The Morning Dispatch: Breaking Down 2020’s Spike in Violent Crime

Plus: From infrastructure to funding the government, a jam-packed week ahead on Capitol Hill.

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Happy Tuesday! On this day in 1928, Dr. Alexander Fleming accidentally “revolutionized all medicine” by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, penicillin.

Here’s hoping that whoever is writing The Morning Dispatch a century from now is able to look back on mRNA vaccine technology as a similarly pivotal breakthrough. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • Senate Republicans blocked a House-passed measure to fund the government and suspend the debt ceiling on Monday, reiterating their position that Democrats should raise the debt limit on their own through reconciliation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday Republicans would support a “clean continuing resolution” to prevent a government shutdown without the debt ceiling provision, and—with the government set to shut down Thursday night—Democrats appear poised to take him up on the offer.

  • Two regional Federal Reserve presidents, Rob Kaplan of the Dallas Fed and Eric Rosengren of the Boston Fed, announced Monday they would resign their positions in the coming days. Both had come under fire in recent weeks for trading securities in 2020 that were potentially boosted by the Federal Reserve’s intervention in financial markets. Kaplan acknowledged the controversy in the announcement of his resignation, while Rosengren cited a health issue.

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  1. Avatar photo
    DougAz

    https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election

    19 of Facebook’s top 20 pages for American Christians are run by Eastern European troll farms overseas, internal documents leaked to MIT Technology Review reveal. The data shows the vast spread of Facebook misinformation is largely powered by coordinated efforts among foreign professionals working together to spread provocative content in the U.S.

    These groups, based largely in Kosovo and Macedonia, have been particularly successful when it comes to targeting American Christians. Though they split their efforts among multiple pages, they are mostly operated by the same groups. Collectively, their Christian Facebook pages reach about 75 million users a month — an audience 20 times the size of the next largest Christian Facebook page.

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    PaulH

    I am not sure there is much advantage to the GOP stalling the debt ceiling bill. At some point, it would probably be best to just allow the Democrats to pass it 51-50; The GOP agrees that the ceiling needs to be increased and invoking the filibuster to slow things down doesn't help the party politically.

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      cheerio

      Unless it is McConnell's desire to force the hand of the Democrats to eliminate the filibuster.

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    CynthiaW

    I don't remember who else was a fan of Theodore Dalrymple/Anthony Daniels, but here is a link to his latest:

    https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/10/a-popular-form-of-monomania

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    Richard Maxton

    Let's all remember, whatever the number of homicides is, the number of lives affected is far higher. Those people all had families - parents, siblings, aunts, uncles - and friends. Many of them probably had children too.

    Life doesn't have to be taken to be destroyed.

    We absolutely should talk about the why's and how's of this increase. I'm glad that conversation is happening here, but don't let the graphs and statistics lessen the gravity of what we're talking about here.

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    Andy Napoli

    Question: Have you noticed any trends in your community over the past few years?

    Yes. Mostly bad ones in Fairfax County, Virginia. The county prosecutor won't pursue cases against aggressive panhandlers who stake out medians along major county roads. Most of these panhandlers are professional con artists -- we've seen them get picked up and dropped off by cars. A discussion with a local police officer confirmed my observations and suspicions that they're pros and not actually poor people down on their luck -- they rake in many thousands of dollars per week.

    I now smell pot (skunk odor) almost every single time I drive around the region -- even on highways -- ever since marijuana was decriminalized. My kids now notice it too whenever we're out and about.

    I see homeless camps sprouting up everywhere. In Fairfax County, and especially in DC. Nobody will do anything about them.

    I see posts on "Nextdoor" in my local neighborhood every single day about teenagers and young adults stealing cars and breaking into parked cars to ransack them. Often there's screenshots of these opportunistic crimes by "Ring" video cameras.

    I just heard yesterday that Fairfax County won't be publicly releasing arrest records anymore. They're only going to publicly release convictions. Score another victory there for criminals and the creation of an atmosphere of criminal impunity.

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    Jen

    Ross Douthat’s latest opinion piece in the NY Times says Instagram is for adults and thinks there should be limits on kids using it. OK short of parents not buying their teenagers cell phones or having the government legislate that only 18 and above can have an instagram account I’m not sure how you achieve it. And while I’m not a libertarian I find it amusing how libertarians are on the one hand irrelevant yet on the other responsible for all of society’s social ills.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/opinion/instagram-social-media-children.html

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  7. Bill Pennell

    Crime is certainly up in my community, and it has nothing to do with "defunding the police," which in my neck of the woods (Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, WA) is a nonstarter. More disturbing has been the politicalization of law enforcement, especially the office of sheriff. Several sheriffs in Eastern Washington have taken upon themselves to refuse to enforce state laws or public health measures they happen to disagree with.

    Recently, the sheriff of Benton county was removed by recall with a 70% vote in favor. In Washington, the office of sheriff is partisan, and when there is a vacancy the local party apparatus (Republican in this case) is required to submit 3 nominations to the county commissioners for final selection. The questions applicants for the job were required to answer were leaked to the local paper. They included these:
    - Do you know the Republican Platform and do you support Donald Trump’s America First Agenda?
    - What does the phrase, “Constitutional Sheriff,” mean to you?
    - Do you think every person must have a COVID vaccine and should they be required by government to get one?
    Hardly reassuring to members of the community who might think that a sheriff's oath to enforce the rule of law, and not loyalty to Donald Trump and the Republican Party, is the most important duty of a law enforcement official.

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      Mudskipper

      Oh, geez. Unbelievable.

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    Dave Conant - MO

    It's likely only correlative rather than causative but I've noticed a distinct change in the approach of police officers to the public. In the past, if one encountered an officer in a public non-professional situation one could rely on a positive interaction as with any other citizen; if one acknowledged the passage of a police vehicle by waving, one could expect a wave back and possibly a smile. This, at least where I live, is rare verging on non-existent; most officers appear to be trying for a pre-emptive anti-interaction visage that resembles Robocop. Maybe if they acted a little more human they'd be perceived a bit more positively and be correspondingly more effective. Community policing has some intuitive validity and might have operational merit as well.

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    Frank Lee

    I live in liberal land and my educated liberal friends were sure that cops were being too mean to black people and if we would just replace them with clipboard-carrying social workers giving free hugs the crime and violence would melt away.

    Really, they believed it.

    And now they are scrambling to come up with any excuse for why crime has exploded in these communities other than the truth... THAT THEY WERE FABULOUSLY WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING.

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      Magpie

      So fun and easy to exaggerate the position of our opponents and then mock them for it.

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        Frank Lee

        I am sorry, but absolutely zero exaggeration. I believe Haidt explained this to some degree in his work explaining how liberals process almost exclusively on a moral filter of fairness and harm. They are also very hierarchy sensitive. It causes them a sort of "white guilt nosy Nancy" syndrome. So the minority guy that car-jacks a higher income white couple and gets busted by the police before he can get away earns their sympathy because they first note the social hierarchy gap (their assessment), and then the gap in power between the cops and the racial group (again, their assessment)... and they feel bad about it. And they naturally want to stop feeling bad about it so they create a virtue signaling narrative of victim oppression and become activists to fix what is making them feel so bad. They get totally disconnected from the simplicity of the situation. Guy breaks law. Cops bust guy. He gets justice for his crimes.

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          Magpie

          Amazing! More words, but even less nuance.

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          1. Avatar photo
            Frank Lee

            Democrats came up with the defund the cops movement. Democrat controlled cities have reduced the police department budgets and are hiring social workers instead. https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3zpqm/these-cities-replaced-cops-with-social-workers-medics-and-people-without-guns

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            Frank Lee

            Amazing, words delivered but lacking the intellectual honesty to processing them.

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      Logical

      Would you give some specifics...like the town?

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        Frank Lee

        Minneapolis is just one example. San Francisco. Seattle too. Most urban precincts with a high minority population in Democrat-controlled cities. Violent crime is way up in most of these places.

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    Sgrantsm

    QOTD: I'm in So Cal near the beach so homeless encampments have increased in the last year as well as bike thefts by them. Also car breakins by them.

    Nothing has affected me personally, but I did observe for the first time ever in my neighborhood a George Floyd-like situation while out to dinner, outside, on an early Saturday evening. I walked by a liquor store on my way to the restaurant and two local police were standing in the parking lot talking with a tall, young, black woman who was visibly intoxicated and cursing at them. I wanted to say to her, "Girl, do yourself a favor and just shut up and be on your way." But, of course I didn't. By the time I was seated at my table and ordered my wine, the police were trying to cuff her. They had her up against the wall of the liquor store. I was amazed at how strong she was in resisting two men. (It didn't seem to be that way whenever the detectives cuff a suspect on Law and Order!)

    She was wailing that she couldn't breathe and screaming, "Mommy, Daddy" then "Mother, Father." I didn't believe her. That's why I'm calling it a George Floyd-type of event. Him I believed as he callled out for his mother. Her I didn't. It struck me as performative.

    They called in help and two police cars arrived. One of the police was a black woman. They eventually got her into the police car, cuffed, with bars on the window, and they took her away.

    When I left dinner, two guys were in the liquor store parking lot talking about what happened: The liquor store called the cops on her. Not sure what she was doing but the store thought it warranted calling the cops. She'd been there before, so this was a repeated offence. What she was doing with the police when I first walked by was jumping off of the public sidewalk onto the parking lot then jumping back, saying "I'm not doing anything" or something like that. From what I could tell, the police did their jobs correctly.

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