Senate: Police Militarized To Fight A War On THEM

[MSimon]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... /15342449/

The hearing — co-chaired by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., to probe "police militarization" in the wake of the police response to protests in Ferguson, Mo. — focused on three federal programs designed to help local police departments respond to drug crime and terrorist attacks.

I blame Nixon. Now that happens when THEY are no longer a target? Are the Feds going to ask for their eqpt. back? Or will police find some one else to target?

[Diogenes]

You blame Nixon, I blame LBJ.



Perverse incentives for creating fatherless children who grow up to be criminals.

[MSimon]

You blame Nixon, I blame LBJ.

Perverse incentives for creating fatherless children who grow up to be criminals.

The biggest cause of fatherless children is drug war incarceration. Welfare made all that possible by giving the mothers an economic backstop. That muted the complaints to an otherwise untenable policy.

Fortunately after 40 years of destruction the policy is in the process of being rescinded. However recovery will take at least another two to three generations. Provided the government doesn't start up some new program for "improving" the lives of its citizens.

[Diogenes]

You blame Nixon, I blame LBJ.

Perverse incentives for creating fatherless children who grow up to be criminals.

The biggest cause of fatherless children is drug war incarceration.

Absolutely disagree. That is a complete disconnect from the available data. The Number one cause of fatherless children is government support for unmarried mothers.




Without such support, mothers would be in DIRE STRAIGHTS if they behaved the way the do now. Nature and Reality would prohibit such behavior. The "War on Poverty" is a perverse bastard incentive program. It rewards behavior which creates bastards.

[JoeP]

Yep, Dio. If you think in terms of an organism following the path of least resistance to both procreation, sustenance, and minimum effort, it seems obvious that is why the poorest people in the US are quite rich enough to do the above. It is incentive.

Sometimes I wonder what Darwin's take would be on it as a dispassionate observer. Who is following the best and fittest strategy ensuring that their genes survive and multiply the future population? The so called (disparagingly called) "welfare queen" who has seven or more kids and government provided food, shelter, and benefits, or a working couple struggling to juggle two or more jobs to pay for their one kid?

Who is going extinct? Which is the inferior set of genes? Even if the system crashes at some point, the winners will already have won, in a sense, as they (perhaps diminished) will dominate the future generations.

[MSimon]

You blame Nixon, I blame LBJ.

Perverse incentives for creating fatherless children who grow up to be criminals.

The biggest cause of fatherless children is drug war incarceration.

Absolutely disagree. That is a complete disconnect from the available data. The Number one cause of fatherless children is government support for unmarried mothers.

Without such support, mothers would be in DIRE STRAIGHTS if they behaved the way the do now. Nature and Reality would prohibit such behavior. The "War on Poverty" is a perverse bastard incentive program. It rewards behavior which creates bastards.

Evidently you haven't read this article on demographics I have posted numerous times.

http://www.issues.org/13.2/courtw.htm

=========================

Yes. The War On Poverty is perverse. And yet you applaud the war on Some Drugs which has the effect of putting families in poverty due to incarceration for status crimes rather than malum per se crimes. If you look up the effects of Alcohol Prohibition it was similar. In fact one of the causes of its early end was the lack of a dole. Families were on the street and visible.

Prohibition was a war on the poor. It is still true today.

As early as 1925, journalist H. L. Mencken believed that Prohibition was not working.[48] As the prohibition years continued, more of the country's populace came to see prohibition as illustrative of class distinctions, a law unfairly biased in its administration favoring social elites. "Prohibition worked best when directed at its primary target: the working-class poor."[49] Historian Lizabeth Cohen writes: "A rich family could have a cellar-full of liquor and get by, it seemed, but if a poor family had one bottle of home-brew, there would be trouble."[50] Working-class people were inflamed by the fact that their employers could dip into a cache of private stock while they, the employees, were denied a similar indulgence.[51]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibitio ... ted_States

Although children in mainstream white American families have been less affected by the drug war, in 2007 a total of 1.7 million children had at least one parent incarcerated — 70% of those were children of color. Families of incarcerated individuals face significant challenges.

In addition to the lives ruined by mass incarceration, widespread drug war violence has claimed many children as victims. Fueled by a combination criminal gangs flourishing under drug prohibition and aggressive police and military actions, drug war violence has destabilized millions of families, schools, and communities at home and abroad.

http://www.protectfamiliesfirst.org/youth-drugs/

[MSimon]

Instead of emptying the prisons as its supporters had hoped it would, Prohibition quickly filled the prisons to capacity. Those convicted of additional crimes with victims (burglaries, robberies, and murders), which were due to Prohibition and the black market, were incarcerated largely in city and county jails and state prisons. According to Towne, "The Sing Sing prison deported no less than sixty prisoners to Auburn in May 1922 because of overcrowding."

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html

Before Prohibition and the Harrison Narcotics Act (1914), there had been 4,000 federal convicts, fewer than 3,000 of whom were housed in federal prisons. By 1932 the number of federal convicts had increased 561 percent, to 26,589, and the federal prison population had increased 366 percent.[44] Much of the increase was due to violations of the Volstead Act and other Prohibition laws. The number of people convicted of Prohibition violations increased 1,000 percent between 1925 and 1930, and fully half of all prisoners received in 1930 had been convicted of such violations. Two-thirds of all prisoners received in 1930 had been convicted of alcohol and drug offenses, and that figure rises to 75 percent of violators if other commercial prohibitions are included.[45]

The explosion in the prison population greatly increased spending on prisons and led to severe overcrowding. Total federal expenditures on penal institutions increased more than 1,000 percent between 1915 and 1932. Despite those expenditures and new prison space, prisons were severely overcrowded. In 1929 the normal capacity of Atlanta Penitentiary and Leavenworth Prison was approximately 1,500 each, but their actual population exceeded 3,700 each.[46]

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html

[Diogenes]

Yep, Dio. If you think in terms of an organism following the path of least resistance to both procreation, sustenance, and minimum effort, it seems obvious that is why the poorest people in the US are quite rich enough to do the above. It is incentive.

Sometimes I wonder what Darwin's take would be on it as a dispassionate observer. Who is following the best and fittest strategy ensuring that their genes survive and multiply the future population? The so called (disparagingly called) "welfare queen" who has seven or more kids and government provided food, shelter, and benefits, or a working couple struggling to juggle two or more jobs to pay for their one kid?

Who is going extinct? Which is the inferior set of genes? Even if the system crashes at some point, the winners will already have won, in a sense, as they (perhaps diminished) will dominate the future generations.

Your argument is valid, however these are artificial and temporary conditions which will be remedied with the coming of the gods of the copy book headings. Nature plays a long game, and in such a game these current government teat suckers will likely perish while those that took the harder path will be more likely to survive.


But we should not be setting up so many people to face such a future disaster.

[Diogenes]

The biggest cause of fatherless children is drug war incarceration.

Absolutely disagree. That is a complete disconnect from the available data. The Number one cause of fatherless children is government support for unmarried mothers.

Without such support, mothers would be in DIRE STRAIGHTS if they behaved the way the do now. Nature and Reality would prohibit such behavior. The "War on Poverty" is a perverse bastard incentive program. It rewards behavior which creates bastards.

Evidently you haven't read this article on demographics I have posted numerous times.

http://www.issues.org/13.2/courtw.htm

I opened it up. First word I see is "Drugs". I close the tab. Not even going to bother looking at it.

Anything which starts off focusing on the 25 billion per year we spend on drug interdiction and ignoring the 800 billion we spend on making lazy parasites and bastard children is not a serious article about demographic problems.


Had it started out focusing on the perverse incentives of government funding of unmarried women, and then later mentioned "Oh, and buy the way, this blah blah blah about the War on Drugs is also a factor...", I would have given it some credibility. But starting off with drugs is an immediate tell that it's Libertarian crap.

Yes. The War On Poverty is perverse.

And is of far greater magnitude and significance in it's consequences than is any problems associated with the War on drugs, but you would prefer we get the cart before the horse.



I personally think the better approach is to start with the most significant factors, and work my way down to the lesser ones. I don't even grasp this idea of starting with one of the least.

[MSimon]

I opened it up. First word I see is "Drugs". I close the tab. Not even going to bother looking at it.

Amusing. An article that touches directly on the subject being discussed and you won't look at it.

I guess you will have to take my word for it then.

Drug war incarceration leads to poverty among the families affected and significant numbers of fatherless children (father imprisoned). Also it changes the M/F ratio in ways that have bad effects on the culture. Which include among other things children without the benefit of fathers (out of wedlock births). The effects of Prohibition are especially prevalent in the Black community where the bulk of enforcement is concentrated.

Lucky you don't have a prejudice against electrons eh?