You can’t disprove what I say.
Unemployment rates are coming down. Four months in a row now, the lowest its been since 4/09. (A fun site to play with the data so long as you, as Kevbo points out, adjust the time scale to see rates in context from 2008.)
Unemployment rates may be a lagging indicator but that rate is what drives any populist movement. And even as consumer confidence hits a soft spot (what with rising gas prices and uncertain global circumstances) unemployment rates are likely to continue to drop over the next year - oh not every month, but overall.
Once people have jobs they worry about how those jobs pay and if they will be there in the future. That’s when those motivated by their own pocketbooks switch from being Tea Partiers to Union supporters and when rhetoric aimed at investing in the future resonates.
Either that, or I think anyone who believes blacks create crime-infested slums wherever they move is so far gone that it ain’t worth it.
I just came across this salon.com slideshow: The 10 most segregated urban areas in America (from the most recent census data). Some analysis on why for each area is there.
Offered just out of potential interest…
I will put this out front that I am a Yellow-Dog Democrat, so here goes.
The Republicans have no real agenda, values or goals other than to get back into power. They ran out of ideas long ago and their only catch phrase that they can agree on is “Less Taxes, Less Government.” Sounds good on a bumper sticker, but how does that actually translate into effective goverrment? Apparently it doesn’t. After 12 years of Rep rule they made a complete and total mess of things by going along with a total nincompoop of a president. Only when a Dem came into power did they grow a set of balls and start protesting against they very things they voted for under their own Prez.
I beleive the TP movement is about exposing this hypocrisy, but as with any new movement, it really brings out the wing nuts, Libertarians, Survivalists, Racists, etc. which considerably dilutes their message. The TP will be around for awhile, and will definately be detrimental to the Reps in the long run as the TP’s will dilute their power, split races, etc. They will ultimatley become dillusioned when they see that politics is about compromise and that the folks back home want their slice of pie and not to be lectured about the nobility of sacrifice for the common good.
As for Obama (not asked, but what the hell) I beleive he is doing a good job. He definately needs to be more proactive in the communication department, and this is hurting him badly. Let’s remember that the US–like every other nation on the globe–is deeply racist and many of the criticisms he faces from the right wing are greatly magnified due to his race. I beleive he he will look back and deeply regret starting with health care reform (as a RN I can tell you that the American People could not give two s&*ts about health care–affordable or otherwise) instead of something more meaningful like tax reform.
Health Care reform just gave the TP’s another ax to grind and something with which they and the Reps could agree. Bad move.
Here is a list of the ten most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States. One has a large Hispanic population. The others have very large black populations.
Unfortunately, the energy is with the Tea Party. If Obama is reelected, he will win by default. Most of us who voted for him are disappointed. We will vote against his opponent, rather than in favor of him.
None of those areas has as many black residents as Tuskegee, Alabama, which is safer than the rest of Alabama despite a 30% poverty rate.
Do I really need to explain the difference between correlation and causation to you?
Wow, that was depressing. 
Tuskagee, Alabama does have a low crime rate with a black population of 95.48 percent.
Nevertheless, the population in the 2000 census was 11,846.
For that reason alone it cannot be seen as typical. Do I need to explain what an exception to the rule is?
The conclusion I draw from your attempts to justify your racism is that minorities in the United States are in a social hole. I see no reason to assume these crime rates are the result of genetic traits rather than the socio-economic situation in which these Americans find themselves.
How do you explain this, then?
In his book, “Crime and Human Nature”, James Q. Wilson and co-author Richard Herrnstein found that one neighborhood in the '60s had the lowest income, the highest unemployment rate, the highest proportion of families with incomes under $4,000 per year, the lowest educational attainment, the highest tuberculosis rate and the highest level of substandard housing of any area in San Francisco. The area was called Chinatown. If poverty is a cause of crime, surely this was a formula for criminal meltdown. Yet in 1965, there were only five persons of Chinese ancestry committed to prison in the entire state of California.
In DC, there are significant middle calss black neighborhoods. It is largely the result of Howard University. So it is not true in every case. I think ther are similar middle class black neighborhoods in Atlanta and near other historically black colleges.
As this thread shows, this is not the case.
The problem is not the natural inferiority of blacks but that black culture is often highly tolerant of criminality and suspiscious of the police. In the blog NDD showed, there is a comment which noted blacks are less likely to report crime. Thus we must increase assimilation efforts in the black community.
Maybe it’s cultural. Maybe Chinese criminals are smarter and don’t get caught, or commit crimes that didn’t merit prison time. Maybe they had the cops in their pocket. How do you explain the behaviour of Asian gangmembers today shooting at each other in the streets or selling girls into slavery out of suburban homes?
And one data point is not a trend.
I’m certainly not going to put a three-sentence description of a single crime statistic up against 50 years worth of genetic research that do not support your claim, not when you refuse to entertain the idea that it might have something to do with black people historically getting the shaft from white people in the United States. If you want to show that criminality is genetic among black people, you’d better back it up with research that shows this criminality is present regardless of nationality, education, income, religion, and everything else the real scientists can think of. Better yet, back it up with research that identifies the gene or genes that lead to this criminality.
But I won’t try to change your mind; I don’t think I could. I’m just telling you that you aren’t the least bit convincing, you’re just reaching for sciencey-looking stuff that helps you justify your beliefs to yourself.
China has a per capita gross domestic product of $7,400. That compares with $47,400 in the United States.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html?countryName=China&countryCode=ch®ionCode=eas&rank=127#ch
In China the murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants is 1.2 percent. In the United States it is 5.0 percent.
That may be because China actually is a serious user of the death penalty rather than our wishy-washy “We MIGHT execute him after twenty or thirty years”.
New Deal Democrat (and others), drop the hijack about race and crime rate. The topic is the Tea Party and the GOP establishment.
This is Great Debates, not The BBQ Pit. Keep the personal remarks out of this forum.
[ /Moderating ]
Irrelevant, as the former is an issue that can be effectively resolved by government policy and the latter generally is not. In any case, social conservative rhetoric has become counterproductive, as it repels both the younger voters (who will be around longer) and independents (who are aware of the Republican tactic of using such rhetoric as a smoke screen – the ones who have not seen through the trick by this point are stuck in the GOP camp and not worth attempting to convert).