposes of the real racists out there.

Pat Buchanan Has Disappointed Me

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I did not think that he could actually disappoint me, Molly Ivins had him nailed when she said that his infamous “Culture War” speech at the Republican convention, “It probably read better in the original German.”

Needless to say, he is an appalling person, and it is even more appalling that he is treated as a font of wisdom by the Washington punditocracy.

So I expect him to appall me.

What I don’t expect is for him to say something that is so outrageous that he actually exceeds my already lowered expectations, but he has outdone himself.

He excused the mass murder in Norway, saying that Anders Breivik might be right.

Why is this man on cable TV? Why is he not a social pariah?

Why he is published in any paper with more credibility than the Moonie Times?

Finally, Someone in Arizona Stands Up to Bigots

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In Prescott, Arizona, the administrators at commissioned a mural depicting current students at the school:

Faces in the mural were drawn from photographs of children enrolled at Miller Valley, a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott. Wall said thousands of town residents volunteered or donated to the project, the fourth in a series of community murals painted by a group of artists known as the “Mural Mice.”

Unfortunately, since some of these actual students at the school were black and Hispanic, Steve Blair, a City Councilman and right wing talk show host on KYCA-AM, threw a hissy fit over the description of darkly complected students.

The weasels school administrators responded to this by ordering the artists to lighten the children’s faces:

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.

The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity. But the school’s principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.

It’s gotten a lot of coverage, and as a result, Steve Blair has been fired by the radio station, so apparently there are limits to racism in Arizona.

Here’s hoping that the voters will do so in the next election, but my guess is that they will elect him mayor.

Alabama Primaries, and Thoughts on What It Means

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Parker Griffith, the Blue Dog Democrat turned Republican, just lost his bid for the Republican nomination to Mo Brooks by 18 points, which is generally known as a shellacking.

So, this is the 2nd party switcher with the backing of the national party, Arlen Specter being the other who has lost the primary.

In the other race on interest, Artur Davis got destroyed in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Alabama, and it was another run away, with 62%-38% to Ron Sparks, where Davis was consistently ahead in the polls the entire time.

Hell, the day before, CNN was writing as if his nomination was a done deal.

Interestingly, in Alabama, the numbers appear to indicate that the margins were the same both in predominantly white, and predominantly black areas, despite the fact that Davis is black, and Sparks is white.

So why did black voters walk away from a black candidate in what could have been a historical race?

Well, they looked at Mr. Davis, and found that he had been running hard to the right, looking at November, because he thought that the primary was a “Slam Dunk.”

Among other things, he:

  • Pointedly disassociated himself from the black community and black organizations in Alabama, refusing to even meet with them, and these organizations came out for Sparks, who actively courted them.
  • Voted against the Obama Healthcare bill. (And was the only member of the CBC to do so)
  • Cozied up to the “cultural conservatives”, which in the USA means people who use code words for, “I want to keep the n*gg*rs down.”

I think that a part of this is a mark of maturity of the black political establishment in Alabama, they looked at policy and character, and decided that pigment did not matter.

I think another part is that Davis pointedly took the black vote for granted, and no voter, regardless of skin color, likes that.

It should be noted too that Artur Davis went to law school with, and was a friend of, Barack Obama, which should have given some more pull with voters.

Actually, this is a more general point, with Specter and Davis on the Democratic side, and with Griffith on the Republican side, and it is that base voters are no longer willing to be taken for granted, not even for a “friend of Barack”.

When they are, and told to suck it up and vote for the party approved candidate, they either vote for the other guy, or they stay home, and my guess is that it is the latter.

To the degree that either party is playing the , “Suck it up and vote for us card,” they will lose.

Unfortunately, while the Republicans have been throwing red meat at their base for the past 2 years, Barack Obama has been studiously cock-punching the DFHs* because he wants to look “post-partisan”.

Unless Obama realizes that compromise in the interest of appearing bipartisan creates both bad policy and bad politics, November will not be pretty.

I have come to the conclusion that Karl Rove’s real genius in his political work was not his completely amoral methods, but an understanding that, except in extreme circumstances,† motivating out the base wins elections.

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.
†A pointless war, “Heck of a job, Brownie”, Congressmen hitting on under pages, Terri Sciavo, and corruption and venality that just buggered the mind.

Gaffe: When a Politician Tells the Truth

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Michael Steel’s latest comment, which appears to be driving Republicans crazy, and making Democrats chuckle, yet again:

For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South.

This quote is factually correct. We literally have the memos, reproduced in the writings of folks like former Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips.

But nonetheless, the Republicans are freaking, so, Dave Weigel talks to Republicans, and gets a quote from Bruce Bartlett:

I think it’s too bad that Steele gave Democrats reason to believe that their distorted vision of how Republicans came to dominate the South is correct. It may be his biggest gaffe so far.

(emphasis mine)

Bartlett is upset because this is true.

Gee, No Racist Cops in Cambridge

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Gawker has some pics of a Cambridge police officer’s vanity license plate, “WHY-TEE“, as in “Whitie,” get it?

Nope, nothing racist there.

Also note that he is parking illegally, and that I think that I have had a sub at this shop.

Even if this particular police officer does not have a single bigoted bone in his body (Yeah, right), this is clearly inappropriate, and the fact that no one has taken him aside to have a word with him on this is telling.

The Entire Officer James Crowley/Henry Gates Thing

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The basic point:

  • The police report shows that Officer Crowley knew that Henry Gates was in his own house, and there legally.
  • The police officer arrested him for being irate about his treatment.

Officer Crowley abused his position and should be fired, but he won’t be.

A police officer is a peace officer, and in situations like that their job is to defuse the situation, not arrest someone for being “mean” to them.

Whether or not Crowley refused to give his name and badge number, which is a crime in Massachusetts, and whether or not race was involved, the officer should simply have left once it was determined that Dr. Gates was in his own house.

This man should not be a police officer any more.

The South Should Be Irrelevant in American Political Discourse

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Brad Delong finds some graphs that show a big difference between the South and the rest of the nation.

As he aptly puts it, “The whites in the heartland of today’s Republican Party just do not vote–and do not think–like the rest of us do.”

Simply put, in the rest of the nation, the greater contact with black people in your daily lives, the less bigoted you are, and in the south, the he greater contact with black people in your daily lives, the more bigoted you are.

One of the founding principles of the United States is the melting point. At the core of the melting pot is the idea that once you know the other, you will accept the other.

Anything else is un-American, and should have no part in our public policy discourse.

Howard Dean Makes “Gaffe”

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One wonders if this “slip” in an interview is a Freudian slip, or intentional:

If you look at folks of color, even women, they’re more successful in the Democratic Party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the (chuckles) Republican Party, because we just give more opportunity to folks who are hard-working people who are immigrants and come from members of minority groups.

I’m hoping intentional.

In either case, I’m Matthew Saroff, and I approve of Chairman Dean’s message.

Mark Penn Should Never Work for Another Democrat

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And Democrats should never donate to a candidate that employs Mark Penn.

Once again, Politico misses the point, and covers the trees, internecine sniping in the Clinton campaign, and misses the forest, that Mark Penn espoused a blatantly racist campaign strategy:

Mark Penn, the top campaign strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign, advised her to portray Barack Obama as having a “limited” connection “to basic American values and culture,” according to a forthcoming article in The Atlantic.

Barack Obama was my last choice for the nomination, but I find these suggestions that a racist and xenophobic an indicator of Penn’s immorality and incompetence.

Amy Sullivan is an Idiot: Politics and Religion Edition

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Amy Sullivan is a columnist who for years has suggested that the only problem that Democrats have is that they are just not welcoming enough to the religious. She is an idiot, and Barack Obama has bought into this view, and is probably its most articulate advocate:

The single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is … between those who attend church regularly and those who don’t. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to ‘get religion,’ even as a core segment of our constituency remains stubbornly secular.”
— Barack Obama, “The Audacity of Hope”

So now, Ms. Sullivan, who must have been ecstatic about the fact that the leading Democratic candidate is espousing her position, is now bent out of shape that it’s all blowing up in his face because of L’Affaire Wright.

In Salon, Walter Shapiro has her number when he says, “This is a week when the Illinois senator probably wishes that he could say, ‘I’m from the stubbornly secular wing of the Democratic Party.'”

More generally, there is no stubbornly secular wing of the Democratic Party. Seriously.

How many atheists are in Congress? None. There is one admitted Agnostic, Pete Stark.

And she gets owned again in yet another episode of What Digby Said, “Apparently, she never considered the possible downsides of hewing so closely to religion that people think it’s definitional. She and he friends didn’t seem to realize that all the blather about secular Democrats was never about religion, but about social conservatism. You get no points for going to the ‘wrong kind’ of church. You’d think they would have figured that out a long time ago.”

The success that the Republican party has had with Religion comes from two things:

  • Because church is still the most segregated place in America, it gives cover for hatred and bigotry.
  • Because the press is accused of being anti-religion, they will bend over backwards to make any unreasoning spew coming from behind a clerical collar seem reasonable, as is shown by their studied indifference to pastors Hagee and Parsley.
    • Except, of course, if they are black, as we can see with Rev. Wright. Or as was the case of a black Preccher protesting police brutality, who was called a “cleric” by the New York Times.

So Amy is wondering what went wrong. Her answer, which shows how unwilling to adjust her theory to accomodate reality is that, “… while Wright is a theologian, a teacher and a pastor, he is ultimately a performer”.

So her answer is not that the wearing religion on one’s sleeve might be problematic, but rather that Reverend Wright is not really religious, which ignores the tradition of activism in the black church and in progressive congregations in general.

What’s more, I think that her article reflects a profound discomfort on the part of Ms. Sullivan with regard to Black America too. Why else would she make a point of noting, “A cheering crowd of supporters that included a whistling Cornel West”, and that, “[the] resulting confusion and fear contributes to a racial divide.”

It sounds to me like this is a genteel way of calling Wright an “Uppity N*****”, particularly when she references Martin Luther King, and suggests that when he spoke out against the war in Viet Nam, Dr. King diminished himself.

Why else would she write:

The poster boy of the reimagined black church is Martin Luther King, Jr. “King said America suffered from a ‘congenital disease’ and that disease is racism,” notes Eddie Glaude, Princeton professor of religion. He says that King’s speech against the Vietnam War, delivered at Riverside Church in April 1967, was not a feel-good speech. “It was a passionate cry to speak to these enormous problems that were linked to America’s imperialism and militarism, and what he saw as the evils of capitalism.” By that point int his career, King had been banned from Lyndon Johnson’s White House. The New York Times condemned his speech, running an editorial calling it “Dr. King’s Error.” And Barry Goldwater said King “bordered a little bit on treason.”

But that King, the one who sounded a little bit like Jeremiah Wright, is not the one we remember every January. It’s because the prophetic black church tradition has been filtered into an unthreatening form suitable for public consumption, so that it has been rendered, in Wright’s word, “invisible.” And it is because of that invisibility that Wright’s sermons seemed so shocking and out of the mainstream. In reality, the two strands fit together — the unbearable optimism of “I Have a Dream” and the righteous anger of “I cannot be silent.”

Unless, I read this wrong, she is saying that King was uppity at times, and that we as a society should ignore that he was a man who was profoundly outraged by what he saw around him in the whole world, not just what happened to the African American community.

I see Reverend Write as being solidly placed in the tradition of American Black theological rhetorical tradition, though my frame of reference is narrow, as I’m neither Evangelical, Christian, so I’ve been to perhaps 3 Churches outside of life events (funerals and weddings) in my life.