Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

The NY Times sports section just put an article up that abuses turning theory terminology. Manny Joins the Lost Generation With Manny Ramirez getting caught with a drug test positive, they tie him in with a 'generation' of drug doped baseball players who aren't apt to get into the Hall of Fame as there are strong suspicions of abuse.

Is this another facet of the unraveling culture? Do we put drugged up athletes next to the Wall Street bubble blowers and corporate shills in Congress?

Actually I got scolded when trying to tell someone else about the theory. I was interrupted by a person sitting nearby and scolded for using the name "Lost Generation" since the "Lost Generation" referred to WWI veterans who died, or so the person said. Actually, I know that it in fact was originally a term coined by Gertrude Stein to label the Americans who lived in Paris AFTER WWI--Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc.

Anyway, I calmly tried explaining that the theory (S&H) I was trying to explain to the girl used the name to apply to the whole generation that those "lost soldiers" came from since it was a memorable name stuck to that generation.

Before I was halfway through the explination I was rudely interrupted and told that it was a "stupid theory". The scary thing was, that the person who interrupted was also my roommate, who grew up on Long Island and went to some fancy smancy school in NYC. To keep his feeling of superiority in tact I decided not to drop the ball. After all, it wasn't like he was going to believe me anyway--afterall I'm just a "civilized hick" from Pennsylvania.

Seeing people behave that way--mostly from the extremist Dems (my Uncle Bill who works for the PA Treasury even displays this tendency at times, but I always chalked that up to his being the youngest boy in the family)--makes me wonder if Rousseau's idea of the "noble savage" was reborn recently.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

The NY Times sports section just put an article up that abuses turning theory terminology. Manny Joins the Lost Generation With Manny Ramirez getting caught with a drug test positive, they tie him in with a 'generation' of drug doped baseball players who aren't apt to get into the Hall of Fame as there are strong suspicions of abuse.

Is this another facet of the unraveling culture? Do we put drugged up athletes next to the Wall Street bubble blowers and corporate shills in Congress?

Actually, the analogy is very apt! Manny, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and co. --all Xers--are the Shoeless Joe Jacksons of their saeculum. I was thinking about this yesterday. The steroid scandal should really have broken big time early in this decade, which would have put it right in sync with the Black Sox, but the cover-up continued for much longer. Baseball remained a relatively strong institution during the last 4T because of strong Prophet leadership. This time--Artist leadership--disaster. . . ..

This is rather explosive speculation, but I have a strong suspicion that Xer Theo Epstein of the Red Sox, perhaps encouraged by Boomer Bill James (who was very anti-drug in the 1980s), have decided upon a crackdown/cleanup. That's why they let Manny go last year. Perhaps it's why another famous Red Sox showed up this year 30 pounds lighter this year and hasnt' been able to hit a home run. .. . or why the team captain has aged so badly. . .etc.

Is there stronger reason to believe that use of performance enhancing substances and technologies will decline or that performance enhancing substances and technologies will become more sophisticated, effective, and have fewer side effects?

Originally Posted by Linus

Is there stronger reason to believe that use of performance enhancing substances and technologies will decline or that performance enhancing substances and technologies will become more sophisticated, effective, and have fewer side effects?

It might not be so much performance-extending drugs as it is career-extending drugs. When I see players go from defensive whizzes to sluggers around age 30, I almost always suspect steroids. (Those who become sluggers while their defensive skills are still good aren't so suspect because such was more the norm 40 years ago).

Exercise and training routines are fair play. Steroids aren't.

The high salaries practically entice cheating. Those who get caught cheating know that the alternative is to not get a big contract. Sure, steroids are dangerous -- witness Ken Caminiti, the late Ken Caminiti (who used other drugs, too). Someone who can hit 30 home runs a year can make millions of dollars at age 32. Someone who can't hit 15 home runs likely sees his career -- and an irreplicable gravy train -- coming to an end.

When professional baseball and basketball players were making three to five times what a workingman made, they had little incentive to shorten their lives to extend careers. How many Cadillacs does one need, and how big a house does one need? When they are making hundreds of times as much things are different. There might be a mistress in Chicago, one in New York City, one in Southern California, one in northern California... one might have lots of people to support with jewelry, designer clothes, paternity payments, liquor... I think that you get the idea. In the old days one could quite baseball or basketball and go to a more 'normal' career such as selling cars, insurance or real estate, or one could start a well-capitalized small business (such as a hardware store) if one didn't go into coaching or broadcasting, neither of which paid spectacularly well.

I suspect that if we have a protracted downturn in the economy, sports salaries will slide. Young athletes will again be paid perhaps seven times as much as the workingman, and they will be thinking of what they must do after the home runs quit sailing off their bats or their ability to outpace defenders on the basketball court subsides. We may again have the scenario in which someone having a long and good career, like Mickey Lolich, "retires" to own a doughnut shop.

Take a look at this pitching line (source: Baseball Reference):

Year Age Tm Lg W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO
1971 30 DET AL 25 14 .641 2.92 45 45 0 29 4

SV IP H R ER HR BB
0 376.0 336 133 122 36 92

... and try to figure what he would make as a free agent. To be sure that was the best year of his career, and he falls just short of the Hall of Fame.

Now look at one of his teammates (source: Baseball Reference):

Pos Age G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB
LF Willie Horton 28 119 498 450 64 130 25 1 22 72 37
SO BA OBP SLG
75 .289 .349 .496

... and even though he missed lots of games to injuries that year, just imagine a team that couldn't use his stats in the middle of the line-up. (This is not the Willie Horton who derailed the Presidential bid of Mike Dukakis. He often walked onto a field after a fight broke out, and the fight usually ended before he got there).

Athletes of 1971 weren't saints as a group, but they probably weren't using steroids. They had little incentive to do so. Shorten your life by five years to make another $100K? No way! In 2009, giving up a few million dollars might put an end to some sybaritic excesses that trap one.

In 2019, sports salaries might be more in line with the rest of humanity (and so likely will be executive compensation)... and those who earn seven to ten times what the workingman will need a Plan B for the rest of their lives.

One mistake many people make WRT the American Revolution is believing that the war was the Revolution. But the founding fathers of the period stated plainly that the Revolution was the change in mindset, which happened before the war. This one article that compared today's situation with past revolutions believes that we have just had one.

Originally Posted by The Revolution Has Already Begun

A couple years back, I started reading up on American history to try and gain an understanding of how and why we got as screwed up as we are. Through all the accounts I read of our own revolution, there was a recurring theme staring me right in the face: the Colonists were able to slough off British rule because they became self-sufficient. The American Revolution was won before a single shot was ever fired. The miltary campaigns which are unfortunately quite often mistaken for the actual revolution, were in reality an attempt by the British to retake what had already been lost. This is contrary to our popular myth of the Minuteman fighting to claim what is rightfully his from the British, rather than defending what he had already taken without violence. The difference is subtle but significant, both in terms of understanding the process of revolution, and understanding the impact our myths have had on our collective conscience.

The American Revolution occurred the moment the Colonists decided to create their own organizations of production and government. They set up their own congresses, and imbued them with the authority of popular consent, rather than divine right. They began to manufacture their own goods, and do without any goods they couldn’t make themselves. They utilized their own natural resources at home, rather than selling them off to England where they were turned into finished goods and then sold back to the Colonies at inflated prices. Each of these actions were undertaken independently, without any overall detailed plan involved, but they added up over time to create a strong community that didn’t need an outside government to rule it. The British Government quite simply became obsolete and superfluous.

Because of our misconceptions of what Revolution really is we think it means collecting AK-47s and slaughtering the "ruling class".

When I was thirteen, I fantasized about millions of workers hitting the streets with their rifles and pitchforks in a popular uprising; exactly how I envisioned the Russian Revolution of 1917. I couldn’t see any other way to change things than loading up my AK and taking out the bosses in cold blood. Looking back, I chalk a lot of that up to raging teenage hormones and unresolved anger issues. As most beliefs do, mine evolved over time and lost their bloody zeal in exchange for a more practical approach.

Degler's Third American Revolution certainly contained a revolutionary change in politics and national mindset, but the revolution favored the state rather than the individual as the technology of that time (assembly line and mass production) was largely supportive of huge centralized industrialized organizations.

In today's time, the revolution occurred around the middle of the decade. So far, we are living through a revolution of media, information, connections, and communications. The rise of the Internet has created a massive fault line between those who primarily use the Old Media and those who use primarily the New Media. It is not really the type of propaganda propagated through both types of mediums that makes a difference. New Media entails a change in mindset and attitudes. For one thing, New Media empowers both groups and individuals. Because New Media is much info rich than Old Media, people are much better able to determine and control their own destinies. Some households, for instance, actually give energy to the grid. And as this information spreads, even more people will be able to take control of their lives. It is from there, I believe, that the new political order in the 2020s will be framed.

Recent Gallup Poll marks the shift in AMerican attitudes and attributes it to:
"The turning point was 2005, after Hurricane Katrina and Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, when the party's support really started to free-fall, according to Gallup: 'By the end of 2008, the party had its worst positioning against the Democrats in nearly two decades.' "


GOP Losses Span Nearly All Demographic Groups
The decline and fall of the Republican Party in recent years has been so widespread that the party has lost support among nearly every major demographic subgroup of likely voters across the country, according to a new Gallup poll.

The party lost support among a broad swath of Americans, from conservative to liberal, low-income to high-income, married to unmarried, and elderly to young.

The only subgroup in which the party saw a slight increase in support from 2001 to 2009 was frequent churchgoers.

The biggest declines, of roughly 10 percent, occurred among the college-educated, 18 to 29-year-olds, and Midwestern voters.

The turning point was 2005, after Hurricane Katrina and Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, when the party's support really started to free-fall, according to Gallup: "By the end of 2008, the party had its worst positioning against the Democrats in nearly two decades."

Evidence we're in a fourth turning?

How about this;

More quantifiable data;

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/po...-48197092.html

"Turnout in our presidential elections has risen from 105 million in 2000 to 122 million in 2004 and 131 million in 2008, an increase of 25 percent when population went up only 8 percent. Turnout in off-year elections has increased too. The total vote for House elections has gone from 66 million in 1998 to 73 million in 2002 and 80 million in 2006, an increase of 20 percent.

The upswing in presidential turnout is unlike anything America has seen for many decades. To find three consecutive elections in which the percentage increase in turnout each time was larger, you have to go back to the three contests between 1928 and 1936."

Originally Posted by callmeindy

Evidence we're in a fourth turning?

How about this;

A logarithmic scale would show a huge increase in government spending during the 3T "Roaring Twenties". That of course was largely for highway construction. Growth from near-zero is of course huge in percentage.

It would also show the spike in 2008-2009 very similar to the New Deal spike. The cause and need look much the same.

Did you know that the UK’s Criminal Justice Act of 2003 repeals the 800 year old legal principle of double jeopardy (in England and Wales) for some crimes including some drug crimes?

If it was not too liberal for the England of the Plantagenets (where you’ll note the better part of the population lived in something like a state of bondage, servitude, and deprivation and could probably be put to death for simply looking at some sadistic, deranged noble fellow the wrong way) you wonder why it’s too liberal for Blair and Brown’s England.

Downhill, friends.

For all her ugly acts as Prime Minister I don’t know that Mrs. Thatcher ever repealed any centuries-old principles of basic law.

You can almost imagine the current crop of Democrats in Washington - reveling in their self-glorification - putting on a new constitutional convention (after the Supreme Court strikes down Roe V Wade?) to pass some kind of privacy amendment (that would have a lot more teeth as a simple federal law as an amendment is likely to be clear, concise, and therefore open to being utterly watered down in interpretation by the Supreme Court) and defacing other parts of the document (including the double jeopardy provision) in the process.

I can think of no one in Washington today that should have any place in altering that document.

You wonder if those crappy gifts Gordy Brown got were by accident. I’ll bet Davie Cameron gets at least a 15 dollar gift certificate to the Virgin Megastore when he goes to Berry’s sleepover party.

Originally Posted by Linus

You wonder if those crappy gifts Gordy Brown got were by accident. I’ll bet Davie Cameron gets at least a 15 dollar gift certificate to the Virgin Megastore when he goes to Berry’s sleepover party.

Or maybe they'll just go long on the Bermuda short stocks while Putin's petrodollar funded cover band plays Back in the USSR.

Interesting post on DU...

24. Ok...ok...don't get me started...

This is PRECISELY why our country is in trouble with regard to the housing crisis and also the
excessive spending/credit card debt.

Let me just say that I love granite countertops, stainless appliances and hardwood floors. Those things
are cool, and if you have them and are enjoying them--kudos to you!

The problem is---at some point---EVERYONE decided that these primo, expensive details were standard fare for
any house. Suddenly, everyone felt entitled to these things. And by God, everyone was going to GET these
things in their next home--even if they couldn't afford them! People also used home-equity loans to purchase
this stuff--and now they're upside-down on their home without any equity!

What cracks me up is that these high-end options were once only found in expensive hotels and mansions. Now,
we insist that they're in our homes. And it's not just granite and stainless-steel appliances. It's professional
stoves, glass-tile backsplashes, sun rooms with expensive furniture and outside fireplaces and firepits. Also,
it's whirlpool tubs, en suite bedrooms, Jack & Jill bedrooms with shared kids bath, fireplaces in the bedroom,
wine cellars in the basement, poker rooms, media rooms with ginormous screens and theater seating, professional
landscaping, 3- and 4-car garages.

It's all completely bonkers!

Remember in the 1970's--when people would be proud of their little "Wonder Years" ranch house??? Those people also
could retire comfortably at 55 and have money to do other things. They weren't living paycheck to paycheck.

Our nation has become a nation where everyone thinks that they're entitled to a fully-appointed McMansion with all
of the trimmings.

And we wonder why we're broke.

Seriously...it's to the point where it's comedy now. We have totally gone off the deep end.

Originally Posted by Odin

Interesting post on DU...

This is PRECISELY why our country is in trouble with regard to the housing crisis and also the
excessive spending/credit card debt.

Let me just say that I love granite countertops, stainless appliances and hardwood floors. Those things
are cool, and if you have them and are enjoying them--kudos to you!

Good reason exists for such goodies being "exclusive". They are nice, but unless one is rich, one has good reason to not buy them. Linoleum, painted metal, and wall-to-wall carpet are all much less expensive.

The problem is---at some point---EVERYONE decided that these primo, expensive details were standard fare for
any house. Suddenly, everyone felt entitled to these things. And by God, everyone was going to GET these
things in their next home--even if they couldn't afford them! People also used home-equity loans to purchase
this stuff--and now they're upside-down on their home without any equity!

A good rule exists for personal finance: unless it makes one money or facilitates one's work (do buy a car so that you don't have to take the bus to work and waste thirty minutes both ways waiting for the bus), don't invest more than is necessary on depreciable objects.

Except that people no longer listen to music with the dedication that they once did, component stereo (separate tuner, pre-amp, and power amplifier) would be buying $50,000 stereos.

What cracks me up is that these high-end options were once only found in expensive hotels and mansions. Now,
we insist that they're in our homes. And it's not just granite and stainless-steel appliances. It's professional
stoves, glass-tile backsplashes, sun rooms with expensive furniture and outside fireplaces and firepits. Also,
it's whirlpool tubs, en suite bedrooms, Jack & Jill bedrooms with shared kids bath, fireplaces in the bedroom,
wine cellars in the basement, poker rooms, media rooms with ginormous screens and theater seating, professional
landscaping, 3- and 4-car garages.

What an irony! Aristocratic items were being put in houses of people being degraded in pay and economic security. A "poker room"? I can understand a spare bedroom becoming a "media room" that can become a spare bedroom with the aid of a Murphy bed.

To be sure I have seen little of this in Michigan, where nobody pretends that things were going well over the last twenty years. 3-car garages? What family needs three cars, let alone four?

It's all completely bonkers!

Remember in the 1970's--when people would be proud of their little "Wonder Years" ranch house??? Those people also
could retire comfortably at 55 and have money to do other things. They weren't living paycheck to paycheck.

I would be satisfied with that, although I might end up in a trailer at some time. That's the trailer with one thousand classical CDs and a filled bookshelf. Even some foreign films. Maybe I won't be alone in that situation.

Our nation has become a nation where everyone thinks that they're entitled to a fully-appointed McMansion with all
of the trimmings.

And we wonder why we're broke.

George Babbitt flourished under Calvin Coolidge and again under George W. Bush. Such is a 3T Degeneracy -- people think that they can buy a better social position and self-esteem by buying what they can't afford.

Seriously...it's to the point where it's comedy now. We have totally gone off the deep end.

I don't know; it's not funny in Michigan.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I don't know; it's not funny in Michigan.

It's DARK humor.

The Madame of the Washington Post, that organ of the Military-Informational Complex, decided that she would not rent out the good orifices of the piano players at her establishment after all. Johns would be welcomed and given custom in the traditional manner; but the musicians would not have to put out as of yet.

Meanwhile, the serious media are giving us daily and hourly updates on the funerary rites of the seriously odd, Mr. Michael Jackson. We be 3T.

Originally Posted by Odin

Interesting post on DU...

That's a great thread. Thanks for the link. I think this particular poster has some good points. We're suffering the affects of a credit bubble bursting. Our propensity to live beyond our means was a big part of why so much credit was being used in the first place.

When I grew up, my mother (who grew up in the last 4T) pretty much instilled in us that credit is bad. If you can't pay cash, don't buy it. I'm willing to bet a lot of us had parents or grandparents like that, but of course, we knew better than they did - hence our current mess .

Mostly, I think a little common sense is a pretty good gauge of what should and should not be done. One of the most useful quotes I ever saw on one of the home improvement shows was a professional flipper who commented that he doesn't put granite in any house that he plans to sell for less than half a million. For less valuable houses, it's just a waste of money. You're not going to see it back (and this comment was made BEFORE the housing bust). I think there's probably a similar price threshold for most of these higher end features.

A fresh coat of nice paint is still your best (and least expensive) bet when you want to sell a house. However, we've found that nice flooring is actually the one high end renovation that is still fairly reasonable AND makes a big impression on friends and potential buyers. You can get hardwood installed in your entire house significantly cheaper than you can do even a relatively modest kitchen reno. If you do the work yourself, a nice ceramic tile is even more inexpensive.

You can spend A LOT of money on other little details, but almost nobody will notice them and even fewer will be willing to pay extra for them when you go to sell the house.

According to this website, http://www.financialsense.com/editor...2009/0709.html, the "Crisis" may last for two decades.

>A 20-Year Bear Market?, David Galland, July 9, 2009

>Most importantly, if [Neil] Howe is right, this crisis is far from over. In fact, when I asked him where we are today on a scale from 1 to 10 -- with 10 representing as bad as the crisis will get -- he replied that we are at either 2 or 3. In other words, the worst is very much yet to come. And, per above, he expects this period of turmoil to take 20 years to play out.

The economic crises as a catalyst for prison reform.

Originally Posted by Lance Steagall

One of the silver linings in this economic crisis: a long-overdue reevaluation of incarceration and corrections-programs in the US is taking place...

...Sustainable prison reform will only come through a recognition that our current approach is not working. It's encouraging, then, to hear Holder acknowledge that our approach to fighting crime is counterproductive.

This is one area where I can see the validity of the theory in action. For example, back in the 1970's when the awakening culture was dominant it was pretty much taken for granted that locking up small time offenders only taught them to be more effective criminals and harder to catch next time.
From the 1980's on, as judgmentalism became the dominant theme in criminal justice the prison-industrial complex hit its heyday. Too often we locked people up for even the smallest nonviolent acts.
Now, after 20 years punitive policies, not only do we see the fact that imprisoning people early and often really does turn them into smarter and more dangerous criminals, we also can't afford to keep feeding the beast.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

The economic crises as a catalyst for prison reform.



This is one area where I can see the validity of the theory in action. For example, back in the 1970's when the awakening culture was dominant it was pretty much taken for granted that locking up small time offenders only taught them to be more effective criminals and harder to catch next time.
From the 1980's on, as judgmentalism became the dominant theme in criminal justice the prison-industrial complex hit its heyday. Too often we locked people up for even the smallest nonviolent acts.
Now, after 20 years punitive policies, not only do we see the fact that imprisoning people early and often really does turn them into smarter and more dangerous criminals, we also can't afford to keep feeding the beast.

Who knows? Maybe we will end up with something like the Ludovico treatment of A Clockwork Orange that makes wimps out of violent people. Such non-violent offenses as shoplifting and hot checks should have been treated as civil offenses. At the other extreme we need to scrap the death penalty that right-wingers thought would impose the ultimate fear upon violent offenders but has become so capricious in its application that it has no deterrent effect.

A long recession will reshape values, one of those most in need of modification the attitude that material gain and indulgence are the sole objectives of life. People who endured the 1930s had no choice except to recognize the emptiness of the crass materialism of the 1920s. People will need to learn to serve first before getting and to invest before indulging, to use and to make the best of flawed communities (which will require that we reform those communities). During the last 3T America became a corrupt society at all social levels; the low-level crooks formed the Bloods and the Crips, the middle-class sociopaths becoming embezzlers and operators of sleazy enterprises, and the high-power sociopaths taking over the executive suites and the GOP. We will have to relearn the worth of offering value for value, and we will be much the better for it all.

This is a definite and very clear turning indicator:

Major Cities' Plummeting Crime Rates Mystifying

Violent crime has plummeted in the Washington area and in major cities across the country, a trend criminologists describe as baffling and unexpected.

The District, New York and Los Angeles are on track for fewer killings this year than in any other year in at least four decades. Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis and other cities are also seeing notable reductions in homicides.

"Experts did not see this coming at all," said Andrew Karmen, a criminologist and professor of sociology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

In the District and Prince George's County, homicides are down about 17 percent this year.

Criminologists have different theories about why crime is down so much, although many agree that the common belief that crime is connected to the economy is false.

Whatever the cause, police across the region are taking credit for the drop.

"Everybody wants to beat us up when it goes up, so we'll take credit for it when it goes down," D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said.

She said police are able to target specific locations or types of crime and policing is so high-tech that investigators are analyzing crime minute-by-minute and have greater ability to attack crime before it happens.

In Prince George's, for example, the department's top commanders get mobile phone updates on crimes and 911 calls every 15 minutes.

In New York, when someone is killed, police send a mobile data center to a neighborhood, allowing police on the scene to listen to 911 calls and immediately search databases that list the names of everyone in a certain building who is on parole.

In the District, the department creates a weekly "Go-Go report," which details where and when home-grown bands are playing, because go-go concerts often bring together rival gangs, causing violence, Lanier said. There is also a weekly gang report that tells officers which gangs or crews are feuding that week.

Armed with that information, police can better predict where crimes might happen and take measures to prevent them.

The District is on track to have fewer killings than in any year since 1964, when the population was about 760,000 and Vietnam War protests were just beginning.

In the years since, the city has struggled at times with civil unrest, the arrival of crack cocaine and the rise of street gangs. In 1991, the District was known as the murder capital of the United States, recording 479 that year. This year, there have been 79.

Last summer, the city was struggling with so much violence in the Trinidad neighborhood that police set up military-style neighborhood roadblocks and stopped people from entering unless they had a "legitimate reason." The checkpoints were so restrictive that they were ultimately ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

This year, there have been several high-profile shootings in the District, including last week's late-afternoon killing of armed suspect Kellen Anthony White by the Capitol Police about a block from the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Also, a security officer, Stephen T. Johns, was killed last month during the lunch hour at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. An alleged white supremacist has been charged.

But Lanier said there has been a turnaround in violence this year. She pointed to a better relationship between the department and the community as a factor, saying it has helped get more violent repeat offenders off the streets. She said tips from the community have been flowing faster than ever, due in part to patrol officers knowing their beats and developing connections in the community.

Last year, the department paid about $500,000 in reward money for tips that led to arrests and convictions, double the amount in 2007. This year, detectives have closed about 70 percent of homicide cases.

"The community is giving us more information than ever," Lanier said. "They're used to seeing the same cop in the neighborhood every day. They feel comfortable. They have a connection to that officer. They know that officer isn't going to burn them."

Burning them, she said, would be to take information and not act on it, leaving sources to believe police are corrupt or lazy.

She also said she has torn down walls in the department so that homicide detectives talk more often with beat officers, sharing vital information.

Violent crime is also down in some of Washington's other large suburbs, including Montgomery and Fairfax counties.

Montgomery has recorded six homicides this year, putting it on track to have its lowest total since 1986.

In Prince George's, violence had been steadily rising since the 1990s, when the county started absorbing spillover crime from the District. But this year, crime is at a 20-year low, and homicides are down almost 17 percent.

Police Chief Roberto L. Hylton said that since he took over the department in September, there has been a more defined mission about how to attack crime.

He identified car thefts as one of the county's major problems and a "gateway" crime, meaning if criminals get away with stealing a car, they sometimes become emboldened and begin committing more daring acts. In 2004, about 18,500 cars were stolen in the county, more than in all of Virginia.

Since then, the department has focused on arresting car thieves and educating the public about protecting their cars, and the number of car thefts has shrunk by half.

"We have a very detailed and comprehensive strategy. We are triaging our community," Hylton said.

He said the homicide closure rate is about 70 percent, which has helped get many criminals off the streets.

"If you come into Prince George's County and you commit a murder, we're going to track you down and arrest you and lock you up," Hylton said.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum, said the drop in homicides this year is notable, especially considering the weather.

"This does come at an important time," he said. "We're midway through summer, and summer is when you see the most significant increase in street violence. Departments have had to be more strategic in terms of gangs and hot spots."

Wexler said that crime isn't down everywhere. Baltimore and Dallas are among some cities experiencing a higher number of killings compared with last year.

Gary LaFree, a criminology professor at the University of Maryland, said it has taken police decades to figure out how to effectively target crime.

"In the '60s, crime was like an act of God, like a tornado or earthquake," LaFree said. "Where policing has changed is that we've gotten the idea this is a problem we created and there are human solutions to it. Obviously, crime is not randomly distributed. It is connected to hot spots in cities and other areas."

LaFree and others agree that crime doesn't automatically go up when the economy is poor. Property crime is also trending down in many jurisdictions, including the District, Prince George's and Montgomery. The FBI reported last week that bank robberies across the country fell in the first quarter of the year, with 1,498 reported, compared with 1,604 in the first quarter of 2008.

Criminologists point to the Great Depression in the 1930s as a time of relatively low crime compared with the Roaring Twenties, when the country experienced more violence.

Lanier said that despite the good news, there's not much celebrating going on among police chiefs across the country.

"We're afraid to relax in any way and say crime is down," she said. "We tend to not talk about it much because we know how quick things can turn. What's successful today, tomorrow can turn on a dime."

Here is an interesting thought about what the near-financial meltdown last Fall might mean for the future of capitalism. I find it as a clear attempt to glimpse at the economic, and social, changes that will define the 1T that emerges from what some consider the current 4T -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...nomics-bankers

This epochal crisis requires us to resolve the paradox of capitalism

At work, we're told to be diligent and disciplined; elsewhere, hedonistic and self-indulgent. We need a sustainable model

What do we want to see emerge from the greatest crisis of capitalism for 70 years? If I had to answer in a single phrase, I would say: new models for a sustainable social market economy. This requires us to change as well as our states.

Capitalism will not end in 2009 as communism ended in 1989. It is too deep-rooted, too diverse and too adaptable to suffer such a sudden death. There are far more varieties of capitalism in the world today than there ever were of communism, and that diversity is one of its strengths. The rainbow reaches from wild west to wild east, and extends to major national variants of a market economy, such as China, that purists would say are not capitalism at all. So some versions of capitalism will weather the storm; others will be left in ruins or at least very substantially transformed.

An extreme "neoliberal" version of the free-market economy, characterised not just by far-reaching deregulation and privatisation but also by a Gordon Gekko greed-is-good ethos – and fully realised in practice only in some areas of Anglo-Saxon and post-communist economies – seems likely to find itself in the latter category. But how about a modernised, reformed version of what postwar German thinkers called the "social market economy"?

Very definitely still a free-market economy, this model nonetheless calls for the state to provide a strong legal and regulatory framework for private enterprise, for the involvement of stakeholders as well as shareholders, an attempt to balance long and short-term considerations in economic decision-making, a national commitment to a social minimum for all citizens, and a strong moral ethos among those involved in business activity. This then needs to be combined with the 21st-century demands for ecological sustainability in the face of climate change, and ethical sustainability, in the face of *global poverty. A tall order, to be sure.

And yet, there is an argument growing that perhaps not much will change. For example, this response to the above prospect -

http://baselinescenario.com/2009/07/...nge/#more-4428

Ash’s essay reflects the feeling that the financial crisis was so cataclysmic, and the behavior that precipitated it so indefensible, that it could not help but trigger a major change in economic organization and perhaps even in societal values. Today, it’s pretty easy to label it as hopelessly optimistic. Many emerging markets, with China in the lead, are determined to return to an economic boom as quickly as possible. In the United States, the official administration strategy is to reflate the banking system as a means of stimulating the economy. After a couple of months of uncertainty, the media has consolidated around reporting this as an ordinary recession, though more severe than most.

More fundamentally, people change only a little bit, and only very slowly. People may be a little less willing to buy flat-screen TVs on credit, but they will still aspire to own flat-screen TVs. Domestic political systems will still undercut attempts at international governance; “internationalism” is perhaps more a dirty word than ever in the United States, as evidenced by the shameful attempts to portray Harold Koh (until recently dean of the Yale Law School) as un-American during his confirmation hearings. As for the environment, I have yet to see compelling evidence that the human race will pull it together in time to meaningfully slow down global warming, and if anything the recession is being used as an argument against investing in alternative energy.

In the longer term, I think we can hope for a few silver linings from this crisis and recession. People may be less willing to take on debt, which will mean greater domestic savings and therefore greater domestic investment with less foreign debt. People may feel less secure economically, or maybe will at least remember feeling less secure during the dark days of 2008-2009, which may make them a little more concerned about the poor and a little more willing to pay for a better social safety net. Graduates of our top universities may want to do something other than become bankers and hedge fund managers, and may invent new technologies and teaching methods instead of new derivatives. Maybe the glorification of extreme wealth will be tempered a bit for a few decades, so the ultra-wealthy will flaunt it a little less and the rest of us will admire it a little less.

All of these things would be good, and they may still happen. But it will be within a capitalist system that remains pretty much the same as before – perhaps with a tiny bit more regulation.

As we've seen with recent growls about the stimulus actually not being needed after all or even that our present health care system is not just fine but "the best in the world," there is a creeping doubt about whether we have, or still are, experiencing a "crisis" - perhaps instead a somewhat overambitious recession that, like any recession, will eventually be overwhelmed by good times again; we only need to await the town crier's "all is well."

And with that sense of a diminished 4T, the tentacle grip of our aged 3T seems to rekindle its ability to cause increasing rancor with each passing day.

Gives me a sense that our 4T has yet to do its job.

For me, a sense of something wicked comes our way.

Black swan.

Originally Posted by playwrite

And with that sense of a diminished 4T, the tentacle grip of our aged 3T seems to rekindle its ability to cause increasing rancor with each passing day.

Gives me a sense that our 4T has yet to do its job.

For me, a sense of something wicked comes our way.

Black swan.

As far as I can see, this "jobless recovery" that is being promised and the "green shoots" aren't based on anything other than hope.

Resuming business as usual is just going to put us back in the same place we were.

Originally Posted by Odin

This is a definite and very clear turning indicator:

Major Cities' Plummeting Crime Rates Mystifying

Possible explanations:

1. The Millennial Generation is less violent, more cautious, and more deferential than Generation X was at the same age. Generation X has largely aged out of the most crime-prone years of early-adulthood and long left adolescence.

2. Generation X has begun to show its pragmatism in unglamorous-but-necessary areas of public administration -- most notably police work. Contrast Boomers more likely to resort to harsh judgment or attempts to "Bring America to Jesus".

3. The economic downturn has made crass materialism less fashionable and more futile.

4. Cars are getting harder to steal.

5. Some of the usual objects of theft (consumer electronics) have become dirt-cheap. Who is going to risk a long prison term for stealing a DVD player or a microwave oven?

6. The economic hard times have made illegal drugs less attractive.

7. People who used to think of "long term" as irrelevancy now think of it more readily.

There are obviously major exceptions to this trend. Areas such as the Chicago neighborhoods like Englewood and Roseland are experiencing as much violence and death as ever. There is an activist priest who has worked to curb such violence for years, and just last week two youths were shot right outside his parish.

As far as the other points mentioned, I recently pointed out on one of the other threads that in many ways not much has changed, and I believe most are hoping that things were revert to the old ways very shortly. So far we have only given lip service to things such as doing for the environment. Would like to invite you to look that post over and comment on it. More on this later.