FBI Gang Threat Assessment Of The Emerging Juggalo Menace

The picture at right, given the filename "juggalette-with_possible_firearm_-atf_file_photo_www_red-alerts.jpeg", is Figure 6 from the FBI 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, which makes 44 references to Juggalos. I didn't realize that Juggalos were a gang. I thought they just liked to go around listening to bad music and drinking Faygo.

The following certainly came as news to me: "NGIC reporting indicates that Juggalo gangs are expanding in New Mexico primarily because they are attracted to the tribal and cultural traditions of the Native Americans residing nearby." Maybe that's how they plan to figure out how magnets work. In any event, that's more impressive of them than I would've thought, unless they're just going there to see if they can score some peyote.

In other FBI Gang Threat Assessment commentary, whose idea was it to call a gang the "Oriental Fantasy Boys"?

Who Hates Herman Cain? Part 2

Bolstering the case for the Perry explanation of Herman Cain's sexual harassment scandal, a consultant for a firm that does some polling for Perry is saying that he knew Cain was harassing women. Chris Wilson used to work for the National Restaurant Association at the time, and apparently he was with Cain when the major events took place. He might've been the one to tell Perry's people where the bodies were buried, so they could get the info out to Politico. For exactly the reasons Matt cites -- Perry could win a one-on-one showdown with Romney, but he's not going to get that as long as Cain is riding high -- that's exactly what they'd be eager to do.

[Update]: Cain himself accepts the Perry theory! You heard it here first.

Free Trade Is Beating Labor Mobility

It's disappointing to learn that Nick Clegg and David Cameron are trying to keep skilled non-EU immigrants (basically, people like me) out of the UK.

Restrictions on the trade of goods seem to be less severe and more easily overturned than restrictions on labor mobility. We buy a lot of stuff from China and Mexico, but Chinese people and Mexicans have to jump through all kinds of hoops to come here, and in many cases they aren't allowed to. And that's well over and above the larger costs of transportation. Container shipping for goods is cheap, but if people come over that way something has gone horribly wrong. So transit costs are higher for labor mobility than for mobility of goods, and on top of that, governments add extra regulatory barriers.

I'm seeing this as an instance of the organized power of businesses to influence regulation, which the rest of us as poorly organized individuals don't have.

Condorcet Wants Kids To Vote

I've been reading the discussion following Jonathan Bernstein's "Kids Vote" proposal with some interest. Extending the voting age downward by at least a couple years strikes me as a good idea.

I think this despite accepting a view of democracy that Bernstein sees as most opposed to the Kids Vote proposal -- the view that "justifies democracy on the basis of an informed individuals, thinking for themselves, being the best way to make good decisions about public policy." If you think kids are just barely better than random in determining who should rule, adding their votes to the system will push things in the right direction overall. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what he means by 'informed', but large numbers of barely informed people can systematically contribute to good public policy if each is right 51% of the time in two-way choices. And then their small but positive level of information is actually producing good public policy. (This sort of reasoning, where larger numbers of barely informed people end up increasing the probability of good decisions, is the kind employed in Condorcet's Jury Theorem.)

Who Hates Herman Cain?

Herman Cain is blaming liberals for the recent sexual harrassment allegations against him. I guess that's the thing to say if you're running for the GOP nomination, but obviously it would be dumb timing for any actual liberal to hand a bad story on Cain to the media right now. If you're a liberal, you'd sit tight and wait until Cain is the nominee to start dumping stuff on him. (I think Cain is extremely unlikely to be the nominee.)

This looks like the work of one of his GOP competitors. My top suspect would be the Perry campaign, just because it makes sense for them to do it -- they certainly don't want this Cain surge lasting any longer.