https://www.nytimes.com/2019/1...id=nytcore-ios-share

Jf

Not sure if you are campaigning for him or against him.

I’m hesitant to comment on the actual piece because Charles Blow is such an embarrassment it would feel like cheating.

So I’ll look more generally at the topic at hand.

1] “stop and frisk” was racist.

Well, sovereign is he who sets the null hypothesis. How do we decide this? By comparing the racial makeup of the stopped and frisked to that of the population of America? Of NYC? Of the residents of the high crime areas? Or of the perpetrators of violent crimes in NYC?

It gives you different answers. Bloomberg himself pointed out that if you use the last metric then whites are over represented in the program. (Blow quotes him on this but, apiece with his usual intellectual dishonesty, provides no context for the reader to understand the quote).

I’m not saying that Bloomberg’s answer is necessarily the right one. I think it’s a complicated question.

We should also remember that blacks (especially) and Hispanics are not just heavily over represented as perpetrators of violent crimes, but also as victims. Insofar as s&f was effective it’s beneficiaries were also overwhelmingly blacks and Hispanics too. An honest judgement of the program would need to take that into account too.


Which brings us to ...

2) efficacy. It’s really hard to tell how effective it was. Needless to say, Blow’s attempt at claiming it was ineffective is idiotic. Though his metrics are good ones to show how unfair the program was to the individuals exposed to it (independent of race). I think the civil liberties (not civil rights) arguments against the program are the most compelling.




Let me just add that personally I was very happy (and more than a little surprised) that the abrupt (almost) end of the program didn’t result in a relapse in the gun violence rate. In that, at least, the law enforcement community was wrong.

Impressive.

NYC was a cesspool the 11 years I lived there (1981-1992) and people lived in near constant fear. If you didn't have your wits about you, the city would shred you. I left just before Giuliani and Bloomberg transformed the place into Topeka, by comparison. Some of their methods were draconian, but the city was unlivable as it was. I'm pretty sure that I never would have left Bloomberg's NYC for Montana. I haven't been "home" now for five years, but friends tell me the place is falling apart again under DeBlasio. Not as bad as when Reagan was president and cut off funding for the homeless and the mental hospitals, but not Topeka any more.

I think extraordinary situations can justify extraordinary measures. I think you had to have been there to understand just how bad it was and while I cannot condone how black young men are often treated by police, I can understand the entirely justifiable fear that motivated this policy.

Bloomberg is worth some $53 billion. If he wants to get my attention he needs to start giving it away. 50 million here 100 million there. If he can spend himself down to a single billion dollars by the time he stands for the primary election he will get my vote. That should give him enough to survive on and show me that he is serious about serving the public.

I am not holding my breath.

High standards, Steve.

He did just donate 1.5 billion to Johns Hopkins.

We give way too much credit to mayors like Bloomberg and Giuliani for "cleaning up" their crime-ridden cities. The crime wave of that time period was national. The crime reduction that followed was national. It went down substantially in cities that followed these "draconian" policies and also went down substantially in cities that didn't. There's a very good chapter in the original Freakonomics about this ...

What's the question?

quote:

Originally posted by Daniel:
What's the question?

I guess how they explain his famous racist "stop and frisk" policies implemented as part of his clean up New York strategies way back when.

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
High standards, Steve.

He did just donate 1.5 billion to Johns Hopkins.

That’s nice. OTOH it may be the only way to donate that amount of money and make no difference whatsoever. Nice tax write off, I suppose.

I made the same offer to Tom Steyer. Maybe he’ll do better.

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
We give way too much credit to mayors like Bloomberg and Giuliani for "cleaning up" their crime-ridden cities. The crime wave of that time period was national. The crime reduction that followed was national. It went down substantially in cities that followed these "draconian" policies and also went down substantially in cities that didn't. There's a very good chapter in the original Freakonomics about this ...

The Freako guys looked at a correlation between the drop in crime and Roe v. Wade. My Mormon friends went in to full freak out over this.

Turns out they can relax. The drop in the crime rate was global and correlates with removing lead
from gasoline.

What might be fun would be to convince Bloomberg that he really can buy the election. How much would it take? $2Bil? $20Bil? What would he do with it?

quote:

The drop in the crime rate was global and correlates with removing lead
from gasoline.

Is this for real? Or a joke?

Totally for real. It was almost certainly a factor.