Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: Tis' the season for Domestic Violence? murders?

In a recent article, Truth is a commodity for J&J, Wells Fargo, Wall Street & Media, I pointed out that there's inadequate or conflicting claims about whether or not there's spike in domestic violence during the holidays, with several articles claiming that there's inadequate research into the subject. A couple articles on the subject claim that the assumption that violence spikes during the holidays is a "myth" backing this claim up with what they imply is scientific research from some experts, including some advocates for domestic violence victims, although it's not hard to find other advocates for victims claiming the opposite.

In the previous article, without doing a thorough search I cited four violent incidents that turned up on one Florida newspaper, that I came across, following that I did a more thorough search on Google, which still is far from complete, but it turned up a large number of shootings and murders during the holidays, in some cases, enough to show that some areas really did have above average murder rates for a few days and in at least a couple states, including Louisiana, there was indeed a spike in murders, although this doesn't reflect all types of domestic violence.

Louisiana had three murders in the fifteenth of November, one day before Thanksgiving, five on Thanksgiving Day, five on Sunday after Thanksgiving, in Sunday before Christmas, four Christmas Eve, six Christmas Day, four New Years Eve, three New Years Day; although my search methods almost certainly didn't turn up most of the murders for November or December, putting it well above the average for that state for the holidays or days that it did turn up murders, which consistently has the highest murder rates in the country with over five-hundred-fifty murders per year, with less than five million people. Louisiana had 582 murders in 2017 and 555 in 2016, so they have about an average of 1.6 per day; so any day with two or more is above average, which includes all the Holidays and Christmas and New Years Eves, but the rest of the murders during November or December are much less likely to turn up on a search using the holiday and murder, so the rest of the month is inconclusive without further data.

Tennessee also routinely makes it into the top ten for murder rates and had a gruesome murder where someone Dismembered, and attempted to dissolve his parents in acid on Thanksgiving weekend of 2016. They also had one more murders on Christmas Eve, two on Christmas Day, one on New Years Eve, and two on New Years Day, in 2018-9 along with numerous more shootings or other incidents which is enough to put it at least a little above average for those days, but it could be even higher if there are additional reports that didn't turn up in the search.

Some additional crunching of the numbers will be helpful; but, most of the states still allowing corporal punishment in schools, and presumably using it more at home too, had more murders or shootings than the states without out CP in schools, in most cases compared to the typical murder rates for the state, although this is only likely to apply to Christmas Day, or Christmas Eve, in some cases I checked for New Years or Thanksgiving, but this search wasn't as thorough. The most notable exception from states no longer allowing it was probably Ohio which had a high number of incidents, but several of the least violent states also had an increase in violent crime for the holidays as well, although in these cases one or two murders is often enough to put them above average.

The Union Leader provided a reasonably complete list of murders in New Hampshire and they probably had the second highest number of murders in 2018 than in the past ten years and five out of twenty one took place during November and December, including one on Thanksgiving. Occasionally some murders are discovered right away, and often start as missing persons report, but if no other murders turn up that is enough to put it above average and Maine and Hawaii both had murders, stabbings or shootings, over the holidays which is enough to make them above average, since they have among the lowest murder rates as well. Maine had a double murder discovered on New Years Day this year and another double murder on Christmas Day in 2015, since they only have about 20-25 murders a year that's enough to push beat the average even if there were't any more holiday murders for years. Hawaii had a stabbing on Christmas Day this year, and a murder on Christmas Day in 2016, which is enough to put it moderately above average for that state.

Many of the articles reporting on alleged increases of violence during the holidays all cite the same study from Idaho, Domestic Violence and the Holidays 11/30/2010, which says "Although Idaho is not likely to be representative of larger and more urbanized states in terms of index crimes, there is little reason to believe that IPV characteristics in Idaho aren’t generalizable to all states." This is a surprising statement from someone involved in research on domestic violence, since most good sociologists, including Murray Straus routinely point out that no one study is comprehensive, and he often cross checked many different studies before coming to conclusions. Many crime reporters in some of the more violent arias, like Louisiana, almost certainly recognize that the spike in violence during the holidays almost certainly isn't just a "myth" in their areas, even if it doesn't apply to all other states equally.

Idaho is a very rural state similar to other North Western States but very different from the South, or New England, and it's among the least violent states in the country, the only one that still allows corporal Punishment in schools, although they practically never use it, to make it into the bottom ten for murder rates. However it still had their share of murders on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, although this year the deaths caused over the holidays were accidents they had murders in 2003, 2011 and 2014; which is enough to put it moderately above average, or average, since Idaho only has about thirty to fifty murders per year.

At best violence doesn't take much of a break for the holidays at worst it's higher, especially in some of the most violent areas. But most people involved in this research agree that there's a need for more research, with a few exceptions.

According to an article, The Holiday Spike in Domestic Abuse It's not new, and it's getting worse this year. 12/23/2014 2014 report from Wayback Machine, "There is also the issue of research funding—there just hasn’t been enough money to do an exhaustive report on exactly how many people are reaching out, the different channels they may be using, where in the U.S. they are, and who exactly they’re contacting. And frankly, domestic violence advocates are okay with this. 'Any extra money we do have, let me use it on transitional housing, let me use it to put someone back on their feet. For people working in the shelters, domestic violence is pervasive all the time, I don’t need a report to tell me that,' said Kim Pentico, director of the economic justice project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence."

If the politicians and policy makers aren't willing to base their decision on the most reliable research, which they don't appear to be, it would be tempting to agree with this; however, even though they aren't there still needs to be more research so activists can know what types of policies they need to push for that could do a far more effective job preventing this violence. Another reason why we should do more research, is that even if we don't do a comprehensive study covering all types of violence, some of it can be done fairly inexpensively, with limited resources. The listing of incidents that I compiled her didn't take much time and with more help to organize it it could show when some of this violence is more likely to take place and possibly help understand why, and how to prevent it more effectively. But some of this simply requires sincere intentions, which many people more concerned with corporate profits often don't have, and they often accuse advocates of being biased, even when their research is better quality.

We actually have enough research in the academic world and in libraries to know what the most important contributing causes of violence are; but the mainstream media practically never reports on this and politicians don't discuss it often either unless they're pressured at the grassroots level, which in some parts of the country, often the least violent parts, they often are. We need more citizens educated about the leading causes of violence to pressure politicians in order to prevent the contributing causes of violence.

The leading causes of violence during the holidays are almost certainly the same as it is the rest of the year; and as I've reported previously the most important one is early child abuse including corporal punishment leading to escalating violence later in life. Poverty and income inequality are also leading contributing causes of violence, especially in abandoned inner cities with little or no educational or economic opportunities.

Even though these are the leading causes of violence there also has to be additional reasons why many areas are more violent during the holidays, and part of it is clearly a result of the hype around obsessive shopping, which leads to an increase in violence at malls or Walmart, which just broke another record for the most shootings in a month with at least twenty probably more; the previous record was eighteen set in 2016, with an unusually low number, only seven in 2017, but November had between thirteen and fifteen shootings each November between 2016 and 2018; and even the one holiday month with fewer shootings they had plenty of other violent incidences which are higher than most of the year.

Also the Idaho study they cite most of these articles claims that "New Year’s Day has 2.7 times more incidents of domestic violence, followed by Independence Day." And it also says, "Once the Holiday season is over, there is an average 5% increase in call volume over the next two weeks." Even some of the articles that claim that a spike in violence over the holidays is a myth often admit that many of the victims of domestic violence are reluctant to report it because they don't want to break up the family during Christmas. They often speculate that part of the reason why it increases so much on New Years and the two weeks following it is because they hold off reporting it til after the holidays.

Another part of the reason calls increase after the holidays is that this may be when large amounts of credit card bills come in, perhaps from excessive shopping for the holidays season. Holiday shopping has to be the most wasteful spending of the year, and most people don't even think about questioning it or thinking about whether they're getting their money's worth, which is why corporations love it, but after the hype is over there could be a big let down.

The reason we never even question obsessive spending might that we're taught that the way to show we love people is to buy them stuff, and many people are shamed into it, even if the products they buy have little or no practical value. We often say it's the thought that counts, and when we're expected to buy so many items for so many people including many that we don't really care that much about although it's not socially acceptable to admit it.

When people make bad choices for gifts, of course we say, "it's the thought that counts," and often that's all the people getting the gift really get while the corporations get the profits from selling wasteful useless garbage! Perhaps the saying should be "It's the profit for corporations making a killing off wasteful spending that counts!"

We're taught that we're supposed to get all excited over pretty diamond rings, or pearls or other decorations that don't really improve the quality of life but are designed to show our status, and the wealthy rig the economy year round but especially during the holidays when they control epidemic levels of propaganda telling us to BUY BUY BUY all year round but especially during the holidays, with appeals to emotion that we're not supposed to question. As I said in my previous article about Truth being a commodity any effort to question this like Adbusters uncommercials are routinely censored, and more subtly research that might show how excessive consumerism or holiday shopping might contribute to violence isn't even done, or if they have to address the issue at all they come up with massive amounts of propaganda to dismiss the issue.

No doubt this seems like a bah humbug attitude, especially to those that never thought about it before, but Christmas leads to epidemic levels of consumer waste which contributes to poverty that sticks around for the rest of the year; and since that poverty, and fights over money contribute to violence, this epidemic amount of waste actually contributes to violence year round.

Many of these researchers rightfully claim that all types of violence are important and need to be addressed, not just the high profile murders or shootings that reporters focus on or that I've cited here; however, it's difficult if not impossible to know how many of these incidents aren't being reported. Most reports on this estimate that at least half, possibly much more, of these incidents are never reported at all. And murders are the only ones required by the FBI to be reported by local police departments.

In the 2014 study that I did based on 2012 crime rates I noticed that Mississippi was the second highest, when it comes to murder rates, but it was only thirty-fifth when it came to all violent crimes, according to the FBI. All violence is interrelated but they're almost never a perfect correlation, and this was much more than any other state raising doubts about whether they were collecting all the data. There's bound to be some fluctuation in reporting from one state to another, but since this discrepancy was so much larger than other states, it's likely they weren't reporting all the incidents, which adds to other doubts about how many domestic violence incidents are being reported.

Donald Trump's recent speech about how he claims "Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now," also adds to the stereotypes and misconceptions about causes of violence, even though he has virtually no credibility. He cited three examples and misrepresented one of them, who was killed by two people omitting the fact that one of them was a US citizen, and there was also Mollie Tibbetts earlier this year and a few other; however it's highly unlikely that there's a large number of additional stories about illegal immigrants committing murder, especially against the middle class or while people with a reasonable amount of political clout, since the right wing routinely makes these stories go viral on the internet to demonize immigrants. In fact most studies indicate that Hispanic immigrants, which are the ones he demonizes the most, are far less violent then the rest of the public, especially in lower income brackets.

In a previous article I pointed out that the cities along the border have much higher Hispanic populations and lower murder rates and another article cited some of those studies that show Hispanic immigrants are less violent than citizens born in the United States, which clearly discredits all the hype Donald Trump, and many other right wing extremists, are constantly repeating.

Furthermore the reason we have so many illegal immigrants being victims of human trafficking is as I pointed out in Scapegoating human trafficker to protect corporations? to fill the demand for cheap labor in many farms, other low wage jobs, often without workers protections, or even working at Trump's resorts which are routinely exposed hiring illegal immigrants. The demand for victims of human trafficking is being provided by people like Trump that are demonizing the immigrants!

One of the leading causes of violence is poverty and lack of economic opportunities, which illegal immigrants are subject to more than most, yet they're less violent, which is actually surprising, since they have plenty of reason to strike out in anger over how they're being abused by an oppressive immigration system designed to make cheap labor available, then when their are complaints put all the blame on the immigrants, who never had any reasonable opportunities, without blaming the wealthy that profit off their cheap labor; which means that it's inevitable that they might incite some violence occasionally, directly or indirectly.

Regretfully, I'm not sure the same could be said for African Americans as pointed out in this article Do black Americans commit more crime? 11/27/2014 which confirms that African Americans are more likely to commit bmurder and reviewing the articles about holiday murders shows a lot of African Americans; however, it also points out that "Some criminologists think we could be simply confusing race for poverty or inequality: black people tend to offend more because they tend to be more disadvantaged, living in poorer urban areas with less access to public services, and so on." The more you look at good research into the contributing causes of violence the clearer it should be that these sociologists are right; so why don't we try to reduce poverty and increase educational and economic opportunities for African Americans?

Like most sociology questions the answer to this isn't easy and those controlling the most powerful institutions will deny it, but, it's virtually guaranteed that public policy is far more concerned with increasing corporate profits that recognizing the causes of social problems and correcting them; and in some cases we can find good research to show how this happens in several subjects, including education.

An article from the Brookings Institution, How charter schools are prolonging segregation 12/11/2017, points out how increasing growth in Charter Schools is focusing mainly on enrolling the poorest people often African Americans. Diane Ravitch has been reporting on how these Charter Schools are part of a massive effort from corporations and economists to control the education system keeping people in their place and that the quality of education is much worse, and in many cases these Charters are accompanied by epidemic levels of fraud to increase profits without providing a good education.

Last year I pointed out in Is Push For Charter Schools Increasing Murder Rates? that the cities and regions with the most Charter Schools also ahve the highest murder rates and that these schools are, if anything making it worse, instead of trying to solve the problem.

Another study, African Americans Own More Life Insurance, Not Less 03/18/2018, claims that, "Life insurance has the potential to mitigate wealth disparities across race," as if Life Insurance is a good thing, without mentioning the fundamentals of pooled risk, or insurance. However, as I pointed out in numerous articles including Insurance Executives Profit By Inciting Murder Occasionally Paying Killers insurance is outright fraud! The average consumer can't possibly get their money's worth, since the administrators have to subtract business expenses from the pool of money available to pay out claims. There are numerous studies saying that property insurance often pays out about ten percent to fraudulent claims, although there are few, except for my own review that explore how often people kill for insurance. If you subtract Ten percent for that fraud, and more for high CEO salaries enormous, amounts of money on lobbying, advertising, and many other business expense, the average policy holder isn't likely to get more than fifty to sixty cents on every dollar that they pay in premiums!

It's a scam!

And we have one white collar scam after another in our economic system increasing poverty while the wealthy profit off it, which leads to higher violence rates.

And one of the biggest contributing causes to violence is early child abuse, including corporal punishment which, in the schools that still allow it, is disproportionately meted out to minorities especially African Americans; teaching them to deal with their problems through violence!

Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy

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Thursday, January 10, 2019

Tis' the season for Domestic Violence? murders?

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