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Heard about the serial killer in NC months ago, but it appears officials are slow in responding.
Serious question: How would the market (in mass media, in law-enforcement) produce better outcomes in the North Carolina case? Any Rothbardians here can suggest something?
The fact is, the majority of Americans have no desire to be tied to a strict, textualist interpretation of the Constitution. And for good reason – it’s not a contract, the overwhelming majority of people alive today never consented to it, and it has zero intrinsic moral force. Most people are more than happy to have a constitutional law centered around broad social norms, provided of course that their norms win out. It’s not terribly surprising that the Supreme Court rarely steps way outside the mainstream of public opinion – since the Court has no mechanisms to enforce their rulings, they are ultimately dependent on the political branches for support. School desegregation in Little Rock never would have happened without the support of the executive, for example.
Since it’s an open thread, a sad story and a sad verdict and some ill-chosen descriptors:
Wikipeedia:
Trying that first one again:
“I burst into tears and was shaking and was so relieved that the system does work,” she said.
And the second:
KTXL FOX40 News confirmed via a leak (and later after the station changed their website) that KDND would be airing a commercial-free format every Tuesday after September 9, 2009
Anarch: Our job here is clear. We Agitators must lead the fight to Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide.
The only way I knew about the NC serial killer was via some links dumped onto my Twitter feed. And I live in Raleigh (roughly 50 miles west of Rocky Mount)…
I live in NC and haven’t heard about this.
Wow, that’s a crummy tin-foil hat on the neuroscience link.
A truly effective tin-foil hat should be multi-layered with some embedded capacitors and inductors to not only shield but absorb the mind control energies. Oh, and it should look like the helmets the Spartans wore in “The 300″. :)
Not only does posting calories not work the way it is intended, but even if it did, it wouldn’t matter. The best diet for most people is high fat (and therefore high calorie), low carbs. Calories are essentially irrelevant.
I live in NC and had heard about the Rocky Mount murders. The idea that the media won’t devote major airtime to a crime because the alleged victim is black is ridiculous (Duke lacrosse case, anyone?). I’m not happy that the police force/government authorities seem slow or reluctant to investigate, but let’s be serious about some differences here. The main one is that the women in question all come from the lower social strata, and have arrest histories for drugs and/or prostitution. The implication by Sam Sommers, the psychology professor quoted in the article, that one has to be a white, middle class victim to make national headlines is simply moronic. Does anyone here seriously believe that if Chandra Levy were black, that the media wouldn’t have made a huge national story out of the disappearance of a woman who was having an affair with a married US Representative (especially since the media got to paint him as the main suspect at the time)? Or should it be surprising that Yale University, one of the richest and most prestigious universities in the world, is able to quickly come up with a large reward for the disappearance of one of its graduate students, while mug shots of ex-prostitutes don’t bring the townsfolk of Rocky Mount to quickly open their wallets? Oh, and what ethnic group did that Yale student, Annie Le, belong to? Was she a white woman? Tempting as it always seems to be for some, we don’t need to pull the race card on this one (and if we’re going to, then how about some background facts—is the entire city council white? The entire police force, or at least every detective?). I for one don’t find it evidence of deep-seated racial bias that educated, middle class people are more able to get police and media attention than are poor, uneducated, unconnected people, no matter what their race. Especially when the victims are from a group that a lot of people think of as criminals anyway (drug users and prostitutes, not black people). The alleged inaction of the police might be disturbing, but I don’t think we can automatically chalk it up to racism just by trotting out some cases with different confounding factors and expect to be taken seriously. But perhaps I’m getting worked up over nothing–after all, who really takes Newsweek seriously, anyway?
The duke lacrosse case wasn’t about the black victim, it was about the white upper class frat boy suspects. I can’t accept your premise because despite all the people that go missing in this country, the only ones that receive national media coverage on a regular basis are pretty white middle or upper class women. The same goes for missing children. Remember how the DC sniper was the criminal of the century until we found he was black? Then the weirdest thing happened the story dropped off the face of the earth, as if it was too normal to merit coverage. The news is all about the ‘man bites dog’ story, not the thousands of ‘dog bites man’ ones.
It represents a cultural bias present in our entire society. That unstated bias is that crime is normal for some groups and tragic for others. Call the cops once in the suburbs and you’ll have two cruisers in ten minutes, but call them a dozen times in the ghetto and you’ll be lucky if they show up in 4 hours. I know of people that have died bleeding to death in the streets because the ambulances won’t come to that neighborhood after a certain time at night.
Its true that affluent people are better able to effect law enforcement and media coverage. But being able to explain the bias, doesn’t mean the bias is acceptable.
So Radley, do you think that bills should have to restict themselves to the issues in their preamble? It’s something we have in the UK and it stops the sort of er….legislative wandering we seem to constantly hear of in the US…
But Random Guy, most of your arguments seem to blend black with poverty or lower class. I think that Zinnen’s main point is that it IS the social strata that determines whether something gets coverage, not race. If a rich black family’s daughter went missing, I’d bet dollars to donuts that it would get a crapload of coverage. Its about the money, not the melanin.
There’s definitely something to the theory that white, middle-class murder victims get far more media attention. All of the big stories involve these kinds of women. Conversely, the media’s coverage of so-called hate crimes belong almost entirely to black victims of white hate, even though the reverse is more common.
The DC sniper turned out to be a muslim guy waging two-man jihad against the US. It didn’t fit the narrative, so the press quickly dropped it.
Ben, I don’t think that’s true because its like what Michael said about fitting the narrative. Normally news has a scale to it. Every missing person gets reported on the local level. But what causes the missing white woman stories to occasionally rise to national prominence even when the victim in question isn’t someone of national importance?
A rich and powerful persons child going missing is national news, it is expected that such a story would receive attention, no matter their race. I think their might be a racist element to it because of all the missing white nobodies who become national news, which doesn’t seem to happen for any other race.
I just think we have some deep cultural biases about the notions of class and victimhood. I think that news, being a business, finds that its does best when confirming such notions.
From the neuroscience meets law link:
The Librans should all be in prison anyways. Tauruses should probably be euthanized, just to be on the safe side.
As for the Virgos…. Let’s just say I have special plans for the Virgos.
;)
Aresen’s got a surprise coming thanks to a typo. ;-)
OK, since both Shrub and Obummer want to hide behind “National Security”, we need to make clear the consequences. OK, you can have your “National Security” and keep the stuff out of open court and out of the press. But when you do, you have automatically conceded the case. Summary judgement for the plaintiff, with a penalty assessed by either a judge or jury.
You want to use “National Security” to hide wrongdoing? Then we as a people are going to presume that every time you use it, the government is using it to cover up some one’s poop on the floor.
Well, Huntsville, Alabama has managed to make national news as they round up the city’s sex offenders and closet them away in an “undisclosed location” so they won’t hurt any trick-or-treaters.
Of course, I don’t expect any protest. Hell, in this part of the country, just voicing an opinion against such a policy would probably brand you as being a supporter of child sex abuse, if not an actual practitioner.
Sex offenders are the new Jews. You could march them off to prison camps without much public opposition. Hell, most sex offenders would probably be glad to have a place that’s not off limits to them.
M. Zinnen #12 FTW.
random guy “But what causes the missing white woman stories to occasionally rise to national prominence even when the victim in question isn’t someone of national importance?”
Because they’re interesting stories. Dead crack whore — boring. (Hell, there’s 10 in a 50,000 person town and nobody knows if it’s even a serial killer.) Rich future sorostitute inexplicably disappears on class trip — interesting. It really isn’t that complicated. And BTW, I remember several regional stories of missing black girls dominating the front page. (insert racist yankee anecdote)
The DC sniper quit being a front page story because he was caught. You see, the story was that people were randomly being fucking shot to death. When that stopped, the story did also.
“Call the cops once in the suburbs and you’ll have two cruisers in ten minutes, but call them a dozen times in the ghetto and you’ll be lucky if they show up in 4 hours.”
And now you’re just making stuff up. It’s true that response times in high-crime areas are slower than in low-crime areas, but there’s a perfectly logical explanation for this. I’ll even give you a hint: the problem is exacerbated by higher police:civilian (before responding, please consult a dictionary) ratios in affluent suburbs. And I have more than my fare share of real problems with the police; I don’t need to elevate Comic View routines to a coherent world view.
“I know of people that have died bleeding to death in the streets because the ambulances won’t come to that neighborhood after a certain time at night.”
I know of people who were anally probed by martians. Call it even.
Dave,
I don’t see your point. Sex offenders are one tiny step below murderers on the scale of despicable humans. I don’t care about their inconveniences if there’s any chance it could (oh noes, I’m about to do it) Save Just One Child.
Is the real beef the extent to which minor age/nudity infractions are often treated equal to rape-rape*? If so, I’m completely on board. But if it’s just a matter of “they did the time,” fuck that.
* Unless it’s Whoopi of course. Word is that she has it coming.
Odd. I just tried to post a comment on the ABC site re. Obama’s and Holder’s lawsuit snuffage and got a message stating, “We’re sorry. We cannot accept this data.”
Here’s the comment I was trying to post:
“‘there is no way for this case to move forward without jeopardizing ongoing intelligence activities that we rely upon to protect the safety of the American people.’
“I’ll take the risk of that lawsuit jeopardizing my safety.
“Someone I’ve never met and to whom I’ve never given any shred of authority over my life may not make such decisions on my behalf without my consent.”
Well, don’t boast about it.
Open Thread Contribution:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1245
UK Deports Cartoonist (Almost)
I don’t know if I can agree with this idea that victims receive less consideration from the media based on race/socio economic status. It was just a few years ago that the Baltimore Sun received a public service Pullitzer for its blanked coverage of the homeless serial killer.
Neuroscience? Our best protection against this will be the police wanting to make sure it isn’t admissable in court where it can be used to constantly catch THEM in lies.
Of course they could always legislate that cops are exempt. But they wouldn’t do that would they? All men created equal and all.
But after that…
Radley,
Concerning the calorie postings on menus. The study from the NYT that you link to is as biased as Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olberman. It was specifically designed to prove that menu calorie postings are ineffective.
The study was conducted in “poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.” I’d like to emphasize the poor neighborhoods part. Poor people don’t look for what is better for them because it’s usually more expensive. We’re probably talking about people who hold down two jobs just to be able to pay the bills. In that case, the $1 value menu items are king. I used to live paycheck to paycheck so I’m talking from personal experience. My friends and I would eat as much as we could off the value menu at Wendy’s ($1 bacon cheeseburgers and fries, with a cup of water) because we were more concerned about not being hungry than about getting fat.
Contrast that to my life now. I like to eat out two or three times a week. It gives me a break from the office (I normally bring my lunch) and I can get out and get some fresh air or it allows me to run my errands and still grab a bite. My wife and I have looked over most of the fast food websites and now know, more or less, what to order to stay below our 2000 calorie budget. How many calories an item has heavily influences our decisions.
Because of this, we enjoyed being able to just walk into a restaurant we haven’t frequented in the past (like Taco Bell or KFC) in NYC and make our decisions there. We didn’t have to find a computer and calculate our caloric intakes, we were able to do it right in the restaurant.
Now, people here will thumb me down because libertarianism calls for as little government intervention as possible. I agree with that premise, which is why I read your site. However, this is one of the very few exceptions as it really isn’t that costly to businesses (with over 20 establishments) to do and it really simplifies my fast food experience.
BTW, maybe it’s the area where I live, but most of my friends are also in favor of having the calorie counts on menus. Not for other people’s benefit, as liberals claim, but for their own.
Oh? Do you really think victims of sex offenders would prefer to be dead? Almost all victims of sex offenses have no permanent physical injuries. And, like it or not, much of the fear, degradation, shame, and long term psychological suffering associated with sex crimes are a product of our culture. In fact, the mere assertion that sex offenders are worse than murders is a prime example of the distortions caused by society’s hypersensitivity to all things sex related.
The perfect example of my point that sex offenders are fair game. I’ve not heard a shred of evidence that herding sex offenders into a holding pens during Halloween would save any child from injury. But it fits in nicely with the barrage of warnings about candy laced with razor blades, poison, and broken glass so common during Halloween. Only the sleaziest of hero wannabes manufactures or inflates a threat just to save the public from it. After a while you’d think the public would scoff at government fear mongering, but they never seem to tire of it.
By the way, if saving “just one child” is the new threshold by which we justify all government behavior, then nothing is off-limits to government control. Just the idea that all sex offenders pose a risk to children is preposterous.
If the justice system is to have any integrity at all, you can’t change the penalty after a defendant has already been convicted and sentenced. Secondly, it’s just sheer idiocy to presume that subjecting someone who lives in your community to persecution and torture, while completely extinguishing any hope they may have for a better life, is going to make us safer. That would be a bit like repeatedly poking a dog with a stick to make him leave you alone.
I’m not totally convinced that the media doesn’t cover certain disappearances because the victims are poor and black. I think a lot of the attention is related to the media savvy of the family of the missing. The families of Natalie Holloway and Laci Peterson were on tv every single day, Larry King, the Today show, you name it. I think their badgering the media and willingness to appear on tv contstantly kept the story alive. I wonder if the Rocky Mount families personally contacted local, then national media and made themselves available there wouldn’t be more attention. I certainly don’t want to blame the victims, but I think if the community was more forceful in presenting to the media, bombarding them with calls and appearances, they’d make more headway. I think it’s a personal responsibility argument: the media may not come to you so you have to make sure you go to them and refuse to be ignored.
Nando, the objections you make to the calorie labeling study are exactly the point, tho. The people who are pushing for these laws aren’t targeting them to you or your relatively affluent friends. They’re saying “Oh, those poor people don’t know what they’re eating! We have to force the restaurants to put the information on the menus so that it’ll be easier for the poor people to make better decisions.” And when they do, it makes zero difference. It just turns out to be a huge cost for the businesses and does nothing toward what it is supposed to do.
For the folks like you and your friends, you *can* look on the websites. You *can* look at the chart next to the door at McDonald’s. And you can tell the restaurants that don’t post them somewhere why you’re not going there, and they’ll probably post the information somewhere for folks like you.
As for the ‘guilt’ aspect of it, wanting the information posted on the menu to shame them from ordering something they know they shouldn’t have? Well, that’s a really really crappy reason for a law.
There’s a reason that there’s a cliche/running gag on Fark about missing attractive white women vs everyone else.
Its a little amusing to me that your post exemplifies the problem I’m talking about. There are far more dead crack whores (of any race) than missing white women in this country, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the news. I mean your own post shows that you won’t care about the crack whore, her death bores you. In your mind, even if she was murdered, she’s still not a victim. Its passive aggressive clasism.
Ted Kaczynski was caught. Jeffery Dahmer was caught. Most serial killers or mass murderers are major news throughout their trial and even incarceration. But the DC sniper dropped off the map. Do you even know his name without googling it? That’s how quick the news media forgot about the story.
Spell check can be a friend and an enemy.
And you accuse me of trying to be the comedian. All I am saying is that there is huge discrepancy in the treatment of people in this country based on race, classism plays a part but race issues are far more prevalent than most people want to admit. Clearly my experience on this is different than yours, but that doesn’t make it a joke.
It is said that courts give Obama a benefit of the doubt on national security issues refused to Nixon. The existence of spy system is well established in plaintiffs’ filing, and thus is no state secret.
Poor people don’t look for what is better for them because it’s usually more expensive.
Generalize much? If they don’t even “look for what is better for them”, how can they possibly decide? It follows that we should be doing more of that deciding for their own good. Something like banning fast food restaurants in their neighborhoods.
Sheesh!
Radley,
It’s easy to be certain that calorie posting laws don’t work when you ignore the more comprehensive study that shows otherwise. Out of 13 NYC chains, 9 showed a decrease in calorie ordering per person, and 4 were statistically significant (Au Bon Pain, Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC). 4 chains showed increases, but only Subway and its $5 footlongs marketing campaign was statistically significant.
Radley,
Check your links on this article
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/41750.html
Cop murders drunk person, other cop makes statements incriminating killer cop, killer cop gets vacation with pay. Best part is incantation of “wanting his Garrity”, a Supreme Court ruling which says cops can’t be held criminally responsible for any statements after invoking their Garrity.
Ouch, nice links!
Sorry Radley, I’m using an old Open Thread to test my HTML tags for URL. Hope you don’t mind.
Agitator URL Test
Sorry Radley, I’m using an old Open Thread to test my HTML tags for URL. Hope you don’t mind.
The Agitator Link
It only goes to show where there’s will there’s a way. Keep on trying.