Actually I did notice that, though my 'social-democrat' status is problematic. But so what? Should we take this to mean that laws providing for capital punishment tend to cause barren welfare provision? Or that people who support one tend not to support the other? The latter was acknowledged in my post. Whether it is true or not has no bearing on the merits of either capital punishment or social welfare provision.
> Mix this social democracy index . . .
This index is not as obvious as it may look. A state with low social welfare spending could have low income too, so that its ratio of the former to the latter could exceed that for a state with higher social welfare spending. Or a state could have low spending on means-tested programs but more on services available to all. This all takes some sorting out.
> . . . with race, and you get an argument that death penalty is
a method that benefits the ruling class by turning the white
working class into a Lynch Mob and away from Organized Labor &
Social Welfare. >
The race thing don't cut it. Blacks support capital punishment. And white workers are not a lynch mob for wanting to see executed those who commit heinous crimes.
There is no question that liberal/social-democratic opposition to the death penalty has helped the ruling class, since it drives workers to the right. Nor that the death penalty is often race-coded, and this serves the ruling class. But neither has any bearing on whether the death penalty is justified. Moreover, if your argument is simply that congeniality of any type towards capital punishment is 'bad politics,' then there is no specific moral issue involved. The obvious fact is that support for the death penalty is good politics; that's why it is ubiquitous, though that doesn't make it right.
> Capital Punishment is a punishment of Labor by Capital. Max,
you wanna turn D.C. into a Lynchburg?>
You forget, as Charles noted in a different context, this is Chocolate City. The D.C. criminal justice system that deals with garden-variety crime, including homicide, is controlled by African-Americans. (The US attorneys mostly deal with white collar matters, and the only thing the Congress and Control Board care about is that the city gov balances its budget.) If we got capital punishment here, it would be blacks deciding to execute blacks who murder blacks, in great part. It would not be "lynchburg."
A few years back in DC, a single mom was driving her kids to school. A car full of kids pulled up alongside. A kid in the car pulled his automatic and shot her dead. Later he explained, "I just felt like bustin someone." A local columnist talked about firing up "Old Sparky." All of the people in this story are black. Somebody should write a folk song about that.
mbs