Posted on 08/23/2006 6:58:59 AM PDT by Graybeard58
Ask the average Joe where he thinks most of America's hate crimes occur, and he's apt to guess Mississippi, Alabama or another state stereotypically overrun with redneck lynch mobs. He would dismiss as preposterous the idea that such enlightened, diverse states such as New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota and Connecticut are bastions of bigots.
He'd be whistling Dixie. According to the latest FBI statistics, crimes motivated by race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin or disability are 44 times more likely to occur in New Jersey than Mississippi. The states with the lowest rates were Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana and Wyoming, the last made infamous by the case of case of Matthew Shepard, the homosexual who was beaten to death in 1998. New Jersey, on the other hand, was No. 1 in bigotry, followed by Michigan, Montana and Minnesota and Arkansas.
Out of the 19 states and the District of Columbia that voted for John Kerry for president in 2004, 15 were among the top 25 in hate crimes. All six New England states landed in the top 25, with Massachusetts leading the way at No. 6; Connecticut was 21st with a rate 23 times higher than Alabama's and Mississippi's.
If there is a silver lining in these statistics, it's this: The FBI logged 7,649 hate crimes in 2004, which represent one-half of 1 percent of all violent crimes and a meaninglessly small percentage of all crimes that year. More than twice as many Americans were victims of homicides than bias crimes. Though the liberals and the mainstream news media want the public to believe hate crimes are epidemic in this country, the statistics refute that notion even as they reveal where America's real bigots live.
Ping
If you want on this ping list to the Waterbury Republican-American Editorials let me know. If you want off the list - It'll cost you.
Hate crimes = thought police.
On hate crimes...Would it make me any less dead if I were shot by someone who liked me?
Those laws are stupidity incarnate.
The elitist Blue States on the East coast also have low charity giving, vs Red States.
Before judging this Post I have to know what hate crimes we are discussing.
Are we discussing all hate crimes, including the black or Hispanic against white people , which arent considered hate crimes at all or just the white against black or Hispanic hate cimes that are Politically Correct in discussing.
How about the Islamic hate crime where this fellow goes into a Temple and shoots women and they dont call it a hate crime.
The crime itself has become so PC and the term so ill used I would have to see FBI records to see how hate crimes are being reported.
I'm no fan of "hate crimes" as a special category, but, just to play along, this does make sense. Liberals are social engineers who push "progress" at the expense of the social fabric.
It's called projection: Moonbats are seething bundles of bigotry and hatred, so they project that feeling onto conservatives in order to make themselves feel better. The MSM, being overrun with moonbats, does this, too.
One possibility overlooked by the author and other posters to this point is that 'hate crimes' are only called such when the local police are in the grip of the barking moonbats and look for 'bias' in any crime that fits their stereotype.
It may not be that violent bigots are concentrated in the 'blue state', but merely that the PC thought-police are.
That's a good point.
Just last year someone burned a cross on a lawn right here in the metro drtoit area..........a$$holes are everywhere, but we seem to have more than our fair share ( and they come in all shapes, colors, religions and sizes )
"Ask this PC uncorrect question - in proportion to their percentage of the population - which ethnic groups commit the vast majority of hate crimes and againts what other ethnic group..."
The state that produced Saint Hillary and that incorrigible William Jefferson?
Add me to the list.
I think Illinois has the honor of producing Hillary.
Done.
ping
you have to report this like a leftist.
It is not that the hate crimes are not rampantly occuring, it is that the states are intentionally not reporting the hate crimes. "some anonymouse sources say" hate crimes are as much as a bilion-ty-billion.
A rebuttle from a liberal writer to be fair...I don't know if he is valid or not but here it is. He could be a moonbat for all I know.
This is pretty dramatic stuff: all those red states on top, all those blue states on the bottom. However, the Generosity Index badly flawed. I could go into the more theoretical reasons as to why - bad assumptions, flawed manipulations of numbers - but rather than dry theory, let's look at two simple yet powerful examples that demonstrate its inadequacies:
The most glaring problem is pointed out by the Geography and Generosity study: in the 2004 Generosity Index, my own state of Massachusetts ranked 49th of 50 states - pretty bad! According to the Generosity Index study, the average Massachusetts tax return showed an charitable contributions of $2,928. Let's suppose, however, that the average Massachusetts charitable contribution went from $2,928 to $1,000,000. Even if every single Massachusetts tax return represented a cool million dollars in charitable giving, Massachusetts would only move from 49th to 23rd on the Index (go to the report and try it!) - although, clearly, any correct measure should show it as the most generous state under these circumstances.
Members of the LDS Church are pretty good about tithing (donating 10% of their income to the church). More than 80% of Utah residents are members of the LDS Church. Therefore, any state ranking based on charitable giving that does not show Utah at the top is suspect, to my mind. The Genrosity Index ranks Utah as only 9th.
If the Generosity Index is defective, then what is the correct ranking? In contrast to the Generosity Index, the Geography and Generosity study does a creditable job of analyzing income and giving, using sounder numbers as a basis and adjusting for after-tax income, cost of living, and so forth. And, lo and behold, it's results do not have the problems pointed out above, if every tax return in Massachusetts had a $1,000,000 deduction for charitable contributions, then Massachusetts would rank as the most charitable state. And Utah ranks first:
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