Could you?
Could you find report after report of statistical analysis showing a right media bias?
I doubt it.
Rooftop:
You forget that even Rush Limbaugh is a commentator NOT a journalist or reporter. That is the difference. Ann Coulter is also a commentator NOT a reporter. The reporters are supposed to be objective as are the editorial boards for news content not necessarily for the editorial page. The idea is that news and editorial content are to remain separate. Clearly, that is not the case, and until the rise of Fox News, we were forced to absorb or read or listen to only the “right-thinking” or “well-intentioned” views of the Left. Now, that we all have more choices, how can that be bad? Hmmm?
Fred: I stand corrected. Good point about the difference between journalists and commentators.
Tigger: I’m more of a chimer-inner. So, we’ll have to wait and see. 
Surely you have heard of the “crime prevention through social development strategies” in the land of the kinder, gentler people–just north of the 48th parallel.
Downtown Toronto on a Sat night.–and I was just there a month ago: no gangs, no one out to mug me and my wife. Drunken imbeciles, yes. we do love our beer, but no ghettoes–a few rough neighborhood, yes, but nothing like the neighborhhoods I’ve had the misfortune to stumble into south of the line.
And it’s not only at the Federal level. What I am talking aobut takes place at all levels of government. The local govts. try to make sure that new developments feature a wide rang of housing prices/options to suit all budgets/needs. Therefore you don’t end up with all the super rich in one area and all the poor in another. That also means the rich and poor kids grow up together and systematic ghettoization is kept to a minimum–unfortunately, much of that has changed because of the last Provincial Tory (Conservative govt.) but, thankfully, saner heads are now newly in charge.
Local govt. zoning also ensures that buildings are “multi-use” meaning that when the office workers leave, downtown does not become a ghost town–a terrible feature of most US urban cores.
That is not to say the Canada doesn’t have it’s share of crime (violent and otherwise) and will contimue to have such problems–that is a feature of all societies. The differences are, I believe, that govt. policies at all levels can and do have an impact on societal behaviour–not only crime–and that a society is not necessarily safer with prisons overcrowded with people convicted of usually nothing more than a dime-bag of dope.
And all of that takes place, IMO, because people tend to put people ahead of ideology–“What? Turn the fifth floor of my bldg. into a nursery so my employees can be near their kids, no! If I want to do that let me do it, but don’t tell me I have to, I am a free man and this is a free country, blah blah…” would be a typical conservative response.
No, It is not polyanna. It is possible and it works in countries like Sweden and Switzerland as well and will work anywhere people have the balls to say, “that is a neat idea, let us try it,” instead of “that will never work, it has never worked before, so that means it will never work.”
The old adage about teaching people to catch fish instead of–in this case–putting them in a place where you have to go and catch the fish to feed them seems more than apt.
This is all a question of ideology, and to a certain extent philosophy, but not one that should be dismissed as too idealistic. After all, the only other alternative would be to lock up all the law-breakers.
I have no idea how your post is relevant to this discussion Wookie. Canada may have lower crime rates for the time being but as Canada becomes increasingly diverse, you too are also importing some of the same problems that we have in the US. Organized crime from Chinese, Italian and Russian societies, terrorist groups from the Middle East and high crime rates that seem to bedevil Blacks wherever they go. I point to the Jamaicans in Toronto which are known for their violence and street crime as well as the Haitians of Montreal and the Black communities of Halifax. Hardly glowing success stories of integration and safety, especially since the Halifax Black community has been there for a couple hundred years. So what is going on with your Chinese triads and Russian mafias now? Give yourself another 20 to 30 years of “promoting diversity” and you may find that your “multicultural” country has the same benefits that diversity has brought the US but also the same problems. After all, the Chinese have certainly brought with them the initiative and trade connections you did not have before. Are the higher rates of racketeering, gambling, corruption worth it? That is up to you and your fellow citizens to decide, but do not sit on your high horse and look down at America for its higher rates of crime when your future looks set to mirror ours. Will you then build more prisons, tighten your immigration policies or allow crime to go unchecked while offering generous but ultimately unsustainable social programs to “deal” with it? I wonder. It will be an interesting experiment and one I look forward with great relish to monitoring.
Was just responding to flipper’s question earlier in the thread and believe me, I was not ‘boasting.’ I really hope that the policies that has kept our crime rates down won’t fall by the way and I pray that ‘cooler’ heads will continue to see that there is always more than just one option.
the fact that canada has a lower crime rate doesn’t prove anything. japan’s crime rate makes toronto look like south central. japan has no rehab and training type programs.
why should the us emulate canada instead of japan?
what i’m asking for is:
country a has a certain crime rate
country a implements those great rehab and training policies
country a’s crime rate goes down
as much as you want to ridicule the us policy of tough crime sentencing laws, they have demonstrated that they can lower crime. nyc was a cesspool until giuliani started putting more people in jail…and for lesser offenses. now, in many comparisons, nyc has a lower crime rate than london!
your touchy-feely anti-crime measures sound very nice, but i don’t see any examples where they’re actually LOWERED crime rates.
Bingo Flipper:
Let’s compare New York and London’s crime rates or even for Britain and America. What is going on? Are crime rates rising in New York or London? Why are they rising in London? Does this mean that these “social programs” are a failed policy and that the UK needs more prisons? Could be?
Also, I take exception with this pretty picture of no crime that you paint of Canada. I know a woman in Taipei who used to work as a police dispatcher in Toronto. I think that she could give you a different view of this safe cosmopolitan city that you paint. I also have been sailing to Halifax several times and every time we had to leave to drive to or from the airport, well if you have been to Halifax you will know what I mean. Not many people feel too comfortable stopping off for gas on the way, shall we say?
As to Montreal, been to a Haitian neighborhood recently? Want to talk about street theft, etc.? break-ins? etc? Might want to check into this as well. Then we have the corruption and racketeering that has plagued Chinese and Vietnamese communities in Vancouver and Toronto. Not to say Canada did not have these before, but it is become a very serious problem in many neighborhoods. Ask around and then come back to me with this myth about the “safety” of Canada.
Come on. This is not about Canada compared to Tokyo. They are totally dissimilar societies with totally different cultural mores, especially when it comes to theft, bribery–HMMMMM, what is considered good business in Japan might well be a felony in Can.
Nor is this about how truly safe TO is. I know people who feel less safe in TO now than four or five years ago when the crime rate was much higher, and also know people who do feel much safer. And I’m sure that if you look you will find many societies with far less crime than Canada.
This, IMO, is about social justice and humanitarianism–How do we deal with people who break the law, continually spend money on prisons as opposed to finding more humane and more cost-effective alternatives? Oh yeah…if you’re a small-time drug offender in NY you can expect a longer sentence than if you just pocketed 350 million from Enron. Great way to lock up the criminals, eh?
The fact is that Can. and the US are very similar societies in general and the difference in per-capita crime between the two countries–especially when it comes to firearm offences–are great indeed. Is that because Can. has chosen to deal with the problems proactively and positively instead of relying on the other factors to take care of it all? I do think so. And, of course, that does not mean there will ever be a situation of no crime in Can. but, at least, people have the option of something other than crime.
There is crime everywhere dudes. Funny, I was very welcome everywhere I stopped in Halifax, but maybe people just go on what they hear or on what the people of a certain neighborhood look like. Hmmmmm!
Haitian gangs, the Jamaican posse, Italian Mafia, the Colombians, the Vietnamese and Chinese syndicates are everywhere and will, no doubt play a part in the crime rate of every country. The question does not change–do you spend your money on jails to house them and feed them indefinitely or do you try to make each a productive member of society.
But let’s play along…You implement tough sentencing laws to bust every doobie-carrier and send them to jail, what happens when a doobie carrier gets out of jail? Chances are he’s going to get back in jail because there are no programs to help him readjust or to find him gainful employment and he has to go back out and sell a couple more doobies because no one wants to hire an ex-con who can’t even vote for his prez! Later, doobie carrier is released again and to his chagrin things are the same. And even if he defies all the odds and chooses not to become a hardened, gun totin’ murderin’ criminal, he still may very well end up behind bars within six months after his release.
And who is paying for all that incarceration time, court time, prosecutors and appointed defence councils’ salaries, prison construction costs, warders’ salaries, and perhaps a new level of govt. to deal with all the offenders–can we call it the Homeland Dungeon Dept.? You Fred! Wouldn’t you much rather pay once, or, wouldn’t you sleep better if you knew that your tax dollars were going toward trying to change peoples’ behaviour through positive means as opposed to locking them up and hoping that they will emerge unscathed, unscarred and forever more enthusiastically happy for having learned their lesson?
Or perhaps your perspective of people is as monochromatic as your great leader who continually talks about “the bad guys” and “the good guys” as if human nature is intrinsic and irreversible.
still don’t see statistics to show that the policies you’re advocating actually reduce crime. we can use post hoc arguments all day, but when it comes down to it, you can’t make policy based on post hoc arguments.
found this interesting. the BIASED european press is saying almost NOTHING about the rathergate scandal.
maarten.typepad.com/brusselsblog … n_eur.html
the worst offender? the biased bbc. not only do they not mention the fake memos, but they have an article up referencing the faked memos as if they were real!
[quote=“Wookiee”]I guess it all depends on your idea of the true nature of humanity.
a. People are essentially good: give them a chance
b. People are essentially evil, prepare them a place: prison
Does that illustrate the Democratic/Republican dichotomy?[/quote]
No. It is the opposite. (and I wouldn’t put it in political parties, which fluctuate in platform) … Conservatism preaches the liberty of individuals and the belief that they can achinve great things when unfettered by chains of government. Liberalism preaches the opposite. Individuals alone are deficient in making the “right” decisions. Greater government and elite control over social engineering will make people great “on average”.
Sorry, can’t let you premise stand. It’s just flat out simplistic.
This cartoon works even better for Dan Rather than it did for Joe McCarthy – because McCarthy’s charges turned out to be true.
Yawn! Who is even talking about what you said. Typical liberal argument. You do not believe in spending billions to rehabilitate people ergo you are throwing them away. Nope. First, prove spending the billions that you are talking about will rehabilitate them. Second, prove that locking them up won’t cause the crime rate to drop. Third, explain how your protection of criminals who have had a chance (sometimes repeated chances) and still chosen to break the law should be balanced with placing innocent law-abiding citizens at risk? Can you? I doubt it. But this should be another brilliant example of Liberals who cannot face up to dealing with intractable and difficult problems and woudl therefore rather “pretend” that they did not really “exist.” How do you tell the victims of crime that your policies are enlightened? Hmm? The mothers of raped daughters, the children of burglarized and murdered old people, the school children who don’t get an education because they are threatened and intimidated from the time they enter the school to well after they leave. What do you say to them oh mr. let’s spend more money to prove that we are enlightened and how “locking up bad people” is not the answer? Apprarently it is in the US because our crime rates have dropped and this is DIRECTLY linked to tougher crime laws. You will face our problem one day. It is inevitable. Talk all you want about how everyone is all equal and all that till the cows come home or you turn blue in the face but the fact is that is is not true and that is precisely why your own Canadian police have experts to deal with Black gangs, Chinese triads, Italian and Russian mafia and Arab and Muslim terrorists. If the shoe fits, there will be a squad to profile it, monitor it, attempt to infiltrate it and attempt to take it down. Welcome to reality sunshine.
Prove this! Give stats to show that…!
You’re all like my old roommate who turned on the weather channel every morning to get the statistics/proof of the day’s weather in order to decide what to wear when he could have done the logical thing–opened the window.
The problem with party politics is that people become such disciples to their ideologies and such followers of party dogma that they are inevitably paralyzed by any attempt to think outside the box.
Fred, show me how the spending of billions on new prisons and personnel will result rehabilitating convicts and return them to a life of productivity. Why is it that conservatives see offering a helping hand as such an anathema? And to think that I once thought that the Cons. were all “God-fearin’ help your neighbor types.” Pshaw!
There is crime everywhere and of course, it’s all ugly. There are people who’ll kill and rape regardless, and no society is without their sort. But they are not who I’m talking about Fred, and you know that.
Spend on enabling people to be productive (not living off the govt.) and you won’t have to spend 50 to 60 US dollars a day to take care of them forever. For someone who is so concerned about govt. spending this is something that should be appealing to you.
And this editorial shows I’m not alone.
seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2 … jdl03.html
"This year’s report from the U.S. Department of Justice said 2,078,570 men and women were behind bars at the end of last June, an increase of nearly 58,000 over the year before.
We lock people up at a higher rate than any other country.
There were 715 inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents last June. Mexico’s incarceration rate is 169 per 100,000, and Canada’s rate is 116.
Prisons have become our ultimate solution to social problems. There are, of course, lots of people who ought to be locked up, but we’ve gone overboard.
Many people who are in prisons today could have been steered away from crime, or dealt with in a less costly and more productive way.
Many of them used drugs, came from poor neighborhoods and aren’t well educated.
If we were Europeans, or Canadians, that combination of factors might suggest some social solutions. We could fully fund K-12 education and restructure it to make it work for the broadest spectrum of children. We could expand efforts to fight drug and alcohol abuse and to treat people who become addicted.
If we had a real system for dealing with mental illness, we’d dramatically reduce the prison population.
Instead prison budgets go up, while education budgets go down.
It isn’t working."
And Pinesay, your conclusions are false. Where is it that I proposed that society should override the individual? Don’t make the Fred mistake and start labeling me now.
But since you brought it up, the problem with conservatism is that when you give individual autonomy precedence over social authority you run into the problems of:
- People become autonomous to the point where acceptance of social authority becomes irrelevant–case in point, the “right to bear arms” is more important than the number of innocents who die by the gun. What are you going to say to those victims Fred?
- And more importantly, history has shown us that society must have the authority to deal with criminals (YES, the ones we’re talking about, the ones that break the law, for whatever reason). Or do y’all believe that the mentally unstable, the fanatics–Tim McVeigh, KKK, et. al. or these so-called “unfettered individuals” have the right to do what they want, because, by golly, it’s a free country?
This is a bit off the top but, no more than your jibe that liberals favor social engineering or rule by an elite.
Nonetheless, it underscores a real problem of conservative thinking–the will of the individual taking precedence over what is good for the majority.
Peace!
[quote=“Wookiee”]Prove this! Give stats to show that…!
You’re all like my old roommate who turned on the weather channel every morning to get the statistics/proof of the day’s weather in order to decide what to wear when he could have done the logical thing–opened the window.[/quote]
Not an applicable analogy.
Nah.
Who says that we do?
That’s more or less the conservative idea.
That’s more or less the conservative idea.[/quote]
Really? Then why are prisons the new growth industry? I mean, If I had the bucks I could go and open a prison myself in good ol’ Tennessee and make a few bucks for myself and a few of my friends–Oh, those warders are the productive people you’re referring to.
Oh, this is getting good. CBS is soooo pathetic. They get this 86-some-year-old secretary to say essentially that the latter is fake, BUT it is how she remembers the “thoughts” of a dead man. Oh my, is this what the coverup has come to. This is so rich. Then the woman goes on to praise Bush’s manners and recalling how she thought he had good parents … She’s all over the map.
This is liberal slant in the media: “So what if we have faked docs? They are representative of the agenda we have. They represent what we want to be true.”
I need some popcorn.