Media: “Police Shoot Unarmed Black Teenager”

Most of the media coverage dealing with the aftermath of the death of a young man in Ferguson, Missouri has featured headlines or leads which are a variation of the title of this piece.

On its face, the text seems unobjectionable and straightforward.  But look deeper; it’s not.  I will break it down: 

 

Police  -  what does that mean, that a group of officers did it?  That the action was a concerted effort?  But the killing was not.  A single police officer was involved.  So why was the plural used?

Shoot  - That term signifies aggression.  But was the shooting justified, resulting from self-defense or some other legitimate reason?

Unarmed  -  Does that mean defenseless?  Posing no threat? Did the police officer know he was no danger to himself or others but shot him anyway?

Black  -  He was shot because of that fact?  The shooting was racially motivated?

Teenager  -  He was between thirteen and nineteen years of age, young and immature - apparently no threat to a police officer, or so the term implies.   In reality, this teenager was an eighteen year old adult who was a large man approaching three hundred pounds.

 

How about this as an alternative headline:  “Police Officer Shoots Man after an Apparent Struggle”?   This is an accurate description of what was known at the time and is not loaded with innuendo.

 

But, of course, this simply won’t do for those who share a bias against the police, and who presume that the fact that the officer was white and the person shot was black raises the prospect of racism.

I am not suggesting that every outlet using the deceptive headline or variation reflected such an agenda.   Undoubtedly, many gave it little thought and used the substance of the suspect headline since others did so as well (including Fox News which is usually alert to liberal catch-phrases).

But it illustrates how implicit assumptions can affect supposedly objective reporting.  In this case, the result may have added fuel to the sentiment of protesters and rioters in Ferguson, Missouri that the dead young man was a blameless victim of racist police. 

*****

In the days following the shooting, facts have been revealed which don’t fit the media’s suggestion that the officer was unjustified in shooting the  “unarmed black teenager”. 

The autopsy established that Michael Brown was struck by six bullets, five hitting the front of his body and one striking the top of his head.

The police officer’s girlfriend has said that he told her that Brown bull-rushed him (head down, charging forward  -  visualize a bull aiming for the matador’s cape).  That would explain the bullet entering the top of his skull.

But why five other shots?  Brown was shot repeatedly, the girlfriend (a cop herself) suggested because he kept coming forward (there was some evidence that he may have been on drugs, marijuana for sure).  What other reasonable explanation, after all, could there be for a police officer nearly emptying his handgun in broad daylight on a public highway?

Sure, the cop could have gone berserk, stood over Brown after shooting him down and pumped more bullets into him…  and shoot him in the top of his head, too?  I don’t consider that a reasonable explanation.  Do you?

The Sensible Conservative Responds

In last week’s posting, the Sensible Conservative hosted a column by an old friend with contrary views on the wisdom of raising the minimum wage.

The California Capitalist, as he termed himself, argued, in essence, that raising the minimum wage would lead to improved social stability for us all.  Both crime and welfare rates would decline as would the taxes that would otherwise be required to fund law enforcement and support payments.  Implicit in that prescription is a belief that there is a correlation, for instance, between crime rates and minimum wage levels.  However, there is not.

Since the 1960s, the minimum wage level has kept up roughly with inflation.  This has been accomplished by periodically raising the wage floor.  During this time frame, the minimum wage averaged around 40% of the private sector rate.  If there were a significant relationship, between the crime rate and minimum wage levels, one would expect that the national crime rate during that fifty year period to be approximately stable as well.

It was not.

In 1960, there were about 2,000 crimes per 100,000 residents.  Between 1975 and 1995, this rate was more than 150% higher (5,000-6,000 for 100,000 residents).  Today’s rate is lower but remains double that of 1960.

 

These statistics, of course, do not prove that increasing the minimum wage will have no impact on those who are deciding whether to commit a crime or take a job.  But they certainly raise the question as to how many might be effected.

[Welfare statistics highlight the same concern.  Those on the public dole are a far higher percentage of our population than was the case in 1960.  The loosely constant minimum wage level can hardly be cited as a major contributor to that fact.]

None of this is to suggest that the objectives of the California Capitalist are unworthy.  It’s just that his solution won’t get us there.

As a conservative, I know that culture matters in determining conduct.  As a capitalist, I recognize that economic incentives are important.  But I am suggesting that the former has been more important than the latter in shaping the predicament of, as the California Capitalist terms them, “unskilled, untrained, not very smart people.”

I suggest that cultural changes over the last fifty years in attitudes toward work and welfare dependency bear a major responsibility.

Would that this problem could be solved by such a simple measure as raising the minimum wage.  Alas.

A Reality Check on Economic Facts of Life:  Competitively set income levels reflect an individual’s economic worth for the task performed.   The market place places a higher value, for instance, on the construction worker making $15.00 per hour than the burger-flipper making $10.00.  Don’t you think the economy will adjust the construction worker’s wage proportionately higher? And on up the ladder the higher wage rates will climb.  Thus, increased costs will ripple throughout the economy.  As a result, inflation will most likely return everyone to their relative economic position occupied before the minimum wage hike was instituted.  The improvement of the lot of the minimum wage worker will have proven to be ephemeral.  Here’s a simple rule that is true:  One cannot produce economic prosperity by fiat.

Another Point of View on the Minimum Wage

This week’s blog is “on loan” to a long-time friend of mine who, unlike the sensible conservative (see blog dated Jan. 12, 2014  ), has a favorable view of  raising the minimum wage.  He fashions himself the California Capitalist and, from that perspective, takes a “realistic” approach.  Read on.  [I will respond next week.] 

The minimum wage debate is almost always waged on moral grounds – whether unskilled, untrained, maybe not very smart people “deserve” to be paid more.  That’s completely the wrong way to look at it.

First off, minimum wage jobs are NOT mostly held by kids who don’t need a living wage.  Seventy-eight percent of people earning the minimum wage are over twenty-four years of age.  The average age of people earning the minimum is approximately thirty-five years.   Three and a half million people receive the minimum wage plus ten million people are entirely unemployed which means that thirteen and a half million people or about 8.65%  of the workforce and about 5.6% of the adult population are earning a take-home pay of $1000 a month or less.

There are always people who are not very smart, not skilled, not determined, and not talented.  You can’t kill them.  You can’t ship them off to a desert island, and you can’t just ignore them in the hope that they will quietly disappear without causing you any trouble.  All benign neglect gets you is a massive welfare system, gangs, drugs, and lots of expensive  policemen and prisons, like we have today.

Your real choice is either to:  (1) deal with these people through a welfare bureaucracy, police and prisons, all funded by your taxes or (2) have jobs available that pay unskilled, untrained, not very smart people enough to live on without welfare.

Looked at another way, your choice is either to:  (1) have these people employed, paying taxes, with a stake in the success of your society or  (2) have them unemployed, getting welfare from a government bureaucracy, sitting around, getting into trouble, having kids who also get into trouble, alienated from you society, and highly susceptible to falling into gangs and drugs and crime.

The city doesn’t employ garbage men in order to be nice to them.  It does it to stop rats and disease.  You want to have everyone, even unskilled people, even stupid people, have a job that will pay them a living wage, not to be nice to them but because it’s better for you.

I would argue that the minimum wage should be set at $10.00 per hour for people under eighteen, $13.00 per hour for people between eighteen and twenty-four and $16.00 per hour for people twenty-four and over and that it should be tied to inflation.

An increase in unskilled wages will be reflected in the price of the products produced by minimum wage employees.  Capitalist principals say that the price of a product reflects the resources needed to produce it and, through competition, the market then chooses which products succeed.

Yes, we may have to pay a $1.25 for a McDonald’s hamburger instead of $.99 just like we have to pay to have our garbage picked up and for the fire insurance on our houses.  They’re all costs of doing business.  Dealing with the existence of unemployed, unskilled people is one of those costs.  You’re going to have to pay one way or the other.  It is a cost that won’t go away no matter how much you wish it would. 

The question is:  Do you want to pay for it with taxes, cops and welfare or by paying a few pennies ore for a Big Mac?

Should Obama Be Impeached?

That’s a thought that’s been floated by some on the right (former VP nominee Sarah Palin, in particular) but, I suggest, that’s a subject which is best ignored unless Barack Obama can be convicted.

(“Should” applies to preference.  “Can” is concerned with reality.  A proposal vs practical politics, if you will.)

Impeachment is a political activity - the bringing of charges against a political official (in this case the President) by the House of Representatives.  Ok.  The lower house of Congress is controlled by the GOP so a majority (as required) against President Obama is practical.

 

Yes, the President can be impeached.  But removal from office requires a conviction (by two-thirds) of the U.S. Senate.  The Democrats control the Senate.  Politically, ouster can’t happen.  It’s not practical.  So why generate distractions from defeating the Democrats in November?  The focus must be on punishing Obama’s Party for the failures, left-wing policies, and incompetence of the Administration.

Just imagine how an impeachment effort would look to the President’s backers and the liberal media.  It would be roundly castigated as an effort to oust a black president because he is.  The black community would be mobilized as if it were 2008 and conservative candidates would suffer the consequences.

Because an impeachment of President Obama can’t succeed in ousting him, what would the purpose be?  A quixotic quest is not only silly because of its non-existent chances of success but, far more importantly, is counter-productive due to its impact in motivating his supporters.

Sarah Palin, your time has passed.  Conservatives need politicians who think before speaking.