Xenophobia erupts in Binghamton New York

NVDL: More and more people are taking strain and snapping. These sort of crimes are likely to increase in frequency. And get worse. This is the dawn of The Dark Night.

clipped from news.yahoo.com BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) — A gunman opened fire on a room where immigrants were taking a citizenship exam in downtown Binghamton on Friday, killing as many as 13 people before committing suicide, officials said. Gov. David Paterson said at a news conference that 12 or 13 people had been killed. The suspected gunman carried identification with the name of 42-year-old Jiverly Voong of nearby Johnson City, N.Y., a law enforcement official said. The gunman had recently been let go from IBM in nearby Johnson City, said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, whose district includes Binghamton. The gunman opened fire on a citizenship class, he said. "People were there in the process of being tested for their citizenship," Hinchey said in a telephone interview. "It was in the middle of a test. He just went in and opened fire." "One of the first questions is going to be, what motivated this?" he said. "What caused this to happen? What was the kind of person who did it?"

Economics and Reason

To economists, it is obvious that if the cost of an activity rises, the amount of the activity will drop.

I am definitely against the death penalty on lots of different grounds,” said Joanna M. Shepherd, a law professor at Emory with a doctorate in economics who wrote or contributed to several studies. “But I do believe that people respond to incentives.”

NVDL: In the same way that if the cost of murdering goes up, murderers might murder less, if the cost of oil goes up (as it is), everything (since everything is based on oil) will be less.