Thursday, June 25, 2020

About that move to defund police

Shutting down the police is a right-wing extremist shorthand. The real goal is to redirect some funding to address issues like mental health, drug addiction and poverty...   -From an email

There is a ton of material in these two sentences to chew on. In the interest of staying focused, let's concentrate on the second sentence.

The rush to main-stream the mentally ill
The mentally ill have been "main-streamed" into society at large. The effort was applauded by both the right and the left.

It was perceived as being exceptionally cost effective to main-stream the mentally ill because mental (emotional) healthcare is both expensive and it is very, very difficult to measure the outcomes.

It was also seen as an outgrowth of the American Disabilities Act. Why would you discriminate against somebody for something they had no control over? They MIGHT surprise everybody and perform swimmingly in society. In fact, many have.

The treatment of the mentally ill has improved greatly but the one constant is that the mentally/emotionally ill person has to want to improve. They have to take their meds. They have to go to counseling. They have to work at controlling themselves all the time.

There are many people who will refuse to take their meds, go to counseling or exert any effort to "regulate" themselves unless there is a constant and real chance they will be tossed in the klink.

Given that utopian mental health care is very expensive compared to tossing somebody in the hoosegow and forcing them to take their meds and attend counseling, the bottom line is that fewer people will be receiving mental health care if a big chunk of the police are vaporized.

Drug addiction
From an outcomes standpoint, how effective are the addiction programs Progressives intend to fund?

When you look at drug addiction issues they start looking a lot like mental health issues. In fact, they look like people with emotional issues self-medicating.

Poverty
Details? If Progressives have an anti-poverty program that works, one must wonder why they have kept it a secret since Lyndon B. Johnson.

Arts
The kid who becomes involved with the cops is almost never the kid quietly coloring in the corner.

Sports
Trying to clone suburbia in the inner-city. Sports programs in suburbia run on parent volunteers. As often as not, the fathers of the children in the programs. In the absence of a culture-of-volunteering, sports dies a quick death of not-enough-money.

Education
Modern education is the tar-pit that trapped many of these police involved peoples. It created the culture of victimhood and you-owe-me-dat.

What is the alternative? Teaching declension of nouns and conjugation of verbs to people who speak non-standard English? Teaching vocational skills when rich, suburban high-schools cannot retain instructors?

Behind the smoke screen
Legacy cities are in a budgetary death spiral.

Under-funded public pensions are rapidly turning into unfunded, public pensions. Public employees who retire before age sixty-five typically have some or much of their healthcare insurance premiums paid by the city they retired from, at least until Medicare kicks in.

Larger-and-larger chunks of revenue are absorbed by the under-funded or unfunded pensions. That money is not available for current operations. The police departments are being defunded, not to fund 'social programs' but to paper over the widening gap between revenue and promises made.

The tax-donkeys are flying out of the legacy cities. They see the handwriting on the wall. Why should they pay, pay, pay more taxes for the privilege of being victimized by the gimme-dats?

Property base will tank. Property taxes will plummet. A few super-virtue-signaling corporations like MS and Amazon might say in the municipal tax-base but most businesses without pricing power (read, monopoly) will flee. Income taxes will crater.

The situation that is currently dire will soon become dystopian.

10 comments:

  1. I can hardly imagine what it will be like in Minneapolis two years after they get rid of the police. I imagine it will closely resemble Monkey Island at the zoo when I was a child.

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  2. It's going to go from bad to worse. I've read some of Matt Bracken's scenarios. I think they're realistic. But I don't think we're quite there yet. Soon though. I think and hope the decline is going to be more of a stair step down than an outright collapse. What starts in the cities will spread to flyover land eventually. Especially with the media fanning the flames of discontent.
    Founding member of BLM is calling for the destruction of depictions of Christ as white and other religious artifacts. I believe that we are experiencing the beginning of the end times bible prophecy. It's going to be an ugly time for a while. But we'll get through it.

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    Replies
    1. If you do an image search on "mizrahi jews", that is, Jews of middle-eastern heritage, you will have a pretty good look at what Jesus PROBABLY looked like.

      Example here: https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.5648767.1515406776!/image/1018316866.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/1018316866.jpg

      I shrug my shoulders. The physical appearance of Jesus H. Christ is not what I focus on. He could look like Rosie O'Donnel or Michael Moore or Herbert Hoover or Jimmny Cricket. I. Don't. Care.

      I care about the values He taught. I care about His message.

      The devil seeks to distract us from the values and the message.

      I cheerfully flip the devil "the bird".

      Jesus offers a personal invitation to salvation. If it helps to have Jesus, Mary and the Apostles "look" like your tribe...Great. Have at it.

      But don't deny anybody else that luxury.

      Delete
  3. And they'll be begging for a handout from the Feds...

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    Replies
    1. And they will get it if the Progressives have power.

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  4. We're going to guns. No way around it. I hope you all are ready, and we'll meet on the other side.

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  5. I HOPE that we don't go right to the guns. A civil war would kill tens of millions. It would be an unimaginable bloodbath. Yes, I know that we "patriots" have most of the guns, but are you prepared to risk your family's safety just yet ? It will be like Europe in World War II. Yes, I will fight if I have to, but I am not looking forward to it, and I want to put it off as long as I can. My first priority is to protect my family. But if war comes, I will do my part. I don't know what that part will be yet, though.

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  6. I have seen a couple of surveys in which truckers will not deliver to cities who have terminated their police. If this actually happens it could turn dystopian in these locals in a hurry if no food etc is being delivered. Also I would have thought left wing rather than right wing. I agree entirely about Christ. Also note that Stalin and his cohorts tried to kill Christianity and today Russia may be more Christian than the USA.

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    Replies
    1. The writer of the email was chiding me for using the word abolish. His contention was the that it was more accurate to say "partially" defund the police. His claim was leaving out the word "partial" was a right-wing move.

      My gut feel is that either the National Guard would be pressed into service to drive trucks (not enough of them) and that enterprising folks in the suburbs would set up transfer warehouses. Truckers drop off outside city limits...their insurance companies are happy. Truckers from inside the city go to the designated drop-and-hook and do the pick-up. It could work but it would add cost and be a cluster festival at the start while things were worked out.

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  7. ". A few super-virtue-signaling corporations like MS and Amazon might say in the municipal tax-base but most businesses without pricing power (read, monopoly) will flee."

    The operations that the Techs have in high tax cities are expenses. Revenues are booked elsewhere. Google, foe example had its EU operations based in Ireland for the lowest tax rate in the EU. Hence the flooding of the poor benighted Emerald Isle with Pakis and Pandits.

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