Thursday Open Thread [12.5.13]
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits tumbled 23,000 last week to 298,000, nearly a six-year low that shows companies are laying off fewer workers.
“What Democrats know keenly — and Republicans seem never to learn — is that positive beats negative every time. Thus, we see MSNBC’s clever montage of Republican negativity: A series of unfriendly faces decrying the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with apocalyptic language. Which would any everyday American prefer? The healer or the doomsayer? The elves or the orcs?” – Kathleen Parker. Indeed. It was how Bush won in 2004 when by all rights he should have lost. The more positive vision always wins.
Steve Newton over at Delaware Libertarian has an interesting point.
Over at Delaware Liberal, Cassandra has another post up about crime in Wilmington. Cassandra and I have our differences, but she continues to do excellent fact-based blogging about the nature of the problem, the potential solutions, and the general ineptitude/malaise of the current governmental apparatus to solve the problem.
As Cassandra knows and has blogged repeatedly, this ain’t rocket science. There are a lot of evidence-proven strategies (like full-scale community policing with a constitutionally careful stop and frisk approach) that could make a dent, a serious dent, in crime and violence in Wilmington. The problem is–in this one-party state–the Democrats don’t care enough about reducing what amounts to urban terrorism in Wilmington to do anything about it. Instead, last year, they supported a State budget that included millions to bail out casinos and tens of millions in corporate welfare rather than invest in either inner-city education or crime fighting.
Good points, Steve. If the Democrats make a huge investment in fighting crime in Wilmington, I am sure you will support it, even if it means raising taxes on the rich to pay for it. Indeed, just adding a progressive tax rate structure above the top level of $60,000 will bring in enough money to both fight crime in Wilmington, balance the budget, and give our state employees, firefighters and police officers the first raises they have had in six years. I am sure you will wholeheartedly support that rather than joining with downstate conservatives in opposing the tax and spend Democrats. I am sure you will silence all the conservative critics on the right, and convince them that this is a noble goal. I look forward in joining with you as we, a liberal and a libertarian, convince the Democrats to do the right thing.
Sarcasm aside, I expect Steve would tells us to end corporate welfare giveaways. I am with him with that. But Republicans and corporatist Democrats like Markell see corporate welfare giveaways as the only way we keep businesses in this state. Bullshit. They come here because our Courts and Corporation Law. But generally speaking, when an investment in taxpayer dollars is needed, and the government does not have the funds, libertarians and conservatives tell us to cut government spending elsewhere to make up the difference. Aside from the corporate welfare giveaways, what other state programs would Steve have us cut? Medicaid? You see, that is where we liberals and libertarians run into a problem.
You know, one of the things I really wonder about is how much money it would take to help control the city’s crime. The WPD is already something like 23 or 24% of the City’s budget. I already think that we don’t necessarily need more money for police — but a better use of these resources is definitely in order. Plus the State has this pretty massive Homeland Security apparatus and I know that Steve and I agree that some of these resources could be put to use in the city to help.
The first thing I’m going to ask is how much does it cost to think more creatively about the city’s issues? Seriously — I read pretty obsessively about the solutions other cities are thinking about and I know people in the city who have been thinking about and proposing interesting solutions for awhile.
Then I’d ask if we could take a good look at existing resources and ask if you could organize them and change their availability so that they are focused on neighborhoods at risk? For instance — Maryland has this Maryland Family Network with Family support centers that exist to help at-risk families learn better parenting skills, maybe even meet parent’s goals for further education or work training, how to prepare toddlers for learning, help parents get medical or social service help they need, provide a supportive network of other parents and so on. Lots of this already exists at the DHSS and other agencies. Why not package it all together and place a center directly in at-risk neighborhoods. And if you think about that, you have the beginnings of what could be the Harlem Children’s project in these neighborhoods.
How much does it cost to provide housing redevelopment incentives or economic incentives? If you use the money to get houses on the tax rolls, maybe using some loans you might get some of that money back. Can you do economic development on Union or Lincoln Sts that might not need the big company giveaways?
The real big ticket item is schools and we’ve been through that. Investment across the board is definitely needed, but perhaps we should take a hard look at what is already available and build from there.
DD I will take you seriously here (although it has been a long day and if I miss a point it is not intentional).
1. I would support the investment of resources in the City of Wilmington to deal with fundamental issues of crime and violence. [And, as a libertarian, I’d point out that keeping the peace is one of those fundamental government responsibilities.] The death and injury rate in that city is unacceptable.
2. My outrage is that there is actually plenty of money in the existing budget to fund reasonable police/law enforcement strategies. Yes I’d like to end corporate giveaways, but I’d also like to reign in the ridiculous pork-barrel spending on Secretary Schilliro’s corpulent office, and even reduce our corrections budget by millions by legalizing marijuana, which would allow the state to impose a consumption tax on weed and treat drug addiction as a medical rather than penal issue. I don’t think you have to be a libertarian or a progressive or any other ideology to see that there’s a LOT of waste and misspent money to move around, and while normally it dies in “the Delaware way” somebody has to make the case for Wilmington’s dying children being one of our highest priorities.
3. I object, by the way, to corporate welfare, because (a) it doesn’t work; and (b) as jason and others have said, if you build infrastructure instead of passing out bribes you create an inviting atmosphere for corporate relocations that don’t require bribes. More to the point, even if the corporations don’t come, you still have the infrastructure and the jobs necessary to create/maintain it.
4. Funding? First let’s redistribute the money we have, then look at different funding options. I find it hilarious that you want to put in a new top progressive tax level at $60K when, for a family of four, the ACA still considers you worthy of an insurance subsidies to the tune of about $3,200 up to $94,200. So the incomes between 60-94K are either wealthy (you) or needy (the Feds). How can you make an argument to increase the taxes on people you are subsidizing for insurance? But beyond pointing that out, I am quite willing to explore funding options for the things we really need to do. We just have to recognize that (a) we have to find the political will to agree on what we need to do and (b) be creative in funding things. I don’t like income taxes a lot; I do like consumption taxes on marijuana and a lot of other options. We could find common ground.
A final note: I have advocated repeatedly that in order to solve the education piece for our poorest citizens we have to change the funding formula, and count children of low SES as 1.5 students in terms of state share funding. I do believe better management could recover a lot of that money from the current DEDOE budget, but it would inevitably cost more dollars. I’m quite willing to talk about where they come from. At the same time, I’m tired of being lectured by Dems who send a Congressional delegation to DC that has never EVER raised the issue that in the three decades since IDEA was passed the Feds have never funded special needs children above about 60% of the funding necessary for real compliance with the law.
Final note: I’ve told you what I would support, but as a Libertarian what I would support is pretty much immaterial, isn’t it? Your political party has the votes to create the progressive income tax raise whether I like it or not. It just doesn’t have the will.
Kos has been tracking the pathetically desperate WSJ op-ed by Third Way that insists on the urgency to cut Social Securlty, and he identifies it as part of a coordinated counter-attack by Third Way against the Liz Warren style populism it fears.
Today he reminded us that Chris Coons and Tom Carper are card-carrying members of Third Way. Remember Carper actually voted against the cliff deal because, he said, it didn’t cut Social Security. Both of them should be challenged at every opportunity to resign from Third Way in light of its policy goal of cutting Social Security.
Steve Newton-
Please explain what a constitutionally careful stop and frisk policy is.
I’m not yanking your chain. As a man who was once a registered Libertarian ( I think there were about 90 of us in DE at the time, but I certainly could be wrong) I’d really like to know how you square “stop and frisk” with the U.S. Constitution.
Not answering for Steve, but I posted this idea for Stop and Frisk in the last Wilmington thread:
I’m not going to make any claims as to the constitutionality of this, but it makes plenty of sense to me that a routine presence of law enforcement — the same group of officers responsible for the same geographic area, across all shifts, would have a good enough familiarity with the neighborhood to be able to stop the folks who are clearly not part of the normal comings and goings or the people who are a persistent problem. They’d have reasons to be able to pick out the potential problems, rather than just shake down all of the black and brown men in an area.
There is nothing wrong with stop and frisk if the police have probable cause to make a stop in the first place . it is only abused when folks of one race are stopped without probable cause. You must not only police aggressively but police smartly which means developing tactics that address the problem