There are so many problems with this story that I almost don’t know where to begin.
First, comparing the WORST neighborhoods in one country to the overall AVERAGE of a second country is meaningless. Unless the parameter, infant mortality, life expectancy or whatever is 100% evenly distributed, something which is pretty much impossible outside of Pretendy-land, then you will always be able to draw boundaries which break things down into good and bad areas.
For comparison purposes, you have to compare bad to bad or good to good or average to average. Hell, that’s why we calculate averages in the first place.
I mean, heck, the infant mortality rate for American women who have suffered the death of an infant is worse than the average of just about any country on earth! Horror!!
Second, who says that the life expectancy in North Korea is so bad? The United States had a life expectancy of about 69.5 in 1960 and I don’t consider things to be so much better today. The biggest change seems to be that we could afford our health care in 1960.
But if Sanders wants to convince me that Baltimore is so bad, he should compare its life expectancy to places like Chad (49.8) or Mozambique (52.9) or some other place that actually has a low life expectancy.
Of course, we’re basing this on “official” North Korean statistics. God only knows what the real life expectancy is in North Korea.
Hmmm....I’m having to look it up. I think it was Prop 63 in 1986. If so, you are right. It passed. It was then overturned by the Ninth Circuit, but the Supreme Court then overturned the Ninth.
All I know for sure is that everything I get from the government here comes in a large variety of languages. I wonder if it could pass again today.
Many years ago we had a vote on “English Only” here in California. At the time I had a VERY conservative roommate. I was surprised when he said he was opposed to English only. Then he explained; “If these people learn English they will be able to compete with me for jobs. I don’t want that.”