US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 84

On November 20 2018 05:22 xDaunt wrote:

There are various initiatives promoting transparency, such as mandatory body cams. But I would personally go further and legislatively loosen up some of the civil liability protections that are typically afforded law enforcement.

On November 20 2018 04:57 xDaunt wrote:

Of course it is catastrophically detrimental to society for law enforcement to cover up for their own. If the police fuck up, they need to be held to account. I'm litigating a case right now that has a video that is far worse than the one above (incidentally, the victim is a white guy). And as bad as it is, it's the cover-up that occurred afterwards is what really makes me ill. The cover-up included not only the officers and their immediate agencies, but it went up to the district attorney level.

On November 20 2018 05:27 GreenHorizons wrote:


So basically nothing? Forgive me for not taking their appeals to "law and order" seriously then.

On November 20 2018 06:33 xDaunt wrote:


That's not "basically nothing." All you really need to do to fix most of the problems is to create additional transparency, curtail the immunities that protect the dirty officials, and otherwise incentivize plaintiffs to bring claims. We don't need to have public beheadings of abusive cops/law enforcement officers to correct the system.

On November 20 2018 08:02 iamthedave wrote:


It would help immensely if the right wing media - primarily FOX since it has the biggest audience by far - was more willing to highlight cases where officers do go too far instead of just not talking about those ones and only featuring ones where it comes to their defense.

Accountability's hard enough without half of the country being fed a consistent narrative that the cops are almost never in the wrong. Cases like this one should be highlighted, because that was horrendous. And your white guy case as well, if it's as bad as you say.

On November 15 2018 17:27 iamthedave wrote:


One of Trump's foreign policy goals was to make America respected again because he believed OBama was weak. I don't think getting literally laughed at by world leaders counts as realising that goal.

President Donald Trump is succeeding in making China pay most of the cost of his trade war.

That’s the conclusion of a new paper from EconPol Europe, a network of researchers in the European Union. U.S. companies and consumers will only pay 4.5 percent more after the nation imposed 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods, and the other 20.5 percent toll will fall on Chinese producers, according to authors Benedikt Zoller-Rydzek and Gabriel Felbermayr.

The trade dispute between the U.S. and China is showing slim hope of abating as the leaders of the two nations prepare to meet in Argentina this month. According to Zoller-Rydzek and Felbermayr, the tariffs will do what Trump has longed for: They will cut American imports of affected Chinese goods by more than a third, and lower the bilateral trade deficit by 17 percent.

The Trump administration selected products with the highest “price elasticity,” or high availability of substitutes, according to Zoller-Rydzek and Felbermayr. The Chinese products hit by Trump’s tariffs can mostly be replaced by other goods, forcing exporters to cut selling prices to keep buyers.

“Through its strategic choice of Chinese products, the U.S. government was not only able to minimize the negative effects on U.S. consumers and firms, but also to create substantial net welfare gains in the U.S.,” the researchers wrote.

On November 20 2018 06:33 xDaunt wrote:


That's not "basically nothing." All you really need to do to fix most of the problems is to create additional transparency, curtail the immunities that protect the dirty officials, and otherwise incentivize plaintiffs to bring claims. We don't need to have public beheadings of abusive cops/law enforcement officers to correct the system.

Trump forced critical concessions out of both Mexico and Canada in renegotiating NAFTA into the USMCA

On November 20 2018 13:25 IgnE wrote:
Yeah they don't take this issue seriously. What do you want? Organize a political campaign or something.

I do think that if you made cops/municipalities liable for massive damages in civil court for fuck ups you'd see a lot of change pretty quick.

On November 20 2018 10:03 xDaunt wrote:

Conservative media isn't the problem when it comes to the coverage of police abuse cases. Liberal media is. Every time that the liberal media pushes the "cops are racist assholes narrative" with trash examples like Ferguson, it turns off most Americans and makes it harder to build a consensus towards real reforms. By and large, people on the Right are okay with the general proposition that cops can be assholes and that they need to be reined in more. Making the issue about race needlessly polarizes the issue makes it much more difficult to discuss.

On November 20 2018 17:07 Jockmcplop wrote:


Wouldn't you also have every police department crippled by constant damages claims by every single person they arrest regardless of the circumstances?

On November 20 2018 13:25 IgnE wrote:
Yeah they don't take this issue seriously. What do you want? Organize a political campaign or something.

I do think that if you made cops/municipalities liable for massive damages in civil court for fuck ups you'd see a lot of change pretty quick.

On November 20 2018 17:07 Jockmcplop wrote:


Wouldn't you also have every police department crippled by constant damages claims by every single person they arrest regardless of the circumstances?

On November 21 2018 07:47 xDaunt wrote:

He's missing the point of what I'm suggesting. We don't need more criminal laws on the books to fix the problems that we have with law enforcement. All of this police abuse stuff is already illegal. What we need is an independent check on law enforcement. Private civil actions are very effective in this regard. Hell, we don't even really need to incentivize plaintiffs and their attorneys to bring suit. We just need to curtail the various qualified immunities that interfere with a plaintiff's ability to bring suit. For example, one of the big obstacles to bringing claims in my jurisdiction is pinning municipalities with vicarious liability for the bad acts of their cops. What we have to prove to get over that hurdle is really difficult. As a result, the municipalities are more likely not to give a shit about the bad actions of their cops because they know that, in many instances, they can simply fire the cop and then wash their hands of whole matter, without fear of any civil claim being brought against them. Like you suggested, politicians are more likely to start giving a fuck if they have to repeatedly explain to voters why they're shelling out big money to settle and satisfy police abuse claims.

politicians are more likely to start giving a fuck

On November 21 2018 07:47 xDaunt wrote:

He's missing the point of what I'm suggesting. We don't need more criminal laws on the books to fix the problems that we have with law enforcement. All of this police abuse stuff is already illegal. What we need is an independent check on law enforcement. Private civil actions are very effective in this regard. Hell, we don't even really need to incentivize plaintiffs and their attorneys to bring suit. We just need to curtail the various qualified immunities that interfere with a plaintiff's ability to bring suit. For example, one of the big obstacles to bringing claims in my jurisdiction is pinning municipalities with vicarious liability for the bad acts of their cops. What we have to prove to get over that hurdle is really difficult. As a result, the municipalities are more likely not to give a shit about the bad actions of their cops because they know that, in many instances, they can simply fire the cop and then wash their hands of whole matter, without fear of any civil claim being brought against them. Like you suggested, politicians are more likely to start giving a fuck if they have to repeatedly explain to voters why they're shelling out big money to settle and satisfy police abuse claims.

On November 21 2018 09:24 GreenHorizons wrote:


No I get it.



You just tried to pretend/claim they already "gave a fuck". Clearly they don't. So when they say "law and order" they don't mean addressing the catastrophic undermining of the social fabric we established earlier.

On November 21 2018 18:14 iamthedave wrote:


I thought one of the classic 'tricks' used to get cops off in these instances was to deliberately try them for a grade of crime worse than what they committed because there'd be no chance of finding them guilty for it? So manslaughter would be tried as murder 1, meaning they walk because duh.

And doesn't the DA have a huge influence over cases brought against cops?

From my various readings of the reports on many, many dubious cases over the last decade it sounds like there's a lot more than just qualified immunities, but a lot of different structural elements that shield the police from punishment unless their actions are just so egregious that their fellow cops turn on them or its so incontrovertible that there's no way to wriggle free.

In addition, plenty of times cops involved in these cases - not edge cases where both sides have an argument - aren't fired at all or really punished in the slightest.

I guess what I'm asking is, even if you remove those qualified immunities, wouldn't those structural elements still get in the way? Or is the civil court separated enough that the police can't influence it at all?

On November 22 2018 01:53 xDaunt wrote:

Civil courts are wholly separate from the regular criminal justice system. The judges may be the same, but the DAs and the police are uninvolved except insofar as they are called as witnesses. Where civil attorneys sometimes run into trouble is with what the DAs and police have done to manipulate or cover up evidence, which is why I advocated that additional measures be taken to improve transparency. Beyond that, however, there isn't much that needs to be done other than weakening the immunities.

On November 22 2018 01:43 ChristianS wrote:

Out of curiosity, have you listened to the latest season of Serial (the podcast)? I'd be interested in your thoughts on some of the specifics it talks about wrt criminal justice. You probably don't need a podcast to tell you how fucked the system is, but it might interest you if only because it's a lot of white people's most in-depth exposure to it.

For instance, the specifics they get into about East Cleveland are absolutely harrowing, and I at least left with absolutely no idea how we would even begin "reform." It's the sort of thing where I'm not sure "abolish the police" would even be enough.

On November 22 2018 02:55 Danglars wrote:
Interestingly enough, Mr “Under no circumstances will I back Pelosi” Brian Higgins now supports Pelosi as speaker. Ocasio-Cortez also switched to her against challengers, not too long after giving support to a sit-in protest in Pelosi’s chamber. She’s good at buying them off and flipping the her staunchest critics.