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Maybe 1,000 lbs of weight, so instead of 40,000 lbs cargo trailer would be limited to 39,000 lbs, but lots of people would not get decapitated. There is also no reason why states could not allow extra 1,000 lbs of total vehicle weight when trailer is equipped with side-guards.
According to the US law enforcement system, in the context of TK, a long slow torturous death is more moral and humane than a quick execution.
Another aspect to TK's story is that prior to becoming a murderer he was involved as a subject in the "MK Ultra" human experimentation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
There is a public perception that the effect of this dirty experimentation (that also involved help from good ol' dirty German Nazis, which BTW could not have been any less evil or murderous than TK, but were spared the kind of prison term that he got) was not sufficiently considered during TK's trial and sentencing.
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The emotional narrative that was initially gravitated toward is in fact correct.
Had there not been the entrenched environment of lawlessness in SF the perpetrator would not have even attempted his attack. And had the victim not been a prominent person the SF police would not have bothered to keep looking.
The only mistake the murderer made here is he underestimated the public outcry that forced the police and the DA to keep investigating in fear of theirs and the city's reputation.
By saying that US is one of the most free countries I meant in terms of freedom of expression and relatively better opportunities to pursue different careers and lifestyles, freedom to have almost any kind of hobby, freedom to not be bound by traditional cultural norms and freedom to go to and join any kind of party. Most prisoners in US are not in there for "insulting a government official", "insulting a royal subject", "blasphemy", "membership in an undesirable organization", being an Uighur, and so on.
You take those 1500k and put them into some other country and have them do the same thing they did that got them incarcerated in US prison, and unless they are friends with somebody important in the government there they'll get incarcerated there too. Furthermore, in lots of countries selling / smuggling drugs is an executable offense. Furthermore, many of these 1500k would not even be admitted to enter many Euro countries with the low incarceration rates that you envy.
As for me I used to go to SF at every opportunity. Now I only go there if it is absolutely necessary for some short errand, and as soon as I'm done I leave ASAP before my car gets broken into.
In my view the main problem is not the politicians but the ineffective opaque police that does not have to produce any metrics and is not subject to any kind of oversight, not in SF and not anywhere else either.
For example, I had a car window smashed not in SF but in Fremont, and when I went to the police, they informed me that that is not even an arrestable offense. Window was smashed in front of a hotel with a prominent security camera overlooking the street. The police told me they left a voicemail with the hotel asking if their camera caught anything. The hotel never returned the police voicemail, the police never bothered to follow-up with the hotel, and told me they don't have authority to take the security footage of the public street without hotel's consent. Some time later I noticed that the hotel removed that street-facing security camera they had, leaving just an empty pole.
I wrote a letter to the Fremont city council regarding their police not wanting to work and lying to victims of crime. And that's when I got back some police action -- in the form of a mental Fremont PD police sergeant calling me in the morning to harass me and bitch about my letter.
So even if SF is bad, outside SF it is not much better. Another nugget to consider is that back in 2014, back when crime was nowhere as bad as today, CA voters, not liberal politicians, voted for Proposition 47 "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" which made potential felonies chargeable only as misdemeanors.
Indeed. A massive country open to everybody and with civil freedoms not even comprehensible in most other countries is going to be a magnet for bad people no matter what. 500k incarcerated is actually not that much in this scenario.
Name another country just as free and open with fewer incarcerated. Not Switzerland for sure.
Re Tesla, now that I think about it, I think I witnessed a very mean nasty dude stealing a bike near Mission & 3rd. He did it so leisurely that I assumed he was just taking his own bike.
Jailing the perpetrator also warns other potential perpetrators that they might also be jailed if they perpetrate the same crime.
> The most basic definition and purpose of the state is to hold the monopoly of violence. It must jealously protect this. The alternative is unsustainable anarchy followed by someone else filling that void.
Can we re-phrase "monopoly of violence" to maintaining the rule of law. The government has an obligation to maintain the rule of law. Monopoly on violence by itself does not provide real legitimacy.
They are not being forced to fill out that paperwork on their own time, it is part of their work shift for which they are compensated. I can think of no other occupation where an employee can refuse to fill out paperwork or refuse to do some other tedious task just because they don't like it and not get fired.
Did Boudin specifically refuse to prosecute the men who stabbed you, or did the police simply refuse to arrest them claiming as an excuse that Boudin will not prosecute?
Does anybody know why she got charged only with attempting to smuggle when they have records of her actually smuggling since 2015?
No the only thing that can stop the cartels and the overdoses is a robust, effective, and non-corrupt law enforcement system deterring the drug dealing and smuggling with severe criminal penalties.
Considering that PRC has been operating concentration camps at least since the 2008 Uyghur unrest, and has been known to harvest organs at least since 1994 https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/events/hearings/forc..., and has been known to disappear individuals it finds undesirable ever since it was founded, none of this is surprising. PRC is simply not a free country and not a place where anybody can live as they please. PRC is a huge concentration camp of slaves.
I suppose the best outcome for the persecuted individuals inside PRC is to flee the country. Anybody wants to chime in if they'd be eligible for refugee status with the US immigration system? One would also think nearby countries like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea should also try to accommodate, even though sadly they are not known to be very sympathetic toward refugees.
I would also argue that the best course of action for people outside PRC is to keep records of the victims of PRC atrocities, and to urge their governments to stop allowing business as usual with this fascist regime, unlike what happened since 1989.
Now, as far as documenting PRC atrocities, United States the bastion of freedom, does not even bother to keep track of statistics regarding the thousands of its own citizens killed each year by its own police.
damn, with a name like "Compton Executioners" I would be proud to be excluded
The US has in interesting system where new ideas are first tried on local levels like individual towns / counties / states, which all compete with each other. It would be interesting to see such a reform tried out somewhere small and if it works better than the current status quo.
And since the current status quo involves rape and murder, I argue that even if it sucks it would still be a huge improvement.
And why would we want American Presidents to have less experience than Russian "Presidents" ??
Are there not corrupt politicians?
There are, but there are a lot less of them in countries with fair democratic elections, and those who are corrupt are on average a lot milder than in countries without fair democratic elections. On average we're talking theft vs murder / genocide.
Generally public officials in countries with fair elections are an order of magnitude better than public officials in countries without fair elections. For example, compare Bush II with Ahmadinejad.
Doesn't seem to stop people from electing horrible sheriffs time and again.
There are some problems with the current election system in the US in that many potential voters don't register to vote to not get summoned for jury duty and similar issues, while lots of police vote in blocks guided by powerful police unions. These problems can be fixed, and overall the US election system is better than in countries like Russia.
Is your comment satire?
Even US politicians who are massively disliked are way better than their counterparts in countries without fair elections. Furthermore, these massively-disliked politicians get voted out at the end of term if a better politician runs against them. And even if they don't get voted out, they have to leave eventually due to hard term limits.
I'm not saying that democratic elections with term limits for police will keep absolutely all bad people out of police, but what I am saying is that there will be an order of magnitude less bad people in the police, and they will also be an order of magnitude less bad than under the current traditional employment scheme.
So far arguments can be made that officer Tipping was not really murdered, or that the woman was not really raped, but it is known for sure from prior cases, including criminal convictions, that there are plenty of rapists and murderers and all sorts of sick individuals in the police, that obviously should not be in the police.
Many articles and discussions on police criminal activity carry a tone of surprise, but in my view nothing here is surprising considering that large numbers of questionable individuals who passed some subjective selection process are armed with guns and placed into what are essentially life-long appointments where lots of money and power is at stake. In my mind it would be surprising had there been no criminal activity within the police under the current system. It would be just as surprising if dictators stayed benevolent and never abused their authority.
I'd say the solution to this problem is to have the public democratically elect police just like politicians, and to also have them be subjected to term limits just like politicians.
So far this system has successfully prevented most people who should not be politicians from becoming politicians or maintaining political power, and I argue that in the same way it would prevent lots of people who should not be in the police from becoming or remaining police officers.
Putin is definitely trying to nullify Gorbachev's accomplishments, but I like to think that he'll actually end up strengthening them against his own will, in that the catastrophe he has created thru his anti-Gorbachev mentality will serve as a lesson of history for future generations and politicians.
For example, racism was kinda considered "normal" before Hitler, but after Hitler, even people like Putin don't want to be deemed racist. Right now dictatorship is kinda considered "normal" too b/c so many countries still have dictators, but perhaps after Putin, no politician will want to be deemed a dictator.
Indeed, what he did by stepping down peacefully was highly unusual for a politician in his circumstances. It was like a miracle. And now we're seeing a more typical behavior from the successor of his successor.
It is too bad that in his later years he kinda regretted it, and kept saying "I should have kept going until the end". Perhaps it is natural to regret past decisions wondering if an alternative decision might have led to a better outcome. Hope that before he died he realized that had he pursued that alternative path he'd end up like Putin.
In summary -- Mr. Gorbachev was one of the most decent politicians and upstanding people in general that ever lived.
Wow this is so disturbing to watch the victim alive and well at one moment, and these animals murdering him the next, and over nothing, and in the United States of America. I can't imagine what it's like for this man's kids and family to watch this. This makes me very angry and sad. I hope that one way or another these animals eventually get the justice they deserve. Complete police overhaul is long overdue.
The parent comment got down-voted, but I think it is spot on. Maybe officially this new "law" says that it's only illegal to record police within less than 8 feet (or at 8 feet), but of course it will be abused and exploited to harass and arrest persons collecting footage of police violence, and to seize their recording equipment.
Indeed, good point regarding the likelihood of mainly outside travelers getting targeted. I was wondering myself why the article had so few details regarding what was being done about this problem or why the residents of this town have not voted out the mayor. Based on the point you brought up it is likely that the town residents are not opposed to this stream of town revenue.
Sounds like in the very least the Alabama state government needs to get involved. Another obvious problem is that somehow "civil forfeiture" somehow became a legitimate process in the United States, not to mention the ease with which citizens can be ticketed and fined with no legal recourse, even though according to the 7th Amendment "where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved".
501(c)(3) corporations typically do not have armed robbers walking around in public robbing anyone they please.
Great site, I just used your service to email "Right to Access Request (Section 110 of the CCPA)" to Equifax.
Question / suggestion -- Have you considered monetizing by allowing lawyers specializing in CCPA / consumer privacy issues to advertise on your site?
theworknumber.com is yet another symptom of a much larger problem in that it is currently impractical for a regular person to enforce their rights via the court system.
According to Peter Thiel “If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system...” https://theintercept.com/2016/10/31/trump-fan-peter-thiel-sa... So never-mind the non-millionaires.
However it is really nice to see efforts by some regular people out there setting up services such as https://yourdigitalrights.org which is the service I just used to request my information from Equifax. It will be interesting to see what comes of it. I suppose if they do not respond in 45 days I'll file a complaint with the CA Attorney General to put yet another ping regarding Equifax on their radar. https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-busine...
This shows that ultimately it is the regular people who drive progress, while the powerful and the wealthy just take credit for it.
Ultimately United States will transition to European-style privacy laws when it comes to private information like income and these credit agencies will be abolished, but the way to get there is for the regular non-millionaire people to exercise whatever "rights" they kinda have to ultimately get these annoyances shut down.