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Rep. Pat Garofalo

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They can't help themselves. This klown is Bachmann with a dick!



Minnesota GOP state representative pens racist tweet about NBA players

‘Let’s be honest, 70% of teams in NBA could fold tomorrow + nobody would notice a difference w/ possible exception of increase in streetcrime,’ tweeted state Rep. Pat Garofalo Sunday.


The offensive tweet was met widely with criticism: more than 1,200 people retweeted it and hundreds of others replied to the tweet, calling it racist.


(NOW, WATCH HIM DO THE UBIQITOUS CONK BACKPEDAL:)

After the fallout, Garofalo said he was only "talking about NBA's high arrest rate.”

“They are the only major pro league that testing positive for marijuana is not a substance abuse violation," he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “No intent beyond that.”

Garofalo, according to the Star Tribune, regularly takes to social media to convey controversial opinions.

Last summer, Minnesota residents widely blasted the Minneapolis-area native for a tweet in which he called a teachers union a liberal hate group.




Conks: just layin' down them palm fronds in Hillary's path to the White House!

The only reason that's seen as racists is because the truth is that Blacks are more likely to be involved in street crime. If people didn't realize that the truth is that Blacks are more likely to be involved in street crime they wouldn't be saying anything because he didn't say anything about race at all. He was just implying that NBA players tend to be involved in crime a lot. It's others who make the leap to thinking he's saying it's because they're Black.

What's happening to him is, of course, unfair. But that's the way it is when it comes to questions of race nowadays. You can't tell the truth without risking getting the Scarlett Letter. You know, the Big Red "R."

JohnStOnge wrote:The only reason that's seen as racists is because the truth is that Blacks are more likely to be involved in street crime. If people didn't realize that the truth is that Blacks are more likely to be involved in street crime they wouldn't be saying anything because he didn't say anything about race at all. He was just implying that NBA players tend to be involved in crime a lot. It's others who make the leap to thinking he's saying it's because they're Black.

What's happening to him is, of course, unfair. But that's the way it is when it comes to questions of race nowadays. You can't tell the truth without risking getting the Scarlett Letter. You know, the Big Red "R."

You're absolutely right, St. Wronge.


In your world.........

You're absolutely right, St. Wronge.


In your world.........

I'm absolutely right in any world. About the "race card" thing I mean. The guy was wrong in one sense in that NBA players are characterized by a lower crime rate than the general population. But the thing of leaping to calling him "racist" because he said something about the NBA and crime while the NBA happens to be mostly Black is just that: leaping. Chomping at the bit to call somebody racist.

And it wouldn't be happening if, overall, it wasn't absolutely clear that Blacks are indeed way more likely to be involved in street crime and particularly violent street crime. It's not this guy's fault the truth is what it is. There's a reason why Blacks are perceived as being more violent and prone to violent crime than the general population. That reason for the perception is that it's true.

BTW the fact that NBA players are characterized by a lower crime rate than the general population does not mean the guy is wrong about what he said about the street crime rate going up. They're NBA players. They make a lot of money. They have something.

He speculated on a scenario in which they would not be NBA players. What would they be doing then? It'd be interesting to have someone model the demographics of crime and estimate what the crime rate among them would be if they had to make it through life without being paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars for playing basketball. You know, it's possible that being paid money like that for playing a kids' game might make it less likely that you'll be involved in crime.

The knee jerk response of saying his "prediction" is wrong is simplistic. Not that he was thinking that deeply when he made the comment. But the comment might not be incorrect.

The race card players made the logical leap from NBA criminals to blacks, not this guy.

Pwns wrote:The race card players made the logical leap from NBA criminals to blacks, not this guy.

How do you know what was in his head? It's not unreasonable to make the leap, and you don't have to be a race card player to do it. I think there is room to give him the benefit of the doubt, but there is also room not to.

That said, Garofalo admitted that his comment was stupid and apologized. IMHO, unless there is more to this story it's probably best to accept the apology and move on (no pun intended).

Nothing to see here other than some donk hyperventilating. Move along...

Conks. Dumb and racist.

BDKJMU wrote:Nothing to see here other than some donk hyperventilating. Move along...

I agree, but funny coming from you only days after you got all worked up because Obama flubbed the spelling of respect.

If you really want to talk about things being a "little bit" disproportionate in the world of professional sports, check out the NBA/NFL demographic makeup vs. US average:

NFL - 66.3% Black, .7% Latino, 30.1% White

http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2013/2013_NFL_RGRC.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

NBA - 78% Black, 4% Latino, 17% White

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_e ... in_the_NBA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

US - 12.6% Black, 16.3% Latino, 72.4% White

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States#Population" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The bottom line is that in a rational culture what he tweeted would not have made the news. But our culture is not rational when it comes to the race thing. It is hypersensitive and constantly on the lookout to catch and burn the heretics who dare make statements that can in some way be construed as blaspheming against the Egalitarian Dogma.

Now this is too funny

JohnStOnge wrote:The only reason that's seen as racists is because the truth is that Blacks are more likely to be involved in street crime. If people didn't realize that the truth is that Blacks are more likely to be involved in street crime they wouldn't be saying anything because he didn't say anything about race at all. He was just implying that NBA players tend to be involved in crime a lot. It's others who make the leap to thinking he's saying it's because they're Black.

What's happening to him is, of course, unfair. But that's the way it is when it comes to questions of race nowadays. You can't tell the truth without risking getting the Scarlett Letter. You know, the Big Red "R."

Crime happens because of poverty not Race. If that's the case, there should be no street crime in Ireland, Italy or China. All of these countries have a high rate of street crime. Or the fact in the 1920's, 90% of the Road way criminals were white males.
Baby Face Nelson- White
John Dillinger_-White
Pretty Boy Floyd- White
Bonnie and Clyde-White.................

JohnStOnge wrote:The bottom line is that in a rational culture what he tweeted would not have made the news. But our culture is not rational when it comes to the race thing. It is hypersensitive and constantly on the lookout to catch and burn the heretics who dare make statements that can in some way be construed as blaspheming against the Egalitarian Dogma.

Do you think what he tweeted was rational?

That said, Garofalo admitted that his comment was stupid and apologized. IMHO, unless there is more to this story it's probably best to accept the apology and move on (no pun intended).

Of course he apologized. That's consistent with the standard pattern. I wish that some day people would start pushing back against this kind of nonsense.

JohnStOnge wrote:

That said, Garofalo admitted that his comment was stupid and apologized. IMHO, unless there is more to this story it's probably best to accept the apology and move on (no pun intended).

Of course he apologized. That's consistent with the standard pattern. I wish that some day people would start pushing back against this kind of nonsense.

Good luck with that. If you are an elected official it's a bad idea to piss off the people whose votes you need. He's a politician, he has to be politically correct. That's probably why they call it political correctness.

Do you think what he tweeted was rational?

In the sense that he should have anticipated what was going to happen if he did it, no.

I'm pretty sure what he said was not intended to be a serious scholarly prediction of the effects of eliminating 70 percent of NBA teams. It was a quip.

JohnStOnge wrote:

Do you think what he tweeted was rational?

In the sense that he should have anticipated what was going to happen if he did it, no.

I'm pretty sure what he said was not intended to be a serious scholarly prediction of the effects of eliminating 70 percent of NBA teams. It was a quip.

Was it a rational quip?

mrklean wrote:

JohnStOnge wrote:The only reason that's seen as racists is because the truth is that Blacks are more likely to be involved in street crime. If people didn't realize that the truth is that Blacks are more likely to be involved in street crime they wouldn't be saying anything because he didn't say anything about race at all. He was just implying that NBA players tend to be involved in crime a lot. It's others who make the leap to thinking he's saying it's because they're Black.

What's happening to him is, of course, unfair. But that's the way it is when it comes to questions of race nowadays. You can't tell the truth without risking getting the Scarlett Letter. You know, the Big Red "R."

Crime happens because of poverty not Race. If that's the case, there should be no street crime in Ireland, Italy or China. All of these countries have a high rate of street crime. Or the fact in the 1920's, 90% of the Road way criminals were white males.
Baby Face Nelson- White
John Dillinger_-White
Pretty Boy Floyd- White
Bonnie and Clyde-White.................

Take your poverty excuse and stick it straight up your ass.

Total cop out and if you are even close to being good at math you would discern its completely wrong. You may be able to get away with that tap out while talking to liberals who want to "feel good" about helping people make excuses, but in the real world crime is crime and there are no economic reasons why this happens its a culture thing.

Is he saying people will riot if that event occurs or is he saying NBA players will turn to a life of crime b/c they are black?

Crime happens because of poverty not Race.

That's something I've never really tried to look into. There's no source of really neat data I know of that I can look at and query as can be done with respect to standardized test scores with that National Assessment of Educational Progress site. A quick Google told me that there are probably different opinions.

Like I found the paper at http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~roos/Course ... ssp802.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. All I've done is read the abstract and take a quick look at variables used in her model (page 355 of the journal, page 7 of the on line document itself). She took socioeconomic status variables including poverty rate into account. A lot of other things too. The conclusion stated in the last sentence of her abstract is, "The analysis reveals that all of the white-Latino homicide differential and half of the white-black homicide gap could be reduced if the characteristics of minorities were improved to levels currently exhibited by whites."

I was able to find that the actual white-black reduction she got is 47%. You can see that near the bottom of Journal page 363. Obviously the inverse of the Statement she made is that she considered all kinds of variables and was able to account for slightly less than half of the gap. She couldn't make the white-black difference "go away" like she was able to do with the white-Latino difference.

I found another paper at http://www88.homepage.villanova.edu/lan ... overty.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; that appears to be a manuscript the authors prepared for submission for publication. I interpret the authors as saying the results support the concept of "racial invariance." In the paragraph below they describe what "racial invariance" is and also describe a situation in which there is disagreement on whether or not the idea is correct:

The social disorganization and anomie perspectives generally suggest that poverty’s criminogenic effect is racially invariant. These perspectives imply that policies that alleviate economic deprivation will equally reduce rates of violent crime in neighborhoods that are predominately white and neighborhoods that are predominately black. In contrast, several social commentators have suggested that alleviating poverty will be a relatively ineffective crime reduction strategy in predominately black areas.

I think that it is very complicated. I think it even depends on the set of violent crime types you look at. I think it likely that if you throw everything in and consider all "violent crime" you'll get substantially different results than you will if you look at specific serious violent crimes. Like looking at all "violent crime" vs. looking at "homicide."

I guess my bottom line outlook after taking a quick look is that we don't know that poverty accounts for all of the difference between white and black violent crime rates in the United States.

Was it a rational quip?

In the sense that a rational thought process could lead to the conclusion expressed? Yes.

I don't think he was thinking that "deeply" though. I think probably if you'd asked him beforehand if there is a higher "street crime "rate among NBA players than there is among the general population he'd have said "yes." That's probably the premise he was operating off of.

So given the premise he was probably operating off of it was a rational statement. But my understanding is the premise is likely false.

ALPHAGRIZ1 wrote:

mrklean wrote:

Crime happens because of poverty not Race. If that's the case, there should be no street crime in Ireland, Italy or China. All of these countries have a high rate of street crime. Or the fact in the 1920's, 90% of the Road way criminals were white males.
Baby Face Nelson- White
John Dillinger_-White
Pretty Boy Floyd- White
Bonnie and Clyde-White.................

Take your poverty excuse and stick it straight up your ass.

Total cop out and if you are even close to being good at math you would discern its completely wrong. You may be able to get away with that tap out while talking to liberals who want to "feel good" about helping people make excuses, but in the real world crime is crime and there are no economic reasons why this happens its a culture thing.

Call me if you're still in the same business. You still should have my number. Need appliances for an 11 unit apt. complex.

7 fridges
8 or 9 electric stoves with the classic burners
8 or 9 garbage disposals

Don't need high end.

Cool!

It's come to this

Criticize professional sports = racist

What should bother people from both sides is that somehow we should even care that this guy said it. The right does it too whenever some leftist makes a goofy comment about conservative bimbos and Uncle Toms

We have way too much time on our oversensitive hands