Maine, Oh, Maine!

The dangers of delusion can be profound. This Maine man believes wrongly that Obamacare will take spousal benefits from his sick wife, so he posted a picture of President Obama on Facebook with the caption, "Shoot the n----r."

He also defends his use of the word n----r.

Sometimes I think this blog should be called "What the Hell Is Wrong with People?" But we know what's wrong with Mr. Marsters. He's a racists whose hate for black people has left him completely cracked. It has poisoned his soul and his mind to the point that he thinks assassinating his President is the way to go.

Never mind that President Obama was elected TWICE by significant majorities. Never mind that President Obama is the first President in US history to be required to publicly show his papers, not that it did anything to convince the birther nuts. Never mind that Mr. Marsters' delusions about Obamacare are completely untrue.

Sadly, Mr. Marsters is not alone. I have had to block, unfriend, and unfollow a number of people in my own social media world who pray for, hope for, wish for, and encourage the murder of President Obama. These are people who claim to be Christians.

People have the right to be racist. It's a free country. But it never ceases to sicken me when I witness the vitriol this ignorant poison fuels. Get Above Your Raisin', Mr. Marsters - and all you birthers, racists, and fear-mongers. Practically every aspect of American life has improved since Barack Obama was elected. Instead of campaigning for his demise, how about opening your eyes and minds and start to see your fear for what it is: psychopathy.

Think Progress Gets It Wrong

This week Think Progress is tweeting a link to its story about Utah spending $30,000 (yes 30,000 dollars) to catch 12 drug users on welfare.Think Progress goes on to report the details of the Utah welfare/drug-screening law.

Utah doesn’t randomly test applicants or require them to all undergo a drug test, but instead requires them to complete a written questionnaire that is meant to screen for drug abuse. Those who have a high probability are then given drug tests. The state spent nearly $6,000 on written tests for 4,730 applicants, 466 of which had to take a drug test, which cost more than $25,000. The law doesn’t disqualify those who test positive but instead requires them to go into a substance abuse treatment program.

So Utah does not drug-test all welfare recipients, but instead gives them a written test. Only about 10% of Utah welfare recipients scored appropriately on the written test to get drug tested. And then only 12 failed the drug test, but those folks were not thrown off the welfare rolls. Instead, they are required to participate in a drug rehab program.

What exactly is ThinkProgress complaining about?

• Thirty thousand dollars is the change in the bottom of the state coffers. So the issue is not wasted money.
• Only 10% of welfare recipients got drug tested based on a screening process that is admittedly too inclusive since only 12 people actually tested positive, but at least it shielded 90% from having to pee in a cup.
• And if they test positive, they are not left to starve, but directed into rehab to get off drugs.

The Huffington Post also reported on this program.

[S]tate Rep. Brad Wilson (R-Kaysville) told HuffPost he thinks the bill saved more than it cost. He said an additional 247 Utahns dropped out of the TANF application process after they were told to expect a drug test. 

"We had 247 who once we told them, 'our test shows that you are likely using controlled substances, we need you to take a drug test,' they refused to move forward with the process," said Wilson, who sponsored the new law. "The Department of Workforce Services here in Utah estimates the benefits of those folks would have received would have been approximately $369,000 of, basically, benefits we didn't pay to people who were most likely using controlled substances. We spent $31,000 on this program over the last year but we think we've saved at least $370,000, if not more."

***

Utah's law differs from Florida's in that it first subjects TANF applicants to a questionnaire and only tests those whose answers give the state a reasonable suspicion of drug use. The reasonable suspicion standard makes the law less vulnerable to a civil liberties lawsuit alleging the tests violate the Constitution's protections against unreasonable search.

I don't love this program, but I can live with it. I don't think it's a sham to enrich testing company political contributors or an overreach that humiliates everyone on welfare. It is a little "big brother" but it's welfare, so we are already into that territory. When I saw the headline, I thought I'd be writing a blog blasting Utah but I was wrong: it's Think Progress that needs to  Get Above It's Raisin'. I'm a liberal who thinks drugs should be mostly legalized, but I also know that drug addiction is a huge social problem. If the state of Utah can funnel some addicts into recovery by using its powers in a limited way as I think they are doing here, at the cost of only $31,000 - or a savings of over $350,000 - I cannot get all worked up about it.

To be clear, had I been in the legislature, I probably would have voted against this law, but I can objectively see merit in it and I appreciate that it was constructed to require "resonable suspicion" prior to testing. An effort was actually made to address a perceived problem in a conservative and limited way. So I say, kudos to Utah for not overreacting the way Florida did, costing its taxpayers millions of dollars.

There are a lot of offensive things going on in red states that ThinkProgress can shine a light on. But they really missed the target on this one.

Ducks Lay Eggs and The Tide Rolls

Paul Finebaum back on the air with ESPN Radio

Paul Finebaum returned to the airwaves last week after several months of silence, now as part of the ESPN stable of talent. I listened to him before his hiatus, and I'm listening to him again. His show focuses a lot of SEC football, especially the Alabama Crimson Tide.

He hosts guest experts from ESPN and other sports journalists and figures to discuss actual facts and analyze teams, players and coaches. But what makes his show the success it is are the regular folks who call in. And many of them deserve to be featured in this blog, because they desperately need to get Above Their Raisin'.

I'm not interested in mocking an uneducated person for being uneducated, or a biased fan for being biased, but this display of down-home bloviation had a meta experience this week that deserves analysis.

Paul deliberately and maliciously invited onto his show an Oregon man (and Ducks fan) who wrote a book called  Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession. His name is Chuck Thompson and apparently, he will do anything to try and sell his book, even go on-air with Paul Finebaum and take calls from angry, offended southerners. This is the link to the segment that included Mr. Thomson if you're interested.

Paul hosts a sports show, so he focused on Mr. Thompson's opinions and statistics concerning the BCS and Thompson's perception of a conspiracy at ESPN to elevate the SEC over other conferences. I have no idea if his numbers are correct or not. Neither did the folks who called. But that didn't stop them from calling in and proving Mr. Thompson's point about the south.

One guy said he'd be happy to push Chuck in front of speeding cars. Another was offended that Mr. Thompson called out the south for racism and KKK culture. Another claimed Alabama had actually won 22 national championships. There was a lot of name calling and high pitched squealing with southern drawls. But not one of them effectively shot down his weak arguments about the SEC, the BCS and college football.

I am from Alabama, and I love my Crimson Tide football, but I honestly could not continue living there. I understand some of Mr. Thompson's points about southern culture. But his points about the BCS and college football are whiny and lame, regardless of the statistics he quoted.

Chuck tossed around a lot of statistics and claimed victory by pointing out that if any other team had lost to LSU at home and only scored 6 points, that team would have been a laughing stock, not invited to play in the championship game. There is only one response necessary:

"Chuck, had your beloved Ducks beaten USC on November 19, 2011, they would have played LSU in the championship game, but they didn't take care of business."

The same thing happened to his Ducks in 2012: they lost to Stanford and Alabama jumped back up the rankings and ended the year champions again.

See, the world is not a fair place. Apparently, they don't teach this lesson in Oregon. Black people are more likely to be arrested for pot possession than white people despite using pot at the same rate. Women make 77 cents for every dollar men make for doing the same jobs. (These inequities seem to me to be much more important than the accuracy and legitimacy of the algorithm used to select the college football champion.)  And the Oregon Ducks cannot seem to win a football game when there are championships on the line. The list of unfairnesses in the world is long and fuels a panoply of grievance.

The way we keep going and succeed in the face of all this unfairness is to do our best and take advantage of every opportunity we get. That's what Nick Saban's Crimson Tide team has done for 2 straight years, resulting in 2 consecutive BCS Championships. When the Ducks lay an egg, the Tide step in and bring home a Crystal Football. There are no bonus points for whining and complaining about someone else's shortcomings, especially when your own (duck) poop stinks that bad.

Paul Finebaum's listeners had a chance to educate Mr. Thompson on this point, but they pulled a Duck-move and threw that chance away, focusing instead on being personally offended by his criticisms of southern culture, which, IMO, have some legitimacy. (If I didn't think so, I would still live there.) They got baited into the wrong argument and ignored the entire reason he was on-air with Paul: football.

No one enjoys a good discussion of sociological issues and a spirited political debate more than I do (as you know). But trying to defend the south against the perceptions of an Oregonian is a fools errand. Plus, Paul Finebaum is not Meet the Press, it's a sports radio call-in show. Next time, callers, get Above Your Raisin' and win the game.

Federal Court Finds NYC Stop and Frisk Unconstitutional. DUH!

The New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has statistics on the NYC stop and frisk program. The overwhelming majority of the New Yorkers stopped and frisked are innocent. The overwhelming majority of them are also minorities. As I write this, a Democratic NYC council member is on TV defending the programming by arguing that the S&F statistics "exactly match" the incidence of violent crimes committed by race. But that is REALLY, REALLY not the point.

Here are the 2012 statistics. They can be found here.

In 2012, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 532,911 times


473,644 were totally innocent             89%


284,229 were Black                           55%
165,140 were Latino                          32%
50,366 were White                            10%

Compare the S&F stats to the racial make-up of NYC from the 2010 census.


White                                                 33%
Hispanic                                             29%
Black or African American                  23%
Asian                                                  13%

So, despite making up a third of the city's population, whites are only subjected to S&F 10% of the time. But Black New Yorkers make up more that half of the total S&Fs despite making up not even a quarter of the population.

The defense that the S&F stats match crime rates is bogus. If you "over-police" a group based on racial profiling, the way African Americans clearly are in NYC, the result is a disproportionately high incidence of convictions. What I'm saying is, if more white people were S&Fed, there would be more white people convicted of crimes. And if fewer Blacks are S&Fed, you will see a drop in crime statistics among the Black population. It is neither rational nor factually accurate to proclaim disproportionate crime rates as justification for racial profiling when the racial profiling itself has led to the disproportionate crime rate.

A great example of this type of institutionalized racism is the statistics for marijuana use and convictions nationally. Whites and Blacks use marijuana at close to the same rates. But Black pot-users are 3-4 times (that's 300% to 400%) more likely to be arrested for toking up. So, if we just look at convictions, we would think more Blacks than Whites use pot, i.e. are criminals. In this area, we know this is not the case, and we know that Blacks are being "policed" at much higher levels that Whites. But who is going to answer honestly on a survey admitting to other, more serious crimes?

I have no doubt that Mayor Bloomberg is trying to keep NYC safe. But he's doing it by making its innocent, minority citizens feel like criminals. The NYPD walking around the Big Apple like jack-booted thugs may lower crime statistics, but it is accomplishing this goal by trampling the rights and dignity of hundreds of thousands of its citizens. 

Get Above Your Raisin', New York City. You are America's bellwether city. We need you to be better than this.