Abortion crime myth

Ever heard the argument we need abortion as it lowers crime? Ever heard the argument Steven Levitt and John Donahue proved this? And you dont know how to respond, you likely say abortion is murder and should be treated as a crime, but it fails to convince your opponent. So does the abortion - crime link exist?

The history of the debate began in the 90s when a few economists argued the abortion crime link may exist, and then debated conservative journalists, notably Steve Sailer. Steve in his debate with Levitt (the creator of the theory) showed after legalization of abortion crime rose, it tripled, and did not fall until the 90s. If Abortion lowered crime, the rate in which crime was rising should have slowed (which would mean it lowered crime) or should have lowered the overall rate. Though Levitt calculated the arrest rate improperly, and when the fixes where added the abortion effect vanished.[1][2]

Though I do respect Levitt, he is one of the only researchers that responds to criticisms effectively and makes sure his data is easily accessible, which is already better then most economists in the field. Though having that data accessible means there is more opening to attack, and instead of the we cannot confirm results without his data response we get more of a "your data has flaws" response. Unless he can prove his data is correct, which he didn't.

John Lott, another economist who has criticized the Levitt hypothesis since the start, notes: "Violent crime in the United States soared after 1960. From 1960 to 1991, reported violent crime increased by an incredible 372 percent. This disturbing trend was seen across the country, with robbery peaking in 1991 and rape and aggravated assault following in 1992. But then something unexpected happened: Between 1991 and 2000, rates of violent crime and property crime fell sharply, dropping by 33 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Murder rates were stable up to 1991, but then plunged by a steep 44 percent. [the 1990 drop is what Levitt emphasizes] ... But a thorough analysis of abortion and crime statistics leads to the opposite conclusion: that abortion increases crime."[3]

Lott basically says look, crime soared after legalization and if abortion lowered crime it should have immediately decreased crime. But instead it has a lag time until the 1990s when Levitt argues the abortion crime link lowered crime. Lott contends, though, that many reasons attributed to the drop. Conceal carry laws, the crack cocaine epidemic ended (lowering crime), the death penalty became more common, and prison sentences and incarnation rates rose. In other words, these other factors could account for the drops Levitt contends happened. A paper written by Lott was published saying crime increased by 7%, and the overall cost to society increased from crime was 3.3 billion dollars in victimization costs [4].

The abortion crime myth is exactly that  -- a myth



[1] http://www.isteve.com/abortion.htm
[2] http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113314261192407815-7O0CuSR0RArhWpc9pxaKd_paZU0_20051228.html?mod=tff_article
[3] http://www.lewrockwell.com/lott/lott64.html
[4] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=270126

A response to skeptical science: warming since 1998

Skeptical science, for those of you who dont know, is a global warming blog which attempts to refute skeptic "myths." But the irony is they present many myths themselves when attacking skeptics opinions. One example is their post on the warming since 1998, in which they claim:

 The planet has continued to accumulate heat since 1998 - global warming is still happening. Nevertheless, surface temperatures show much internal variability due to heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. 1998 was an unusually hot year due to a strong El Nino.[1]

 But is this claim really true? This claim is widely circulated, and in many skeptic blogs they usually get this response.

In truth, though, there has been global cooling since 1998, and even if you take 1998 out of the equation (the one that skeptical science needs to rebut the theory) we see there is still a decrease in global temperatures.

As the telegraph notes:

Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero)[2]

 In other words, there is essentially a flat line in temperature.

Skeptical sciences main concern, though, is that 1998 had a large warm spell so that any warming would look like cooling as the next year would inevitably have a cooler climate. So lets look at this claim. The 1998 explains the cooling/flat line. No it doesn't. Look at this NOAA graph:

 
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl

By starting in 2000, it makes the 1998 warm spell objection invalid. And guess what we still see? cooling.

If we use data from 1998, though, it is obviously going to be more of a decline. but this rebuts the point of cherry picking the 1998 data as it shows cooling regardless of the El nino (how to you make then ene (squiggly)).

Now there are multiple satellite data sets we can look into. The reason satellite data is so essential is because surface scanner data is susceptible to the urban heat island effect. So before we can claim cooling, what does the satellite data say? Cooling.





Source 3

Even if we look past the 1998, we see an overall flat-line trend, statistically its essentially zero.

Now that the UAH data is out of the way, what about RSS? RSS and UAH combined makes this chart:




Source 3

When observing the facts, almost every data set shows either cooling or zero change in temperature in 1998. And the skeptical science rebuttal of El Nino hurting the results is false, as proven by NOAA data.[3]

Is the data bias?

 Yes, these organizations support the AGW hypothesis and believe the earth is warming. Yet they get my conclusions. Fair enough?


[1] http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3624242/There-IS-a-problem-with-global-warming...-it-stopped-in-1998.html
[3] http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=129

Has Obamas presidency been successful?

Here are the main topics in this article:

1. Jobs
2. Energy
3. Foreign policy

Lets look at them in order.

1. Obama's Jobs record

For me to prove this point I must prove that Obama jobs record has been sub-optimal throughout his first term. I must prove there are less people in jobs now then there where at the beginning of his term.

When Obama first took office unemployment was 7.8% [1].
The unemployment rate is not 8.2% [2].



Although there is current drops in unemployment it can be misleading by the way we count actual unemployment. It does not count the people who have given up based on a poor market, so we can assume much of the decline is based on people leaving the workforce not being able to get a job. And even with this we see unemployment recovery has stalled and, as we see at the end of the graph, beginning to rise again.

Based on the BLS way of counting unemployment is misleading, we need to look at the U-6 unemployment rate. This accurately counts the people who have given up looking for jobs based on the down market. The U-6 is the only way to really get a sense of how the economy is doing.

When Obama entered office the U-6 unemployment was 14.2%
Now in 2012 it is 14.9% [3].
here is a U-6 graph:






We similar trend lines to the graph above, though the improvement is much lower and the rate is much higher.

How about the stimulus?

1. Obama promised it would keep unemployment under 8%, it isn't even at that point as we speak
2. Obama promised it would lead into an immediate increase in jobs
3. He said it would lift 2 million americans out of poverty

Results? Here:





We see the general trend lines did not change after the stimulus. This means the stimulus likely had little effect [4]. Further all of his promises have failed [5].


2. Energy Policy

Lets look at his failures:

• Solyndra. Was awarded over 500 million in tax payer money and 25 million in tax incentives. Went bankrupt.[6]
• Ener1, green energy company. 118 million dollars in tax payer money. Went bankrupt.[7]
• Beacon power, green energy storage company. Got 43 million dollars in DOE money from the Obama administration. Went bankrupt.[8]
• Proised 5 million energy jobs, now says created or saved 65,000 jobs. Broken promise much?

Keystone Pipeline:

 He turned the offer down. How many jobs would it create? "TransCanada Corp. has released a detailed job breakdown for the Keystone XL pipeline and said it will create 13,000 construction employment opportunities and 7,000 in manufacturing for Americans."[9]

There has been a 100% increase in gas prices.[10] He is also responsible for the increase as he has failed to increase the needed supply, in other words has cancelled many new refineries and is only building the ones already planned in the Bush administration (they have a few year lag time).

3. Foreign Policy

Obama has failed to ease the struggle between Israel and Palestine, worsened the problem with Iran for not being assertive, and weakened US - Israeli relations.[11][12]

The new START treaty hurts us, not Russia. It reduces our stockpile by 20% and has little overall impact on the Russian one.[13] It hurts us, it does not help.

Conclusion:

There is a lot more I could add in foreign policy, but I am going to be brief here as the economy is and was the major concern. In short: Obama has failed in Foreign, Economic, and Energy policy.


Sources:
1. http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/2011/12/02/take-look-unemployment-report-mixed-bag/
2. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
3. http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp
4. http://www.redstate.com/congressman_jim_jordan/2012/02/17/the-stimulus-chart-obama-doesn%E2%80%99t-want-you-to-see/
5. http://www.debate.org/debates/Resolved-Obamas-performance-in-the-White-House-has-not-been-successful/1/
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra_loan_controversy
7.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ener1
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Power
9.  http://business.financialpost.com/2012/01/10/transcanada-details-keystone-xls-job-creating-potential/?__lsa=64c7d8ee
10. http://www.policymic.com/articles/5379/high-gas-prices-are-president-obama-s-fault
11. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576341212934894494.html
12. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-foreign-initiatives-have-faltered/2012/01/05/gIQAeCqAkP_story.html
13. http://csis.org/publication/new-start-agreement

Cost of the death penalty

Opponents of the death penalty often cite statistics arguing the DP costs 2 million per case, and Life in prison costs 1 million over 50 years. Though JFA (Justice for all) has looked into the research and has estimated that Life in prison costs 1.2 - 3.6 million dollars MORE then the death penalty. Here is the break down in costs:

LWOP (at its cheapest):
Cell cost - 34,200/year
50 year cost - 2% annual increase (food, maintenance, housing, etc.)
Trial[s] - 75,000$
=
3.01 million dollars

DP (at its cheapest):
Cell cost - 60,000/year
6 year cost (average before death): 2% increase
Trials[s] - 1.5 million
=
1.88 million dollars

Now if we change the annual costs (say 4%) LWOP costs 4.04 million, and the DP costs 1.91 million. As we can see, the death penalty costs more [1].

But why does the DP cost less? LWOP prisoners usually face 30-40 years in prison, though 50 years is not uncommon. The annual cost for these prisoners is 40-50 thousand dollars a year. Now everyone agrees the trial costs of the death penalty are much more costly but there shouldn't be much of a question that the long term costs of the LWOP sentence is more then equivalent DP cases. I would also note in the death penalty your in the jail for a much shorter length of time, 6-8 years, whereas in LWOP your there sometimes for the remainder of your life. In that time there will likely be more medical costs for a criminal on LWOP. Even when using the abolitionist claim of DP trials costing 20 times more, we still see LWOP is more expensive over time [2]. Now as stated some people are on death row for 8 years. So do need to look into that difference? Yes, I do. That might be a game changer. And it is! the DP is still 1 million dollars cheaper then equivalent LWOP cases.

Also if its trial costs that worry you, dont be worried. Some say the DP may even save money. States that abolish the death penalty save no money on trial costs. The DP actually makes up for its trial costs by acting as a plea bargain tool. This avoids the cost of a trial entirely [3]! Looking at it this way the cost of the DP is now even less costly then we thought it was.




[1] http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/dp.html#D.Cost
[2]  http://www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html#cost
[3] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/1110