“Importantly, however, once you control for income, the likelihood of growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is, the importance of race disappears for all crimes except homicide. (The homicide gap is partly explained by crack markets). In other words, for most crimes a white person and a black person who grow up next door to each other with similar incomes and the same family structure would be predicted to have the same crime involvement. Empirically, what matters is the fact that abortions are disproportionately used on unwanted pregnancies, and disproportionately by teenage women and single women.

3) Some people might think that my comments in (2) above are just ducking the race issue because it is politically correct to do so. Anyone who has read Freakonomics knows that I am not afraid to take issues of race head on. Much of the book deals with challenging issues of race (e.g. black-white test score gaps, black naming patterns, etc.). I mean it when I say that, from a purely fact-based and statistical perspective, race is not in any way central to our arguments about abortion and crime.

4) When a woman gets an abortion, for the most part it is not changing the total number of children she has; rather, it is shifting the timing so those births come later in life. This is an important fact to remember. One in four pregnancies ends in abortion and this has been true for 30 years in the U.S. But the impact of abortion on the overall birth rate has been quite small.”

“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down,” said Bennett, author of “The Book of Virtues.”

To me, its plain as day. This man has some very serious issues. No need to anayze anything…just read it word for word, people.

Welcome back!

Wilbur, I’ll take that as a compliment!

There is a fact that no one seems to be mentioning, which is, everyone keeps getting distracted by the wrong numbers.

Bennett did not specify violent crimes, or property crimes, or any other subset, so we can assume that he referred to total crimes. As the NYC Police Department discovered, putting the brakes on even small offenses brought down totals of crimes across the board.

So – I propose that the total number of crimes committed by whites in a given period would exceed the total number committed by blacks.

What does it matter if more crimes are committed per black capita than per white capita, when we’re talking about reducing the crime totals?

That’s right, it doesn’t matter. If one of you folks wants to look up the statistics, it would help the already obvious argument that race was unneccessary in making a point about the potential of abortion victims.

One more nail in the coffin is his use of the word “impossible”. No doubt he used “ridiculous” and “reprehensible” in a useless attempt to justify what he said, but “impossible” does not fit for that purpose.

First of all all, he can’t mean “impossible” in the true sense of the word, since anything is possible, and everyone knows that. People might have thought, in 1930, that the Holocaust would have been impossible.

Secondly, saying that it would be impossible to abort every black baby gives away the fact that he doesn’t like seeing a black population (apparently doomed to lives of crime) so large that efficiently ridding the nation of them would be such a formidable task that it might not be worth the effort, and therefore would not even be worth the effort of further consideration. There’s really no use arguing against that fact, since the consideration of whether or not it would be possible to abort every black baby would never occur to someone unless they first considered that a justification to get over the moral boundary might be available.

So, he may not be burning crosses and may not even hate black people, but it’s quite clear that he holds prejudice against them.

Dkelsmith, I think you’re missing something important here: Bennet was not talking about the total AMOUNT of crime, but the RATE of crime, i.e. the number of crimes per capita.

The diminution of any segment of the population could reasonably be expected to lower the amount of crime, but you would only expect a drop in the RATE of crime if you thought that segment of the population was disproportinately prone to committing crime.

Voters with no college degree went for Bush over Kerry 53%-47%

This is a higher rate of Bush voting than the general voter population (52%-48%)

Therefore if we abort all republicans the rate of people graduating from college will increase.

Stupid, eh? er….. wait a mo…..

O Dub has sputtered on the hottie postings. I think you found your new niche … get that up on your blog and your traffic will skyrocket.

I am shocked and amazed that you think I would defer from this debate to actually take the time to ogle Jessica Alba in a skimpy hellow bikini……….what kind of an ingrate do you think that I am ? As if I would deviate from this debate and pay special attention to picture # 4. You need to grow up and get to my mature level.

I can see your point, but with so many right-wingers coming in here to tro– er, to challenge Oliver’s point of view, I don’t think you can call this blog an echo chamber.

http://www.linkydinky.com/alba.shtml

It’s not like he said the comments at an official GOP function, or anything. He said it on his radio show and he just happens to be a Republican. His job, as a radio commentator, is to say outragious things to get ratings.

If you, Oliver, (or any other right or left wing blogger, for that matter) ever said anything that was offensive to someone else, would you demand that the leadership of the DNC or RNC denounce your comments?

It’s freedom of speech – if something is said that causes an uproar, then call the station or his advertisers – they’re the ones that could actually do something, not the GOP leadership. What exactly do you want the GOP to say? Issue a canned statement and move on with their business? What would that accomplish? Would you expect the Democratic leadership to denounce something if Randi Rhodes or Mike Malloy (or any other left-wing host) ever said anything shocking?

Quite frankly, I think the government is putting too much stock in to what we say, as it is…

Bill Bennett is the GOP leadership. That’s the whole point. He was Education Secretary and Drug Czar under Reagan and he speaks regularly at GOP functions and as a leading Republican on Fox news. Respectfully, Oliver and Rhandi Rhodes are not even close comparisons to the influence Bennett yields over conservative policy makers. If Bill Bennett is not at the heart of the conservative movement. Bill Bennett is a “Distinguished Fellow” at the Heritage Foundation, one if not the leading conservative think tank in the country. Here’s the link: http://policyexperts.org/last_name/last_name_results.cfm

Here’s what the Heritage Foundation says are Bennetts areas of expertise:

Issues

* Church-State Relations
* Civil rights/Racial Preferences
* Corrections/Sentencing
* Police/crime/crime statistics
* Bilingual Education
* Education Unions/Interest Groups
* Higher Education
* Public School Financing/Administration
* Parental choice: charters, vouchers, home schooling
* Standards, Curriculum, & Testing
* Arts, Humanities & Historic Resources
* Citizenship/Civil Society
* Family/Children
* Media and popular culture
* Philanthropy
* Political Correctness/Multiculturalism
* Religion/Public Life

How many of these areas of expertise are compromised by what he said? And yet, there he is, distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, leading conservative think tank in the country. Yup, Bennett doesn’t speak for conservatives at all.

“…we raised the price and lowered the purity of cocaine…”

He is actually claiming to have helped the drug dealers sell an inferior product for more money. What a perfect business model for increasing profits. I wonder whose side this guy is on. Dig yourself deeper, Mr Czar.

But also, and I may be wrong here, whether or not abortion effects crime rates depends on how you measure crime rates, right? As a total per year or per capita, right?

Dugger