Two words convict Bill Bennett

"I Believe"

Several times on Randi's radio show yesterday, she kept playing that clip over and over for her FReeper callers who were insisting that he was "Quoting" from the book "Freekanomics". Frankly, I was getting sick of hearing it.

Everytime she played it, I heard him say "I believe that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose..."

That's not what you say when you're quoting a source. Most people say "It states in this book", "It says here", or "And I quote"....

I believe.

Well, I believe these Racist mo-fos think they have the Green Light. They don't have to hide it anymore. They read the bullshit Emails making the rounds (if they aren't creating them in the first place) and they think they have the majority of Murka behind them.

And his syndicator doesn't seen too terribly concerned. Wonder how they'd react if a program host had said "First thing we do, let's kill all the ReTHUGlicans"?

I thought you were saying "convict Bennett :shrug:

The man speaks volumes about what they really think. Sickos

I can't believe these thugs forget that the tape is rolling.
Tomorrow's excuse will probably be that Howard Dean paid to have the clip Sound Forged...

He appears to have some large holes in his virtuous cloak.

Listen to these disemblers at work. They're masters of symantics...twisting the language in a way to get out the hatred without themselves being held responsible for saying it.

Lines like "I have it on good authority", "it's common knowledge", "i've seen reasearch that indicates" and the infamous "according to an undisclosed source". They'll also cite unknown authors or articles from wierd-sounding Newspapers and websites. It all creates this aura of "credibility" that is used to propel every stereotype and divisive point the Right wing loves to play with.

The polarization of the past few years has pushed the right wing into greater justifications and reaffirmations of their conveluted and immoral "philosophies". They've been twisted and manipulated by the fundies, the chickenhawks, the corporates and others so that the extremism now shows as each attempt to regroup requires harsher rhetoric. Remember, this is the party of fear, and when their backs are up against the wall, this will be the card they play to hold onto power.

"The polarization of the past few years has pushed the right wing into greater justifications and reaffirmations of their conveluted and immoral "philosophies"."

They try to turn language inside out. I had a discussion with one the other day where he tried to explain why things like, "Under God," and, "In God We Trust," and the Decalouge in the courts or school or other government prayers wasn't an endorsement of religion, so not a violation of the seperation of church and state, but *NOT* having that stuff *WAS* an endorsement of religion, and a violation of church and state.

It was kind of amazing to watch the poor guy twisting and spinning like that.

(His argument was based on symantic manipulation to try to prove that "theism" isn't a religion, but "atheism" is a religion, and from there that the above is just non-religious theism, while removing it would be promoting "the religion of atheism".)

The deal is we're hearing the results of decades, if not centuries, of lies and misconceptions continuously updated to serve whomever the speaker's purposes are.

Without getting into a long theology discussion (seems we agree on the semantics) Religion has long used "the word of god"...always interpreted by a mere mortal (generally a charlatan) that takes a personal bias or agenda and "justifies" it in a way it can't be questioned.

Just the oxymoronish concept of "Intelligent Design" shows this process in evolution. :rofl:

Even more painful is to listen to a group of these people attempt to reinforce one another or try to get their conflicted stories straight.

Welcome to DU. A great screen name!!

:hi:

He ties-in his conclusion with the fact that blacks are overly represented in police arrests. Yes, that's a fact. And the point, no the wall, that most white people can't seem to get through is that more black people are arrested by police because police policies overly target blacks with the approval of our white dominated society.

So a big DUH that black people are overly represented in jail. NOW IS THE TIME TO BRING UP THAT REPORT THAT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TRIED TO SQUELCH. THE ONE THAT CONCLUDED THAT BLACKS AND HISPANICS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE STOPPED THAN WHITES.

I haven't read Freakonomics, but I read reviews and commentary and hadn't heard their theory that crime reduction was tied to abortion framed in racial terms before the Bennett dust up. Does the book tie this observation to race, or was it just a little flourish added by Bennett? I think the latter (DUers who know the book, please correct me if I'm wrong here.)

in _Freakonomics_.

Haven't read the book, or even seen a review of it. But I was an avid reader of Science News for many, many years.

I read summaries of the research that correlates dense poverty with crime rate (and the disproportionate number of blacks that live in communities with dense poverty) back in '96? '98? In any event, far too long ago to remember either the year or the researchers' names. Rather than "I believe", I would have said "I think I recall." But some people use one for the other; the intonation disambiguates the two meanings.

The implication of the higher black abortion rate for the crime rate (and, I think, the poverty rate) in those communities I think was a few years later, and isn't a big stretch, to be honest. One of those "ah, yes ... a grad student should have spotted that" moments. The wild extrapolation, ostensibly meant as an example of wild extrapolation, was probably Bennett's.

BTW, to make the results valid, they considered only violent crime, not drug-related convictions.

The reason I asked specifically about Freakonomics is that Bennett used it as reference just before he made his wild extrapolation. With Bennett's C.V. I find it hard to believe he was unaware of the possible impact of his statement, although he may have forgotten that he was talking on air rather than in an informal discussion with friends. It is his refusal to apology that shows his racism.

Correlation of poverty concentration to crime rates has been documented, although I can't pull out any citations at the moment. I dumped most of my reference materials when I left the public policy research field.

"That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. "


"...but your crime rate would go down."


That tells me he believes blacks are more prone to commit crime because of some genetic disposition, and that's racist.

edit

It was a decent book, but kee-riced, it's this year's version of "bell curve" or "skeptical such-and-such" or "urban legend". (Or, even worse, "meme".) And Bill Bennett had his own little game with The Book of Virtues.

Everybody wants to get on the Freakonomics bandwagon. Everybody wants to be hip and not get "taken", to have the Inside Scoop on the Real Story. And for long-time Menckenites and neo-Nietzcheans, the appeal of NOT being part of the "herd" is so seductive there ought to be a personal lubricant for it. Fashionable intellectual independence feels so good, especially when it gives credibility to one's pet delusions. But too often it's an unhealthy obsession.

And who does "unhealthy obsession" better than right-wing jagoffs?

The Republicans -- mainly the younger neo-Cons -- try so hard to be hip that they will stop at nothing to burnish their "street cred", and intellectual fads are the easiest way to do this. Whatever value such fads may have (or have had), MIS-quoting from this year's book of Inside Dope is a popular GOP pasttime. It makes the Young Pub seem so wise, so suave, so worldly. In reality, he's just another blithering idiot thinking he can buy intellectual respectability in a dust jacket, and to hell with any valuable content within the pages.

With a tip of the hat to BiggJawn and Carl Sagan, I believe we're dealing with a Demon-Haunted Political Ideology and Party here.

--p!
I believe when I fall in love this time it will be forever.
(Stevie Wonder)

they go into the apology with the assumption that black people have a genetic predisposition to crime and that, therefore, it's true that aborting black babies would cause the crime rate to go down. They assume that what he said is true but that he shouldn't have said it or worded it poorly or something. But they assume that it's true.

to discuss social and public policy.

Correlation does not imply genetic predisposition. And the correlation exists, or at least existed when they reported numbers by race, even just looking at violent crimes. But it's not primarily a racial correlation: the racial aspect is secondary, because more blacks live in conditions that predispose people to criminality.

But that requires a reasoned debate. The research was done under Clinton's watch; the debate got under way, policies were promulgated and suggested. But nobody wanted them apart from a few wonks. The main effect was to remove the racial categorization from the publicly released numbers, and deny the problem exists.

Except they continue the breakdown of numbers for victims--it's ok to report violent crime disproportionately has AA victims. But to deny the crime rate correlation by community (not 'racial community', but 'geographic community') is to deny the problem, the causal relationship between conditions and crime rates resulting from decades of racism and alienation.

Unless there are serious changes made in this country, there will always be a poor underclass and if it isn't black people, then someone else will fill that void and we'll have the same problems. Poor people are at least convicted of more crime, but I'm not convinced they actually commit more crime. Tax fraud, embezzlement, etc., aren't convicted at nearly the same rate as the crimes of poor people.

"It is true that if you abort all black babies crime rates will go down". first it is not true, it is belief, and no one ever aborts a baby. They abort fetus or embyo never baby.

It's our duty however to point them out!

i.e. Ted Kennedy. Imagine if you were a teen African-American and you heard someone on the radio say that? Virtue would be to realize the incredible harm he's done, apologize and leave it at that. But not Bill B. What further demonstrates his bad character is his attack on Ted Kennedy.

Disgusting!