Author Archives: HassanE54kqinqhe

2015: The Great Crime Wave That Wasn’t

by HassanE54kqinqhe Posted on December 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Was there a huge crime wave in 2015? There are two main sources for crime rates in the United States. The FBI produces the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), which is based on reporting from police agencies. The Bureau of Justice Statistics produces the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which conducts surveys of ordinary Americans and asks if they’ve been a crime victim in the past year. Rick Nevin breaks down the numbers:

The 2015 NCVS property crime rate (household burglary, motor vehicle theft, and other theft) was down 6.3% from 2014…2015 UCR burglary rate…down 8.5%…UCR larceny-theft rate…down 2.5%…UCR property crime rate…down 3.4% from 2014….roughly consistent with the NCVS data showing the property crime rate falling 6.3% in 2015 to a record low.

The UCR violent crime rate (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) should be roughly consistent with the NCVS serious violent crime rate (sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault),1but the UCR violent crime rate increased 3.0% in 2015 as the NCVS serious violent crime rate fell 11.7%….

OK, hold on. Everyone agrees that property crime is down, but the FBI says the reported violent crime rate increased 3 percent while the NCVS survey data says it decreased 11.7 percent? What’s going on? The biggest components of the violent crime index are robbery and aggravated assault. Both the UCR and the NCVS agree closely about the robbery rate, so that means there must be some kind of discrepancy in the aggravated assault rate:

The 2015 UCR aggravated assault rate was up 3.8% from 2014….NCVS total aggravated assaults were down 25.2% in 2015, and NCVS aggravated assaults reported to police were down 20.7%.

Yikes! Long story short, Nevin shows that this divergence between UCR and NCVS has been increasing for the past decade. The culprit, apparently, is exactly the opposite of the frequent allegation that police departments understate serious crime in order to make themselves look better. “The fact that NCVS victims are reporting aggravated assaults far below UCR recorded aggravated assaults suggests that police have become far more expansive than crime victims are when it comes to defining aggravated assault, perhaps to protect against allegations that the police undercount serious violent crime.”

Most likely, then, there’s a longstanding issue of how aggravated assault is reported and categorized. Basically, police departments underreported it in the past and are now overreporting it. Aggravated assault probably decreased or held steady in 2015, which means the overall rate of violent crime was also either down or steady.

There was an increase in the murder rate last year, from 4.44 in 2014 to 4.88 in 2015 (per 100,000). This is a significant jump, and it was apparently fueled by an especially large jump in about a dozen big cities. This is cause for concern, especially since the murder rate usually correlates roughly with the overall violent crime rate. The divergence last year is unusual, and we don’t yet know what explains it. It might just be a random spike, or it could suggest something worse.

But while murder gets the headlines, it’s only one small component of the overall crime rate. Overall property crime was down last year and overall violent crime was probably down too. These are, by far, the crimes that actually affect most people. With the exception of a few pockets of increased homicide, America continues to get safer and safer.

1The NCVS numbers don’t include homicide because you obviously can’t survey murder victims. However, homicide is a tiny part of the overall violent crime rate, so that doesn’t account for the difference between UCR and NCVS figures.

Link to article:

2015: The Great Crime Wave That Wasn’t

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Chart of the Day: Brexit Would Have Turned Out Very Differently if Kids Turned Out to Vote

by HassanE54kqinqhe Posted on June 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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This will come as no surprise, but here’s the fundamental reason that Brexit won:

The younger the voter, the more strongly they voted to remain in the EU. The older the voter, the more likely they were to actually get out and vote. Eventually the kids are going to figure out how badly their elders are screwing them, and maybe then they’ll finally muster the energy to cast a ballot. I wonder what it’s going to take to make that happen?

(Preference via YouGov. Turnout via SkyData.)

Continued: 

Chart of the Day: Brexit Would Have Turned Out Very Differently if Kids Turned Out to Vote

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Louisiana Republicans Now Wish They’d Never Heard of Grover Norquist

by HassanE54kqinqhe Posted on June 9, 2015

Mother Jones

It’s hardly surprising when Democrats criticize Grover Norquist, the godfather of the anti-tax movement. But following like sheep behind Norquist’s demands to lower taxes always and everywhere has gotten states in so much trouble that even some Republicans are now begging him to be a little less obstinate. Sadly for Louisiana, Norquist is having none of it:

A group of self-described “conservative” Republican state representatives took their complaints to Norquist himself, asking him to give them some wiggle room on raising taxes and to shoot down some Jindal-backed legislation that they say would set a “dangerous precedent” in how government could mask revenue hikes.

….Sunday’s letter — signed by Louisiana House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Joel Robideaux (R) and 10 other state Republican representatives — asked Norquist to take into account the previous tax cuts Louisiana has passed in recent years and the effect they will have in the future when assessing whether the state is in compliance with the no tax pledge….Furthermore it asked Norquist to weigh in on the so-called SAVE proposal, which they said would allow governments in the future to raise billions of dollars in revenue in the guise of a revenue-neutral budget.

….However, Norquist refused to take the bait. While declining to come out for or against the tax credit proposal, he said it qualified as an offset and asked the lawmakers, “If you don’t like the SAVE Act, why not find other offsetting tax cuts that are more to your liking? “Norquist also scoffed at the Republicans’ plea that their past tax cuts be taken into account, writing “under that logic, President Obama could argue he didn’t raise taxes.”

In other words, go pound sand. But then, what did they expect? Norquist has one and only one thing going for him—thou shalt never raise taxes, no how, no way—and Bobby Jindal is still delusional enough to think he’s running for president. So no taxes are going to be raised in the Pelican State. And if that causes massive pain and dislocation? Well, that’s just tough, isn’t it?

Source – 

Louisiana Republicans Now Wish They’d Never Heard of Grover Norquist

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