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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On April 10 2018 08:46 Kyadytim wrote:Show nested quote +A federal appeals court ruled Monday that employers cannot justify paying a woman less than a man doing similar work because of her salary history — a move advocates say will help close the wage gap between the sexes.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided Monday with the California math consultant at the center of Rizo vs. Fresno County Office of Education, which argued that considering prior compensation when setting a worker’s pay perpetuates gender disparities and defies the spirit of the Equal Pay Act.
“The Equal Pay Act stands for a principle as simple as it is just: Men and women should receive equal pay for equal work regardless of sex,” wrote Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the opinion. “The question before us is also simple: Can an employer justify a wage differential between male and female employees by relying on prior salary? Based on the text, history and purpose of the Equal Pay Act, the answer is clear: No.” www.washingtonpost.comI am extremely happy about this decision. I hope it leads to a logical conclusion that employers can't consider prior salary at all because doing so perpetuates any discrimination that lead to lower wages at some point in the past. Somewhat related, my graduating class is facing a permanent loss in wages relative to people who graduated a few years earlier, so banning consideration of prior wages would help basically everyone I know. We are all otherwise permanently fucked over by having the misfortune of having been born in the latter half of the 1980s and therefore having graduated with 4-year degrees right after the economy tanked in 2008. Show nested quote +The United States faces a generational gap in wages with a very clear dividing line: between those who graduated before 2008, and those who finished college during and after that fateful year, which marked the depths of the Great Recession and global financial crisis.
That's because graduating during or in the immediate aftermath of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s meant sky-high unemployment rates — and rock-bottom wages for those lucky enough to get their foot in the door.
"Data on youth unemployment rates show a sharp rise during and after the 2008-09 recession - both on an absolute and relative basis," Spencer Hill, economist at Goldman Sachs, writes in new research report. "Unemployment rates in the 16-24-year-old segment rose by 7.9 percentage points to 19.0% between Q4 2007 and Q4 2009, compared to +5.1 percentage points to 9.9% for the population as a whole."
The average earnings discount for young workers widened by 4% to 6% in the years following the recession, Hill added.
"While youth underperformance is typical of recessions, the effects of the most recent downturn appeared larger and more long-lasting than average," said the report, ominously titled "The lost generation: recession graduates and labor market slack."
Weekly earnings for these unlucky millennials declined by 6% relative to the population during and after the recession on an age-adjusted basis, Goldman said.
"However, despite a partial recovery, the earnings gap remains: relative wages on this basis have only retraced a third of the post-recession decline."
Hill points to academic research that corroborates his findings.
A study from Lisa Kahn at Yale School of Management looked at an earlier generation of recession/weak economy graduates, those who finished school between 1979 and 1989.
Kahn finds "large, negative wage effects of graduating in a worse economy which persist for the entire period studied. I also find that cohorts who graduate in worse national economies are in lower-level occupations, have slightly higher tenure and higher educational attainment, while labor supply is unaffected."
Her results "suggest that the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent." www.businessinsider.com
employers should have to disclose current employee compensation and length of employment before opening any new-hire salary negotiations
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On April 10 2018 09:07 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2018 08:46 Kyadytim wrote:A federal appeals court ruled Monday that employers cannot justify paying a woman less than a man doing similar work because of her salary history — a move advocates say will help close the wage gap between the sexes.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided Monday with the California math consultant at the center of Rizo vs. Fresno County Office of Education, which argued that considering prior compensation when setting a worker’s pay perpetuates gender disparities and defies the spirit of the Equal Pay Act.
“The Equal Pay Act stands for a principle as simple as it is just: Men and women should receive equal pay for equal work regardless of sex,” wrote Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the opinion. “The question before us is also simple: Can an employer justify a wage differential between male and female employees by relying on prior salary? Based on the text, history and purpose of the Equal Pay Act, the answer is clear: No.” www.washingtonpost.comI am extremely happy about this decision. I hope it leads to a logical conclusion that employers can't consider prior salary at all because doing so perpetuates any discrimination that lead to lower wages at some point in the past. Somewhat related, my graduating class is facing a permanent loss in wages relative to people who graduated a few years earlier, so banning consideration of prior wages would help basically everyone I know. We are all otherwise permanently fucked over by having the misfortune of having been born in the latter half of the 1980s and therefore having graduated with 4-year degrees right after the economy tanked in 2008. The United States faces a generational gap in wages with a very clear dividing line: between those who graduated before 2008, and those who finished college during and after that fateful year, which marked the depths of the Great Recession and global financial crisis.
That's because graduating during or in the immediate aftermath of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s meant sky-high unemployment rates — and rock-bottom wages for those lucky enough to get their foot in the door.
"Data on youth unemployment rates show a sharp rise during and after the 2008-09 recession - both on an absolute and relative basis," Spencer Hill, economist at Goldman Sachs, writes in new research report. "Unemployment rates in the 16-24-year-old segment rose by 7.9 percentage points to 19.0% between Q4 2007 and Q4 2009, compared to +5.1 percentage points to 9.9% for the population as a whole."
The average earnings discount for young workers widened by 4% to 6% in the years following the recession, Hill added.
"While youth underperformance is typical of recessions, the effects of the most recent downturn appeared larger and more long-lasting than average," said the report, ominously titled "The lost generation: recession graduates and labor market slack."
Weekly earnings for these unlucky millennials declined by 6% relative to the population during and after the recession on an age-adjusted basis, Goldman said.
"However, despite a partial recovery, the earnings gap remains: relative wages on this basis have only retraced a third of the post-recession decline."
Hill points to academic research that corroborates his findings.
A study from Lisa Kahn at Yale School of Management looked at an earlier generation of recession/weak economy graduates, those who finished school between 1979 and 1989.
Kahn finds "large, negative wage effects of graduating in a worse economy which persist for the entire period studied. I also find that cohorts who graduate in worse national economies are in lower-level occupations, have slightly higher tenure and higher educational attainment, while labor supply is unaffected."
Her results "suggest that the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent." www.businessinsider.com employers should have to disclose current employee compensation and length of employment before opening any new-hire salary negotiations
Been a while since you had a post so aptly fit your sig. WB IgnE of yore.
To the larger point, we gotta do something significant to balance the economic benefits of modernization and globalization or this is all going to fall apart and these stock portfolios folks from the near-bottom to the tippy top value so much are going to turn to sand between their fingers.
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United States43468 Posts
Good news/bad news story for accountability when police shoot black children. A jury finally decided that they were willing to return a guilty verdict when the murder of the sixteen year old by police officers came to trial. Unfortunately they decided to convict the victim's friend, also black, who was fifteen at the time and was not the shooter. But still, progress?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43673331
+ Show Spoiler +In the US, you don't have to kill to be a murderer
After police killed a burglary suspect in a shootout, the officer was not charged - instead a teenage boy who did not fire the gun has been found guilty of his murder. How do accomplice liability laws work?
Lakeith Smith was 15 years old when he went along with four older friends on a burglary spree. A neighbour called police when the group went into a home in Millbrook, Alabama, and the responding officers surprised the teenagers as they were coming through the front door.
The group turned and fled out the back door, and a shootout ensued. When it was all over, 16-year-old A'Donte Washington was dead with a bullet wound to his neck.
It's never been in dispute that a Millbrook police officer shot and killed Washington - officer-worn body cameras captured the fatal confrontation. A grand jury declined to charge the officer, finding that the shooting was justified.
Instead, Smith was charged and found guilty of his friend's murder. Last week, a judge sentenced him to 65 years in prison. Under Alabama's accomplice liability law, Smith is considered just as culpable in Washington's death as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
"It's sad in my opinion," says Smith's defence lawyer, Jennifer Holton. "The cause of death was the officer's action."
Alabama's law is an example of so-called felony-murder laws and they are very common throughout the US - only seven states do not have some type of law that expands the definition of murder to include an unintentional killing in the course of committing a felony. These laws also sweep up accomplices who, again, may not have directly caused harm, but were still a party in the felony that preceded the death.
While rooted in English common law, felony-murder is a rare concept outside of the US.
In the UK, the "joint enterprise" law can be used to convict an accomplice in a murder, but it applies mostly to gang-related crimes. The UK Supreme Court narrowed its application in 2016, ruling that the person must have "foresight" and "intention" to be found guilty of the killing.
"Felony-murder is a lovely American fiction," says Michael Heyman, professor emeritus at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. "It's a fiction in that it attributes a killing to you that you need not have done by your own hand."
For example, if a victim has a heart attack and dies while being robbed, the perpetrator can be charged with murder even if he had no intent to kill. If the robber's friend was sitting in a getaway car a block away, under accomplice liability, he too can be charged with murder. One of the most famous examples involved a man convicted of murder for loaning his car to friends who went on to murder an 18-year-old girl. According to prosecutors, it didn't matter that he was 30 minutes away.
These laws make cases like Smith's surprisingly common, where defendants are charged with the murder of their own accomplices, who can be their friends and even relatives. These often occur in the course of burglaries gone wrong, when the perpetrators are confronted by police or armed homeowners. Recent examples include cases in Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma.
The legal logic has expanded into the opioid crisis, where, in one case, a husband was charged with the murder of his wife for providing her with the heroin that killed her.
What makes Smith's case different, according to Scott Lemieux, a lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Washington, is that Smith went forward to trial instead of pleading guilty.
"These really long sentences are used to put pressure on people to plead," he says. "The risk of going to trial is so extreme."
Smith decided to take that risk, turning down a 25-year plea deal, and was found guilty by a jury. The other three surviving suspects have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Randall Houston, the district attorney who prosecuted Smith, says he felt the charges and the punishment were appropriate.
"If you're gonna bring a gun and commit a crime and somebody dies, there's consequences in Alabama - it's felony-murder," he says.
Houston points out that at his sentencing, Smith laughed and smiled. Holton, the defence lawyer, says that only shows how young Smith is.
Andre Washington, A'Donte's father, attended Smith's trial, but he didn't sit on the prosecution's side of the courtroom. Instead, he sat with Smith's mother.
"I went there to show him and his family some support. What the officers did - it was totally wrong," says Washington. "I don't feel [Smith] deserves that. No. Not at all."
That article title is what happens when the famously impartial and apolitical BBC editorial staff can't even anymore. The rest of the black teenagers there were tried collectively for the murder but took a deal to only serve 25 years each for the murder of their friend. But the dumb 15 year old actually believed in the system and thought he could fight the murder charge on the grounds that he didn't murder his friend, so he gets 65 years.
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On April 10 2018 09:05 Ayaz2810 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2018 08:46 Kyadytim wrote:A federal appeals court ruled Monday that employers cannot justify paying a woman less than a man doing similar work because of her salary history — a move advocates say will help close the wage gap between the sexes.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided Monday with the California math consultant at the center of Rizo vs. Fresno County Office of Education, which argued that considering prior compensation when setting a worker’s pay perpetuates gender disparities and defies the spirit of the Equal Pay Act.
“The Equal Pay Act stands for a principle as simple as it is just: Men and women should receive equal pay for equal work regardless of sex,” wrote Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the opinion. “The question before us is also simple: Can an employer justify a wage differential between male and female employees by relying on prior salary? Based on the text, history and purpose of the Equal Pay Act, the answer is clear: No.” www.washingtonpost.comI am extremely happy about this decision. I hope it leads to a logical conclusion that employers can't consider prior salary at all because doing so perpetuates any discrimination that lead to lower wages at some point in the past. Somewhat related, my graduating class is facing a permanent loss in wages relative to people who graduated a few years earlier, so banning consideration of prior wages would help basically everyone I know. We are all otherwise permanently fucked over by having the misfortune of having been born in the latter half of the 1980s and therefore having graduated with 4-year degrees right after the economy tanked in 2008. The United States faces a generational gap in wages with a very clear dividing line: between those who graduated before 2008, and those who finished college during and after that fateful year, which marked the depths of the Great Recession and global financial crisis.
That's because graduating during or in the immediate aftermath of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s meant sky-high unemployment rates — and rock-bottom wages for those lucky enough to get their foot in the door.
"Data on youth unemployment rates show a sharp rise during and after the 2008-09 recession - both on an absolute and relative basis," Spencer Hill, economist at Goldman Sachs, writes in new research report. "Unemployment rates in the 16-24-year-old segment rose by 7.9 percentage points to 19.0% between Q4 2007 and Q4 2009, compared to +5.1 percentage points to 9.9% for the population as a whole."
The average earnings discount for young workers widened by 4% to 6% in the years following the recession, Hill added.
"While youth underperformance is typical of recessions, the effects of the most recent downturn appeared larger and more long-lasting than average," said the report, ominously titled "The lost generation: recession graduates and labor market slack."
Weekly earnings for these unlucky millennials declined by 6% relative to the population during and after the recession on an age-adjusted basis, Goldman said.
"However, despite a partial recovery, the earnings gap remains: relative wages on this basis have only retraced a third of the post-recession decline."
Hill points to academic research that corroborates his findings.
A study from Lisa Kahn at Yale School of Management looked at an earlier generation of recession/weak economy graduates, those who finished school between 1979 and 1989.
Kahn finds "large, negative wage effects of graduating in a worse economy which persist for the entire period studied. I also find that cohorts who graduate in worse national economies are in lower-level occupations, have slightly higher tenure and higher educational attainment, while labor supply is unaffected."
Her results "suggest that the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent." www.businessinsider.com I had no idea that employers could even consider prior compensation. I guess I never thought about it. What an abhorrent practice.
A employer is trying to get talent at the lowest price. The idea is to offer you enough of a raise to make a move and not a cent more, in most cases. It takes a bit of a hat trick to really get a bump.
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On April 10 2018 10:05 KwarK wrote:Good news/bad news story for accountability when police shoot black children. A jury finally decided that they were willing to return a guilty verdict when the murder of the sixteen year old by police officers came to trial. Unfortunately they decided to convict the victim's friend, also black, who was fifteen at the time and was not the shooter. But still, progress? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43673331+ Show Spoiler +In the US, you don't have to kill to be a murderer
After police killed a burglary suspect in a shootout, the officer was not charged - instead a teenage boy who did not fire the gun has been found guilty of his murder. How do accomplice liability laws work?
Lakeith Smith was 15 years old when he went along with four older friends on a burglary spree. A neighbour called police when the group went into a home in Millbrook, Alabama, and the responding officers surprised the teenagers as they were coming through the front door.
The group turned and fled out the back door, and a shootout ensued. When it was all over, 16-year-old A'Donte Washington was dead with a bullet wound to his neck.
It's never been in dispute that a Millbrook police officer shot and killed Washington - officer-worn body cameras captured the fatal confrontation. A grand jury declined to charge the officer, finding that the shooting was justified.
Instead, Smith was charged and found guilty of his friend's murder. Last week, a judge sentenced him to 65 years in prison. Under Alabama's accomplice liability law, Smith is considered just as culpable in Washington's death as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
"It's sad in my opinion," says Smith's defence lawyer, Jennifer Holton. "The cause of death was the officer's action."
Alabama's law is an example of so-called felony-murder laws and they are very common throughout the US - only seven states do not have some type of law that expands the definition of murder to include an unintentional killing in the course of committing a felony. These laws also sweep up accomplices who, again, may not have directly caused harm, but were still a party in the felony that preceded the death.
While rooted in English common law, felony-murder is a rare concept outside of the US.
In the UK, the "joint enterprise" law can be used to convict an accomplice in a murder, but it applies mostly to gang-related crimes. The UK Supreme Court narrowed its application in 2016, ruling that the person must have "foresight" and "intention" to be found guilty of the killing.
"Felony-murder is a lovely American fiction," says Michael Heyman, professor emeritus at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. "It's a fiction in that it attributes a killing to you that you need not have done by your own hand."
For example, if a victim has a heart attack and dies while being robbed, the perpetrator can be charged with murder even if he had no intent to kill. If the robber's friend was sitting in a getaway car a block away, under accomplice liability, he too can be charged with murder. One of the most famous examples involved a man convicted of murder for loaning his car to friends who went on to murder an 18-year-old girl. According to prosecutors, it didn't matter that he was 30 minutes away.
These laws make cases like Smith's surprisingly common, where defendants are charged with the murder of their own accomplices, who can be their friends and even relatives. These often occur in the course of burglaries gone wrong, when the perpetrators are confronted by police or armed homeowners. Recent examples include cases in Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma.
The legal logic has expanded into the opioid crisis, where, in one case, a husband was charged with the murder of his wife for providing her with the heroin that killed her.
What makes Smith's case different, according to Scott Lemieux, a lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Washington, is that Smith went forward to trial instead of pleading guilty.
"These really long sentences are used to put pressure on people to plead," he says. "The risk of going to trial is so extreme."
Smith decided to take that risk, turning down a 25-year plea deal, and was found guilty by a jury. The other three surviving suspects have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Randall Houston, the district attorney who prosecuted Smith, says he felt the charges and the punishment were appropriate.
"If you're gonna bring a gun and commit a crime and somebody dies, there's consequences in Alabama - it's felony-murder," he says.
Houston points out that at his sentencing, Smith laughed and smiled. Holton, the defence lawyer, says that only shows how young Smith is.
Andre Washington, A'Donte's father, attended Smith's trial, but he didn't sit on the prosecution's side of the courtroom. Instead, he sat with Smith's mother.
"I went there to show him and his family some support. What the officers did - it was totally wrong," says Washington. "I don't feel [Smith] deserves that. No. Not at all." That article title is what happens when the famously impartial and apolitical BBC editorial staff can't even anymore. The rest of the black teenagers there were tried collectively for the murder but took a deal to only serve 25 years each for the murder of their friend. But the dumb 15 year old actually believed in the system and thought he could fight the murder charge on the grounds that he didn't murder his friend, so he gets 65 years.
So I'm not sure if I understand correctly. It sounds like those guys, and the one that is dead went and robbed houses together. Then police got involved, there was a shootout, and 1 guy died? Now his friends there were robbing houses with him are being tried for his murder? I can't seem to find the reason for the shootout in the article, were they armed or posing a danger to the police, or just shot at because? While that law is pretty dumb, if I understand this right I really have no sympathy for them, they went and robbed houses, they deserve whatever they get, even if in this case they're going to jail for something different than what they actually did.
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So I'm pretty agnostic on this Stormy Daniels garbage floating around but if I may, Erik Erickson actually has an excellent point I hadn't thought about.
Now is the time for me to revive "bring on President Pence."
+ Show Spoiler +No, I don't think that's going to happen.
I don't know what the result of all this will be even if Trump knew the whole time. Problem is we've had so much of "this swung the election!" vs "no it didn't!" that I think we are beyond the point where anything actually happens. We already knew Trump cheated on his wives, would it have killed his chances if he illegally paid off a mistress? I say no. And that's what this is all about. To me everything even tangentially connected to Mueller is about re-litigating 2016, and there it will die.
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United States43468 Posts
On April 10 2018 10:15 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2018 10:05 KwarK wrote:Good news/bad news story for accountability when police shoot black children. A jury finally decided that they were willing to return a guilty verdict when the murder of the sixteen year old by police officers came to trial. Unfortunately they decided to convict the victim's friend, also black, who was fifteen at the time and was not the shooter. But still, progress? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43673331+ Show Spoiler +In the US, you don't have to kill to be a murderer
After police killed a burglary suspect in a shootout, the officer was not charged - instead a teenage boy who did not fire the gun has been found guilty of his murder. How do accomplice liability laws work?
Lakeith Smith was 15 years old when he went along with four older friends on a burglary spree. A neighbour called police when the group went into a home in Millbrook, Alabama, and the responding officers surprised the teenagers as they were coming through the front door.
The group turned and fled out the back door, and a shootout ensued. When it was all over, 16-year-old A'Donte Washington was dead with a bullet wound to his neck.
It's never been in dispute that a Millbrook police officer shot and killed Washington - officer-worn body cameras captured the fatal confrontation. A grand jury declined to charge the officer, finding that the shooting was justified.
Instead, Smith was charged and found guilty of his friend's murder. Last week, a judge sentenced him to 65 years in prison. Under Alabama's accomplice liability law, Smith is considered just as culpable in Washington's death as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
"It's sad in my opinion," says Smith's defence lawyer, Jennifer Holton. "The cause of death was the officer's action."
Alabama's law is an example of so-called felony-murder laws and they are very common throughout the US - only seven states do not have some type of law that expands the definition of murder to include an unintentional killing in the course of committing a felony. These laws also sweep up accomplices who, again, may not have directly caused harm, but were still a party in the felony that preceded the death.
While rooted in English common law, felony-murder is a rare concept outside of the US.
In the UK, the "joint enterprise" law can be used to convict an accomplice in a murder, but it applies mostly to gang-related crimes. The UK Supreme Court narrowed its application in 2016, ruling that the person must have "foresight" and "intention" to be found guilty of the killing.
"Felony-murder is a lovely American fiction," says Michael Heyman, professor emeritus at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. "It's a fiction in that it attributes a killing to you that you need not have done by your own hand."
For example, if a victim has a heart attack and dies while being robbed, the perpetrator can be charged with murder even if he had no intent to kill. If the robber's friend was sitting in a getaway car a block away, under accomplice liability, he too can be charged with murder. One of the most famous examples involved a man convicted of murder for loaning his car to friends who went on to murder an 18-year-old girl. According to prosecutors, it didn't matter that he was 30 minutes away.
These laws make cases like Smith's surprisingly common, where defendants are charged with the murder of their own accomplices, who can be their friends and even relatives. These often occur in the course of burglaries gone wrong, when the perpetrators are confronted by police or armed homeowners. Recent examples include cases in Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma.
The legal logic has expanded into the opioid crisis, where, in one case, a husband was charged with the murder of his wife for providing her with the heroin that killed her.
What makes Smith's case different, according to Scott Lemieux, a lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Washington, is that Smith went forward to trial instead of pleading guilty.
"These really long sentences are used to put pressure on people to plead," he says. "The risk of going to trial is so extreme."
Smith decided to take that risk, turning down a 25-year plea deal, and was found guilty by a jury. The other three surviving suspects have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Randall Houston, the district attorney who prosecuted Smith, says he felt the charges and the punishment were appropriate.
"If you're gonna bring a gun and commit a crime and somebody dies, there's consequences in Alabama - it's felony-murder," he says.
Houston points out that at his sentencing, Smith laughed and smiled. Holton, the defence lawyer, says that only shows how young Smith is.
Andre Washington, A'Donte's father, attended Smith's trial, but he didn't sit on the prosecution's side of the courtroom. Instead, he sat with Smith's mother.
"I went there to show him and his family some support. What the officers did - it was totally wrong," says Washington. "I don't feel [Smith] deserves that. No. Not at all." That article title is what happens when the famously impartial and apolitical BBC editorial staff can't even anymore. The rest of the black teenagers there were tried collectively for the murder but took a deal to only serve 25 years each for the murder of their friend. But the dumb 15 year old actually believed in the system and thought he could fight the murder charge on the grounds that he didn't murder his friend, so he gets 65 years. So I'm not sure if I understand correctly. It sounds like those guys, and the one that is dead went and robbed houses together. Then police got involved, there was a shootout, and 1 guy died? Now his friends there were robbing houses with him are being tried for his murder? I can't seem to find the reason for the shootout in the article, were they armed or posing a danger to the police, or just shot at because? While that law is pretty dumb, if I understand this right I really have no sympathy for them, they went and robbed houses, they deserve whatever they get, even if in this case they're going to jail for something different than what they actually did.
The police shot one of the gang as the gang tried to escape and then charged the rest of the gang with the murder of the one that they shot, including a 15 year old who received a 65 year sentence for the murder of his friend.
You don't have to condone burglaries to think that that's pretty fucked up. I'm not saying that burglars shouldn't be prosecuted, I'm saying they should be prosecuted for the crime of burglary.
They don't deserve "what they get", they deserve punishment for the crime that they actually committed, they deserve to go to jail for the thing that "they actually did".
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On April 10 2018 10:18 Introvert wrote:So I'm pretty agnostic on this Stormy Daniels garbage floating around but if I may, Erik Erickson actually has an excellent point I hadn't thought about. https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/983511796442071040Now is the time for me to revive "bring on President Pence." + Show Spoiler +No, I don't think that's going to happen. I don't know what the result of all this will be even if Trump knew the whole time. Problem is we've had so much of "this swung the election!" vs "no it didn't!" that I think we are beyond the point where anything actually happens. We already knew Trump cheated on his wives, would it have killed his chances if he illegally paid off a mistress? I say no. And that's what this is all about. To me everything even tangentially connected to Mueller is about re-litigating 2016, and there it will die.
It seems pretty premature to be speculating on what will get released in this NY investigation. From all reports, Mueller brought the evidence to the Justice Department and they felt it was outside Mueller's mandate.
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Perhaps more alarming than the far-right getting braver is the seep into mainstream politics of their hate, their talking points, their rhetoric. “It feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin,” Jacobs speculated, ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018 on Thursday.
“Things that couldn’t be said five years ago, four years ago, three years ago—couldn’t be said in public—are now normal discourse. It’s totally unacceptable.
“We thought our country had changed. In fact, it didn’t. We were operating on a misconception. ‘My god, we elected a black president in the United States! Look how far we’ve come!’ We haven’t.”
In Trump, Jacobs says, the far-right sees an “enabler.”
“I’m involved with New York real estate, I know this man personally,” says Jacobs, whose eponymous architecture firm celebrated its 50th birthday in 2017. “Trump is an enabler. Trump has no ideas. Trump is out for himself.
“He’s a sick, very disturbed individual. I couldn’t say that Trump is a fascist because you’ve got to know what fascism is. And I don’t think he has the mental power to even understand it.” www.newsweek.com
Some comments by a Holocaust survivor on the current political atmosphere. It wasn't really comfortable reading, but it has a sort of unique draw because the author is part of the NY real estate scene and knows Donald Trump personally.
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On April 10 2018 10:15 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2018 10:05 KwarK wrote:Good news/bad news story for accountability when police shoot black children. A jury finally decided that they were willing to return a guilty verdict when the murder of the sixteen year old by police officers came to trial. Unfortunately they decided to convict the victim's friend, also black, who was fifteen at the time and was not the shooter. But still, progress? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43673331+ Show Spoiler +In the US, you don't have to kill to be a murderer
After police killed a burglary suspect in a shootout, the officer was not charged - instead a teenage boy who did not fire the gun has been found guilty of his murder. How do accomplice liability laws work?
Lakeith Smith was 15 years old when he went along with four older friends on a burglary spree. A neighbour called police when the group went into a home in Millbrook, Alabama, and the responding officers surprised the teenagers as they were coming through the front door.
The group turned and fled out the back door, and a shootout ensued. When it was all over, 16-year-old A'Donte Washington was dead with a bullet wound to his neck.
It's never been in dispute that a Millbrook police officer shot and killed Washington - officer-worn body cameras captured the fatal confrontation. A grand jury declined to charge the officer, finding that the shooting was justified.
Instead, Smith was charged and found guilty of his friend's murder. Last week, a judge sentenced him to 65 years in prison. Under Alabama's accomplice liability law, Smith is considered just as culpable in Washington's death as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
"It's sad in my opinion," says Smith's defence lawyer, Jennifer Holton. "The cause of death was the officer's action."
Alabama's law is an example of so-called felony-murder laws and they are very common throughout the US - only seven states do not have some type of law that expands the definition of murder to include an unintentional killing in the course of committing a felony. These laws also sweep up accomplices who, again, may not have directly caused harm, but were still a party in the felony that preceded the death.
While rooted in English common law, felony-murder is a rare concept outside of the US.
In the UK, the "joint enterprise" law can be used to convict an accomplice in a murder, but it applies mostly to gang-related crimes. The UK Supreme Court narrowed its application in 2016, ruling that the person must have "foresight" and "intention" to be found guilty of the killing.
"Felony-murder is a lovely American fiction," says Michael Heyman, professor emeritus at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. "It's a fiction in that it attributes a killing to you that you need not have done by your own hand."
For example, if a victim has a heart attack and dies while being robbed, the perpetrator can be charged with murder even if he had no intent to kill. If the robber's friend was sitting in a getaway car a block away, under accomplice liability, he too can be charged with murder. One of the most famous examples involved a man convicted of murder for loaning his car to friends who went on to murder an 18-year-old girl. According to prosecutors, it didn't matter that he was 30 minutes away.
These laws make cases like Smith's surprisingly common, where defendants are charged with the murder of their own accomplices, who can be their friends and even relatives. These often occur in the course of burglaries gone wrong, when the perpetrators are confronted by police or armed homeowners. Recent examples include cases in Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma.
The legal logic has expanded into the opioid crisis, where, in one case, a husband was charged with the murder of his wife for providing her with the heroin that killed her.
What makes Smith's case different, according to Scott Lemieux, a lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Washington, is that Smith went forward to trial instead of pleading guilty.
"These really long sentences are used to put pressure on people to plead," he says. "The risk of going to trial is so extreme."
Smith decided to take that risk, turning down a 25-year plea deal, and was found guilty by a jury. The other three surviving suspects have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Randall Houston, the district attorney who prosecuted Smith, says he felt the charges and the punishment were appropriate.
"If you're gonna bring a gun and commit a crime and somebody dies, there's consequences in Alabama - it's felony-murder," he says.
Houston points out that at his sentencing, Smith laughed and smiled. Holton, the defence lawyer, says that only shows how young Smith is.
Andre Washington, A'Donte's father, attended Smith's trial, but he didn't sit on the prosecution's side of the courtroom. Instead, he sat with Smith's mother.
"I went there to show him and his family some support. What the officers did - it was totally wrong," says Washington. "I don't feel [Smith] deserves that. No. Not at all." That article title is what happens when the famously impartial and apolitical BBC editorial staff can't even anymore. The rest of the black teenagers there were tried collectively for the murder but took a deal to only serve 25 years each for the murder of their friend. But the dumb 15 year old actually believed in the system and thought he could fight the murder charge on the grounds that he didn't murder his friend, so he gets 65 years. So I'm not sure if I understand correctly. It sounds like those guys, and the one that is dead went and robbed houses together. Then police got involved, there was a shootout, and 1 guy died? Now his friends there were robbing houses with him are being tried for his murder? I can't seem to find the reason for the shootout in the article, were they armed or posing a danger to the police, or just shot at because? While that law is pretty dumb, if I understand this right I really have no sympathy for them, they went and robbed houses, they deserve whatever they get, even if in this case they're going to jail for something different than what they actually did.
The hell?
I don't even understand how that works. You think someone deserves 65 years for being a dumb 15 yo who thought robbing houses wouldn't end badly for themselves because a cop shot one of them. So it doesn't matter if the kid's the one doing time for a murder he didn't commit.
That is one twisted sense of justice and yet another reason I think we should be working toward abolishing the police.
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On April 10 2018 10:23 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2018 10:15 hunts wrote:On April 10 2018 10:05 KwarK wrote:Good news/bad news story for accountability when police shoot black children. A jury finally decided that they were willing to return a guilty verdict when the murder of the sixteen year old by police officers came to trial. Unfortunately they decided to convict the victim's friend, also black, who was fifteen at the time and was not the shooter. But still, progress? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43673331+ Show Spoiler +In the US, you don't have to kill to be a murderer
After police killed a burglary suspect in a shootout, the officer was not charged - instead a teenage boy who did not fire the gun has been found guilty of his murder. How do accomplice liability laws work?
Lakeith Smith was 15 years old when he went along with four older friends on a burglary spree. A neighbour called police when the group went into a home in Millbrook, Alabama, and the responding officers surprised the teenagers as they were coming through the front door.
The group turned and fled out the back door, and a shootout ensued. When it was all over, 16-year-old A'Donte Washington was dead with a bullet wound to his neck.
It's never been in dispute that a Millbrook police officer shot and killed Washington - officer-worn body cameras captured the fatal confrontation. A grand jury declined to charge the officer, finding that the shooting was justified.
Instead, Smith was charged and found guilty of his friend's murder. Last week, a judge sentenced him to 65 years in prison. Under Alabama's accomplice liability law, Smith is considered just as culpable in Washington's death as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
"It's sad in my opinion," says Smith's defence lawyer, Jennifer Holton. "The cause of death was the officer's action."
Alabama's law is an example of so-called felony-murder laws and they are very common throughout the US - only seven states do not have some type of law that expands the definition of murder to include an unintentional killing in the course of committing a felony. These laws also sweep up accomplices who, again, may not have directly caused harm, but were still a party in the felony that preceded the death.
While rooted in English common law, felony-murder is a rare concept outside of the US.
In the UK, the "joint enterprise" law can be used to convict an accomplice in a murder, but it applies mostly to gang-related crimes. The UK Supreme Court narrowed its application in 2016, ruling that the person must have "foresight" and "intention" to be found guilty of the killing.
"Felony-murder is a lovely American fiction," says Michael Heyman, professor emeritus at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. "It's a fiction in that it attributes a killing to you that you need not have done by your own hand."
For example, if a victim has a heart attack and dies while being robbed, the perpetrator can be charged with murder even if he had no intent to kill. If the robber's friend was sitting in a getaway car a block away, under accomplice liability, he too can be charged with murder. One of the most famous examples involved a man convicted of murder for loaning his car to friends who went on to murder an 18-year-old girl. According to prosecutors, it didn't matter that he was 30 minutes away.
These laws make cases like Smith's surprisingly common, where defendants are charged with the murder of their own accomplices, who can be their friends and even relatives. These often occur in the course of burglaries gone wrong, when the perpetrators are confronted by police or armed homeowners. Recent examples include cases in Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma.
The legal logic has expanded into the opioid crisis, where, in one case, a husband was charged with the murder of his wife for providing her with the heroin that killed her.
What makes Smith's case different, according to Scott Lemieux, a lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Washington, is that Smith went forward to trial instead of pleading guilty.
"These really long sentences are used to put pressure on people to plead," he says. "The risk of going to trial is so extreme."
Smith decided to take that risk, turning down a 25-year plea deal, and was found guilty by a jury. The other three surviving suspects have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Randall Houston, the district attorney who prosecuted Smith, says he felt the charges and the punishment were appropriate.
"If you're gonna bring a gun and commit a crime and somebody dies, there's consequences in Alabama - it's felony-murder," he says.
Houston points out that at his sentencing, Smith laughed and smiled. Holton, the defence lawyer, says that only shows how young Smith is.
Andre Washington, A'Donte's father, attended Smith's trial, but he didn't sit on the prosecution's side of the courtroom. Instead, he sat with Smith's mother.
"I went there to show him and his family some support. What the officers did - it was totally wrong," says Washington. "I don't feel [Smith] deserves that. No. Not at all." That article title is what happens when the famously impartial and apolitical BBC editorial staff can't even anymore. The rest of the black teenagers there were tried collectively for the murder but took a deal to only serve 25 years each for the murder of their friend. But the dumb 15 year old actually believed in the system and thought he could fight the murder charge on the grounds that he didn't murder his friend, so he gets 65 years. So I'm not sure if I understand correctly. It sounds like those guys, and the one that is dead went and robbed houses together. Then police got involved, there was a shootout, and 1 guy died? Now his friends there were robbing houses with him are being tried for his murder? I can't seem to find the reason for the shootout in the article, were they armed or posing a danger to the police, or just shot at because? While that law is pretty dumb, if I understand this right I really have no sympathy for them, they went and robbed houses, they deserve whatever they get, even if in this case they're going to jail for something different than what they actually did. The police shot one of the gang as the gang tried to escape and then charged the rest of the gang with the murder of the one that they shot, including a 15 year old who received a 65 year sentence for the murder of his friend. You don't have to condone burglaries to think that that's pretty fucked up. I'm not saying that burglars shouldn't be prosecuted, I'm saying they should be prosecuted for the crime of burglary. They don't deserve "what they get", they deserve punishment for the crime that they actually committed, they deserve to go to jail for the thing that "they actually did".
to me it'd depend somewhat on how the shootout initiated; are there clear details on that or is it murky?
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On April 10 2018 10:23 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2018 10:15 hunts wrote:On April 10 2018 10:05 KwarK wrote:Good news/bad news story for accountability when police shoot black children. A jury finally decided that they were willing to return a guilty verdict when the murder of the sixteen year old by police officers came to trial. Unfortunately they decided to convict the victim's friend, also black, who was fifteen at the time and was not the shooter. But still, progress? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43673331+ Show Spoiler +In the US, you don't have to kill to be a murderer
After police killed a burglary suspect in a shootout, the officer was not charged - instead a teenage boy who did not fire the gun has been found guilty of his murder. How do accomplice liability laws work?
Lakeith Smith was 15 years old when he went along with four older friends on a burglary spree. A neighbour called police when the group went into a home in Millbrook, Alabama, and the responding officers surprised the teenagers as they were coming through the front door.
The group turned and fled out the back door, and a shootout ensued. When it was all over, 16-year-old A'Donte Washington was dead with a bullet wound to his neck.
It's never been in dispute that a Millbrook police officer shot and killed Washington - officer-worn body cameras captured the fatal confrontation. A grand jury declined to charge the officer, finding that the shooting was justified.
Instead, Smith was charged and found guilty of his friend's murder. Last week, a judge sentenced him to 65 years in prison. Under Alabama's accomplice liability law, Smith is considered just as culpable in Washington's death as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
"It's sad in my opinion," says Smith's defence lawyer, Jennifer Holton. "The cause of death was the officer's action."
Alabama's law is an example of so-called felony-murder laws and they are very common throughout the US - only seven states do not have some type of law that expands the definition of murder to include an unintentional killing in the course of committing a felony. These laws also sweep up accomplices who, again, may not have directly caused harm, but were still a party in the felony that preceded the death.
While rooted in English common law, felony-murder is a rare concept outside of the US.
In the UK, the "joint enterprise" law can be used to convict an accomplice in a murder, but it applies mostly to gang-related crimes. The UK Supreme Court narrowed its application in 2016, ruling that the person must have "foresight" and "intention" to be found guilty of the killing.
"Felony-murder is a lovely American fiction," says Michael Heyman, professor emeritus at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. "It's a fiction in that it attributes a killing to you that you need not have done by your own hand."
For example, if a victim has a heart attack and dies while being robbed, the perpetrator can be charged with murder even if he had no intent to kill. If the robber's friend was sitting in a getaway car a block away, under accomplice liability, he too can be charged with murder. One of the most famous examples involved a man convicted of murder for loaning his car to friends who went on to murder an 18-year-old girl. According to prosecutors, it didn't matter that he was 30 minutes away.
These laws make cases like Smith's surprisingly common, where defendants are charged with the murder of their own accomplices, who can be their friends and even relatives. These often occur in the course of burglaries gone wrong, when the perpetrators are confronted by police or armed homeowners. Recent examples include cases in Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma.
The legal logic has expanded into the opioid crisis, where, in one case, a husband was charged with the murder of his wife for providing her with the heroin that killed her.
What makes Smith's case different, according to Scott Lemieux, a lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Washington, is that Smith went forward to trial instead of pleading guilty.
"These really long sentences are used to put pressure on people to plead," he says. "The risk of going to trial is so extreme."
Smith decided to take that risk, turning down a 25-year plea deal, and was found guilty by a jury. The other three surviving suspects have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Randall Houston, the district attorney who prosecuted Smith, says he felt the charges and the punishment were appropriate.
"If you're gonna bring a gun and commit a crime and somebody dies, there's consequences in Alabama - it's felony-murder," he says.
Houston points out that at his sentencing, Smith laughed and smiled. Holton, the defence lawyer, says that only shows how young Smith is.
Andre Washington, A'Donte's father, attended Smith's trial, but he didn't sit on the prosecution's side of the courtroom. Instead, he sat with Smith's mother.
"I went there to show him and his family some support. What the officers did - it was totally wrong," says Washington. "I don't feel [Smith] deserves that. No. Not at all." That article title is what happens when the famously impartial and apolitical BBC editorial staff can't even anymore. The rest of the black teenagers there were tried collectively for the murder but took a deal to only serve 25 years each for the murder of their friend. But the dumb 15 year old actually believed in the system and thought he could fight the murder charge on the grounds that he didn't murder his friend, so he gets 65 years. So I'm not sure if I understand correctly. It sounds like those guys, and the one that is dead went and robbed houses together. Then police got involved, there was a shootout, and 1 guy died? Now his friends there were robbing houses with him are being tried for his murder? I can't seem to find the reason for the shootout in the article, were they armed or posing a danger to the police, or just shot at because? While that law is pretty dumb, if I understand this right I really have no sympathy for them, they went and robbed houses, they deserve whatever they get, even if in this case they're going to jail for something different than what they actually did. The police shot one of the gang as the gang tried to escape and then charged the rest of the gang with the murder of the one that they shot, including a 15 year old who received a 65 year sentence for the murder of his friend. You don't have to condone burglaries to think that that's pretty fucked up.
The English language lacks words sufficient to describe the sort of fucked up shit this sort of law can lead to. Following the inauguration day protests, a few hundred people were charged with a handful of felonies, including "conspiracy to riot," to charge for the crimes committed by anyone involved in criminal behavior to basically everyone in the area involved in the same march/protest/whatever. Using the law that kid was charged under, if the cops had shot and killed a single protestor, those few hundred people could all have been charged with the murder of that protestor in addition to all of the other charges leveled against them.
Keep in mind that in the US, a burglar can sue their victim if they hurt themselves in the course of committing their burglary. When it comes to injuries sustained in the course of committing crimes, the only people who aren't liable are police, who have no incentive to not open fire as soon as they can find reasonable justification.
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United States43468 Posts
On April 10 2018 10:39 Kyadytim wrote:
Keep in mind that in the US, a burglar can sue their victim if they hurt themselves in the course of committing their burglary. When it comes to injuries sustained in the course of committing crimes, the only people who aren't liable are police, who have no incentive to not open fire as soon as they can find reasonable justification.
I believe that this comes from the McDonald's coffee school of badlaw and urban legends.
If you litter your property with bear traps for the explicit purpose of maiming intruders then you can be sued, and you should be. But if the intruder cuts themselves climbing through the window they just broke you're not going to get in trouble.
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The McDonalds coffee ruling is the opposite of bad law. It is a clear cut case of comparative negligence with 200 degree coffee. It melted her pants it was so hot. And McDondalds could have settled for medical expenses, but decided to fight it at trial and got dumpstered.
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United States43468 Posts
On April 10 2018 10:50 Plansix wrote:
The McDonalds coffee ruling is the opposite of bad law. It is a clear cut case of comparative negligence with 200 degree coffee. It melted her pants it was so hot. And McDondalds could have settled for medical expenses, but decided to fight it at trial and got dumpstered.
That's my point. The urban legend about a woman suing because her hot coffee was hot and what actually happened could not be further apart. I was using that as a comparison to show the invalidity of the "if an intruder slips and hurts themselves while robbing you they can sue" claim.
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i mean, they can sue. they won't win though, unless you have a really bad lawyer or skip out on court and get a default judgement against you.
though if you booby trap your home or whatever the burglar might have a case, i guess.
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On April 10 2018 10:52 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2018 10:50 Plansix wrote:
The McDonalds coffee ruling is the opposite of bad law. It is a clear cut case of comparative negligence with 200 degree coffee. It melted her pants it was so hot. And McDondalds could have settled for medical expenses, but decided to fight it at trial and got dumpstered. That's my point. The urban legend about a woman suing because her hot coffee was hot and what actually happened could not be further apart. I was using that as a comparison to show the invalidity of the "if an intruder slips and hurts themselves while robbing you they can sue" claim.
All right, just making sure. People calling out that ruling is one of my pet peeves since it is an example of a perfectly acceptable ruling.
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Actually, what I came up with when I was double checking to make sure this shit really happened, it was this story about a guy who fell while stealing floodlight.
Except if one actually goes to the document, buried within a lot of rhetoric criticizing reformers for mentioning the Bodine lawsuit, we learn: Ricky Bodine was a 19-year-old high-school graduate who, with three other friends (one of whom had a criminal record), decided the night of March 1, 1982, to steal a floodlight from the roof of the Enterprise High School gymnasium. Ricky climbed the roof, removed the floodlight, lowered it to the ground to his friends, and, as he was walking across the roof (perhaps to steal a second floodlight), he fell through the skylight. Bodine suffered terrible injuries to be sure, though one questions the relevance: if the school is legally responsible for burglars’ safety, it doesn’t matter whether Bodine stubbed a toe or, as actually happened, became a spastic quadriplegic. But I fail to see what it is that reformers are supposedly misrepresenting. A burglar fell through a skylight, and sued the owner of the skylight for his injuries. Bodine sued for $8 million (in 1984 dollars, about $16 million today) and settled for the nuisance sum of $260,000 plus $1200/month for life, about the equivalent of a million dollars in conservatively-estimated 2006 present value.
www.overlawyered.com
So this shit does actually happen.
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On April 10 2018 11:49 Kyadytim wrote:Actually, what I came up with when I was double checking to make sure this shit really happened, it was this story about a guy who fell while stealing floodlight. Show nested quote +Except if one actually goes to the document, buried within a lot of rhetoric criticizing reformers for mentioning the Bodine lawsuit, we learn: Ricky Bodine was a 19-year-old high-school graduate who, with three other friends (one of whom had a criminal record), decided the night of March 1, 1982, to steal a floodlight from the roof of the Enterprise High School gymnasium. Ricky climbed the roof, removed the floodlight, lowered it to the ground to his friends, and, as he was walking across the roof (perhaps to steal a second floodlight), he fell through the skylight. Bodine suffered terrible injuries to be sure, though one questions the relevance: if the school is legally responsible for burglars’ safety, it doesn’t matter whether Bodine stubbed a toe or, as actually happened, became a spastic quadriplegic. But I fail to see what it is that reformers are supposedly misrepresenting. A burglar fell through a skylight, and sued the owner of the skylight for his injuries. Bodine sued for $8 million (in 1984 dollars, about $16 million today) and settled for the nuisance sum of $260,000 plus $1200/month for life, about the equivalent of a million dollars in conservatively-estimated 2006 present value. www.overlawyered.comSo this shit does actually happen.
Looks like it happened, once, in the 1980's, at a publicly owned building, and I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess Bodine and friends were white and it was a small town and people felt bad for his parents.
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On April 10 2018 10:57 ticklishmusic wrote:
i mean, they can sue. they won't win though, unless you have a really bad lawyer or skip out on court and get a default judgement against you.
though if you booby trap your home or whatever the burglar might have a case, i guess.
booby trapping your home doesn't matter if the burglar has a case or not you're in trouble with the law at that point given it's just about illegal everywhere in the US to trap your home. Usually the laws around it has to do with dangers to police and first responders. Just about any violation of the law that harmed another individual opens you up to civil litigation. Ofc if you want to get buck wild about it you could try a civil suit of damages against the burglar as a separate matter lol.
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EPT
