Tag Archives: Real

Are Younger Police Officers More Productive Than Older Ones?

by BrianneDetwiler Posted on May 8, 2017

Mother Jones

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Tyler Cowen points us to a study from last year which concludes that police officers become “less productive” as they gain experience. Here’s the abstract:

This study analyzes two decades of data from a municipal police agency and describes the average patrol officer career productivity trajectory. We find that declines in productivity begin immediately after the first year of service and worsen over the course of officers’ careers. After their 20th year, patrol officers generate 88% fewer directed patrols, 50% fewer traffic warnings, 58% fewer traffic citations, 41% fewer warrant arrests, and 57% fewer misdemeanor arrests compared to officers with 1 year of experience. Using a patrol officer productivity metric called Z-score per Productive Time (Z-PRO), we estimate that each additional year of service decreases an officer’s overall productivity by about 2%. Z-PRO also indicates that after 21 years of service, an average officer will be approximately 35% less productive overall than an officer with 1 year of service.

There’s an issue of framing here: What is the “proper” level of productivity for a police officer? Perhaps the real issue is that newish police officers are overzealous. They’re eager to ticket anyone going 6 miles over the speed limit. They arrest anyone hanging out on a corner who turns out to have a joint in their pocket. Etc.

It’s not necessarily the case that more is always better. To really judge this stuff, you’d also need to measure the quality of arrests and traffic citations in some way. It’s possible that older officers arrest less because their experience tells them it’s better to let the small stuff go, but have a better eye for genuinely dangerous behavior.

Then again, maybe they just get lazy.

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Are Younger Police Officers More Productive Than Older Ones?

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Our Dishonest President — Part 1 of 1 Million

by WilsonElsey Posted on April 2, 2017

Mother Jones

Oh man. Here’s the lead editorial in the LA Times this morning:

This could go on forever. The online version suggests that it’s only four parts, finishing up on Wednesday, but who knows what we’ll find out between now and then? By 2020—or however long Trump lasts—this could end up being a thousand-part editorial.

And while we’re on the subject, a federal judge has ruled that it’s OK for a lawsuit to go forward accusing Trump of inciting violence at one of his campaign rallies last March. That’s sure something you don’t see every day. But Wikipedia tells me the judge is some notorious Obama appointee, so he’s probably taking direction from the same folks who ordered Trump wiretapped. As the president puts it:

Yessir. Find the leakers, and we’ll probably also find out who’s pulling the strings of this so-called judge.

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Our Dishonest President — Part 1 of 1 Million

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Trump Throws Ryan Under the Bus in the Classiest Way Possible

by WalkerMcCranie Posted on March 26, 2017

Mother Jones

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On Friday—that’s 24 hours ago for those of you with short memories—President Trump insisted that he had no hard feelings toward Paul Ryan. Ryan had worked hard on the health care bill, and it was just bad luck that it failed. In fact, it was really the fault of the Democrats, who hadn’t provided a single vote. Not one!

However, experienced Trump watchers noticed a brief aside: he mentioned that there were a few things he would have done differently—but he wasn’t going to talk about that. This is Trump code for “I’m not to blame and I won’t be able to bottle up my whining for long. I definitely will talk about these things eventually.”

So how long would Trump be able to hold his tongue? A few days? A whole week? Nope. About 18 hours, it turned out:

And here’s what Jeanine Pirro said a few hours after that on her Fox News program:

What a guy. Within 24 hours Trump is sticking a shiv in Paul Ryan’s back without even a pretense of keeping it private. He doesn’t have the guts to tell Ryan to his face, so instead he uses a TV show to pass along the message.

The real message, of course, is that no one should ever work with Trump. He’ll throw you under the bus at the first hint that he needs someone to take the blame for something that went awry. And maybe Ryan should take him up on this. When John Boehner retired and Kevin McCarthy flamed out, Republicans were literally left with no plausible candidates for Speaker who were acceptable to all factions of the party. Ryan was the only one who came close, so if he quits the GOP is in for some real chaos. That’s just what they need as they try to get a budget in place and start work on a hugely complex tax cut for the rich.

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Trump Throws Ryan Under the Bus in the Classiest Way Possible

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Trump Beats Obama LOLOLOLOLOL

by Tera258437 Posted on March 25, 2017

Mother Jones

The American Action Network PAC aired a bunch of ads on basketball games tonight congratulating Republican members of Congress for voting to repeal Obamacare. Here’s my artist’s conception of Obama’s response.

Pete Souza/The White House via ZUMA

Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Barton (R–TX) earns quote-of-the-day honors for this explanation of why, after Republicans had unanimously voted to repeal Obamacare repeatedly over the past six years, they couldn’t get it done this time:

Sometimes you’re playing Fantasy Football and sometimes you’re in the real game. We knew the president, if we could get a repeal bill to his desk, would almost certainly veto it. This time we knew if it got to the president’s desk it would be signed.

LOLOLOLOLOL. And Trump himself comes in a close second:

I’m a team player….It’s very hard when you need almost 100 percent of the votes and we have no votes, zero, from the Democrats. It’s unheard of.

Unheard of! LOLOLOLOLOL.

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Trump Beats Obama LOLOLOLOLOL

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Trump’s Budget Is Basically a Very Long Tweet

by BerryDeLaCondami Posted on March 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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Just a quick note to repeat something I said a few days ago: don’t pay any more attention to President Trump’s budget than you do to his tweets. It’s not meant as a serious proposal. It’s just a way for him to send a message to his fans that he hates the EPA and the State Department and loves vets and the Pentagon.

The real action is in Congress. They won’t pay any attention to Trump’s budget, and he knows it.

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Trump’s Budget Is Basically a Very Long Tweet

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Slavitt: Obamacare Should Be Profitable This Year if Republicans Don’t Blow It Up

by TyreeP48paejrf Posted on February 10, 2017

Mother Jones

Andy Slavitt ran the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Obama, which included responsibility for Obamacare. Here’s a tweetstorm he posted today:

I talked today/last night to 5 health plan CEOs. Won’t use names but: 1 Blues, 1 integrated w hospital, 2 non-profit, 1 VC backed. All 5 health plan CEOs believe they priced 2017 #ACA business & should at least breakeven. Several of the plans beat their ACA membership projections.

Of the 5 plans, w/ current uncertainty none can yet commit 2 participate in 2018. All seemed aware that new #ACA stability reg is coming. One plan said with all the work to be profitable in the #ACA (they hadn’t been), ironic to question participation now.

….They didn’t say, but I will: if there is ambiguity, they will raise prices if they participate. One CEO who has an actuarial background said he would be at single digit rate increases but for all the uncertainty. It sounds like the plans will submit #ACA rates for 2018 high to hold place in line. Big increases all from repeal & mandate uncertainty.

It is a shame. Not sure if representative, but single digit if we would wipe uncertainty off table. Still can. But needs to be fast….I think people are so weary of the unpredictability of politics. It zaps energy from their real jobs.

We don’t yet have final enrollment figures for 2017, but it appears that even with double-digit rate increases, uncertainty over Republican repeal plans, and deliberate sabotage from the new Trump administration, signups will be only 2-3 percent lower than last year. That’s a pretty stable market, and probably a profitable—or at least breakeven—one. Fairly modest changes could fix a lot of Obamacare’s existing problems, and higher funding could fix the rest of them.

Instead, we have massive uncertainty in an industry that felt like things had finally settled down after years of work. Slavitt is right: it’s a shame. We can only hope that Republicans will wake up and decide that repairing Obamacare and then taking credit for its success is a better path than blowing up the entire individual health insurance market.

Source: 

Slavitt: Obamacare Should Be Profitable This Year if Republicans Don’t Blow It Up

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Trump Accidentally Makes Support of Civil Asset Forfeiture Administration Policy

by AraceliHeinig Posted on February 7, 2017

Mother Jones

The latest from our president:

Actually, Trump was obviously joking about destroying the nameless senator’s career. The real scandal is what the conversation was about:

SHERIFF: A state senator in Texas was talking about introducing legislation to require conviction before we can receive that forfeiture money.

TRUMP: Can you believe that?

The target here was probably Konni Burton:

Before the 85th Texas Legislative Session formally opened on Tuesday, state lawmakers had already filed a handful of bills that would curb or strike down the law enforcement practice known as civil forfeiture, which allows law enforcement officials to seize assets from those suspected, not charged or convicted, of involvement in criminal activity.

Konni Burton, R-Colleyville, has her name on the most comprehensive of the lot. Senate Bill 380 was pre-filed on Dec. 20 and would reform asset forfeiture laws to prohibit the state of Texas from taking an individual’s property without a criminal conviction, in most cases.

….Burton’s bill aims to make sure the possessors of that property, or cash in many cases, are actually criminals and the property related to actual crime before the cops have the right to seize it….Predictably, opposition to such bills comes mainly from law enforcement agencies that seize cash and stand to gain from the sale of seized property.

This demonstrates the problem with Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip style.1 My guess is that he has no idea what civil asset forfeiture is and has no real opinion about it. If, say, Trump had been in a meeting with a few senators, and Bob Goodlatte had remarked that “police can seize your money even if you weren’t convicted of a crime,” Trump probably would have reflexively answered, “Can you believe that?” Instead, a sheriff said it was a bad thing related to Mexicans, so Trump automatically agreed with him. That means it’s now official Trump administration policy.

Sad. But then again, Jeff Sessions is a huge fan of civil asset forfeiture and all the corrupt incentives it creates, so he probably would have gotten Trump on board one way or another. It’s yet another big win for the working class.

1One of the problems, anyway.

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Trump Accidentally Makes Support of Civil Asset Forfeiture Administration Policy

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Ford’s Plans in Mexico Have Nothing to do With Donald Trump

by pelerinajemanastiri Posted on January 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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Here’s the news from Ford:

The automaker also said it is canceling plans for a new $1.6 billion plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, but confirmed that the next-generation of its Focus compact will be produced at its Hermosillo, Mexico factory.

Ford CEO Mark Fields said the decision to cancel the plant in Mexico was based in part on changing market conditions with sales of small cars declining as well as the pro-business climate the automaker expects under incoming President Donald Trump. “This is a vote of confidence for president elect Trump and some of the policies he may be pursuing,” Fields at the plant today.

The real reason this is happening is that Ford has suffered sales declines in its Fusion sedan, which is made at its Mexico plant, as well as sales declines in the Mustang, which is made in Flat Rock, Michigan. There’s not much point in building a new small-car plant anywhere if Fusion sales are down, and not much point in underutilizing its Flat Rock plant.

And it’s not as if Ford is moving any production from Mexico to the United States. All it’s doing in Flat Rock is some expansion to build self-driving and electric vehicles. This involves a grand total of 700 jobs, which were never going to be in Mexico in the first place.

In other words, this was a pure business decision. So why is Mark Fields giving Trump a big shout out? Because he figures there’s no harm in spinning this into flattery of the incoming president. It might help and it can’t hurt.

But it ain’t so. Ford sales of sedans and small cars are tanking. If they were doing better, they’d still be building that new plant in Mexico.

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Ford’s Plans in Mexico Have Nothing to do With Donald Trump

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Why Ben Carson’s HUD Confirmation Hearing Should Probe His Tie to a Felonious Dentist

by WilbertMoulds8 Posted on December 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump’s selection of Ben Carson as the new secretary of housing and urban development is puzzling. After all, Carson was a world-renowned brain surgeon who has never held a government job before. Recently, a top adviser to Carson noted that the retired doctor was not interested in joining the Trump administration because “he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency.” Yet Carson two weeks ago did claim he had sufficient experience for the HUD job, saying, “I know that I grew up in the inner city and have spent a lot of time there, and have dealt with a lot of patients from that area.” But his campaign website’s issues page made no mention of housing policy. And the extent of his public pronouncements on housing seems restricted to an odd statement in which he compared attempts to desegregate public housing to “failed socialist experiments.”

Yet Carson does have experience with real estate and home building, thanks to his association with an investor who once pleaded guilty to committing fraud.

Much of Carson’s personal wealth, estimated to be at least $8 million, is tied up in a handful of real estate deals. These deals were engineered with the assistance of a close friend named Alfonso Costa. Costa was once a successful Pittsburgh dentist, but he went into the real estate game full time after pleading guilty to a conspiracy to commit health insurance fraud. Now Costa runs a successful commercial and high-end luxury real estate empire with properties in Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, Italy, and elsewhere. Costa also heads the Pittsburgh office of Carson’s charity, and he appears to have managed Carson’s real estate investments.

An investigation by Mother Jones last fall showed that Carson’s investments included ownership of a commercial office building in suburban Pittsburgh that netted Carson and his wife between $200,000 and $2 million in 2015. The holding companies used to buy this building were registered at Costa’s home, and Costa managed the buildings on behalf of Carson.

But that’s not Carson’s only apparent involvement with Costa. On his most recent personal financial disclosure forms, Carson listed owning a plot of land in Palm Beach County, Florida, which seems to be a rather grand horse farm:

But according to property records, the estate was actually owned by Costa’s real estate development company. For more than a year, it was listed for sale at $10 million, but records show it has never been sold. Sotheby’s currently lists the farm, which includes a riding ring, 22-stalls, brick floors, tack rooms, and a small apartment for a caretaker, for rent at $330,000 a month. Carson’s campaign refused to confirm his role in the investment.

In response to questions from Mother Jones about Costa, Carson a year ago said:

Al Costa is my best friend. Al Costa is my very best friend. I know his heart. I am proud to call him my friend. I have always and will continue to stand by him. That is what real friends do!

Carson’s relationship with Costa dates back to before Costa’s 2007 arrest and indictment on the health care fraud charge. In a 2013 book, Carson wrote that doctors who commit health care fraud should get “the Saudi Arabian Solution,” although he allowed he “would not advocate chopping off people’s limbs.” But years earlier Carson had appeared in court as a character witness for Costa and had asked the judge to impose a lenient sentence on his friend. At that time, he wrote in a letter to the court, “Next to my wife of 32 years, there is no one on this planet I trust more than Al Costa.”

Carson and Costa have vacationed together, and Carson has spent time at a luxury villa owned by Costa on the Amalfi coast of Italy.

In years past, HUD has been an agency prone to cronyism and corruption. So it might be worthwhile for senators involved in Carson’s confirmation to vet Carson closely and to examine his relationship with a convicted felon.

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Why Ben Carson’s HUD Confirmation Hearing Should Probe His Tie to a Felonious Dentist

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Donald Trump, Champion of the Working Class, Is Filling His Cabinet With Billionaires

by AlvaroAsher Posted on November 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Donald Trump and his possible choice for secretary of state Mitt Romney were photographed dining at Jean-Georges, a three-star Michelin restaurant located inside the president-elect’s Manhattan hotel property. The two men, accompanied by Reince Priebus, reportedly feasted on frog legs, lamb chops, and chocolate cake:

During the campaign, such images of the two would have seemed inconceivable. In March, Romney dedicated an entire press conference to blasting the real estate magnate as a fraud. Much of Trump’s campaign also decried Hillary Clinton’s ties to Wall Street and billionaire donors.

But three weeks after Trump won the general election, both the Jean-Georges dinner and Romney’s potential role in a Trump administration are only in the latest incidents in what is increasingly shaping up to be a presidential cabinet dominated by millionaire—even billionaire—appointees. Just take a look at the reported estimated net worths of Trump’s picks so far:

Betsy DeVos: $5.1 billion, married to Richard DeVos Jr., co-founder of AmWay and member of the DeVos political dynasty
Wilbur Ross: $2.9 billion, “vulture investments”
Elaine Chao: $37 million (together with husband Sen. Mitch McConnell), from family inheritance and sits on several corporate boards
Steve Mnuchin: $40 million, former Goldman Sachs banker with Hollywood ties
Tom Price: $13.6 million, former orthopedic surgeon

And they share more in common than just millions of dollars and a taste for expensive restaurants. They’re all outspoken opponents of LGBTQ rights.

In his cabinet picks, Trump appears to be flagrantly abandoning his campaign promises to “drain the swamp” and eliminate big money interests once he takes office. The question is: When will Trump supporters realize they’ve been conned?

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Donald Trump, Champion of the Working Class, Is Filling His Cabinet With Billionaires

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