I think he finishes to say 'this is why we should pay black people to have abortions'

IT WILL SPELL THE END OF LIFE ON EARTH AS WE KNOW IT!

Finally! My abortion addiction is almost making me bankrupt. But they almost slide out on their own now anyway.

What if Hitler's grandma had access to an abortion? There would have been no Hitler's mom!

HA!

No, the Freakonomics book showed that cities with easier access to abortion had a lower crime rate due to their being fewer people born in social conditions that would have more likely led them to crime. They go on to say that if you wanted to follow this line of reasoning, you could abort everyone and reduce the crime rate to zero.

The book states, over and over, that this is just data they've gathered and what it says, not advocacy for a particular policy. Also, the book tries to tell the reader that you can't retrofit conditions of their data gathering to create an outcome. For example, their data showed that homes with large collections of books were more likely to produce children who got better grades. This doesn't mean you can stick a library in your house and make your children smarter, it means that if you were the kind of household who had books in the first place, the environment your children were in would foster learning.

I highly suspect you didn't read the book at all and are just parroting talking points from websites you like. Either that, or you didn't comprehend it very well.

Jesus Christ, dude.

Yeah, you didn't actually read Freakanomics. But nice try.

Also: "neo-liberal"

Is that a new X-Man or something?

No need to get aggressive, buddy. I did read the book, but will admit that it was when it came out, and as that was a while ago and I don't have it beside me at the moment I may have forgotten some of the provisos and "ha ha we're not SUGGESTING" qualifiers that simple decency included. Because of this I almost didn't press submit, but you've gone ahead and confirmed the thesis for me. So thanks. Can you confirm that the example he used was in fact the violence in the black communities? I promise I'll trust the word of you, some guy I read on a website.

Look, all I'm saying is, I can see the other side. No one read that book and came away saying, "Freakonomics said that all economic data is inherently open to interpretation." It was one of the most widely read and influential books of the last several years. Wendys is using it to sell their burgers, for goodness sake. Vast swathes of society were discussing it. And now we have here, apparently, a bill that drives the cost of abortions lower. So that poor people can have better access to them. Because poor people need abortions. Why? Well, womens rights, constitutional right to privacy, and NONONO, Why especially POOR people? Why? Seriously, if you want to discuss something, let's ask ourselves why abortions shouldn't just be for those who can afford the doctor's fees.

Why shouldn't abortions just be a matter of choice like a hybrid car is a matter of choice?

I'll settle for economic justice, if you will. And we'll ignore the book. And ignore the fact that, no doubt, some people aren't.

I'm just too much of a cynic not to heave a little sigh and go, you know, sometimes I see where the other side is coming from, man. We have a constitutional right to privacy in the matter of our abortions. Everything else has a whiff of social engineering to it, and that shit sometimes has odd consequences. I ain't gonna vote for them. It's just an intellectual exercise.

Stanleypain: Well, neoliberal economics are the ones that get blamed for moving our manufacturing base overseas. Which in turn gets blamed for poverty in the black communities, which relied heavily on manufacturing. It's not a very sophisticated argument, to be sure, so you're fine in disagreeing with it. I'm generally a neoliberal myself.

I love how, on the comically cynical poe Network, someone shitting on a pop-culture book called Freakonomics caused a stir.

Just because you or a legion of mong-men don't understand an academic book (or in this case pop academic) doesn't mean you can argue what it means because that's what the Legion of Mong came away with.

PS. are you a Cena Mark sock puppet?

That was a low blow phalsebob. He's playing a devil's advocate, not a dumbass advocate.

allcaps just is stating his interpretation of a book he read a long time ago. I'll admit that I have read books and forgot the whole point of their message over time (I could have sworn "Angry White Men" was suppose to be humorous). He also has serious misgivings about dollar-menu abortions, from what I can tell.

allcaps, if I may, I would like to posit that abortion is cheap as possible because if the procedure wasn't, people will go ahead and do it themselves for free. I don't believe that the hybrid-car analogy is quite apt for this discussion. Maybe instead we look at Veterinarians who offer to clip dog ears and tails, for the fact that if they don't do it, then the owners will go ahead and do it themselves. Yeah, that's cringe-worthy that a vet will go ahead and mutilate pets, but given the choice of those two options, I'm glad they aren't letting the owners do it with gardening shears.

Now, should the Government step in and subsidize the Dog-ear clipping market?

Erm....

phalsebob: Granted, but my sin is even worse than that, in that I'm trying to go beyond the book (I wish I'd never mentioned the book, it's fucking irrelevant to what I'm saying) to draw some broad social conclusions. It's attempted omniscience and I'm hardly qualified, but I decided years back that this was no point to shut up about it (esp. on the internet) because there ain't no other way I'll learn nothing.

Let's forget the book. Basically I'm saying, the Pro Choice argument rightly (IMO) points out, among many other things, that abortion should be legal because a great number of women (and their families) are incapable, for whatever reason, of raising them. It is not only unjust to force them to, but a terrible social burden on the rest of us to have poorly raised kids running around. Where I start to get queasy is that there are, clearly, social groups in this country that are, as a consequence of specific policies (for example, the neoliberal economics I mentioned, also the drug war, all the institutionalized racism... I'm just throwing them out, pick whatever reason you have to explain it), economically disadvantaged. In addition (or perhaps as consequence), they also have less access to education, more exposure to violence, less cohesive social networks, etc. I think of these things as well understood, but we can discuss this if you disagree. Then you have what I flippantly termed one "technoliberal" response to this, which is to expand access to abortions to these disadvantaged groups. It's far harder to, you know, solve all the problems. Harder to rebuild an industrial base, harder to reform schools, harder to end the drug war... In the meantime, a convenient technofix - e.g. abortions - will be employed to alleviate the problem. It is, and I'm not denying it is, a kind of solution, but it does raise some unsettling questions in the mind of many people. It's the same thing liberals always do when push comes to shove. We know we should probably solve global warming by cutting back on our wasteful lifestyles. But that's soooo hard. Better to buy fancy new hybrid cars and pray that solar power becomes less of an urban myth sometime soon. Of course, the current conservative response to all these issues - close your eyes, hum loudly, pretend it's not happening - is even worse, which is why I vote the way I do. Doesn't mean I have to stop worrying about it.

As to Cena, no I'm not him, but don't you just love how on POETV, some guy will be just clicking along, making witty remarks, five starring cats, for months and months, and then something comes up and they snap and pour out 5000 words and piss everyone off? I'm chuffed that my chance has come up. ... although it does rather often, for me.

Toenails: Thanks, man, for your calmness. I was getting worried there for a second.

Obviously, that is a real clincher. I'm kind of leaving it out because, as far as I can stretch my opinions to some weird places, I can't really get past that. The Right sits around a imagines their utopia where strong and moral families working hard will never need to get an abortion. I'm not dumb enough to believe that will ever be true, and so I fell where I fell in the political spectrum. If I had to be totally honest, though, I'd have to admit that this utopia exerts a strong pull on me (I am, after all, of that cultural milieu) and so increasingly hope we might get to a place sometime where we might discuss how to reduce abortions, to make them, "safe, legal, and rare" or whatever it is Clinton said way back when. Obviously, this ain't going to happen anytime soon/fucking ever... so, shit hits the fan I'll be out shouting one-line slogans along with the rest of us.

@allcaps: I'm not sure where you get "black" out of either the book or what I wrote, as the book didn't cover race in the chapter concerning abortion. You might be recalling Bill Bennet's response to it:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/bill-bennett- and-freakonomics/

That article might clear up a few more points for you as well.

As for presuming that this is some kind of social engineering experiment on the poor, I don't see that at all. I do see that unwanted pregnancy can be a larger burden for the poor than it is for the middle and upper classes (both if they choose to have the child or if they want to safely have an abortion).

The whole "techno-neo-liberal" hoo-hah you're tossing around just seems like an excuse to vent over some strawman you dislike.

Spirit bulb for awesome cynicism, and for your criticism of neoliberal economics making people think you were some kind of ultra conservative. Way to expose ignorance!

Kleenex: Thanks for linking to that article. I do vaguely remember that incident, but I was out of the country at the time and thus think I may have been conflating the discussion of abortions with all the other discussions of black people in that book. You must admit, a lot of it did concern issues of race. Obviously, though, as we can see through your link, the later discussion did focus on this issue in a racialized context, which is more what I was refering to than the book itself. Stripping it of that context, the focus returns to marginalized and economically disadvantaged groups, and I think we arrive at my response to phalsebob. The focus on black in this particular context comes from the posting itself - there's even a tag. I just pulled an example out of my ass that I thought people would recognize, in order to say that I understood why Kansas guy could be provocative on this point. Perhaps we can leave the book behind, since I see the reference to it is pissing you off for some reason.

As for social engineering, I can understand if you don't see it. Obviously I'm being a bit provoctive just for the hell of it, but I do think it's there, because if not, what the hell is it? As I asked before, why bother fighting for it, if not to change something? Why not just let rich people do it? And yes, I am basically accusing the left of using abortion, even if unknowingly and with the best of intentions, as part of a vast social engineering scheme to improve the lot of the lower classes. What annoys me is that no one will admit this out of politeness or whatever. I'm pretty damn sure they're talking in this context up in Washington, so why the hell aren't we? And also, in this case, it annoys me that it's unacceptable to even WONDER if this may be adversely affecting the future of certain disproportionately disadvantaged social groups, as dudemo here may be doing. I don't actually know what he's doing, and seriously doubt that is what he's doing. But it's what I'm doing. Whether they be black, or just poor and urban, or just young and female... can't we have a quick wonder if our fantastic expansion of abortion might, MIGHT, have an adverse affect we had not foreseen in the future? I don't even have to say "might," I can guaran-fucking-tee it will, because it always freaking has. If benefits outweigh the costs, then hey, maybe we can get away with it. But let's not sing a happy song and pretend we're saints, just because we can boil it all down to some encouraging aphorisms. Let's sit down and ask ourselves the hardest questions we can. Will we eliminate the next generation of black leaders? Why not wonder, just as an exercise in masochism if nothing else? We won't be able to do it in polite discussion, so why not do it here, where nobody knows our names? We can argue, for example, that a higher rate of abortions in disadvantaged communities would actually INCREASE the chances of exceptional leaders emerging from within them, through a reduction in competition for scant resources and the elimination of adverse influences. Try making that argument in Congress.

As I indicated, though, I don't actually think a focus on exceptional outliers is very useful. I think the guy is nuts for using those two examples to illustrate anything.

As to strawmen, first you accused me of not reading the book and drew conclusions from that, now you're accusing me of taking cues from a rightwing pundit and of setting up strawmen in pursuit of an unthinking personal agenda. I don't really have a response except: Kleenex, stop setting me up as a strawman, dude. I'm entirely willing to have a discussion without my usual theatrics (which I put into the original comment), and to admit an error if I have made one, as I believe I have been illustrating.

This thread was a great read, I laughed, I cried, I forgot I was nude. I really wanted to agree with allcaps because "1+1=WHATEVER THE FUCK $ELL$" was a great line that I wish I had thought of when everyone in econ thesis class was trying to come up with the most inflammatory topics to right about whether or not they had anything to do with economics. But the other guy convinced me allcaps was wrong and someone said "mong men" which sealed the deal.

I just want a tiny flag.

Ah, rats... THA SUGAH RAIN might have the last word on this. This hasn't been very useful in the end. I shall have to revise my pitch with more pretty phrases, but if I do that everyone will mistake me for a Socialist, I fear.

It's my submit. So I get the last word on the wall-of-text thank you very much. >:(

In closing, I want you to give everyone a couple of things to chew on:

1. Rep. Tiahrt's district is Wichita Kansas. You know, the whole "Tiller-the-Baby-Killer-abortion-capital-of-the-world"? Yeah, he's elected by those constitutes (Not exactly, since district 4 includes all of Kansas west Wichita and westward. But even still, more people live in Wichita than the rest of the district).

2. If you click "Im a Kansas" tag you will notice that this title wordwraps at "Obama's mother got money for an abortion." and that is just fucking hilarious.

Toenails,

You are incorrect about point #1. Most of Kansas, including the entirety of the west, is encompassed by the first district, represented by Jerry Moran of Hays (home town pride, yay!). The fourth district in only the southeast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas%27s_1st_congressional_district

Western Kansas is of the Great Plains. It has a truly libertarian, small government, man-of-the-earth, I don't really care what you do in your bedroom sort of mentality. (Yes, there are exceptions. It is very Catholic, and abortion is a non-starter.) Still, you are as likely to find folks who describe themselves as "conservative Democrats" or "liberal Republicans" as anything else. Or, as my father avers: "I'm a Republican, I just haven't been able to vote that way for a long time."

Wichita is a cesspit, and Tiahrt emblematic of why I don't go south of I-70 if I can help it. As Kansas is the center of the 48 contiguous states and broadly quarterable thereby, so is its southeast section representative of the worst of southern stereotypes. It might as well be Oklahoma, or Missouri.

Tiahrt and Moran are facing off to replace Sam Brownback in the next Senate campaign. I am pulling hugely for Moran, as that would allow me some civic pride in the state I was born and grew up in, and still feel attachment and affection for (north of the interstate...) Jerry is a decent dude with whom I happen to disagree about many things--but he's an honest and upright enough fellow. Todd Tiahrt is a small-minded, racist, bigoted fuck, and I would be ashamed to have him represent me in the Senate of the United States.

azraiel,

Terribly, terribly, sorry for fucking up the lines and putting your area under his district. I know I wouldn't stand for somebody saying that Tiahrt represented Topeka in congress.

And the way I understand it, Moran is trouncing Tiahrt in the fund-raising dept., but I don't know if he's going to be ready for the dirty politics in the race for Senator.

http://cjonline.com/news/state/2009-07-16/senate_race_will_tes t_gop_base
(remove spaces where needed)

Good luck with you guy, I know whoever is going to run on the Dem ticket simply won't have a fucking chance.

yeah, he can only think of two black people.
i can think of at least five.
but they're all wayans bros and i don't know their first names.

and what about the video?

I don't like to 5-star my own video Foolish.

So how about an internet high-five?

555 555 555
555 555 555 555
555 555 555 555
555 555 555 555
555 555 555 555 555
555 555 555 555 555
555 5555555555555555
555 5555555555555555
5555555555555555555
55555555555555555
5555555555555555
5555555555555
5555555555555

yeah, that failed. :(