people used to look at children as a way to pass on knowledge, culture, adn ofc, genes
nowadays our genes dont matter so much unless youre a super athlete or mega genius, so passing them on seems frivolous to many. then theres the interent, which houses knowledge on damn near everything. so i guess it makes sense why the desire to carry on would be outweighed at this point
Every Ohioan needs to contact their representative and explain that we voted on what we wanted including where the taxes go
I already contacted mine. And yes, it’s passed the senate, contact them anyway, make sure they understand you don’t want the cops getting money, you don’t want this to go to building new fucking jails (like seriously wtf), we specified 12 plants per household, and we voted to treat it like alcohol so it’s really fucked up that they’re trying to ban sharing a bowl between adults or picking up some bud for your buds.
We did that with the voting maps and the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the maps illegal, they ignored the Ohio Supreme Court and did as they please anyway.
Lawsuits have no power with the current administration here.
Shouldn’t people who need medical cannabis be able to get their prescription reliably? It kinda seems like there’s a real risk of recreational users gobbling up their supply, leaving them without treatment for whatever they’re going through.
The biggest issue in most states with legal recreational weed is excess supply tanking the market. I understand the concern, but it’s unlikely to pose a significant challenge in the short term, and it’s possible to legislate that some quantity be set aside for medicinal purposes if need be in the long term.
There have been issues briefly in other states of a shortage of supply after starting a rec program, caused by regulatory restrictions of course in the face of booming demand. After that, though, the issue has I overwhelmingly been an excess on the market… California, Oregon, Colorado, Oklahoma.
Yeah exactly I love it and want that to stay and that’s something we left for them to decide.
I am however wondering if we need a constitutional amendment granting a grace period for ballot initiatives to prevent them from being altered or repealed by the legislature for X amount of time. If after the effects of legalization have settled something needs changed sure let the legislature change it, but they seriously think they have the right to preemptively change it. My wife suggests 5 years so they have to be re-elected first.
I’ve emailed my representative, Darrell Kick, twice now, once before Wednesday’s vote and again yesterday while the house was discussing further changes to issue 2.
The onslaught of emails they received the first time is the whole reason why they started panicking and couldn’t get anything past Wednesday.
It worked, and I also highly suggest everyone do the same.
But please write your own email, hundreds of identical emails won’t send the same message as hundreds of unique voices all saying similar things.
There is absolutely nothing these over-hyped “space” companies can do that the US couldn’t do far better and far cheaper through NASA itself - you know, just like they did when they sent astronauts to the moon?.
that’s a fair point but it was also politically necessary to spend half a billion or more per launch to “show the ruskies who the real superpower was” - and a lot of the tech was still being developed. now, 50 years on, the tech is much more established, materials science has matured, and it’s cheaper for a non-government organization to perform the launches.
getting nasa involved is just going to involve gratuitous spending and pork barrel politics - look towards the SLS program. vastly over budget with not much to show for it. rounding down, you could buy every single launch SpaceX has made this year and still have a few billion $$$ in spare change left over for the cost of SLS… and it’s flown, what? once?
NASA’s first launch of the heavy lift Artemis, vs Space X’s Starship’s disaster of a “successful test” are different paths (and seems largely because the cut costs on protecting the lunch pad with water).
Falcon and all the previous space x rockets seem much less influenced by Musk than the Starship. Same as the Tesla Truck, I feel the Starship project is more vanity than engineering, and might not succeed the way Falcon etc. did.
There’s absolutely nothing “necessary” about a nationalist pissing contest between two vile empires. I know that’s an irrlevant tangent… but anyway.
and it’s cheaper for a non-government organization to perform the launches.
No, it isn’t. The US just did what it has always done… develop technology with public funds and then hand it off to the crony class to exploit for privatized profit at everyone else’s expense. Nothing about it is cheaper or more efficient - those are easily debunked myths.
getting nasa involved is just going to involve gratuitous spending
Duh… that’s how space exploration happens - through gratuitous spending. Whose money do you think Phoney Stark is burning through? His own?
Getting NASA involved is going to lead to results other than merely corporate parasites getting rich off money that could have been far, far better spent - that’s pretty much it.
There’s absolutely nothing “necessary” about a nationalist pissing contest between two vile empires.
I dunno, I don’t think it was necessary, but I do think we got some pretty cool stuff out of it. Satellites are kind of neat, I like those, I like knowledge about space and radiation and stuff. I would also like healthcare, that’s probably a higher priority, but I would like to have both.
but I do think we got some pretty cool stuff out of it.
Do you know why the US had to create NASA? The US wanted to get into space - but the corporates weren’t interested. There was no profit in it. So Eisenhower had to wait until Sputnik was launched, and then used the media hysteria to push through massive state intervention to actually get it done - same way Roosevelt had to use WW2 to launch the massive state intervention that resulted in the GI Bill (without which the modern-day idea of a “middle-class” wouldn’t even exist). This was no obstacle for the USSR, of course - they just went ahead and did it.
Here’s the thing… nobody got any poorer because the US sent a bunch of flyboys to play tic-tac-toe on the moon. But the existence of people like Phony Stark does make us all poorer.
Exactly. Start every kid with unlimited physical and mental health care, never wanting for any basic need, traveling the world on cool first-class vacations, attending fancy private schools. See if they don’t all turn into “self starters.”
Exactly. In just a few thousand years, he’ll run out of money as long as he keeps buying yachts every day.
But no, seriously, if we want him to be less relevant it’s pretty simple. Stop going to Twitter (fuck x, i won’t call it that ever) don’t buy tesla, and lobby against SpaceX. At least, until Elon has no control (edit: and financial benefit) over any of those.
And will only get even more bolder as a consequence. It’s quite fascinating how that shit head is exposing so many flaws in the current political system. And yet very little is done about it.
I wish it were only the political system, but it is also the social contract that is being broken.
Not everything in a society can and should be regulated by law. For example, we know not to cough or sneeze in someone else’s face, but to put our arm or hand in front of our face. It’s not a law and yet 99% of people know it and do it and call out people who don’t.
The US political system worked well for a while because there were do’s and don’ts that weren’t made into law, but every politician respected them to some degree. The GOP no longer respects anyone or anything, not an unwritten rule or even a written law, but they want to be respected, they want their rights to be respected.
This is not just happening in the US, I see it happening in the UK and Germany for example. Basic respect for each other is being lost more and more, between families, between neighbours, even between politicians. How do you get that back?
We don’t know how to deal with it as a society. We can’t have a law for everything. We depend on people and politicians to keep within the minimum social rules and follow an unwritten code, and we have nothing to punish them if they don’t and they just ignore these rules and spit on them.
It’s a double edged sword to build up this much shit. We saw with the court cases that nothing happened until one person decided to make a move. After that, the indictments came flooding in.
Someone needs to be willing to be the first one to throw his orange ass in jail for obstruction of justice and witness intimidation. But after that first person moves, I think we’ll see everyone move, and it’ll all collapse on him.
It’s certainly a flaw though, as you point out. Needing one brave person to stick their neck out to maintain rule of law isn’t great.
Some of the very first people that the Brownshirts went after was transpeople, even completely destroying an institute that was studying gender in the 30’s.
It’s not like the people involved in that lynching felt bad about it or regretted it. And then they passed that hate to their children who passed it on to their own children. Those people were the grandparents and great-grandparents of these kids. Some of them are still alive and still preaching their hate to the kid. Some of them were alive long enough to do it before they died.
Important to note that the population of the study all had a history of cardiovascular health issues, and were not representative of the rest of the population.
Also important to note is the failure to assess a distinction between combustion and non-combustion consumption.
Combusting marijuana results in particulates, carcinogens [1], lack of oxygen, and off-gasses benzene. [2] These are very important factors to control for, and this distinction was not addressed at all.
Definitely in need of further studies on the topic. This is an interesting area to explore, but this study falls a little flat in addressing any causation.
Yeah my favorite is people who say things like “I’m the 1940s USA/Canada/aus/etc fought fascism, what happened”?
No, they fought GERMANY. tons of those soldiers came back home and became John Birchers or klansmen or Christofascist evangelicals any other kind of fascist.
Shooting nazis does not an anti fascist make, perplexingly.
Also, the US was VERY hesitant to enter the European war. There was a lot of support for the Nazis in the US. From some high ranking people. Like the first director of the OSS and the Dulles brothers (instrumental in forming the CIA and NATO). They wanted a separate peace with Germany, and to enter the European war against the Soviets. But luckily FDR was unmovable in his support of the Soviets against the Nazis.
The latter point is not particularly surprising. Many people fight in wars because they have no choice or out of patriotism, or a combination of those plus other factors.
Another important point is that there are varying degrees of racism. Some people might have the badly mistaken view that a certain skin color is better or worse at certain jobs, for example, but that doesn’t mean that they would endorse genocide.
Another important point is that there are varying degrees of racism.
No, not really. You could, if you really wanted to, distinguish between two different “wings” or “traditions” of white supremacist ideology (which, of course, is the only “racism” there actually is) - the eliminationist and the exploitative.
They are not mutually exclusive - the Nazis, for instance, followed both policies when they exploited Slavic people for labor with the full understanding that all Slavic people would be eliminated as soon as their labor was no longer needed by the (so-called) “master race”.
Anti-fascist rhetoric was clear and popular, even in nations that would be arguably considered fascist themselves today, like Segregation Era America and the British Empire.
Tons of those soldiers might have continued being a racist after being drafted to fight Nazis, but just as many learned exactly what path they were following and changed course.
FDR’s political coalition even pretty much directly evolved into the Civil Rights Movement.
The simple reality is that 20th century politics was never simple but progressive thought thoroughly won out over ideologies of hate and actively worked to undo the centuries of damage done by colonial era white supremacist thought.
It was hardly a perfect process, and it’s one that continues to this day, but to pretend it was simply just nations butting heads to the common man is dangerously revisionist.
The allied nations fought fascism. They knew what it was, could describe it better than many do today, and the leadership was clear in their opposition, even if often confusingly hypocritical, and often beset by internal opposition. That not every person in 1940 was completely on board with it is simply the human condition.
It’s been smoldering and festering in the background for so long the internet just gave us a clear view into it. If they really think there’s a resurgence they’ve never been anywhere rural for the past 40 years as a minority.
No shit. Groceries have gone up 40% in the past 1-2 years for no real reason while wages have not and things like housing are going up too. Amazing that people would be buying less ‘units’.
No doubt. I’m starting to eat healthier because a bag of Doritos is like $5 now when I used to buy it for $2.50-3.00. That’s just one example, but across my snacking ‘units’, everything is outrageous.
Where I am, cooking oil is now $14.99 for a 3 liter jug and never goes on sale anymore. It used to be $5.99, and would frequently go on sale for $2.99. I haven't deep-fried anything in months. This isn't the way I expected to start eating healthier...
The American dream is dead. When good people can’t even afford their first cardiac arrest from eating carnival food like fried butter we know lady liberty is sheding tears of regret.
It’s $3.11 canadian dollars from department and grocery stores where I live. Pepsi hasn’t gone up as much, which includes Rockstar energy drinks, which are now cheaper than Coke somehow. On the Walmart website, they show 52 cents per 100ml of rockstar vs 53 cents for Coke.
Sure, I noticed that part. Inflation is always a scam, built into the monetary system, and while manufacturers/distributors are paying more for their materials and energy also, the rest is price gouging. It’s ‘working’ because people have no choice but to you know, eat food.
Inflation is a natural phenomenon that will occur with or without any amount of central monetary planning. It's impossible to introduce new currency without it affecting the value of that currency. You either don't introduce currency, which causes the existing currency to become more and more valuable as economic developments create new value, or you print some new money which will cause some amount of inflation.
If your economy has $1000 dollars in it, and suddenly a new invention allows you to create 50% more widgets for the same cost, then the same amount of money is now more valuable since it can fund the creation of more stuff. You can instead add another $500 to the economy to represent this new wealth, but that will have an inflationary effect. You can try to balance it to keep it relatively low, which is what the Fed does with its 2% inflation target, but there's no real way to completely get rid of it. Additionally, some amount of inflation encourages people to put money into more productive assets like investments rather than simply hording all their money, allowing the existence of things like credit, which are pretty helpful for anyone looking to start a business or buy a house. But, credit requires you to either have a lot of money sitting around in order to make that loan, or you need to be able to print money. The latter offers a lot more flexibility, but again, thus inflation.
I’ve noticed a lot of things taste worse. Maybe worse ingredients, but also like things were burnt on the assembly line or left out to dry for too long
It has helped me cut down on eating processed food… It’s expensive and not even good half the time
You’ve noticed the trees but missed the forest. Housing is so astronomically worse. Sure, it sucks to buy bread, but have you looked at mortgage rates??
Mortgage rates aren’t the real issue IMO, but it is an indicator. The real issue is a mix of rent and food prices, which have both gone up drastically. Add to that financing costs for cars and you have basically increased the most common expenses most households have.
Mortgage interest isn’t something the bottom 50% need to interact with, rent, food, and cars are.
Where do you live that your groceries only went up 40%??? Here it was more like 100-150%. A dozen eggs from a company I like went from $2.89 back in 2021 to $5.69. They said it was avian flu, temporary, covid, etc. Prices today are still $5.69.
This went across the board. A bushel of green onions went from $.99 to $1.99. Some places went higher.
The worst part of all this is that both rent/mortgage and food doubled in a matter of 3 years. And you have to pay these. There’s no avoiding food and shelter.
It’s as if the entire world just threw you down and started rifling through your pockets. The nice ones let you keep a shilling…
Jesus, where I live eggs are back down to $1.99 a dozen which is more than they used to be but not that extreme. I think pre-pandemic, we were paying $1.79. There was a period where the store brand was $5.99 and Egg Lands Best was $3.99 which made no sense to me.
I’ve found the prices very much depend on where you shop. A dozen good eggs at my local Albertson’s is $2.50-7.00 depending on how organiccy they are, but I can get 18 at natural Grocers for $5.50 or 24 at Costco for $7.50. Green onions are 2 bundles for $.99 at this Chinese grocery store near me, 89 cents at the local Kroger, or $2.50 at the food coop. A whole chicken at Natural Grocers went from $9.99 to $12.99, but at other stores they’re $15-25 (one is charging $4.99 a lb, which is definitely double what it was a few years ago).
Our rent hasn’t gone up much because it was already ridiculous when my girlfriend signed 3 years ago. Our neighbors who moved in 7 years ago are paying less than 50%.
And yeah, what’s happened with the prices of neccessities is absurd. It’s also absurd that official sources say ‘inflation of 6%! 10%!’. Complete bullshit when we can see prices that went up way more than that.
The protests are that much more notable because the pharmacists don’t have a union and aren’t asking for better pay. They primarily want their employers to hire more staff to alleviate the workload and to eliminate policies that push them to work faster. They say those conditions are making it more likely they will make a mistake that could harm a patient.
Highlighting because people don’t read articles - they are protesting to ensure patients are safe from the speed of greed. I for one would like my medication properly compounded and dosed. Good for these workers, get them more hands.
I’m not convinced from that comment that the user they’re referring to is a tankie, but simply put, I’d describe a tankie as the alt-left equivalent of the alt-right.
They’re not quite as violent in my opinion, but they push pro-china/russia propoganda and misinformation, and are just as self-deluded and delusional as the alt-right. I’ve also seen tankies justify Hamas’ attack against Isreal, which I find inexcusable and morally reprehensible. The same can be said of the IDF’s genocide against innocent Palestinians.
Tankies are on the fringe and are just on the other end of the bell curve of the alt-right.
You forgot to mention IRGC propaganda and misinformation. The current Gaza conflict is, without a doubt, the biggest propaganda victory the IRGC has ever had. They’ve got the US left absolutely fractured. People were worried about 2024 elections? HAHAHAH just wait. We’re so fucked.
Sure, my point was that they didn't know. That they were just out here throwing out words they had no clue about and (in my and others opinion) doing it as an attempt to drive wedges in the community. That's literally the joke up the thread that the guy baited the moron in with. I've met some of these people in real life. They weren't violent. They absolutely we're deluded apologists, but outside of talking revolution in the streets (which I don't think is to imply violence either, Iceland for example) they we're very much passive folk that just got pulled into a lame MLM.
To your later point, personally I agree, that the attack Hamas carried out on people in Israel is inexcusable. I don't think that is ubiquitous on the left, nor should it be. It parallels quite clearly in the discussions we're all having as to the validity of attacks on civilian populations but to some it is also a question of self defense under the massively imbalanced power dynamic between the two countries. Not only are we talking about apartheid here, but what is clearly becoming erasure. The longer this madness goes on the more people are going to question the validity of that Oct 7 attack and as I see the atrocities carried out daily I wonder if that point will come for me as well.
That's the significance of this story. Wolf fucking Blitzer, is starting to question this shit. If you ever needed a warning that you are taking the lead in the "bad guy" race, this is a skull and bones in the tea leaves.
Not sure what tankies have to do with it, but I think everyone understands mocking text, and yes, there is a lot of pro-IDF astroturfing on all social media platforms currently.
I downvote that type of meme humor because I don’t find it adds to discussion. Even if I agree with the person, I downvote them every time.
Up/downvotes are meant for promoting relevant discussion and suppressing off-topic content, spam, trolls, and hate. They are not and were never intended to be dis/agreement buttons. People just misuse them.
To be fair, Democrats generally want reasonable restrictions on guns, such as ones that would have prevented this person from owning them and more liberal ones would have supported mental health programs to help this person not reach this point, Republicans want neither.
I’m in favor of mental health checks on an annual basis. Crazy people shouldn’t have access to guns. And you can bipartisan this all you want, the VAST majority of irresponsible gun owners are REPUBLICANS (or whatever center->right bullshit title they choose. LiBeRrRtaRrRiANz
Thing is when people talk about restrictions they mean “These people shouldn’t have guns, but these people should be allowed to have them.” What I’m saying is they should be banned altogether.
Yeah that is a pipe dream, in a country with more guns than people that is bordered on two sides by 2 foreign governments. It just seems unrealistic to say "Just ban all guns" that seems like a massive oversimplification of the problem. We don't have some magical button that just deletes all guns in the borders of the US. Restrictions seem to be a realistic option but one would hope the left gets a bit of a better understanding of firearms since at the moment they mostly make laws about things they have very little understanding of and typically ban things based on how they appear rather than how they operate.
Because its the easiest route at the moment yes but you don't think gun smuggling would be a profitable venture? Seriously part of the reason why the opiate epidemic is so bad is China selling off the supplies for it to the cartels in Mexico, this also isn't to offload the responsibility of this mess on Perdue Pharma. They got the ball rolling and are 100% responsible for starting this mess but you have to be blind not to see how an enemy foreign nation is exploiting the issue and only making it worse to further destabilize a geopolitical rival. Same exact thing applies to Russia and their Interference in the election, they didn't make or start the problem, just took advantage of a fire that has been burning for a while and poured more gasoline into it.
Also again you don't really answer the question of how do you get rid of all those guns. There are 120 guns per 100 people in the US. They aren't going to magically disappear the minute you ban them. You can't just do a full ban, hell I would say half this country wouldn't allow it. So restrictions are the only realistic option.
Oh that ain't happening. Sorry but you have to get around the 2nd amendment firstly (That ain't going anywhere unless we rip up the constitution). You would require most law enforcement to be for it while ACAB typically cops are pro guns... I just don't see it happening in a nation where guns are a fundamental part of this country's history and ownership has been written into the fabric that bind this nation together. Restrictions are the only realistic option here. They work as we don't see an abundance of full auto firearms but a full ban would cause quite a bit of unrest.
Edit: did a double post but deleted it since wasn't sure if the indentation was working correctly and trying to keep the conversation in a single threadline.
Firstly the first 10 are a bill of rights. While technically yes they can be amended it does set a very bad precedence that you are advocating for the repeal of one of those. Not even getting into how unlikely that is since there has only been one amendment that has ever been repealed (18th). You think its a good idea for a nation to get to pick and choose which "natural rights" you are allowed to have at the moment? So if they decide that the 4th or 5th amendments should just disappear, you aren't going to have an issue with that (Yes, the justice system and police really do love to test the boundaries on those 2 but at least having a line is a good thing)?
You think it’s a good idea for a nation to have its constitution set in stone so the way of life hundreds of years ago sets the way forever? What if the first ten included that women can’t own property or vote? Would that be ok because they’re bill of rights? Would that also be a bad precedent? Is it so hard to accept that maybe they couldn’t envision the issues that could eventually come with their decisions back in the 1780s? Would they have included the second if they had known it would lead to hundreds of shootings every year?
Except you are going with a hypothetical but I'll take the bait, seeing as it also goes against the spirit of the declaration of independence, although they did betray that spirit because they ignored the plight of the slaves, I think the removal of the clause of that women can’t own property or vote would be just but again the 2nd amendment has a huge part in our founding myth so its basically going to be impossible to remove. Also do you not think people in the Rural areas are safe from the wilderness? How the fuck are they going to ward off coyotes, foxes, razorbacks, bears, etc. You were suggesting a blanket ban of all firearms.
" Would they have included the second if they had known it would lead to hundreds of shootings every year?"
Also seeing as they literally just won a revolutionary war and failed to make an initial government to form a new one but the nation at that time was based on state militias. I think they would have still included that.
Let’s not pretend that the shootings happening now have anything to do with a militia.
I live in a rural area, close to 30 years outside the city, both in the middle of the woods and in the middle of a field, never had to own a firearm. Heck, my uncle used to live in a northern village and didn’t own one, there’s trained services to take care of wildlife.
Were you a farmer or a rancher? Where your livelyhood is connected to the net worth of animals/food in your possession, you know something that a wild animal may want to take/kill? If the answer is no, then sure a gun isn't a requirement but its still a handy thing to have.
Actually if you’re involuntarily committed you already lose your right to firearms (iirc there are steps to regain your rights, but they were not taken here). Red flag laws aren’t just bad from a “gun” standpoint, they’re bad because “innocent until proven guilty” gets thrown out the window and it becomes “guilty until you can prove you’re not crazy,” and proving the negative is always a more difficult position. It perverts our whole justice system, and while I have issues with other things doing the same thing (racism for example), adding more is imo not a good idea. I’d rather see them actually enforce the laws we already have which while more stringent than “my roomate seems unstable,” also would have prevented this. I mean the guy was commited (making him a prohibited purchaser) and displayed violent ideation to a degree that warrants keeping him for a little while, so they let him out, don’t take his current guns, and afaik fail to input his commital to NICs, that’s three things that already could and should have been done in this specific case red flag laws withstanding.
A bulletin put out by the Maine Information and Analysis Center, a database for law enforcement officials, said Card was a trained firearms instructor and was believed to be in the Army Reserve.
It added that law enforcement said Card “recently reported mental health issues to include hearing voices and threats to shoot up the National Guard Base in Saco, ME.”
The bulletin said Card was reported to have been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks this summer and then released. NBC News has not been able to independently verify the bulletin’s statements about Card’s history. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lewiston-maine-shooting-robert-card-what-know-rcna122262
The Gun Control Act (GCA), codified at 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), makes it unlawful for certain categories of persons to ship, transport, receive, or possess firearms or ammunition, to include any person:
who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution;
The rule, which was finalized in December, added people receiving Social Security checks for mental illnesses and people deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to the national background check database.
I don’t think this guy would been in either category, but yes.
I think he ought to have been arrested when he threatened to shoot the National Guard facility.
This story is fucked. He was wrongfully convicted and then set free, gets $800k compensation in August, then pulled over (looks like they’re still coming up with a reason for pulling him over), threatened I’m sure with more jail (essentially provoked), tased then shot.
I think some fucking cops were after him and pissed that the dude got paid.
Video link from a comment below. Not a good look for the guy. Hard video to watch.
And the alleged ‘good cops’ are out here confused why no one respects them.
Until I start running across evidence that some police are angrier about the bad cops than they are about everyone else being angry about the bad cops, I refuse to believe they exist.
As someone who knew an actual good cop (grew up with him): They quit. That’s what he did. That’s all they can do. Because speaking up just ruins your career path. So they choose to go along or they change careers entirely.
We had a “good cop” DA in my city. The cops went on strike (though they didn’t call it a strike, they just stopped doing their jobs), and started a propaganda campaign. When crime went up, people are stupid and blamed the DA. He got recalled and a police bootlicker got put in instead.
paying their union dues, which keep going up because the defense of their fellow cop’s actions are expensive… if they get caught and lose qualified immunity.
Oh, I see the problem. You’ve written black and brown people.
You should know by now that they don’t count as people unless they go through a very rigorous “personhood” check, with markers such as “will they stay quiet about racism,” “will they strive to emulate rich white people in dress, speech and manner, to the detriment of their own culture,” “will they lead fully sanitized lives as wage slaves without complaint and never dabble in white collar or petty crimes that would be ignored if their skin was lighter,” and “will they silently and happily vote for rich white capitalists in politics, against their best interest”. Because clearly if they can’t follow these very generous and simple guidelines, they don’t want to be considered people, duh.
The police will do a full investigation of themselves and find no wrong doing. After that, the murderer will return from his paid vacation, which will allow his wife for some much needed time to recover.
I always joke with my black girlfriend when she driving. I’ll say “Be careful you don’t want to get pulled over for a DWB”. She laughs, I laugh, we both die a little inside.
When I was younger, I worked under a Black man driving trucks through Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Anywhere rural, it was unofficial company policy that I (a white man) was supposed to drive and pretend to be in charge. Anywhere urban, my actual boss could be himself.
My local department of family services very openly teaches about the risk of police violence towards black people and those who adopt them, to make up for the education they would receive from black parents on how to avoid being beaten or murdered by cops.
It’s so real part of our government formally acknowledges it. While the other part wins “most racist” awards.
Ok so this whole story is fucked up beyond belief but I just want to take a minute to say holy shit, because that dollar figure is pretty messed up in and of itself. They gave him $817k. That’s $5.82/hr.
It doesn’t any good to “punish” the police by awarding large sums of money to the wrongly convicted, because the taxpayers pay for it. To really add some justice, the awards should Come from the police pension funds. Then they are Incentivized to do it right. Now they don’t care, because there is little downside for them
Eh. We always like to think that this stuff bothers them. It doesn’t. He didn’t think twice about it. I’m sorry to paint with a broad brush, but conservatives just do not think on the same level as normal people do. They aren’t bothered by this stuff because they don’t think about any subject long enough to have deep thoughts on them. Frankly, they wouldn’t even be such an angry frothing-at-the-mouth group of people if they didn’t have all variations of media avenues telling them what to be mad about every second of every day. If not for conservative media, they’d be relatively pleasant little dipshits doing manual labor and whatever other grunt work, but instead we have this failed experiment of a nation.
Minimum wage plus overtime for his time in prison placed monthly into a mutual fund with 7% return for 16 years would be a little over 2.5 million dollars.
Isn’t this basically what happened with the Making a Murderer guy? He was due a huge settlement from being wrongfully convicted, so they planted a bunch of evidence to put him back in jail instead.
That was my takeaway. The more fucked up part is that they dragged his nephew into it and at each man’s trial, told wildly differing stories about how the murder supposedly occurred.
The police were definitely corrupt, but that documentary is intentionally misleading.
While some evidence may be in question, it’s important to know that Teresa Halbach’s vehicle was found on the property, along with charred pieces of her human bones in a burn pit.
It was the last place she went, the last place she was seen, and Avery lured here there under false pretenses (Teresa was not even supposed to be meeting with Avery).
None of this excuses any bad behaviors by the police, and that department certainly appears to be corrupt, but probably not a good example for this instance.
it’s important to know that Teresa Halbach’s vehicle was found on the property, along with charred pieces of her bones in a burn pit.
Police corruption is the problem. Her vehicle being on the edge of his fairly large property is a lot less damning if it weren’t for Steven’s blood being reported in the vehicle. There were witnesses who claim to have seen it moved there, even if Zellner cannot seem to decide who moved it.
And you say “her bones”, but there’s two problems with that. The bones have been confirmed to be human female, but they couldn’t confirm or deny they were Halbach’s. And there’s a compelling reason to believe they were not burned in the burn barrel they were found.
There seem to be two real possibilities in his case. EITHER it’s a fairly ridiculous frame-up job or he’s guilty. That should be easy because of the question “why would anyone go to THOSE lengths to frame Steven Avery?” It’s not easy because the open animosity and bad-faith of thep olice in this case is compelling.
I think he likely did it, but I genuinely think the case is so tainted, he should not have been convicted.
Huh, I could’ve sworn I had read that the DNA was confirmed to be hers. After looking more thoroughly you’re absolutely correct. I did see a few articles that said it was matched via a partial tooth, but looking deeper into that it looks like the findings may have just been “consistent” with Halbach. Still compelling evidence, but not a direct DNA match.
I also think it’s more than likely he did it, but that’s an important clarification.
It’s a really complex case. And just like the Depp v Heard documentary, Netflix didn’t do it justice. Sometimes exaggerations make the validity of a claim harder to see. Judges don’t like to offer mistrials or retrials to people they are convinced are guilty, whether the appeal was valid or not.
From my own (very ameteur) independent reading, there’s a few big things that should’ve been slam-dunk for vacated verdict, and his attorney colluding with the prosecutor to have him interrogated unassisted is the top of the list, though Avery lost appeal on that already. Brendan Dassey had perhaps the strongest case to vacate verdict I’ve ever seen short of exoneration, and his eventually failed (after a very reasonable appeal verdict in his favor).
EDIT: I’d also like to note that Netflix’s exaggeration has led to anti-Avery people who also exaggerate the case against him. People like Kathleen Zellner don’t get involved in cases that are strong or clean. At the very least, a good lawyer would have a cakewalk winning the Reasonable Doubt standard and arguably would have with only the limited evidence that was available during his first trial. It’s that exoneration cases are so hard, understandably so.
The hardest ethical question regarding law I think ask is this. If a person is guilty of a crime but can only be convicted by illegal and unethical behavior, should they be incarcerated? I’ve always thought we’ve allowed the “be certain they’re guilty” standard to erode too much in the US between jurors who will convict on “I’m pretty sure” and the Federal Habeas Corpus changes.
I mean, if you boil it down, Steven Avery is arguably in prison today not because he might have committed murder but because he filed his Habeas Corpus appeal without the assistance of a lawyer and is forbidden to file another. And Brendon Dassey is definitely in prison because the current standard for that federal Habeas Corpus appeal is “no reasonable judge would ever rule this way” despite 2 reasonable federal judges agreeing he reached that standard. Hearing the appeal audio is chilling, with one of the judges constantly saying “you know we MUST reject this” without actually listening to the argument.
It’s certainly very complex. I definitely agree he didn’t get a fair treatment or trial and for that reason alone shouldn’t be incarcerated
I also think that the Netflix documentary really skewed the view and understanding of the evidence, though. And, as you note, there can be confusion over what level of certainty a jury needs to reach. Beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond any doubt.
All this being said, it bothers me to some degree that people will go to great lengths to fight for Avery’s innocence, largely due to that documentary, when there are others whose cases are much more questionable and deserve attention too, such as Temujin Kensu.
I just hope that people, upon seeing documentaries (or really any information that drives them to a certain decision or thought, particularly based on an emotional response), would do further research.
And, as you note, there can be confusion over what level of certainty a jury needs to reach. Beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond any doubt
Here’s the Ninth Circuit opinion on reasonable doubt: “A reasonable doubt is a doubt based upon reason and common sense and is not based purely on speculation”. A single “I don’t know”, a single seemingly-minor inconsistency, a singular whiff of incompetence by the defense council. More complicatedly, a single defense line of questioning that gets suppressed (which, maybe a juror is supposed to disregard, but being told to disregard something favorable to the defense at all is something that gets my “common sense” aware)
There’s a gap between reasonable doubt and doubt, but it’s a lot narrower than the gap between reasonable doubt and preponderance of evidence. If the phrase “probably did it” shows up in deliberation, that should be the moment everyone stops and agrees to a “not guilty” verdict because of the “probably”.
All this being said, it bothers me to some degree that people will go to great lengths to fight for Avery’s innocence
He’s an Innocence Project exoneree who, as you just agreed, was railroaded again. I’d like to point out that Netflix didn’t lead the publicity about him, they just profited from it. And the truth is, there’s enough inconsistency with the prosecution’s case that “probably did it” is honestly a bit strong and I vacillate between thinking he did it and that he’s innocent because as bad as it looked for him, there were a couple stronger suspects that didn’t have alibis. The only reason I’m not “team innocence” is the physical evidence, but even I have to admit it’s evidence that prosecution couldn’t form a cohesive narrative for but defense could.
Coincidentally, I watched a “Police Accountability” video just yesterday that matches the Defense story of this trial almost perfectly. Small car (let’s say house), they keep searching for something and fail to find it… Then you hear them panicking that this is going to blow back if they don’t find something. And then the cop plants a little marijuana thinking the angle on his body-cam won’t catch it, and it only barely does. There are inconsistencies with how they discovered the only physical evidence that directly ties Steven Avery to the homicide (the bones weren’t a smoking gun), evidence that is so weird it doesn’t create a sensible story.
Both Lenk and Colborn are described like they had nothing against Avery, but both were caught in the exoneration crossfire, and their behavior could have prevented Avery from being convicted of the original rape.
See, there I go again. Just talking to you and remembering my own independent research about the whole key-and-blood situation, I’m leaning towards actually innocent again. I’ll probably flop back the other way shortly. But that’s why it’s a complicated case. Netflix never shows both sides of everything. And FWIW, all the evidence we’ve been discussing is divulged in the Netflix documentary.
Dash and body cam footage of the incident. They didn’t need to retroactively come up with a reason for pulling him over, it’s right there in the footage - he apparently was speeding at 100 mph.
Edited my comment, thanks. Very difficult to watch. I don’t love the way the interaction was handled by either of the men, though. I understand speeding is dangerous and against the law, but he began the interaction at 11. This could have gone another way, despite the apparent mental health issues the dude was clearly dealing with.
I don’t love the way the interaction was handled by either of the men, though. I understand speeding is dangerous and against the law, but he began the interaction at 11.
Agreed. The cop started out at 11, and the guy started out openly hostile.
It could have gone another way, but the moment the dude attacked the officer it wasn’t going to.
In a rare speech during contract talks in the company’s hometown of Dearborn, Michigan, Ford said high labor costs could limit spending to develop new vehicles and invest in factories. “It’s the absolute lifeblood of our company. And if we lose it, we will lose to the competition. America loses. Many jobs will be lost,” said the great grandson of company founder Henry Ford.
Okay, go ahead and spend on R&D and factories, if that is the "absolute lifeblood of [your] company." Good luck producing those new cars in new factories with no workers.
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