ID Theft, Meth, and liberalism
Posted by Moonage on 13 Jul 2006 | Tagged as: US Regional Politics
This doesn’t really surprise me. The Top 10 Worst Cities for ID theft:
- San Francisco
- Seattle
- Denver
- San Jose
- San Diego
- Atlanta
- Salt Lake City
- Las Vegas
- Sacramento
- Phoenix
Now, maybe a map would make this appear more obvious:
Anyone want to take a stab at why there is such a concentration of ID thefts in California? I mean, people have money in other parts of the country as well. I personally “assume” that the combination of money and silicon valley breeds a different type of criminal, ie more intellectual than physical. That’s just an assumption. But, I think it’s a safe one. The only dot that appears east of the Mississippi River is Atlanta. And, there’s a ton of computer based companies and schools in Atlanta. However, silicon east is in North Carolina. And, not a dot appears near there. Is there some ethical difference between computer motivation in the South than the West? Dunno. The cities that gave the US organized crime, New York and Chicago, are missing from this list as well. So, IMO, that means the typical criminal logic that used to apply doesn’t with this newest form of theft. It’s apparently a totally different mindset. And, above anything else, it seems to love sunlight. And, it seems to thrive in liberal cultures. ( Atlanta, for those not wanting to think it out, gave us Cynthia McKinney. I don’t think I need to explain Southern California or Seattle. )
This is a very interesting set of data to me. I’d like to see some more detailed follow-up to it. The report does make a couple of correlations:
The study shows a clear link between an increased rate of methamphetamine use and an increased rate of identity theft. Residents in cities like San Francisco (top percentile) and Denver (86th percentile) are at higher risk. Cities like Birmingham, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Oklahoma City and New Orleans are at the least risk.
I think it goes a little deeper than drug use or personal income levels. To me, risky behavior is just risky behavior. Whether it’s drug use or crime, it’s a mindset. A risky person will take all kinds of risks. A conservative person won’t take a lot of risks of any sort. In other words, liberalism seems to be the root of all this. That’s certainly not the conclusion this printed version leads to. The point out that people are more likely to use ATM’s and such, and apparently do meth in some areas. But, if you look at it a little differently, you get a total different picture I think. Let’s compare those same 50 cities and their liberal rating percentile from 2005:
| ID Rank | Liberal Percentile | City |
That’s a LOT of blue there. In fact, it’s 74% blue. Is that supposed to be a coincidence? I personally don’t think so. And, for what it’s worth, two of those Top 10 cities are within a teeny tiny fraction of being blue as well ( Am I really supposed to believe San Diego is one of the more conservative cities in the US? ). With those two dancing on the statistical edge, cities that are in the upper 50 percentile of liberal cities in the US make up 90% of the Top 10, and 78% of the entire list.
Sometimes I toy with numbers just to yank people’s chains. In this case, I’m pretty serious. The correlation between liberalism and ID Theft is mine. The correlation between ID theft and hard drugs is not. It’s hard NOT to prove there is no correlation between hard drugs, crime, and liberalism with this data. I would be receptive to CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and data that proves otherwise.
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