The South Gibson Star-Times serves the towns of Haubstadt, Owensville and Fort Branch.
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1464965
A-8 Tuesday, April 19, 2022 South Gibson Star-Times Violent crime, like the price of gas, is rising. Not everyone is expe- riencing this crime wave in the same way. For some, it's a distant issue experienced by other people some- where else. For others, it's a daily life-threatening concern. We parsed the FBI's crime data from 2011 to 2020 (the most recent data available) and found that A fri- can Americans bear an increasingly large share of the harm from crime. A frican American offenders, mean- while, are committing an increasing- ly large share of violent crimes. For other racial groups, the num- bers are either decreasing (in the case of both white victims and of- fenders), increasing by much small- er amounts, or holding constant. CRIME BY THE NUMBERS According to federal crime data, the number of violent crimes has in- creased by almost 50 percent over the last 10 years. In 2011, the FBI reported 314,907 violent offenses. In 2020, there were 640,836. The most striking figure in the da- ta is the spike in reported homicides, which tripled from 3,549 offenses in 2011 to 10,440 offenses in 2020. The picture that federal crime da- ta provide is bad, but the reality of crime in the United States is even worse. The FBI's data is not com- plete. It relies on local law enforce- ment agencies across the country to voluntarily share their local data with the FBI. Not all do. In 2020, nearly 3,000 law enforce- ment agencies around the country opted not to send the FBI their crime data, leaving 14.8 percent of law en- forcement agencies, and the crimes committed in their respective juris- dictions, unaccounted for in the Na- tional Incident-Based Reporting Sys- tem. In truth, violent crime—especially homicide—is worse than the Nation- al Incident-Based Re- porting System statis- tics show. According to other sources, the number of homicides in 2020 was more than double what those sta- tistics report: 21,750. However high the raw numbers are, the upward trend is dis- turbing. For most types of violent crime tracked by the FBI, the number of of- fenses has more than doubled in the last 10 years. The number of police officers killed feloniously is rising too. In 2021, 73 were murdered, a 20 -year record for the amount of officers killed in the line of duty. The increase in crime, though drastic, has not been steady over the course of the past decade. America witnessed much larger spikes in vi- olent crime in 2020, especially ho- micide, than any of the previous 10 years. WHO SUFFERS? Although the National Inci- dent-Based Reporting System is not complete, it provides useful insights into who suffers from and who com- mits crime because it tracks demo- graphic data about both sets of peo- ple. We utilized the FBI's crime data to compare victim statistics to deter- mine which groups have been most impacted by the rise in violent crime. Factoring out the cases in which the race of the victim was unknown, we calculated who has borne the brunt of the crime wave. For this analysis, violent crime in- cludes assault, homicide, and sex of- fenses. We found that the increase in these crimes has fallen hardest on black people. From 2011 to 2020 the percentage of vio- lent crime victims who were black increased by 3.2 percent to reach a peak of 32.7 percent in 2020. By contrast, the percentage of to- tal victims who were white steadily de- clined from 69.1 per- cent to 64.7 percent over the same period. For Native Americans and for Asians, the changes were smaller. For the former, the percentage in- creased by 0.3 percent to compose 1.1 percent of all victims. The lat- ter saw an increase of 0.4 percent to compose 1.2 percent of victims in 2018, which held constant through 2020. When we look at homicide spe- cifically, we see similar trends. The percentage of total victims who were black rose 2.9 percent to 54.4 percent in 2020. For white victims, the per- centage fell 3.5 percent to 43.3 per- cent over the same period. Again, with Native Americans and Asians, the changes were much smaller. For the former, the percentage in- creased 0.4 percent to 1.1 percent. For Asians, the rate increased by 0.4 percent to a high of 1.4 percent in 2018, and then fell by 0.4 percent back to the 2011 rate of 1 percent in 2020. The most significant changes, therefore, were that black people represent an increasing share of vi- olent crime victims, and white peo- ple a smaller share. It's true that we're dealing in relatively small per- centages (less than 5 percent), but Consumer financial protection gone awry The crises of recent years tend to erase from memory those that pre- ceded them. One, as you may recall, was the fi- nancial collapse of 2008 — a collapse deemed by many as the worst since the Great Depression. That collapse swept into power a government like the one we have now — the White House and both hous- es of Congress controlled by Dem- ocrats. Newly elected President Barack Obama appointed then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, who made popular the saying, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste." Indeed, the new Democrat admin- istration followed this advice and used the financial crisis as an oppor- tunity for a major expansion of gov- ernment. Democrats wasted no time to as- cribe the financial collapse to busi- ness greed and insufficient regula- tion of banks and other financial in- stitutions. In 2010, the 2,300 -page Dodd-Frank Act was passed — with no Republican votes in the House and three in the Senate — adding 400 new regulations on financial in- stitutions. Included in this tsunami of new fi- nancial regulation was the creation of a new independent agency — the Consumer Financial Protection Bu- reau. The agency, originally the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, was conceived with her view, shared by Democrats on the far left, that dis- parities in financial results between different communities must be due to racism and discrimination. So, need- ed, in their view, was an all-power- ful bureaucrat in Washington to lev- el the playing field. Now our financial institutions — banks, securities firms, credit unions, payday lenders, etc. — fall under the purview of the Consum- er Financial Protection Bureau and must submit to its scrutiny and over- sight. The CFPB has just announced sweeping new changes in its "super- visory operations to better protect families and communities from ille- gal discrimination" Firms must make available to CF- PB "their processes for assessing risks and discriminatory outcomes, including documentation of custom- er demographics and the impact of products and fees on different demo- graphic groups." We might summarize this as finan- cial markets gone woke. Can a government bureaucrat re- ally determine why a banker did or did not make a loan, and should the heavy hand of government be in- volved here? Can it be the same thing when gov- ernment intervenes in how finan- cial institutions do their business as when government intervenes regard- ing who sits at a lunch counter? We can learn something about this from the financial crisis of 2008. According to the work of Ameri- can Enterprise Institute's Peter Wal- lison, the crisis was not the result of insufficient regulation of business but of government excess. It all started, according to Wal- lison, with government mandated A ffordable Housing Goals in 1992. These mandated that the two giant government-backed mortgage com- panies — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — set a quota of 30 % of all mort- gages they acquired from mortgage originators to be targeted to low- and moderate-income borrowers. By 2008, this was up to 56 % . In order to meet these quotas, lending practices were dramatical- ly relaxed. Downpayment require- ments dropped from 10 % to 3%; cred- it score requirements were relaxed, as were debt-to-income requirements for borrowers. By 2008, according to Wallison, just before everything collapsed, "More than a majority of all mortgag- es in the U.S. financial system was sub-prime, required low or no down payment, or were otherwise risky." With the collapse of lending stan- dards, housing demand and prices went through the roof, and then the bubble exploded. Who suffered the most in the en- Including regulating your air conditioning Once upon a time, the mantra of the libertarian Left was "keep the government out of the bedroom." President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi want to regu- late any gadget or appliance with an electric switch that turns on in your house or your driveway. New Depart- ment of Energy rules will dictate the amount of water that comes out of your showerhead, how much warm air comes out of your heater and how much cool air comes out of air con- ditioners. There is even talk about gadgets monitoring your home's temperature in the winter and sum- mer months. How is any of this the govern- ment's business? The latest shower regulations are especially aggravating. The new wa- ter-efficient heads make you stand in the shower much longer to get wet and wash your hair because the wa- ter pressure is low. It's a drip, drip, drip policy. This is all reminiscent of the low- flush toilets mandated during the Bush and Obama years. These were designed to save water, but there was so little water flow that you had to flush two or three times. So it ended up not saving water at all. Light bulbs, swimming pools, re- frigerators and freezers are all sub- ject to the same regulatory schemes. Last week, the Biden regulators announced fuel efficiency require- ments for cars, minivans and light trucks of 49 mpg by 2026. New cars are already more fuel-efficient than ever before, and the Trump rules had the requirement rising to 32 mpg over four years. That wasn't enough progress for Transportation Secre- tary Pete Buttigieg. "Mayor Pete" hates any car with a com- bustible engine. At his press conference announcing the strict mileage rules, he as- sured us this would save motorists money. But if it's such a great financial bene- fit, Pete, why do you have to mandate it? But here's the other part of the sto- ry that the greenies won't tell: The new rules won't reduce pollution lev- els much. This is because the higher fuel standards can raise the price of a new car by $1,000 to $ 3,000. So to save money, families keep their old- er gas guzzlers on the road longer. Congrats to the White House: Your new pollution standards may actual- ly mean higher, not lower, tailpipe emissions. It gets worse. The primary way au- to companies comply with strict fuel standards is by making cars lighter. Get the family out of a minivan and into a Ford Fiesta. But our friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute note that lighter cars are more dan- gerous and lead to more fatalities. So the Biden administration is willing to spill more blood on the highways to save gas. What humanitarians! The new draconian fuel standards are higher than what former Presi- dent Barack Obama requested and even higher than what the Nation- al Highway Traffic Safety Adminis- tration and the Environmental Pro- tection Agency recom- mended. And under the rules, auto com- panies that fail to meet the standards can buy emission credits for tens of millions of dol- lars from other au- to companies — like Tesla. What's the real goal here? Obviously, make fuel standards so un- achievable that every- one has to buy an electric car. But, of course, many low and middle-income families can't afford the higher costs for Tesla, so they will henceforth ride on one of Pete's electric buses. How is this progress? These rules are designed to save the planet, but most people just want to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and they want to choose their car rather than having Biden choose for them. If it seems like Big Brother is watching you, you're not paranoid. He is looking over your shoulder. So keep your showers short and your air conditioner off, and stop driving around in that gas-guzzling family car. Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Re- lentless Growth of Government Is De- vouring Our Economy." race for the Cure By Star Parker Heritage Viewpoint By GianCarlo Canaparo Who suffers the most from crime? Give Me a Break By John Stossel Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Biden wants to regulate everything Kids' books Bookstores now sell only certain kinds of children's books. "Go into Barnes & Noble," says Bethany Mandel in my new video, "and you will be met with a wall of biographies. Probably 27 different books about former Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Great. A ton about Kamala Harris. Great." But where are the biographies on conservatives? There weren't any. She found lots on people like Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Oca- sio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren and Rachel Carson, but not one on con- servatives like Margaret Thatcher or Amy Coney Barrett. "It's time to bring those books to the market because Lord knows the publishing industry won't," says Mandel. So, she created Heroes of Liberty, a company that will publish books on conservatives like Barrett, Ronald Reagan and Thomas Sowell. "You're indoctrinating kids just like the left does," I tell her. "That's a very fair question," she responds. "My answer is, read the books! " Her top seller is her biography of Sowell, who overcame adversity to become a famous economist. When Sowell's family moved to New York, his new teachers put him in a lower grade because they assumed that he couldn't compete. Sowell went to see the principal. "He didn't play the victim. He stood up for himself," says Mandel. "He said, 'I will prove to you that I'm capable of doing fourth grade math.'" The principal actually lis- tened and gave him a test. When Sowell aced it, the principal told the teachers, "Take this young man to fourth grade, where he belongs! " Sowell didn't let racism or pover- ty stop him. He helped pay his fam- ily's expenses by getting jobs, like delivering groceries. By contrast, she says, books from today's big publishing houses por- tray Black people as victims who ad- vance only through protest. Ibram X. Kendi's popular "Antiracist Ba- by" teaches kids to focus on color. "If you claim to be color-blind, you deny what's right in front of you," writes Kendi. That's "toxic," says Mandel. "When you promote this hyper- awareness of race, kids see their friend as Black, white or brown, in- stead of Lucy or Sally." Although conservatives make up about half the country, book pub- lishers rarely try to appeal to them. "When they produce 27 books about Ruth Bader Ginsburg or 'Antiracist Baby' board books, those are bought in bulk by libraries," says Mandel. Libraries buy many more books than moms and dads. "(So book publish- ers) have this incentive built in to churn out progressive ideological books." That surprised me. I thought of li- brarians as apolitical. But no, today they are part of the progressive mob. Ninety percent of librarians' political donations go to Democrats. "It's our tax dollars buying 1,000 copies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and zero about Amy Coney Barrett," Mandel points out. Mandel is frustrated that "girls" children's literature rarely focus- es on motherhood. The books sug- gest, "You can be a NASA scientist, an entomologist, (but) girls are not taught that you can have all these ca- reer ambitions and also be a moth- er." Barrett has seven kids. Mandel's book says: "For Amy, being a moth- er is no less important than being a judge." Mandel's books are mostly about conservatives. She recently released one about John Wayne. I'm libertarian, not conservative, but I am still glad she's producing alternatives to what today's publish- ers pick. Other authors are fighting back, too. The Tuttle Twins' books feature libertarians like Frederic Bastiat. Julie Borowski's books teach kids about the free market. All had to self-publish because tra- ditional publishers were hostile to people like them. Even illustrators turned down Mandel's books for fear of being "canceled." "We have a hard time paying peo- ple many thousands of dollars to il- lustrate books! We're never going to get a book printed about Amy Coney Barrett with a Scholastic (or) Pen- guin Random House! " Fortunately, a free market can't be held back forever. See CRIME on page 9 See PROTECTION on page 9