Breakdown In Civil Order

[lpetrich]

Someone skeptical about this alleged crime wave:
Alec Karakatsanis on Twitter: "THREAD. I noticed something fascinating: ..." / Twitter

THREAD. I noticed something fascinating: many of the reporters concocting the new hysteria over "retail theft" are using the *exact same* words and patterns in each story. It's pretty wild. Let's take a look:

Let's use today's dangerous @chicagotribune article as an example. First thing to notice: who does the newspaper choose to use as sources? Here they are in chronological order:
1. CEO of local retail lobby
2. National Retail Federation
3. Police
4. CEO of state retail lobby (5 paras!)
5. CEO of World Business Chicago
6. Pres. of restaurant lobby
7. CEO of Illnois Hotel lobby (7 paras!)
8. New hotel CEO (6 paras!)
9. CEO from earlier (7 more paras!)

Does this look familiar? Check out the sources in the very similar recent @ap article about "brazen" San Francisco "retail theft."
1) Right-wing DA association president
2) "Authorities"
3) California Retailers Association President and CEO
4) "National retail groups"
5) Director of business lobby group
6) Sheriff
7) AG
8) DA
9) Centrist non-profit
10) Atty for prosecutor lobby
11) More same business lobby

It's weird, but both those article source lists look eerily similar to what the New York Times published!
-Corporate spokesperson
-Corporate VP
-"Retail executives and security experts"
-"Industry veterans"
-"President of the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail"
-"Some industry experts"
-"Head of the California retail trade group"
-Governor
-CLER president (again, twice)
-Sheriff

I cannot stress this enough: when you see articles like this, ask yourself: Why is this news? How did it get to the reporters? What is the goal of the article? How did they choose which voices to quote and which to ignore? Who benefits?

Next, did you notice that this article continues the pattern of the same exact words and phrases as other similar recent articles across outlets?

"brazen"
"organized crime"
"flash mob"
"smash and grab."

How is this happening?

One thing that many casual news readers don't know is that articles, and the specific words used in them, are often carefully crafted by expensive corporate marketing consultants. It's something wealthy business groups pay a lot of money for.

There is a big marketing industry for corporations and cops that teaches them to use the same words and phrases when they pitch journalists. It's not a coincidence that different journalists are all using same words, and those words were carefully chosen by wealthy people.

This is intentional, and it subtly changes the way we think. For example, the slick phrase "smash and grab" is pure marketing. It's vague, scary, and hard to fact check. Such theft is likely close to 0% of retail thefts, but it's all we're talking about. What does it even mean?

The result of all of this is a public massively distracted from far more important issues. Did you know that these same corporations engage in wage theft every day that dwarf all other property crime combined? Read this whole thread:

Take the frenzy over “retail shoplifting” from big corporate stores, which has taken over local/national news. Same reporters don't cover the $137 million in corporate wage theft *every day,* including by the same companies whose press releases about shoplifting they now quote.

We must help each other become more critical consumers of the news, and we must hold journalists accountable for the role they are playing in scaring the public into deeply destructive human caging policies that crush poor people.

UPDATE: it’s especially interesting to compare the breathless Chicago tribune reporting with actual facts:

Responding to a Chicago Tribune story,
David Menschel on Twitter: "1. Property crime in Chicago is at a many DECADES-LONG LOW ..." / Twitter

1. Property crime in Chicago is at a many DECADES-LONG LOW you irresponsible purveyor of sensationalist, fearmongering garbage.

2. Assaults (which Chicago police call “aggravated battery”) are *DOWN* DRAMATICALLY compared to two & three years ago in the police precinct that includes the Mag Mile. Also down compared to four years ago, YOU AWFUL FEARMONGERERS.

3. Irresponsible “reporters” like @chicagotribune @RobertChannick are creating a hysteria based on falsehoods, then turning around and acting like all they are doing is noting fear in the community WHEN IN FACT THEY ARE MANUFACTURING THE FEAR WITH THEIR REPORTING.

Nice to see some actual *evidence*.

 

[lpetrich]

The Yale Law Journal - Forum: The Punishment Bureaucracy: How to Think About “Criminal Justice Reform” - 28 Mar 2019 - Alec Karakatsanis

ABITXNTV on Twitter: "@equalityAlec I worked in retail 25+ years ago, and these thefts were occurring then. Ralph Lauren merch was highly desired. We kept it right at the front by the doors. Every week we had groups “mob” the displays and take off with as much as they could grab. This isn’t some new phenomenon." / Twitter

Mal Content❤⚖ on Twitter: "@ABITXNTV @equalityAlec "Every week we had groups “mob” the displays and take off with as much as they could grab."
And the store owners did nothing to stop this despite heavy losses???
I'll take, "Shit that never happened, for $1000, Alex"..." / Twitter

Ravindra Kanodia * Trending Non-Gamer of the Year on Twitter: "@caymanislandman @ABITXNTV @equalityAlec A friend used to work at the Apple Store in Palo Alto, and Steve Fucking Jobs would yell at them if he came in and saw that the expensive, frequently-stolen iPods had been moved to the back. He wanted the store to be inviting and enticing and accessible, losses be damned" / Twitter

The Angry Librarian on Twitter: "@caymanislandman @ABITXNTV @equalityAlec Just had this exact conversation with my partner who has worked retail forever yes it's always been happening, no. No one paid attention before." / Twitter

John "6-Hoffa Trunk" Miller on Twitter: "@caymanislandman @ABITXNTV @equalityAlec Expensive items that are hard to sell are placed in areas where they are easy to steal. ..." / Twitter

Expensive items that are hard to sell are placed in areas where they are easy to steal. "Every effort" is made to discourage such theft, but every retailer knows they are easily circumvented. Insurance, however, still pays out for the thefts.

This was very common at radio shack, where items that would normally be marked down for clearance were instead moved to displays at the front of the store. Easily stolen, written up as loss at full price.

Circle K, when it was owned by Tosco, did the same thing with Pokémon and MTG cards. They knew any card packs in the display were going to be stolen, so they displayed packs that weren't selling. Did the same with expired cigarettes.

Lots of anecdotes, no idea how typical this has been in past years. But I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the recent fuss about retail theft is noticing what's been going on for a long time.

 

[lpetrich]

Alex Karakatsanis has a thread on what the news media covers. He claims that it mostly focuses on the lower-class sorts of crime. But the upper-class sorts of crime that he mentions, like wage theft and tax evasion, are sorts that are more difficult to track down. It has been a struggle to finance the IRS enough to investigate a lot of upper-class tax-evasion schemes, since they can be very complicated.
Alec Karakatsanis on Twitter: "This is a thread about how journalists decide what is “news” and what isn’t. ..." / Twitter

This is a thread about how journalists decide what is “news” and what isn’t. Anyone shaping the news and anyone consuming the news should understand who decides what counts as news, how they decide it, and what determines what they say about it. Here, I ask a few questions:

This thread is inspired by the gap in what mainstream media treats as urgent and what are the greatest threats to human safety, well-being, and survival.

For example, air pollution kills *10 million people* each year and causes untold additional illness and suffering. It rarely features in daily news stories. Why?

Instead, daily news is dominated by “crime” stories. But even these are “crime” stories of a certain kind: they aren't stories about the many air pollution crimes. They are the kind of "crimes" publicized by police press releases, usually involving poor people.

Much of deadly U.S. air and water pollution is also criminal, but “law enforcement” chooses to ignore it, and thus so do most journalists.

Why is this important? What the media treats as urgent helps to determine what the public thinks is urgent. It shapes what (and who) we are afraid of.

A thought experiment: Imagine if every day for the last 25 years every newspaper and tv station had urgent “breaking news” stories and graphics about the *thousands of deaths the night before* from air/water pollution, climate change, or poverty?

Take the frenzy over “retail shoplifting” from big corporate stores, which has taken over local/national news. Same reporters don't cover the $137 million in corporate wage theft *every day,* including by the same companies whose press releases about shoplifting they now quote.

The media’s frenzy has led to emergency actions by many politicians, who are feeling intense political pressure to pass laws, assign thousands more police, increase police/prison budgets, and project an urgency they have *never* shown for wage theft:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Promises to Boost Police Funding Amid Shoplifting Wave

Wage theft is more devastating than all other property crime combined. And unlike theft from big companies, wage theft is *by corporations* from workers, many of whom struggle to meet basic necessities of life. It makes people homeless and kids go without food and winter coats.

Did you know that mostly bank fraudulent overdraft fees amount to basically the same amount of property theft as all burglary, larceny, car theft, and shoplifting combined? Probably not, because the media doesn’t report on instances of overdraft fraud by banks every day.

If it’s hard to grasp the scope of the news’s silence on $50 billion wage theft epidemic, how can we grasp the scope of the news’s daily silence on the $1 trillion tax evasion epidemic by wealthy people?

Tax Evasion: Cheats Are Costing the US About $1 Trillion a Year, IRS Estimates - Bloomberg

Viewed in terms of absolute property value and objective harm, this makes much of the media’s obsession with retail shoplifting from corporate chain stores look absurd.

The same is true across public health, banking, manufacturing, employment, consumer protection, tax, and environment: things that cause greatest suffering and threats to public safety—many of which are crimes—receive a fraction of the attention as what police report as “crimes.”

Most people don’t know, because "news" didn’t tell them, that fraud crimes by bankers killed tens of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of people become homeless each year because of illegal actions by landlords. Almost never reported each day.

So, who is deciding to cover shoplifting with “breaking news” urgency but not air pollution, wage theft, and fraud that leaves people and their children homeless and in poverty?

The stakes are enormous. The world is careening toward extinction level events and millions are already dying from preventable causes that most people in the U.S. do not treat with urgency.

It’s hard to think of something more important than understanding the information-spreading apparatus that creates this gap between perception and reality.

Most people setting these agendas in the media are caring people committed to helping people understand the world. The NYT slogan is “all the news that’s fit to print.” The WaPo: “Democracy dies in the darkness.” How did such a gap between reality and "the news" develop?

Here are a few questions worth asking, and I hope you’ll add more:

Do the social and economic circles of journalists determine what they think is newsworthy?

Are there habits and customs relating to where journalists look for information, who their sources are, and who has the money to publicize things to journalists that determine what is considered news?

Are there professional economic incentives, racial and class biases, and jingoistic ideologies that shape *what harms* to *which people* count as important enough to be breaking news, or news at all?

What role does corporate ownership and consolidation of media companies play in determining what is covered and how urgently it is covered?

 

[lpetrich]

Alex Karakatsanis links to some older Twitter threads, and I've gleaned from them:

John Pfaff on Twitter: "Still waiting for an article abt how conservative Jacksonville FL is dealing with its historic-high homicide rate. Or the spike in Ft Worth, or all the other non-progressive cities seeing spikes. Portland has 650,000 ppl. 0.2% of the US pop. But I head abt it ALL the time." / Twitter

David Menschel on Twitter: "@MrOlmos @kljohnso Some cities with higher homicide rates than Portland that the NYT hasn’t written endless articles about. Dallas Ft. Worth Nashville Atlanta Tucson Tulsa Charlotte Houston Albuq. Vegas Denver Philly LA Baltimore Jacksonville Boston Oakland NOLA Minneapolis DC Milwaukee Chicago" / Twitter

Many Americans Are Convinced Crime Is Rising In The U.S. They’re Wrong. | FiveThirtyEight

And that combination of questions revealed something important about American fear: We are terrible at estimating our risk of crime — much worse than we are at guessing the danger of other bad things. Across that decade, respondents put their chance of being robbed in the coming year at about 15 percent. Looking back, the actual rate of robbery was 1.2 percent. In contrast, when asked to rate their risk of upcoming job loss, people guessed it was about 14.5 percent — much closer to the actual job loss rate of 12.9 percent.

In other words, we feel the risk of crime more acutely. We are certain crime is rising when it isn’t; convinced our risk of victimization is higher than it actually is. And in a summer when the president is sending federal agents to crack down on crime in major cities and local politicians are arguing over the risks of defunding the police, that disconnect matters. In an age of anxiety, crime may be one of our most misleading fears.

...
But those statistics don’t tell the whole story, and that matters in ways that become important when you’re trying to understand the difference between how people feel and what the data say. Not all crimes are reported to the police. Sexual assault, in particular, is notoriously underreported. And there are plenty of crimes we don’t really track well in data — like vandalism, drug use and sales, or public intoxication — which can affect how safe people feel in their neighborhoods, even if the crimes aren’t serious.

But why do many Americans think that crime rates are very high?

Turns out, the local news may be responsible for convincing Americans that violent crime is more common than it really is. Researchers have consistently found that “if it bleeds, it leads” is a pretty accurate descriptor of the coverage that local television broadcasters and newspapers focus on. For years, rarer crimes like murders received a lot more airtime than more common crimes like physical assault. And that hasn’t changed as the crime rate has fallen.

Understandably, seeing stories about violent atrocities on the news every night seems to make people afraid that the same thing could happen to them. According to one study conducted in California, consumption of local television news significantly increased people’s perceptions of risk and fear of crime.

...
There’s a significant amount of evidence, too, that reporting on crime can prop up harmful stereotypes: Studies have found that local news media disproportionately portray Black people as perpetrators of crime, and white people as victims.

There’s also plenty of fodder for this kind of coverage because even though crime has fallen a lot over the past few decades, the U.S. is still a pretty violent country, at least compared to other developed nations.

But often, those fears can be blown out of proportion — not just by wall-to-wall murder coverage on the news, but also by politicians who bring up the crime rate in press conferences and interviews. President Trump is far from the first president to paint a dark vision of crime in American cities, but he is singularly obsessed with the topic, especially now.

...
Some Americans may be more receptive to tough-on-crime rhetoric than others, of course. Republicans are generally more apt to say that crime is a serious problem facing the country than Democrats.

 

[blastula]

San Francisco Mayor Declares State of Emergency to Fight City’s ‘Nasty Streets’

It’s a highly unusual move by a liberal mayor in one of the country’s most liberal cities.

www.nytimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO — The mayor of San Francisco on Friday made a sharp break with the liberal conventions that have guided her city for decades, declaring a state of emergency in one of its most crime-infested neighborhoods.

Mayor London Breed’s announcement came just days after she emphasized the need for the police to clean up what she has described as “nasty streets.” At a news conference at City Hall, steps away from where drug dealers openly peddle fentanyl and methamphetamines, she said, “We are in a crisis and we need to respond accordingly.” She added, “Too many people are dying in this city, too many people are sprawled on our streets.”

The neighborhood, the Tenderloin, has been ground zero for drug dealing, overdose deaths and homelessness for years. But Ms. Breed said in an interview that she reached her “breaking point” in recent weeks after meeting with families with children who live in the Tenderloin and said they felt constantly threatened.

Her actions and startlingly blunt language were a marked change in tone and policy in a city that has been polarized over homeless encampments and open-air drug use. Elected as a liberal Democrat, she spoke this week about “a reign of criminals,” trash strewn across neighborhoods full of “feces and urine,” and shoplifting at high-end stores that she called “mass looting events.”

 

[Derec]

Nice to see some actual *evidence*.

"Evidence" should be in scare-quotes, not asteriskes.
I see no evidence, just some genetic fallacy by the far left-wing shyster and some unsourced claims from the 2nd guy.

 

[Derec]

The Yale Law Journal - Forum: The Punishment Bureaucracy: How to Think About “Criminal Justice Reform” - 28 Mar 2019 - Alec Karakatsanis

This Alec guy is insufferable. He apparently thinks this Sharnalle woman should be allowed to ignore her traffic tickets. Why? Because she is female or because she is black or both? I had to pay all the traffic tickets I have incurred in my life. But then again, I did not have a Yale lawyer going to bat for me - so much for my white male privilege!
Then he quotes Angela Davis, an actual card-carrying communist who supplied weapons for the Marin County courthouse massacre in 1970.
Then it descended into a word salad screed and I quickly lost interest.

ABITXNTV on Twitter: "@equalityAlec I worked in retail 25+ years ago, and these thefts were occurring then. Ralph Lauren merch was highly desired. We kept it right at the front by the doors. Every week we had groups “mob” the displays and take off with as much as they could grab. This isn’t some new phenomenon." / Twitter

Even if this anecdote were true and indicative of wider trends, how that makes what is happening right?

I'll take, "Shit that never happened, for $1000, Alex"..." / Twitter

Exactly!

Lots of anecdotes, no idea how typical this has been in past years. But I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the recent fuss about retail theft is noticing what's been going on for a long time.

A lot of anecdotes by random people on Twitter responding to a far-left lawyer who is against the criminal justice system anyway.

 

[Derec]

Alex Karakatsanis has a thread on what the news media covers. He claims that it mostly focuses on the lower-class sorts of crime.

And why should not lower-class sort of crime be prosecuted? When a bunch of lowlifes rob a store, or steal cars etc. that is a big deal and a city that ignores it goes down the drain.

But the upper-class sorts of crime that he mentions, like wage theft and tax evasion, are sorts that are more difficult to track down.

This is textbook whataboutism. Nobody is claiming these sorts of crimes should be ignored, but neither should retail thefts.

It has been a struggle to finance the IRS enough to investigate a lot of upper-class tax-evasion schemes, since they can be very complicated.

I am sure IRS knowing all transactions over $600 will help that effort a lot!

This is a thread about how journalists decide what is “news” and what isn’t. Anyone shaping the news and anyone consuming the news should understand who decides what counts as news, how they decide it, and what determines what they say about it. Here, I ask a few questions:

You really are obsessing over this dude Alec today.

Instead, daily news is dominated by “crime” stories. But even these are “crime” stories of a certain kind: they aren't stories about the many air pollution crimes. They are the kind of "crimes" publicized by police press releases, usually involving poor people.

Because so-called "poor people" are justified in stealing from others, including with violence?
That reminds me of the "How he gonna get his money" story. A teenager burglarized a home and the homeowner shot him. His cousin was defending his actions with the aforementioned quote, but many posters on here have defended him too.

Much of deadly U.S. air and water pollution is also criminal, but “law enforcement” chooses to ignore it, and thus so do most journalists.

What evidence is there that criminal violation of pollution standards is not prosecuted? In any case, that does not excuse so-called "poor people" stealing and robbing.
And there have been many articles and columns about environmental issues. It is not that the media is ignoring it. What Alec the Insufferable wants though is for media to ignore retail robberies, car thefts, muggings and other crimes he excuses in the name of "social justice".

Did you know that mostly bank fraudulent overdraft fees amount to basically the same amount of property theft as all burglary, larceny, car theft, and shoplifting combined? Probably not, because the media doesn’t report on instances of overdraft fraud by banks every day.

[citation needed]. By the way, if a bank overdraft is part of the schedule of fees, it is not fraudulent. And I shudder to think how Alec defines "wage theft".
Now, actual fraudulent behavior and wage theft should be punished. I just don't think this Alec is honest with his numbers.

If it’s hard to grasp the scope of the news’s silence on $50 billion wage theft epidemic, how can we grasp the scope of the news’s daily silence on the $1 trillion tax evasion epidemic by wealthy people?
Tax Evasion: Cheats Are Costing the US About $1 Trillion a Year, IRS Estimates - Bloomberg

The estimate is $1T for all tax evasion, not just by "wealthy people". What about EITC fraud? Or fraudulent reparations tax credit?

Snipped the rest because Alec is just repeating the same screed over and over again.

 

[Derec]

Alex Karakatsanis links to some older Twitter threads, and I've gleaned from them:

Give it a rest with this guy, will you?

John Pfaff on Twitter: "Still waiting for an article abt how conservative Jacksonville FL is dealing with its historic-high homicide rate. Or the spike in Ft Worth, or all the other non-progressive cities seeing spikes. Portland has 650,000 ppl. 0.2% of the US pop. But I head abt it ALL the time." / Twitter

Jacksonville is #37 on homicide rate and Fort Worth is #57. Top 10 are some rather progressive cities from St. Louis and Baltimore to Newark and Chicago. Admittedly, Portland is low on that list (#78) but not because of leadership but because of demographics. Portland has few black people and they have a 5-6x higher homicide rate than white people according to FBI. Where Portland is infamous is not homicides but Antifa mobs breaking shit every time they are upset about something - including Biden's inauguration! Or Antifa thugs occupying a neighborhood because they think a black person should not be paying his mortgage. Needless to say, the Antifa-friendly DA did not prosecute the occupiers.

Many Americans Are Convinced Crime Is Rising In The U.S. They’re Wrong. | FiveThirtyEight

A lot of crime has been rising in recent years. There is a reason 538 (which has declined quite a bit in quality) is citing data from 1994 to 2004 in the beginning of the piece or why the graphics stop around 2016.

There’s a significant amount of evidence, too, that reporting on crime can prop up harmful stereotypes: Studies have found that local news media disproportionately portray Black people as perpetrators of crime, and white people as victims.

BS. First of all, black people are disproportionally frequently the perpetrators of many crimes - 5-6x more frequent for homicide for example. When 538 talks about "disproportionate" it is relative to population share, not share of crime.
If anything media, especially national media like CNN, MSNBC, NY Times or NPR love to focus on less frequent cases with white perpetrators and black victims. The Ahmaud Arbery case was extensively covered for months, but black killer and white victim are more than twice are frequent than the converse, according to FBI Uniform Crime Report. You would not know it by the amount of media coverage though.

 

[Swammerdami]

It seems that Valjean's stealing of a loaf of break is on-topic here, but the billions stolen by Bernie Madoff, or the billions in pollution by Koch Industries are not.

Or at least that seems to be one Infidel's opinion.

But the upper-class sorts of crime that he mentions, like wage theft and tax evasion, are sorts that are more difficult to track down.

This is textbook whataboutism. Nobody is claiming these sorts of crimes should be ignored, but neither should retail thefts.

It has been a struggle to finance the IRS enough to investigate a lot of upper-class tax-evasion schemes, since they can be very complicated.
...
This is a thread about how journalists decide what is “news” and what isn’t. Anyone shaping the news and anyone consuming the news should understand who decides what counts as news, how they decide it, and what determines what they say about it. Here, I ask a few questions:
...
Much of deadly U.S. air and water pollution is also criminal, but “law enforcement” chooses to ignore it, and thus so do most journalists.

What evidence is there that criminal violation of pollution standards is not prosecuted?

I've painted the final, amazing sentence red. I don't see a smiley emoticon; could Derec really be serious here?

I know this is the post-truth era, but may I be allowed to post some facts?

To listen to some, auto theft is one of America's biggest problems. In 2020, $7 billion was lost to auto thefts. (The record number of vehicles stolen was set in 2008 during the reign of George W. Bush, a noted pro-criminal leftist. The highest theft rate was in 1991 during the reign of, as might be expected, GWB's pro-crime father.) The same webpage shows that liberal strongholds like Tulsa OK, Billings MT and Odessa TX are on the Top Ten list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas with highest auto theft rates.

Annual losses to burglary are less than $4 billion. Add that to $7 billion of autos and round it up to $11 billion. That's a lot of money, almost $33 per capita!

To compare auto theft with white-collar theft is "whataboutism." But, well, what about white collar crime?

Bernie Madoff swindled his clients out of somewhere between $11 billion and $50 billion, depending on definitions. (Those figures are AFTER government-arranged restitutions.) That's ONE man who did this, with a little help from his brother and his sons. That's 'billion' with a B. Even using the low figure of $11 billion, the Madoffs all by themselves stole more than all the burglars and car thieves in America in an entire year! (Sure most of Madoff's victims were millionaires, but some lost their life savings and committed suicide. Victims also included many charities, pension funds and universities.)

Some ignorant right-wingers will say that Madoff's prison sentence proves that white-collar crime IS prosecuted, but Madoff wasn't arrested until he spontaneously confessed, despite that the fraud has been reported to Federal regulators many years before! His complicit sons were never charged; that was the point of his confession of course.

Even in prison, Madoff acted like a big-time criminal:

After an inmate slapped Madoff because he had changed the channel on the TV, it was reported that Madoff befriended Carmine Persico, boss of the Colombo crime family since 1973, one of New York's five American Mafia families. It was believed Persico had intimidated the inmate who slapped Madoff in the face.

Just today we see that JPMorgan confessed to crimes in one simple matter and agreed to a $200 million fine. In 2020 fines paid by U.S. banks totaled $11 billion. Is that a lot of money? How many banking executives went to jail? How many had their necks stomped on by an arresting officer?

Here's a rather amazing list. Can you believe that over the years Bank of America has paid $83 billion in penalties? (There's that B again.) If one of their executives had ALSO stolen a car, that would have been $82,000,009,000 and the executive would have been sent to jail.

The penalties for all 100 corporations showed come to $540 billion. Is that a lot of money? Is it more than the $7 billion lost annually to auto theft?

And that list shows ONLY the $929 million Koch Industries actually paid out in penalties. Their crimes were far FAR greater. I guess it pays to have friends in high places.

But what about Jean Valjean, hunh? He stole a loaf of bread. Not just a few slices; a whole loaf.

 

[Jarhyn]

It seems that Valjean's stealing of a loaf of break is on-topic here, but the billions stolen by Bernie Madoff, or the billions in pollution by Koch Industries are not.

Or at least that seems to be one Infidel's opinion.

But the upper-class sorts of crime that he mentions, like wage theft and tax evasion, are sorts that are more difficult to track down.

This is textbook whataboutism. Nobody is claiming these sorts of crimes should be ignored, but neither should retail thefts.

It has been a struggle to finance the IRS enough to investigate a lot of upper-class tax-evasion schemes, since they can be very complicated.
...
This is a thread about how journalists decide what is “news” and what isn’t. Anyone shaping the news and anyone consuming the news should understand who decides what counts as news, how they decide it, and what determines what they say about it. Here, I ask a few questions:
...
Much of deadly U.S. air and water pollution is also criminal, but “law enforcement” chooses to ignore it, and thus so do most journalists.

What evidence is there that criminal violation of pollution standards is not prosecuted?

I've painted the final, amazing sentence red. I don't see a smiley emoticon; could Derec really be serious here?

I know this is the post-truth era, but may I be allowed to post some facts?

To listen to some, auto theft is one of America's biggest problems. In 2020, $7 billion was lost to auto thefts. (The record number of vehicles stolen was set in 2008 during the reign of George W. Bush, a noted pro-criminal leftist. The highest theft rate was in 1991 during the reign of, as might be expected, GWB's pro-crime father.) The same webpage shows that liberal strongholds like Tulsa OK, Billings MT and Odessa TX are on the Top Ten list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas with highest auto theft rates.

Annual losses to burglary are less than $4 billion. Add that to $7 billion of autos and round it up to $11 billion. That's a lot of money, almost $33 per capita!

To compare auto theft with white-collar theft is "whataboutism." But, well, what about white collar crime?

Bernie Madoff swindled his clients out of somewhere between $11 billion and $50 billion, depending on definitions. (Those figures are AFTER government-arranged restitutions.) That's ONE man who did this, with a little help from his brother and his sons. That's 'billion' with a B. Even using the low figure of $11 billion, the Madoffs all by themselves stole more than all the burglars and car thieves in America in an entire year! (Sure most of Madoff's victims were millionaires, but some lost their life savings and committed suicide. Victims also included many charities, pension funds and universities.)

Some ignorant right-wingers will say that Madoff's prison sentence proves that white-collar crime IS prosecuted, but Madoff wasn't arrested until he spontaneously confessed, despite that the fraud has been reported to Federal regulators many years before! His complicit sons were never charged; that was the point of his confession of course.

Even in prison, Madoff acted like a big-time criminal:

After an inmate slapped Madoff because he had changed the channel on the TV, it was reported that Madoff befriended Carmine Persico, boss of the Colombo crime family since 1973, one of New York's five American Mafia families. It was believed Persico had intimidated the inmate who slapped Madoff in the face.

Just today we see that JPMorgan confessed to crimes in one simple matter and agreed to a $200 million fine. In 2020 fines paid by U.S. banks totaled $11 billion. Is that a lot of money? How many banking executives went to jail? How many had their necks stomped on by an arresting officer?

Here's a rather amazing list. Can you believe that over the years Bank of America has paid $83 billion in penalties? (There's that B again.) If one of their executives had ALSO stolen a car, that would have been $82,000,009,000 and the executive would have been sent to jail.

The penalties for all 100 corporations showed come to $540 billion. Is that a lot of money? Is it more than the $7 billion lost annually to auto theft?

And that list shows ONLY the $929 million Koch Industries actually paid out in penalties. Their crimes were far FAR greater. I guess it pays to have friends in high places.

But what about Jean Valjean, hunh? He stole a loaf of bread. Not just a few slices; a whole loaf.

It's almost like there is a trend and that trend is "Affluenza"

 

[Rhea]

It seems that Valjean's stealing of a loaf of break is on-topic here, but the billions stolen by Bernie Madoff, or the billions in pollution by Koch Industries are not.

Or at least that seems to be one Infidel's opinion.

But the upper-class sorts of crime that he mentions, like wage theft and tax evasion, are sorts that are more difficult to track down.

This is textbook whataboutism. Nobody is claiming these sorts of crimes should be ignored, but neither should retail thefts.

It has been a struggle to finance the IRS enough to investigate a lot of upper-class tax-evasion schemes, since they can be very complicated.
...
This is a thread about how journalists decide what is “news” and what isn’t. Anyone shaping the news and anyone consuming the news should understand who decides what counts as news, how they decide it, and what determines what they say about it. Here, I ask a few questions:
...
Much of deadly U.S. air and water pollution is also criminal, but “law enforcement” chooses to ignore it, and thus so do most journalists.

What evidence is there that criminal violation of pollution standards is not prosecuted?

I've painted the final, amazing sentence red. I don't see a smiley emoticon; could Derec really be serious here?

I know this is the post-truth era, but may I be allowed to post some facts?

To listen to some, auto theft is one of America's biggest problems. In 2020, $7 billion was lost to auto thefts. (The record number of vehicles stolen was set in 2008 during the reign of George W. Bush, a noted pro-criminal leftist. The highest theft rate was in 1991 during the reign of, as might be expected, GWB's pro-crime father.) The same webpage shows that liberal strongholds like Tulsa OK, Billings MT and Odessa TX are on the Top Ten list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas with highest auto theft rates.

Annual losses to burglary are less than $4 billion. Add that to $7 billion of autos and round it up to $11 billion. That's a lot of money, almost $33 per capita!

To compare auto theft with white-collar theft is "whataboutism." But, well, what about white collar crime?

Bernie Madoff swindled his clients out of somewhere between $11 billion and $50 billion, depending on definitions. (Those figures are AFTER government-arranged restitutions.) That's ONE man who did this, with a little help from his brother and his sons. That's 'billion' with a B. Even using the low figure of $11 billion, the Madoffs all by themselves stole more than all the burglars and car thieves in America in an entire year! (Sure most of Madoff's victims were millionaires, but some lost their life savings and committed suicide. Victims also included many charities, pension funds and universities.)

Some ignorant right-wingers will say that Madoff's prison sentence proves that white-collar crime IS prosecuted, but Madoff wasn't arrested until he spontaneously confessed, despite that the fraud has been reported to Federal regulators many years before! His complicit sons were never charged; that was the point of his confession of course.

Even in prison, Madoff acted like a big-time criminal:

After an inmate slapped Madoff because he had changed the channel on the TV, it was reported that Madoff befriended Carmine Persico, boss of the Colombo crime family since 1973, one of New York's five American Mafia families. It was believed Persico had intimidated the inmate who slapped Madoff in the face.

Just today we see that JPMorgan confessed to crimes in one simple matter and agreed to a $200 million fine. In 2020 fines paid by U.S. banks totaled $11 billion. Is that a lot of money? How many banking executives went to jail? How many had their necks stomped on by an arresting officer?

Here's a rather amazing list. Can you believe that over the years Bank of America has paid $83 billion in penalties? (There's that B again.) If one of their executives had ALSO stolen a car, that would have been $82,000,009,000 and the executive would have been sent to jail.

The penalties for all 100 corporations showed come to $540 billion. Is that a lot of money? Is it more than the $7 billion lost annually to auto theft?

And that list shows ONLY the $929 million Koch Industries actually paid out in penalties. Their crimes were far FAR greater. I guess it pays to have friends in high places.

But what about Jean Valjean, hunh? He stole a loaf of bread. Not just a few slices; a whole loaf.

This is a straightforward exposure of the real problems. And Swammer only outline ONE white collar criminal. And that is the picture that people are fed lies to overlook.

Thanks Swammer, that is very important. Quoting For Truth.

 

[thebeave]

It seems that Valjean's stealing of a loaf of break is on-topic here, but the billions stolen by Bernie Madoff, or the billions in pollution by Koch Industries are not.

Or at least that seems to be one Infidel's opinion.

But the upper-class sorts of crime that he mentions, like wage theft and tax evasion, are sorts that are more difficult to track down.

This is textbook whataboutism. Nobody is claiming these sorts of crimes should be ignored, but neither should retail thefts.

It has been a struggle to finance the IRS enough to investigate a lot of upper-class tax-evasion schemes, since they can be very complicated.
...
This is a thread about how journalists decide what is “news” and what isn’t. Anyone shaping the news and anyone consuming the news should understand who decides what counts as news, how they decide it, and what determines what they say about it. Here, I ask a few questions:
...
Much of deadly U.S. air and water pollution is also criminal, but “law enforcement” chooses to ignore it, and thus so do most journalists.

What evidence is there that criminal violation of pollution standards is not prosecuted?

I've painted the final, amazing sentence red. I don't see a smiley emoticon; could Derec really be serious here?

I know this is the post-truth era, but may I be allowed to post some facts?

To listen to some, auto theft is one of America's biggest problems. In 2020, $7 billion was lost to auto thefts. (The record number of vehicles stolen was set in 2008 during the reign of George W. Bush, a noted pro-criminal leftist. The highest theft rate was in 1991 during the reign of, as might be expected, GWB's pro-crime father.) The same webpage shows that liberal strongholds like Tulsa OK, Billings MT and Odessa TX are on the Top Ten list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas with highest auto theft rates.

Annual losses to burglary are less than $4 billion. Add that to $7 billion of autos and round it up to $11 billion. That's a lot of money, almost $33 per capita!

To compare auto theft with white-collar theft is "whataboutism." But, well, what about white collar crime?

Bernie Madoff swindled his clients out of somewhere between $11 billion and $50 billion, depending on definitions. (Those figures are AFTER government-arranged restitutions.) That's ONE man who did this, with a little help from his brother and his sons. That's 'billion' with a B. Even using the low figure of $11 billion, the Madoffs all by themselves stole more than all the burglars and car thieves in America in an entire year! (Sure most of Madoff's victims were millionaires, but some lost their life savings and committed suicide. Victims also included many charities, pension funds and universities.)

Some ignorant right-wingers will say that Madoff's prison sentence proves that white-collar crime IS prosecuted, but Madoff wasn't arrested until he spontaneously confessed, despite that the fraud has been reported to Federal regulators many years before! His complicit sons were never charged; that was the point of his confession of course.

Even in prison, Madoff acted like a big-time criminal:

After an inmate slapped Madoff because he had changed the channel on the TV, it was reported that Madoff befriended Carmine Persico, boss of the Colombo crime family since 1973, one of New York's five American Mafia families. It was believed Persico had intimidated the inmate who slapped Madoff in the face.

Just today we see that JPMorgan confessed to crimes in one simple matter and agreed to a $200 million fine. In 2020 fines paid by U.S. banks totaled $11 billion. Is that a lot of money? How many banking executives went to jail? How many had their necks stomped on by an arresting officer?

Here's a rather amazing list. Can you believe that over the years Bank of America has paid $83 billion in penalties? (There's that B again.) If one of their executives had ALSO stolen a car, that would have been $82,000,009,000 and the executive would have been sent to jail.

The penalties for all 100 corporations showed come to $540 billion. Is that a lot of money? Is it more than the $7 billion lost annually to auto theft?

And that list shows ONLY the $929 million Koch Industries actually paid out in penalties. Their crimes were far FAR greater. I guess it pays to have friends in high places.

But what about Jean Valjean, hunh? He stole a loaf of bread. Not just a few slices; a whole loaf.

This is a straightforward exposure of the real problems. And Swammer only outline ONE white collar criminal. And that is the picture that people are fed lies to overlook.

Thanks Swammer, that is very important. Quoting For Truth.

What Swammer wrote is a classic derail. Read the title of this thread and the OP. We are not talking about white collar crimes perpetrated by rich individuals and corporations. [removed]

 

[Jarhyn]

It seems that Valjean's stealing of a loaf of break is on-topic here, but the billions stolen by Bernie Madoff, or the billions in pollution by Koch Industries are not.

Or at least that seems to be one Infidel's opinion.

But the upper-class sorts of crime that he mentions, like wage theft and tax evasion, are sorts that are more difficult to track down.

This is textbook whataboutism. Nobody is claiming these sorts of crimes should be ignored, but neither should retail thefts.

It has been a struggle to finance the IRS enough to investigate a lot of upper-class tax-evasion schemes, since they can be very complicated.
...
This is a thread about how journalists decide what is “news” and what isn’t. Anyone shaping the news and anyone consuming the news should understand who decides what counts as news, how they decide it, and what determines what they say about it. Here, I ask a few questions:
...
Much of deadly U.S. air and water pollution is also criminal, but “law enforcement” chooses to ignore it, and thus so do most journalists.

What evidence is there that criminal violation of pollution standards is not prosecuted?

I've painted the final, amazing sentence red. I don't see a smiley emoticon; could Derec really be serious here?

I know this is the post-truth era, but may I be allowed to post some facts?

To listen to some, auto theft is one of America's biggest problems. In 2020, $7 billion was lost to auto thefts. (The record number of vehicles stolen was set in 2008 during the reign of George W. Bush, a noted pro-criminal leftist. The highest theft rate was in 1991 during the reign of, as might be expected, GWB's pro-crime father.) The same webpage shows that liberal strongholds like Tulsa OK, Billings MT and Odessa TX are on the Top Ten list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas with highest auto theft rates.

Annual losses to burglary are less than $4 billion. Add that to $7 billion of autos and round it up to $11 billion. That's a lot of money, almost $33 per capita!

To compare auto theft with white-collar theft is "whataboutism." But, well, what about white collar crime?

Bernie Madoff swindled his clients out of somewhere between $11 billion and $50 billion, depending on definitions. (Those figures are AFTER government-arranged restitutions.) That's ONE man who did this, with a little help from his brother and his sons. That's 'billion' with a B. Even using the low figure of $11 billion, the Madoffs all by themselves stole more than all the burglars and car thieves in America in an entire year! (Sure most of Madoff's victims were millionaires, but some lost their life savings and committed suicide. Victims also included many charities, pension funds and universities.)

Some ignorant right-wingers will say that Madoff's prison sentence proves that white-collar crime IS prosecuted, but Madoff wasn't arrested until he spontaneously confessed, despite that the fraud has been reported to Federal regulators many years before! His complicit sons were never charged; that was the point of his confession of course.

Even in prison, Madoff acted like a big-time criminal:

After an inmate slapped Madoff because he had changed the channel on the TV, it was reported that Madoff befriended Carmine Persico, boss of the Colombo crime family since 1973, one of New York's five American Mafia families. It was believed Persico had intimidated the inmate who slapped Madoff in the face.

Just today we see that JPMorgan confessed to crimes in one simple matter and agreed to a $200 million fine. In 2020 fines paid by U.S. banks totaled $11 billion. Is that a lot of money? How many banking executives went to jail? How many had their necks stomped on by an arresting officer?

Here's a rather amazing list. Can you believe that over the years Bank of America has paid $83 billion in penalties? (There's that B again.) If one of their executives had ALSO stolen a car, that would have been $82,000,009,000 and the executive would have been sent to jail.

The penalties for all 100 corporations showed come to $540 billion. Is that a lot of money? Is it more than the $7 billion lost annually to auto theft?

And that list shows ONLY the $929 million Koch Industries actually paid out in penalties. Their crimes were far FAR greater. I guess it pays to have friends in high places.

But what about Jean Valjean, hunh? He stole a loaf of bread. Not just a few slices; a whole loaf.

This is a straightforward exposure of the real problems. And Swammer only outline ONE white collar criminal. And that is the picture that people are fed lies to overlook.

Thanks Swammer, that is very important. Quoting For Truth.

What Swammer wrote is a classic derail. Read the title of this thread and the OP. We are not talking about white collar crimes perpetrated by rich individuals and corporations. [removed]

No, it is lt. The "breakdown in civil order" described by the OP is a whinge of penny wisdom in a world of pound foolishness.

We have orders of magnitude more grab just without the smash. Yes, smash is scary, but it's really the grab that makes us angry.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's almost like there is a trend and that trend is "Affluenza"

It's what the Republicans want.

 

[Derec]

It seems that Valjean's stealing of a loaf of break is on-topic here,

Nobody is stealing a "loaf of bread". These are organized robberies of high end stores we were talking about. Also, car thefts have been mentioned.
Nobody needs to steal bread in the US. There are food stamps (SNAP). There are food banks. There are soup kitchens.

but the billions stolen by Bernie Madoff, or the billions in pollution by Koch Industries are not.

Those would be separate topics.
By the way, Madoff was prosecuted, convicted and received what amounted to a life sentence without parole. Compare that with murderous terrorists like Kathy Boudin or David Gilbert who were released prematurely because of political meddling.
And what particular alleged illegal actions by Koch Industries do you have in mind?

What evidence is there that criminal violation of pollution standards is not prosecuted?

I've painted the final, amazing sentence red. I don't see a smiley emoticon; could Derec really be serious here?

Funny how you decided to emphasize this sentence in red, and yet you failed to address "criminal violation of pollution standards". Lost focus there?

To listen to some, auto theft is one of America's biggest problems. In 2020, $7 billion was lost to auto thefts.

It is a significant problem. It may not be the biggest problem in the US today, but when car thieves keep getting released despite stealing cars over and over again, then there is a big problem with the local authorities being soft on thieves.
I have not had my car stolen, but twice some lowlifes broke in and stole stuff from my car. I say, fuck the bastards!

(The record number of vehicles stolen was set in 2008 during the reign of George W. Bush, a noted pro-criminal leftist.

TIL that presidents have direct influence on the rate of car thefts.

The same webpage shows that liberal strongholds like Tulsa OK, Billings MT and Odessa TX are on the Top Ten list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas with highest auto theft rates.

A lot goes into car theft rates in particular areas. However, how does that excuse DAs and judges in California letting a guy go after repeated car thefts?

Bernie Madoff swindled his clients out of somewhere between $11 billion and $50 billion, depending on definitions.

Again your obsession with Madoff. He got severely punished, far more harshly than say the terrorist BLA/WU bank robbers who murdered three people in the process.

Victims also included many charities, pension funds and universities.

Caveat investor.

Some ignorant right-wingers will say that Madoff's prison sentence proves that white-collar crime IS prosecuted, but Madoff wasn't arrested until he spontaneously confessed,

He "spontaneously confessed? So nobody was suspecting him, and he just confessed? [citation needed] on that.

Just today we see that JPMorgan confessed to crimes in one simple matter and agreed to a $200 million fine.

When did he confess? He died in 1913.

In 2020 fines paid by U.S. banks totaled $11 billion. Is that a lot of money? How many banking executives went to jail? How many had their necks stomped on by an arresting officer?

It is a lot of money. But what does that have to do with the sentence you highlighted in red? You completely ignored that topic.

But what about Jean Valjean, hunh? He stole a loaf of bread. Not just a few slices; a whole loaf.

What about him? How is people robbing high end stores or stealing cars anything like a fictional character stealing a loaf of bread in revolutionary France?

 

[TSwizzle]

Another weekend of death and mayhem in Chicago;

Chicago's grim crime-ridden year continued its familiar path over the Christmas weekend and into Monday, with three people fatally shot and 22 injured in a city run by woke Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Murders are at a 25-year high, with 793 recorded so far in a city with 2.7 million people. Lightfoot has not commented on the Windy City's carnage, instead posting a video wishing residents a happy Kwanzaa - the African American and Pan-African holiday created in 1966, and celebrated from December 26 until January 2.

Daily Mail

Happy Kwanza !

 

[thebeave]

Another weekend of death and mayhem in Chicago;

Chicago's grim crime-ridden year continued its familiar path over the Christmas weekend and into Monday, with three people fatally shot and 22 injured in a city run by woke Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Murders are at a 25-year high, with 793 recorded so far in a city with 2.7 million people. Lightfoot has not commented on the Windy City's carnage, instead posting a video wishing residents a happy Kwanzaa - the African American and Pan-African holiday created in 1966, and celebrated from December 26 until January 2.

Daily Mail

Happy Kwanza !

Yep. This is the world we live in. Mayor Lightfoot would rather send Kwanzaa wishes, and people on this forum would rather talk about an old white man (Bernie Madoff) who ripped off a bunch of rich people 10+ years ago. Anything to avoid confronting the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of young black men year after year after year. SMH.

 

[ZiprHead]

Another weekend of death and mayhem in Chicago;

Chicago's grim crime-ridden year continued its familiar path over the Christmas weekend and into Monday, with three people fatally shot and 22 injured in a city run by woke Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Murders are at a 25-year high, with 793 recorded so far in a city with 2.7 million people. Lightfoot has not commented on the Windy City's carnage, instead posting a video wishing residents a happy Kwanzaa - the African American and Pan-African holiday created in 1966, and celebrated from December 26 until January 2.

Daily Mail

Happy Kwanza !

Yep. This is the world we live in. Mayor Lightfoot would rather send Kwanzaa wishes, and people on this forum would rather talk about an old white man (Bernie Madoff) who ripped off a bunch of rich people 10+ years ago. Anything to avoid confronting the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of young black men year after year after year. SMH.

Is talking about it a solution?

What is your solution?

 

[Jarhyn]

Another weekend of death and mayhem in Chicago;

Chicago's grim crime-ridden year continued its familiar path over the Christmas weekend and into Monday, with three people fatally shot and 22 injured in a city run by woke Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Murders are at a 25-year high, with 793 recorded so far in a city with 2.7 million people. Lightfoot has not commented on the Windy City's carnage, instead posting a video wishing residents a happy Kwanzaa - the African American and Pan-African holiday created in 1966, and celebrated from December 26 until January 2.

Daily Mail

Happy Kwanza !

Yep. This is the world we live in. Mayor Lightfoot would rather send Kwanzaa wishes, and people on this forum would rather talk about an old white man (Bernie Madoff) who ripped off a bunch of rich people 10+ years ago. Anything to avoid confronting the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of young black men year after year after year. SMH.

As if you care one bit about poor people getting killed.

The fact is that we continue as a nation to get fleeced and conned, robbed of orders of magnitude more wealth than all the two-bit shoplifters and petty thieves combined.

This wealth then goes to collect and hide and own the world's collective treasures.

It would be such a shame if someone gained access to money and instead of being broken in the jaws of Mammon, took the opportunity to shove a spear through the roof of the mouth that stands poised to swallow them...