US Politics Mega-thread - Page 10064

On March 15 2018 08:26 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
All this ends with Trump having Mueller fired, the question is how the GOP will react to Sessions being fired and protect Mueller as a result, or more than likely, close to the midterms we are and Democrats somehow take back both houses.

On March 15 2018 08:26 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
All this ends with Trump having Mueller fired, the question is how the GOP will react to Sessions being fired and protect Mueller as a result, or more than likely, close to the midterms we are and Democrats somehow take back both houses.

A sheriff in Alabama took home as personal profit more than $750,000 that was budgeted to feed jail inmates — and then purchased a $740,000 beach house, a reporter at The Birmingham News found.

And it's perfectly legal in Alabama, according to state law and local officials.

Alabama has a Depression-era law that allows sheriffs to "keep and retain" unspent money from jail food-provision accounts. Sheriffs across the state take excess money as personal income — and, in the event of a shortfall, are personally liable for covering the gap.

Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin told the News that he follows that practice of taking extra money from the fund, saying, "The law says it's a personal account and that's the way I've always done it."

Sheriffs across the state do the same thing and have for decades. In most cases, the public doesn't know how much money is involved because sheriffs do not need to report extra income of less than $250,000 a year.

But in Etowah County, that cap was exceeded, and the News found the paper trail.

On March 15 2018 07:51 Gorsameth wrote:

I assume Danglars point is that this means Tillerson wasn't fired over condemning Russia.

Personally I will wait for actions instead of words before congratulating Trump (or anyone else for that matter) on acting against a chemical weapon attack by Russia on a foreign nations soil.

On March 15 2018 11:45 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
This seems like a law that needs updating. articles a good read about the topic




https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/14/593204274/alabama-sheriff-legally-took-750-000-meant-to-feed-inmates-bought-beach-house

On March 15 2018 13:12 Golgotha wrote:
Trump is fucked. That white house has become the most toxic work environment in history. Turnover rate is nearly fifty fucking percent.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/14/more-white-house-departures-could-be-coming--heres-who-to-watch.html

But apparently people still think everything is fine.

On March 15 2018 12:31 GreenHorizons wrote:


If this is a thing can someone please help me understand what this makes Democrats who support Trump's Russian puppet picks?

As far as I can tell, helping to put Russian puppets in the cabinet is only a deal breaker if there is an R next to the name of someone who did it.

EDIT: Anyone?



Abolish the police

On March 15 2018 15:00 Falling wrote:

Abolish the police? What do you propose to replace it? Or have you gone hardcore anarcho-capitalist recently?

1. Unarmed mediation and intervention teams

Unarmed but trained people, often formerly violent offenders themselves, patrolling their neighborhoods to curb violence right where it starts. This is real and it exists in cities from Detroit to Los Angeles. Stop believing that police are heroes because they are the only ones willing to get in the way of knives or guns – so are the members of groups like Cure Violence, who were the subject of the 2012 documentary The Interrupters. There are also feminist models that specifically organize patrols of local women, who reduce everything from cat-calling and partner violence to gang murders in places like Brooklyn. While police forces have benefited from military-grade weapons and equipment, some of the most violent neighborhoods have found success through peace rather than war.

2. The decriminalization of almost every crime

What is considered criminal is something too often debated only in critical criminology seminars, and too rarely in the mainstream. Violent offenses count for a fraction of the 11 to 14 million arrests every year, and yet there is no real conversation about what constitutes a crime and what permits society to put a person in chains and a cage. Decriminalization doesn't work on its own: The cannabis trade that used to employ poor Blacks, Latinos, indigenous and poor whites in its distribution is now starting to be monopolized by already-rich landowners. That means that wide-scale decriminalization will need to come with economic programs and community projects. To quote investigative journalist Christian Parenti's remarks on criminal justice reform in his book Lockdown America, what we really need most of all is "less."


3. Restorative Justice

Also known as reparative or transformative justice, these models represent an alternative to courts and jails. From hippie communes to the IRA and anti-Apartheid South African guerrillas to even some U.S. cities like Philadelphia's experiment with community courts, spaces are created where accountability is understood as a community issue and the entire community, along with the so-called perpetrator and the victim of a given offense, try to restore and even transform everyone in the process. It has also been used uninterrupted by indigenous and Afro-descendant communities like San Basilio de Palenque in Colombia for centuries, and it remains perhaps the most widespread and far-reaching of the alternatives to the adversarial court system.

4. Direct democracy at the community level

Reducing crime is not about social control. It's not about cops, and it's not a bait-and-switch with another callous institution. It's giving people a sense of purpose. Communities that have tools to engage with each other about problems and disputes don't have to consider what to do after anti-social behaviors are exhibited in the first place. A more healthy political culture where people feel more involved is a powerful building block to a less violent world.

5. Community patrols (I'm particularly skeptical of this one for the reasons mentioned and some others)

This one is a wildcard. Community patrols can have dangerous racial overtones, from pogroms to the KKK to George Zimmerman. But they can also be an option that replaces police with affected community members when police are very obviously the criminals. In Mexico, where one of the world's most corrupt police forces only has credibility as a criminal syndicate, there have been armed groups of Policia Comunitaria and Autodefensas organized by local residents for self-defense from narcotraffickers, femicide and police. Obviously these could become police themselves and then be subject to the same abuses, but as a temporary solution they have been making a real impact. Power corrupts, but perhaps in Mexico, withering power won't have enough time to corrupt.

6. Here's a crazy one: mental health care

In 2012, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed up the last trauma clinics in some of Chicago's most violent neighborhoods. In New York, Rikers Island jails as many people with mental illnesses "as all 24 psychiatric hospitals in New York State combined," which is reportedly 40% of the people jailed at Rikers. We have created a tremendous amount of mental illness, and in the real debt and austerity dystopia we're living in, we have refused to treat each other for our physical and mental wounds. Mental health has often been a trapdoor for other forms of institutionalized social control as bad as any prison, but shifting toward preventative, supportive and independent living care can help keep those most impacted from ending up in handcuffs or dead on the street.

On March 15 2018 16:09 GreenHorizons wrote:


haha, certainly not anarcho-capitalist. Rolling Stone did a decent outline for those unfamiliar with the concept.



Source

On March 15 2018 16:14 Slaughter wrote:


I think for this to really be a replacement for Police in the current US there would need to be drastic change in other cultural areas first. Definitely could boost these programs and gradually reduce the need for as large and armed police forces as we have now.

On March 15 2018 16:28 Wegandi wrote:
That sounds great, but who is going to investigate murders and crimes with victims who aren't immediately identifiable (or property crimes/white-collar)? You're talking about people patrolling, but unpaid and without the necessary resources to handle disputes. Like, this is even more utopian than Communism. Someone steals a car - how do they have any capacity to investigate this?

The biggest problem - you're not addressing the #1 point of police. They're there to enforce statutory law - that's their purpose. They enforce like Tie Domi did, whatever the hell gets written and passed in legislatures, commissions, etc. How are you going to keep the status quo of statutory law and then abolish the mechanism that enforces it? It's schizophrenic imho.

I'm with you on abolishing Government police, but your solution is naive and doesn't address the boogeyman.