Understanding Government

While high-speed rail in California may be in trouble, it looks like more rail-based mass transit is on its way in Los Angeles, according to reporting by Adam Nagourney in the New York Times.  This with the help of more than $500 million in federal aid — funds for rail transportation that elected leaders in other states are hoping to reject. (more…)

In southern California the car may still be king, but the train is making tracks. Officials hope a novel financing plan, pushed by Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, will garner federal aid faster and help the region realize a long-held dream, re-building its once robust commuter rail network.

The crux of the plan would roll funds from a recently approved transportation sales tax surcharge into leveraging a big federal loan (more…)

The Wall Street Journal’s Tamara Audi and Gary Fields report that Los Angeles is the latest big city to announce that violent crime, including homicides, was significantly down in 2009, joining New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. among other cities. The article provides a surprising reason why this was the case:

Experts believe the fall in violent crime is tied to the aging U.S. population.

“The graying of America is a significant factor,” said James Alan Fox, Lipman Professor of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston. “The largest and fastest growing segment of the population is people over 50. People over 50 also happen to be the age group that is the least likely to commit crimes. As the group grows, crime rates do decline.”

Prof. Fox said a common assumption that crime goes up during a recession is wrong. Historic data show there is little connection between economic conditions and crime, particularly violent crime.

This graying of America, though, can’t really explain why the decrease in crime between 2008 and 2009 marked a greater annual decline than years past — unless in 2009, a whole swath of the population improbably grew out of their biological window to commit crime.

What the crime stats show is a correlation that does not exist — recession and violent crime. Despite fears, Broad outage over wealth divisions in America — and alienation with how the law has worked for Wall Street and the rich — has not lead to any generalized lawlessness or induced people to become more violent.