[Free Beacon] An increase in the number of policemen, driven by an Obama-era boost in federal funding, led to drops in violent and property crime, including a reduction of one murder per every 11 police officers, a new paper argues.
The analysis, authored by Princeton Ph.D. candidate Steve Mello, examines what Mello identifies as a natural experiment in the relationship between the number of police and the rates of crime in a given jurisdiction.
Specifically, Mello focuses on the increase in police funding that came when a newly elected President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, allocating some $2 billion to the Department of Justice for police hiring grants, mostly through the Department's Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program. COPS grants were issued based on a "fuzzy cutoff," meaning a city's chances of receiving a grant jumped substantially if its scoring by DOJ (a combination of factors including crime rate and current police force size) passed a certain threshold. That fuzzy cutoff creates two natural groups for comparison: Those that received COPS funding and those that didn't.
Mello demonstrates that, while "high and low scoring cities follow[ed] similar trends in police and crime prior to the application year," cities above the threshold saw a 3.6 percent increase in police. This translated into a 4.8 percent decline in violent crimes and a 3 percent decline in property crimes for cities over the threshold, over average, an effect which Mello ties directly to the increase in police.
#4
More "cops" doesn't necessarily mean less crime. Police Officers actively pursuing and arresting the bad guys and fugitives with active arrest warrants does result in less crime. The dirty secret in the big cities is the existence of tens and even hundreds of thousands of arrest warrants that they don't care about. They just wallow in the pool of criminals and complain they don't have enough resources to fight the crime the criminals are committing.
My point is that more officers in the large bureaucratic departments does not immediately equal more work...
#5
Hard to imagine how this works. Since when do cops arrive before or during a crime? Don't they just show up after the fact and write a report? Isn't that why we carry guns?
Something very quietly is happening out there. It’s not being touted, and it’s a little bothersome that it isn’t being touted. The Democrats are showing remarkable discipline here in not touting what is very quietly happening out there. And what is very quietly happening out there is that the Democrats are winning elections. They have recently begun to win elections. They are winning special elections. They are winning local and state elections.
This is a massive and it’s apparently, to date, a very successful grassroots effort that is being funded by George Soros, primarily, but there are others.
[Townhall] Every place you look in Robert Mueller's investigation, the same names keep popping up: FBI agent Peter Strzok and sleazy, foreign private eye -- or "British intelligence agent" -- Christopher Steele.
So it's rather important that they both are Trump-hating fanatics, and one was being paid by Trump's political opponent in a presidential campaign.
Steele is the author of the preposterous dossier that sparked the special counsel investigation, and Strzok is the FBI agent involved at every crucial turn of both the Trump and Hillary investigations.
As we found out from the House Intelligence memo, Steele told Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr that he "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president." (Ohr's wife worked for Fusion GPS, and, like Steele, was being paid by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.)
In the hands of Trump-obsessive Peter Strzok -- he of the estrogen-dripping texts to his Trump-hating FBI lawyer mistress -- the dossier was used to obtain a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act against Trump's alleged "foreign policy adviser," Carter Page.
The FISA warrant against Page constitutes the last crumbling piece of the "Russia collusion" story.
Strzok was the person who instigated the Russia investigation against Trump back in July 2016. He was the lead agent on the investigation into whether Hillary, as secretary of state, sent classified information on her private email account. (Conclusion: She had -- but it wasn't any of the FBI's business!) He volunteered for the Mueller investigation and remained there, right up until his Trump-hating texts were discovered by the inspector general of the FBI. (He was also, one surmises, the authority for many of the media's lurid, anonymously sourced claims about how the investigation was proceeding.)
Most strangely, Strzok was the FBI agent who asked Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, about his phone call with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
There was nothing wrong with Flynn's conversation with Kislyak, but Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to an FBI agent about it, based on a secretly recorded intercept of the phone call. The question remains: Why was any FBI agent even asking about a perfectly legitimate conversation? No one seems to know. But we do know the name of the FBI agent who asked: Peter Strzok.
Aside from Strzok's girl-power text to his mistress upon Hillary becoming the first female presidential nominee -- "About damn time!" -- his most embarrassing message to her was about the Russia investigation:
"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office (FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) -- that there's no way (Trump) gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 ..."
The media have tied themselves in knots trying to explain this text as meaning anything other than its obvious, natural meaning. To wit: "Although the worst is unlikely (Trump wins/you die before age 40), you still prepare by taking out 'insurance' (we take Trump down with the Russia investigation/your family gets a payout)."
h/t Instapundit
[AmericanThinker] As someone who has followed Russia for four decades, I perceive Carter Page as a bit of a naif. Our assessments of Russian foreign policy, by all accounts, are diametrically opposed, and Page’s inclusion, along with Mike Flynn, on the Trump campaign’s foreign-policy team gave me yet another reason not to vote for The Donald. With all due respect for Page’s native intelligence and high level of education, he comes across as what Lenin pithily called a "useful idiot."
...Indicative of this attitude is the surreptitiously taped characterization of Page by the Russian intelligence operative who vetted him in 2013 for possible recruitment: "I think he is an idiot." Apparently, however, Page didn’t even qualify as a useful one‐the operative decided he was not even worth recruiting.
This assessment should be borne in mind, since Trump’s detractors, to the contrary, have decided that Page is extremely useful indeed, albeit in an entirely different way.
...Make no mistake: If the account in the Steele dossier were true, it would represent a quantum leap in Russian risk-taking with regard to manipulation of foreign elections. Things like hacking and leaking, or planting slanted stories, are low-cost, low-risk activities impossible to trace back to senior Russian officialdom. However, if the Russian leadership were taking the gamble of personal involvement in such a high-risk scheme, would it trust a man whom their own intelligence services had assessed as worthless?
...It’s hardly a secret that, for a broad swath of the U.S. political classes and the American press, the removal of Trump has become the Holy Grail, the goal to which all other things must be subordinated. In this sacred endeavor, Carter Page is useful in ways that even the most cynical Russian handlers could hardly have imagined. And if his dignity and reputation must be utterly trashed in the process‐well, so much the worse for Page. Mind you, the ruling elites would do anything to undermine political opponents, not just in USA. Right now chief legal authority in Israel decides whether Israel's PM should stand trial for receiving a gift of cigars.
#1
Equally disturbing is Stephanopoulos’ mendacious assertion that Page was “recruited by a Russian agent.” Of course Page was not “recruited.” He was only vetted for a possible recruitment attempt—and found to be not worth the effort.
Why do we assume the Russians cannot recognize a plant ?
It would indeed be a waste, all of that legend building, training and travel. Surely he can be used elsewhere.
#2
The Ingraham interview of Page a week or so ago made Page look like a well-educated but naïve and hinky.
Page became a tool, not of the Russians but by those here who were desperate to take down Trump. Page was used as a means to an end. It looks more and more like he did nothing other than have a profile that could be distorted and used for the purpose of obtaining a FISA warrant.
Trump was open, while campaigning, about the danger and threat he presented to the Deep State. The left did not expect HRC to lose. In fact, the Podesta emails indicated that Trump was the person who HRC and her associates most wanted HRC to run against--he was supposed to be the candidate who was the most easily beatable. The Dems made the mistake of believing their own bullshit; all their bought polls said she was going to win. When she lost, panic ensued and plans were activated to take down Trump. Some of these plans appear to still be ongoing and difficult to dismantle. Swamp dwellers are still screwing around. A few well-placed indictments of Swamp Dwellers and Shadow Government members might put a chill on their plans and activities. It's not like the evidence is not all around.
#3
Page was used as a means to an end. It looks more and more like he did nothing other than have a profile that could be distorted and used for the purpose of obtaining a FISA warrant.
The employment of Page was likely a two-stage operation:
1. Exploit Page's well documented Russian history and contacts to gain approval of the FISA warrant.
2. Exploit Page's access into a more urgent target, the Trump campaign.
#4
I have come to the conclusion that Carter Page was a deliberate plant in the Trump Administration. If the truth be known, he was recruited by the FBI to give them a door into the Trump Campaign.
There are no coincidences in the world. It is NOT a coincidence that Carter Page sent emails to various contacts in the Trump Campaign the day AFTER the FISA warrant was approved. The timing is too convenient to be a coincidence. Those emails allowed the FBI to throw their net over the Trump Campaign to spy.
Carter Page is playing the dunce. I will play the contrarian card. Those tapes calling Page an idiot, who said it and who got the recording. As invested as the FBI and CIA were in sabotaging Trump, I believe they could have manufactured a bunch of stuff to support their narrative. I believe Page has been coached and groomed to play the naïve useful idiot for the press.
#5
Thereare no coincidences in the world. It is NOT a coincidence that Carter Page sent emails to various contacts in the Trump Campaign the day AFTER the FISA warrant was approved.
#6
Notice how SUDDENLY the Russian collusion narrative and the Mueller "investigation" and the Shiff(less) democratic memo have disappeared from the media?
I've scoured the internet for the latest developments in this below the surface civil war and all I hear are crickets. Obviously, the media has decided to not cover the negative blow back on their false narrative.
OR...are the Klingons merely regrouping and plotting their next attempt to discredit Trump? Or is the Stormy Daniels thing their last good shot before calling it a day?
Is the kitchen getting too hot and are they all running for cover now that we know the media was signed sealed and delivered, with money no less, to support his crap...and Sid Blumenthal of all people? Really? Who could honestly trust anything that Slimy Sid says??? They used it as "intelligence?" And they used Cody Shearer???
Talk about acceleration of commitment to a failing endeavor.
#8
Last week, I was trying to answer the question:
"Who is Carter Page?" Haven't yet read Pages's testimony. It's possible Page was groomed and a plant. I also checked with a guy very high up in Merrill Lynch during the time 7 years Page was reported to be there. He did not know him. I wonder if Carter Page was blackmailable?
[DAWN] A MUCH delayed legislative intervention, though only in the form of a presidential ordinance, may finally allow Pakistain to align its domestic law with international obligations. Days before an important Financial Action Task Force meeting in Gay Paree ‐ a meeting in which many believe action could be taken against Pakistain for non-compliance with terrorism-financing and money-laundering rules ‐ the government has perhaps acted to forestall punitive action against the country. Therein lies a problem. Has Pakistain done the minimum it needs to prevent punitive action by the international community for allegedly harbouring murderous Moslem groups, or is this the beginning of a genuine attempt to rid Pakistain of all forms of militancy whether externally directed or internally? The timing, on the eve of the meeting, and the method, a presidential ordinance that can be promulgated overnight as opposed to an act of parliament, suggests that the former may be true.
Welcome as the latest move to include UN-designated banned groups in a Pak list of proscribed organizations is ‐ ending the earlier ambiguity ‐ there need to be sustained efforts against all murderous Moslem groups in the country. At every point, there have been and continue to be explanations and unconvincing justifications for Pakistain’s inability to adopt zero tolerance against militancy. Too often, the arguments against a zero-tolerance policy have been embedded in expedient reasons. Sometimes it is that Pakistain is not in a position to absorb a blowback from holy warriors who find themselves suddenly under pressure from the state, at other times the justification offered is that Pakistain does not need to militarily act against groups that have not taken up arms against the Pak state and society. But the quasi-justifications always have the effect of allowing a significant part of the militancy, terrorism and extremism spectrum to continue to proliferate in the country. At some point ‐ arguably, a point that has long since been passed ‐ it is important to have ideological clarity about who are the enemies of peace, stability and constitutional democracy in the country and to fight them with determination and consistency.
The unfortunate reality is that Pakistain appears to have neither the will nor the capacity to stamp out militancy of every stripe and colour ‐ despite persistent official claims to the contrary. Time and again, the state has insisted that Pakistain’s fight against militancy is its own. That is unequivocally and undeniably true. But it makes little sense to claim a fight as necessary to the stability and long-term existence of Pakistain and yet not adopt a zero-tolerance policy against militancy. Pakistain does not and should not need external pressure and cajoling to shut down networks of militancy that are inimical to modern, peaceful societies based on the rule of law. Organisations like the LeT, JeM and affiliated groups ought to have no space in present-day Pakistain.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018 00:00 ||
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[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistain Proxies
[DAWN] MOBS do many things in Pakistain: they harass women, they burn down buildings, they torch cars; they are guilty of devastating Gojra, of tearing the bodies of Muneeb and Mughees Butt to pieces, cheering the killer of a governor, mourning the death of a dictator. They are guilty also of the murder of a man named Mashal Khan. For anyone who needs to refresh their memory of the horror, in the parade of horrors that ticks by on news channels every day, he was the man killed by a mob after being dragged out of his hostel room at Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan.
Mashal Khan was a student of mass communications; but to his murderers he was merely a target of vengeance and hatred, all the poison of intolerance cast on a single body. Such was the level of brutality that the mob continued beating him long after he was dead. Weeks later it turned out that university officials had conspired with students who disagreed with Mashal Khan’s liberal views and orchestrated the attack. A number of them were suspended from their positions as the investigation proceeded. The student who ultimately shot Mashal Khan was also identified.
Mashal Khan was murdered last April, and last week there was the beginning of accountability for the murderers who take refuge in mobs. On Feb 7, an ATC judge announced the verdict in the Mashal Khan case at Central Jail Haripur. Per the verdict, one man was sentenced to death, five were given life sentences, and 25 other men, all accused in the case, were sentenced to three-year imprisonment. Twenty-six of the 57 men accused of the crime were acquitted. According to the judgement, there was not enough conclusive evidence that the 26 men who were set free had committed any overt act in the killing of Mashal Khan ‐ although it appeared that they were identified in the video of the lynching.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[Beyond Socrates' Knee] Earlier this week, US Advisors with their Kurdish allies repelled an attack on their base in Western Syria near Deir Ezzor. According to US official sources, the group was a "battalion size" movement that included up to 200+ Russian "mercenaries" with an organization called Wagner Group. The US associated forces called in air and artillery support decimating the forces and turning the attack back.
[PowderedWigSociety] The first thing I noticed about Barack Hussein’s official presidential portrait was the fact that our 44th president, seated in a cheap chair, appeared to be suspended in a hedge. What the hell is up with that?
Secondly, I could hardly focus my attention on the subject of the painting due to the annoyingly distracting background with repeating patterns like antebellum wallpaper. Note the red boxes showing duplicated patterns. There are additional.
"Repeating patterns that look like antebellum wallpaper is a Wiley thing and is a recurring feature in much of his work, or rather the work of artists (to be kind) in China, where much of Kehinde Wiley’s art is produced ("painted" is not exactly the right word).
Note the repeating patterns in the Hussein portrait, like so many layers of a fabricated PDF birth certificate, successfully sold to the American people by Hussein and his trained seals in the mainstream media as the real deal.... Continues.
#3
Haven't read the article yet, and, not keeping close tabs on "modern" "art," I've only flipped quickly through a few instances of PlaidMan's "work," but who cares? I gotta throw down my sippy cup right now and scream:
1) I. Knew. It. All of it. Textbook hustle, right?
2) I LOVE this guy. I've been waffling about going visual for years, and THIS cat, of all people, has reached down like Sistine Jehovah to yank me across the line (ow, my finger!). Me and, probably, hundreds of other people. Thanks, Mr. [DDGs] Wiley.
#4
I believe it's a good thing - anything to keep reminding you (Americans) about Obama era and increasing your determination that it never should happen again.
#5
B.O. is tasteless and tawdry, over-busy, and utterly unlike any other presidential portrait. The background distracts from what should be the central focus. One of his hands (the right) is anatomically incorrect, and it looks like he sat so long for the portrait that he was being overgrown by the plant life. Yuck.
Madame Obama's portrait is merely bad. It looks more like a sketch. Her dress is better done than her features. Ptui.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018 2:52 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Birth certificate, extended family, passport, books, education, phony baloney Chicago job, senator no-show, presidency, Nobel Peace Prize, Kudzu portrait.... all in the same category.
#9
Made in China. Like Barack Hussein’s birth certificate, his portrait is the work of an untalented manipulator who hires other artists to paint his work
Ya mean 6-sticky-fingered Soetero wasn't Born in the U.S.A.? It was all a fake?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Townhall] Every place you look in Robert Mueller's investigation, the same names keep popping up: FBI agent Peter Strzok and sleazy, foreign private eye -- or "British intelligence agent" -- Christopher Steele.
[DAWN] A MUCH delayed legislative intervention, though only in the form of a presidential ordinance, may finally allow Pakistain to align its domestic law with international obligations. Days before an important Financial Action Task Force meeting in 
[DAWN] MOBS do many things in Pakistain: they harass women, they burn down buildings, they torch cars; they are guilty of devastating Gojra, of tearing the bodies of Muneeb and Mughees Butt to pieces, cheering the killer of a governor, mourning the death of a dictator. They are guilty also of the murder of a man named Mashal Khan. For anyone who needs to refresh their memory of the horror, in the parade of horrors that ticks by on news channels every day, he was the man killed by a mob after being dragged out of his hostel room at Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan.
