Making News: Podcast On-Line of National Radio Interview on Police Reform

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"Defund the Police", "Disband the Police", Breitbart News Tonight, Camden, George Floyd, Making News, New Jersey, police brutality, police reform, race relations, racism, surveillance

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast of my latest national radio interview is now on-line.  Broadcast last night on “Breitbart News Tonight,” it dealt with the subject of yesterday’s post on what lessons are really being taught by Camden, New Jersey’s recent experiment in police “defunding” and “disbanding” and even “reform.”  To listen, head to this link and scroll down till you see my name.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: About that Camden Model for “Defunding” or “Replacing” Police

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"Defund the Police", "Disband the Police", Camden, community policing, crime, George Floyd, Im-Politic, New Jersey, police brutality, police reform, surveillance, violent crime

It was as predictable as the sun rising: No sooner did many participants in the recent George Floyd-killing protests and their supporters adopt “Defund the police” as a position, than all manner of Mainstream Media journalists and other sympathizers began piping in that not only is that stance not the slightest bit extreme, but that there’s a shining example of how this program could work: Camden, New Jersey.

Which sounds incredibly promising – especially considering that Camden has long been an especially dismal example of urban decay. Until you look at the Camden policing record since its police policy transformation began in 2014.

Throwing cold water on the Camden experiment is certainly not the same as dismissing the idea that many police reforms are urgently needed and long overdue. Let’s also acknowledge that many and possibly most “defunders” apparently don’t literally back abolishing police forces or even drastically reducing their budgets – or imagining that cops on the beat can literally be replaced person-for-person with social workers and community activists, or that “investing in communities” and law enforcement are either-or choices.

Most encouragingly, there does seem to be a strong case that for too long police forces have been given responsibilities that really aren’t policing matters, and that they shouldn’t be assigned to tasks like dealing with folks who suffer serious mental illness problems but aren’t institutionalized. No one should blanketly oppose all efforts to reshuffle municipal resources.

But the idea that Camden has adopted a radically new model of policing and that the results have been miraculous is at best way too simplistic, and indeed largely misleading. And no claims are more common, and more irresponsible, than contentions like “Camden Sees Crime Drop Over Past Decade.” (For other typical examples, see here and here.)

If, for example, you look at the crime statistics superficially (presented in the Tap into Camden article linked above), you do indeed see a falloff in crime in Camden over the last decade – from 5,559 in 2010 to 3,267 last year. (Of course, the full-year 2020 data aren’t in yet.) That’s an impressive 41.23 percent.

The problem is that Camden’s experiment in new police techniques isn’t a decade old. Its first full year didn’t come until 2014. The good news is that crime is off significantly since then, too – by 25.67 percent. In fact, it decreased more than during the pre-reform years – when crime fell by 20.94 percent.

The bad news is that crime changes over a specific period of time don’t clinch the case for effective or ineffective policing. That’s because these ups and downs often take place during periods of population change. And it’s not only clear that crime in Camden has been down at least in part because the city simply has been losing population. It’s also the case that, adjusted for population decline, crime declined more slowly in Camden before the police overhaul than it has since.

Specifically, during the four years between 2010 and 2014, when crime tumbled by 20.94 percent, the city’s population shrank by 1.45 percent. Between 2014 and 2018, the next four-year-period, Camden lost 2.60 percent of its residents – a difference of just over 79 percent. But the falloff in crime of 22.61 percent was only about eight percent greater than that seen during the previous four years.

Nor does the picture change much when you add in the 2019 totals – a fifth year – which brings the overall post-2014 crime decrease to the 25.67 percent figure mentioned above.

It’s also crucial to note that “Defund the police” doesn’t come close to describing accurately the changes the city actually made. First, to be technically accurate, Camden didn’t make these changes. In a desperation move (precisely because crime was deemed out of control) the surrounding county took charge in May, 2013. Moreover, although the new strategy undoubtedly emphasized “rebuilding trust between the community and their officers,” and “changing the culture” (as reported in the New York Times article linked above), other crucial elements were  more policing and, it’s arguable, more intrusive policing. According to Times correspondent Kate Zernike, the county:

“added officers [and] put 120 civilian clerks and analysts in a new operations and intelligence center, monitoring 121 surveillance cameras and the gunshot-mapping microphones. When shots are fired or a 911 call comes in, the system automatically dispatches the two nearest police units.

“Car-mounted cameras read license plates, which are checked against law-enforcement databases. A disembodied voice announcing ‘medium alert’ signals a car whose owner has bought drugs in Camden before. ‘High alert’ flags a stolen car.”

Something else to keep in mind: As Zernike wrote, during the years leading up to 2013, the old city police force “was so overwhelmed, it stopped responding to property crimes or car accidents without injuries.” And even so, the data that take into account the vital demographic context show that crime at the time was dropping faster than it has during the post-reform period.

Moreover, focusing solely on “violent crime” reveals a better post-reform performance – but with one terrible exception. Adjusted for population change, murders and assaults have decreased faster after the reforms than before them. But whereas during the four years before the reform, rapes were off just over thirty percent, during the four years after, they rose by 25.49 percent.

The journalistic accounts have contained enough encouraging impressionistic observations to indicate that Camden is a better place to live now than it was pre-police reform. But as these reports also show, that’s an awfully – indeed, unacceptably – low bar. And it’s hard to imagine that many of the Defund supporters know that much of this progress results from a “thin blue line” that’s not only gotten considerably thicker, but that’s been equipped with many more eyes and ears.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Long Overdue Curbs on U.S. Financial Investment in China Seem at Hand

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CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, cybersecurity, government workers, human rights, investing, investors, MSCI, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pensions, privacy, rogue regimes, sanctions, Steven A. Schoenfeld, surveillance, Thrift Savings Plan, Trump, Wuhan virus

A major debate has just broken into the open over some crucial questions surrounding the future of U.S.-China relations. Chances are you haven’t read about it much, but it essentially involves whether Americans will keep – largely unwittingly – sending immense amounts of money to a foreign regime that was long posing major and growing threats to America’s security and prosperity even before the current CCP Virus crisis. The details, moreover, represent a case in point as to how stunningly incoherent America’s China policy has been for far too long.

The controversy attained critical mass this week when the Trump administration on Monday “directed” the board overseeing the main pension plan for U.S. government employees and retirees (including the military) to junk a plan that would have channeled these retirement savings into entities from the People’s Republic. The President can’t legally force the managers of the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) to avoid China-related investments. But he does have the authority – in conjunction Congressional leaders – to appoint members to the board, and has just announced nominations to fill three of the five seats. 

This afternoon, the board announced that its recent China decision would be deferred. But because it’s still breathing, all Americans need to ask why on earth the U.S. government has ever allowed any investment in shares issued by entities from China (as known by RealityChek regulars, I refuse to call them “companies” or “businesses,” because unlike their supposed counterparts in mostly free market economies, they’re all ultimately agents of and most are massively subsidized by the Chinese government in one way or another). And why doesn’t the board just kill off the idea for good?    

After all, at the very least, Chinese entities often engage in the most fraudulent accounting practices imaginable, thereby preventing outsiders from knowing their real financial strengths and weaknesses. As just pointed out by Trump administration officials, many also play crucial roles in China’s human rights violations and engage in other practices (e.g., hacking U.S. targets, sending defense-related products and technologies to rogue regimes) that could subject them to national or global sanctions. Worst of all, the thick and secretive web of ties between many of these entities and the Chinese military mean that in a future conflict, U.S. servicemen and women could well get killed by weapons made by Chinese actors partly using their own savings.

Further, government workers’ savings aren’t their only potential or even actual source of U.S. financing. Any American individual or investment company or private sector pension plan is currently allowed to direct money not only toward any Chinese entity listed on American stock exchanges (even though regulators keep complaining about these entities’ lack of transparency – while generally continuing to permit their shares to trade). Such investment in Chinese entities listed on Chinese exchanges is perfectly fine, too. In addition, as documented on RealityChek, U.S.-owned corporations have long been remarkably free to buy stakes in Chinese entities whose products and activities clearly benefit the Chinese military.

Still, the idea of the federal government itself significantly bolstering the resources of China’s regimes belongs in wholly different categories of “stupid” and “reckless.” And don’t doubt that major bucks are involved. The total assets under management in the TSP amount to some $557 billion. And about $40 billion of these are currently allotted to international investments. (See the CNBC.com article linked above for these numbers.)

Could there be any legitimate arguments for permitting these monies – most of which are provided by U.S. taxpayers – to finance an increasingly dangerous Chinese rival? Defenders of the TSP China decision (prominent among whom are officials of public employee unions, who seem just fine with underwriting a Chinese government whose predatory trade practices have destroyed the jobs and ruined the lives and jobs of many of their private sector counterparts) maintain that the prime responsibility of the managers is maximizing shareholder value. And since the TSP had decided that the optimal mix of international holdings are essential for achieving this aim, it quite naturally and legitimately decided to move its overseas investments into the MSCI All Country World ex-US Investable Market index.

This tracking tool and the fund it spawned are widely considered the gold standard for good investment choices lying outside the United States, and in early 2019 decided to speed up a previous decision to triple the weighting it allots to China companies. The share is only about three percent, but who’s to say it stops there?

The TSP board unmistakably should be mindful of its fiduciary responsibilities to current and former federal workers. But as noted by the Trump administration, how can it adequately promote them when it’s transferring their savings into Chinese entities that are simply too secretive to trust and that may be crippled by U.S. sanctions?

More important, as managers of a government workers’ pension fund, TSP board members can’t expect to be treated like private sector fund managers. They clearly have responsibilities other than maximizing shareholder value, and undermining U.S. policies toward China (or on any other front) can’t possibly be part of their mandate.

Bringing the TSP in line with the broader emerging U.S. government approach to China wouldn’t solve the entire problem of huge flows of American resources perversely adding to Beijing’s coffers. This article by investment analyst Steven A. Schoenfeld (full disclosure: a close personal friend) details the alarming degree to which MSCI along with other major indexers have increased the China weightings in their emerging markets indices in particular to alarming levels – levels that aren’t easy to reconcile with the imperative of investment diversity, and that haven’t exactly been broadcast to the large numbers of individual investors who rely on them.

Even immediate, permanent new restrictions on TSP would do nothing to address this issue. Nor would they affect continuing private sector investment in Chinese entities that supply that country’s armed forces, and that strengthen its privacy-threatening hacking and surveillance capabilities.

But TSP curbs would be a start. And any TSP managers that don’t like them can quit and go to work on Wall Street.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: How a U.S.-China Huawei Tech Disaster Unfolded

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5G, antitrust, AT&T, Bell Labs, China, espionage, Huawei, Lucent, national security, networking, offshoring, privacy, semiconductors, surveillance, tech transfer, technology, telecommunications, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s hard to think of a worse mess that Washington has gotten the country into than the loss of global leadership in advanced telecommunications knowhow to China. With the world on the cusp of a transition into the so-called 5G standard, the United States boasts exactly zero companies capable of creating complete networks based on this technology, which will increase by orders of magnitude the speed with which individuals, organizations of all kinds, and governments can send and receive digital information, and thereby bring much closer all kinds of game-changing breakthroughs. In particular, 5G can enable the creation of truly “smart” electronic networks that will greatly boost the efficiency of public transportation and energy infrastructure, healthcare, manufacturing, and so much more. (Here’s a good primer.)

Even worse, the world’s pace-setter in terms of both quality and price is Huawei, and Chinese entity with unusually close ties with China’s dictatorial and belligerent government.  Moreover, its lead over its other two 5G competitors (Finland’s Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson) is enormous. Huawei’s dominance matters a lot because the advent of an effectively networked world also means the advent of a world in which hacking becomes much more dangerous – and the power to hack will translate into decisive strategic and economic leverage. Just think of the possibilities of national security and economic spying alone, let alone the implications for everyone’s privacy. And because of Huawei’s 5G leadership, Beijing holds entirely too many of these cards.

All is by no means lost yet. In particular, Huawei and other Chinese technology entities still rely heavily on U.S.-based companies for state-of-the-art parts and components – especially semiconductors – along with software. But thanks to 5G’s vast potential alone, Americans can’t assume that, before too long, China won’t be able to use it to cut into their lead in these information technology manufacturing and services sectors.

So how did this dangerous U.S. failure come about? When I first briefly answered this question posed by a Twitter follower, I emphasized the U.S.’ reckless pre-Trump administration China policies. These both greatly incentivized Americans businesses to offshore production and jobs to the People’s Republic even in the advanced manufacturing sectors in the public was assured the United States would always maintain matchless superiority, and turned a blind eye to China’s practice of extorting cutting edge knowhow from these U.S.-based firms in exchange for access to China’s huge and potentially huge-er market.

But as the author of an article last year focusing on the weird – and arguably perverse – relationship between recent American trade policies like these, and recent American antitrust policies, I was especially grateful to this Financial Times article for reminding me that the latter helped create this disaster as well.

Here are the key passages explaining the lack of a US telecom equipment manufacturer capable of producing the full-range of 5G kit:

“To understand how this came about, it is necessary to go back to the mid-1990s when the US passed a Telecommunications Act that weakened US champions such as Lucent Technologies by enticing a flurry of new entrants into the market. With its profit margins under pressure at home, Lucent targeted sales in a fast-growing Chinese market to prop up a flagging share price.

“But Chinese authorities insisted that all foreign equipment makers would — as the price of admission — be obliged to hand over technology and knowhow to state research labs and business partners. One by one, the chief executives of the largest telecoms equipment companies trooped through Beijing in the early 2000s pledging to localise their technologies and production bases.”

Neither American Presidents nor Congresses displayed any serious interest in the consequences. Yet submitting to China’s blackmail failed even to save Lucent. In 2006, it found itself in desperate straits, “and was sold to a French rival, leaving North America without a heavyweight telecoms equipment player. The company that was once the technology champion behind Bell Labs is now part of Finland’s Nokia.”

My trade/antitrust article focused on the bizarre situation that had prevailed in the pre-Trump decades, during which the U.S. leaders from both major parties seemed hell-bent on maximizing the competition faced by U.S.-based businesses from foreign economies (via offshoring-friendly and similar one-way trade deals and policies) even as they seemed equally determined to reduce the domestic competition faced by U.S.-based businesses by greatly weakening antitrust enforcement.

The Financial Times article shows that exceptions periodically appeared to this indulgent antitrust policy. But more troubling, it indicates that no national security or even global economic competitiveness considerations (and of course the two are closely related) ever significantly affected antitrust policy. That’s an indictment just as serious as simple neglect or actual encouragement of ever greater levels of corporate concentration.

It’s important to point out, moreover, that this telecommunications disaster’s roots run much deeper. Specifically, the federal government began back in 1949 to pressure AT&T’s ancestor Bell Telephone, which had dominated American telecommunications from its 19th century beginnings, to divest it manufacturing and research and development activities on the one hand from its services activities. And this even though that research arm, Bell Labs, invented the world’s first semiconductor device – the transistor.

First AT&T and then Lucent made plenty of their own mistakes, too. It’s a really complicated story, though, and two good short accounts can be found here and here. Nonetheless, clearly the voices in Washington during these decades that might have been encouraging a more comprehensive strategy to preserve U.S. dominance – or even competitiveness – in this crucial technology were way too weak. And now, for the near-term future in any event, the nation is dependent for this knowhow on a distant regime whose benign intentions can by no means be assumed.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Preliminary Thoughts About and Lessons of Paris

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2016 elections, Al Qaeda, border security, borders, Charlie Hebdo, civil liberties, Constitution, Donald Trump, France, Immigration, intelligence, ISIS, jihadism, Middle East, migrants, Mumbai attack, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paris, Paris attacks, radical Islam, refugees, Robert Jackson, September 11, surveillance, terrorism

Because barely a day has passed since the news first broke of the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, caution is in order about commenting, especially about the identity of the attackers, and other crucial details of the strikes. Nonetheless, some observations can reasonably and usefully be drawn, and some important implications, including for a range of security and economic policies, can be identified.

> Except for the innocent victims and their families and friends, the Paris attacks weren’t a “tragedy,” as so many good-hearted folks have mistakenly supposed. Whether the aim is intentional or not, that term drains the event of moral content and inhibits clear thinking. In particular, it weakens the public’s determination to establish and enforce accountability – notably over the longer run, as the temptation grows to return psychologically to normality, along with shoulder-shrugging defeatist impulses. Instead, the attacks were an outrage and an atrocity. Making all efforts to prevent repeats are imperative both for self-defense and to create a better, safer world for future generations.

> Another term we need to excise from news coverage and discussion is “senseless.” The Paris attacks clearly were intended to further a political and policy agenda: sowing chaos among ISIS’ enemies the worldwide, including in the United States, and dissuading governments from joining military efforts against the group in the Middle East, or from continuing or strengthening existing efforts. Indeed, these agendas – which are sadly likely to achieve at least some degree of success – are what justify labeling the Paris attacks as acts of terror. As such, they are utterly incomparable to the kinds of mass shootings in America and elsewhere that are carried out by obviously deranged individuals whose heads are filled with heaven knows what delusional “ideas” with no chance of attracting significant support or even sympathy.

> ISIS has now credibly claimed responsibility, and both the French and U.S. (albeit with some apparent reluctance) governments agree. So there can’t be much doubt that the attacks represent the latest instance of Islamic terrorism.

> As widely noted, the Paris attacks could well mean that this Islamic terrorist challenge is entering a new phase even more dangerous than experienced so far. Its scale and intensity more closely resembled the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, India, than the more targeted strikes on the Charlie Hebdo staff and on a kosher grocery store in suburban Paris, both in January. Indeed, the City of Light was literally a war zone for several hours, as both the French military and police were called into battle.

> There’s no reason to think that ISIS – and similar groups – will stop, even for the time being, with Paris. No one should rule out equally deadly follow-on strikes elsewhere in Europe, and – though less likely due to geography – the United States.

> Mumbai, of course, was all too easy for Westerners to ignore, even though many of the victims were Westerners. But because so many were not, and because it took place in a very far away developing country that’s typically dismissed as violence-prone, it hardly amounts to wallowing in liberal guilt to acknowledge that Mumbai’s impact in Europe and North America was orders of magnitude weaker than mass killings in one of the former’s crown jewels.

> Meaning no disrespect to all the dedicated individuals in intelligence and security agencies in France, and all over Europe, but if only because attacks like those in Paris require so many accomplices and so much on-the-scene planning and related activity, it’s clear that anti-terror strategies need to be dramatically improved. For example, it’s already been confirmed that one of the attackers was a French national who had been on a French government terrorism watch list since 2010. No doubt other lapses will be revealed going forward.

> Similarly, there can’t be any reasonable doubt that border security policies in Europe and the United States will need to be strengthened. Near the body of one dead attacker at the Stade de France was found a Syrian passport showing that holder had been admitted as a refugee into Greece in early October. It’s not certain that the passport actually belonged to the attacker – as opposed to a victim – although at least one report says the document was found on the attacker’s person. Further, another report has appeared of a second such passport. And another passport found in the vicinity reportedly comes from Egypt.

Although some analysts believe these documents to be counterfeit, and carried by the attackers to boost European opposition to admitting large numbers of Middle East refugees, properly screening these migrants is clearly a major challenge because terrorist infiltrators could easily exploit the chaos surrounding many entry points. And once in a country belonging to Europe’s visa-free zone (and Greece is one of these), visitors are free to travel passport-free among 25 others (including France).

It’s also important to note that America’s own borders, especially with Mexico, aren’t exactly hermetically sealed, and that serious mistakes by its own immigration authorities made the September 11, 2001 attacks that much easier to carry out. Indeed, six of the 19 September 11 hijackers had violated various American immigration laws, but were still in the country, including two who had overstayed their visas. As a result, supporters of lenient U.S. and European immigration and refugee policies clearly don’t want to hear this, but tighter restrictions are nothing less than essential.

> In this vein, these policies are bound to become far more controversial throughout the West, and it’s hard to imagine that supporters of stronger immigration controls – especially Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump – won’t benefit politically.

> Further, since many Islamic terrorists are nationals of victim countries, more aggressive surveillance and related counter-measures are simply unavoidable. For all the vital importance of preserving civil liberties, their preservation, as always, needs to be balanced against national security considerations that clearly have again grown in importance. No freedoms are ever absolute, and in times of emergency like this, it’s crucial to remember Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson’s warning in a 1949 dissent that “if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

> Calls for escalating the West’s military operations against ISIS have naturally proliferated over the last 24 hours, but the goal of decisively defeating this terrorist group is no more realistic than it was before the Paris attacks. As made clear by the decisive defeat of Al Qaeda following 9/11, the Middle East remains so terminally ill on so many fronts that it will remain a breeding ground for terrorism for the foreseeable future. And since, as I have written repeatedly, America’s allies in the region are too internally weak to “step up” and provide meaningful assistance to a coalition dominated by non-Muslim outsiders, the nation’s best hope for greater security is focusing on what it can plausibly hope to control – access to its own territory.