Friday Ephemera
Tough Crowd

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Heather Mac Donald on the myths of Black Lives Matter: 

Police officers —of all races— are disproportionately endangered by black assailants. Over the past decade, according to FBI data, 40% of cop killers have been black. Officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police. Some may find evidence of police bias in the fact that black people make up 26% of the police-shooting victims, compared with their 13% representation in the national population. But as residents of poor black neighbourhoods know too well, violent crimes are disproportionately committed by black people. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009, though they made up roughly 15% of the population there. Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers’ own risk of using lethal force.

College Fix reports on the importance of getting in that leftist indoctrination while minds are soft and yielding

Stef Bernal-Martinez, a self-described “radical queer progressive educator” at Central Park School for Children in Durham, North Carolina, took her entire first grade class to a local Black Lives Matter rally this past Thursday. Yes, during the school day… “The project that my class took on in this quarter was a study of the Black Lives Matter movement,” she says. “And so, we’ve been investigating and asking questions about the issues and the causes that people are fighting for, and my kids... were very excited to, sort of, join the movement themselves.” 

Parents of the children in her class were informed,

The students will be wearing Black Lives Matter t-shirts during the march on Thursday. 

No, don’t raise that eyebrow. When it comes to impressionable six-year-olds, progressive role models are important. Ms Bernal-Martinez is of course enthused by “social justice work” and tells us that she endures a life of oppression in a “White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.” When not busy indoctrinating the small children left in her care, she spends her time “envisioning a world without physical or intangible borders.” 

And Guy Sorman on Finland’s experimental welfare model: 

This year, the Finnish government hopes to begin granting every adult citizen a monthly allowance of €800 (roughly $900). Whether rich or poor, each citizen will be free to use the money as he or she sees fit. The idea is that people are responsible for their actions. If someone decides to spend their €800 on vodka, that is their decision, and has nothing to do with the government. In return for the Universal Basic Income, however, the public accepts the elimination of most welfare services. 

One catch that springs to mind is what happens when those who are inadequate to the task of living spend the $900 on booze or drugs or whatever and then find themselves in dire straits - hungry, possibly homeless. Will the Finns allow such people to face the consequences of their own choices and irresponsibility? And what about any children they might have? And then of course there’s the issue of incentives and the corrosion of the work ethic, as discussed here previously in the lively comment thread following this post, in which “activist and union organiser” Godfrey Moase insists that a “universal income” would unleash the enormously talented artists hidden inside us all, and whose supporters announce, triumphantly, that getting money for simply being would “make employment optional.”  

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