But there’s a “Hot Air” post from 2007 that uses “President Silky”. Darn. I amost invented the phrase.

Maybe I can still register the presidentsilky.com domain. Umm… No, I don’t want to be that famous.

DKL?

What’s Rush Limbaugh’s nickname for Obama? Maybe I’ll suggest it to him.

The police and courts have essentially given up on the minorities (essentially black and hispanic) in inner cities. It doesn’t _look_ that way to the casual observer, because the police are very very busy. But… as a percentage of the total crime that goes on, the stuff that police respond to is a tiny fraction.

I suppose inner cities need about 5 to 10 times more criminal justice resources than currently exist; but we can’t afford 5 times as many inner city police, 5 times as many courts, 5 times the jail space, and 5 times the prison space. The inner cities don’t have the tax base to support it, and the outer areas don’t want to pay for it.

There are regular sweeps done as “shows” to give the impression that cops are still working on it, but they’ve given up. Within 24 hours of a drug sweep, all the drug dealers are replaced with the next guy in line, and the supply chain makes up whatever product got confiscated.

(And from what I observed while living in the inner city, corruption in the multi-jurisdictional LEO forces ensures that the big guys rarely get caught. The people running it were either incredibly stupid or corrupt, and the lower level LEOs knew it, but were powerless or will-less to expose the stupidity and/or corruption.)

What the criminal justice system can do now has no more effect than a fart in a wind storm.

Fathers/husbands are rarely involved with children in the inner city, and without them, the children are at the mercy of the undertow: Hollywood, the hip-hop culture, the gangster culture, and the drug culture.

I’d also estimate that 3/4′s of the African-American girls in the inner city are sexually abused, and 1/4 of the boys. Can’t prove it, but that’s what I believe. If you don’t think it’s that high, ask 10 or more black women who grew up poor in the inner-city, and get an estimate for yourself.

But yeah, something needs to be done to change the “drinking at age 10, pot at age 12, hard drugs at 14 or 16″ mind-set that goes on in the inner-city. But will something be done? I doubt it. I don’t think President Silky gave it more than lip-service in his activist days. After all, he wasn’t raised by blacks and I don’t think he grew up in a black neighborhood.

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson probably have a better and bigger picture of the inner city than Silky. But they sold out their fellow blacks for fame and fortune long ago.

The first thing is admit there’s a problem, try to quantify it, and publicize it. Let’s see John Stossel, The View, and Oprah deal with it more. Get the real facts and figures into the public awareness.

I don’t think prohibition is the answer. But I wonder if our country can do some more kinds of legitimate control. Look at the drunk-driving stats I linked too. Both the total number of alcohol-related deaths, and the percentage of fatalities that are alcohol-related have gone down (while the number of miles driven annually has presumably gone up.)

The social and legal campaigns against drunk driving seemed to have had a good effect.

I haven’t looked it up, but I believe the per capita consumption of tobacco has gone down in the US too.

Our society has successfully made it less “cool” to drive under the influence, and made it less “cool” to smoke.

With alcohol, the change has to be slow, and not coercive of those who have already chosen to drink responsibly.

I would be in favor of more controls on advertising of alcohol, along the lines that were done with tobacco. Just as we legislated away tobacco ads on TV, I think doing away with alcohol ads should be explored and tested.

When I was young, I remember cigarette ads on TV. So their absence is noticeable to me, it shows that we can do the same with alcohol, if our society collectively wants to.

Drugs (including alcohol) and illegitimacy. Those things are killing the inner cities, and destroying black Americans faster than anything else, including Republicans, George W. Bush, and white racists.

And by the way, the candy/alcohol/tobacco store I mentioned is in an almost entirely white area.

So when 20-something and 30-something academics and lawyers on the ‘nacle make those kinds of excuses, “oh, it’s not so bad”, it’s as if they are only going by what they see in their neighbors, peers, coworkers, etc. It’s as if those young’uns haven’t begun to see the gritty mess of real life that the majority of less-affluent urban Americans see.

It really is like you say, the vast vast majority of drinkers are NOT “moderate” to the point of only one drink a day.

It’s a shame that the forces of good have fallen behind in making ‘good’ appear ‘cool’. But the prophets have been right. Vices of all kinds anesthetize one over the years, and it takes more and more, stronger and stronger to have whatever effect the addict seeks, whether it be drugs, alcohol, porn, or illicit sex.

Just as your close observation of people who drink and hold down jobs shows that very few are actually “moderate”, so has been mine. Long term alcohol use by an uncle broke up his well-to-do upper-middle class marriage. You can almost tell who the heavy drinkers are by the time they are in their late 40′s, and almost certainly by their late 50′s.

It may be that only 10% of people who try alcohol go on to be a Barney (on the Simpsons), with a full-on drunk every night. But I’d guess that well over 50% of people who drink, do it to the level that it impacts their life-expectancy, and even more where it impacts their health in terms of quality-of-life.

I feel just a tad bad about picking on Clark, but he’s using a platitude to misdirect the attention that should be focused on MAJOR societal problems that people don’t want to talk about, or admit. And it goes to more than just alcohol, but that would hijack the discussion.

There is the cost of lives lost in alcohol-related traffic fatalities, plus the property costs of the accidents, cost of medical expenses of immediate treatment plus care for the permanently injured, and reduced income of injured survivors. And which costs are spread throughout society by insurance premiums.

http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics.html

There is also the shortened life-span of problem drinkers, medical costs directly attributed to alcoholism, and the increase of health-insurance premiums for all of us to cover the cost of treating the illnesses of those who do drink.

And the cost of reduced worker productivity due to alcohol.

Since the alleged benefits of moderate alcohol consumption can also be gained by an equal intake of fruit juices, I can’t see how one can assert any cost/benefit justification for moderate drinking, especially when one must factor in the increased costs (property damage, increased insurance premiums, medical costs, lost lives, lost income, etc) incurred by those who won’t be moderate.

And in fact, the “majority” of responsible drinkers you’re thinking of may in fact be the minority. I’d bet that the responsible-citizen upper-middle-class “wine and cheese set” is a small minority of alcohol consumers.

The vast majority of alcohol is sold in liquor stores and grocery stores in lower-middle to lower class neighborhoods where much is bought and consumed irresponsibly. “Bought irresponsibly” in the sense that a family could eat healthier if mom-and-dad didn’t consume as much alcohol.

I need to take a video camera to a “grocery” store near the house of one of my friends. 55% of the store (in terms of shelf space) is alcohol, 25% is candy, and 10% is tobacco. It’s unreal. Man, if you want to make money in America, open a liquor store in a poor part of a city.

And that particular one is smart, they’re acclimating kids to tobacco/alcohol by exposing it to them in this “candy/alcohol/tobacco store”.

Clark, if you could actually see up close and personal what goes on in the inner city with and due to drugs/alcohol you’d want to go back to the days of prohibition. I know prohibition is a pipe dream, and it caused more problems, etc. But drugs, illegitimacy, and alcohol (and probably in that order) are the top problems in our inner cities today. They may not be the “root cause”, but they are a very _direct_ cause of much suffering.

Yeah, maybe your circle of upper-middle-class yuppies can handle their drink, but as you go down the socio-economic scale, a larger and larger percentage of the consumers can’t or don’t.

I’d also venture that alcohol is a “hidden wedge” (a la Spencer Kimball’s parable with the tree) that is working to eventually destroy the families and marriages of many of your upper-middle-class yuppy friends. You just won’t see the effects until they are in their 50′s, and the long-suffering wives leave their semi-secret alcoholic husbands once all the kids are grown and out.

If any ‘nacclers are ever in Indianapolis, email me, and let’s go to that candy/alcohol/tobacco store. Even if you think you know poor or know the inner city, you’ll likely be amazed. (Unless you’re a cop who works the inner city.)