This Week In Quotes: Jan 17 – Jan 23

The peer-reviewed estimates didn’t rely on arrest records but instead on an annual federal Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of about 7,000 young people who answered questions each year from 1997 to 2008 on a range of issues – including if they had ever been taken into custody for something other than a traffic offense. Self-reported crimes ranged from underage drinking to violent assaults. The authors found that by age 18, 30 percent of black men, 26 percent of Hispanic men and 22 percent of white men have been arrested. By 23, those numbers climb to 49 percent for black men, 44 percent for Hispanic men and 38 percent for white men. Among women, 20 percent of blacks, 18 percent of whites and 16 percent of Hispanics were arrested at least once by age 23. — Associated Press

Marijuana is the most widely used drug in the country, especially among young people. According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, “of the 7.3 million persons aged 12 or older classified with illicit drug dependence or abuse in 2012, 4.3 million persons had marijuana dependence or abuse,” making marijuana the drug with the largest number of people with dependence or abuse. — William Bennett

A recent Northwestern University study found that marijuana users have abnormal brain structure and poor memory and that chronic marijuana abuse may lead to brain changes resembling schizophrenia. The study also reported that the younger the person starts using marijuana, the worse the effects become. — William Bennett

Anybody within the sound of my voice that hates a gay person because they’re gay, you have no place calling yourself a fan of mine. You are not a fan of mine, you have no friendship here if you hate people because they’re gay. — Glenn Beck

Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are. — Andrew Cuomo

Is this in direct relation to feminism on the rise? Is it a result just sort of society seeing men that are not as masculine and men that are as masculine being kind of demonized? …Do you see this affecting national security, how a nation operates in terms of being a strong presence globally? — Elisabeth Hasselbeck

After all, the folks at NSA and other intelligence agencies are our neighbors and our friends.” — Barack Obama

There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president. Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president. — Barack Obama

I’m the best corner in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that’s the result you gonna get. Don’t you ever talk about me. […] Don’t you open your mouth about the best or I’m gonna shut it for you real quick. — Richard Sherman

Why do leftists, when faced with scorn, pine for coercion? Shouldn’t your arguments win on merit, not force? — Greg Gutfeld

So, some guy with a whiteboard has declared war on us. So, the Speaker may have declared war on us. Let me borrow from Animal House: “What’s all this laying around stuff? Why would anyone just lay around when our liberty, lives and loves are on the line? Did someone say let it go? The war’s over? What? Over? Did someone say over? No. It’s not over until we decide it’s over. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No! Well it ain’t over now! Because when the going gets tough, the tough get going!” What happened to the Tea Party I used to know? Where’s the spirit? Where’s the guts? This could be the greatest time of our lives but you’re going to let it be the worst because we’re afraid to go with Louie. We might get in trouble. Just kiss my aspen tree. From now on, not me, I’m not going to take it. We’re not going to take it anymore right? We’re going to stand up and take our country back! — Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it. Let us take that discussion all across America because women are far more than the Democrats have played them to be. — Mike Huckabee

My last column referred in passing to a surprising fact that came out of last weekend’s Wall Street Journal: Somewhere between 65 percent to 90 percent of the 2.2 million folks who bought insurance on the exchanges through late December seem to be people who already had insurance. — Megan McArdle

Rich America is working America: Wealthy households contain on average more than four times as many full-time workers as do poor households, and, surprisingly, inherited wealth constitutes a smaller share of their assets than it does for middle-class and poor households. They live modestly relative to their means and for the most part do not work on Wall Street or as corporate executives. — Kevin Williamson

If you have a net worth of $0.01, then your wealth exceeds that of the poorest quarter of Americans combined – their net worth begins in negative territory and tops out at $0.00. — Kevin Williamson

Wealth transfers – inheritances and gifts combined – constitute a small part of the holdings of the rich, whether you define “rich” in terms of income or net worth. For the top income quintile, gifts and inheritances amount to 13 percent of household wealth, according to research published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the top wealth quintile, they amount to 16 percent. For the hated “1 percent,” inherited wealth accounts for about 15 percent of holdings. Contrary to the story the Left likes to tell about economic inequality in the United States, those numbers have gone down over recent decades – by almost half for the wealthiest Americans. Meanwhile, inherited money makes up 43 percent of the wealth of the lowest income group and 31 percent for the second-lowest. — Kevin Williamson

There is, to be sure, such a thing as the working poor, but the most salient characteristic of poor households is the lack of full-time workers in them. For the bottom income group, there is an average of 0.42 earners per household, with 68.2 percent of householders not working at all, as opposed to 1.97 earners per household and only 13.3 percent not working for the highest income group. The answer to poverty turns out to be “get a job,” after all – though that should be an aspiration toward which we assist the poor rather than a contemptuous dismissal of their needs. — Kevin Williamson

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