kimmy

Oh. Do Canadian conservatives feel different about abuse of power by the state? -k

If they'd run out of it when you Boomers were running up a half trillion dollar debt, we wouldn't be in this mess. -k

oh sure, but it's only the past 10 years or so that the US government has been dumping used military gear on police departments to the point that even Podunk Idaho now has its own APC and a squad of cops with military body-armor and M4s. Radley Balko from the Cato Institute has been doing some interesting reporting on this issue and found that the number of SWAT team call-outs has risen astronomically in recent years. As the adage goes, if you're given a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. -k

A key difference between the situations is that the law of the land, and numerous judges and juries, and the police themselves, all agree that these "nickel rides" are completely illegal, while courts have upheld the right to obtain an abortion. I'm also confused as to why the conservatives on the forum are so upset about the riots. Based on the rhetoric from the NRA types, and the Tea Party types, one thing I know for sure is that conservatives believe that the threat of popular uprising is necessary to keep politicians honest. A great many conservatives argue that the Second Amendment was designed as a check against government tyranny. That viewpoint has been argued by the NRA, by Republicans, by constitutional experts. Well, in Baltimore you have a group of people who are not just talking, they're putting those words into action. There is, certainly, no more obvious example of government tyranny than police officers slaying a man without trial. And here is a group of Americans who have banded together to take up arms against this tyrannical use of government force and say "this ends here!" and you guys are mad? Why? Why aren't the rioters heroes to you guys? When this stuff happened at Clive Bundy's ranch, Sean Hannity jizzed his pants on-air, he was so aroused by all the freedom. Why aren't you conservatives having freedom parties in honor of the Baltimore riots? I thought you guys loved it when the citizenry rises up against government oppression. -k

I get that the mentality between US cops and British cops is completely different. However, the militarization of US police is a fairly recent issue, while as BC2004 indicated earlier, the problem of cops inflicting extra-judicial punishment on suspects goes back decades. -k

I'm not saying it's smart, I'm just saying I understand why people are angry. All of this stuff-- offshoring jobs, corporate tax avoidance, temporary foreign workers, rising tuition fees, austerity measures-- all of it is basically a result of people who got to the top pulling the ladder up behind them. If you pull the ladder up behind you, the people stuck at the bottom are going to be mad. The politicians who are in charge of this stuff are probably shareholders in Starbucks too. It's the only explanation as to why they'd rather save nickels and dimes by cutting jobs at Revenue Canada rather than investing in the resources to pursue tax cheats. Hoping for change from Ottawa is pointless. I think the more likely avenue is public shaming of these deadbeats, kind of like happened to the Royal Bank and McDonalds with the foreign workers. -k

As mentioned earlier in this thread, the city of Baltimore has paid out millions of dollars in compensation to other people who have been injured, crippled, or killed while bouncing around by deliberately wild rides in the back of Baltimore PD vans. And, while the police keep insisting these are "unfortunate accidents" and "we are updating our procedures to make sure this doesn't happen again", it keeps happening. While paying lip-service to the idea that these "nickel rides" are illegal, the Baltimore PD is obviously laughing down their sleeve about these lawsuits that the city has been paying out on their behalf, and it's obvious that the police have no intention of changing. Likely the memo sent out a week before Freddie Gray got his spine broke, reminding officers to use restraints when transporting suspects, was met with huge guffaws in the squad room as well. I'm sure we all watched the sad-faced police lawyer telling reporters how the 6 officers were "sincerely saddened" by Gray's death. I'm sure they're sad that he died. I'm sure that they didn't mean for him to be crippled by the time he got to the station. I know for certain that they're really sad to be charged with murder, criminal negligence, manslaughter, or whatever the prosecutors end up going with. But if you look at the route the van took, you'd have to be an idiot to think that what happened to Gray wasn't deliberate. And you've have to be an idiot to think that they "forgot" to restrain him in the vehicle. "The nickel ride" is a long-running practice in Baltimore and in other cities as well. And they had no interest in changing. In this case, the rioters "getting what they want" means making the police obey the law. And why is that so unreasonable? And why is rioting necessary to make that happen? -k

What alternatives would you suggest? -k

That's how the United States of America was founded! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! -k

Peaceful protest has failed to produce any change. A long history of successful civil suits against Baltimore's PD has also failed to produce any change. -k

They dodge vast amounts of tax by licensing "intellectual property" (ie, the green mermaid logo, and calling a small a "tall" etc) at outrageous prices from Starbucks Holland. Right off the top, 10% of the money you give them is out of the country tax free. Tim and I had a long chat about this in a thread a while back. Their accountants are brilliant at finding ways to "lose money" into the pockets of their Dutch division. In England, negative press over their tax avoidance strategies became so bad that they voluntarily left tax deductions on the table so that people would stop boycotting them. Students are angry at austerity measures and rising tuition fees, and Starbucks is finding ways to avoid taxes, and they're confused about why people are mad? They're creating value for their shareholders, I guess, and the shareholders don't care about the rest until its their own windows that get smashed. -k

With all the taxes companies like Starbucks and McDonalds avoid by shifting money to Holland, and the wages they avoid paying by bringing in foreign workers, and all the money they save by buying produce grown by undocumented fieldworkers, and materials made in China, I think they can afford to replace their windows a few times a year. It's just a cost of doing business in the "I got mine" economy. Increasing numbers of angry people who didn't get theirs yet and aren't going to get theirs any time soon are a consequence of the business model. -k

I don't see how that relates to an unarmed person who was shackled hand and foot in the back of a van somehow arriving at the station with a severed spine. -k

This stuff regarding the power wielded by politicians is a ridiculous diversion from the topic. If you find yourself cornered by a group of thugs in a parkade, does it matter to you that the urban poor are virtually powerless in society? nuh-uh. At that moment, in that situation, those urban poor-people have a great deal of power over you, far more so than some distant politician. Likewise when you find yourself face-to-face with the police. I once had an acquaintance who worked in the emergency room at a hospital in Edmonton's north side. They said it was very frustrating watching the same people show up at emergency over and over. People who had drank crap trying to get drunk. People punched or kicked or stabbed in drunken brawls. People sick from eating or smoking something trying to get high. People-- poor people, disproportionately native-- with trouble that traced back to their own stupidity. And they'd see the same faces over and over, and think "I wonder what Joe drank this time," and they'd see unfamiliar natives come in and expect that they too had been involved in some kind of ill-fated drinking party and usually that was correct. And they said that after seeing the same thing over and over again, it was becoming hard not to be prejudiced, and hard not to wonder "what's the point of helping Joe when he's just going to be back here again next week?" And I have no doubt that cops feel the same kind of frustration. -k

Not really sure why you're concerned about this. But if it makes you feel better, the anonymous member browsing the forum is BC_2004. -k

I'm sure capitalism will be just fine. Economic stimulus! Creating jobs for hard-working tradesmen! -k

So I hear that after years of hype and build-up, Floyd Mayweather got paid $200 million for running backwards and hugging Manny Pacquiao for 12 rounds. Boxing experts are declaring it a "defensive clinic", everybody else is declaring it "boring." Anybody watch? -k

oh for ... no, there's no secret plan to declare martial law. -k

There are hundreds of threads on this forum that indicate that people are very concerned with governmental powers. Are we only supposed to be concerned with one thing at a time? Politicians have the power to make "big picture" decisions that affect lots of people, but when you interact with the police they have direct and immediate power over you in a way that no politician has. -k

For those wondering what could possible go wrong in the back of a police van: http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-baltimore-rough-rides-20150501-story.html#page=1 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gray-rough-rides-20150423-story.html#page=1 There seems to be something of a pattern here. -k

I recall that there's really only one contemporary historian, a Roman named Tacitus, who was discussing Christ, and he was not actually a contemporary, he was decades later, and he wasn't actually discussing Christ, but rather the existence of a cult who worshiped him. There seems to be widespread agreement that Jesus was a historical figure, but there also seems to be a lot of stuff in the gospels that doesn't jive with historical facts. It seems as if you wish to entirely disregard the Old Testament, which is *certainly* not about the Golden Rule. How is it possible to reconcile the loving father described in the New Testament with the raging psycho of the Old Testament? How could they possibly be the same guy? Let's clarify this whole "consequences" idea. I think most people understand cause-and-effect. I break the law, I get in trouble. I pick a fight, I get punched in the nose. I drink too much, I wake up feeling like crap the next day. I don't think anybody here doubts those kinds of "consequences". When it comes to some of these other kinds of "consequences" some religious people talk about, that's where things get a little sketchy. I work on the Sabbath, I spend eternity in a lake of fire. I have girl-on-girl sex, I spend eternity in a lake of fire. I don't accept that some middle-eastern guy got killed for me 2000 years ago, I spend eternity in a lake of fire. There are mainstream religious and political figures who claim that things like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina and the Texas drought and wildfires and the Sandy Hook massacre are "consequences" of people not believing in the Bible. Are these the kinds of "consequences" you believe in? Nothing matters, unless you get to live in the sky with a bearded dude after it's all done? Didn't god wipe out Job's entire family just to prove a point to Satan? Wipe out everybody on earth except for Noah's family in the Great Flood? I think he commanded the Israelites to annihilate one of the Canaanite tribes right down to the last infant. I can't imagine what those infants and toddlers must have done to deserve that... Great people do great things. Bad people do bad things. There are lots of religious and non-religious people on both sides of that ledger. -k

no, no, no. This is a bunch of conspiracy theory crap. A military training exercise in Texas has nothing to do with riots in Baltimore. -k

I've never believed that racism, directly, is the root of this problem, because that fails to explain why we often see white victims of police brutality as well. I think that the reasons that black people are disproportionately affected relate partly to racism (ie, racial profiling by police) as well as sociological issues where of course racism may be a factor a well. But to me the direct root of the problem is that the police feel entitled to use force on a whim, and that they don't expect to be held accountable for the use of force. You can look at any number of incidents where the primary police interest in these matters is not accountability or upholding professional standards, but rather protecting their own, obfuscating evidence of wrongdoing, covering up, trying to manipulate public perception of the incident. Just looking at this Baltimore case, a couple of things we've found out are that this "switchblade" that Gray was carrying was actually a legal pocket-knife. Why did the police initially say it was a switchblade? The police know the difference between a switchblade and a pocket-knife. They called it a switchblade in the initial press reports because they wanted to manipulate the public perception of the arrest. If you believe otherwise, you're naive and gullible. And then we heard about this alleged witness who allegedly claimed that Gray had been trying to injure himself in the van. But now that we've seen the time line of Gray's trip from the scene of the arrest to the police station, we know that the alleged witness wasn't picked up until the 4th stop the van made, while the police in the van had called for medical help before then. So the alleged witness obviously didn't see what happened. And that witness himself says that his remarks were misrepresented, and that he never actually saw Gray and only heard a few banging sounds from elsewhere in the van. So this is obviously also a bunch of BS that the police conjured in an attempt to deflect blame. This is typical. We saw the grand-daddy of examples of this in how the police managed information released to the public in the wake of the slaying of Robert Dziekanski. -k

I never said they don't. I just said that's what the Republicans are going to say they're doing to help women, and that's all they're going to offer. Well, I'd suggest two things. First off, some issues affect women disproportionately more than men. For example, an pay discrimination law might theoretically benefit men as well as women, but in practice it would be overwhelmingly used by women and not men. And secondly, I'd suggest that if Mrs G were the one attempting to file a pay discrimination lawsuit against her employer, I suspect that your view that it only benefited women might change. I just mention pay discrimination as an example because I seem to recall that Republicans fought vociferously against the Lily Ledbetter Act. -k