US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4027

On July 28 2023 04:32 NewSunshine wrote:

Well, if you're suggesting that, by contrast, Right-wingers rolling us back 50 years and banning abortion did so knowing it would exacerbate a host of social problems including poverty and crime, so that they can then point to the existence of those problems as evidence that we're not electing enough right-wing officials into office, and that it's some kind of vicious cycle...

Well, I'd be shocked at the thought.

On July 28 2023 03:13 ChristianS wrote:
(Edit: @Drone, I hadn’t read any responses after that before posting)

Yeah, I mean, I’m skeptical of anybody that tells too confident a causal story (especially a local one) about 90’s crime rates, considering crime was insanely high and nobody knew why or what to do about it, and then it dropped precipitously everywhere, all at the same time, again without anybody really knowing why. Like, if bee populations are dying off everywhere, it’s natural to seek a causal explanation, but it should be pretty obvious somebody insisting “it’s because this farmer in Iowa switched pesticide brands” doesn’t have the whole story.

In New York specifically, it more or less coincides with Jack Maple essentially “moneyballing” the police, reworking the whole system around measuring and responding to crime rates. It’s a nice success story, and plausible enough to me, although the next thing that happens is terrible and predictable: police departments everywhere rebuild themselves around gaming crime statistics, which has all kinds of negative side effects. Sometimes they’re incentivized to lower them, resulting in department-wide efforts to downscale any reported crimes; other times they’re incentivized to raise them, resulting in (at best) upscaling reported crimes or (at worst) sending out cops to find somebody, anybody, to ticket or arrest.

A bit of a digression: my dad’s Mormon LDS, and he used to tell me stories about when he went on his mission to Brazil. Apparently there were monthly meetings at the mission where leadership would talk strategy about how to improve performance. One month it was “We’ve had a lot of first meetings this month, but a pretty low percentage lead to people requesting follow-up visits. So this month we’re really pushing to get that percentage up!” The next month it was “Okay, the percentage went up, but now first visits are down. Let’s try to get out there and make more first visits!” But it was obvious what was happening: when they wanted more first visits, missionaries would report any brief conversation in the street as a “first visit.” When they wanted better conversion to follow-up visits, they’d only report “first visits” of people that seemed genuinely interested.

This is a fundamental challenge in data-driven approaches even if you’re genuinely trying to solve the problem. But another element to this is that when police departments get good at manipulating the stats, that gives them political leverage. Wanna get elected on a platform of criminal justice reform? Well how do the cops feel about your reforms? If they don’t like them, there’s a pretty good chance crime rates will be up next time you’re up for re-election. It doesn’t really matter whether your underlying philosophy about “addressing root causes” or whatever was right, because before you can worry about *actually* lowering crime you have to first figure out how to *seem* to lower crime, or you’ll just get kicked out of office.

Although that might be less of a factor these days because people just don’t care if the stats say crime is down. Trump’s whole “American Carnage” campaign was just completely dismissive of the fact crime rates were down basically everywhere; they just kept shouting “criminals are destroying your country” anyway and voters bought it. Or that SF recall election for Chesa Boudin or w/e that BJ keeps bringing up? My understanding is that crime statistics didn’t even show an increase! But a right-wing meme campaign made her name synonymous with rising crime anyway, so she was gone.

At any rate, the net result is that when you have places (like SF!) clearly going through some dramatic and destabilizing changes, the only response available to governments is authoritarian: mandatory minimums, more cops, more military equipment, bigger police budgets. Anything else is political suicide, even though that’s basically the same shit local governments were trying in, like, 1982 and it didn’t really work.

On July 28 2023 06:41 JimmiC wrote:
I find it pretty funny that conservatives are even mad about it. Shouldn't the businesses just invest more in security? government should be hands off no? Who is going to pay for all these jails for all this shoplifting and long sentences? Not republicans. Let the free hand of the market deal with it.

On July 28 2023 06:41 JimmiC wrote:
I find it pretty funny that conservatives are even mad about it. Shouldn't the businesses just invest more in security? government should be hands off no? Who is going to pay for all these jails for all this shoplifting and long sentences? Not republicans. Let the free hand of the market deal with it.

On July 28 2023 05:57 BlackJack wrote:


I don't understand, you seem to spend the first half of your post to illustrate the problems with crime states and data driven approaches but then end your post by saying states show crime in SF is not even on the increase. Is there some sarcasm I'm not picking up on?

This reminds me of the SF Chronicle article that tried to throw skepticism onto the claim that shoplifting was on the rise and a root cause behind stores closing down in SF. They even included this bar graph in their article:



First, it seems they don't even have enough respect for their readers to think they can interpret a bar graph because those graphs do seem to show shoplifting is a growing problem. It's either rising exponentially in the first 2 graphs. In the 3rd graph its rising and then plummets to almost zero. Perhaps the store stopped bothering to report it?

According to the graphs most of the stores average about 2 shoplifting incidents per month. Clearly not a lot.

Except when CNN went to a Walgreen's to report on shoplifting they witnessed 3 thefts in 30 minutes.

Hmm... 3 thefts per month according to the reported crime statistics or 3 thefts in 30 minutes according to CNN's reporters on scene... which is the bullshit narrative....

A wise man once said "When the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it"

Chesa Boudin was recalled because everyone in SF knows that crime is getting worse. They aren't locking up mustard behind plexiglass and running out of auto-glass to replace broken windows because they've all bought into MAGA lies about shoplifting and car break-ins.

On July 28 2023 05:51 Slydie wrote:


That seems far fetched to me. Right wingers do not care about the social consequences of stricter abortion rights. They fight for foetuses and sexual moralism. Once the babies are born they could not care less. They won.

On July 28 2023 13:05 Falling wrote:

This is a fun hot take in liberal circles. But by population, the pro-life crowd is one of the most likely groups to adopt children, which is no joke strictly on the financial end these days. As such, I don't see this as especially compelling argument except to gain internet high fives.

On July 28 2023 11:56 ChristianS wrote:

Bezos? You’re quoting Bezos?

I’d love to tear into the quote and how it shows how incurious and egomaniacal he is, but looking up the context, it sounds like he was talking about receiving customer complaints. “Listen to customer complaints instead of telling them the data says they’re wrong” seems like fine advice to me; I don’t think it naturally follows that we should base public policy on vibes, do you?

To be totally honest: my read on you is that you’re generally smart enough and reasonable enough, but for whatever reason you get your information and opinions from turbid right-wing meme tanks. Like, I’m not gonna dive into SF crime statistics (and meta-statistics like how many shoplifting instances CNN happened to notice while they were there) because it’s complicated and abstruse and I don’t live in SF. Do you ever pause to wonder if it’s smart to spend so much of your political education on one-sided deep dives on crime patterns in San Francisco and Portland, to the point that you reach for a modifier to describe liberal DA’s and your brain comes back with “Soros-funded”?

But if you want to focus on the plight of San Francisco, here’s a quote for you: “men will not always die quietly.” Seems like for at least a decade I’ve been seeing articles about the continuously skyrocketing expenses in the city, and how cost of living is completely outstripping wage growth. It’s maybe a little puzzling how that *ever* worked, but I think a lot of the answer is that there’s a lot of unpleasant things desperate people can do to make ends meet. Share a small place with four roommates? Commute 2 hours to and from work from somewhere cheaper? Work 2 or 3 jobs? Sleep in your car, and shower at the Y?

But all of that feels to me like pulling back a rubber band; you’re only gonna be able to pull it back so far. I mean, as I understand it, homeless populations have skyrocketed, and city services absolutely can’t keep up. Is it any surprise that crime (especially shoplifting) would go up, regardless of a liberal DA? I mean, if you’re so plugged in on SF crime patterns, you tell me: have things gotten better since Boudin was recalled? Or has the downward slope continued unabated (maybe even accelerated)?

On July 28 2023 05:51 Slydie wrote:


That seems far fetched to me. Right wingers do not care about the social consequences of stricter abortion rights. They fight for foetuses and sexual moralism. Once the babies are born they could not care less. They won.

On July 28 2023 18:57 BlackJack wrote:


Did you google that quote to see who said it or are you just familiar enough with Bezos to know he said it? What's wrong with quoting Jeff Bezos? I think the quote is very apt. I think I demonstrated that well by showing that the crime data is showing only a few shoplifting cases per month when anecdotally CNN's reporters saw 3 in just 30 minutes. It's obvious the anecdotes are more true than the data.

I think your quote is a good one too. I don't know who said it. I'm not going to google it because it doesn't matter to me. It could be something Hitler or Stalin said and I still wouldn't come back and say "You're quoting Hitler?!" Just because you find someone disagreeable doesn't make every thought they've ever had and everything they've ever said wrong. I think you're an intelligent guy but I think maybe it's you that's gone too far into the left-wing echo chamber when who is saying something matters more than what is being said.

Btw I get the large majority of information about SF crime/politics from 2 sources, The first is SFChronicle which is a left-wing newspaper that endorsed Chesa Boudin in the recall election, for which I am a paying subscriber. The other is reddit.com/r/bayarea which is a Subreddit of Bay Area reddit users that share posts/links of topics and events relating to the Bay Area. fyi the reddit user base is generally left leaning and bay area residents are also generally left leaning.

I don't blame just liberal DAs for the predicament SF is in. I think there are many variables, but I do think stupid woke policies are the common theme among those variables. Eventually people will have to take responsibility for their bad policies instead of just insisting that SF is doing great and the rest of us are just captured by MAGA narratives.

+ Show Spoiler +

On July 28 2023 13:05 Falling wrote:

This is a fun hot take in liberal circles. But by population, the pro-life crowd is one of the most likely groups to adopt children, which is no joke strictly on the financial end these days. As such, I don't see this as especially compelling argument except to gain internet high fives.