Quote:
Originally Posted by LessinSF
That review looks interesting and I will read when not a Friday night, i.e. when sober. But I can say now that I was not endorsing all of Shellenberger's arguments (such as they are - the book is often more incredibly well researched statistics (100 pages of footnotes) than conclusions), but that this book will either anger or epiphanize (I just invented the word) Sebby's progressive gift-recipients. It is a lesson in progressive failure, but weak in proposed change.
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He kind of drives me nuts because his climate book was endorsed as gospel by every over-70 right wing denier I know. It got maddening arguing that one book among literally libraries of others was somehow the final word on climate change.
But that's not his fault. And I don't think he's a charlatan. I just think he's all but assuredly wrong in his ultimate assessment.
Philly has a variant of the SF thing going on with its progressive DA, Krasner. There's a movement to hang Larry from City Hall right now, with every carjacking and mugging blamed on him. I don't think it's fair.
We over-incarcerate in this country. And the length of sentences is obscene. It's a cruel, stupid, vengeful system. And it creates more dangerous criminals, with prisons acting as grad schools in crime.
We had a pandemic. Shit does not return to normal overnight following a pandemic. The right wing crowd - which doesn't even like the cities or live in them - needs to be ignored. They're using the crime spikes which are totally normal and expected following a pandemic to create paranoia that is going to lead to a vicious and monumentally stupid resurgence in "tough on crime" politics.
More now than ever before cities and their justice systems need to be run by circumspect thinkers. It's "elitist," I know, and so politically probably impossible, but moderate apolitical technocrats need to be brought into city govts to handle this problem. The right wing and the progressives need to get out of the way, stop bending the conversation in counterproductive directions. Let a star chamber of pros fix things, because despite the shit one will hear to the contrary, the following can be done simultaneously:
1. Reform justice/enforcement to stop jailing/harassing/preying upon the poor and minorities at the ridiculous pace of the past; and,
2. Address violent crime.
You can look up the stats on the arrests in NY. It is a small percentage of criminals getting arrested and rearrested for violent crime. The cure is not to focus on entire communities of poor/minority people because "that's where the criminals are" or restart "broken windows" policing that crowds jails mindlessly. The solution is to identify and jail the recidivists.
