Which American city overpays the most in federal taxes, relative to the federal benefits it receives?

San Francisco. Another one of the most overpaying cities is New York City.

A silver lining to budget cuts for police departments

Budget cuts are forcing the police to come up with innovative ways to police more efficiently, possibly spurring police departments to achieve the same or even better results than in the past, at lower costs.

That article focuses on this example (though it also lists several others):

Partnering with criminologists from George Mason University, a team led by Sacramento Police Sergeant Renée Mitchell identified 42 “hotspots”—street corners that attracted the highest percentages of violent crime in California’s second most violent city.

As part of a 90-day study conducted between February and May this year, Mitchell and her team assigned officers to visit a randomized rotation of three or four of these hotspots for 12 to 16 minutes apiece during shifts. That meant police would inhabit Sacramento’s most dangerous corners about every two hours. The officers were told to be “highly visible” during these visits—to step outside patrol cars, to talk with people.

This was a change for Sacramento police. It focused on places to target rather than specific crimes, and relied on data rather than police instinct. The results, Mitchell says, were striking.

“Part I” crimes—which include violent offenses such as murder, rape and robbery, as well as property crimes such as burglary and vehicle theft—decreased by 25 percent in these hotspots. Calls for service decreased by nearly 8 percent.

The police were able to achieve those huge successes in the most high-crime areas of the city for just $75,000, which the article tell us is "less than one percent" of the police department's 2011 budget of $116 million. If my math is right, that's technically true but a dramatic understatement: 75,000 divided by 116 million isn't just less than one-hundredth; it's less than one-thousandth (about 0.065%). If you multiply the cost by 4 to estimate what this practice would cost year-round (instead of the study's 3-month period), it's only about a quarter of 1% (about 0.259%). The media expect us to think of "one percent" as "the smallest possible percentage," so they don't bother to make even smaller divisions than that.

Mitchell, the police sergeant who led the team that implemented the study, says:

“Arrests are glamorous. . . . People want to see that guns and drugs are being taken off the streets. But that’s reactive. We should be working to prevent. Our job is to reduce the opportunity for crime, not necessarily to patrol every street corner and make high-profile arrests. Sooner or later we’re going to have to face that.”

I've tagged this post with "unintended consequences." That phrase is normally considered negative, but it can be positive too.

(The article is from a brand-new site by the Atlantic called the Atlantic Cities.)

Mickey Kaus gets 5%, ends his California Senate campaign, and concedes.

"I congratulate Senator Boxer on her primary victory. But the results send more than one message.

"I'm a blogger. I spent about $40,000. I had one part-time aide, a recent college grad who was prepping for his LSATs. We had no headquarters, no pollsters, no highly paid strategists and consultants. We had a couple of laptops and an old Volvo. And we still ripped off more than 100,000 votes from a three term incumbent because there is a large group of voters who are dissatisfied with the prevailing dogma of the Democratic party . . . "

UPDATE: Kaus and TNR's Jon Chait have dueling interpretations of the percentages.

Blacks and same-sex marriage

This is one of the most appallingly prejudiced things I've read in a while.

The author of that L.A. Times editorial, Jasmyne Cannick, is writing about the exit polls that provocatively revealed that "black voters in California voted against gay marriage by more than 2 to 1" -- in contrast with the electorate as a whole, which voted the same way (for Proposition 8) but only by 52%.

Her position: blacks have been right not to support same-sex marriage.

Now, she doesn't quite say she's against same-sex marriage; she carefully leaves open the possibility that she supports it but just sees it as such a low priority that it's not worth devoting any effort to. But she doesn't have a word to say in favor of it even in principle.

How does she justify blacks' role in undoing same-sex marriage in California? She says (a) there are just too many other problems facing black people, and (b) it's hard to see how same-sex marriage would help black people. 

A few points:

1. It's a very convenient excuse, anytime you don't want to take an issue seriously, to point out the existence of other problems that should be taken seriously. Apparently there's a pretty stringent limit to the number of issues we're allowed to think about.
2. Every paragraph of the article says basically the same thing: that blacks should see a clear dividing line between "white" and "black" in American society, and exclusively focus on the problems facing the black side. (As is so often the case, other races aren't even part of the discussion.)

Well, imagine if everyone decided to put that principle into practice. That is, everyone only cares about what's good for their own group. There's no loftier goal than securing benefits for your own side. Would that principle be good for blacks, in a democracy where they're only 12% of the population?
3. Some of her specific examples are inadvertently comical. She says: "The right to marry does nothing to address the problems faced by both black gays and black straights. Does someone who is ... suffering from HIV but has no healthcare ... really benefit from the right to marry someone of the same sex?"

Would someone who's suffering due to a lack of health care be helped by being able to marry the person they love? Um ... yes! Health care does have something to do with being allowed to legally marry!

Another one: "I don't see why the right to marry should be a priority for me or other black people. Gay marriage? Please. At a time when blacks are still more likely than whites to be pulled over for no reason ...." Actually, a lot of people would be more upset about losing the right to marry than they'd be about being randomly pulled over. It's far from clear that racial profiling is a more important issue than same-sex marriage; the idea that it's so dramatically more important than same-sex marriage that the former should somehow eliminate same-sex marriage from consideration is just nutty.
4. There's a meme out there that liberals need to "get religion" (literally) if they want to be politically successful -- that there needs to be a religious left to counteract the religious right. Excuse me if I'm not exactly gung-ho about this idea after reading something like this:

White gays often wonder aloud why blacks, of all people, won't support their civil rights. There is a real misunderstanding by the white gay community about the term. Proponents of gay marriage fling it around as if it is a one-size-fits-all catchphrase for issues of fairness.

But the black civil rights movement was essentially born out of and driven by the black church; social justice and religion are inextricably intertwined in the black community. To many blacks, civil rights are grounded in Christianity -- not something separate and apart from religion but synonymous with it. To the extent that the issue of gay marriage seemed to be pitted against the church, it was going to be a losing battle in my community.

5. A blog called The Republic of T. (which has the tagline, "Black. Gay. Father. Vegetarian. Buddhist. Liberal.") has an excellent response. Here's a brief sample (click through to the post if you're interested in his links to back up the facts):

Mikki Mozelle and Lisa Kebreau, a Black lesbian couple — among those for whom Cannick thinks marriage equality isn’t a priority — who were also one of the plaintiff couples in Maryland’s marriage lawsuit, spent upwards of $6,000 on legal documents to give their family a few protections, and with no guarantee that their documents will be recognized.

In the Maryland County where I live, a $55 application fee gets you a marriage license and the 1,049 benefits and protections that come with it. So heterosexuals pay about $0.05 per protection/benefit. Mozlle and Kebreau (and other Black gay couples) pay hundreds of times more than heterosexuals for less protection and fewer benefits....

Wesley Mercer, a gay Black man, died on September 11, 2001, while helping evacuate the World Trade Center. His partner of 26 years, Bill Randolph, also a Black gay man, struggled to get equal recognition for their relationship. Morgan Stanley, Mercer’s employer, gave him $700 to cover immediate expenses, and later a check for $10,000. Though Mercer supplied half the household income, Randolph does not receive Social Security benefits, workers’ compensation, or Mercer’s 25-year army pension. Only spouses are eligible.

Randolph has spoken up about what he faced as a gay, man losing a partner on 9/11, without the benefits and protections of marriage. I doubt he believes he or any of the Black gay couples who were plaintiffs in the state marriage lawsuits — Corey Davis & Andre LeJune (CA), Mikki Mozelle & Lisa Kebreau (MD), Alvin Williams & Nigel Simon (MD), Takia Foskey & Jo Rabb (MD), Alicia Heath-Toby & Saundra Toby-Heath (NJ) — would agree that that inequality is a “secondary issue.”