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Joe Biden falsely claimed on multiple occasions that the number of reported rapes in Flint, Mich., has skyrocketed since 2008 — providing different accounts at different events that do not square with FBI data. He started at a 152 percent increase, and since then has said rapes in Flint have tripled and even “quadrupled.” But FBI data show the number of rapes in Flint has gone down 11 percent, from 103 in 2008 to 92 in 2010.

Biden also said the city’s murder rate has “tripled.” The city says there were a record-high 66 murders last year — double, not triple, the 32 murders that occurred in 2008.


Rapes Haven’t ‘Quadrupled’

The vice president has been touring the country delivering his pitch for the American Jobs Act, President Barack Obama’s $447 billion plan that includes $35 billion to prevent the layoff of police, firefighters and teachers. On Oct. 12, Biden visited Flint, Mich., which has had the highest violent crime rate in the nation for the last two years. The city’s violent crime rate has increased from 20.2 violent crimes per 1,000 residents in 2008 to 22.1 in 2010, a jump of about 9 percent, our analysis of FBI reports shows.

Crime is bad in Flint, no doubt, but Biden makes it out to be worse than it is.





http://factcheck.org/2011/10/bidens-whopper-in-flint-mich/

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
With Obama's newest spending plan defeated in the Senate, they've decided to now try to sell the beaten and bloody thing to 4th graders. Joe Biden is a gift for Republicans. I pray he stays on the road campaigning.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

Biden is exactly that, but for what ever reason, the history of the GOP is to NOT take advantage of such gifts. Maybe they just assume that the American public is smart enough to figure it out, and to play up the fact of Biden's idiocy and incompetence would be over kill, but I don't know.

The GOP almost never takes advantage of the opposition's blunders like this.

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The Facts

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/bidens-absurd-cl
aims-about-rising-rape-and-murder-rates/2011/10/20/gIQAkq0y1L_blog.html

Flint is certainly a violent city, ranked number one in many categories. The website of the Flint Police Department only gives data through 2008, but both the FBI and the Michigan State Police have more recent figures that are provided to them by the Flint police. The numbers are not precisely the same because of different reporting requirements, but they are roughly the same—and show a different picture than reported by Biden.

The Flint website for 2008 shows the same figures that Biden cited: 35 murders and 91 rapes.

Here’s what the FBI shows:

2008
City of Flint: 32 murders, 103 rapes

Surrounding area: 37 murders, 239 rapes

RATE PER 100,000 INHABITANTS: murder, 8.6; rape 55.5

2009
City of Flint: 36 murders, 91 rapes

Surrounding area: 44 murders, 235 rapes

RATE PER 100,000 INHABITANTS: murder, 10.3; rape, 55.1

2010
City of Flint: 53 murders, 92 rapes

Surrounding area: 58 murders, 225 rapes

RATE PER 100,000 INHABITANTS: murder, 13.8; rape 53.7

More important than the raw figures is the rate per 100,000 individuals. Murder did go up—though the rate did not double from 2009 to 2010, as Biden claimed. But rape has gone down. Biden actually asserted it had tripled.

Biden’s office referred us to officials in Flint. After inquiries from The Fact Checker, Dawn Jones, a spokeswoman for Flint’s mayor, issued a statement from Public Safety Director Chief Alvern Lock saying: “The City of Flint stands behind the crime statistics provided to the Office of The Vice President….This information is the most accurate data and demonstrates the rise in crime associated with the economic crisis and the reduced staffing levels.”

The statement said the murder rate for 2010 was different than the FBI statistics because of a “clerical error” when the data was submitted to the FBI. (Someone in the police department forgot to add people to the murder rate if they died long after the assault.) But the revised number for the FBI will be 58 murders, not Biden’s figure of 65, because the FBI only counts willful homicides, not manslaughter and negligent homicide, Jones said.

The statement, however, was strangely silent on the massive discrepancy in the rape statistics. There have been a number of studies (see here and here) that document that the FBI statistics do not capture all forms of rape. The FBI stats include forcible intercourse but not oral sex or other forms of sexual assault.

But that issue does not explain why Biden’s rape statistics would be so much higher than what was reported in the local press over the years. The Flint Journal on May 24, in fact, reported the number of rapes had declined in the city from 2009 to 2010.

Jones, in an interview, said that the city had never released the broader rape figure to the public until the vice president’s office requested the data. “We have never shared that number,” she said, agreeing that it was strange that Flint’s official rape figure for 2008—91--was actually lower than the FBI figure for that year, even with the FBI’s more narrow definition of rape.

“I am thinking that maybe there is no policy on how we input those numbers,” Jones said. She could not provide an explanation Thursday night, but our working assumption is that these numbers are apples and oranges. The proper comparison with Flint’s 2008 figure appears to be the FBI’s figure for 2010--showing a decline in rapes. The higher figure for 2010 cited by Biden is simply a different data set.

Interestingly, Flint Police Chief Lock has repeatedly asserted that cuts in staffing had little effect on the crime rate.

As the Flint Journal reported in May: “Officials said the fact that 46 police officers were laid off last year had little to do with the escalating crime. Most of the crimes were between people that knew each other. ‘No matter how many officers we have, we can't stop disputes between two people in their own homes,’ Lock said.”

Lock made a similar assertion in September, 2010, when FBI statistics were released showing violent crime in Flint had decreased in 2009. The Flint Journal reported: “A smaller police force doesn't automatically mean more crime, said Flint police chief Alven Lock. ‘There's been years when we had 300 officers and we still had more homicides,’ he said, referring to 1986, when he was in the homicide division and homicides hit an all-time high of 61.”

As Jones put it, “we have a messaging problem.”

This brings us to the central point of Biden’s argument--that fewer police officers means more crime. More police officers might certainly mean more arrests and convictions, particularly for less noteworthy crimes, but researchers have strived to make a link between murders and officers on the street.

University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt, who examined ten possible factors for why crime fell in the 1990s, made a noteworthy effort in 2004 to assess the importance of additional cops. He included the increase in police as one factor that could explain the decline in crime. But he also said that other key factors included a rising prison population, the receding crack epidemic and even the legalization of abortion (which resulted in fewer unwanted births).

In other words, even if you could make a link, it is likely one of many factors that affects the crime rate, not the single one, as Biden suggests. The FBI itself lists more than a dozen variables in what causes crime to increase in a community.

Others believe the connection is tenuous, at best. “There is limited or no correlation between the number of officers and the homicide rate,” said David Carter, a Michigan State University criminal justice professor who works with the Justice Department to track homicides. “To draw any kind of conclusion on simply the number of officers and the number of homicides is virtually meaningless. There are too many other variables that will influence the commission of homicides as well as clearances. In essence, the reporting of this simple data, whether using Biden's data or city data, does not describe changes in the incidents of homicides in Flint or any city.”

Andrew Kramer of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice also has closely studied the reasons for the decline of crime in New York City. “The NYPD has decreased in size by about 4,000 officers to 36,000 since 2000 and yet crime has continued to go down,” he said.



The Pinocchio Test
Biden, when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1994, was author of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the largest crime bill in U.S. history. On the face of it, a threefold increase in rape in two years—when other violent crime statistics show relatively modest increases in the same city—should raise serious questions for anyone knowledgeable about crime or statistics. Clearly, the city of Flint supplied bad data, and either Biden or someone in Biden’s office should have caught it.

In any case, the vice president should know better than to spout off half-baked facts in service of a dubious argument. Even if one believes there is a link between crime and the number of police—which is debatable and subject to many caveats—there is no excuse to make the dramatic claim that more people will die or be raped without additional funds for police. When making such a breathtaking charge, you had better have your facts straight.

Four Pinocchios

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Joe Biden falsely claimed on multiple occasions that the number of reported rapes in Flint, Mich., has skyrocketed since 2008 — providing different accounts at different events that do not square with FBI data. He started at a 152 percent increase, and since then has said rapes in Flint have tripled and even “quadrupled.” But FBI data show the number of rapes in Flint has gone down 11 percent, from 103 in 2008 to 92 in 2010.

Biden also said the city’s murder rate has “tripled.” The city says there were a record-high 66 murders last year — double, not triple, the 32 murders that occurred in 2008.


Rapes Haven’t ‘Quadrupled’

The vice president has been touring the country delivering his pitch for the American Jobs Act, President Barack Obama’s $447 billion plan that includes $35 billion to prevent the layoff of police, firefighters and teachers. On Oct. 12, Biden visited Flint, Mich., which has had the highest violent crime rate in the nation for the last two years. The city’s violent crime rate has increased from 20.2 violent crimes per 1,000 residents in 2008 to 22.1 in 2010, a jump of about 9 percent, our analysis of FBI reports shows.

Crime is bad in Flint, no doubt, but Biden makes it out to be worse than it is.





http://factcheck.org/2011/10/bidens-whopper-in-flint-mich/

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Maybe he was thinking of all those headless bodies littering the Arizona desert, and including them in his stats.

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
A Nobel Peace Prize to Antifa / BLM ?

https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffdavidson/2021/01/31/a-nobel-peace-
prize-to-black-lives-matter-n2583972

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
A Nobel Peace Prize to Antifa / BLM ?

https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffdavidson/2021/01/31/a-nobel-peace-
prize-to-black-lives-matter-n2583972

Biden brings back critical race theory

https://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/3240193-b
iden-brings-back-critical-race-theory.html




U.S. economy contracts in 2020; worst performance since 1946
https://www.narutoforums.org/threads/u-s-economy-contracts-in-2020-wor
st-performance-since-1946.1220887/

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The problem with necroposts. I was like whoa, we still have auraptor?

I think Joe has no idea where he is

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Originally posted by second:
With that one move, 8,000 Taliban, or even as few as 800 Taliban could conquer all of Afghanistan.

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Originally posted by second:

Why aren't the Afghans killing Taliban?

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:

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Originally posted by second:

Why aren't the Afghans killing Taliban?

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Because that's not how Kandahar works. And our idea that Kabul decides the fate of that country is our failure to understand how that country works.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by second:
With that one move, 8,000 Taliban, or even as few as 800 Taliban could conquer all of Afghanistan.

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Remember the Alatalibanimo!

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Come'on man!

That one wasn't even chuckleworthy?

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Come'on man!

That one wasn't even chuckleworthy?

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Nothing is funny when it is this expensive:

Estimated amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has debt-financed as of 2020: $2 trillion.

Estimated interest costs by 2050: Up to $6.5 trillion.

THE WARS END. THE COSTS DON’T:

Amount Bilmes estimates the United States has committed to pay in health care, disability, burial and other costs for roughly 4 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans: more than $2 trillion.

Period those costs will peak: after 2048.

PAYING FOR A WAR ON CREDIT, NOT IN CASH:

Amount President Harry Truman temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for Korean War: 92%.

Amount President Lyndon Johnson temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for Vietnam War: 77%.

Amount President George W. Bush lowered top tax rates for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars: 8%.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-08-14/costs-of-the-
afghanistan-war-in-lives-and-dollars

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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