Republicans: continued

[Svartalf]

well, you have actually had to be a certifiable nutter to be a GOP supporter ever since they got reagan elected.

[Sean Hayden]

What gets me is how uninformed some of these people are. DeVos answered a question about gun violence, something like, are we experiencing a gun violence crisis with "I believe we are experiencing a violence crisis". But you can't spend any time around these conversations without finding out that violent crime in the US has been dropping rapidly for yonks now! But she just doesn't know that. What am I supposed to think?

I guess she just doesn't participate in many conversations with people who worry about facts.

[Brian Peacock]

What gets me is how uninformed some of these people are. DeVos answered a question about gun violence, something like, are we experiencing a gun violence crisis with "I believe we are experiencing a violence crisis". But you can't spend any time around these conversations without finding out that violent crime in the US has been dropping rapidly for yonks now! But she just doesn't know that. What am I supposed to think?

I guess she just doesn't participate in many conversations with people who worry about facts.

Of course she doesn't - she's blazing a trail of pure belief for Jebsus, and them poor school kids and hopeful para-Olympians are just fodder for her righteous crusade.

[Svartalf]

must admit that I utterly fail to see how sports events can come from the education budget, most athletes are past school days.

[Seabass]

Who knows what people like her want.

We know what they want. They want public funding for private (read: religious) schools.

Read this article:

Tampa Bay Times Editorial: DeSantis redefines public education
The governor says spending public money on private school tuition is still public education. That’s absurd.
https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editor ... -20190218/

And here's DeVos agreeing with him:

Completely agree, @GovRonDesantis. "If the taxpayer is paying for education, it’s public education. We have parents who are lining up for a tax credit scholarship. They would not do that if the program was not succeeding."
https://twitter.com/BetsyDeVosED/status ... 5264986115

It's what these right-wing religious loonies have wanted all along. Thing is, religious indoctrination is prohibited in public schools.

Remember when DeVos said that her brand of education reform was a way to "advance god's kingdom"?
Trump's education pick says reform can 'advance God's Kingdom'
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/ ... ion-232150
Betsy DeVos Wants to Use America’s Schools to Build “God’s Kingdom”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... cretary/2/

[Animavore]

But Republicans aren't religious!

[Svartalf]

They may stamp ''in god we trust" on the money, it still has no religion, and republicans are all about the money, nothing much else.

[pErvinalia]

But Republicans aren't religious!

[Hermit]

you can't spend any time around these conversations without finding out that violent crime in the US has been dropping rapidly for yonks now!

It's gone up in the latest four years for which data are available. United States Violent Crime Rates 2014-2017 per 100,000 People

Murder
2014 4.4
2015 4.9
2016 5.4
2017 5.3

Forcible rape
2014 26.6
2015 28.4
2016 40.9
2017 41.7

Aggravated assault
2014 229.2
2015 238.1
2016 248.3
2017 248.9

Total violent
2014 372.0
2015 384.6
2016 397.5
2017 394.0

[Sean Hayden]

crime_rates_90s.png

Violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century. The two most commonly cited sources of crime statistics in the U.S. both show a substantial decline in the violent crime rate since it peaked in the early 1990s. One is an annual report by the FBI of serious crimes reported to police in approximately 18,000 jurisdictions around the country. The other is an annual survey of more than 90,000 households conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which asks Americans ages 12 and older whether they were victims of crime, regardless of whether they reported those crimes to the police.
Using the FBI numbers, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2017. Using the BJS data, the rate fell 74% during that span. (For both studies, 2017 is the most recent full year of data.) The long-term decline in violent crime hasn’t been uninterrupted, though. The FBI, for instance, reported increases in the violent crime rate between 2004 and 2006 and again between 2014 and 2016.

--an interesting one

[Sean Hayden]

perception.png

[Hermit]

Yes, yes, I am aware of the long term trends. I have even stuck the relevant data into a spreadsheet, graphed them and posted them in this forum. They had to show long term trends because I argued against the "more guns, less crime" mantra at the time, and indeed they prove that there is no such correlation. Here they are again:





That said, I seriously doubt DeVos had the past quarter century in mind when she said "I believe we are experiencing a violence crisis". Politicians rarely think in longer terms than a single electoral cycle on either side of where they presently find themselves, and the four most recent years for which data are available have seen a significant uptick in the rates of violent crime. The uptick will be even more noticeable when I get around to updating the spreadsheet.

[Sean Hayden]

Right, she said violence crisis to avoid being seen as against the right to bear arms.

She probably thinks like many people that violence has only ever gotten worse, and especially since we've taken God out of everything.

[Hermit]

I was really only bickering over a minor point. My guess is that we agree about Betsy deVos's general politics and opinions. Can we also agree that she is right in terms of violence trends in recent years and wrong in terms of those trends in the past quarter century?

[Sean Hayden]

No.