Where Do Police Most Often Shoot People?

As explained in a story reporting on it, new study "looked at police shootings from 2015 to 2020 and researchers found that 45% happened in rural areas and 22% happened in the suburbs." This leaves 33% in urban areas.

About 20% of the population of the U.S. is rural, according to the census bureau. In a three-way urban-suburban-rural split, according to the Pew Research Center, the nation is 31% urban, 55% suburban, and 14% rural. So, police shoot people with an average frequency in urban areas, with a highly elevated frequency of 2.5-3 times the average in rural areas, and a far below average frequency (about 60% below average) in suburban areas.

Introduction 

Much research on shootings by police has focused on urban jurisdictions, but most U.S. law enforcement agencies are not located in cities. Prior research suggests that rates of fatal shootings by police are comparable between urban and nonurban areas. Yet, shooting characteristics across the urban–rural continuum are unknown. This study describes and compares fatal and nonfatal injurious shootings by officers in U.S. urban, suburban, and rural areas from 2015 to 2020. 

Methods 

Characteristics of fatal and nonfatal injurious shootings by police were abstracted from Gun Violence Archive. In 2023–2024, using ZIP-code and county-based rurality designations, the national distribution, incidence, and characteristics of injurious shootings by police were compared across urban, suburban, and rural areas of the U.S. 

Results 

Rates of injurious shootings in rural areas approached or exceeded those of urban rates. As rurality increased, proportionately more injurious shootings involved single responders, sheriffs, or multiple agency types. Across the urban–rural continuum, characteristics of precipitating incidents were similar. Injurious shootings were most frequently preceded by domestic violence incidents, traffic stops, or shots-fired reports; co-occurring behavioral health needs were common. After accounting for local demographic differences, Black, indigenous, and Hispanic residents were injured at higher rates than White residents in all examined areas. 

Conclusions 

Shootings by police represent an overlooked and inequitable source of injury in rural areas. Broadly similar incident characteristics suggest potential for wide-reaching reforms. To prevent injuries, crisis prevention, dispatch, and response systems must assure proportionate rural-area coverage. In addition, legislative prevention and accountability measures should include sheriffs’ offices for optimal rural-area impact. 

Ward, et al., "Characteristics of Injurious Shootings by Police Along the Urban–Rural Continuum" American Journal of Preventive Medicine (June 4, 2024) (open access).

English Crime Rates

 
From here.

The peak is right around the same time as the U.S. peak, which casts doubt on U.S. specific explanations for the trend.

Fraud and computer misuse account for a majority of crime incidents in England and Wales.

Young People Commit Fewer Crimes These Days

Gen Z commits less crime than the generations that came before it.

The chart is for males in the U.S. only. Admittedly, arrest aren't necessarily crimes, but the rate at which arrests led to convictions has been stable over time, and rate at which crimes are cleared by convictions has grown, rather than fallen, since 1995 when crime was at its peak. The chart probably actually understates the shift.

It is also worth noting that the percentage of U.S. males that are non-Hispanic white, and the percentage of U.S. males that are Christian, both declined significantly from 1995 to 2019, especially among younger males.

From this source.

About Nextdoor

I don't go there often but when I do, I think I am living in Mogadishu or Port-au-Prince.

- Doug Newman on Facebook.

Violent Crime Plummets In Boston

Boston is typical when it comes to the nature of its violent crime. A larger share of it happens in a tiny part of the city and a few hundred people out of about 651,000 people in Boston proper (about one person per one or two thousand) are involved in most of it. Boston is more diligent than most places, however, in the way it is responding to it.

City and police leadership are quick to acknowledge that the remarkably low number of homicides is not all their doing, and that bigger forces are at work. Large cities across the country saw violent crime decline in the first quarter of this year, part of a continuing downward trend after an alarming spike during the pandemic.

Boston’s smaller population, relative to other major cities, helps narrow the scope of violence prevention efforts. There is also a strong local foundation for such work, dating to the 1990s, when academic researchers, clergy and community leaders worked together to drive change so transformative, the “Boston Miracle” captured national attention.

The city set its new goal last year as Mayor Michelle Wu encouraged law enforcement and public health workers to revive that collaborative approach. Her administration has mined historical crime data to pinpoint 150 “micro-locations” across the city — as specific as a single intersection — where violence has flared in the past, and where custom-designed interventions can have outsize impacts.

A similarly granular approach involves reaching out to past violent offenders, and survivors of violence — seen as largely overlapping groups — to find out what they need to stay out of trouble. Some ask for transfers to other public housing, away from conflicts that spur violence. Others need food, clothing or health care, or help acquiring G.E.D.s or skills training to prepare them for employment.

“Boston is a place where 40 percent of violent crime happens on 4 percent of city streets, and where a very small number of people drive a significant part of the violence,” said Isaac Yablo, the mayor’s 29-year-old senior adviser for community safety. “So when you go and get to know the people, eventually you’re going to know the people involved.”

The goal, pursued through outreach to neighborhoods and weekly meetings where 15 community organizations and city departments trade ideas and updates about some of the several hundred people on their radar, is to “engage 100 percent of the individuals most likely to shoot or be shot,” Mr. Yablo said.

Previous efforts to identify those most likely to be involved in crime have stirred concern about racial profiling and a lack of transparency. Ms. Wu, in her former role as a city councilor, raised such questions about a gang database maintained by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center and used by the city’s police. Some changes were made to the database as a result, including the removal of more than 2,000 names, but criticism of its use has continued.

Some intelligence and analysis from the center are used in the city’s latest push to curtail violence, but leaders of the effort said their approach goes far beyond policing, prioritizing public health and basic needs above the sorting and surveilling of gangs.

Thomas Abt, the founding director of the Violence Reduction Center at the University of Maryland — who has worked with Boston in the past year on its techniques — acknowledged valid national concerns about overpolicing but described the Boston strategy as practical.

“They’re carefully identifying people they should spend more time on, based on past behavior,” he said. “That’s just smart policy.”

From here.

Why Are Buses And Intracity Rail In The U.S. So Crime Ridden?

The biggest reason for low bus and intracity rail usage in the United States by international standards is that crime in and around transit is high and these means of transportation don't feel safe. It is a long standing issue, and it isn't nearly such a serious problem in countries all of the world. 

Israelis, for example, packed buses in the course of living their every day lives, even when suicide bombers were terrorizing those buses.

A recent Denver Post story quantifies and characterizes the problem in Denver's transit system.

When Denver resident Jana Angelo rides the Regional Transportation District’s buses and trains, she feels trapped and says she sometimes hugs herself for fortitude.

She’s smelled fumes from passengers smoking fentanyl. She’s heard unhinged riders’ rants. Two “really high” men once fought right in front of her, said Angelo, 29.

“I was like, ‘Stop the bus!’ ” she said. “But the driver did not.”

Angelo packs a knife just in case, she said, and wears headphones, avoiding conversation. . . .

Passengers on RTD’s buses and trains were assaulted or threatened at the rate of one per day over the last three years, according to agency records obtained by The Denver Post. RTD drivers also are assaulted regularly — more than 100 times a year on average since 2019, records show — as they work amid crime and antisocial behavior, including riders using illegal drugs and unhoused people who sleep in station elevators and on climate-controlled buses and trains. 

. . .

The agency’s general manager, Debra Johnson, acknowledged the problems and said ensuring safety is critical. She’s discussed rising violence and crime in public transit with her counterparts in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

“We’re all adversely impacted by the same elements of society,” Johnson said in an interview, referring to mental health problems, substance use and homelessness. “These are societal issues. Whatever’s happening in a municipality is going to spill over into the transit system. What are we collectively doing to help minimize and mitigate these societal issues?” 

. . .

RTD bus driver Dan Day, 43, recalled how, on a cold day in 2020 during his first year on the job, he saw a man down, bleeding from his head, while another man kicked him at the Decatur Station along Federal Boulevard.

Day took the bleeding man onto the bus and handed him paper towels. As he steered the bus around the station, the attacker approached it, pointing a gun. He climbed on, aiming the barrel at the bleeding man. Day was caught between them, learned it was a dispute about a sister, and brokered a truce.

“I had a sense he wouldn’t shoot,” Day said. “…I was just trying to follow procedure, to call dispatch, let them know what happened.”

RTD supervisors offered him therapeutic counseling. He declined, turning instead to classic stoic philosophers: “My own tools to just cope with scary and difficult situations,” Day said. “Keep yourself in the moment. This is just a moment in time. It is going to pass.” 

. . .

RTD bus drivers and train operators were physically assaulted 463 times between January 2019 and April 2024 — a rate of roughly seven assaults per month, according to the records obtained by The Post through a Colorado Open Records Act request.

In addition, drivers have reported 501 verbal assaults and threats of violence since 2021 — a dozen per month on average, the records show.

Assaults and threats targeting RTD passengers happen more often, according to the records. Since January 2021, 1,375 passengers have experienced physical assaults and verbal threats along bus and rail routes, records show. That’s an average of 34 a month over the past three years.

The troubles appear concentrated along busy streets including Colfax Avenue, Broadway and Federal Boulevard.

RTD’s transit police have been busy. The agency’s tallies show that, during the first half of 2023, transit officers made a monthly average of 36 arrests. They responded to a monthly average of 60 assaults, 486 disturbances, 1,206 drug-related incidents, 389 trespasses and 58 instances of vandalism, according to an agency document.

This year, a homicide on an RTD bus in west Denver heightened concerns. A 13-year-old boy has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting on Jan. 27 of a 60-year-old grandfather whose leg was blocking an RTD bus aisle.

Illegal drug use happens almost daily, drivers and train operators say. 

. . .

Light rail operator Roy Martinez, who previously worked as a bus driver and endured assaults, said he regularly smells illegal drugs on light-rail trains such as the E Line that connects downtown Denver with the south suburbs.

Typically, a rider places a fentanyl pill on a piece of foil and crushes it. Then the rider lights the powder and, hunkering under a hood or blanket, inhales the fumes.

Those fumes rise and spread through the train’s air system, Martinez said, noting he detects odors inside the locked front cabin where he runs the train. There’s no option but to push through to the next stop. “Then you stop the train, open the doors, air it out,” he said.

From the Denver Post.

The story presents a mix of questions and answers, some tucked away behind the scenes.

One obvious issue is that the U.S. has a weak social safety net, and the highest percentage of people who drive their own cars, if their licenses aren't revoked, and don't use transit. Transit is disproportionately left with people who are too disabled to drive, people whose licenses have been revoked, and people who are very poor. Even people without licenses who have money often ride share instead.

So, transit is heavily weighted with very poor people and is not well counter-balanced, most of the time, with middle class and more affluent people. It is also heavily weighted with people who have lost driver's licenses due to illegal conduct and substance abuse.

Big cities in the U.S. with transit systems also tend to have riders who lack social cohesion that can impose order through nearly universally held social norms, in lieu of formal law enforcement.

But another issue is that policy makers and people who talk about policy and involved in politics, like me, struggle to understand why people who act in anti-social ways in and around transit are acting the way that they do.

I can completely understand why someone might become addicted to smoking fentanyl. But I can't fathom at all why someone would feel like this is an activity that makes sense to engage in while riding a bus or a light rail train.

I'm comfortable trusting that Debra Johnson, the general manager of Denver's Regional Transportation District has a better handle on what's going on that I do. She blames mental illness, substance abuse and homelessness.

In other words, mentally ill and homeless drug users tend to use drugs on buses and train cars because that's more comfortable than doing it on the streets, under a bridge, or in an alley.

Public libraries, which are one of the few places you can just hang out without paying money, in a place shielded from the weather, face similar problems, although seemingly, fewer violent assaults.

Anecdotally, at least, the assaults seem to be driven by poor people with a lack of an ability to control anger and impulse, and a lack of access in terms of both personal social skills and formal access to other recourse to resolve situations where they feel aggrieved. 

It isn't that working class and middle class people don't often do some of the same things. But they don't do that at bus stops, on buses, and on light rail trains. Driving a car reduces the amount of potentially triggering interactions you have with other people, although even that doesn't stop road rage incidents.

These situations on transit and in urban neighborhoods are something that urban people can't ignore, which is one of the reasons that urban people tend to be more liberal.

The whole situation is also an apt example of what makes illegal drugs a problem that we have invoked the criminal justice system to address, even if it has done a very poor job of it. Most vices, including illegal drug use, are primarily a problem because they are instrumental in creating a "bad neighborhood." 

If drug users were out of sight in an opium den somewhere, and didn't bother everyone else, we'd care less. And, modern opium dens might even be equipped to deal with overdoses and other forms of drug induced anti-social behavior.

Things That Aren't True

One of the most serious problems with the current political climate is that large numbers of people believe things that aren't true. And, the absurdity of some of those beliefs is extreme.

Consider this example:

The outcome of the 2022 race for Governor in Colorado did not hinge on Republican Heidi Ganahl’s bizarre obsession with the ridiculous idea that public schools in Colorado were infested with children dressed up as animals (which she referred to as “furries“). . . . The final six weeks of that campaign were dominated mostly by Ganahl’s bizarre insistence on bringing up the widely-debunked conspiracy theory that public schools were catering to children who wore elaborate cat costumes in class. This is the same nonsense conspiracy theory that other Republican politicians have used to claim that schools were providing “litter boxes” for students; a Nebraska State Senator publicly apologized for the suggestion in March 2022. . . . 

Long after the 2022 gubernatorial race had ended, Ganahl was still talking about furries as she pushed to start up a “Moms for Liberty” chapter in Colorado — an idea that brought “Furry-Lago” full circle. Ganahl launched herself down this insane rabbit hole in 2022 at least in part at the suggestion of a Jefferson County woman named Lindsey Datko, who runs a Facebook page for like-minded idiots called “Jeffco Kids First.” Datko’s involvement was detailed in a story by Rylee Dunn of Colorado Community Media (publisher of the Arvada Press) that explained how “Jeffco Kids First” tried very hard to prove the existence of the invisible furry menace:

Over the summer, the members of a Facebook group called Jeffco Kids First began shifting their concern away from pandemic policies in schools to identities it deemed disruptive to learning. A leading voice in the group told parents to empower their children to find “furries,” kids who dress up in animal accessories, and to record them.

“If any of your kids would be willing to record anonymous audio of their experiences with furries hissing, barking, clawing, chasing, and how it affects their school day, please send to me or let me know ASAP!” Jeffco Kids First creator Lindsay Datko, a parent in Jefferson County Public Schools, posted.

Details like these have not been widely publicized because the Facebook group is private, meaning only members can see what is posted. After being denied entry to the group, Colorado Community Media gained access through a member who wanted the group’s content to be public.

School officials say the group’s activities can be disruptive and harmful to kids. But it has some strong backers, including Heidi Ganahl, the Republican Party’s nominee in this fall’s Colorado gubernatorial race. She’s also a member of the group.

There are other common falsities out there, some of which influence politics or are otherwise harmful:

* The false belief that election fraud is widespread and frequently impacts election results in the U.S. for the benefit of liberals. It is in fact, vanishingly rare, usually unintentional, is at least as common in benefiting conservatives as liberals, and almost never influences election outcomes before being caught. When election administration issues influence close elections voter suppression by conservatives, and unintentional bureaucratic and technological errors, are the main causes of outcome changing impacts.

* The false belief that almost everyone in the U.S. has a valid photo ID (about 11% of adults do not).

* The false belief that Donald Trump won the 2020 Presidential election.

* The false belief that the United States was established as a Christian nation.

* The false belief that many or most leading Democratic politicians are involved in child sex trafficking. 

* The false belief that ritual Satanic abuse is, or was ever, common.

* The false belief that transgender identity doesn't exist.

* The false belief that male to female transgender individuals present a high or elevated risk of sexual abuse of women or girls, for example, when using a women's restroom.

* The false belief that homosexuality is merely an immoral choice.

* The false belief that immigrants (or undocumented immigrants) commit more non-immigration crimes than native born persons.

* The false belief that illegal immigration across the Mexican border is a source of people who commit acts of terrorism in the United States. 

* The false belief that immigrants are a net economic burden on taxpayers.

* The false belief that vaccines are more harmful than beneficial.

* The false belief that Young Earth Creationism is accurate.

* The false belief that everything in the Bible is literally true. 

* The false belief that evolution isn't real, or that it isn't a conclusively scientifically established scientific reality.

* The false belief that the Earth is flat.

* The false belief that literal demons are real. Of course, the "demons" in the metaphorical sense of past traumas, addictions, and anti-social impulses do exist.

* The false belief that demon possession is an important cause of physical or mental illnesses.

* The false belief that IQ and almost all other human behavioral traits have no significant genetic component and are predominantly and even overwhelmingly a product of nurture. In fact, IQ is heavily genetic and more than a third to more than a half of a great many human behavioral traits are attributable to one's genetic inheritance, while the parental nurture impact on a great many human behavioral traits is widely overestimated.

* The false belief that substance abuse lacks of strong genetic component. In fact, it is one of the most strongly genetic human behavioral traits. 

* The false belief that atheists believe in and follow a literal Satan.

* The false belief in the reality of transubstantiation.

* The false belief that meteorologists control the weather.

* The false belief that U.S. Presidents have a significant ability to influence the inflation rate.

* The false belief that U.S. Presidents have a significant ability to influence gasoline prices.

* The false belief that owning a gun reduces your risk of being a victim of a violent crime.

* The false belief that successful, legal, self-defense from crime with a gun (including by brandishing it) is common.

* The false belief that crime rates are high and rising in the year 2024.

* The false belief that personal injury and malpractice lawsuits are usually frivolous.

* The false belief that climate change isn't real.

* The false belief that climate change isn't caused by human caused pollution.

* The false belief that nuclear power is more of a threat to public health and safety than fossil fuels. There are reasons to be concerned about nuclear power (e.g., the risk that nuclear fuel will be diverted to nuclear weapons), but that is not one of them.

* The false belief that someone who has not committed any crimes more than seven years after finishing a sentence for a previous crime is at highly elevated risk of committing a crime in the future compared to a comparable person with no prior criminal record.  

* The false belief that rape can't cause a pregnancy. 

* The false belief that abortion is more dangerous for abortion patients than giving birth.

* The false belief that miscarriage is rare (something on the order of 1/4 to 1/3 of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, and this is an underestimate of the total miscarriage rate because it excludes miscarriages before someone knows that they are pregnant).

* The inaccurate belief that income taxes cause people to earn less (a concept associated with the Laffer Curve) at income tax rates much lower than the rates at which this is actually true. The peak of the Laffer Curve is actually at tax rates of about 70%.

* The false belief that high tax rates are strongly correlated with low economic growth.

* The false belief that prayer itself (as distinguished from community support and knowledge of community support) influences anything.

* The false belief that astrology is valid.

* The false belief that literal ghosts are real. Of course, "ghosts" in the metaphorical sense of recollections of people who have died are real.

* The false belief that the United States has very nearly the best health care outcomes.

* The false belief that driving is safer than commercial air travel. 

Improving Government

Government has a mix of problems. Sometimes it regulates too much, sometimes too little, sometimes it owns too much, sometimes too little, sometimes it is just operated in the wrong way. This post is a grab bag of ideas about improving it.

* Sidewalks should be publicly owned and maintained. Individual responsibility of property owners for this doesn't work because low rates of non-maintenance (including lack of prompt snow removal) makes the network of sidewalks much less valuable.

* Bicycles should usually not share roads with cars and trucks. They should use sidewalks or dedicated, protected bike paths and lanes.

* Amtrak has failed and should be shut down outside the Northeast Corridor.

* The U.S. Postal System worked well for a long time, but in the era of widespread parcel delivery services and e-mails and texts, it no longer does. Strong Veteran's preferences and higher pay than private sector equivalents don't justify it. Free mail for incumbents in Congress don't justify it. Delivering junk mail is not a good enough reason for a massive public enterprise. Fewer and fewer letters of significance are delivered that way. Money orders are no longer economically important and can be provided by private commercial banks and money services. Subsidizing rural living isn't a good reason for it.

* Occupational licensing is required when it shouldn't be. When it is required, requirements like a lack of a criminal record are often inappropriate for people who have been non-recidivist for a long enough time (about five to seven years) when the risk of future crime fades to the background level. Worse yet is construction trade licensing at the local level when it should be at the state level, fostering a high level of non-compliance. Independent legal para-professions should be allowed much more liberally, although licensing that might be appropriate. There should be a common database of licensing discipline since many disqualifying acts for one profession should also apply to others.

* Zoning and land use regulation should be dramatically paired back and places like Colorado finally realize that this is true and driving high housing prices. Deregulating is better than mandating affordable housing or rent control. Development fees to mitigate externalities of government costs caused by development, however, make sense. 

* Involuntary landmark designation is almost always a bad idea and an unfunded mandate. If it is important enough historically to preserve the government should buy it and rent it.

* Building codes are critical and non-compliance with permit requirements is far too high. But building codes are also too restrictive and the processing of building permits is much too slow. A system of private building code compliance auditors similar to the CPA system might be better.

* We should do a better job of discouraging people from building disaster prone housing in flood zones, fire zones and other "stupid zones".

* We should do a better job of encouraging off site manufacturing of buildings and large building modules.

* Property taxes are a decent way to finance local government (and shouldn't exempt non-profits and governments other than the one imposing them) but are a bad way to finance public K-12 education which is the main way that they are used now.

* Electing coroners, treasurers, clerks, surveyors, secretaries of state, engineers, and judges (even in routine judicial retention elections) is a horrible idea.

* Electing sheriffs and district attorneys and attorneys-general isn't as horrible an idea, but is still a worse idea than having elected officials appoint them, directly or indirectly.

* State and local school and college boards would be better not elected by the general public. Local school boards should be elected by student's parents. College boards could be elected by alumni or appointed by the elected official who make their funding decisions. State school boards should be appointed by the state officials who fund state K-12 education.

* Shorter ballots are better. In the England, there is one nation election in which you vote for a single legislator on a partisan ballot in a single district, irregularly, but not less than every five years absent a world war, for a government that does everything that the state and federal governments do in the U.S., with no primary elections since parties nominate their own candidates internally, and there is one set of partisan local council elections for one or two posts, and there are few referenda a lifetime, and they are democratic enough, despite having a monarchy and a house of lords. Very modest public electoral input is enough.

* I don't favor a system quite as simple as England's. But we should still have much shorter ballots.

* Rare recall elections make sense for officials who serve longer terms and perhaps for judges and other public officials who are now elected but shouldn't be.

* State constitutions and local charters should have less detail and so that changes to them should be things that require voter approval and not housekeeping measures.

* Some referenda on tax and debt issues is appropriate, but Colorado, with TABOR overdoes it. New taxes, and not new revenues from existing taxes, should get public votes. Maybe bond issues that commit a government to substantial tax obligations from general revenues but not renewals of them.

* Citizen initiatives have their place in overcoming systemic flaws in the legislative system and making elections interesting to voters. But it should be a bit harder and more structured and generally should avoid spending and taxing decisions that need to be made globally.

* Colorado mostly does the probate process right, although probate procedure could use more structure. Most states make the process too intrusive.

* When there is a single post in a candidate election, dispensing with primaries, having a majority to win requirement, and having runoff elections would be preferable to first past the post elections and to instant runoff elections.

* There would be merit to electing state legislatures and state congressional delegations by proportional representation.

* There would be merit to making state legislatures unicameral.

* The electoral college should be abolished in favor of a direct popular vote.

* The franchise should be expanded. The voting age should be reduced to sixteen. Non-citizens should be allowed to vote. Felons, even felons in prison, should be allowed to vote (in their pre-incarceration place of incarceration).

* HOAs are horrible but sometimes necessary institutions. They should be abolished or replaced where possible, and be restructured with fewer powers and less discretion where not possible. HOA covenants are routinely unreasonably restrictive.

* Municipal ordinances related to zoning and land use should have fines or other civil penalties, not criminal penalties.

* Arbitration on the U.S. model is usually a bad idea and should be banned in many circumstances.

* We should have a more pro-active way of intervening in cases where people are mentally ill or cognitively impaired, and the system for adjudicating these cases is too cumbersome.

* Single judges should not handle parenting time and parental responsibilities cases, and the best interests of the child standard should have more detailed substances to guide it. Alimony should also be less discretionary.

* There should be a right to counsel in all cases involving "persons" such as child custody cases, protective proceedings, and immigration cases.

* Forum shopping in the federal courts needs to be better restrained, and allowing a single forum shopped judge to issue national injunctions is problematic.

* After some rocky starts, regulation and technical private management of junk faxes, junk telephone calls, and even junk email has made some real progress. Social media junk is less well regulated.

* Privacy regulation often does more harm than good. Juvenile justice privacy does more harm than good in most cases, educational privacy goes too far, and Europe's GDPR goes too far. Secrecy around ownership of closely held companies is too great and the exception under the Corporate Transparency Act is far too complicated. There are places for privacy regulation but it needs to be cut way back. Secrets are often harmful in hard to quantify ways.

* Cryptocurrency serves few, if any, legitimate purposes, is an environmental disaster, and should be discouraged.

* Programs to help the poor need to have much less paperwork and red tape; means testing is rarely a good choice unless it is integrated into the tax system.

* Some tax credits for poor and middle income people, like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Obamacare insurance premium subsidies, are far too complicated.

* State and local government funded free wi-fi for all would make lots of sense.

* There is a logic to allowing vouchers for religious private K-12 schools, but on balance it does too much to support religious institutions at public expense. Charter schools, i.e. public schools with autonomy from school boards, are a better approach. School choice of some kind does make sense among public ordinary and charter schools, ideally, statewide, rather than only within a school district.

* Boarding schools attached to high schools in more urban areas would be a better alternative to highly subsidized tiny rural high schools.

* We do a horrible job of managing the business of health care. The requirement that doctors be the sole owners of medical practices also forces them into being small business owners when they are ill suited to that part of their jobs and leads to bad systems and poor health care administration and bad financing arrangements. Almost every other country, in many varied models, does a better job. The current system results in overpaid health care providers (doctors, nurses, drug companies, medical equipment companies, private hospital system owners, etc.), for inferior results. Our drug prices and medical equipment prices and ambulance prices and ER prices are all vastly higher than in other countries and this isn't mostly driven by private pay medical education or medical malpractice lawsuits.

* We need to create more medical school slots. We have too few doctors and are compensating for that with too many senior paraprofessionals like nurse practitioners, physician's assistants, and midwives. We should also allow more non-M.D.'s to provide the care that psychiatrists do since the knowledge base for psychiatrists doesn't overlap heavily with that of M.D.'s and where it does overlap can be taught separately.

* The substance of pass-through taxation in taxing closely held business income once at roughly individual tax rates while allowing limited liability, is good, but the actual pass-through tax mechanism is not. Subchapter K of the Internal Revenue Code is not a good approach for taxing closely held limited liability entities, it complexity, it phantom income, and more don't work well. A double taxation reducing or limiting variation on the C-corporation model would be much better.

* We do a poor job of taxing hot assets in international taxation.

* We lack adequate guidance for remote worker labor and tax regulation, and haven't updated our laws adequately to reflect the era of independent contractors.

* We over regulate many prescription drugs and under regulate supplements and herbal remedies and the like. Homeopathic remedies and other supplements need to be regulated more like drugs. Prescription drug approval when approved elsewhere should be easier. Prescription approval for experimental drugs for the terminally ill, or in a pandemic, should be easier. More non-abuse prone prescription drugs should be available over the counter or with pharmacist approval.

* Prostitution should be decriminalized or legalized to a greater extent.

* We vastly under-regulate firearms and explosives and military equipment.

* We do a poor job of commercial air travel security, imposing too much of a burden and delay for too little benefit in a security theater way, at an excessive cost and a greatly excessive externality cost. We also do a crap job of managing luggage charges and checked luggage, and we are more inefficient than we need to be in how quickly commercial aircraft are loaded and unloaded.

* Uber, etc. revealed that we over-regulate taxis, but that we do need some regulation to assure riders are safe from dangerous or dangerous to them drivers.

* Buses and intracity rail won't thrive until we make them feel safer and comfortable.

* Public energy utilities do mostly a good job, except in Texas which opted out of the national energy grid.

* Clean water and good sewage treatment should be expanded urgently to places like Indian Reservations and Flint, Michigan.

* To better disentangle church and state, the charitable income tax deduction (but not the gift and estate tax deduction) for contributions to religious organizations (but not the tax exemption for churches) should end, the parsonage exemption should end, the property tax and sale tax exemptions for churches should end, the investment income of churches should be taxed as a corporation, and the ban on politics by churches should end.

* There should be more power to compel road maintenance below some standard.

* There should be a power to compel HOAs to do their jobs for all members, similar to landlord-tenant maintenance claims.

NDAs

It should be a crime and violation of professional ethics rules, in and of itself, and should also make one a civil and criminal co-conspirator to use a non-disclosure agreement to conceal criminal conduct, tortious activity, breaches of contract, violations of government regulations, government mistakes, adultery, affairs, or to protect a person's reputation. Any such non-disclosure agreements should also be void ab initio. An NDA should be permissible solely to protect trade secrets. And, any valid NDA should disclose this limitation on its face.

Likewise, data protection and privacy rules and laws should never be used for these purposes.

Privacy protections for juvenile delinquency and educational records should also be abolished.

All of this legal protection for secrets does more harm than good.

Musings

I really have no moral problem with killing pirates.

People who flee police in high speed chases are a particular menace who should routinely face prison sentences.

Drones could be used to get vital equipment like rappelling equipment or air tanks to people trapped in high rises.

While felon disenfranchisement is troubling, there might be something to be said for barring people who have been convicted of felonies and only finished their sentences within the last five years or so from holding public office.

For a self-employed person, the administrative burden of tax compliance is at least as bad as the actual amount of money owed for taxes.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if a bunch of Southern cities were drowned by rising sea levels. Drowning Houston or Charleston or even pretty much all of Florida, for example, would be, on balance, a positive development.

First world class water treatment plants are not all that expensive in the greater scheme of thing. Given that, it is really surprising how common it is for tap water to be not safe to drink in so much of the world. The cost of providing running water and sanitary sewage service is vastly greater. Yet, many places with running water and sanitary sewage service lack adequate water treatment.

The State Of The Union Is Strong

By a variety of measures, the U.S. is in a time of record or near record peace, prosperity, and well-being, although blue states (i.e. those that lean towards the Democratic party) are generally better off than red states (i.e. those that lean towards the Republican party). 

This should provide a political boost to President Biden in his rematch seeking re-election against former President Donald Trump. Biden should also be helped relative to the 2020 Presidential election by his incumbency, by the fact that the electorate is less white and less Christian, by the fact that many of the oldest voters in 2020 have been replaced by younger voters, and by the fact that younger voters and Democrats have been turning out more reliably in 2020 and 2022 than in prior elections with overall voter turnout reaching record highs, and with a rolling back of felon disenfranchisement laws in many states. And, of course, Donald Trump is facing four sets of felony criminal prosecutions on more than 90 charges, and has had other legal problems such as two civil judgments against him for a combined amount of more than half a billion dollars for fraud, rape, and defamation. Fox News is wounded, after paying an immense defamation settlement to a voting machine company and facing other similar massive pending lawsuits, and almost all non-Fox News outlets have made Trump's short fallings clear. Trump's three U.S. Supreme Court appointments as part of a six to three conservative majority overruled Roe v. Wade in  a highly unpopular decision and has been plagued by evidence of corruption leading to recover lows in its credibility, which has mobilized pro-choice voters and removed the urgency on the part of conservatives to vote for Trump to secure a conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority. 

But the polls, nationally and in swing states, show that the Biden-Trump Presidential race in 2024 (there is essentially no possibility that either major political party will pick a different nominee) is a toss up, and the polls understated Trump support in both the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections. 

Violent crime rates in the U.S. are at their lowest level since 1970, down about 51% since 1991. The murder rate in big cities that bounced up in the pandemic (2020-2021) has fallen again (down 5% in 2022 and down another 12% so far this year compared to the same time period in 2022) to return to almost pre-pandemic levels which are comparable to murder rates in the early 1960s and are down about 50% from the peak levels in the early 1980s. Property crime rates are down 62% since 1991 and declined steadily until a slight bump upwards in 2022. Crime rates are generally higher in red states and lower in blue states.

The teen pregnancy rate is lower than it has been at any time in all of history and prehistory in North America. The teen pregnancy rate is down 75% since 1991. It is down 79% in that time period for black teens, 77% for Hispanic teens, and 76% for white teens. Teen pregnancy rates are lower in blue states and higher in red states.

After reaching a 50-year record low for two consecutive years (2020 and 2021 at 14.0 divorces per 1,000 married women), the divorce rate rose slightly in 2022 to 14.56 divorces per 1,000 married women. But, divorce rates are still lower now than at any time from 1970 to 2019. There is a class divide in marriage, however. For Americans in the top third income bracket (mostly college educated), 64% are in an intact marriage, meaning they have only married once and are still in their first marriage, comparable to 1960s and earlier levels. In contrast, only 24% of Americans in the lower-third income bracket (mostly people with no college) are in an intact marriage. Divorce rates are lower in blue states than in red states. 

U.S. unemployment is at its lowest level in 54 years. The economy added 2.7 million jobs in 2023. The U.S. has had positive job growth for 38 consecutive months, putting the current streak in 5th place of the longest job streaks in US history (since 1939). Inflation-adjusted disposable personal income rose 4.2 percent in 2023.

The U.S. poverty rate in 2023 was 11.5%. It has been lower than that in only three of the last 60+ years: 2019 (10.5%), 2000 (11.3%), and 1974 (11.1%), and in none of those years was it dramatically lower. By comparison, the U.S. poverty rate was 15.1% in 1993 and 2010, was 15.2% in 1983, and was 19.0% in 1964 (and was 15.1% or more in 1965 and 1966). Poverty rates are higher in red states and lower in blue states.

The percentage of Americans who don't have health insurance is at record lows (mostly due to Obamacare). A greater percentage of people don't have health insurance in red states than in blue states.

GDP growth in the U.S. has been solid during Biden's administration after experiencing an unprecedented plunge four years ago in the final year of Trump's Presidency due to the COVID pandemic. The stock market (which is a leading economic indicator of the economy's future direction) is at an all time high, despite upward trends in interest rates. The dollar is at 20 years plus highs in strength relative to other major world currencies. Per capita GPD and household net worth is much higher in blue states and blue regions of states than in red states and red regions of states.

Most economic activity has returned to pre-COVID levels. Inflation has come back to normal after a COVID/Ukraine War driven spike. Gasoline prices are close to their long term average in inflation adjusted dollars.

The percentage of Americans age 25 or older who have have high school diplomas (91.1%) was an all time high in 2022, and the percentage who had college degrees (37.7%) in 2022 was just slightly below the all time high of 37.9% in 2021. In 1960, only 41.1% of Americans age 25 or more had high school diplomas and only 7.7% of Americans age 25 or more had college degrees. Educational attainment is higher in blue states and lower in red states.

The number of Americans in active duty military service relative to the population is as low as it has been at any time in the last 83 years. The draft ended in the U.S. 51 years ago. U.S. military spending as a percentage of GDP is 3.48%, slightly above its post-1960 lows from 1997 to 2002 when it reached its modern low of 3.09% in 1999. In 1967 it was 9.42% of GDP. People in red states are more likely to serve in the military than people in blue states.

COVID deaths and hospitalizations are way, way down. COVID death rates were generally higher in red states (mostly due to lower vaccination rates) and lower in blue states.

U.S. deaths from AIDS are at a record or near record low, down more than 90% from the peak number of deaths per 100,000 people in 1995. One of the four major strains of influenza has gone extinct sometime in the last four years.

The average share of electricity generated from coal in the US has dropped from 52.8% in 1997 to 19.7% in 2022 and is still falling. The United States got nearly 17% of its electricity from solar, wind and geothermal power in 2022 and is still rising. That's up from just over 5% in 2013. Fourteen states produced the equivalent of more than 30% of the electricity they used from solar, wind and geothermal in 2022. That is up from just two states in 2013.

The U.S. produced 2.5% more energy in 2022 than it consumed. 2022 marked the highest level of US energy independence since before 1950. By comparison, in 2005 the U.S. consumed 44% more energy than it produced.

The percentage of Americans who identify as non-religious, 30%, is at an all time high and the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian is lower than it has been at any time since European colonization of North America. Among Americans aged 18-29 who are indicative of the future trend, 43% are not religious, 52% are Christian, and 4% adhere to some other religion. Red states are more Christian and less secular, while blue states are less Christian and more secular.

In 2022, immigrants made up 13.9% of the U.S. population, the highest percentage in more than a century. It was last this high sometime between 1910 (when it was 14.7%) and 1920 (when it was 13.2%). This is higher than in the 1900 census (13.6%), the 1880 census (13.3%), the 1860 census (13.2%), and the 1850 census (9.7%), but lower than in the 1890 census (14.8%) and the 1870 census (14.4%). The year 1970 census had the smallest foreign born population in the period from 1850 to the present at 4.7%, about a third of the current foreign born population percentage. Blue states have higher percentages of immigrants than red states.

The percentage of people living in urban areas (80.0%) v. rural areas (20.0%) in the 2020 census was essentially the same as in the 2010 census which set an all time high of 80.7% urban, with most or all of the difference from 2010 to 2020 being due to a stricter definition of what counted as urban in 2020. The percentage of the population that is urban is projected to grow steadily over the next thirty years as it has for almost all of U.S. history, and over the last 20 years, there has been much more population growth in urban areas than in rural areas. Blue states are generally more urban than red states. 

U.S. Secretary of State Travel Advisories

The maps below from the U.S. Secretary of State website show that agency's current travel advisories for Americans traveling abroad. Localized versions are provided where the advisories are hard or impossible to see on other maps.

Red zones are "do not travel" areas. These are places that it simply isn't safe for Americans to be.

Orange zones are "reconsider travel" areas with some having areas of heightened risk. 

Yellow areas of "exercise increased caution" are no real worry (including the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Nepal, and Chile) except in areas of heightened risk where they are effectively "orange zones."

Legend:

Worldwide:

In Eurasia and Africa:

In Eurasia, the countries marked as red zones (i.e. "do not travel") are Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar), Yemen, and North Korea. 

China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Lebanon, Moldova, and Israel are "orange zones" (i.e. "reconsider travel") with Papua New Guinea, Lebanon Moldova, and Israel having some areas that are "orange zones" with increased risk. 

Parts of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Kosovo, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia are "yellow zones" with increased risk.

In Africa, the countries marked as red zones are Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia.

Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, are "orange zones." Parts of Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of Congo are "orange zones" with increased risk.

Parts of Algeria,  Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Cameroon, Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique,  are also "yellow zones" with increased risk.

In the Caribbean and Mesoamerica:

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the countries marked as red zones are Haiti, Venezuela, and parts of Mexico (including the tourist destinations of Acapulco and Mazatlán). 

Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Columbia are "orange zones." Parts of Mexico (including Tijuana and all other cities near the U.S.-Mexico border), Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil are also "orange zones."

Immigration Still Doesn't Increase Crime Rates

Fear of foreigners, xenophobia, and other sources of intuition about immigration and crime are surprisingly persistent in the face of evidence to the contrary, and a few well publicized incidents can play into those cognitive biases. Republicans, who are less connected with factual reality, are much more likely to believe that there is a crime-immigration connection, than Democrats.

In a new Pew Research Center report about the situation at the US-Mexico border, 57% of Americans say the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime. . . . it flies in the face of years of studies looking at what actually happened after immigrants came to communities across the US. Many researchers crunching the numbers have found there’s no connection between immigration and crime. Some have even found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the US. . . .  

when those surveyed were asked specifically about the impact of the migrant influx on crime, there were stark differences across party lines, with 85% of Republicans linking the migrant influx to crime, compared to 31% of Democrats. The survey also found that 39% of Americans don’t think the migrant influx has much of an impact on crime. The Pew report is based on a survey of 5,140 adults conducted from January 16-21. . . .

Across a variety of studies that use different years of data that focus on different areas of the United States – with some exceptions, there’s some nuance there. I don’t want to deny the nuance – in general, on average, we do not find a connection between immigration and crime, as is so often claimed. The most common finding across all these different kinds of studies is that immigration to an area is either not associated with crime in that area, or is negatively associated with crime in that area. Meaning more immigration equals less crime. It’s rare to find studies that show crime following increases in immigration or with larger percentage of the population that are immigrants. . . . 

New York Police Commissioner Edward Caban recently described a “wave of migrant crime” in the city as he announced a bust in a ring of cell phone thefts. Is that what’s happening?

There’s an increase in robbery. Is the increase enough to call it a crime wave? No. Are you sure the migrants were responsible for the increase in robbery? No. Do we know if the victims were also migrants? No. … It’s tough to call it a migrant crime wave when we don’t know all these things.

Is there any big-picture data that you would look at to think about what the impact might be of this large number of recent arrivals in the city?

When a New York Daily News reporter asked me about this recently, I gave her what I thought was a good formula: Why don’t you take police precincts that have shelters in them and just look at that sample. Is crime up? Is crime down? 

That report in the New York Daily News ended up finding that, in the places they looked at where shelters are located, crime is down this year compared to the same time last year in most categories.

From CNN. 

The U.S. Gun Violence Problem Is Uniquely Severe

The U.S. gun violence problem is on a whole different level than almost everyplace else in the world. Over the last five years, the U.S. has averaged one school shooting per day that school is in session. 

Bad conservative opinions from U.S. Supreme Court are some of the reasons that this is the case. 

Between January 2009 and May 2018, the United States endured 288 school shootings, while the second-place country, Mexico, had only eight. Since then, school shootings have occurred much more frequently in America. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in 2022 at an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL in Uvalde, Texas. In 2023, there were 346 school shootings across our country, almost one a day. All in all, between 2018 and 2023 there were over 1200 school shootings in the United States. 

. . . 

The gun nightmare in America transcends school shootings. Wyoming, along with a few other western states, have high rates of suicide by guns. According to an officer at a medical center in Wyoming, "one of the challenging aspects of working in the Rocky Mountain region is just the availability and accessibility of firearms. Some days it feels overwhelming because you think, 'if we didn't have firearms to worry about, what would suicide look like here?'" She has a strong point, given that suicide by firearms is 97% lethal and Wyoming is near the top of suicide rates on a per capita basis. 

. . . 

Statistics of course can be manipulated and numbers often tell only a partial story, but not in the case of guns in the United States because all the statistics are so out of proportion with the rest of the world.

Only four countries--Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala and the United States--have made owning a gun a constitutional right. There are 120 guns per 100 people in the United States. Yes, we have more guns than people. The country with the second highest gun ownership rate is Yemen, with 52 guns per 100 people. America has more than twice as many guns per person as the next most armed country. Gun ownership in Canada, a country that is very similar to the U.S. in many respects, is only 35 guns per 100 people, and many military style weapons that are legal here are illegal there. America has only 5% percent of the world's population but approximately 40% of civilian-owned guns.

Not surprisingly, the absurdly huge number of guns in our country has led to violence and deaths. Other than Brazil, the United States has far more gun-caused fatalities than any other country. In 2021, over 48,000 Americans died from guns, with many more injured. 

Although most of those deaths were related to suicides, murders, and accidents, when a mass shooting occurs at a school or in a community, the emotional and psychological toll effects far more people than just those who are actually killed or injured. . . . There can be no debate that there is a terrible gun crisis in America. 

. . . 

But tragically, the Supreme Court of the United States has weaponized the Second Amendment and misinterpreted its text to make gun ownership a super-constitutional right. The justices have prohibited the states and the federal government from asserting public policy justifications in Second Amendment litigation, requiring them to instead find historical analogues from 1791 or maybe 1868 as a prerequisite to judicial validation of gun reform laws. But, as I've documented before, there is no textual or historical justification for the Court's elevation of personal gun rights to such high levels through a history-only test that is itself inconsistent with the Constitution's original meaning. . . . Recently, a federal judge struck down a federal law prohibiting guns in post offices. As I wrote here, that opinion is beyond any and all reason and is a direct consequence of the Court's demand that judges look only to history when evaluating the constitutionality of legislation restricting or prohibiting the use of guns. . . . the Court's wildly inappropriate judicial aggression towards legislative solutions to gun violence is almost certainly responsible for making the crisis worse. Given the Second Amendment's specific textual reference to militias, as well as the presence of 400,000,000 guns in America, along with all the other contributing factors leading to death and destruction by guns, this judicial interference is constitutional insanity and a form of national suicide. . . . .

From Dorf on Law.