The answer, of course, is anything by the Great Philouza. If your reply is “the Great who?” then: 1. You’re a philistine. 2. Go to 16:50 here:
Professor at Fordham Law. Prisons and criminal justice quant. I'm not contrarian, the data are. Author of Locked In. New stuff at johnfpfaff.com.
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The answer, of course, is anything by the Great Philouza. If your reply is “the Great who?” then: 1. You’re a philistine. 2. Go to 16:50 here:
But feel like that take is a 300-post thread to avoid all the inevitable responses that I opted not to make a big point abt it.
Actually, my take on that line is complex. Def “don’t have to give him credit,” but also I’m def on the record for saying we over-hype the risk, and thus adopt policies (like regular active-shooter drills) that likely cause more trauma than they prevent.
What’s so infuriating to me is that we are now seeing—SO CLEARLY—the very deep, democracy-eroding costs of this sort of coverage, and NOTHING IS CHANGING. We can’t change the bad coverage of the past; that’s a (HUGE) sunk cost. But “business as usual” NOW is a CHOICE. And a terrible one.
By my count it’s actually 40, and about 4 or 5 ads too. And par for the course: the reason NOT to fear is always buried deep deep after the bad news designed to gin up fear. It’s critical to note, too, that this is NOT NEW. Trump didn’t change things. He’s just exploiting a long-run pathology.
Frozen caveman journalism—“we have no context or historical memory so we just have to take the angry orange man at his word”—is exhausting.
That too.
Interesting. On a related issue, I now exclusively use “SCOTUS” bc it means I don’t call it a “court,” which it isn’t. Feel like I had similar thoughts abt “POTUS,” which refuses to apply word “president” to Trump, but maybe the contexts are different (if only bc he IS a prez, they AREN’T a court).
This is pure Willie Hortonism. The message is this: as long as there is just one bad weekend, or one bad event, crime cannot be “down” and we cannot be “safe.” We are only “safe” based on impossible standards, and we can never get “safer” as long as some risk exists.
Decrying people as irredeemable at scale is always a sign of someone who does not care about public safety, only social control. They want to make ppl they don’t like suffer. They do not want to make communities more livable.
Several thousand people were granted release. Admittedly not a random sample, but their reoffense rate was ONE-TENTH the state average (5%, vs 50%). A major reason? They were just older, more mature, ready to get on w their lives. Such needless waste to stay locked up.
Another example of aging out: CA used to have the easiest 3-strike law to trigger. When they tightened the requirements in 2012, they made it retroactive: Anyone who had been sentenced pre-2012 w facts that no longer met the new bar could petition for early release. The result?
Of course, if you don’t view those who suffer those errors as fully human—which Trump and other racists clearly do not—then those error costs aren’t really costs. Arguably, to the Trumps and Millers of the world, they’re features, not bugs.
And while it is true that there are some ppl who seem to have high rates of offending into their 30s and 40s, we have struggled in general to identify who they are in their teens and 20s. So even locking lots up “just” for 20s and 30s would have HUGE error costs in terms of needless caging.
The graphs show a measure of the rate of offending (y-axis) over age (x-axis). Don’t read too much into the specific shapes—small changes in data shift things around. But the overall pattern—age in and out, most age out pretty young—is consistent and correct.
For those who want to see how consistent this effect is, here (from left to right) are age trajectory results from: 1. Mostly white guys from Boston around the 1950s 2. Mostly Black ppl from Chicago’s South Side around the 1970s 3. Canada 4. Holland (I think: def someplace Nordic/Nordic-ish)
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Is this the UKY thing? I didn’t even know I was subscribed to that until I found myself deleting emails from it every five minutes this weekend.
One of my all-time fav (and apparently no longer on-line) SNL skits was the one in 1990 when Tom Hanks played a dad who realize the milk was sour and instead of throwing it away insisted his entire family try it just so they could taste how sour it was too. Not sure why that just came to my mind.
I recall the first half. Did someone do the second?? I’d love to see that….
Also, of course, not only are a lot of those who favor reforms in cities (“not real Muricans!”) but they tend to be non-white, and Black in particular. So double or triple “not real Muricans!”
But ppl in high-crime/high-enforcement communities? The ones who are actually voting for reformers? The ones for whom criminal legal policy is a lived experience not a vicarious one? Almost always silenced. So of COURSE reform policies seem politically weak, if you never talk to their supporters!
Another “who journalists talk to” point I think matters here, esp w respect to crime: Major papers rarely interview those actually affected by crime and enforcement. They’ll interview cops, who obv favor toughness. They’ll interview DA, who mostly are self-servingly/selection-bias the same.
Anyway, back to Chicago’s huge decline in shootings. It’s inevitable that it will get 1/100th the coverage of the rise, and any coverage will put cops and DAs at the center, almost to the exclusion of all else. Which are common traits that I think have played a big part in Getting Us Here.
But of course we frame Abbott Elementary as a comedy, while FBI: Warrior Cop or whatever is framed as a Serious Drama. (I mean, Abbott IS hilarious. But a more-serious version would likely never get approved; if it did, would almost certainly have to be a Dangerous Minds white-savior show.)
In fact, know what I think the best show abt public policy is? Abbott Elementary. Get past the jokes, and it is entirely abt loving parents and overworked teachers trying to do what’s best for disadvantaged kids amidst a system stacked against them … and celebrating the successes that can happen.
This is of course amplified by a prime time TV culture that is nothing but cop shows, and many of them where the primary characters seem to be combat-cops or combat-cops adjacent. There’s no Dick Wolf show abt violence interrupters, much less abt social workers.
Coverage always treats declines in the presence of more-humane approaches as surprises, or in-spite-of successes. Ditto cutting more-humane approaches: if crime goes up, it’s not bc of those cuts. But heavily-armed cops? More of those OF COURSE ➡️ less crime, and vice versa. Just accepted as true.
I feel like the way we have covered crime is a great window into How We Got Here. Not just the constant fearmongering of covering increases while ignoring declines (tho that’s huge on the openness-to-military-on-the-streets front). But how we cover interventions more broadly.
A decline like this would be huge news just in general. But given JUST how rapidly this drop happened makes it extra-newsworthy. Given it happened while Trump yells abt “crime!” to justify authoritarianism makes it even MORE newsworthy. Yet… mostly crickets and “ppl still think crime’s up.”
Honestly, wonder which way that goes?! “Man, there were thirty mistakes, easy, in that last scene” or “They really nailed my day job.” Not sure which answer is worse.
My kids have developed the habit of pausing any movie or TV show involving a lawyer to ask me repeatedly if something is realistic (bc they know they’ll hear either way). Sometimes it takes my oldest and me WELL over an hour to watch a 45-min Better Call Saul episode.
Yeah, mine was about 450 (100-120 per class). His school boggles my mind. I knew every classmate by name. He hasn’t even met a huge percent of his.
Rumor when I was in grad school was the way that MIT’s Econ department did this was to have every (retired) Nobel laureate tell senior ppl when it was time to retire. Hard to say “… but I still have big ideas yet to come” to retired laureates. (Don’t know if true, but really hope it is/was.)
For me, this is easy: Nightswimming.
It’s fine. I mean, it’s the WhatsApp group for a honors NYC public high school. The parents are all chill as one would expect such NYC parents to be.
My oldest’s HS has 1,500 kids in each grade. The class WhatsApp is just a nuclear-powered firehose. I consistently mute it for one week, and the when the deadline expires watch my notifications explode while I race to hit mute again.
Honestly can’t decide which is worse, structurally: 1. Trump overreactions with the support of the press and (appellate) courts; or 2. Trump just taking advantage of legal powers Congress never should have delegated away.
Or are Trump’s claims to abolish the unions his routine style of legal-overreach-via-EO-then-conjured-into-reality-by-headline-writers-who-are-allergic-to-the-word-“illegal”? (Genuine question here.)
I’m not a labor lawyer at all, but it seems strange that in the Fed system we gave the boss the unilateral power to abolish the unions that exist to organize against … that same boss.
Journalists, never: “holy crap! Homicides are at near historic lows, following a reversal with almost no historical precedent.” But also journalists: “it’s an objective reality that ppl think crime is always rising and reforms don’t work and, um … we have no idea why!”
Journalists, in the red circled area: “Progressives just have to accept the numbers abt rising homicide and stop pushing for reforms.” Journalists, in the green circled area: “Progressives have to stop trying to make ppl accept the numbers abt falling homicide and stop pushing for reforms.”
This isn’t just semantic nitpicking. I think it gets to the heart of some of the politics here. Anti-MAGAs can’t convince MAGA that they’re wrong by pointing to (alleged) inconsistencies …. bc they are not, in fact, inconsistent. It’s that one word (freedom) means two VERY different things.
Because, but their definition of “tyranny,” it isn’t tyrannical. Cowie’s Freedom’s Dominion should be one of those everyone-must-read books. To some ppl, freedom = freedom FROM oppression. For others (like MAGA), freedom = freedom TO oppress. There’s nothing hypocritical here.
Is he just reading from his autobiography?
Blue check communist tells you abt all you need to know about this guy.
Am about half-way thru this book myself, and second this.
I’m just exhausted by frozen caveman journalism, where journalists acted shocked by perfectly predictable outcomes that would seem obvious with just a little reflection. “Who could have possibly foreseen seen this completely obvious policy failure by those in power?”
Unexpectedly, when the price of Good X went way up, while the piece of nearly-identical Good Y stayed the same, demand shifted heavily towards Y. I mean, yes, I spent 6 years getting a PhD in Economics. But I feel like this is sort of outcome a five year old would expect.
We made a fire tonight, and added in one of those sticks that make it somewhat blue. Thought these pics of that came out pretty cool. (Not every post has to be bleak, despite my posting history. There’s still beauty in this world.)
We also apparently lost the formula for white during the early 80s, and had to settle for everything being a slightly off-white beige plastic.
We’ve been watching a lot of Price Is Right from 1982 (free on Amazon), and the thing that has really struck me: What happened to our national obsession w rattan furniture, and why did we have one in the first place? So. Much. Rattan. (And terrible hair choices.)
You have tenure already, right? Bc it’d be sort of hilarious if you went down bc the provost thought your work was more than good enough, but they didn’t trust you with the awesome power of the Nobel nomination.
You know who can nominate ppl for the Nobel Peace Prize? Me. A random, terminally on-line law prof. All law profs can make nominations. Being nominated is no big deal, since the committee doesn’t even do the noms—these ppl have no idea how this process even works.
Good example, I’m sure, of how to many conservatives “freedom of speech” really means “obligation to listen.” So they see no fault in themselves from driving family members away. “I’m just taking … abt how your friends should be exterminated.”
Also, how many Republicans saying it’s not okay to stop talking bc of political views also wonder why their kids haven’t talked to them since 2016? “I didn’t kick them out for political reasons! I WANT them to listen to me denigrate and insult everything they value.”
The China Mieville sequel no one wanted: The Country and the Country.
I guess the founding father FedSoc, Heritage, and their Originalist enablers ended up elevating the most was John Dickinson. Perhaps a lesser-known Founder, his big claim to fame was drafting the Articles of Confederation.
Oh, yeah, this year is a “thoughts and prayers” year thru COVID and flu season for us. I’m just wondering more long-term. Scaling up production in response to a self-imposed policy crash in your gigantic next door insane asylum takes time.
It wasn’t a mistake, tho. RFK Jr is doing everything he said he’d do, and Trump surely picked him BECAUSE OF those promises, which he is now catastrophically keeping. Maybe (don’t know!) it’s good politics to call it a “mistake” to give Trump a face-saving off-ramp. But none of this is a mistake.
But also none of it is static. If RFKJr’s brain-worm really does blow up our entire vax infrastructure and tens of millions of Americans start looking for modern meds, I could imagine some sort of pay-to-get option arising: as an humanitarian act, as a source of money, and just to stick it to DJT.
"We are all going to see our political careers die" too.
Both. Congress then wrote a law that closed a big loophole only implicitly, which enables the Republicans in Congress now to be more feckless in their deference to/support of Trump.
I’d add, tho, that the ICA could have been more explicit about rejecting this sort of cynical move and wasn’t, and here we are.
FWIW, the GAO has argued that pocket recessions are illegal under the Impoundment Control Act (the law at issue here). Whether this will win in court (or if a Trump-headed GAO would fight this) are fair questions, but worth noting that textual and constitutional arguments:
Thanks for this!
Is theirs a statutory argument (“the law says all requests must be made more than 50 days before the next cycle”) or more generic separation-of-powers concerns? The former seems like it would be the stronger argument, esp in the Roberts Court Era.
I was all set to make one of my usual "put `illegal' in the headline!" rants, but based on the article, it strikes me that this is much less about illegality, and more about bad practices by Congress. Which is also important to call out! But is a VERY different structural flaw.
The budget cycle ends in < 45 days. So if Congress doesn't act--and we know they won't--then the 45-day wait means that the budget year ends before the hold expires, and the spending authorization ends anyway. To me (not my area of law), appears less unconstitutional, more misfiring delegation.
This is actually less an "end-run" and more "example #145,436,884 of how Congress repeatedly gave away its powers and hoped norms would just hold everything together and now they aren't." Congress lets POTUS petition for a clawback and withhold funding for 45 days during the process. But here?
It had to be done when she moved to NJ, but I feel that in 15-20 years we’re going to regret that my mom sold her place in Buffalo.
I think abortion is different, tho. The desire to genuinely control is much greater, with a religious zeal that the anti-vaxxing movement lacks.
So, at least in this case, there is actually a bit of data to support my anti-doomer take.
Even here: all the bad vax moves have been done where the authority already exists, so vice signaling is cheap. Saying "we'll punish the cities!" is easy. Passing the law is hard. And a lot of performative nastiness dies in that gap.
I've been looking into that when it comes to red-state preemption of blue city criminal legal reform. What's interesting is that, by and large, those efforts fail. And I think it's bc it's fun to do the low-cost performative stuff, but not worth investing political capital in big stuff.
As Mexico can testify to, American demand for drugs can reshape an entire country's economy. Hopefully here, given that the drugs in question are legal, the demand wouldn't bring with it the lethality and destabilization. But the demand is potentially huge.
Depressing to hear, but also wonder if that's a short-run equilibrium. If tens of millions of Americans suddenly want Canadian vaccines, I bet that creates an incentive for pharma companies to start opening factories in Canada (or importing more from China for Canada).
I thought abt that, but I don't think they really care if people get them elsewhere (unlike abortion, where they really do want to limit it (for other ppl but not themselves)). I feel like this is more about breaking the mandates here, for, you know, the freedom to die painfully from tetanus.
The life expectancy map of the United States is just going to be a gradient map of how far one is from the Canadian border (and from the Mexican border, but bet less significantly so, given weaker quality control). "Daddy, how did Maine end up with six members of Congress?" "Tetanus and the flu."
Buffalo's next renaissance will happen when the city sells itself as the home to a heart-breaking football team, low housing prices--and ready access to real medicine, right across the border. Don't even need a passport if you have an enhanced ID!
You know when you cross the border of a state with bans on fireworks to one that is fine with kids blowing off their fingers you immediately see a glut of firework stores? I have to think the Canadian border is going to be the same way, but w places offering cheap Covid, flu and penicillin shots.
My first year Econ PhD class had 30 people. Fewer than 10 of us were US citizens. And I don’t think any of us finished in four years. I’m not sure anyone ever had.
She was never fired tho. She’s just suing over being suspended for one year, at half pay. I’ve had colleagues take a paid one-semester sabbatical and then the other semester off at no pay, just for an easier year. Which is all she is facing/suing over.
FWIW, she wasn’t fired. She was just suspended for one year, at half pay. That’s all she’s suing over.
It is equal parts infuriating and exhausting. How many times can we smash our heads into the brick wall of a media that simply refuses to see the world through anything other than Dick Wolf colored lenses?
Then that same media that says things like this acts like a naive frozen caveman journalist when it discusses a public that remains afraid of crime even as crime rates fall (not that they ever actual publish the magnitude of the fall, just point to a link no-one will click, down on paragraph 34).
To a huge swath of the pundit class and media, any real reform is inherently wrong. Sun rises in the east, water is wet, anything but the tiniest pushback against aggressive policing will fail. So a tactic that FAILED is "effective" bc it invoked The Truth (that is not true, but who cares).
It's one thing to constantly confront shady misuse of stats when trying to understand politics and policy of crime control. But this stuff? Just hurling "effective" at elections that they ... LOST ... is ... I mean, how do we develop sound policy when "serious ppl" just do NOT care abt reality?
I’m just going to add, bc the contrarian in me can’t help it: This argument holds true even for the common reply of “well, we do know that all mass shooters have guns.” That’s true! Also true? Almost no one w guns is a mass shooter. Tracking all gun owners? Still needle in a haystack.
Didn’t know that—thanks! Always felt like it was a city that deserved more stories set in it.
I thought Silo was amazing world-building, but found the last 1/2, esp the last book, almost unreadable. At least for me was a real case of whatever the opposite of “sticking the landing” is.
Haven’t read Water Knife, but loved Windup Girl.
Dawned on me that my fav novel is urban sci-fi/fantasy where the city itself is a major character: Right now, Tchaikovsky’s City of Last Chances. Or Mieville’s Perdido St Station or City & City Literally, Jemsin’s City We Became. Or Robinson’s New York 2140. What are other ones I should read?
Daphne is in Baldwin County, AL, and Baldwin went 80-20 for Trump in 2024.
It looks like that is the case. In many, I’m guessing by now most, states, criminal assault is no longer defined in that old common law way. But seems the Feds are, unsurprisingly, clinging to the old common law definition.
My claim abt trans came from this. It’s the Advocate, so not right-wing, but it’s also strangely written in an unclear way.
Oh, she was trans. That's going to make the statistical abuse here--which is now absolutely inevitable--even worse. Because the first half of the fallacy ("most shooters have trait x") doesn't even apply here: rarely are mass shooters trans! But no doubt all trans ppl will be demonized now.
Assault rifles and riot shields? Uselessly clustered in a giant pack? They're not even making an effort to pretend this is about safety. It's naked intimidation. And yet NYTimes just a week ago referred to ... all this ... as using DC as a "laboratory for a militarized response to urban violence."
I don't know any details abt the MN shooter. But I know whatever traits get revealed, they will be (statistically) misused in ways that inescapably malign entire groups, often vulnerable groups. It happens every time. It's called "selecting on the dependent variable," and it's a REALLY big deal.
They've got armored IRS agents enforcing, what, fare evasion on the DC subway. I'm tired of all the new sentences we are being forced to bring into existence these days.