Category Archives: Crime

Thursday link roundup

  • This Agitator post illustrates in perfect detail why it’s not even worth trying anymore. Short version, a noble citizen does soemthing that would save the fovernment 2.2 million dollars and deliver a higher quality. The feds refuse, and take years in doing so. Your tax dollars at sloth.
  • Putin’s Rise to Power
  • MaoPost.com – really cool
  • Oil Econ 101 – and oldie but a goodie
  • This little nugget from Marginal Revolution

    In Brazil, they segregate their prisons according to gang membership. No exceptions. Not even for individuals who in fact are not members of any gang.

    How does that work? Easy. Upon being admitted to the prison system, unaffiliated prisoners are required to join a gang.

Your saturday morning reading

  • Dead Left – Jon Chair on Naomi Klein
  • The Atlanta PD and their odd hat history
  • Radley Balko and the non-existent presidential crime policies of the candidates
  • American Murder Mystery – everyone should read this, it’s about the current and future face of crime.
  • Report: Rich Consistently Outearning Poor

    Armbrister stressed that it would be premature to draw any final conclusions from the 550-page report, cautioning that “much supplementary research must still be done.”

    “Yes, we do need more data,” she said. “But regardless, it is apparent that a severe gulf exists between rich and poor. And this cannot be mere coincidence. There is clearly an unknown mitigating factor at work here, and I strongly suspect it may be financial in nature.

Flying Squads

Unbeknowst to me, before now, the Justice Department sends out teams to fight street level crime in cities around the country. The Yahoo News article lists it’s failures, which are to be expected. It’s hard to see how it could be successful when all of it’s efforts and managements are so insulated from feedback. Sending out federal people to deal exclusively with local crime is a troubling trend.

If Granny had wheels, she’d be a trolley

Starting with this review of a CNN.com Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko is Socko“. It prattles on and on about the inequalities and suffering that result from illness. All true most likely. Read that and ask yourself, “So What?” Is the same leviathan that brought you the Iraq War (or “Peace” if you prefer) likely to improve matters? Or for that matter, one that couldn’t even find a way to discreetly have sex with interns?

The second one is “What if Lincoln Had Survived?“, also on CNN.com. If they had the medical technology of today but not the 25th Amendment, what would have happened?

Isn’t there some news site that caters to the person who is interested in news?

For far better non-news brain candy, check out this history of the 1920 Wall Street bombing. The perpetrators of that attack, much like the anthrax mailer, were never caught.

A rise in crime

Personally I think Katrina and meth have something to do with it but Tom Barnett might have it, specifically

the three-strikes and other harsh-penalty laws of the previous decade had surged the prison population, but soon the number of ex-cons being released (about 600k, if I remember) would surpass the number of new cons going in (about 500k). A simple prediction: urban crime was going to go up all across America.

Food for thought.