Student detained, forced to drink urine for 5 days - Page 15

On May 02 2012 14:12 Noruxas wrote:
Well seeing how its USA, he'll probably sue them and get a few million dollars OLOLOLOL

On May 06 2012 09:27 NotAPro wrote:
Well to be fair the US is pretty shitty by most standards.

On May 06 2012 09:27 Praetorial wrote:


*facepalm*

It begins...

On May 06 2012 06:51 naastyOne wrote:
As such I`m a huge opponent of using taxpayers money as any sort of compensation for "moral suffering".

Paying medical bills? Definitely. Maybe even year or two after the incident.
Paying for the psychological "assistants" bills? Yes.
That will take care of the victim.

Paying him tenth of millions? NO.
These money are earned by other hard working people. These money should be resounable distributed etween people that need help. He is not the only one there.
Suffering doesn`t make you ellighable for getting rich for other`s people money.
There is a tonne of places where the state could use money. The fact that is, the amound of help a person recives should be reasonable.

Needless to say, the entire money-side of affair make me loose any sympathy I would otherwise have to the "victim".
Because the "victim" is just a greedy bastard who uses his suffering as "front" to get his hands on taxpayers money.
The entire idea that you put a price tag on tragedy, turning a it into the a money grab, is disgusting,
and I wish him loose the case, despite his suffering. While i do not have any sympathy for people that locked him down,
the fact that his unreasonably huge compensation will deny help to other people in need, make the "victim" far worse man in my viev.

On May 06 2012 09:42 redviper wrote:


The mistake that you are making is that you think the money is coming from other tax payers. It is not, atleast not directly. It is coming from the government which is the one who made this boy suffer. Suffering deserves compensation and the compensation should come from the perpetrator. Since we can't put the government in jail the best known method of punishing the government is to fine it huge amounts.

The amount has to be huge because the government's coffers are huge. A small fine will not have any deterrence impact on a rich government. Even if that means the city/state has to increase taxes and/or goes bankrupt the fine should still be imposed.

Once again its not tax payer money. Its government funds. He was tortured by the government he deserves appropriate compensation.

On May 06 2012 09:42 redviper wrote:


The mistake that you are making is that you think the money is coming from other tax payers. It is not, atleast not directly. It is coming from the government which is the one who made this boy suffer. Suffering deserves compensation and the compensation should come from the perpetrator. Since we can't put the government in jail the best known method of punishing the government is to fine it huge amounts.

The amount has to be huge because the government's coffers are huge. A small fine will not have any deterrence impact on a rich government. Even if that means the city/state has to increase taxes and/or goes bankrupt the fine should still be imposed.

Once again its not tax payer money. Its government funds. He was tortured by the government he deserves appropriate compensation.

On May 06 2012 09:42 redviper wrote:


The mistake that you are making is that you think the money is coming from other tax payers. It is not, atleast not directly. It is coming from the government which is the one who made this boy suffer. Suffering deserves compensation and the compensation should come from the perpetrator. Since we can't put the government in jail the best known method of punishing the government is to fine it huge amounts.

The amount has to be huge because the government's coffers are huge. A small fine will not have any deterrence impact on a rich government. Even if that means the city/state has to increase taxes and/or goes bankrupt the fine should still be imposed.

Once again its not tax payer money. Its government funds. He was tortured by the government he deserves appropriate compensation.

On May 06 2012 10:16 Djzapz wrote:

That's absurd. Public funds are public! The individuals who work at the government won't lose a second of sleep over this, because in the end they ALL get exactly the same salary. The only difference is that it puts a hole in the budget that needs to be filled somehow.

And how are such holes filled, you may ask? They'll increase the taxes, or they'll cut in services, or they'll borrow money for which you'll pay interests. So, who pays for all this? The tax payers - a few of them are government, most of them aren't and have absolutely NOTHING to do with the DEA... and a negligible part of the taxpayers are actually the offenders.

"The government" doesn't give a shit about losing money. It's their fault but it doesn't really affect them all that much, and probably not at all. Don't feel too bad for the government, they'll take the exact same amount of money home.

On May 06 2012 10:38 Velocirapture wrote:


I dont understand how it is relevant at all that its taxpayer money. Fines HAVE to hurt those financing the establishment because they are the ones that can force change. Saying the individuals at the branch wont feel it is silly. And even if it were true, the point of the fine isnt to seek revenge on those responsible, its to make sure everything possible that can be done to prevent it is done and to take care of the victim. You better believe that the higher ups will take notice of the 20 million dollar gap in their budget and any discomfort they suffer in having to raise the amount will be passed down in the form of regulation and restructuring (which is the point). 20 million seems like a perfectly reasonable sum to force a move in this direction.

On May 06 2012 11:59 Djzapz wrote:

Which all leads back to what I said about Americans being too used to seeing large figures, so much so that you don't really know what they represent. You say that 20 millions "seems like a perfectly reasonable sum...", do you have any conception of the words "perfectly reasonable"? 20 millions of dollars is a perfectly reasonable sum of money to hire 750 people for a year --- or it can go toward handing out something symbolic to someone who was treated poorly, giving them a disproportionate amount of financial aid, large enough to fund a gross, materialistic life for decades. 2 millions would allow for the guy to live his entire life in relative luxury while still having a good sum leftover to pass on to his children, all on the tax payers dime. And the other 18 millions could actually go toward Doing Things. It's a HUGE amount of money, capable of having an extremely significant impact on society as a whole.

Furthermore, if you yank 20 millions from the DEA, it's going to be replaced with another 20 millions from the fed, or at the very least a VAST majority of the 20 millions, in which case the DEA will be under-budgeted. And so, while any "discipline" will help prevent other such mistakes, its lower budget will render the DEA less effective [not that I think the DEA should exist anyway] and by having a lower budget, will perhaps fail at doing its purpose as effectively or will be more prone to different mistakes due to lower staff or lower resources.

The higher ups would have a lot on their hands, because they'll have to do all the budget cuts and perhaps they'll have to fire people, and lower other people's salaries even though it wasn't their fault in the slightest.

On May 06 2012 12:52 Velocirapture wrote:


The element of fairness you are appealing to is not present in ANY business in the world. When a company makes a bad investment and loses money, is it the janitorial staff's fault? No but they will still pay the price. Also, the whole notion of "if you take money from something it will be less effective" can be made for ANY amount of money. Believe it or not, these sums are carefully calculated. Damages are claimed based on the financial status of the institution. If they just paid for the medical bills it would be the same as telling them, "you can do this all you want for a minor fee" the same way oil companies laugh at the fines levied by the EPA.

In the end, people need to get hurt to cause change. Does it suck? Absolutely, but its better than things like this becoming standard practice.

On May 06 2012 13:09 Djzapz wrote:

Yes in "any business", if something bad happen, employees will pay the price. It's fine though because private businesses are replaceable for the most part and so when a company fails, another enterprise gets that business.

The DEA is not a business like any other, it doesn't run at a profit. The DEA is a part of government and, in theory, it's funded just enough to function efficiently enough for the task it needs to accomplish - no more, no less. The drug-related "crimes" won't slow down. Also don't forget that the DEA runs with a deficit ALL the time, and the government pays for that. Reducing the size of that particular task force would be either admitting that its previous budget was too high, which may or may not be valid, or just the outright acceptance that the DEA will slow down and nobody will pick up the pace for them because they're a monopoly in their business.

On May 06 2012 13:31 Velocirapture wrote:
Also, the notion that the government will allow the DEA to be crippled is countered in your own post when you say the government will have to compensate for the deficit, as they always have.

This will not destroy the DEA. The DEA will not lose significant efficacy. The debt will be passed on to taxpayers who will in turn demand steps be taken to prevent this from happening again. This is exactly how it should be.

On May 06 2012 13:53 Djzapz wrote:

I was clear enough in my explanation. Either the deficit is covered completely or partially. If it's only covered partially, then the DEA would be crippled.


Sure, but then it's a question of quantity. I think 2 millions is a much more reasonable amount of money. Whereas 20 millions is actually a fairly relevant and crippling amount of public funds, 2 millions is big, but doesn't have a major negative impact on everyone else. And yet, 2 millions, PLUS the media attention and the fact that a guy nearly died is definitely enough to force important changes within the DEA.

Plus, the figure is not outright excessive for one person's normal use. 2 millions pretty much guarantee a good life, financially.

I don't know that I'm much of an utilitarian, but I think handing out 20 millions of public dollars to one guy would have to be done at the detriment of any sort of "greater good".

On May 06 2012 14:53 Jormundr wrote:

So you think that the guy should only get the equivalent of around 0.083% of the DEA's annual budget, as opposed to 0.83%? Must be a crisis in a world where governments are funded by debt-based currency. You're right though. That guy is costing us hardworking taxpayers our money! Every god damned citizen is going to be paying him ~ $0.07! Or, if it's only Californians paying, they're each going to have to shell out $0.41!

But in all seriousness the DEA(a subsidiary of Pfizer and Merck) is a very useful part of our society. It provides us with a war to fight within our own country on the off chance that our military expansionism ever slows down.

TL;DR
Satire. You're worried about $20,000,000 vs $2,000,000 of ghost currency instead of $2,400,000,000 vs $0.00. The DEA, from a government perspective, is nothing more than a specialized marketing tool. It doesn't do much other than breathing life into the "Drugs are bad*" propaganda machine started by Nixon.

*Unless they can be patented and sold for a reasonable profit margin by restricting access through medical practitioners who are given marginal benefits to promote said product.