William Bennett's Plan to Reduce Crime

It's a doozy, folks.

From mediamatters.org:

Bill Bennett: "[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down"

Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down."

Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.

From the September 28 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America:

CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.

BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?

CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.

BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.

CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.

BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --

CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

I don't think we even need to say anything here. Bennett did a pretty damn good job all by his lonesome.

White supremacist runs for Minneapolis council

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sept. 1, 2005:

Rochelle Olson, Star Tribune
September 1, 2005

Larry Leininger, a University of Minnesota janitor, is running for the Minneapolis City Council's open Third Ward seat on a white supremacy and segregationist platform.

Leininger, 53, said the city should ask nonwhites not to come to Minneapolis. "My yardstick for deciding whether or not a piece of legislation should be passed is whether it's beneficial to white people," he said in an interview Wednesday. "In the past, everything's been going against white people."

Leininger, who affiliates with the "White Working Man's Party," is one of five candidates running in the Third Ward, just off of downtown in northeast and a small portion of north Minneapolis. The ward is open because of redistricting.

Diane Hofstede, a Library Board trustee, is heavily favored to be one of two candidates who will advance from the Sept. 13 nonpartisan primary to the Nov. 8 election. The rest of the field includes novices Aaron Neumann of the Green Party and independents Julian Pishko and Mike Ludwig.

Leininger is a long shot. He ran for mayor in 2001 and received 78 votes in the primary. Mayor R.T. Rybak was the top vote recipient that year with 20,059, or 34 percent.

Leininger's white supremacy platform is unusual for the city. Asked whether he expects to win or just hopes to put out a message, Leininger said he thinks he may have an outside shot at winning and adds, "Yes, I am getting a message out. Hopefully, after a while, it will sink in."

In addition to his supremacy views, Leininger favors a trackless trolley system instead of light-rail expansion. He would power the trolleys with a hydroelectric dam on the Mississippi River.

So far, his campaign has amounted to distributing some pamphlets that argue that black people have IQs so far below white people that affirmative action should be precluded. While Asians have slightly higher average IQs than whites, fewer of them are geniuses, Leininger's pamphlet says.

Leininger said that affirmative action works against white people and that "since the 1960s, the government has gone against white people."

He would pursue passage of an ordinance allowing the Minneapolis Police Department to ask immigrants for their documentation at traffic stops.

Leininger said he doesn't intend to spend a lot of money on the campaign. "I figure I owe it to society. I've benefited from society and I ought to pay back a little to society."

The party to which he affiliates "is not huge, but you've got to start someplace," Leininger said.

Natalie Johnson Lee, one of two black members of the City Council, said, "We'll contend with Larry if he gets through the primary, which I seriously doubt."


I don't think I need to say anything other than, Comments anyone?

EDIT:

More information can be found at the sites listed below...

On Downtown's East Bank, rolling down the river ward

White Working Man's Party website

Larry's email address: whiteworkingmans@excite.com

And this archived Minnesota Daily article from July 2001 has a picture of our buddy Larry:
New Party Makes First Mayoral Bid

SECOND EDIT: Anyone else think he resembles Denethor from Lord of the Rings? He has that same kind of evil look about him.