Im-Politic: A Critical Test Failed by Critical Race Theory?

Tags

African Americans, critical race theory, Im-Politic, Pew Research Center, racism, systemic racism

As I’ve written previously, polls did such a lousy job predicting the results of last year’s U.S. midterm election that I’m reluctant to devote to many posts to these soundings on any subject. I’m making a new exception today, though, because Pew Research Center findings that were released yesterday revealed results that appear to just demolish widespread claims that American history is a story of virtually uninterrupted systemic racism.

At this point, I need to add a qualifier I often use on Twitter: “If true.” Both because of all the evidence that polling is seriously flawed, and because the question prompting such a stunning answer isn’t exactly a model of precision or detail. But given the pervasiveness of the Critical Race Theory I alluded to above, the results can’t be completely ignored, either.

Here’s the question: “In general, would you say life in America today is better, worse, or about the same as it was 50 years ago for people like you?”

And the response that blew me away: By a 41 percent to 33 percent margin, black adults said that life five decades back was better for them and presumably other African Americans, as opposed to being worse, than at present.

Overall, many more Americans overall (58 percent to 23 percent) said life was better in the early 1970s, as opposed to being worse, than it is today. So the survey is telling us that Americans in general were more satisfied than black Americans with their lot half a century ago, which (for what it’s worth) passes both the common sense and pervasive racism tests.

In addition, “better” doesn’t necessarily mean good – also bolstering the case that thoroughgoing racism has been a constant, even relatively recently. And I’m sure there are those who will claim that Donald Trump is such a racist, and that the former President has inspired so much prejudice in his followers, that of course African Americans’ situation was better even many years before.

Think, though, about the early 1970s. Consumer inflation in America was higher than today and still rising. The unemployment picture was considerably worse. Most of the big American cities that contained so much of the country’s African-American population were in sad decline. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s had run its course, “white backlash” had reared its head, affirmative action programs hadn’t yet spread beyond the federal government, and a president widely thought to have won the White House largely through racist dog whistles was sitting in the Oval Office.

And even so, more than four in ten African American adults told Pew that, compared with today, those were the good old days? Or at least the not-so-bad old days?

Again, it’s a poll, so it certainly doesn’t justify jumping to the conclusion that all was fine and dandy with U.S. race relations then, or even close, or is now.  But unless we’re back in the embarrassingly primitive “Dewey Beats Truman” days (and who really thinks we are?), there’s at least as much reason to think that today’s Critical Race Theory crowd is missing something crucial about race in America today as is this new Pew report.     

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Im-Politic: Where America’s Schools are Best in Fostering Employment

Tags

economy, education, Employment, Im-Politic, Jobs, public schools, schools, state and local government, students, teachers

So it turns out that America’s public school systems have been excelling on the employment front after all. Only their perfomance has nothing to do with their effectiveness at equipping students with the knowledge and skills needed for successful careers. Instead, it has to do with their effectiveness in creating jobs in public school systems – and specifically, growing employment much faster than public school enrollment has increased.

And although most education specialists believe (understandably, IMO), that the lower student-teacher ratios get, the more the former learn, widely accepted measures of student performance show that this relatively rapid expansion of public school system employees has achieved nothing of the kind.

That may be because teachers are getting worse (or at least less capable of teaching today’s students), or because too many of the new workers in school systems are doing something other than classroom teaching. The (official) data I present below doesn’t distinguish between types of public education jobs, and which types have risen faster than others. 

The big picture, though, should worry anyone concerned about lagging public school performance: From 1980 through 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Education, the numbers of students in the nation’s primary and secondary schools were up by 22.16 percent – from 40.877 million to 49.375 million.

But the Labor Department figures peg the expansion of employment in “local education” during that period at 58.77 percent – from 5.073 million to 8.054 million. That’s nearly three times as fast.

And the disparity between the two growth rates has been pretty remarkable during some timeframes. For example, between 1980 and 1990, public school enrollment inched up by just 0.83 percent. But local education employment jumped by 15.45 percent.

Between 1991 and 2001 (generally the years of that decade’s economic recovery), public school enrollment grew by 12.26 percent. But local education systems added 24.29 percent more workers. That’s nearly twice as many.

As made clear by the Bloomberg piece that sparked my curiosity about the trends, the CCP Virus pandemic brought these trends to a screeching halt. Thanks to extended school closings, their aftermath, and other Covid-driven changes in the U.S. employment picture, between 2020 and last year, even though public school enrollment expanded by 1.13 percent, the local education workforce actually shrank by 3.66 percent.

More recently, local education payrolls have rebounded, and as Bloomberg‘s Nic Querolo reports, have almost returned to their pre-pandemic levels. And because municipal finances overall are in unexpectedly excellent shape for now, state and local governments may well be able to boost education headcounts further.

But will public school enrollment keep growing as quickly? (No figures for this year are available yet.) Will the result (finally) be better educational outcomes? Will state and local governments and taxpayers care enough to start changing what seems to be a losing game for students and the country in general? I’ll be eagerly anticipating the full year 2023 enrollment and local education employment data for further insights. 

Im-Politic: Despite Census Cheerleading, U.S. Cities Keep Taking It on the Population Chin

Tags

CCP Virus, Census Bureau, cities, coronavirus, counties, COVID 19, crime, demogaphics, homelessness, housing, Im-Politic, population, taxes

I never expected the U.S. Census Bureau to act like a pusher of hopium. Now that I’ve read through its new report on county-level population changes from 2021 through last year, I’m not so sure.

“Growth in the Nation’s Largest Counties Rebounds in 2022,” declared the report’s press release. But it didn’t.  Certainly not in total, which is what counts the most.

The release makes clear that by “the largest counties,” Census means the United States’ ten most populous. In descending demographic order, they are:

Los Angeles (Cal.))

Cook (Ill.)

Harris (Tex.)

Maricopa (Az.)

San Diego (Cal.)

Orange (Cal.)

Miami-Dade (Fla.)

Dallas (Tex.)

Kings (NY.)

Riverside (Cal.)

For those unfamiliar with how some of the less familiar names correlate with more familiar names, Cook is Chicago and nearby suburbs, Harris is Houston and nearby suburbs, Maricopa is Phoenix and nearby suburbs, Kings is Brooklyn, and Orange and Riverside are Los Angeles suburbs. That is, on balance, they’re all really urban.

If the growth of this group rebounded, then you’d expect them collectively to have gained population between 2021-22. But altogether, they lost 74,712 residents.

Now that’s a heck of a lot better than their performance in 2021, when their net losses were 366,423. (Census’ 2020-21 figures cover a period three months longer than the 2021-22 numbers.) But a loss of nearly 75,000 people is by no means “growth.”

Maybe Census was referring to the fact that between 2020 and 2021, seven of these top ten counties lost population whereas from 2021 to 2022, only four saw absolute declines (Los Angeles, Cook, Orange, and Kings)? Or that all of these people losers experienced slower population declines from 2021-22 than the year before?

Unfortunately, for several reasons, neither development seems brag-worthy, either. In the first place, in two of the big counties where population grew in absolute terms last year, the growth was minimal: 0.04 percent in San Diego, and 0.13 percent in Miami-Dade. The first in particular is so meager that it could fall within the margin of error.

In the second place, the main drivers of big county/urban population loss – the CCP Virus pandemic and associated mandated and voluntary curbs on behavior – was much less serious last year than the year before. And yet overall, folks were still leaving these big counties in 2022.

In the third place, demographically, seven of the top ten remain underwater compared to just before the virus’ arrival. The exceptions are Harris, Maricopa, and Riverside.

All of which suggests that they mostly continue to strike Americans as unacceptable places to live for other reasons as well – some chronic, some new. Rising crime rates and taxes, worsening public services and quality of life (due, for example, to surging homeless populations), and increasingly unaffordable housing (of course a major contributor to homelessness) come readily to mind.

Since the nation has by no means yet returned to its pre-CCP Virus normal, the continuing fade of that shock may draw ever more Americans back to the big counties. And to her credit, the senior Census official quoted in the release sounded much more measured than the headline.

But the Bureau’s new report demonstrates that on net, the verdict being delivered by Americans voting with their feet is that these big, highly urban counties are still failing to cope with a series of problems and challenges that were either created or worsened by the pandemic, and that a meaningful turnaround still isn’t in sight.

Im-Politic: How to Deal with TikTok

Tags

censorship, China, Constitution, First Amendment, freedom of speech, Im-Politic, national security, privacy, social media, spying, TikTok

Extra! Extra! I think I’ve come up with solutions to a major China-related conundrum facing U.S. policymakers: How to prevent the wildly popular social media app TikTok from endangering America’s national security and the privacy of individual Americans (often with ominous national security implications) without violating Constitutional protections for speech.

Actually, it’s several solutions. First, it’s vital to remember that

>TikTok – like all entities in China – is ultimately an agent of the Chinese regime;

>it’s already been caught spying on American journalists and sending the information back to China; and

>it’s also already been caught engaging in news and information (including censorship) practices that serve Beijing’s interests. (For evidence for these last two claims, see links in this post from a pundit who’s by no means a China hawk.)

That’s why President Biden banned its presence on federal government-issued devices, and why no one has raised any First Amendment objections. The federal government clearly has the right even in peacetime to ensure that its workforce does nothing to expose itself to blackmail to foreign counterparts or transmit (however innocently) material that could serve foreign government interests. It’s doubly important to put these protections in place before U.S.-China security-related tensions rise further, and certainly before the two countries come to blows over Taiwan or some other dispute.

But this TikTok ban needs to be broadened to include all devices used by U.S. government employees even in private capacities, and to all devices used in any capacity by federal contractors and their employees. After all, no one has a right to work for or to do business with Washington. Those who wish to continue using TikTok would be entirely free to do so, but would need to find jobs and business elsewhere. Any security- and privacy-minded American state or municipal government should be entitled to take the same steps.

As for the use of TikTok in other capacities by private citizens, this entity should be required to run on the app a continuous crawl text stating that it’s a Chinese dictatorship controlled entity; that it’s passed sensitive and possibly compromising personal information to that government, and that the information it makes available is regularly skewed to reflect Beijing’s views and further its objectives. It seems reasonable that these caveats would persuade any thinking adult to switch to other platforms for their entertainment and whatever else they use TikTok for, and begin sharply curbing or at least monitoring their kids’ usage.

I’ve already recommended that all other foreign government materials that can be accessed in the United States be clearly and continuously (in the case of broadcasts or internet content) labeled as such, and these mandatory warnings can be tailored to suit the foreign government in question. (E.g., materials from allied governments would be less detailed than those from China or North Korea or Iran – or Russia.)

But if you’re not satisfied with these measures, here’s another way to justify banning TikTok from the U.S. market in one fell swoop: Authorizing the President to kick out any government-owned or related media or social media entity from any country that has displayed a pattern of endangering U.S. military forces

This way, not only can China be dealt with in a fashion consistent with the First Amendment before the outbreak of a full-scale shooting conflict that would obviously require censoring enemy-state material (its pilots have buzzed U.S. military aircraft flying over international waters several times), but also rogue states like Iran (see, e.g., here) and Russia (see, e.g., here). After all, why give demonstrably hostile foreign regimes any access to what Americans hear and see even if an official state of war doesn’t yet exist? 

Champions of civil liberties (and I count myself as one) are right to worry about government abusing all manner of actual and proposed   national security-related curbs on Americans’ freedoms.  But the above ideas contain plenty of highly specific guard rails based on concrete,  measurable criteria.  TikTok and China have already met every single one of these tests for all of the above limitations, and indeed that set by the  “U.S. forces” yardstick.  In fact, the case against them, based on these commonsensical standards, is so overwhelming that any reasonable person has to wonder why authorized TikTok use still remains so widespread.     

Im-Politic: DeSantis’ Real Ukraine Mistake

Tags

election 2024, foreign policy, Im-Politic, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, politics, Ron DeSantis, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin

Since the Ukraine War is the first international crisis in decades that could draw the United States into a nuclear war, and since Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis could well become the nation’s next president, it’s vital to explain why the real mistake made by DeSantis in recently commenting on U.S. policy toward the conflict isn’t the one his critics have charged he’s made.

Instead, it’s a mistake that’s not only different, but actually serious, because it could eventually force him to support deeper and more dangerous U.S. involvement if he ever wins the White House.

The mistake DeSantis supposedly made in an interview published yesterday was flip-flopping, or at least seeming to walk back, an earlier statement downplaying Ukraine’s importance to the United States, and stating that because of nuclear war risk, should sharply limit its military aid and shift its focus to pushing for a peace deal.

Here’s his full statement to Fox News-talker Tucker Carlson. To me, the key passages are:

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests – securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party – becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.” And

“Without question, peace should be the objective. The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table. These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.”

The core ideas: Ukraine’s fate is not a vital national interest of the United States’, and is therefore obviously not worth risking exposing America to a nuclear attack from Russia.

Full disclosure: At this point, DeSantis is my preferred presidential candidate. So keep that in mind as I evaluate his comments. And this Ukraine position is my position. But of course, it’s far from a consensus. According to supporters of current Biden administration policies (and even more aggressive actions), these first DeSantis remarks were fundamentally off-base because Ukraine is in fact a vital U.S. interest, and because therefore Russia’s aggression must in fact be defeated (a goal that could take several somewhat different forms) “no matter what,” as Mr. Biden recently declared.

It should be apparent even to DeSantis opponents or those neutral, though, that he was not proposing dropping all aid to Ukraine and leaving that country at Vladimir Putin’s mercy. But backers of the current (and even more aggressive) American policies thought confirmation of their flip-flop (or less dramatic “walk back”) claim came in yesterday’s DeSantis remarks. Here’s the passage they believe shows that the Florida Governor now sees the error of his ways in calling the war a “territorial dispute that’s not of “vital” importance to America:

“Well, I think the [“territorial dispute statement has] been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong.

“What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting and that’s what I was referring to and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it, but I think the larger point is, okay, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO. That’s a good thing. I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified (in invading) – that’s nonsense.”  

I don’t see how these words can be read in any way other than saying that “territorial dispute” was poor wording, and that DeSantis still opposes any U.S. steps to “escalate more involvement.”

But his rationale for opposition changed significantly here. As opposed to simply denying that Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity are vital U.S. security interests and therefore not worth the nuclear risk, here he’s saying that there’s not “sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement because “Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO.”

That is, previously, DeSantis’ position focused solely on Ukraine’s intrinsic value to the United States. Russia’s strength or lack thereof was immaterial. Because he’s said nothing about changing, much less ending, the U.S. commitment to the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) alliance, whose members are protected by an American nuclear guarantee, I assumed that he believed that nuclear deterrence plus the major buildup of conventional forces from NATO members in those allies in Ukraine’s neighborhood would suffice to keep Putin at bay whatever Ukraine’s fate (which is my position).

But in the new interview, DeSantis made his opposition to a harder Ukraine line conditional on Russia’s capabilities, not Ukraine’s intrinsic importance. And I worry that if he becomes President this stance could trap him into a Biden-like Ukraine policy, with all the nuclear war risk, if Russia proves stronger (or more reckless) than he currently surmises, or after it becomes stronger in a post-Ukraine war world. As a result, he would wind up risking nuclear attack on America for a country that he may still consider of inadequate intrinsic interest to the United States – which I view as the height of foreign policy irresponsibility.

It’s still very early in the 2024 presidential cycle. In fact, DeSantis isn’t even a declared candidate yet. He’s a foreign policy newbie and it’s not even known yet who he’s been getting his foreign advice from – if he’s indeed getting any in a systematic way. So there’s still time for DeSantis to tack back to a genuine America First-type approach.

If he doesn’t, all else equal, I’d have to reconsider my support. And the next presidential campaign’s foreign policy debate, and the nation’s approach to Ukraine War and national security overall, will be all the poorer.

Im-Politic: Just What New York City Public Schools Need?

Tags

AAPI, African-American Studies, Asia/Pacific Islanders, black studies, education, Im-Politic, Latinos, math, National Assessment of Educational Progress, New York City, public schools, reading

Let’s say you’re in charge of a big city public school system and you know that students are way under-performing in basics like reading and math. You’d focus like the proverbial laser beam on improving their performance in basics like reading and math, right?

Not, evidently, if you’re in charge of the New York City public school system. Facing these circumstances, the City, reported The New York Times last Thursday, decided to “launch a new Black studies curriculum next fall that could eventually be used across hundreds of schools, part of a local effort to embrace lessons on race and culture that have sharply divided school districts around the country along political lines.”

The Times continued, “The Black studies curriculum in social studies will launch in a handful of classrooms in September, before expanding across grades pre-K to 12. An Asian American and Pacific Islander curriculum, which was taught in about a dozen schools this fall, will also expand across the system in 2024.”

As The Times account noted, it’s not as if these subjects have been absent from New York City public schools. Instead, teaching efforts along these lines are being expanded.

But even if the system never mentioned these identity groups in class (which I would consider a huge mistake), would they really deserve such priority attention now? If you think that mastering basics like reading and math are much more important building blocks of progress for disadvantaged groups, you may well  answer “No,” especially when you consider how poorly New York City students have performed in these subjects compared with their peers in other big city school systems and especially nation-wide.

The evidence is clear from the latest edition of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “The Nation’s Report Card.”

As this gold standard evaluation effort makes clear (but aforementioned Times article never mentioned), for fourth and eighth grade reading and math (not the only results it presents, but representative enough), in 2019 (a good starting point since it was the final pre-pandemic year), New York City students almost always lagged their big city and national public school school counterparts in shares of students proficient in these subjects. And in 2022, they kept lagging.

Even worse, in no instance did any of these sets of U.S. students, for either year, remotely approach fifty percent. So it’s not like the bar was high. Indeed, by far the best proficiency rate recorded by any of these groups was the 40 percent of national fourth grade math public school students achieving this level in 2019.

New York City students’ highest score during these two years? Thirty two percent proficiency for fourth grade math students in 2019.

It should be noted, however, that New York City educators may not be solely responsible for choosing their cockeyed priorities. A poll last fall showed that 92 percent of black City voters supported introducing a black studies curriculum in the public schools starting in pre-kindergarten classes, and 92 percent “ voiced support for prioritizing Black studies as a means to improve the education delivered to students in the nation’s largest public school system.”

Here’s hoping these survey results don’t confirm Oscar Wilde’s famous observation that “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

Im-Politic: The Regime Media’s Illegal Aliens Cover-Up Continues

Tags

Biden border crisis, child labor, Financial Times, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, labor productivity, Mainstream Media, meatpacking, productivity, Regime Media, UniParty, Washington Post, workers

The evidence keeps mounting that the Uniparty’s Regime Media will stop at almost nothing to cover up the costs of illegal immigration to the U.S. economy and American society. Just yesterday, as I tweeted, the Financial Times published a report claiming that a labor shortage fueled in large measure by flows of legal and illegal immigrants allegedly so inadequate that resulting worker shortages are imperiling President Biden’s infrastructure and manufacturing revival plans.

Only one problem: The reporter and her editors completely failed to mention that the wages offered by U.S. construction firms have gone exactly nowhere at best lately – which is hard to square with the idea that they’re desperate to hire.

And this morning, I noticed a Washington Post report on the shameful reappearance of illegal child labor in the United States – including child employees exposed to dangerous working conditions – that buried unmistakable signs that continuing inflows of illegal aliens obviously enabled by President Biden’s lax border enforcement policies bear at least much of the blame.

In the fifth paragraph, the article states that

“Child labor violations have been on the rise in the United States since 2015. The number of minors found to be employed in violation of child labor laws shot up by 37 percent between 2021 and 2022. The number of children found to be illegally employed in hazardous occupations, such as meatpacking and construction, spiked by 93 percent over the past seven years.”

That’s certainly important to know. And in the following graph, readers learn that “Experts say a historically tight labor market could be fueling this rise in violations, with employers tapping into new labor pools to fill vacancies across a variety of industries.”

But it’s not until paragraph seventeen that the piece even obliquely mentions the illegal aliens angle:

“Many of the children [working at the meatpacking facilities focused on in the article] spoke only Spanish, and at least some Labor Department interviews with minors were conducted in Spanish, investigators [who were probing labor law violations for the federal government] said.”

Yet the article still never disclosed why these unilingual children are in the country to begin with – no doubt because their presence is surely unlawful, and a testament to the humanitarian impact of the Open Borders-friendly immigration policies pushed so avidly and for so long by major U.S. news organizations.

Also conspicuously overlooked in this Post report – the harmful economic impact of the long-time absence of sensible immigration policies. In this case, strong productivity growth is the casualty, which matters decisively because ever greater efficiency is a key – and probably the most important key – to America’s ability to generate high and rising living standards. And the evidence could not be clearer that the ready availability of illegal alien labor has enabled the nation’s meat-processing industry to remain profitable without automating or shaking up management or reconfiguring its production lines or taking any other major steps to modernize.

I last looked at that sector’s lagging performance in labor productivity (where the data is most up to date) in May, 2020, and here’s where the situation stands now: In the non-durable manufacturing sector, where meat processing is found, from the first quarter of 1987 through the fourth quarter of last year improved by 71.62 percent. But between 1987 and 2021, it rose in “animal slaughtering and processing” by just 13.98 percent.

And for those doubting the illegal immigrant connection, this 2021 Fact Sheet, issued by an organization bent on highlighting “the many different ways that undocumented immigrants contribute to the food supply chain in the United States,” puts the number of illegal alien workers in slaughtering and processing companies at 82,700 in 2019. If that’s accurate, then according to the official employment data for that sector, that came to nearly one in every five employees at year!

The bottom line:  The resumed illegal immigration tide fostered by the Biden administration has helpd bring about resumed economic woes and exploitation. If I was shilling for the Cheap Labor Lobby, or ideologically wed to Open Borders, I guess I’d want to cover that up, too.   

Im-Politic: No Easy Answers – At Best – for Reducing Gun Violence

Tags

assault weapons, crime, gun control, gun violence, Im-Politic, mass shootings, RAND Corporation, regulation, suicide

One of my favorite quotes about public policy is from Henry Kissinger. As the former Secretary of State, national security adviser, once lamented about what he viewed as the over-optimism of his compatriots, “Americans hold that every problem has a solution….”

Kissinger’s pessimism flowed from his membership in the realpolitik school of diplomacy and foreign policymaking. He wasn’t arguing for a do-nothing foreign policy. Instead he was underscoring the limits of human knowledge and capabilities, and emphasizing that many challenges are so intractable that the best hope of coping was managing them with the aim of avoiding worst cases.

I couldn’t help but remembering Kissinger’s observation when reading through a recent report from the RAND Corporation. The private, California-based think tank examined “18 broad classes of gun policies that have been implemented in some states and the effects of those policies on eight outcomes.” Sixteen of the policies typically appear on the agendas of those favoring tighter gun control, but two (concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws) tend to be backed by their opponents.

The RAND study is a “meta-study” – that is, a study of the available research. And the overall conclusion? The evidence so far demonstrates that only a handful of the 18 types of policies generated notable, positive impacts on any desired objectives, like curbing violent crime,and preventing mass shootings and suicides and unintentional gun injuries and deaths. And many of the proposals advanced most energetically by gun control advocates have had almost no beneficial effects.

According to RAND, only three gun control measures resulted in meaningful progress toward any of the 144 total goals the the 18 policies sought in total. And two of them – concealed,carry and stand-your-ground – are anathema to most supporters of tighter gun control. Each of these was found to play important roles in reducing violent crime.

The other category, which gun control advocate generally favor, focuses on preventing children from accessing guns. Such measures have meaningfully helped shrink the numbers of suicides, unintentional injuries and fatalities, and violent crimes.

In only six cases, moreover, did gun-related laws “moderately” influence their target problems. Minimum age and waiting period requirements for gun ownership earned this conclusion for suicides. And Waiting periods, background checks, and bans on gun ownership for domestic violence perpetrators and other “prohibited possessors” displayed some effectiveness against violent crime.

But bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines? According to RAND, their impact on effects were “limited” on mass shootings and on the size and profitability of the gun manufacturing industry, inconclusive in addressing suicides and violent crimes – and that’s it.

Background checks? As stated above,moderately effective against violent crime, but no evidence or inconclusive evidence on all other outcomes – including mass shootings. Bans on “low-quality handguns”?: Only limited effectiveness was found against mass shootings and cutting the gun industry down to size..Minimum age requirements for gun ownership? As reported above, moderately effective for suicide prevention and not much else.

Viewed from the opposite perspective, only the assault weapons and high capacity magazines bans apparently had even limited effects on mass shootings. Evidence for all other countermeasures was inconclusive at best. Only the child access prevention laws demonstrated meaningful effects on unintentional deaths and injuries, while only two other measures revealed even inconclusive results (minimum age requirements and – interestingly – concealed carry laws.

The two categories of gun-related problems on which policies seem to work best are suicide (especially, as noted, child-access prevention laws, mandatory ownership waiting periods, minimum age requirements, and licensing and permitting requirements); and violent crime (where the evidence looks encouraging for mandatory background checks and waiting periods along with, as noted, concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws).

As the RAND authors acknowledge, their work suffers from some important limitations. Specifically, the chosen classes of gun policies

“do not comprehensively account for all—or necessarily the most effective—laws or programs that have been implemented in the United States with the aim of reducing gun violence. For example, our set of policies does not include mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for crimes with firearms. Furthermore, by restricting our evaluation to state policies, we exclude local interventions (e.g., problem-oriented policing, focused deterrence strategies) that have been evaluated in prior meta-analyses….”

But as the reseachers also point out because “states are a predominant source of variability in firearm-related legislation…we believe that laws applied statewide may generalize to new jurisdictions better than local gun policies or programs that may be more tailored to the unique circumstances giving rise to them.”

Gun control advocates can also observe that in many instances, the RAND study finds that either the evidence is inconclusive, or that it doesn’t exist at all. And the authors certainly support further inquiry on gun issues.

But in a crucial way, that’s one of the two main takeaways from their work. America’s public air has been filled with all manner of gun control proposals in recent decaes. In most cases, however, they’ve been developed – and debated – in a factual vacuum. The other big takeaway? With a few exceptions, gun violence per se (as opposed to underlying causes) may be a problem without a ready solution. 

Im-Politic: Chat GPT’s No Threat to My Job. Yet

Tags

AI, artificial intelligence, Chat GPT, Im-Politic, innovation, tech

Credit for the idea behind this post goes to my good friend Leon Hadar, a foreign policy analyst always worth reading. He recently decided that he’d heard so much about Chat GPT – the new artificial intelligence software that enables users to produce everything from research papers to works of art and music simply by making a request with some key search terms – that he decided to try it for himself.  (To date, it’s free.)

For reasons that should be obvious, this program has educators and anyone who earns income from creating content scared witless. Even someone like me, who writes as a hobby, has reasons for concern. After all, if actual and potential readers can access the information and analysis I try to provide without visiting RealityChek, then who needs RealityChek?

So Leon recently asked Chatp GPT to write “a column in the style of Leon Hadar.” He found the results, which came in seconds “unbelievable” (evidently in a good way).

Leon’s experiment inspired me to try one of my own, but I was not so blown away by the results, or even close. In fact, I was surprised at how many major mistakes the program made.

Here’s the response I got (in seconds) to my request to “Write an essay in the style of Alan Tonelson”:

“It is time for America to wake up and realize the threat that China poses not only to our economy, but to our very way of life. For too long, we have allowed China to take advantage of our open markets and weak trade policies, resulting in the loss of millions of American jobs and the erosion of our manufacturing base.

“China’s rise as a global economic power has been nothing short of spectacular. In just a few decades, it has transformed itself from a poor, agrarian society into the world’s second largest economy. But this rapid growth has come at a steep price for the United States and other nations.

“China’s economic success has been built on a foundation of unfair trade practices, currency manipulation, and a blatant disregard for intellectual property rights. The Chinese government has used state-owned enterprises and subsidies to dominate key industries, such as steel and solar panels, and has used its control of its domestic market to shut out foreign competitors.

“The result has been a massive trade deficit with China, which has cost the United States millions of jobs in manufacturing and other industries. In addition, China’s disregard for intellectual property rights has allowed it to steal American technology and know-how, giving it an unfair advantage in the global marketplace.

“But the threat from China is not just economic. It is also strategic and military. China is rapidly building up its military capabilities, particularly in the areas of naval and air power, in order to challenge American dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. It is also using its economic leverage to gain influence and control over other nations, particularly in the developing world.

“The United States must take strong and decisive action to counter the threat from China. We must use all available tools, including trade tariffs and other penalties, to level the playing field and protect American workers and businesses. We must also work with our allies and partners to counter China’s strategic and military ambitions.

“But most importantly, we must invest in our own economy and our own people. We must invest in education, infrastructure, and research and development in order to ensure that we remain competitive in the global economy. We must also reform our immigration policies to attract and retain the best and brightest talent from around the world.

“In short, we must be willing to take bold action to defend our economic and strategic interests and to ensure that America remains the leader of the free world. We cannot afford to continue to ignore the threat from China and the consequences will be dire for our nation.”

Certainly, the software captured my major overall worries about China’s rise (though in very generalized form), and the urgency with which I view the threats it poses.

But as RealityChek regulars know, I don’t view “investing in our own economy etc” as being more important for countering China than using tariffs. As I see it, both domestic and international responses are essential. Moreover, I’m completely unconcerned with “leveling the playing field” as opposed to doing whatever is needed to restore cutting edge U.S. industrial and technological competitiveness – whether this approach conforms to some abstract notion of fairness or not.

I’m fine with tweaking U.S. immigation policies to attract more of the world’s genuine geniuses, but believe that the real key to winning the so-called global talent war is developing the almost criminally neglected potential talent available right here at home among our 330 million people.

Regarding China’s use of “its economic leverage to gain influence and control.over other nations, particularly in the developing world,” my views are much more nuanced. If Beijing could call major shots by big developed economies in Western Europe and East Asia, that would clearly undermine American security and prosperity. Remaining kingpin of the Western Hemisphere is essential, too, for Monroe Doctrine-type reasons. And some third world countries are sources of key minerals.

But lots of developing countries in particular are little more than failed states to varying degrees, Therefore, they’re simply not worth trying to control. Much more important, even when it comes to competing with China for influence in places where it does currently count, I’d put much more emphasis than at present on America trying to maximize its own already considerable economic and strategic independence than on trying to win popularity contests around the world.

Similarly, I see no intrinsic value in the United States ensuring that it “remains the leader of the free world.” I simply want it to retain the power and wealth to promote and defend whatever international interests that it deems vital, and that can’t be secured with the kinds of domestic measures over which it will always have more control.

Finally, although I asked Chat GPT to write an essay in my “style,” I don’t see any resemblance here to my own particular voice. The prose is competent at best – nothing more.

At the same time, it is competent – demonstrating an ability that’s beyond that of most humans I’ve encountered. And it got lots right.

As a result, I can easily imagine a day in which Chat GPT or another piece of artificial intelligence software will be able to generate a piece of writing indistinguishable from the Real McCoy. I can even foresee it producing posts and articles on subjects with which I haven’t dealt, in the process using exactly the kind of reasoning and evidence I’d use.

Judging from what I just got from Chat GPT, that day is still a ways off. Still, I can’t help but wonder how far.

Im-Politic: Straight Talk on Police Racism and Violence Urgently Needed

Tags

African Americans, Brakkton Booker, Cerelyn Davis, crime, Im-Politic, law enforcement, Memphis, police, police brutality, policing, Politico, racism, systemic racism, Tyre Nichols

OK, now I’m really confused. The widespread claims that American policing and law enforcement itself are systemically racist have been muddied enough by perhaps the most startling fact about the five Memphis, Tennessee police officers who bodycam and CCTV footage from January 7 show beating an unarmed African-American so brutally that he eventually died: These cops are all African American.

Then yesterday, I read a Friday post from Politico with the eye-catching headline: “‘Diversity alone won’t change policing’”. Moreover, this claim wasn’t simply the view of one of the racial justice advocates quoted. Author Brakkton Booker stated categorically that “What is becoming evident is that diversifying a police force does not guarantee different outcomes when Black Americans come into contact with police.”

If true, of course, that completely eviscerates the allegations of systemic racism plaguing both policing and law enforcement. For if both white and black police are regularly mistreating African Americans they encounter, then something else must be going on.

Yet the piece got even stranger when it quoted Memphis’ (African American) Police Chief Cerelyn Davis as first agreeing with the above conclusion. The death of Tyre Nichols, she said, “takes off the table that issues and problems in law enforcement is about race, and it is not.”  But then she added, “It does indicate to me that bias might be a factor also.”

What kind of bias, however? Against people like Tyre Nichols? An African American? But that would be by definition racist. Or against African American men? Sounds pretty racist to me, too. Or against young African American men? Again, kinda racist. And why would African American men like the five accused Memphis officers adopt these attitudes?

Unless this is a problem peculiar to Memphis? Or Baltimore (where three of the five policemen implicated but eventually cleared in the 2015 death of another young African American man in their custody were black)?  Yet this development would be pretty strange, too, given, for example, that not only is Memphis’ police chief black, but so is 58 percent of the entire force.   

In fact, how common or rare are unjustified black police killings of other blacks? Does anyone know? Has anyone bothered to look? Not that I can determine.

The racial justice advocate mentioned above, Rashad Robinson, who heads a group called Color of Change, did provide one potentially useful insight when he told Booker “Policing will not get better without diversity, but diversity alone will not change policing. Something like this doesn’t exist without a culture that allows, rewards it, protects it.”

But just as Memphis Chief Davis needs to explain exactly what kind of non-racial “bias” may be at work here, Robinson needs to elaborate on the “culture” he finds so problematic. Is it one that fosters needless violence against suspects no matter  their identity? Yet if so, how come even this apparently happens so seldom?

Specifically, as of 2019, about ten million Americans were being arrested annually. According to an organization called Mapping Police Violence, however, the number of Americans killed by police last year was 1,186. And as best as I could tell, only 219 of all backgrounds were unarmed. (The interactive search engine isn’t easy to work). It’s terrible that anyone who’s unarmed is killed by police, but a number this absolutely and relatively infinitesimal (and don’t forget – people encountered by police can resist violently even when they’re not armed) shouldn’t scream “nation-wide culture of violence” to anyone.

All of which makes me wonder: Is America experiencing a crisis of policing? Or one of talking about policing sensibly?