According to this article from New Geography, Yes.

An excerpt.

“Over the past half century, media and academic sources repeatedly suggested that increasingly dense cities would dominate the future. Places such as London, San Francisco and Chicago would dominate an economy.

“Today, this assessment seems grossly dated. Even in the pages of the urbanista New York Times there are widespread fears of an “urban doom loop.” But this, too, is a stretch. Great core cities will not go the way of post-imperial Rome, but their role is being recast as the urban frontier shifts increasingly to the periphery.

“What we are seeing mirrors H.G. Wells’s vision. He predicted that most economic life, and most families, would shift to the suburbs and exurbs. The urban core would be reinvented: no longer the uncontested center of political and economic life but a vast theater of “concourse and rendezvous,” ideal for the childless wealthy, necessary for their servants and a beacon to the young and the culturally aware.

“This would surely represent a major shift away from the idea of the dominant “transactional city,” filled with workers packed in ever-higher buildings, drawn from the vast array of bedroom satellites across a huge geographic area. Office occupancy has been declining since the turn of the century. Covid accelerated that trend.

“Although they are no longer the epicenters of economic life, London, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Miami retain an irresistible allure to educated young people, globe-trotting elites and cultural creators. In New York, while the population has declined, the ranks of the ultra-rich have continued to increase. These favored cities have become less economic capitals and more stage props for luxury-brand groups.

“Now, the bulk of new urban development takes place outside the core of the city, largely in the suburban and exurban periphery. In 1950, those living in city cores accounted for nearly 24 percent of the US population; today that share is less than 15 percent.

“Suburban, and particularly exurban, metropolitan growth has accelerated in recent years. From 2010 to 2017, 91 percent of employment growth among major metropolitan areas was outside central business districts. The 50 highest-growth counties in the US, almost all suburban or exurban, had an employment increase of more than 2.5 times that of the others in 2019.

“These changes are generally greeted with horror by our cultural, academic and media elites. But if some analysts still predict a return to urban growth and greater office occupancy, even devoted friends of urban density admit that the urban future will be increasingly shaped by sprawl.

“The drivers here are demographic shifts and technological improvements. With the development of instantaneous communication, notes a report from Brown University, neither the size nor density of a city makes it more productive. Indeed, almost all the leading tech centers in the country are primarily suburban in nature.

“In New York, while the population has declined, the ranks of the ultra-rich have continued to increase.”

“The rise of remote or hybrid work is accelerating this shift. According to a study by the University of Chicago, in high-end business services and technology, a third of the workforce can function remotely – as can employees in roughly 50 percent of jobs generated by Silicon Valley.

“Demographics provide the most compelling evidence of peripheral ascendancy, which can be seen in the movement of educated young people, particularly as they hit their thirties, away from places such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Even before the pandemic, two-thirds of millennials favored the suburbs. The same thing is happening in other countries. Rather than signaling decay, the growth of suburban and exurban communities represents the cutting edge of 21st-century urbanism. These areas are becoming cities of a new sort, serving as domiciles but also places of employment, shopping and the arts.

“This process is in its infancy. New exurban areas are being planned, notably by Elon Musk in Texas and Bill Gates in Arizona. Rather than an abandonment of the city, this is a continuing reinvention of it.

“The rise of suburban and exurban living reflects a desire for safer, cleaner and less congested environments, and core cities will only be revitalized if they address the quality of life they provide. Donald Trump’s return has been greeted by many urban leaders with about as much enthusiasm as a reprise of the bubonic plague. But a second Trump presidency could also force mostly Democratic municipal leaders to address challenges on their own.

“The right’s drive to close off America’s international borders may slow the movement of populations to urban centers. But it could also reduce threats to public order and social cohesiveness. In New York, warns its former governor and mayoral aspirant Andrew Cuomo, the “migrant crisis” has become “the tipping point” of “the urban death spiral.” The challenge for older cities lies not in notions about diversity but in making the streets safe and creating opportunities for business and culture.

“A promising sign lies in the election of new, pro-business moderates in cities where crime has been a key issue. In Houston, more than 80 percent of voters listed it as their primary concern. In 2023 the public elected as mayor, by almost two to one, veteran state senator John Whitmire over left-wing firebrand Sheila Jackson Lee.”

Why Cities Have Lost Their Appeal | Newgeography.com

Very nice story in the L.A. Times.

An excerpt.

Be honest: If you were asked to list cities you’d want to visit in our great state, you’d probably go through at least 10 before you got to Sacramento, our capital. San Diego would be on it since it has beaches. Napa would be near the top because of the wine. But Sacramento? What does it have? Politicians?

Well, believe it or not, even the politicians didn’t choose Sacramento at first. When California became the 31st state on Sept. 9, 1850, its government designated San Jose as the official capital. The state capital moved twice more, to Vallejo and Benicia, before they finally settled on Sacramento in 1854. Construction of the capitol building as we know it today wasn’t completed until 20 years later.

Despite visiting many other state capitals, I hadn’t been to Sacramento. It wasn’t on my list. But some inexplicable force recently drew me to the town.

OK, maybe it was “Lady Bird.”

You, too, might have been clued into Sacramento’s charms by filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s 2017 solo directorial debut film. The loosely autobiographical coming-of-age story was Gerwig’s love letter to her hometown, and Sacramento was central to the titular character’s arc. At the beginning of the film, Lady Bird yearns to move out to a city with “culture.” But when she ends up in New York in the final scene, she admits in a touching phone call to her mother, “Did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento? I did, and I wanted to tell you.”

So I made my first pilgrimage, booking the 1½-hour flight from L.A. to explore it for a weekend.

I admit that it wasn’t without some initial hesitation. Remembering a Stephen Colbert interview with “Lady Bird” star Saoirse Ronan didn’t help. The late-night host quipped, “I’ve been to Sacramento before. … I’m aware of how boring it is.”

But I knew Colbert was wrong as soon as I landed at Sacramento’s airport. It gleamed of glass and shimmered of chrome. New, modern and sleek, with a gigantic sculpture of a leaping red hare above baggage claim, it was one of the most impressive airports I’ve seen in the U.S. — and a sign that this city was going to surprise me.

And it did.

In that weekend, not only did I discover that Sacramento wasn’t boring, it’s got a little bit of everything. In downtown, I saw streetcars gliding along an avenue shaded under a canopy of trees. Other parts of town felt like walking in New York’s Central Park or Washington, D.C.’s Pennsylvania Avenue. Old Sacramento gave off both the boozy vibes of Bourbon Street and the cowboy vibes of Tombstone, Ariz. And when I saw the stately homes in East Sacramento, I fantasized about moving into one.

Food, history and glorious trees: A weekend in Sacramento – Los Angeles Times

One of the great American Catholic thinkers…article in City Journal.

An excerpt.

“In the fall of 1970, when I was a college sophomore, the first article assigned in one of my courses was titled “What Is Theology’s Standpoint?” The author argued that a “standpoint” was “a set of experiences, images, presuppositions, expectations, and operations (of inquiring and deciding),” by which human beings made sense of themselves and their relationship to the world. Late-twentieth-century theology, he continued, should operate from an “open standpoint,” engaging the human experience in full. Reading that article was my first encounter with the mind and spirit of Michael Novak. More than four decades later, it strikes me that the gist of the article nicely captures the range of Novak’s achievement, as well as suggesting its distinctive intellectual and cultural location.

“Back then, in theological circles, a fad existed for titling articles and books “Toward a Theology of” this, that, or the other thing (a fad once neatly parodied by my Toronto colleague Margaret O’Rourke Boyle, in “Toward a Theology of Garbage”). Indeed, the “toward” bug infected Novak on one occasion, when he christened an extended essay “Toward a Theology of the Corporation.” But that was, I’m sure, a literary venial sin. For Novak’s entire intellectual enterprise has never needed that faux rhetorical booster “toward.” As he showed me in his 1968 Theology Today essay on theology’s “standpoint,” authentic Catholic intellectual life, and especially Catholic theology, is always “toward”: Catholic intellectual life consciously engages the fullness of human experience, which Catholic thinkers “read” through the prism of revelation and reason, both of which, they maintain, cast the light of truth on human affairs. This conviction—that reflection on the things of the City of God can illuminate the paradoxes, tragedies, conundrums, and possibilities of the City of Man—stands at the center of Michael Novak’s thought.

“And that is why, in more than a half-century of scholarship, journalism, and public service, Novak has applied his philosophical and theological skills to virtually every consequential aspect of the human condition. He has not followed a preset itinerary but has deliberately charted previously unexplored territories and terrain. That choice—to break out of conventional patterns of thought and become one’s own intellectual GPS—has not always made for an easy life.

“Some did not appreciate having their disciplines and practices examined through lenses ground by theological reason; in fact, some of those whose turf Novak surveyed regard the very notion of “theological reason” as oxymoronic. Explorers make mistakes, and Novak would be the first to admit that what once seemed an interesting track to follow eventually turned into a blind alley, or that the account he gave of this or that form of human activity was incomplete. One of the most impressive aspects of Novak’s intellectual personality has been his openness to criticism and his willingness to say, when necessary, “you were right and I was wrong”—a confession that comes harder to intellectuals than to most.

“Like others who, in the standard political categories, made the pilgrimage from left to right, Novak has been pilloried as a traitor to his class. The truth is that he had the courage to face facts and hold fast to his deepest convictions about human dignity and human freedom, rather than adjust those convictions to the shifting fashions of political correctness. Like virtually everyone who enters the public arena with ideas that challenge the regnant wisdom, Novak must have wished, from time to time, for a better class of enemies. Unlike some of those enemies, he has maintained a commitment to charity, candor, and respect.

“It has not been easy being an intellectual trailblazer, this past half-century; perhaps it never is. Still, it’s worth noting en passant how nasty intellectual exchange—or what passes for it—often is, these days. Late in his life, which was built around debate and controversy, almost always conducted with robust good humor, G. K. Chesterton regretted that his friend Hilaire Belloc’s controversies were always so “sundering.” That had something to do with Belloc’s bulldog demeanor. But in our own time, controversy over ideas has become inexorably “sundering” because of the secular-messianic streak that dominates late-modern and postmodern intellectual life, especially at the sometimes-bloody crossroads where ideas meet public policy. Those who challenge the shibboleths of the politically correct academy aren’t merely mistaken; they are wicked and must be shunned. That this cast of mind has seriously eroded American public life has become all too clear in, for example, recent Supreme Court dictathat dismiss those who defend traditional moral norms from postmodern Gnosticism as irrational bigots. Similar shunning dynamics, rooted in the same belief that history’s ratchet only works in one direction, have too often made intra-Catholic controversy an unpleasant arena in recent decades.

“But enough about the difficulties that Michael Novak has faced over a half-century of intellectual exploration. What about his singular achievement?

“It is not within my competence to make judgments about Novak’s account of economic life; others are better equipped to determine what he got right and what has been left incomplete in his philosophical and theological analysis of markets, free enterprise, the system of democratic capitalism, and the vocation of business. But however those judgments wind up, it’s clear that Novak, with singular dedication and real effect in the evolution of Catholic social doctrine, introduced a new temper to Catholic thinking about economic life. We can describe that new temper as an empirical sensibility that never descends into empiricism.

“Novak’s account of economics begins, not with abstractions, but with keen observations of what is, which, in turn, lead to a disciplined reflection on how what is ought to be understood, casting light on moral truths and responsibilities in the process. Or, as his friend Rocco Buttiglione, the Italian social thinker, has put it, Novak’s seminal thinking about economic life raised an important question, little explored previously in Catholic social thought—or indeed in any other religiously informed social thought: Might “laws” exist in economic life analogous to the moral laws that a disciplined reflection on human moral action can discern? Is there, in other words, a deep structure to economic life that helps explain why some economies “work,” whether those economies are lodged in medieval Benedictine monasteries or in modern business enterprises? And does that deep structure reflect truths about the human person and human relationships that we can recognize by a careful, empirically informed reasoning that is attentive to the truths about the human condition that we learn from biblical religion?”

American and Catholic

All from Inside Sacrament, Arden, about River and Parkway related issues.

The first, Better Safe is by Jeff Harris aformer city councilmember and addresses levee strengthening using rocks, (riprap)—a process he supports—as do I.

The second, Spot Fix It is against the riprap approach.

The third, Take Your Tackle is about the danger discarded tackle can be to water creatures and reminds us all to protect nature.

The issue can be accessed at 2025 – Inside Sacramento

No. 208, May 16, 2024

Crime Statistics

Always argued about, as this article from City Journal explains.

An excerpt.

“Americans are worried about crime on their streets, but President Biden and the mainstream press corps don’t think that they should be. ABC News claims that “violent crime is dramatically falling.” NBC News asserts that “the drop in crime does not appear to be well understood by large majorities of Americans.” And in his State of the Union address, Biden bragged about a purported drop in crime that was allegedly a result of his efforts.

“While the administration and its allies are trying to convince Americans that the crime spike that they think they’ve seen in recent years has been a mirage, the public should trust its own judgment. The best available figures, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), show a whopping 58 percent rise in violent crime in urban areas from 2019—before the summer of George Floyd, BLM, and the “defund the police” crusade—to 2022, the most recent year for which finalized federal statistics are available.

“The numbers are even worse on closer inspection. If one removes from that period the bar fights and other similar encounters that make up much of the “simple assault” category, urban areas have seen a 73 percent spike in more serious violent crimes. That’s a huge rise in violence in the nation’s cities that the media aren’t interested in acknowledging. They are also unwilling to admit that cities have retried the experiment in lax law enforcement first attempted roughly a half-century ago. The verdict is in, and once again, the results are not pretty.

“Much as with inflation, however, Biden and his media allies are pushing the notion that Americans should be happy, because the worst of the spike could be in the rearview mirror. That’s a tough sell. While the recent homicide spike appears to have peaked in 2021, and the recent inflation spike in 2022, overall violent crime in urban areas and consumer prices across the nation are both noticeably worse now than they were just a few years ago.

“Biden nevertheless has insisted that crime has generally been brought under control, and that his policies are to thank for it. In his State of the Union address in March, the president said, “The year before I took office, murders went up 30% nationwide.” While Biden wants to pin that huge increase on Donald Trump, the combination of policies that led to that historic homicide surge—lax prosecution, Covid lockdowns, and the stoking of race-based grievances—were clearly pushed by progressives far more than by conservatives.

“Later in the speech, Biden suggested that his massive Covid stimulus package has helped reduce crime: “Now, through my American Rescue Plan, which every Republican voted against, I’ve made the largest investment in public safety ever.” In fact, less than 1 percent of the first $1.1 trillion in borrowed money disbursed under that bill went toward public safety.

“Finally, Biden asserted, “Last year, the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history, and violent crime fell to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years.” This statement is puzzling—in fact, one wonders what Biden is talking about. The FBI statistics released last year, which report 2022 figures, don’t show a record-setting decline in murder rates. They do report that 2022’s violent-crime rate was higher than 2014’s, the year that the Ferguson, Missouri riots—and President Obama’s reaction to them—sparked the anti-policing movement.

“If Biden were instead relying on preliminary FBI figures for 2023, rather than on the 2022 data released last year, that’s problematic, too—especially since he made it sound like he was using fully processed, validated, and finalized federal statistics, as one would expect from a president during a formal address to Congress. The preliminary FBI figures for 2023, which contain no reporting from 21 percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies, haven’t been fully processed or validated. There’s a reason such figures haven’t yet been released as final.

“In truth, it’s hard to compare even the FBI’s 2022 numbers with any years prior to 2021, when the FBI switched to a new reporting system. Thirty percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies in 2021, and 17 percent in 2022, didn’t use the new reporting system and therefore weren’t included in the FBI’s stats. Among the missing agencies in 2022 were giants like the New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco police departments.

“Reliable federal statistics for 2023 likely won’t be released until September, when the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) typically publishes the NCVS. Around that time, the FBI will also release its finalized statistics for 2023. Those figures won’t easily lend themselves to comparisons with the FBI’s 2019 figures, compiled under the previous reporting system, and even comparisons with 2022 and 2021 could be distorted by the different mixes of reporting agencies involved. It’s also worth noting that FBI statistics don’t include crimes not reported to police. As self-identified victims tell the NCVS, nearly 60 percent of violent crimes, and about two-thirds of property crimes, aren’t reported to the authorities….

“This surge in urban violence, of course, comes amid the scourge in many areas of tent cities, drug addicts on streets, marijuana stench, and orchestrated shoplifting, giving the cumulative impression that great cities are abandoning civilized norms. Cities today are pursuing the opposite of “Broken Windows” policing, ignoring pettier crimes, inviting a general sense of disorderliness, and effectively encouraging more severe acts of lawlessness. This reality is not a figment of Americans’ imaginations.”

The Urban Violent Crime Spike Is Real | City Journal (city-journal.org)

No. 205, February 16, 202

Lenin’s World

Still, sadly, around, as this article from Compact Magazine reports.

An excerpt.

“When the Soviet Union unraveled in 1992, statues of its founder, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, were torn from their foundations by the thousands and dumped in fields and warehouses, leaving behind surreal Ozymandian relics that still litter the former Communist world. These uprooted likenesses of the great revolutionary, frozen in a triumphant pose, became reminders of the definitive deadness of the system and ideology he embodied. If, as David Remnick wrote, “Lenin was the initiator of the central drama—the tragedy—of our era, the rise of totalitarian states,” then presumably the inhabitants of the 21st century should be so glad to be rid of him and everything he represented.

“Lenin, or his heirs, may yet have the last word.”

“But as we mark the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik leader’s demise, he is more present in today’s world than his gravediggers could have anticipated in the 1990s. Although Marxism-Leninism lost the Cold War, it is doubtful in hindsight whether the West really won it either. The United States enjoyed its moment of unchallenged hegemony, but now America is tottering under the weight of its own contradictions—and drawing frequent comparisons with the late Soviet empire. Meanwhile, alternative political orders arising from the parts of the world where Lenin’s creed had its greatest influence are asserting themselves ever more forcefully. What is more, the memory of Lenin, far from being dead or forgotten, has had a surprisingly vivid resonance in recent years. Echoes of his name and his slogans continue to reverberate across geopolitical and ideological faultlines. Lenin, or his heirs, may yet have the last word.

“When Russian tanks started rolling toward Kiev in February 2022, Vladimir Putin pointed to Lenin in his explanation of the casus belli: “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia … by separating, severing what is historically Russian land … [it] can rightfully be called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.’ He was its creator and architect.” Apparently seeing no contradiction with Moscow’s “de-Nazification” rhetoric, Putin promised a purge of Bolshevik influence, as well: “Grateful descendants have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine…. But you must not stop halfway. We are ready to show you what genuine de-Communization means for Ukraine.” Kiev disagrees, pointing instead to Ukraine’s brief period of post-Tsarist independence as the origin of its modern statehood, which Lenin immediately tried to subdue—in which case, Putin is the one fulfilling Lenin’s wishes.

“However one interprets the war, the combatants are grappling with unfinished business left over from Lenin’s time, and the war is raging against the backdrop of a larger question the Cold War’s end failed to settle: Which version of the “universal homogenous state”—the phrase used by Francis Fukuyama in his famous essay positing the end of history—should prevail in the disputed realms of Eastern Europe? Should it be the incumbent one anchored in Washington and Brussels, or the revisionist successor regime to the Communist empire founded by Lenin?

“On the other end of the Eurasian landmass, the People’s Republic of China is often described as only nominally Marxist-Leninist, yet Xi Jinping hasn’t minced words in describing his guiding philosophy. In a speech delivered not long after he assumed leadership, Xi was adamant about the relevance of the Communist Party’s original doctrines: “Marxism-Leninism brings to light the laws governing the development of the history of human society. Its basic tenets are correct and have tremendous vitality.… So long as [we] uphold the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism … China will be crowned with final victory.” Beyond its formal platitudes, Xi’s speech pointed to an important truth: It was the stubborn insistence of his predecessor Deng Xiaoping on holding onto the Leninist model of party dictatorship, even as he pursued far-reaching economic liberalization, that allowed Communist rule to thrive in China where it disintegrated in Russia.

“Furthermore, the pragmatic utilization of market reforms, far from a simple deviation from Leninism, can credibly be traced back to the inspiration of Lenin’s own New Economic Policy as filtered through the theories of Nikolai Bukharin, which Deng studied closely as a visiting student-revolutionary in 1920s Moscow. It was this distinctly Leninist fusion of an unyielding political monopoly combined with instrumental tactical flexibility in economic governance that ensured the success of Deng’s experiment, generating the vast material abundance Xi has inherited. The Middle Kingdom today can thus be seen as the triumph of an alternative but no less authentic strain of Marxism-Leninism. In this sense, the impending confrontation between China and the United States will determine whether Lenin’s successors inherit the earth after all.

“It is one thing to hear invocations of Lenin in Moscow and Beijing, and another to see thought leaders from across the partisan spectrum in America, in one way or another, embrace the Russian revolutionary’s ideas and example. This phenomenon, increasingly widespread since 2016, offers clear indication of the weakening hold of the liberal-democratic creed in its own heartland. Among the new generation of American Leninists are conservative provocateurs like Steve Bannon and Christopher Rufo; theirs, of course, is a Leninism of style and temperament rather than ideology. Bannon is reported to have declared before his short White House stint: “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.” In a similar vein, Rufo, darling of the Millennial New Right, often couches his crusade against progressivism in Leninist terms as a “vanguardist” attempt to take control of academic and cultural institutions as part of a counterrevolutionary strategy.

“On the other end of the spectrum, a proudly socialist Millennial left has sought to reclaim some of the idealism of the early Communist movement while also learning from its “loss of innocence” under the Soviets. In a 2017 editorial reflecting on the centennial of the October Revolution, Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara said that he envisioned a “21st-century Finland Station,” where “many now crushed by inequity [can] participate in the creation of a new world.”

We Still Live in Lenin’s World | Compact Mag

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Praying the 15 Decade Rosary

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I’ve been praying the 15 decade rosary for some time now, once I understood through my studies that it was the rosary presented by our Holy Queen Mother to St. Dominic, so any additions since then are not what was divinely given.

I pray the 15 decade rosary the way St. Louis Montfort taught us, available online at http://www.philomena.org/rosarydemontford.asp and be sure to add the prayer our Holy Mother taught us at Fatima, available online at https://www.thoughtco.com/the-fatima-prayer-542631 .

Today, I timed how long it took to say the full fifteen decades in one sitting, 40 minutes.

Here is one great place (I got mine here) to get 15 decade rosaries, http://www.sistersofcarmel.com/custom-15-decade-rosaries/

This article from Tradition in Action makes the case for the 15 decade rosary superbly.

An excerpt.

“While driving home from the chapel last week, I was praying the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. My plan was to pray the Sorrowful Mysteries in the afternoon and the Glorious Mysteries in the evening before going to bed. For many years, I had simply prayed the five decades designated for the day in order to fulfill Our Lady’s request at Fatima that her children pray the Rosary every day for the Consecration of Russia and the peace of Christ in the world. At least I thought that was the nature of her request. More on that misunderstanding will be clarified momentarily.

“Then, one evening in December, one of our parishioners in Southern California mentioned to me that he prays the whole Rosary every day because if Our Lady said that Francisco would go to Heaven only after praying many Rosaries, and he died at the tender age of ten, then how many more would we have to pray to get there! That struck a chord with me.

“I now believe that it is good to pray the entire Rosary daily for three reasons.

“Our Lady asked for the full Rosary

“The first reason is that when the Virgin Mary asked us at Fatima to pray the Rosary every day, she was not asking for five decades. She was asking for fifteen. When Our Lady says “Pray the Rosary,” she is speaking of what has been termed her Psalter, a word referring to the Book of Psalms, which contains one hundred and fifty Psalms of David. From the time of St. Dominic, “Mary’s Psalter” was the 150 Hail Marys. In 1569 St. Pope Pius V, himself a Dominican, issued an apostolic letter establishing the fifteen-decades as the official Church-authorized Rosary.

“For some, if not many, it may seem like too much to ask, given so many other daily responsibilities, to pray the whole Rosary. They will say that even one of the Mysteries, that is, a set of five decades, is difficult.

“I would respond that each one of us is awake at least fifteen hours of the day. Some are awake a few hours longer, but for the sake of argument, we will use the figure fifteen hours. Yes, it would be very nice to get nine hours of sleep at night! If each of us prayed one decade of the Rosary each waking hour, which amounts to five minutes out of every sixty of our day, we would pray the entire Rosary every day.

“Oh sure, some days we could get tied up for two to three hours at a time at work and subsequently “fall behind” in this commitment. But then there is always the ride home, which for most people is more than five to ten minutes, so decades can be made up for in the drive. It does take a little bit of planning ahead and at times those unexpected circumstances do arise. Hard working mothers who are home with their children also face varying circumstances. But, as the old saying goes, “Where there is a will, there is a way.”

“A special efficacy in praying the 15 decades

“This leads to the second reason why I believe this is a very important commitment for us as Catholics to make. Our Lady said that she had obtained from God a special efficacy to be attached to the praying of the Rosary so that there was nothing that we could request from her that we could not obtain through the daily Rosary. If we believe our Mother when she speaks to us, then this statement alone should fill us with great confidence and the desire to ask Our Lady’s intercession for our spiritual and temporal welfare by praying the Rosary. It is like what Jesus said to His Apostles on the night before He died, “Whatever you ask for in My Name, it will be given to you.”

“The Virgin Mary at Fatima was God’s last olive branch for peace in the world today. Is it any wonder that there is such an overlap between the generosity of Jesus and His Mother Mary? In fact, Jesus revealed to Sister Lucia in the 1930s that He wanted Mary’s Immaculate Heart to be honored alongside His, and hearts that love the same things share the same dispositions towards others. In fact, His request simply reiterated what Our Lady herself had already revealed on July 13, 1917: that God wants to establish devotion to her Immaculate Heart in the world.”

Retrieved October 5, 2023 from https://traditioninaction.org/religious/d013rp15Decades_Stretenovic.html

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David H. Lukenbill, President

The Lampstand Foundation

It takes a reformed criminal to reform criminals.

Post Office Box 254794

Sacramento, CA 95865-4794

Lampstand Website: https://davidhlukenbill.wordpress.com/         

Email: Dlukenbill@msn.com

Blog: http://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Re-entry Evaluation Page: https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

With Peter, to Christ, through Mary

Better to light up than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being  a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed

The Lampstand Foundation E-Letter:

No. 199, August 16, 2023

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Twenty Year Anniversary Issue

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This ministry began in August of 2003 proposing that the most effective people helping criminals transform their lives will be transformed criminals with a deep understanding of the criminal culture—rarely understood even by the criminals themselves, except in the maximum-security prisons where the hierarchy reflect the ancient values.

At the top of this hierarchy is the professional criminal—who commits crimes for money, is not sexually perverse, nor an informer, respects the innocent especially women and children and lives by a code of honor.

Lampstand has published 11 books on various aspects of this work which can be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=david+lukenbill+books&crid=2QWAZXA0KGTQW&sprefix=david+lukenbill+books%2Caps%2C140&ref=nb_sb_noss

I derive deep satisfaction from this work and will continue it for as long as I am able, and remain deeply appreciate of those of you who support it.

__________________________

David H. Lukenbill, President

The Lampstand Foundation

It takes a reformed criminal to reform criminals.

Post Office Box 254794

Sacramento, CA 95865-4794

Lampstand Website: https://davidhlukenbill.wordpress.com/         

Email: Dlukenbill@msn.com

Blog: http://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Re-entry Evaluation Page: https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

With Peter, to Christ, through Mary

Better to light up than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being  a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

Feeling Safe: E Letter #197, June 16, 2023

Crucial, yes?

Great article about it from AEI.

An excerpt.

“It seems that a day hardly goes by without another incident of violence making the national news. From school shootings to aggressive protests from extreme groups and endless petty crime in general, America’s mood toward feeling safe is not particularly good. Data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard show that at the end of 2022, a quarter of American adults say they live in fear of being attacked in their neighborhoods.

“Residents of America’s older, urban core-based cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chicago are in a particularly bad spot. Civil unrest has become common in Chicago’s Loop and homicides and violent crime is up in the City of Brotherly Love. Rampant drug use in the Tenderloin and surrounding neighborhoods in San Francisco has caused a retail exodus and shoplifting is commonplace. New York is dealing with seemingly endless hate crimes and random acts of violence on the streets, in the squares, and on mass transit. City-dwellers are scared for their safety.

“It should be little wonder that surveys reveal that “only 15% of New Yorkers feel ‘very safe’” riding the subway during the day.” New Yorkers do not like being harassed at cafes and restaurants and parents are no longer comfortable bringing their children into the libraries that dot the landscape. It is unsurprising, then, that 94 percent of New Yorkers do not think enough is being done to address homelessness and mental illness. In the same poll, 57 percent of New Yorkers report that not enough is being done to address shoplifting, and three-quarters (74 percent) of transit riders say safety has become far worse since the start of the pandemic.

“Worries about safety and security as a matter of public policy are not new. There are, and have been, endless debates about how to manage issues of safety from gun control measures to policing and mental health outreach. As the COVID-19 pandemic winds down, safety and security issues are front and center in discussions about how to renew and revitalize urban cores. Not mentioned, however, in these discussions of urban decline is this: critical spaces of social mixing and engagement are under dire threat. If concerns of safety are not addressed and, if public, shared spaces continue to decline, the critically important social and communal fabric of our cities is at risk.

“Central business districts in cities have traditionally been places where Americans meet, mingle, and encounter others with different outlooks and backgrounds; they are the common thread that keeps our cities, connections, and relationships together.  The spatial and physical elements of communal life in cities – think amenities like parks, libraries, playgrounds, cafes, community centers, and mass transit—have huge impacts on propinquity and on creating and sustaining conditions to meet, socialize and create communal social capital. 

“Research has repeatedly demonstrated that Americans who live in closer proximity to these spaces and regularly take advantage of community amenities and third places like parks, libraries, restaurants, and theaters are appreciably more content with their neighborhood, more trusting of others, less lonely, and more engaged with their neighbor. Residents in amenity-rich neighborhoods with third places are more likely to say their community is an excellent place to live, feel safer walking around their neighborhood at night, and report greater interest in neighborhood goings-on. It is also the case that having vibrant public squares and common shared focal points result in Americans being more likely to help neighbors when asked along with being more trusting of others and more optimistic about the future. 

“Regular interaction and engagement with others, which community amenities and public spaces and resources promote and facilitate, generates a sense of familiarity and ownership of place. As Ryan Streeter rightly notes, it creates “a pride of place that make ‘home’ not just a house but the place where we live in community with others.” Thus, safer and robust urban landscapes promote feelings of community satisfaction and social trust which promote civility and civic engagement.”

 By Failing to Promote Safety, America’s Older Cities are Failing to Build Community | American Enterprise Institute – AEI

__________________________

David H. Lukenbill, President

The Lampstand Foundation

It takes a reformed criminal to reform criminals.

Post Office Box 254794

Sacramento, CA 95865-4794

Website: https://davidhlukenbill.wordpress.com/      

Email: Dlukenbill@msn.com

Blog: http://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Re-entry Evaluation Page: https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

With Peter, to Christ, through Mary

Better to light up than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being  a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

No Bail Means More Crime

Excellent article by Michael Rushford published by California Globe.

An excerpt.

“Data released last September by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services provided researchers at the Manhattan Institute with the necessary information to compare the rearrest rate for offenders prior to the state’s 2020 bail reform law with the rearrest rate after the law took effect. The intent of the bail reform law was to force judges to release more arrestees without bail, called Non-Monetary Release (NMR). Charles Fain Lehman’s piece in the City Journal confirmed what many in law enforcement had predicted: when offenders are released without bail, they are more likely to be rearrested for committing new crimes.

“This finding was ignored by the major media and liberal think tanks like the Brennan Center, which had for months tried to convince the public that releasing more offenders without bail was not the cause of increased crime across the state. One exception was a September New York Post article by Jim Quinn that noted: “in 2019, 166 of the NMR participants got re-arrested each month. In 2021, the number soared to 445 re-arrests a month, including more than 300 felonies each month.” That’s over 2-1⁄2 times more rearrests per month.

“Earlier this month, a study by the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office (California) appears to confirm the findings in New York. While California did not enact a bail reform law similar to New York’s, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the state did order a Statewide Emergency Bail Policy on April 6, 2020, eliminating bail for those arrested for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. It should be noted that vehicle theft and drug dealing are nonviolent felonies in California. This policy remained in force in Yolo County until May 31, 2021.

“The study looked at a random sample of 100 arrested individuals who were released under emergency zero bail in Yolo County and compared their recidivism with a random sample of 100 similarly situated individuals who posted bail in Yolo County between January 2018 to December 2019.

“Recidivism during an 18-month period was examined for a random sample of 100 arrested individuals who posted bail in 2018 or 2019, compared to a random sample of 100 arrested individuals who were released on zero bail between April 19, 2020, and May 31, 2021. Offender demographics and original offenses were similar for the comparison groups despite the random sample generator process. Recidivism was counted if the individual was arrested anywhere within 18 months, for at least one new crime, after being previously released.

“In this study, individuals released on zero bail were subsequently rearrested for a total of 163% more crimes than individuals released on bail.

“The average recidivism rate for those released on zero bail was 78% over 18 months, while the average recidivism rate for those released on bail was only 46%. Thus, arrested individuals released on zero bail reoffended at an average rate that was 70% higher than arrestees who posted bail…. Individuals released on zero bail committed new felonies 90% more often than those who posted bail…. Individuals released on zero bail committed new violent offenses 200% more often than those who posted bail.”

“Could there be other factors that contributed to the significantly increased rearrest rates in New York and Yolo County following the elimination of cash bail? Certainly. But widely published claims that the crime spike was caused by the pandemic do not explain why during the first four months of business lockdowns and school closures and masking, crime rates were significantly lower than in previous years. Yet after the nationwide George Floyd riots erupted in late May 2020, reported crimes (particularly violent crimes) climbed to unprecedented highs. The logical conclusion is that with tens of thousands of offenders turned loose under zero bail, and tacit approval for the “mostly peaceful” rioting by the national media and political leaders, most parts of the country had become consequence-free environments for criminals.”

Data Indicate That Zero Bail Results in More Crime | California Globe