TSN Open Mic for the week of 1/23/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to Ten Second News.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these on the Sidebar every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Posted shamlessly from before, the latest internet fraud: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/21/business/jpmorgan-chase-charlie-javice-fraud.html
Frank was supposed to be a company that did something or other to simplify the college financial aid process and help people save. JP Morgan purchased the company for 175 million based partially on its alleged 5 million customers. It turns out everything was a lie.
1. Frank only had 300K customers, not 5 million;
2. Frank founder Charlie Javice hired a data science instructor/professor to create the illusion of 5 million customers. She carelessly used her work e-mail. JP Morgan has the e-mails in its possession.
3. Charlie Javice was featured on a few 40 under 40 lists and subject to puff pieces which took her spiel at face value and did not question it. She talks about her her mother with a masters cried over student loan and aid forms. Ms. Javice also told the press that she was considering going to university in Canada because of the cost but was able to go to Wharton because of help from family, loans, and scholarships. Simple digging would have revealed that she grew up in Westchester, attended tony private schools, has a dad who runs a hedge fund, and that Wharton was loan free since 2008. So family help is a polite euphemism for “mommy and daddy paid the tuition bill.”
4. Frank also listed a bunch of online courses that it stole from other places that its customers could allegedly take for college credit.
All in all failure all around.Report
My favorite tidbit about this is that one of the things that gave it away was that the list contained 1,048,576 entries. This is one of those numbers that is meaningless to the vast majority of people out there but there are a number of crazy people who see that number and immediately recognize it and know that something nutty would be going on for that number to just show up organically.Report
There are two kinds of people, and one is those who recognize powers of 2.Report
On the lighter side, a look at the origins of California Cuisine: https://www.eater.com/23560806/california-cuisine-history-great-chefs-pbs-showReport
For the second time, the DoJ has won seditious conspiracy convictions against participants in January 6th. For the first time their lawyers point to Trump as part of their defense.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/23/politics/oath-keepers-seditious-conspiracy-verdict/index.htmlReport
Now it’s Pence.
Report
Yes and? We established a long time ago that the classification system is leaky. Especially at that level.
But notice what didn’t happen here – a year’s worth of denials and misdirection resulting in a warrant being needed. This was voluntary and in full cooperation. Just like Biden. One of these things is STILL not like the others.Report
It’s like you don’t understand that these are preplanned problems.
Biden’s bleeding badly because of this, and Pence decided it was better for himself to bleed a little now rather than later.
One of these things is still not like the others.Report
If you think Pence voluntarily took this hit so that Biden could look better, you have got more than a light touch of the cray-cray going on.Report
If someone puts a sword above your head, and you cut it down proactively, it has nothing to do with TheBidens. It does not make theBidens look good.
TheBidens are in trouble, mainly because of our constitution. This was predictable from the moment they stepped into office.Report
and Carter!
https://twitter.com/FarnoushAmiri/status/1618057944632856576Report
Holy crap! I thought you were referencing a pretty good joke but that’s real!
The joke:
Report
I’m willing to give Pence the same benefit of the doubt I afforded to Biden. I’m not willing to give that benefit of the bargain to Trump, on the basis of the sheer volume of documents found and the amount of bullshit, obfuscation, and rigamarole Trump vomited upon the process which in any context is good evidence of consciousness of guilt.
With that said, it does seem like we ought to be asking how it can be that so many former high public officials seem to have stray classified documents in their possession after they leave office, even if they do the right thing and turn them back in upon discovery. There is something amiss about how those documents are being handled and that probably does transcend any particular individual and certainly transcends partisanship.Report
I’d be interested in merely knowing the genre of classified information.
If it’s stuff like “medical records”, I’d say “I don’t care”. If it’s stuff like the ship specs that get leaked out to that World Of Warships mobile game forums, then I’d say “maybe we should pick up some books to throw”.
But without knowing the genre, we’re stuck saying stuff like “it’s okay that Carter, Pence, and Biden did it but Trump!”Report
Mens rea matters.Report
In further chronicles of “How to lose a war you’re not even fighting,” Germany is sending Leopard tanks and America is sending Abrams tanks to the Ukraine.
90 Seconds to Midnight, say the Nuclear Scientists — and I’d put it closer. Russia has a very, very good bead on “how to cause nuclear winter” — and the fatalism to actually do it.Report
Headline in LA Times:
California reeling from back-to-back shootings that killed 24: ‘Too much bloodshed’
Speakinng on behalf of all 39 million Californians, Nope.
We aren’t “reeling”. We aren’t even “shocked”. And why should we be?
Would any of you here find it shocking if a mass spree shooting were to happen in your state?
This is a “Day in America ending in Y” event.
Apparently we don’t have one of those monocultural high trust societies like *checks notes* Belfast, Northern Ireland.Report
In this mixed up crazy world of ours, Andrew Sullivan somehow thinks that Ron DeSantis is the one that can bring the youths to the GOP by enacting the tones and policies of Barack Obama and YIMBYism. Charlie “I used to be the Wisconsin Rush Limbaugh” Sykes correctly responds, “Sully, what are you smoking? Stop it.”
https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/why-is-the-right-losing-the-youngReport
Ron DeSantis is the Dan Quayle of Nick Gillespies.Report
What states are DeSantis likely to win that Trump lost, unless Joe Biden (or whoever the Democratic candidate is) self-destructs?Report
Maybe Georgia? It is still the reddest of the states that went from Trump to Biden. I can almost sort of see him winning Wisconsin too if the stars align just right. Other than that, not much. Arizona might be a squeaker.
BTW, it should be clear that Trump is still the overwhelming favorite for the 2024 nomination. The trillion dollar question is whether Trump can make 2024 into more of a 2016 situation. My inclination is that he cannot but others (possibly more traumatized than me) on the left state they think he can.Report
In a state where 80% of the population favors Medicaid Expansion, the mostly male and GOP state Legislature say nope.
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/01/18/medicaid-expansion-mississippi-poll/
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/01/23/postpartum-extension-philip-gunn/
This is the glorious future that awaits when the GOP cements power nationally.Report
What is the expression? Talk is cheap.
People say the same things over and over to pollsters again and again. Yet a lot of people still vote the Republicans over and over again despite the GOP refusing to expand medicaid or a bunch of other things.Report
Oh I agree, and around here it has a significant racial undertone.
But my point still stands – the GOP sees no need to take care of the less fortunate.Report
I think it’s a hair more complicated than that. They make distinctions between the deserving less fortunate and the undeserving less fortunate.Report
They call most poor black and white Americans undeserving because being poor is cast as a moral choice. They still rail against lazy welfare cheats who refuse to work, even though its been a heavily enforced federal requirement since 1996. The less fortunate are not worthy of economic support in their eyes.Report
Periodically, I find it useful to link to this post from useful idiot Kevin Drum writing in the Russia-sympathetic Mother Jones:
The entire essay is pretty good, but those are the two nut grafs.Report
and by continuing to vote for the GOP, the White Working Class continues to shoot its own foot off.Report
I also like to link to this short little video.
Why in the world would the monkey abandon the cucumber? How silly!Report
“For them, the poor aren’t merely a set of statistics or a cause to be championed. They’re the folks next door who don’t do a lick of work but somehow keep getting government checks paid for by their tax dollars. For a lot of members of the WWC, this is personal in a way it just isn’t for the kind of people who read this blog.”
and again I point to Burt Likko’s “Three Classes”.Report
Burt was largely correct in that distribution. And it definitely informs a lot of these politics.Report
“This is an expression of Class War” has a different solution than “this is an indignity pushed upon the downtrodden by the laughing plutocrats for whom The Cruelty Is The Point”, sir.Report
yeah, it is – it uses fewer words to say the same thing.Report
…you, ah, should probably read the article I’m talking about before you reply to it.
lmgtfyReport
I would have brought this up last week if I wasn’t recovering from having my wisdom teeth out, but Jacinda Ardern has resigned as Prime Minister of New Zealand. The Labour caucus elected Chris Hipkins (previously Minister of Health) over the weekend, and he has swron in about half an hour ago.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/131057178/chris-hipkins-formally-sworn-in-as-new-prime-minister
This isn’t in response to an specific scandal, the official word is that its burnout, which is plausible given the last 3 years. But her popularity has been declining over the last year (her favorability dropped into the negative in polls that released shortly after she announced her resignation), and there’s an election in October, so this may also be getting out of the way before election season starts.Report
The Land of the Long White Cloud is worse off for it. By all measures readily apparent to me, Arden was more than competent at her job, and during an amazingly difficult time to be in charge of a government.Report
Her public support’s been waning for a while now. She handled COVID in 2020 very well, but our vaccine rollout was one of the slowest in the developed world. As it stands today, bivalent boosters are still not available in New Zealand, and fourth doses are only available to those 50 and over.
And now we have a lot of non-COVID problems to deal with, and Labour have handled those, less well.Report
George Santos apparently won a twitter argument against a contestant on Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
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Where are my First Amendment defenders at?
https://www.salon.com/2023/01/25/sorry-twitter-but-floridas-on-books-is-no-joke–ron-desantis-wants-to-keep-kids-from-reading/Report
This fits hand in glove with the wave of bills criminalizing trans people, everything from school sports to medical treatment, as well as the ban on teaching the history of race in America.
The bigotry is out of the closet so to speak, and no longer hiding behind the “bad DEI” nonsense we were told at the outset.Report
I can’t find the supposed quote from the article:
“He’s banned the teaching of Black history classes on the grounds that lessons on people like Frederick Douglass or Rosa Parks, for instance, ‘have no educational value.'”
It appears to be a reference to the FL Department of Education letter that states that the proposed AP curriculum “significantly lacks educational value”. Florida requires coursework on Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks currently. They oppose the proposed AP curriculum that includes things like queer theory.Report
How do you feel about government entities removing books from classrooms – all books – until they get “vetted?” How do you feel about teachers being forced by government officials to tell kids NOT to bring books from home to read because the teacher might get arrested and prosecuted? How do you feel about teachers – trained professionals in what kids need educationally at each age – being told that sometimes decades of curating books for their classrooms is a threat to students, parents, and the public?
That’s the issue, not some disagreement about which curriculum requires what. Nice attempt at misdirecting though.Report
How would you feel if the teacher was bringing in right-wing books for his/her classroom bookshelf? Wouldn’t you then want some oversight?Report
As someone who believes that kids are capable of thinking, it wouldn’t bother me. Hell, I grew up with conservative books and lessons (we even read 2 of Rand ‘s novels, in high school), I managed to grow up without becoming a ghoul. I trust my child to be able to do so as well.Report
Sure, this is basically my opinion too — we dealt with this as parents raising our kids as ethical vegetarians, and in general I wouldn’t expect every classroom to be sanitized for my child’s beliefs. I do think the right wing exaggerates the threat and this rule is unnecessary, but at the same time I think people like Philip are exaggerating in the other direction and not taking a few seconds to imagine how they would react if the cultural directions were reversed.Report
I live in a red state where the curriculum is already somewhat white washed. I grew up in another red state, where my public highschool taught the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression into the 1980’s. I’m more then passingly familiar with how this turns out.
And in Florida – in the article underlying Marcotte’s op-ed, there are now vague laws that prevent teachers from teaching things that make people uncomfortable – such as teaching that the southern states seceeded to keep slavery intact. NNo, the law doesn’t say that, but because its so vague and because the state is run by far-right politicians, good people, well meaning people, are going to sanitize the schools. As is being reported in multiple Florida counties. Which means that, defacto, right wing ideas and books are winning.Report
I think we just come at this from different perspectives — the difference between arguing whether the Yankees or the Red Sox are the better team vs. discussing how best to update the rules to make for a fair game for both teams.Report
One way to make and keep the rules fair is to allow teachers to choose books for their students. Since they are professionals and know what students at all levels need.Report
This is some terrible both sidesism. The only side making judgements about books is the right.Report
I regret entering into this into the first place — usually I have better discipline. But in for a penny, in for a pound. I wasn’t doing “both sideism” if I understand what you mean by that. I was accusing Philip (and Chip and now I guess you) of professing a principle that you don’t actually believe. Your support of teachers, education, and books lasts just as long as you feel they’re on your side. If a story were to come out about a controversy where, say, a MAGA teacher in Connecticut had a book in his classroom promoting conversion therapy, I think you’d be out there with your torch and pitchfork demanding that this not be allowed.
I could certainly be wrong, but I feel that the fact you’ve been avoiding answering my hypothetical is pretty good evidence. Of course it’s fine to want to promote the the progressive values you believe in, but why not be honest about your motivations and not pretend it’s due to some abstract principle?Report
This just the charge of hypocrisy, but it’s rooted in a logical fallacy.
The fallacy here is that it is inconsistent to demand free speech protection for LGBTQ themed books but not say, conversion therapy books.
There is nothing wrong with creating boundaries around protected speech which allow some ideas to be protected and others not.
That’s why pornography, libel, and other forms of expression may be suppressed, depending on the circumstances.
The circumstances are the key here which requires a consistent principle.
The consistent principle is that the community has a powerful compelling interest in being inclusive of inherent identities as possible.
So a book that encourages tolerance deserves free speech protection, while a book that encourages forcible conversion doesn’t.Report
We have no real world examples of what you hypothesize, and plenty of the opposite. Why deal in hypotheticals?Report
I think when Philip argues that right-wing government officials shouldn’t choose books, but teacher should, he’s falling into this behaviour. Unless he’s recently turned against centralized government.Report
The public school district I’m in recommends (apparently children’s) books at the preK-1 level that include made up concepts like ‘cisgender’ or that people can be ‘boys, girls, both or neither,’ plus lessons about drag queens. Basically weird, anti scientific religious beliefs. They’re also fighting a court battle against parents to maintain guidance permitting school teachers and admins to lie to parents about ‘gender transition’ of children.
So it isn’t a hypothetical.Report
This is called “giving away the game”.Report
No. It’s called expecting good, secular public services, and for public employees not to take license with other peoples’ children in matters outside of their business, authority, and competence.Report
Pre-K schools regularly show men and women holding hands, or households with daddies and mommies and babies.
Showing a household with two mommies or two men holding hands is, what?
Inappropriate? Pornographic?Report
I’m not sure operating from the background premise of how human reproduction actually works is an apples to apples. But it’s also kind of besides the point. I’d be annoyed by a children’s book that said ‘boys play with trucks and girls have tea parties’ as if it were an essential truth about the world. And annoyed doesn’t begin to express how I’d feel if someone brought in their religiously themed children’s books to talk about the nature of the soul, which is really what this stuff is.
In any case, I think public schools do best when they are very conscientious about respecting boundaries, especially with the youngest children. None of that is an attack on the freedom of adults to live and love however they want.Report
Taking your words literally, this means no Christmas pageants or Easter Bunny egg hunts.
But your introduction of the phrase “as if it were an essential truth about the world” is the point.
For generations, books have shown boys playing with trucks and girls playing with dolls, overseen by mommy and daddy.
Is this an example of framing this as “if it were an essential truth”?
If we literally just photoshopped in a mommy instead of a daddy, or changed the artwork to be children of ambiguous gender, how would this change things?
The distinction is what we saw with same sex couples in media.
Everyone thought they were being tolerant and liberal by having a wacky gay side character, but the underlying premise was that the character could never be in a couple nor be shown kissing.
Because in this view, anything LGBTQ is essentially “adult” or “sexual”, while cishet is not.
A mommy and daddy is wholesome and asexual, but two mommies is inherently sexual and adult themed and inappropriate for children.
So this framing makes it impossible to present any book that DOESNT present cis heterosexuality as “the essential truth of the world”.Report
That’s certainly some interesting popular media criticism but I’m not sure what it has to do with the topic.Report
“I’ve been censored for promoting conservative ideas!”
“God, you’ve been censored for promoting free enterprise?”
“Hah ha, not that idea.”
“Oh, for promoting a strong defense?”
“Heh, not that one.”
“Oh, for promoting prudent government spending?”
“No, not that one either.”
“So what conservative ideas are being censored?”
“Oh, you know the ones.”Report
I’m not on the Florida bandwagon with this but I think it’s worth mentioning last time we debated this the specific book in question included instructions on how underage people can arrange hookups using grindr. I think people can reasonably decide that content is not age appropriate for a public school library.Report
Well you acquiescence to that one book will be taken as agreement by the people in Florida currently taking all books out of classrooms.Report
None of the new laws are aimed at that.
They themselves have made this quite clear that trans people by their very existence are objectionable.Report
Oh, and remember the one with the detailed passage about the adult violating the girl (15 years old, if I remember correctly)? We talked about that one too.Report
That’s the point though isn’t it? The books that will pass vetting are the books the right wing approves of. Prior to that it was books the teachers felt would enhance their curricula and speak to the actual students in front of them. Which is what classroom libraries should do. As Chip notes, “Classic” conservative ideas aren’t actually harmful to children. But that’s not what will be left at the end of this.Report
You’re just substituting one setter of standards for another. It’s not even clear who’s in charge of vetting the material from Marcotte’s article, so why should we assume that they’ll do better or worse than the teachers? The link from article says that the material will have to be:
1. Free of pornography and material prohibited under s. 847.012.
2. Suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented.
3. Appropriate for the grade level and age group for which the materials are used or made available
That doesn’t sound outrageous.Report
And yet both Manatee and Duval Counties, at the direction of the State Department of Education, have told all their teachers to make all books inaccessible to students until school librarians can vet them against nebulous standards where the state has said to err on the side of caution regard what’s appropriate and what’s not. As if classroom teachers – trained education professionals – can not and have not already made such decisions. And the counties – at the direction of the state – have told teachers that failure to do this will result in felony prosecution.
This is state sponsored censorship.
How do you feel about the state of Florida violating the First Amendment to the US Constitution by censoring books in classrooms?Report
How did Alachua County interpret and implement the policy? Baker, Bay, Bradford, Brevard, Broward, Calhoun, Charlotte, Citrus, Clay, Collier, Columbia, DeSoto, and Dixie? Those are the ones that the article doesn’t mention that come before Duval alphabetically. There are 24 counties between Duval and Manatee, and 27 after Manatee. Do you trust Amanda Marcotte enough to say that she’d definitely tell you if different counties are handling it in different ways?Report
Not a misdirection. That’s just what jumped off the page at me. You know, first find out if the author is lying. As for the subject at hand, it doesn’t sound like all counties are reacting the same way, so I’d guess there’s room for interpretation. If the regulation is too sweeping, then it wouldn’t be the first poorly-written state reg, but I’d hope it gets changed. But I’m not going to assume that Marcotte’s slant on the story is accurate. I mean, the idea that the governor doesn’t want children reading, that should take any further consideration of her analysis off the table.Report
From the original reporting:
Seems quite clear that state agencies – working for the governor to implement laws he signed, don’t want students reading. Unless they are reading the state sanctioned stuff.
Which means that school librarians now have to police student brought books. Or face felony prosecution. And again, the laws and their interpretation is so overbroad you could drive a tank truck three Prime delivery trucks and an entire Kia dealership through them:
The Governor doesn’t kids reading books he doesn’t approve of. That government censorship in action.
I’ll ask again – how do you feel about the government of the state of Florida violating the First amendment and censoring books?Report
“…Ron DeSantis, is aggressive with book bans because he would just prefer it if kids didn’t read books at all.”
That statement is an indictment of the intelligence of its author, as well as that of the reader who accepts it. I understand why you tried to broaden it to something non-laughable, but you didn’t cast the net broadly enough. You got to: “Seems quite clear that state agencies – working for the governor to implement laws he signed, don’t want students reading. Unless they are reading the state sanctioned stuff.” But that’s still not there. You’d have to say that the state doesn’t approve of things that the state doesn’t approve of, and by that point it becomes obvious that the accusation is meaningless.
And you conclude that “The Governor doesn’t kids reading books he doesn’t approve of. That government censorship in action.” Neither of those are sentences though.Report
How do you feel that the State of Florida has censored classroom books in violation of the First Amendment?Report
Please demonstrate that this policy violates the First Amendment.Report
The State Department of Education in Florida has issued binding regulations to local school districts whish are resulting in the removal or denial of access to ALL books previously available to students, subject to a vague and likely highly political vetting process – which is being carried out under the threat of criminal prosecution. Given that reading, and access to printed words is a foundational concept in speech, this is censorship in violation of the First Amendment.
How do you feel about state agencies violating the First amendment by barring access to books in schools?Report
You haven’t demonstrated that this violates the First Amendment, though.Report
All speech is presumptive covered by the First Amendment unless it falls under one of the unprotected classes established by court ruling.
DeSantis has the burden of proof, not the teachers.Report
I welcome our OT lawyers to speak to this, but as far as I can tell, the closest Supreme Court case is Pico (1982), which is ambiguous.Report
While we’re at it maybe they can explain the difference between “vetting” and “imprimatur”.Report
The California Bar seeks to disbar John Eastman for his role in Jan 6 and other instances against Constitution: https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News/News-Releases/attorney-john-eastman-charged-with-multiple-disciplinary-counts-by-the-state-bar-of-californiaReport
Kemp declares state of emergency, calls in National Guard, in response to what everyone but the mainstream media calls antifa terrorists.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3832901-kemp-declares-state-of-emergency-in-georgia-after-protests-erupt-in-atlanta/Report
So impatient developers sent local and state police to clear a privately built training center for police. These cops killed a protestor because … deadlines. Some bad apples decide to use the cover of the following protests to engage in property crimes. And we get a militarized response and all the protestors being called terrorists. Got it.Report
Those cops killed a protestor who SHOT ONE OF THEM. but they did it just for deadlines, I’m sure.Report
According to reports, they went in to clear what had been peaceful protestors because the protest was holding up construction. On a training facility being built for the local and state police by a private developer.
So yes, the initial shooting was very much dictated by deadlines.Report
OK, so construction project, protesters, cops clearing, protester SHOOTS A COP, protester killed. And you’re saying that the protester getting killed was the result of deadlines.Report
The private developer had deadlines that were being interfered with by protestors. Cops wouldn’t have been shot had the developer not called them.Report
Which of these events would you consider an unusual escalation? Which would you consider to be the turning point?
– construction project
– protests
– deadline
– police called in
– protester SHOOTS A COPReport
I’m picturing you building a time machine to go back and tell people that Atlanta will be set on fire if they don’t listen to you – please, for the city’s sake, don’t set a deadline!Report
The escalation was going to clear out the protestors. The cop wouldn’t have been shot, the protestor wouldn’t have been shot and no further protests would have occurred.
Nice to see that you’d prefer to look at the whether the cops in the initial shooting were justified rather then whether Kemp is going over the top to militarize a response to protests that could have been avoided with a different response posture to the initial protests.Report
If only Brandon Tsay had been on the scene.Report
Are you saying it’s Tsay’s fault for not being there? That’s (arguably) a slightly worse take than Philip’s.Report
Heh. Unarmed guy disarms guy with a rifle. I’m going to take it on good faith that you missed my point.Report
It’s possible for an unarmed man to defeat someone with a gun. I don’t know the specifics of either incident, but it’ll come down to distance and luck, and if the former isn’t right, no amount of the latter will be enough. You don’t want to be too close with a gun or too far without one. The one thing you can be sure of is that someone who shot at you is willing to kill you and likely others. There’s no shame at that point in seeking to minimize innocent lives lost.Report
The headline here is “Red States Have Higher Murder Rates Than Blue States” but the real story is “Poor and Uneducated Places Have More Murder Than Rich Well Educated Places”:
Which aligns with centuries of evidence about the interrelated effects of poverty, education, culture and crime.
Over the course of the full 21 years between 2000 and 2020, the Red State murder rate was still 12% higher than the Blue State murder rate, even when murders in the largest cities in those red states were removed. And the murder rate was still higher in 18 of 21 years.
Between 2010 and 2020, even after removing New Orleans and Jackson, Louisiana and Mississippi continued to hold the number one and two spots for highest murder rates. Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Tennessee were still consistently in the top 10 after removing their largest city.
In 2020, the states with the highest murder rates stayed roughly the same after making this change: Mississippi in first, then Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Missouri, Illinois, Maryland, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia.
https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-two-decade-red-state-murder-problem
Crime is never as simple as having One Weird Trick explanatory variable, but the common and consistent factors are always poverty, education, fracturing of community solidarity and family. This holds true across time and around the world.
In America, this is exacerbated by easy access to weapons designed to kill easily and rapidly.Report
I mean, the moderate conservatives will try to hem and haw and talk about blue cities in red states to dogwhistle, but your more “based” conservatives will be honest with you – it’s all the non-white people in those states. Only they’d say something different than non-white, and start talking about genetics.Report
Charlie Sykes has concluded that the GOP is no longer conservative:
https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/theres-nothing-conservative-aboutReport