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Between 2010 and 2011, California experienced a drastic 20 percent decrease in juvenile crime–bringing the underage crime rate to the lowest level since the state started keeping records in 1954.
1954.
In that one-year period, the number of arrests for violent crimes dropped by 16 percent, homicide went down by 26 percent and drug arrests decreased by nearly 50 percent.
The vast majority of the drop resulted from far fewer arrests for marijuana possession…..
California’s 2010 law did not legalize marijuana, but it officially knocked down “simple” possession of less than one ounce to an infraction from a misdemeanor–and it applies to minors, not just people over 21. Police don’t arrest people for infractions; usually, they ticket them. And infractions are punishable not by jail time, but by fines–a $100 fine in California..
The study, entitled “California Youth Crime Plunges to All-Time Low” and released by the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, looked at the number of people under the age of 18 who were arrested in the state over the past eight decades.
It appears it took a while for America to get smart. While experiencing the enlightenment of marijuana….. kids aren’t committing violent crimes…
It is time to reduce juvenile crime across the entire country…..
Duffy is God’s answer to a prayer.. I miss the old days of blogging when we were debating principals instead of people… Duffy has stuck to the old line of debating principals with facts, and that is what makes him special in the eyes of bloggers everywhere…
Since the passing of Steve Newton, he has been the only one to challenge me in any argument, and usually some pretty good stuff comes out of both sides during the exchange… I have respected that.. Cause once again, opinions mean dick. Facts are what we steer by.. It is my hope that in responding to his challenge that an answer may make itself apparent.. Who knows? It may not come from me… But if I’m the catalyst for bringing it out in the open, then… none of this was in vain..
Why I like to debate Duffy is simple.. Neither side, he or I, is concretely set in their opinions… We accept it when the other side makes sense… I usually go into such debates having no idea where they’ll end up… I hope the rest of you enjoy the ride as welI….
That said..
kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate.
First off, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was developed for, and locked in on, urban developmental areas and had no part of the subprime boom, which primarily occurred out in western desert regions where owning 4 to 5 investment homes was normal… Those homes were overwhelmingly funded by loan originators NOT SUBJECT to the act… We all know the crises was not because people couldn’t afford a payment on their house. It came about, because with no occupants, people could not afford the payments of 4 to 5 houses….. Instead of one loan per borrower turning up in default; four to five were.
Second off, The housing bubble reached its point of maximum inflation in 2005.
Courtesy of NYT
Third off, During those exact same years, Fannie and Freddie were sidelined by Congressional pressure, and saw a sharp drop in their share of loans secured by the Feds… Follow the dotted line on the very bottom of the graph…
Courtesy of NYT
Fourth off; During those exact same years, private secures, like Delaware’s own AIG, grabbed the lions share of the market.
Courtesy of NYT
Remember these graphs for later on when I discuss the results of deregulation, versus regulation… But like it or not, these graphs conclusively show that private insurers, who thanks to Marie Evans, we now know were deregulated by Phil Gramm in the 2000 Omnibus Bill, were the primary cause of the worlds financial collapse.. Probably put best by these words of AIG’s spokesperson, who when asked why they didn’t have sufficient funds to cover losses, said point blank, “We were deregulated. We were no laws requiring us to keep any funds, ..so we spent it…”
kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. I agree that the hedge funds did survive better than the banks. Not because of bailouts, but because they sold short during the crises and made billions while firms closed and people got thrown out of work. There is nothing wrong with that; I did the same. In fact close readers may remember my warnings that the crises was impending almost a year earlier. Very close readers may remember my telling them exactly when to sell, and at what point the stock market would rebound… I must say: I called it rather well. 🙂
De regulated hedge funds are not the issue… De-regulated, excessively leveraged, mortgage securities, are a different story however… They, not the banks that held them, are the cause of the crises…Years from now, when academics search for causes of the stock market crash of 2008, they will focus on the pivotal role of mortgage-backed securities. These exotic financial instruments allowed a downturn in U.S. home prices to morph into a contagion that brought down Bear Stearns a year ago this month – and more recently have brought the global banking system to its knees.
Where you err is when you state that banks too big to fail, assumed they would be bailed out… By implication, you say imply they failed from squandering money, and wanted the bailouts.. But your tax dollars didn’t flow directly to the bottom line.
So in that sense, the bailout money represents an expense for banks. That’s one reason a number of banks have said they want to give the money back as soon as possible.
You say big banks were counting on a bailout, and they got them? That didn’t happen to these banks. New Mexico, Georgia, and Florida each lost a bank just last Friday. That brings to 8, the number of banks failed in June. Unfortunately if a bank is failing, it can’t bet on itself to fail, as can a hedge fund.
kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. The idea is that the banks made bad decisions knowing taxpayers would bail them out is the issue that is inaccurate. For the record, I have no qualms that it was the Clinton legacy who tore down the wall between banks and investment banking. Like you, I feel it was a good idea to do so… Again the problem was not primarily with banks making loans to people who could not pay.. Although, it was as late as October 2009, when I was made aware of one private Bank in Denver still exaggerating income to make loans look good enough on paper to get approval of securitization. What caused the collapse was the leveraging of those loans as securities, so that as the housing market became overextended, and the ARM jumped past the low cost opening years, the damage was 100 times worse because of leveraging. What made the collapse criminal, was that the insurance most financial institutions had bought from AIG, to cover such an improbable event, had already spent by that companies executives, out on bonuses to themselves. What made it doubly criminal, was that when they received government dollars through a taxpayer bailout, those same executives assumed it was to first go towards paying their bonuses again. However, very recent events may give some cover to the argument that some collusion was implicit in the bailing out of Goldman Sacs and AIG… Basically, once bailed out, AIG paid Goldman Sacs for shares twice as much as they were worth. The documents also indicate that regulators ignored recommendations from their own advisers to force the banks to accept losses on their A.I.G. deals and instead paid the banks in full for the contracts.
Today’s intellectual allotment was strewn throughout comments on a multiplicity of posts.
🙂
Somehow I came across a blog about Ryan Seacrest’ s interview with Britney Spears. The line that bothered me was how she was quiet and her “handlers” answered all the questions for her…..
As I was thinking “that’s sad” I had a nudge within my memory bank that said this has happened before…..It took some time to burn through the slow fog over memories past but eventually I remembered reading that before her end, Marylin Monroe had acted the same way…..
Towards her end there were attempts by Marylin to retake control over her own life, but eventually she was out-foxed and re-boxed by her “trusted” handlers. There were similar rages, (no shaved head) that were tsk’d tsk’d as signs of a coming “breakdown”…Sedate her was the answer…..And find a quiet sanitarium……
Then one day she was gone…………and many a young man, who understood her frailty, would pine if only he had been there for her…………..
There is still time for Brittney…So what’s the big deal you might wonder? If one basks in the sun too long, it goes to ones head….Celebrities are so spoiled these days…….No one cares for the average victim, the runaways in the same situation……
Thats a good point, But I guess it can be said that if Britney Spears goes, then part of us goes as well…..Similar to the typical Ming vase, lasting for centuries, that often gets shattered on Hollywood’s floor, the loss of any piece of art that inspires someone, is a loss indeed.
And Britney inspired many…So many prayed she would get back on track at the MVA awards………she didnt…….For ten years she has been the inspiration for so many girls. She’s occupied the thoughts of a few guys as well….
We can say this episode is not important and move on. But in doing so we set another tragedy in motion….A better alternative would be to offer love and support, and forgive past discretions based on our appreciation of her young artistry…..A young artist has a hard time. Mozart, Van Gogh, Jim Morrison come to mind. For at that young age, once the peak has past it is a long downward slide…..Britney evolved the new art form of song and dance into the mainstream ….Put a mike on anyone and they say “I look like Britney Spears.” Now she should stick to just singing. just as the Stones should probably stick to studio sessions.
Instead of a person I think she sees herself as an icon, a possession, as was Marylin Monroe. A board of directors, demanding something new, more return for the dollar….and she feels she has already given…much more than many who have gone before her…
I recommend a trip to India. Not as did Paris, to meet up with drunken elephants, but to do what the Beatles did, and to a certain extent, doing so kept them from going off the deep end,…..the same one as is facing this popular icon now. For as silly as it sounds, the new perspective given by the Maharishi, kept the Fab Four producing for a long, long time…….
Currently it seems as if Britney has no floor to stand on…..If she does not want to follow Marylin, she needs to lose her “flunkies” and “get a life.