Write True If The Statement Is Correct And False If The Statement Is Wrong Health: Fill & Download for Free

Here’s what really happened:Li was a junior Ophthalmologist at a Wuhan hospital. He had no training in virology or epidemiology.Li overheard a rumor that SARS had broken out again.Li did not inform China’s CDC who, unbeknownst to him, were already investigating it.Instead, Li used social media to repeat the rumor to family and friends and they told their friends….Li was wrong professionally: it was not SARS, as he asserted in his tweets.Li was wrong legally: spreading rumors Publicly that are likely to cause panic is illegal in China.Li was wrong procedurally. China’s CDC was already investigating it.Li was not convicted of anything. After an hour of questioning the police concluded that he had merely acted irresponsibly. He signed a statement attesting to his mistake and was allowed to return to work.The US, which had staged bio warfare on China in 1951, unleashed its media—the same media that lied about WMD.Most Western media ignored China’s CDC.Western media inaccurately reported Li’s encounter with the police.NO Western media told the public that, worldwide, the outbreak would kill fewer people than die of ‘flu (a Coronavirus) in one day.An analysis of the Dr. Li Wenliang incident, from friends in the State Security Ministry and translated by China author Jeff J. Brown:"Regarding major public-health events in the country's explosive infectious-virus outbreak, we must speak with a unified voice. After impeccable verification, the information should be released by the relevant specialized departments. The virus must be identified not only through clinical experience, but be corroborated by all tests available to humanity. That’s a basic mechanism for national governance."Dr. Li was an ophthalmologist and not a front-line infectious-disease or fever clinic doctor. Nor was he a doctor who conducted professional testing and screening of the virus. That is to say, the information he obtained came from a colleague or medical circle, not through his own professional analysis or that of an equivalent. Further, he did not go through the normal channels before crossing the red lines to release major information to medical circles. Given the circumstances and lacking clearance for information release, public security officials handled things correctly. Their disciplining of Dr. Li was also moderate; they did not apply excessive force or injure him."In this outbreak, there will of course be cases of weak response or dereliction of duty. But ordinary people are unable to obtain public information on whether the disaster is natural or externally manufactured. Nor is the state able to put certain information or evidence on the table. If it is a manufactured disaster, then the possibility that the relevant departments and officials responsible might have been impeded in their duties or misled into error is relatively large, and their culpability comparatively small. To judge from CCTV’s whitewashing of Hubei Province, the prospect of an externally made crisis seems larger."At present, the situation facing the country is extremely complex and severe. It has to deal not only with domestic pressure but also with foreign pressure, not only with the pressure of the epidemic but also with production, food, materials, public opinion, economy, finance, diplomacy, military pressures. These are comprehensive. If a weak link is breached, it could spark a serious chain reaction and a domino effect. The consequences can not be imagined!"National security is the people’s interests. There are no rights and wrongs that supersede state security. The handling of all matters is related to the chain reaction: actions that benefit the nation’s interests are right; those that do the opposite are wrong. The immediate priority is to overcome the outbreak and end it. Everything else can be handled later, by correction or through accountability."The world is not as peaceful and harmonious as it might seem to average folks. The greater the tensions within the country, the more furiously the rumors fly. That’s when external forces aim at public opinion and begin their precisely targeted attack. It’s like what we have seen in Hong Kong. Once the government loses its credibility and control of the narrative, it’s on an irreversible path to perdition!"Why did public opinion choose Dr. Li to focus on? Because he was young, handsome, progressive, kind-hearted. Pick him and you can readily get ordinary people to sympathize … the easier to incite public opinion. Given his youth and what’s known about the virus, Dr. Li’s death was a very low-probability event. Yet within an hour, even before his treatment began, public sentiment was boiling over and people were mourning him. Disinformation was circulating that his parents, wife and children had died as a result of the outbreak. What despicable, cold-blooded actions!"The rumors are no more than a bid to create a climate of terror and undermine internal unity. Hubei Province has been their breakthrough point. If Hubei falls, so would the whole country. So they zeroed in on Hubei. But if Hubei can pull together and tide itself over the difficulties, the country can turn to safety!"Even if the People's Daily or some VIPs intervened, it would not yet be possible to determine what’s true and what’s false. Whatever the case, the state has been obliged to make concessions to pacify public opinion. This only underscores the precariousness of the situation!"The discourse on the epidemic is now pointing fingers at the public security units — verbally and in writing. Medics aside, which police force isn’t fighting on the frontlines against the virus? If their morale and their ability to maintain order are undermined, the consequences can be easily imagined. That’s why the external forces are making precision attacks, replicating the Hong Kong model."This incident seems no simple matter. Whether it’s a natural or man-made disaster may never be answered, but its impact on China evidently is not just an epidemic. Heaven bless China!"

Don’t you remember what happened the first time?As “correctly” claimed by the doomsayers:The stock market and economy would collapse.Celebrities would flee the nation.Americans would move en masse to Canada. (Hm. Why not to Mexico?)America would become a fascist, Nazi nation.Jews would be rounded up.Muslims would be persecuted.Minority populations in general would be persecuted.Tax cuts would only help the rich and ruin the nation.We’d be in a nuclear war with North Korea.Manufacturing jobs would not return to the US.Israel would not be supported.All immigration would be stopped.The Constitution would be thrown out.Martial law and dictatorship would emerge.Russia would control America via puppet Trump.No one would get medical care and millions would die.Trump would ignore court rulings.Liberal states would secede from the union.And lots more.Hey, I don’t agree with everything Trump does and he has plenty of flaws. But the dire predictions, pounded into us daily by the media, reached a point of shrillness and irrationality that actually drove some people into therapy, broke up marriages, split friendships, and so on.Of course, there are some who will say that all or some of the above things and more and worse would still happen if Trump is re-elected.Historians will most assuredly have “fun” with this era of American political life as the years, decades, and centuries pass.Addenda:Overview: I hope readers will look at and enjoy—or have other reactions to—the comments and responses. Some comments have challenged whether any of the above things were predicted by anyone and that the above bullet points are therefore hyperbole. Others have claimed that some or all of the above points did indeed come true—which is in line with my prediction in the original answer.As an educator, I find the responses fascinating. They can be categorized as follows:Those agreeing with the answer above.Persons who interpret the answer as supporting Trump. That’s their interpretation. If anything, the answer indicts media sensationalism—and American gullibility in falling for it. They have jumped up the ladder of inference (see below), altered hard data into belief, and reached the zone of bad judgment.Persons who believe that some or all of the things listed in the answer really have happened. When pressed for concrete examples, few responded. Those who did conveyed interpretations and evidence that could be considered ambiguous at best. It is very natural (very human, to put it better) for people to filter their selected data through their beliefs. The answer to this question was an exercise of showing people data contradictory to their beliefs. Tellingly, as of this writing, not a single person has acknowledged that the hard data show their Trump beliefs are incorrect on any number of parameters. What does that mean? Is it a sign of Americans not wanting to look at the hard data? Is it a sign of effective media indoctrination? Something else?In any event, all of us Americans need to get rid of this ideological barrier that is fed either by those who want us to be divided or by some other flaw in our cognitive abilities. We can’t all be right, but we could all be wrong! So why not err on the side of believing in one another and the present and future hopes and dreams of a nation that is so good—despite its flaws—that for decade after decade people from around the world do their best to get here?Some suggestions for readers.(1) See confirmation bias (Confirmation bias - Wikipedia), the Mandela Effect (see False memory - Wikipedia), and (2) Enjoy the following video titled “The Ladder of Inference Creates Bad Judgment.”Documented sources: Yes, various media did make the claims in the answer and those overblown, overwrought, inflammatory claims failed to materialize—possibly only to the surprise of the media or those whose thinking was molded by the media.Woven throughout my and others’ responses to some of the comments are reliable sources of data that confirm that the 2015 and 2016 media predictions, did not come to be and in many cases show that the opposite is what actually happened.The main point of this exercise is to challenge the media portrayals that are drummed into us by actively seeking out facts that contradict our beliefs—thereby helping us to step out of the cognitive bias and selective perception we may have—to transcend the faulty ladder of inference. In that spirit, hard evidence that contradicts any of the points is not only welcomed, but is actively sought.Please note however that emotion, name-calling, accusations, and further doom saying do not amount to hard evidence. If America is going to hell in a hand basket, prove it with evidence. If it is not, many may wish to reconsider how they have reached such passionate levels of belief, misplaced “certainty,” and outrage based on information that may have been faulty. And it is always worth asking this: who gains if America becomes increasingly divided?The bullet points from the answer are above are considered in turn here:Stock market would collapse:https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-wall-street-effect-markets-230164 (“Economists: A Trump win would tank the markets”, published by Politico in 2016)What Happens to the Markets if Donald Trump Wins? (The New York Times in a 2016 article quoted an “expert” who said that a Trump presidency would “likely cause the stock market to crash and plunge the world into recession”)Instead we are seeing things like this:Here’s President Trump’s stock-market scorecard after 2 years in office (Market Watch, 2019) which said in part “Jan. 20 marked two full years since the real estate mogul and the reality TV star was sworn in as president. In that time, stocks have rallied to records, making him among the most successful Republican presidents when judged by market gains. In fact, the Nasdaq soared 29% since January 2017, marking the tech-centric index’s best rally under a Republican president, according to Dow Jones Market Data.” (but read the full report, as there are indeed some downsides, and as one commentor mentioned, the inverted bond market is a troubling signal)Celebrities would flee America:'I really will': the stars who didn't move to Canada when Trump won (Guardian)Pack your bags: Stars who vowed to leave America if Trump won (Washington Times)Celebrities who said they'll leave America if Trump wins (SF Gate)Celebs moving if Donald Trump wins (this CNN article points out that celebs are prone to announce every election that they will leave if their favored party / candidate does not win)The majority of celebs seem to have indicated Canada as their destination. Only one celeb popped up as “going back” to Mexico—that was George Lopez, who is actually not Mexican but is an American citizen. Link is in comments section.Instead of celebs fleeing America, we see:Where Are They Now? These 23 Celebrities Said They'd Move If Trump Won—most are still in the US and doing very well under a free market capitalist system with growing social welfare protectionsAmericans would move to Canada:A lot of Americans are threatening to move to Canada if Trump wins (The Loop)Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S. (2019 Gallup report)We see this:Record Numbers of Americans Want to Leave the U.S.—which concluded that around 1 in 4 Americans want to move to Canada. But there are some questions that arise logically. Do they want to move to Canada because of what Trump is actually doing, or because of how the media portray Trump? And since the current US population is approaching 329,000,000, that Gallup poll result would imply that around 85,540,000 Americans are likely headed for Canada. This does not pass any bare credibility test.In fact, by late 2018, only about 2,000 more Americans than normal had moved to Canada (About 2,000 more Americans than normal have moved to Canada since Trump’s election). Notice that “than normal” part of the statement? That means that American migration to Canada is not a new thing under Trump. Americans moved to Canada under Obama, too.And to top it off, Canadians move to America, too! It’s not a one-way street. See for example Moving from Canada to the US 2019: Canadians Living in the US. And in the first three quarters of 2018, more Canadians gained lawful permanent resident status in American than Americans who moved to Canada (Quarters 1–3, 2018, 7,761 Canadians became US permanent residents—see attachment at Legal Immigration and Adjustment of Status Report). That projects out to around 10,000 Canadians becoming US permanent residents in 2018 compared to maybe one third that number of Americans moving to Canada.America would become a fascist, Nazi nationA leading Holocaust historian just seriously compared the US to Nazi Germany (Vox, 2018)https://www.washingtonpost.com/https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwinraW70vPhAhXUsJ4KHciBDK4QFjACegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fposteverything%2Fwp%2F2018%2F07%2F16%2Fits-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why%2F&usg=AOvVaw2oCwPPwLpRcn2hAr6lTywP (“It’s not wrong to compare Trump’s America to the Holocaust. Here’s why.” Washington Post)https://prospect.org/article/trump-and-rise-21st-century-fascism (“Trump and the Rise of 21st Century Fascism”, The American Prospect, 2018)Instead, when we look into claims that these things have happened, we often see it is the left that has promoted them.For example, at least one commentor claimed that Trump was trying to become dictator for life and had asked if he could throw out the 22nd Amendment (term limits on presidents). I must admit I was surprised to find that it was actually a Democrat in the 111th Congress, under Obama, who proposed getting rid of the 22nd Amendment—and at the time there was talk of removing the two-term limit so Obama—not Trump—could continue to serve as president. (See Text of H.J.Res. 5 (111th): Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the ... (Introduced version) - GovTrack.us, and see New York congressman introduces bill to abolish presidential term limits.)Jews would be rounded up:With White Nationalism Emboldened, American Jews Consider Exit Strategies (HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News, originally published on Yahoo News)Some challenged whether there was any actual fear among Jews of being rounded up. I personally knew Jewish people who had this fear, and who could say the worry was unfounded if they were persuaded by the press who wildly proclaimed that Trump was a Nazi, that current American events were paralleling those of Germany as it fell under national socialist control that had coupled itself with racism and anti-Semitism, and so on. This trope was even promoted by the left-leaning Israeli publication, Haaretz in 2018: Donald Trump is still setting up concentration camps on American soil | Opinion.Instead, we see:Israelis love Trump more than almost any other nation, poll shows (Haaretz, 2019—and note that Haaretz is generally a left-leaning media source)And of course his own immediate family—see Ivanka Trump: America's most powerful Jewish womanMuslims would be persecuted:Donald Trump’s attacks on Muslims fit a pattern of persecution — United States Studies Centre (2015)Instead we saw:Not a persecution of Muslims as a whole group, but a call for temporary travel bans from countries known to have significant evidence of a will to hurt or destroy America and a poor ability to properly vet or even identify immigrants—even Hillary Clinton advocated much more rigorous vetting. That was not to hurt immigrants, but to keep Americans and America safe. Yes, you can spin the aim to protect into calling it persecution of those barred by too broad a brush, but then you are getting into spin, narrative creation, and interpretation rather than facts. Even the so-called Muslim ban was not that—it included countries that were not Muslim (e.g., North Korea, Venezuela) and it did not include all Muslim nations by any stretch (e.g., it did not include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan).Minority populations in general would be persecuted:52 Harms in 52 Weeks - Center for American Progress (Center for American Progress, 2018)Instead we see things like:Fact check: Under Trump, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans have seen lowest unemployment rates (NBC News, 2019)https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/dont-look-now-but-minority-unemployment-is-at-record-lows-under-trump/ (Investors.com, 2018)Tax cuts would help only the rich and ruin the nation:The Atlantic, Business section claimed in 2016, in Make America Have a Recession Again, that “Donald Trump's Economic Plans Would Destroy the U.S. Economy”In 2016, Fortune proclaimed that “Donald Trump's Tax Plan Could Cost the U.S. 11 Million Jobs” (Donald Trump's Tax Plan Could Cost the U.S. 11 Million Jobs)Instead, what we see is:US job growth remains strong and steady in April (MSNBC, 2019) and surpassed projectionsTrump Scoreboard shows acceleration in jobs growth even with unemployment rate at new lows (Market Watch, 2019)Fact check: Under Trump, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans have seen lowest unemployment rates (NBC News, 2019)Nuclear war with North Korea:How Trump made the North Korea crisis worse (Vox, “How Trump made the North Korea crisis worse” stating in part “Most people are not aware of how close we came to nuclear war and how plausible it actually was throughout 2017 and early 2018.”)Breakdown in Hanoi Summit Shows the Real Danger on the Korean Peninsula: Donald Trump’s America (The Intercept, 2019)Instead we see the North Korean bully being confronted rather than appeased as he was under Clinton, Obama, and probably other presidents.More to come when time permits on the following points:Manufacturing jobs would not return to the US. (Links to come with time.)Israel would not be supported. (Links to come with time.)On this one, my answer may have misled. Trump appears to have always had solid rhetoric in support of Israel. What I could have said to make the point clearer can be shown in how past presidents failed to keep their promises to Israel. For example, a number of past presidents have allegedly said they would move the US embassy to Jerusalem, but did not follow through. So would Trump, making similar campaign trail promises, actually support Israel through such a move?Obama did not move the embassy, stating that to do so could have “explosive” results. (See Trump was right — Obama did call Jerusalem the 'capital of Israel'.)So would Trump fail to support Israel in this regard, too? A 2017 Politifact article on the subject said he would back down (see Updated - Donald Trump keeps promise, opens Jerusalem embassy—they were wrong so if you check the link, you have to scroll down to the October 9th, 2017 article that reads “Trump signals step back from Israeli embassy plan” to see their earlier incorrect reporting).Did the move cause riots and bloodshed? Yes, but not as one would expect. See Deadly protests erupt over the US Embassy move to Jerusalem (CNBC May 2018—describing riots not in the West Bank or in Jerusalem, but on the Gaza-Israeli border, and months after the December 2017 announcement that the embassy would be moved. And note that a year later—May 2019—Gaza is still being Gaza, firing hundreds of rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilian areas). Another publication from The Guardian, May 2018, has a sub-headline that reads “Follow latest developments as 52 Palestinians killed and hundreds wounded in protests in Gaza and West Bank over moving US embassy to Jerusalem” but the details all seem to describe Gaza, not the West Bank (see Israeli forces kill dozens of Palestinians in protests as US embassy opens in Jerusalem – as it happened).Instead of Trump backing off his promise to move the embassy to Jerusalem, we see:Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem (Statement by President Trump on Jerusalem, December 6, 2017 | U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Italy).But did the press hail this as a campaign promise kept with one of our strongest allies? No. The BBC in 2018 opined that the move was not about peace (see Why Trump and Jerusalem was not about peace). And in 2018, Business Insider alarmingly pressplained (like “mansplained” but done by the press) Why Trump moving the US embassy to Jerusalem infuriates the Middle East and enflames geopolitics.All immigration would be stopped. (Links to come with time.)At least one commentor actually claimed that all immigration into the US had been stopped and at least one other claimed that the attempt had at least been made.Instead we see:It is unlawful entry that is the main issue. It is illegal aliens, not lawful immigration that is the key issue. Yes, Trump stated a desire to end chain migration (see Trump plan to end 'chain migration' could take years to reduce immigration) but that is a policy discussion worth having. Trump advocated ending the diversity lottery (see Trump presses Congress to end diversity visa lottery: 'We need to make AMERICA SAFE!'). And Trump advocated for a merit-based immigration system (see As Trump Administration Seeks “Merit-Based” Immigration, MPI Report Examines Points-Based Systems in Canada, Australia & Beyond). But these were all calls—reasonable calls no doubt in the view of many Americans—for policy discussion. They were not calls to end all immigration.Other countries have just as stringent of immigration policies as the US. https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/mex/en_mex-int-text-const.pdf (https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/mex/en_mex-int-text-const.pdf) (Constitution of Mexico; Article 33 shows how Mexico will expel foreigners at will with no legal proceedings needed—much harsher than American laws)French nationality law - Wikipedia (French nationality law - Wikipedia) (At least one comment concerned Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship—not all countries have this *jus soli* law, and France is an example of a nation that used to have it but did away with it in 1993 due to the problems it was causing; see also Jus soli - Wikipedia (Jus soli - Wikipedia))And perhaps most tellingly, lawful immigration has continued at a good pace under Trump, with over a million people from all around the world gaining lawful permanent resident status in 2018 alone, projected from 820,748 in the first three quarters of 2018 (Legal Immigration and Adjustment of Status Report see attachment to web page). Even Politifact in 2019 admitted that we have over 1,000,000 legal immigrants annually—though that may not be a record, it completely negates claims that Trump has stopped all immigration (see Has legal immigration hit a record high, as Santorum said?).The Constitution would be thrown out. (Links to come with time.)Martial law and dictatorship would emerge. (Links to come with time.)Russia would control America via puppet Trump. (Links to come with time.)No one would get medical care and millions would die. (Links to come with time.)In 2017, Nancy Pelosi said “hundreds of thousands of people will die” if the Senate health care bill became law. (See Deaths from a Health Care Bill? - FactCheck.org.) But as the FactCheck article pointed out, “… the research uses terms like “could” and “suggests” and “cannot definitively demonstrate a causal relationship,” not the definitive “will” favored by opponents of the [Senate ] bill. We can’t say whether any specific projection is a correct or valid number.”See also FactCheck.org’s findings when they looked at the “no insurance = death” correspondence in 2009: Dying from Lack of Insurance - FactCheck.orgIn 2016, ThinkProgress proclaimed that “Getting rid of Obamacare is a death sentence” stating that “Nearly 36,000 people could die every year, year after year”—and with the passage of time that would add up into the millions (see Here’s how many people could die every year if Obamacare is repealed).What we find instead:Deaths due to lack of healthcare insurance is indeed a problem, but it has been a longstanding one is not unique to Trump. Under Obama, a 2009 report from The Harvard Gazette found that close to 45,000 deaths per year were associated with lack of health insurance (see New study finds 45,000 deaths annually linked to lack of health coverage). The ACA (nicknamed Obamacare) was no doubt motivated in great part to fight against such abysmal statistics that rightly offend all Americans of good heart.In 2017, “experts” (real or not) were cited by The Guardian (Will losing health insurance mean more US deaths? Experts say yes) as claiming that “Using government data, doctors and academics have tested whether a lack of healthcare coverage increases the probability of death. Most conclude it does”—but which experts? How many was “most” and out of how many were consulted? Remember those misleading ads that read like “9 out of 10 doctors / dentists / etc. say …”? How were the professionals picked—randomly or selected for their likely views? How many were consulted? Ten or 10,000? What statistical tests were applied? And you have to read the full story in The Guardian to get to this: “There is scant evidence directly against the connection between mortality and health insurance. But that does not mean that studies such as the one published in 2012 are without flaws. For one thing, the numbers do not necessarily match up. A 2002 study published by the Institute of Medicine found that 18,000 people died each year due to lack of health insurance. A study published by the Urban Institute put the figure at 22,000 deaths in 2006.”None of this is to say that Obamacare had no good effects. It did (despite Obama personally having lied repeatedly to the American public about medical care choice and supposed savings). See Key Facts about the Uninsured Populationfor example. This writer (mois) could not agree more that healthcare in America needs serious improvement. And it is common sense that people with healthcare insurance are going to have better survival rates because of better access to healthcare. But did the Trump election lead to an additional 36,000 people a year dying due to lack of healthcare after the ACA no longer had a mandate (The GOP Tax Bill Repeals Obamacare's Individual Mandate. Here's What That Means for You)? There are some who claim a much smaller number died (though any number > 0 is awful—whether under Trump, Obama, and preceding presidents). For example, NC Policy Watch / The Progressive Pulse claimed in 2018 that 4,000 Americans have died already because of Trump healthcare policies” (see Latest estimate: 4,000 Americans have died already because of Trump healthcare policies | The Progressive Pulse). But the article seems to lack citations and sources, other than referring a study of 2016 data (when Obama was president!), a recent (relative to January 2018) “estimate” from the Washington Post—hardly a neutral source, and an editorial in the Charlotte Observer! Where are the hard data?This writer’s opinion: No one should lack adequate medical care, and insurance should be available to everyone who is a citizen or lawful resident of the US—and America should have provisions for those illegally here to while illegal immigration gets solved. And America should not be a nation where the main cause of bankruptcy is medical costs. But did Trump cause tens or hundreds of thousands or eventually millions of Americans to die? No. And is Trump the first president under which lack of healthcare insurance is associated with (needless) mortality? Hardly.Trump would ignore court rulings. (Links to come with time.)Liberal states would secede from the union.#Calexit: Will California secede with Trump win? (USA, Today, 2016).Silicon Valley investors call for California to secede from the US after Trump win (The Guardian, 2016).Nexit: A Call for New York City to Secede From the Union (Observer, 2016).Instead we find:No state seceded, and that would be a Constitutional matter anyway.This childish behavior or “we’re taking our toys and leaving” is not unique to the Trump election. See for example Petitions to secede are filed for 23 states since election (Washington Times, 2012—right after Obama was elected to a second term).When the media are full of sound and fury signifying nothing, isn’t it time to take them with a grain of salt or quit listening to them at all?

This is where I get frustrated. There was a moment. It was a real moment where everyone in the country agreed. Right and Left; black and white; we all agreed. There was something that needed to be done about these bad cops. It was clear that there were bad cops. No one was arguing about that.Then the craziest people say the craziest things, like, “abolish all police” because of the actions of a few. All I can say then is that the people who lead these sorts of protests do not think black lives actually matter.I say that not because of the hatred I am always accused of any time I take a stance that is not the absolute most hysterical one proposed. I say that because I actually read black authors. Thomas Sowell, Jason Riley, Larry Elders, and the honorable Justice Clarence Thomas.They will point to the specific places and times where there are the fewest police are the same settings of the most blacks killed. This isn’t because the number police are hunting down black men; it is due to crime. The places where police involvement is the strongest, i.e. where “tough on crime” policies are implemented the most is where we see the greatest reduction in the number of violent deaths of young black men.Let’s compare statistics. The two graphs below are from the CDC and depict the leading causes of death for males in the United States. I’ve highlighted this portion pertaining to homicides, where homicide accounted for 5.2% of the deaths of white boys aged 1–19.[1][1][1][1]For blacks, it was a very different picture. Homicide was by far the number one killers of black boys and men aged 1–44.[2][2][2][2]Only about 100 out of ever 100,000 black people will die from an interaction with a cop. It is the sixth most likely cause of death for young black men and boys, according to a University of Michigan study. The same study, which was trying to demonstrate the problem of police for blacks, however, showed the number three killer of blacks of the age group were those slain due to criminal homicide. Number three pretty fairly explains number six from a statistical standpoint. The odds that they will die due to crime near their homes is far, far higher. Only in those places where policing was made greater did the rate of black deaths go down.But now we’re having a conversation about police brutality, which somehow morphed into a discussion about abolishing all police everywhere. In some areas, the police, flawed as they may be, are the only thing keeping back a much worse killer of young black men. I’m just going to say, it’s probably not going to work.I want to try to do justice to the other side, and at least give credit to where this idea comes from. To many of us, the idea comes off as simply vengeance against the police. In part, it absolutely is, and anyone pretending otherwise is lying to themselves. But the other part is a sincere belief that through investments into social services, people won’t need the police.The idea behind abolishing the police is that the funds for the police don’t actually do anything to solve the systemic problems in crime ridden areas and people who commit crimes. Instead, those funds should go towards schools, welfare, housing, job programs, education, and such. It echoes the frustrations communicated by the Dallas Chief of Police David Brown when, in 2016, five of his officers were ambushed and assassinated while protecting civilian protesters during a Black Lives Matter protest.“We’re asking cops to do too much in this country,” Brown said at a briefing Monday. “We are. Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding, let the cops handle it. … Here in Dallas we got a loose dog problem; let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, let’s give it to the cops. … That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems.”[3][3][3][3]It’s true. Whenever something is wrong, cops are simultaneously blamed and called to fix the problem. This extends to being the people who have to break up families where the father is a criminal, to being the “big brother” to local kids, or saving the day when anyone has a problem with anything from animal control to needing help with directions.It also follows a particular differing world view between ideological conservatives and liberals. In an answer I wrote last month, I talked about how conservatives generally view humanity’s nature as flawed where liberals view people as generally good. Practically speaking, that’s saying that the basic conservative belief is that all people are like Lord of the Flies — devoid of a strong fabric of social institutions and traditions, people would devolve in brutal monsters and society would be unlivable. The opposite is the belief that the world is what corrupts us and that the institutions themselves are what make otherwise good people do badly. Slowly get rid of these corrupting influences and the world becomes a manifestation of the beauty within all people.People who hold the view that people are fundamentally flawed, believe that those who commit crimes are not better or worse than the rest of us, but they did fail where we did not. Crimes must be punished, to create a negative incentive against doing more crimes, both for the criminal and for everyone watching. People who hold the latter belief, that mankind’s nature is fundamentally good, believe that people who commit crimes aren’t themselves wrong, but made wrong by a society who failed them. Inequality, broken communities, poor education, a lack of opportunity, those were why people committed crimes… not their own personal actions. Where the flawed vision seeks punishment, the more optimistic vision views crime as a symptom that is fixed through a better network of aide and reformation of the whole person “back” to the good.For one, crime is a personal choice and for the other crime is a symptom of injustice.With that framework, one vision views the police and prison system as necessary to protect the rest of us from ourselves by creating disincentives to committing crimes. But the other views the prisons as rehabilitation centers and the police as a painful, inefficient, and abusive way to get people there.You can see how people who are predominately viewing the world through the vision that people are good would want to “defund police”. The theory isn’t to punish the police (although it is that, too). It is to reinvest that public funding towards ways to prevent crimes from happening. Remember, in that vision of human nature, people don’t commit crimes because of personal character flaws, but because society is responsible for making them that way. To revisit a previous image, the money should instead go to things like education, job creation, and welfare.It’s a nice idea, but will it work?Not reasonably.Let’s look at a few of the proposed solutions to crime instead of the police.HungerThe one with the most immediate effect would probably be food. The suggestion is that people are committing crimes because they are poor, or even starving. This is a false narrative. America has a very bad problem when it comes to relating the actual effects of hunger. This is because, for many years, government statistics have inflated the term “hunger” with many other things. A good example of that comes from the 2015 report from the Agriculture Department saying that “48 million Americans were living in hunger”. That is how the report’s findings were communicated, however the actual language was “food scarcity”. The USDA defined food insecurity as “uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.” Furthermore, it doesn’t define that as a chronic condition, but at any time in the last 12 months. It’s a lot more broad and less abysmal then imagining one in six Americans starving. James Bovard of the Foundation for Economic Education criticized the finding:The definition of “food insecure” includes anyone who frets about not being able to purchase food at any point. If someone states that they feared running out of food for a single day (but didn’t run out), that is an indicator of being “food insecure” for the entire year — regardless of whether they ever missed a single meal. If someone wants organic kale but can afford only conventional kale, that is another “food insecure” indicator.[4][4][4][4]This same statistic, however, from the almost unchanged 2016 data, is what Nancy , Pelosi based her statements on that “1 in 5 children in America goes to sleep hungry at night because they are so poor.”[5][5][5][5]No. 1 in 5 children starving in the United States is a ridiculous exaggeration.In the past, a similar error in reporting happened the poverty statistics from the US census are conflated with our understanding of hunger. It is to say that anyone who falls below the poverty line was also starving, as if the two are the same. The two aren’t the same. In fact, for many poor, it is cheaper to get too many calories than it is to get the right amount leading more cases of obesity and heart problems among the poor than the chronic affects of starvation. For Americans as people beneath the poverty line in the US still can afford a stable home, a car, TV, cable internet and a cell phone.In fact, Robert Rector, one of the key architects of successful welfare reform in the 1990s, communicates a far different picture of what it means to be part of the American poor. [6][6][6][6]Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning.Nearly three-quarters have a car or truck; 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television.Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and a quarter have two or more.Half have a personal computer; one in seven has two or more computers.More than half of poor families with children have a video game system such as an Xbox or PlayStation.Forty percent have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.Ninety-two percent of poor households have a microwave.Forty-two percent of all poor households actually own their own homes.The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.Ninety-six percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food.The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and in most cases is well above recommended norms.Most poor children are, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.[7]That the majority of these people who are poor by the measure of the US census cannot afford food is… misleading.In truth, we have no idea how many people are actually hungry, or more to the point, starving from a chronic lack of food. What we can say, however, is that it is not one of the largest problems in the United States, today. While decreasing food insecurity among the rest of America should be goal, weighed against all other problems America faces, there is no clear evidence that reducing that statistic will reduce the much larger problem of black-on-black homicide. David Dorn, the 77 year old black retired police captain wasn’t killed because someone was hungry. He was killed while defending his store from a looter stealing a TV.Let’s look at the next most immediate problem that advocates of defending the police are pushing.HousingI’ve written on this elsewhere.In the case of housing, we actually have a good case of the systemic effects of racism, even if they no longer exist, carrying forth into today. New Deal programs such as the Federal Housing Administration, created in the National Housing Act of 1934, eventually worked to create a system of renters among the poor where rents became much more common than mortgages. Mortgages are a means of actual wealth creation through the purchase of real estate that usually appreciates over time and which can be passed on or sold to fund retirement. Rent doesn’t do that. Rent is a liability that buys only one period’s living and nothing else. This matters because the policies of the National Housing Agency and later the Federal Housing Agency which grew out of it created one of the most systematically devastating programs in the history of blacks in America since Jim Crow.Beginning in the 1960s, the US government began heavily subsidizing new home development, however, they didn’t do this equally. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development was created by the Johnson administration as part of the War on Poverty. It was intended to help the urban poor to resettle into home ownership. Remember owning homes was a path to wealth creation for the middle class and seen as the greatest predictor for wealth later on. However, what the program actually did was channel whites out of the cities into rural areas surrounding the cities. With the rise of cars and highways, these tracts of land grew into the modern suburbs. Blacks, on the other hand, were given “opportunities” to live in densely packed high rise buildings near the inner cities. These became known as the Projects.The Projects concentrated a population of poor people into an extremely small geography. Anyone studying demographics at the time could have pointed out that this would be a recipe for crime, declining education, and would over saturate the local job market with too many mouths to feed and not enough job creation. This is not to mention the fact that as crime rises, education falls, and wealth diminishes, investment into new business drops creating a downward feedback loop. Add to it the fact that people have literally been piled sky high and you create a powder keg of everything necessary to see inner cities become war zones. Again, any demographic statistician could have predicted this regardless of whether they were talking about the American blacks or not because the same effects happen anywhere in the world where this kind of experiment under these conditions is tried.Was this clear systemic racism? I think so. I think there was an intentional element of racism in at least some of the planners of this scheme under the Johnson Administration that pushed whites to the unsettled suburbs, leading to the largest rise in wealth in human history, and the nightmare scenario that became the Projects for black people.But even then, maybe there is an argument that it wasn’t quite as racist as even I am suspicious of. One could argue that at a time when America was still a manufacturing powerhouse, or to be more precise, when factories benefited from being massive places where thousands of people with no real need of higher education could work and have a meaningful and happy life while providing for a healthy and happy family. Many factories in the same area benefited from one another, sharing talent and a culture of expertise not unlike modern Silicon Valley. It made sense to stack people up as many as could fit near them, from an urban planning perspective, perhaps. More factories were good for America and at the time, it was also good for blacks and other urban poor working them. They were working their way out of poverty.But then Free Trade happened. As the rest of world recovered from WWII, it became profitable for the continued wealth of the nation to start looking to external means of production, such as creating incentives to move manufacturing to Mexico or China. This wasn’t racially motivated at all, championed by both the Democrats and Republicans and in fact, encouraged by a progressive ideology of globalism. So it was great for certain already wealthy parts of America and greater yet for the rest of the world, but an absolute economic disaster if you have already created entire cities dependent on the idea that there will be tens of thousands of low skill, high paying jobs a few blocks away… as in, the Projects. So in a very real and tangible way, while much of the country became very rich from international free trade, blacks were devastated and mostly because they believed in an idea that would raise them out of poverty lasting perpetually.If we really, honestly look at what has been happening to the black communities since the 1960s, during a period where racism has played less, and less, and less of a factor every single year, but where the problems of black poverty seem even more overwhelming for blacks to overcome and consider the problems not just as a problem of racist whites, but as a consequence of many bad policy decisions that came together to create a perfect storm of terribleness for blacks in America, you start to realize that there is an incredibly high likelihood that the policies intended to help are more to blame than the sinister machinations of evil whites.So housing is another area where blacks should be concerned. Rent can be expensive, but generational poverty is more expensive. All the plans to “help” the poor blacks where, at best, convoluted and required the American economy to remain unchanged indefinitely while paradoxically growing forever. This is if we ignore the very real suspicions that they very policies were racist themselves by design in how they divided the poor whites from the poor blacks. Either way, the collapse of American manufacturing led to many of the problems we saw beginning in the 1980s and 1990s with exploding crime rates among the inner cities.That leads us to jobs.JobsThe government can’t create jobs out of thin air. They can, but only for government jobs. These jobs, however, are risky at best because they are tax-payer supported, and all tax payer supported jobs are at risk of being viewed as parasitical by taking money away from other programs or even, just artificially, taking too much in taxes for sake of saying jobs were produced. Case in point — the police, right here, in this question. If one argues that we should defund the police, you’re arguing that the jobs of many police officers aren’t really needed. All government jobs are weighed against the value they put into the community. If they can, however, be automated, or the same result gained through other means, then those jobs don’t last long.So the government doesn’t create jobs. The only thing the government can do is help nurture the environment for opportunity. Opportunity creates work and work creates jobs. By this, the US government does more for American jobs by implementing some program like building up new means of transportation like the US interstate system (which lowered the cost of transportation within the US and thereby raising opportunity for manufacturers) than it does with most jobs programs, providing tax payer subsidies to hire for businesses that couldn’t or shouldn’t otherwise afford the extra labor.The other way that government can influence jobs is by creating policies that create the environments where job creators leave. A good example of that came from the last few weeks.A Minneapolis manufacturing company has decided to leave the city, with the company’s owner saying he can’t trust public officials who allowed his plant to burn during the recent riots. The move will cost the city about 50 jobs.“They don’t care about my business,” said Kris Wyrobek, president and owner of 7-Sigma Inc., which has operated since 1987 at 2843 26th Av. in south Minneapolis. “They didn’t protect our people. We were all on our own.”That’s one company of about 50 jobs that will no longer be in the city. There will be more who will take what work opportunities exist, and they will leave, too. These companies will make major investments in places where they feel they will find long term success. That will not be in places where entrepreneurs and investors fear things like high crime. Beyond the obvious risk to the business of robbery or vandalism, high crime areas also erode property values, and drive out talent who might make a business prosper and grow. Over the course of years, it also reduces the investment pool for further new businesses.So focusing on job creation instead of ensuring that crimes are dealt with fails in that it:Reduces business investmentReduces the number of jobsReduces wealth creationReduces property valuesWhat is the link in all these? Those are where we get our taxes. If, for some reason, crime isn’t reduced after defunding the police, the pool of money used to fund all these other programs is itself going to be shrink. If “increased investment in community initiatives” doesn’t have a major impact, then one by one, these initiatives will fall. At that point, without policing or community initiatives, the only possible word for such a system is anarchy.EducationThe last major call is to defund the police to fund more in education. I’ve worked as a public school teacher and my wife is a currently a teacher. I’m sympathetic to this one. It’s clear that better education can put someone on the track to a better life. This is true — of individuals. As a community planning policy, education can’t happen if the lower levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs aren’t met. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology that states that a person can’t achieve the important processes of development, if their lower needs aren’t met. Below educational needs are things like safety and security. Simply, if a person doesn’t first feel safe, he isn’t going to get much from education.Second, while some politicians have defended the call to defund police by saying “we’ve defunded education for decades and look where that got us,” not only is that a misdirection, but it’s also demonstrably false.The US has not defunded education. In reality, it spends more per student than any other country.Furthermore, while education spending continued to increase, there is no clear indication that education itself it has. That is to say that in America, more funding doesn’t clearly show better education. The fact that so many call for more funding doesn’t mean the problems revolve around not enough money, but how it’s spent.The education system is fraught with other problems, so many that it doesn’t help to go into it here. But simply pouring more money into a leaky bucket doesn’t actually improve failing schools. Evidence shows us that schools aren’t failing from a lack of funding as much as other systemic failures that will exist just the same with 10 times the funding they currently have. If we want to fix education, robbing from the police departments to fund more of it will not solve the problem anywhere in the United States. Education itself must be reformed.The last problem is also obvious.If we take away from policing to support education… even if it would work… it would take about 20 years to show fruits of that labor. That’s about the time it would take a child raised in a rough neighborhood to grow up and graduate, becoming a productive member of the community. During that 20 years, he will have to endure a policeless environment where crime will not be stopped and where the criminals may, in fact, be the source of order, as we saw with gang warfare in the 1980s and 90s. The temptation, or even, to sell drugs or take part in other illicit activities to support a family in need will be great. Or maybe that’s just the best job they can find and don’t care enough about the consequences. If he survives that life unscathed, he will also be choosing between two very different realities — should he take up one of the jobs in his neighborhood, or should he seek work elsewhere? Most, will move on, leaving the old neighborhood behind them. This disgenic cycle is another reason why other things need to happen first for education to truly have an impact, and part of that is an immediate reduction in crime, something which can only happen through strong policing.BureaucracyThe final reason I think these programs will fail is that someone has to be in charge of them, and not just them, but many other programs. The reason that we’re attempting this complex network of new social programs is to have an indirect response — reducing crime. It’s not altogether obvious why any one investiture will reduce crimes, and as I’ve shown, the chances that any will in fact improve much is low. But we need all of them to maybe work.That’s dangerous.It’s like what happens when traditions go away. There are things we do just because we’ve always done them, with no real idea of why. Stop doing them. Suddenly, new problems no one expected start popping up to ruin our beautiful schemes of efficiency and planning. That’s because, often traditional methods are formed to solve a problem, and the tradition lives on protecting us from that problem long after we forgot about the problem in the first place. If you want an example, read through the Bible’s book of Leviticus. It reads like a list of the senseless draconian laws of a bronze age era nomadic culture, but read it closer and realize how many of the laws protected them from diseases no one would understand the cause of for another 4,000 years.This idea of investing into numerous social programs is like that, too. Say it works. Great, crime is reduced. But how do you convince a future bean counter that you need to keep investing in all of these programs, when it is unclear how exactly any one of them contributes to the real problem of crime? You won’t. Instead, they will look at education and rank it according to education, housing according to housing, food according to food, and so on. “We don’t have this problem,” they’ll say, and a program will get cut. At some point, there will be a crisis and a call for austerity, and people will start slowly defunding one or two more of these “antiquated” programs.Then what?Some pencil pusher makes a huge bonus by saving the state and municipality ten million dollars by cutting “excess funding” from programs that no longer serve their “original function.” Then, a few years later, crime starts creeping back in. Look, call it cynical, but also call it realistic. This idea, this hope, is too complex with far too few proofs that it will work. Instead, what will probably happen is that we may spend a great deal to achieve marginal gains, but those gains will soon be lost through the natural and unrelenting push of bureaucratic incompetence, as all good social programs eventually succumb to.Better WaysIt’s obvious that defunding the police is an idealistic approach to urban planning policy, like so many others. It’s also not without the palpable vein of vengeance. It is, however, being pushed in large part by non-urban idealistic white liberals who will not suffer the long term effects of their policies, also like so many others. This has been the criticism of many black conservatives, and is the central focus of the book “Please Stop Helping US: How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed” by Jason L. Riley. I recommend everyone, conservative or liberal, legitimately concerned with the plight of blacks in America and not simply engaging in the outrage issue du jour, should start by reading his book. It is a clear look from economic and historical perspectives of the other side of the argument.I don’t like to complain when I have no better solution to the problem. Here, I think that defunding the police is a suicidal plan for the long term success of black neighborhoods. Abolishing it is even more obvious, but something so extreme as to lend credibility to the less absurd defunding.Instead, some other things should have been tried first.In an answer I wrote last week, I talked about a method that is far more practical and has better chances of bringing real reforms, based on how the military solves problems. Hold the chain of command responsible. When something goes wrong, it is up the supervisor to issue discipline, but when something goes seriously wrong, it is up to the supervisor to be held accountable for his oversight. In this case, with Derek Chauvin, the police officer with his knee over George Floyd’s throat, it seemed to all of us that there was criminal negligence leading to the death of someone placed under the arrest, and care, of the Minneapolis police department. That should be a call to investigate not only Derek Chauvin, but who ever leads, trains, and ultimately ensures he stays on the force. There should be an investigation of his supervisor, as well… and his, all the way up the chain up to Police Chief Medaria Arradondo. Even if the death of George Floyd were to be all there was, the chief should be investigated. Seeing the chaos and numerous abuses of the entire force with the riots that followed, I don’t know why more people aren’t calling for his removal.Mind you, he’s just the lowest ranking member I can name. I’m saying every supervisor directly between Derek Chauvin and him needs to be removed from leadership positions one way or another.No, not only am I saying that the immediate supervisors need to be investigated, probably fired, and perhaps even charged, and that the higher ranking supervisors need to be charged, but the elected officials need to also be investigated and impeached for the sheer incompetence leading up to right now, such as Mayor Jacob Frey.Oh, no, but I’m not done. I also think that Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota should be impeached. People should be asking questions about if he failed in this, what should be done.Mind you, “impeached” has lost a lot of its meaning in recent years. Where many politicians openly called for the impeachment of Donald Trump before he even took office, and the following three year spectacle that was, impeachment isn’t supposed to be about firing people. It was intended to happen far more often for investigating failures in the public view and determining if something more could have reasonably been done by the leaders in charge. If the investigation proves that these leaders either did the best they could, or that they simply don’t have the power to act, then changes can be made to the process empowering them and their successors to better do their jobs in the future. If, however, they had the opportunity and botched the responsibility, then the impeachments need to lead to their removal from office.I’ve heard absolutely nothing in any of this about holding the leaders responsible. There’s be numerous calls to charge all four of the officers responsible of murder. I’ve seen that explode into blind hatred towards all police officers, including abolishing and defunding them altogether. But I have yet to hear a serious conversation about investigating either Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, Mayor Jacob Frey, or Governor Tim Walz. None. To me, that would have been the first option.Leaders are the people who write the rules. Leaders select people they expect to follow the rules. Leaders enforce the rules. Most importantly, leaders demonstrate how to do their jobs within the rules.If you want to radically correct the culture of an organization, then you don’t make a big show of holding the lowest of level of people responsible. Worse, you don’t just brand all people who wear a badge as hopelessly corrupt murderers who need to be defunded You change out the entire leadership of everyone responsible for them. That’s the fastest and most effective means of changing a broken culture of incompetence and corruption. More discussion needs to center on holding that department in that city and that state accountable, as well as any others where failure is demonstrated, rather than demanding we punish all cops everywhere or even worse, defund and abolish an institution vital to the protection of the very people most vulnerable.But there is one more solution that has been tried successfully worth bringing up, the example of Camden, New Jersey.In 2013, the city of Camden, NJ was suffering some of the worst effects of the prolonged recession starting in 2008. It had some the highest violent crime and murder rates in the nation. That year, the city dissolved the old Camden Police Department and reconstituted it as the Camden County Metro Police. Led by then governor Chris Cristi and other local officials, they created a public-safety department within the Camden county government dedicated to the city of Camden before disbanding the police department.From there, they were able to reform their practices. This included enacting an entirely new union contract which removed wasteful practices and rules that may have been good for creating jobs for cops, but kept those cops in offices and off the streets where they were needed.Immediately after, officials invited all of the former Camden police officers to reapply for their jobs and rehired most, but being selective in not hiring known bad apples into the new force. [8][8][8][8]The overall quality of the force was improved as since then, violent crimes per 1,000 people have dropped from 79 to 44.[9][9][9][9]The new department is more involved in the community, more efficient, and has less barriers to doing the jobs of police officers.Disbanding a whole police department sounds extreme. It is. It is far more extreme then my suggestion to hold the chain of command responsible, but nowhere near as radical as defunding the police or abolishing them altogether. At no point did the citizens of Camden not have a police department. One day, they had a bad police department; the next day, they had a reformed police department made up of mostly the same good cops, but now more empowered to do their jobs.For this plan to work it took a lot of people realizing a few things. It’s possible to have a structure that works against itself. It’s possible for years of practices, policies, and routines to pile up, or for inefficient positions to be created which can’t legally be removed. It might also be impossible to remove some bad people, who deserve to be fired or whose position just shouldn’t exist, thanks to unions that overreached their mandate. All of these things could be true, and a police department still be filled with good cops who want the best for their communities. What’s more, the process actually saved a lot of money from the old way of policing, so Camden could use that money either to invest in their new police department, or attempt some of these community minded experiments being lauded about today.Defunding the police department, with no other Camden-like reforms, does none of this. In fact, it’s worse. It tells the police that they are now expected to do the same job with less funding. This might mean that the same inefficient organizational structures, same bad policies, and many of the same bad people stay in place because legally there is nothing that can be done about them. Think, if Camden had been told, “We’re punishing you by taking away tens of millions from your budget, but you still have to do the same job”, they probably would have been forced to let go of a lot of their officers and as past models show, they probably would have asked many to voluntarily leave and seek other jobs. What normally happens in those cases is that those who can move and are great, jump ship and get jobs at better departments, leaving only the people who absolutely must stay with the community and those cops who are terrible at their jobs. Think about that. You cut funding and leave only the worst cops.This is a death spiral.You know how we know? Look at Minneapolis. Piggy backing off of Anthony Galli’ excellent answer is this quote from the Minneapolis mayor:“We know that when officers are doing more overtime and they're overworked, they're more fatigued. When they're more fatigued, they're more likely to use force.” He was concerned seeing a report note that 30% of overtime in 2018 was due to staff shortages and another 6% was due to "possible" staff shortages. Mayor Frey continued, “The best way to combat staff shortages is to hire more staff, yes. I think that's one important element to both public safety and police community relations.” [2]As well as this, from the police chief over a year ago.Minneapolis is what a city looks like with a defunded police department. So if more cities want to go that route, they’re playing an experiment in which we already know the results.I’m just a little dumbfounded at some of the people making statements calling for defunding the police, or abolishing them outright, when better options are not only available, but obvious. It comes off not just as needlessly virtue signalling, ignorant of better, and less suicidal methods to improve their communities. It might serve some, like the Mayor of Los Angeles, to say these things for national attention from people who ultimately will not suffer or gain from it. Some people want this to work so bad, but that doesn’t mean there is any reason to believe it will other then blind ideology. Some are simply embracing a vengeful attitude towards the cops, which serves absolutely no one. Given the costs, the real costs, I fear that what we’re going to see in some of these areas a return to the violence and chaos of the 1990s. And, so that no one forgets, that hurt blacks and the poor most of all.Relaxed. Researched. Respectful. - War ElephantFootnotes[1] From the CDC-Leading Causes of Death-Males Non-Hispanic white 2017[1] From the CDC-Leading Causes of Death-Males Non-Hispanic white 2017[1] From the CDC-Leading Causes of Death-Males Non-Hispanic white 2017[1] From the CDC-Leading Causes of Death-Males Non-Hispanic white 2017[2] From the CDC-Leading Causes of Death-Non-Hispanic Black Males 2017[2] From the CDC-Leading Causes of Death-Non-Hispanic Black Males 2017[2] From the CDC-Leading Causes of Death-Non-Hispanic Black Males 2017[2] From the CDC-Leading Causes of Death-Non-Hispanic Black Males 2017[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/grief-and-anger-continue-after-dallas-attacks-and-police-shootings-as-debate-rages-over-policing/[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/grief-and-anger-continue-after-dallas-attacks-and-police-shootings-as-debate-rages-over-policing/[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/grief-and-anger-continue-after-dallas-attacks-and-police-shootings-as-debate-rages-over-policing/[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/grief-and-anger-continue-after-dallas-attacks-and-police-shootings-as-debate-rages-over-policing/[4] No, 48 Million Americans Are Not Going Hungry | James Bovard[4] No, 48 Million Americans Are Not Going Hungry | James Bovard[4] No, 48 Million Americans Are Not Going Hungry | James Bovard[4] No, 48 Million Americans Are Not Going Hungry | James Bovard[5] Pelosi Misrepresents Childhood 'Hunger' Data[5] Pelosi Misrepresents Childhood 'Hunger' Data[5] Pelosi Misrepresents Childhood 'Hunger' Data[5] Pelosi Misrepresents Childhood 'Hunger' Data[6] The War on Poverty After 50 Years[6] The War on Poverty After 50 Years[6] The War on Poverty After 50 Years[6] The War on Poverty After 50 Years[7] 40 Million Americans Are Living in Poverty? FALSE[8] Camden, NJ, did police reform right — not that radicals will pay attention[8] Camden, NJ, did police reform right — not that radicals will pay attention[8] Camden, NJ, did police reform right — not that radicals will pay attention[8] Camden, NJ, did police reform right — not that radicals will pay attention[9] Ex police chief says crime went down when they disbanded the force[9] Ex police chief says crime went down when they disbanded the force[9] Ex police chief says crime went down when they disbanded the force[9] Ex police chief says crime went down when they disbanded the force