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Home Front: Culture Wars
American Murder Mystery
2008-07-20
Why is crime rising in so many American cities? The answer implicates one of the most celebrated antipoverty programs of recent decades.
Posted by:tipper

#19  I was just 'adding and extending'  :-)
Posted by: Steve White   2008-07-20 21:32  

#18  SW - see comment #2 :-)
Posted by: Frank G   2008-07-20 21:25  

#17  And remember, Section 8 housing is how Daley has remade Chicago, closing the high-rise filing cabinets that imprisoned a lot of folks (Stateway Gardens, Cabrini-Green, etc.) and shoving them into the boondoggles and crooked low-rise housing.


The kind Obama was involved in, with friends, as a 'community organizer'. 



See the superb article in the Boston Globe for more.
Posted by: Steve White   2008-07-20 20:35  

#16  Sad thing is black crime tends to disproportionately be violent - and disproprotionately have black vitims.
Posted by: OldSpook   2008-07-20 18:51  

#15  Two comments: first, wherever there are sizable concentrations of blacks there will be a disproportionate amount of crime. Why this is so is an exercise left to the reader but that it IS so is indisputable.

Second, don't believe the figures. There's a tremendous amount of sleight of hand involved in compiling them. Rudy Giuliani did some good work in NY but he fudged the figures by having a lot of crimes simply not recorded as crimes. When the situation is actually on the edge of out of control, it is in the authorities' best interest to downplay the problem as much as possible. British police departments, and the Met in particular, are supposed to be world-class at this "reevaluation/recategorization" of real violent crime incidents.

In short, it's the usual thing: a group of boneheaded malcontents blaming others for their self-created problems and the authorities trying to hide the magnitude of the problems said malcontents cause. The only answer is to get a CCW and be prepared to protect yourself, and if you live in a place where that isn't possible, move to one where it is.
Posted by: Jomosing Bluetooth8431   2008-07-20 18:15  

#14  Not necessarily, take Gainesville FL (Hogtown) it was a crossing on a minor river before an Ag School was built there, then the crime rate exploded, and the hawgs are always paranoid now.

Seriously, tho, the college first, then the crime.. low crime.. except for the occasional Ted Bundy and Rollins.
Posted by: .5MT   2008-07-20 18:14  

#13  Don't most cities have a college of some size, not to mention towns, villages and suburbs -- at least a satellite campus?
Posted by: trailing wife    2008-07-20 18:11  

#12  As far as Sumter SC goes, well,hell, fightings about the only going enterprise there.
Posted by: .5MT   2008-07-20 18:10  

#11  Barfights, most of those cities have a college of some size, that's violent crime.
Posted by: .5MT   2008-07-20 18:09  

#10  Thought I'd post the list of the top 10 cities by violent crime rates and rankings for 2006. A few others are listed for comparison. I was a little surprised to see Anchorage, Alaska and Saginaw, MI. on the list. My recollection of Saginaw of about 10 or so years ago was that it was a sleepy little city. What happened to Chicago, D.C., Detroit, and Youngstown?

Memphis topped the list of 311 metro areas in its 2006 rate of violent crime -- homicide, rape, aggravated assault and robbery. The top 10 and selected others (violent crimes per 100,000 residents):

1. Memphis 1,262.7
2. Sumter, S.C. 1,244.0
3. Shreveport, La. 1,187.9
4. Florence, S.C. 1,160.6
5. Saginaw, Mich. 1,089.8
6. Alexandria, La. 1,067.4
7. Gainesville, Fla. 934.1
8. Anchorage, Alaska 932.3
9. Flint, Mich. 929.6
10. Salisbury, Md. 907.6
12. Little Rock 905.5
13. Jackson, Tenn. 879.2
20. Nashville 857.7
59. Chattanooga 599.5
74. Jonesboro, Ark. 561.9
106. Knoxville 513.5
131. Jackson, Miss. 456.1

Posted by: JohnQC   2008-07-20 17:36  

#9  Glenmore, there's a way to fix that. It's called "trolling for alligators". Works well, too. Or you could raise a couple of mil, hire Sherrif Joe Arpio away from Arizona, and turn him loose in New Orleans.

My family lives north of the Red River, where there are fewer problems, but also fewer people. New Orleans is, and has been since the late 1840's, a problem. It takes strong men and strong willpower to put a stop to it, neither of which are common down there.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2008-07-20 16:43  

#8  You might have something there Rob06. At least if the housing is inside an intact perimeter fence with guard towers & such. Just fence 'em in instead of out. Then you don't have to worry much about the rest of the standards

Here in Katrina-land crime was WAAAYYYY down - for about a year. And I mean crime rate, not raw numbers. But then we brought most of our scum back from Houston, Dallas, Atlanta etc. And they brought their 'friends' and newfound 'skills', so our crime rate is worse than ever now.
Posted by: Glenmore   2008-07-20 16:23  

#7  We could start to utilize some of the family housing on downsized and closed military bases. But to keep them from turning into new ghettoes and projects, there has to be tight criteria on who gets in, and behavior standards for staying. Yes, I'm suggesting a tight "leash" on these families - especially those lead by a single female with male children. There needs to be a large male presence in the lives of these boys - to teach them what is expected of men in America. You can't leave it up to the television, the same medium that gives us "pimp my whatever" and "thug-life".
Maybe I'm too idealic, but I don't think that anyone wants to be a POS, they simply evolve into it while no one is watching or doing any thing to stop it.
Enough is enough. Decent people shouldn't have to be the heard that feeds these predators. Some need to go away, they're simply too far gone to be mended. Many can be turned from their futures as crimnials and ganstas, but it will take a lot of effort - every day, not just fresh paint on new walls.
Posted by: Rob06   2008-07-20 15:57  

#6  Phyllis Betts told me that when she was interviewing residents leaving the housing projects, “they were under the impression they could move into the new developments on site.” Residents were asked to help name the new developments and consult on the architectural plans. Yet to move back in, residents had to meet strict criteria: if they were not seniors, they had to be working, or in school, or on disability. Their children could not be delinquent in school. Most public-housing residents were scared off by the criteria, or couldnÂ’t meet them, or else theyÂ’d already moved and didnÂ’t want to move again. The new HOPE VI developments aimed to balance Section8 and market-rate residents, but this generally hasnÂ’t happened. In Memphis, the rate of former public-housing residents moving back in is 5 percent.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. I mean for Pete's sake, we need to draw the line somewhere. What good does subsidizing irresponsible, counter-productive behavior do? My guess is that it only exacerbates the problem.

Is it a shame that only 5 percent of residents could meet such basic and lenient criteria? Absolutely. But there's only so much you can do to help someone. At some point, they need to help themselves.
Posted by: eltoroverde   2008-07-20 15:31  

#5  I see yer Nym of the Month package showed up.
Posted by: Pappy   2008-07-20 11:56  

#4  Ima starting to think this ain't the real Cajun Cueball.
Posted by: Wayne Anthony nutz   2008-07-20 11:21  

#3  When I lived in Irvine, CA, the communist mayor of Irvine, Larry Agran, embraced the Section 8 program as a way to "help" the disadvantaged in Orange County.

I was away one Christmas and my house was burglarized. The police told me there had been 12 buglaries in my neighborhood in one week. They tracked the burglar down through an informant and the culprit was the first Section 8 guy moved into Irvine, in my neighborhood.

This nexus between Section 8 and crime does not surprise me at all.

I personally believe it is a class warfare program developed by the leftists in Congress to destroy the middle class.

Let's see:

Ruin the public school system and dumb down the middle class

Sexualize women, promote promiscuity among teen age girls and destroy the nuclear family

Demonize organized religion

Increase the role of the central government in every phase of our lives.

The latest addition is the "National Security Force" that Obama is promoting.

Looks like Obama and the dems in congress spend more time reading Trotsky than they do Keynes or Adam Smith or even Volker or Greenspan.
Posted by: James Carville   2008-07-20 10:39  

#2  they do their damndest to avoid talking about race, absence of fathers, cultural acceptance of crime and welfare (which is what section 8 is). What they need is a Community Organizer, huh?
Posted by: Frank G   2008-07-20 10:26  

#1  About six months ago, they decided to put a hunch to the test. Janikowski merged his computer map of crime patterns with BettsÂ’s map of Section8 rentals.

Hardly rocket science. If the federal government is permitted to FEED the vermin, they will come. Ask any Orkin Man. Second-order effects; declining school standards and rejected school systems, closed businesses, declining home values, homes that won't sell, unwanted subdivisions and communities.
Posted by: Besoeker   2008-07-20 10:09  

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