Techdirt reports
Two law enforcement agencies will be returning their Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) [vehicles] to Uncle Sam, with the announcements arriving almost simultaneously.
Davis, Calif., city officials have directed the police department to return a surplus U.S. military armored vehicle to the federal government after residents, citing images seen during protests in Ferguson, Mo., expressed fears of militarization.
The Davis Police Department now has 60 days to get rid of a $689,000 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle, which police acquired through a U.S. Defense Department program, and must consider other rescue vehicle options.
[...]
Over in San Jose, CA, it's a completely different story. Rather than having an MRAP pried from law enforcement's clutches by city reps, the San Jose Police Department gave it up voluntarily to protect its relationship with the people it serves.
San Jose police spokeswoman Sgt. Heather Randol told KCBS the decision was made based on concerns for potential damage to the department's image and community relationships.
"We want to keep their trust. We don't want them to feel we are going off on another path with our police department," she said. "We want them to feel comfortable about the tools that we use."
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I've previously mentioned federal whistleblower Peter Van Buren here and his expose on working for minimum wage at a store he called "Bullseye" while his lawsuit wound its way through the court system.
He has now blogged about a part of government which, apparently, hasn't had any new ideas since 1856.
I just wrapped up a couple of days of jury duty.
Note "jury duty", which is very different than serving on a jury. I didn't do that. Being on an actual jury involves making a careful judgment on someone's life. I did jury duty, which involves waiting and sitting and waiting, while watching your last hopeful images of democracy fade away.
[...] It was about 10:30 before a guy who said he'd been doing this exact same job for 34 years began speaking to us as if we were slow children or fairly smart puppies. The bulk of his explanation was about how most of us would get our $40 a day jury payment, and the many exceptions to that. It was then lunch.
[After lunch, we waited for the rest of the day but] were unneeded. We were dismissed until re-summoned tomorrow morning.
[...] The next morning, [...] I got called to jury selection, along with about 20 [others who had been waiting in the same semi-air-conditioned room]. We were brought to an unventilated hallway to wait for 30 minutes before entering an actual courtroom. [...] We did an olde timey swearing in, and then were invited to visit the judge and explain any "issues" we might have that would prevent us from serving on a jury.
It was pathetic. Nearly everyone bitched, whined, begged, and complained that they could not do it.
[...] I got bounced out of the jury selection in the next phase. Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney asked us questions about our jobs, our thoughts on law enforcement (especially if we trusted police to testify honestly), and the like. I answered every question completely candidly and was thrown back to wait three more hours until "jury duty" was over. The only way I could have served would have been to lie.
[...] This system is a mess. [...] The 19th century notion that everyone simply must find a way to put their life on hold does not work. [...] Telling single parents to just figure out child care, Wall Street brokers to just not care about millions of dollars, students to just miss class, and people who work freelance or hourly to just suck it up and lose their already limited income is not 2016.
If assigned to an actual jury, you stay with the trial until it is done. [...] If you pull a murder case or one of the many medical malpractice suits, it could be a month+. [...] For $40 a day [...]--minus the minimum five dollars [that] commuting to court and back costs, means you are getting about half the minimum wage in New York, and even that takes six to eight weeks to be sent to you. [...] If you are already living on the margins, you cannot afford to serve on a jury.
[...] A lot of folks whose English was poor or who sounded as if they did not get much of an education had no excuse the judge would accept [to be dismissed].
[...] My limited window into all of this suggests juries might just be made up of people who can't get out of it. Hard to say how bitter that makes them feel listening to an actual case.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:11AM
Davis makes sense because that community is to the left of Karl Marx, politically. San Jose is rather more surprising because it's a much bigger city with even bigger clout via Silicon Valley.
It would be refreshing to see other cities and states following suit, because all levels of American government have seemed to be fantasizing about turning the country into occupied Fallujah recently. But I don't think they will. The WWII generation who had real first-hand experience with fighting fascism and understanding on a visceral level what happens when democracy is jettisoned have mostly gone. No one remains with that deep perspective to rein things in. We have Baby Boomers instead whose long adventure into narcissism is devolving into a primal scream/death rattle. Gen-X thru Millenials are still comparing their pay stubs to their student loan statements and wondering WTF?
I did my Master's in history & social theory and I can almost hear future historians writing the epitaph for the 20th century Pax Americana now, the way past and current historians have written about the Fall of Rome or the end of the Japanese Shogunate.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Informative) by buswolley on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:25AM
As a resident of Davis I take issue with your overstatement of Davis's Left political leanings.Left, but left od Marx...no. What they are however, is politically active to the point where the city responds and listens to its citizens. e.g. a season of politics and a vote to decide on opening up a new commercial zone for Target...we now have a Target.
subicular junctures
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:11AM
For a while, federal whistleblower Peter Van Buren couldn't get a job that used his skills and education while his case made its way through the courts.
He took a job at a company he calls "Bullseye".
For those who haven't already had their jobs exported, his account is informative about where the American workplace is headed.
I wish the page was built in a way I could index it down to
Life in the new American minimum-wage economy. [warincontext.org]
That sort of place is the last thing I would expect a "Liberal" town to approve.
-- gewg_
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday September 04 2014, @05:08AM
That's not nearly as bad as what happened to Thomas Drake -- Drake had to work at an Apple Store!
This is sensationalist bullshit. Nobody runs credit checks unless vetting for hot-shit or money-related positions, even store fucking bookkeepers aren't vetted with a credit-check. Everybody has bad credit nowadays anyway. And here where I live, at least, they have to tell you give you a copy of the report if you ask or check the box. And, boo-hoo a drug test, which tests your ability to not be a crackhead, to have the discipline to lay off the pot for a few weeks, or be smart enough to use a clean-test kit (yes, the Detoxify-brand Clean drinks I used do work).
False-positives are pretty damn rare, and if you fail the GC your sample gets the MS as a backup. If you're concerned about false positives, bring your goddamn prescriptions to the testing facility. It's highly likely that painkillers are the only thing that would cause a false pos on a 5-panel, and if you have a prescription like you should, you'll be safe. The marijuana think I can sympathize with, however, nobody does true random drug tests. You have to really fuck up or hurt yourself to get one, like say you hurt your back and want to go out on disability, or topple over 5 racks of merchandise with the forklift. Everybody's afraid of "pissing hot" because they're fucking dope-addicts. I know I was when I worked in stores. High all the fucking time.
Yes, resentment, I get it...but that kind of shit doesn't magically go away once you get a so-called "real" job. He should know that.
I'm sure something's left out here. The guy was probably a fat slob addicted to Mcgarbage, who refused to eat Ramen noodles even though they are super-affordable and can be filling on the cheap. The bastard probably had kids without the discipline, skills, or cash flow to take care of them, and if that's the case, I have no sympathy for the fucker. And about the toilet-cleaning crew, in many ways that job is better because you don't have to deal with talking to asshole customers. I've been there, I have the authority to speak about these things.
Once again -- people who don't have the discipline, skills, or cash flow to have children should not have children. In fact, they should be sterilized and have their offspring euthanized. Employers are sucking veterans' cocks nowadays, so the veteran is likely either an unstable loon who can't hold down a job or is not applying himself. The immigrants can get the hell out, they're only making problems like these possible with their presence. The small-store guy is not applying his skills if he plans to stay in retail for long.
Simple: You kick the illegals the fuck out, or enslave them outright and funnel some of the profit back into the economy. If things are really that bad where they're coming from, then they can work for free as long as they get three hots and a cot.
Well, I'm glad that story had a happy ending, it made the corners of my mouth turn up and now I feel warm and fuzzy inside -- but I have little sympathy for people who are stuck in retail*.
*I actually had a lot of fun working in stores -- the women are dumb and easy (one of my coworkers would go upstairs where there were no cameras and make a "bed" out of packages of toilet paper and paper towels, then fuck on them, and then we would stock the shelves with those come-stained packages to be bought by unwitting rubes. I was the film developer and would show peoples' nudes (hint: we saw all the frames, you can't take one "normal" picture in the front and back and think we don't see every frame) to the entire store, even the manager himself peeked at them. A crackhead swiped thousands from the safe, another manager was arrested for embezzling $10K, we came in drunk, gigglingly high, smoked weed in front of and behind the store, screwed in the bathrooms, used employee discounts for expensive booze, watched crackheads make it all the way to the inside of the cash office and run the servers in a shopping cart right out the door. The pay does suck, but you see some shit there that you don't see anywhere else.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:23AM
Well, that may be because you are a dipshit. Not everyone's in retail because they didn't try hard enough. I was in retail, I have a Computer Science degree. I get turned down for all jobs because I have a disability and people - such as yourself - are bigots. Your asterisked comment seems to indicate you are a negligent employee, with no consideration for others at all. Your comments and assumptions throughout are supportive of this.
You forgot to append "At least, as far as I know," because that's all you're arguing with.
I have good credit, but that's as irrelevant as your statement.
Even cameramen are given drug tests today. What the hell does it matter if a cameraman is high? He's not driving, he's simply standing still framing a shot.
So? No, really, so what?
But the treatment does improve. Most of the places I've worked, the senior managers won't even look you in the eye because you're not worth it, you're just a minimum wage employee so fuck you and fuck your rights. This is normal, this is par for the course.
Ah yes, the good old strawman. Guaranteed to be pulled out to make an asshole look more reasonable.
The truth is, you have no idea what was going on. None. Stop trying to make shit up to make yourself feel better. This "Just World" bullshit is a fantasy made up so people such as yourself can feel superior for working harder than the less successful, who clearly didn't work as hard. Hard work doesn't get you very far without a lot of luck.
But this is only because you've made stuff up to reinforce your prejudiced opinion of someone you've never met. You are a delusional fool.
See how that works? I just made something up about you!
Oh, so you're an authority on shit now? You write as if nobody else has ever worked one of those jobs. Those jobs also pay next-to-nothing and have as few hours as they can get away with.
Who are you to tell people who to live their lives? You can't even formulate an argument without falling back on opinion and fiction to justify your position.
It's interesting that you think only the wealthy should have children, and the poor should all be sterilized while their children are killed.
And there you are again, making up shit just to support an extreme opinion.
Damned foreigners, stealing all our jobs and driving wages down.
I honestly can't tell if you're trolling, if you really believe this shit, or if you're trying to use irony and opposition to make a point. I'm hoping it's the latter, but that's mostly irrelevant.
(Score: 4, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday September 04 2014, @08:55AM
You are a contemptible excuse for a human being.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:31PM
How do you propose we do this and with what money? Do we have law enforcement stop everyone who remotely looks Mexican and ask "papers please"? This is the fallacy of the right standing idiots who sit around screaming throw out all the illegals without ever thinking about how much money it will cost. To put it better, we have better things to spend our money on than chasing illegals. This is why it is far better to turn them into tax paying citizens and get it over with. We actually gain from that scenario. But nope. Can't let those mooching wetbacks stay here. It's all about racism and keeping the mud people out (good luck with that).
If by enslave you mean turn them into tax paying citizens, then yes. It's a win as taxes and wages put profit back into the economy. Because lets face it, taxation is monetary enslavement. If you don't pay you go to jail which for all intents and purposes is torture. If not then your ability to troll is lacking in effort.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:44PM
Not once did I mention "Wetbacks" or "Mud People," and of course you're spouting that tired ol' accusation of racism you're attributing to me and using to wrongly censure and discredit anybody who disagrees with you. I said, "immigrants," dumbass. Caucasians can also be immigrants. And it's simple, really -- people who are not naturalized citizens should be thrown the fuck out. We have plenty of law-enforcement infrastructure we can use to determine immigration status in non-invasive ways like auditing employer records and mandatory citizenship as a condition of employment.
I replied to a person who said that minimum wage and reduced hours is "the new normal," so flooding the market with even more labor is going to correct, and not exacerbate, the situation? For every immigrant who does add value there are 20 who have more kids they can support, placing an extreme burden on the school and healthcare systems, and many don't bother to learn English or otherwise adopt our culture and standard of living, so it's just a race to the bottom. Modern immigration into America is about corporate profit at the expense of standards of living, and that statement immediately shows that the Left gives as little of a shit of the American people (and maybe even less) as the Right does.
Gewg's pet issue of raising the minimum wage is only half-right in that it provides the illusion of raising standards of living when it's really just about squeezing more and more people into the underclass, eliminating the middle-class. Wages must be raised across both the lower and middle-classes, not just the very bottom.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Thursday September 04 2014, @08:09PM
I will admit that I flew off the handle. I apologize. If you thought I was directly calling you racist, that was not the point I was trying to make. But lets be honest with ourselves: The vast majority of the illegal population are from Mexico, Central and South America. A 1996 study[https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/illegal.pdf [dhs.gov]] of illegal immigration reveals that Canada was number 4 in illegals at 120,000 illegals vs 2,700,000 from Mexico, 335,000 from El Salvador and 165,000 from Guatemala. Yet I have not heard of angry mobs banging and shouting at busses of Canadians, militias patrolling the Canadian-american borders or building a fence across it. Plus you never hear anything about all those damn Canadians stealing American jobs. Another group that is guaranteed to be white are the 70,000 Polish illegals. Yet We arent screaming to deport them. Fast forward to 2011 and the numbers are greater: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_ill_pe_2011.pdf [dhs.gov]. The minute you hear someone complain of illegals and really start to talk to them is when the nasty shit comes out, and it is always directed at "brown people" from south of the border. And some of the people I have spoken to aren't afraid to straight up use terms like mud people, wetbacks and worse. Some were hispanic themselves, Puertorican in fact. But hey they aren't racist. At least that is what they claim. Believe me, racism is a large part of the immigration issues at hand. To flat out write it off as a major factor in the politics of immigration reform is absurd and a misleading.
A war on illegal immigrants will be no more effective than the war on drugs. We can't seem to stop them, they just keep pouring in and they are happily paid next to nothing by American employers. How many more "war on something's" do we need before we have to stop, think and realize it is a losing battle that was never worth it. Auditing records and mandating citizenship for employment will never work. All of that can be easily faked by both employers and employees. More bureaucracy, money spent and red tape that will further snarl businesses with a burden they don't want. Besides, how many small businesses are out there with illegals? Every landscaper and resturant I see in NYC is staffed by people who are obviously Mexican, central or south american. Will the government be able to audit the thousands of businesses in NYC alone? The nation? Doubtful.
And also consider that there are lobbying groups that support the illegal immigrants. You think everyone is going to quietly sit by and watch millions of people get tossed out for no other reason then some papers?You think they are going to go quietly? And lets not even talk about the untold number of anchor babies who are citizens. Do we toss them out along with their illegal parents? Their numbers are great and they are becoming more than just illegal immigrants, they are a large part of the economic machine and have the power to severely disrupt it. Like I said before, trying to root out and deport them is best described as a war. Food for thought: who is going to drag MILLIONS of people out of the woodwork and pay for their trip home? The Mexicans are easy we just push them across a line we drew in the dirt some time ago. But who buys the plane or boat tickets for the Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, Hondurans, Chinese Filipinos and numerous others? Just picture the logistics of moving over 11.5+ million people back their their countries of origin. And do you think millions of people who are happily making a better future won't fight back? You think it won't become a hot war involving violence? It will bring no good to this nation, divide it even further and push the whole fucking thing right off the cliff. Anyone who spouts "throw them out" and then says that it's easy did not, ever, for one microsecond, think it through. We are well past the point of throw them out. The only smart thing to do is give them what they want, a hearty welcome gift of citizenship and let them return the favor by paying taxes. win-win.
I am sure the same was said about the Irish, Italians, Germans and other non-wasp Europeans over 100 years ago. Remember "no Irish need apply"? At least they were openly racist and actively trying to prevent their employment. Contrasted with todays American businessmen who are more than happy to pay illegal immigrants next to nothing for long hours and shit pay for grueling work. Meanwhile they vote, donate and lobby the morons in office who are screaming about the illegal problem. Pot meet kettle doesn't even apply here.
I agree. But lets define the two first. Wikipedia lists middle class as the class that exists between the working class and the upper class. The Working class is defined as:
The working class (also labouring class, proletariat, or laboring class) is the class of people employed for wages, especially in manual or industrial work. Working-class jobs include blue-collar jobs, but also include large amounts of white-collar and service work.
The middle class is roughly defined as:
The modern usage of the term "middle class", however, dates to the 1913 UK Registrar-General's report, in which the statistician T.H.C. Stevenson identified the middle class as that falling between the upper class and the working class.[citation needed] Included as belonging to the middle class are professionals, managers, and senior civil servants.
So here is where the line begins to blur. Many professional jobs can pay less or more than what people in supposed working class jobs are paid. How many STEM jobs are paying college grads 100k+? Yet I know a kid who is 24, high school degree education and a don't give a rats ass attitude making 100k/yr in the bridge painters union, a working class job. The problem is the middle class was redefined at some point and people who are just making enough to live with a little extra consider themselves middle class. Here is a test, go ask someone you know to be working class and ask ask them if they consider themselves middle class or working class. Chances are you will hear middle class. Middle class would be business owners, high paid professionals like doctors, lawyers and managers.
But before I get sidetracked, an eight-something dollar minimum wage, or as you called it: the bottom, is a large part of the problem. We have people who are willing to work hard. We have a vast pool of workers willing to do shitty work. But because it is shitty work, employers think less of the people who do it and therefore feel justified in paying them next to nothing for it. It must feel real good to work 8+ hours a day flipping burgers, dealing with irate customers and playing robot on the assembly line for 8 bucks an hour. How do you pay rent, buy food and pay bills on 18k/yr? HOW? No wonder the shit is hitting the fan. To add to this the people looking for these jobs are always passed on for illegals who can be paid even less. So not only are they insulted by an 18k/yr wage but no one wants to hire them unless it's a big shitty chain like Taco Bell or Walmart because ICE has them under a microscope. But johnny's pizzeria or carls landscaping can sail right under the radar. There is your fuel on the fire for an upheaval. Some of the biggest businesses in the US pay the least amount of money to their workers: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-20-companies-with-the-most-low-wage-workers-2013-2 [businessinsider.com]. Minimum wage is a huge problem. It creates a class even below working, poverty. At least working class people can make 40-50k/yr. These people can't even afford a pot to piss in.
So my point here is this: minimum wage must be increased. The 8 something an hour is unlivable. Even 10 an hour is nothing. From experience you need to be making $15+ an hour to not struggle. And if you live in NY you better make 20+. That or you sacrifice your privacy and rent room in a shared apartment to cut down of rent (like my friend did). The low end help at my work (75%of the workers) are paid 10-12 an hour. Most of them are young guys who are still living with parents, fresh out of high school or in college. The older people (30+) who take these jobs are either working another job or share the burden with a spouse. One single 53yo guy, I feel so bad for him, makes 12 bucks an hour here 5 days/8hrs week. On top of that he delivers newspapers 7 days a week between 1 and 6AM. He has almost no life save for taking care of stray cats, movies and the rare trip to the bar and lives in a trailer park. Another kid was struggling working two full time jobs, no days off, mother didn't give a shit if he was alive or dead and father remarried with a new family. So he asks our boss, a distant relative of his, if he could get a dollar raise from 12 to 13 an hour so he could cut his hours on the second job and get sunday off. Bosses reply: "12 dollars is damn good money. You have not proven that you deserve more." Oh but mr boss man has 3/4 million in his retirement fund, tons more in the bank and takes weeks off to entertain his new fuck of the week with his hard earned money that he shows up 5-6 hours a day for. Seriously we open 6:30 and he strolls in 9am and leaves between 2 and 4pm. Oh, and his father built the business, he was a software developer prior to his inheritance. This is the problem with this county, selfish entitled assholes who think they are better than everyone else. Let them walk a mile in their low wage employees shoes for a year and come back and tell me 8 bucks an hour, or even 12 an hour is "good money".
Nothing is as easy as you think it is.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 04 2014, @05:09PM
screaming throw out all the illegals without ever thinking about how much money it will cost. To put it better, we have better things to spend our money on than chasing illegals.
So basically, you're saying instead of bailing out the water accumulating in our boat, we should be tuning the engine to go faster. Hmm.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Thursday September 04 2014, @05:49PM
Your analogy is apples to oranges. Unlike unwanted water or bilge in a boat, illegal immigrants can be converted to tax paying citizens. The economic engine is not tuned but fueled by this.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 04 2014, @06:41PM
Technically there's plenty of useful things you *could* be doing with the water, but the fact remains that it's filling up your boat, which is undesirable.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @01:24PM
Where your boat is steered is going to affect your future a lot more. A lot of jobs the illegals are taking will be gone in the future anyway. Just look at plans for robot cars, burger making robots; the existing warehouse robots, automated factories, etc. Foxconn is aiming to replace more and more chinese workers with robots. Chinese workers took a lot of manufacturing jobs from the "expensive world" workers. So imagine those chinese workers as "robots" and ask yourself did as many new jobs really appear in practice for those jobs they took away? No? Then don't believe the idiots who say that robots will take away jobs but there will still be jobs for everyone (as long as they retrained, reskilled, worked smarter and harder).
Where does all that improved productiveness go? Into making the 0.1% even richer? After a while they won't need most of us. They'd own the farms, the mines, the fishing fleet - they just need armies, a bunch of engineers, doctors and some servants. Why would they keep us around? We wouldn't have the money to buy the stuff they make.
At least the more socialist countries have an "upgrade path" - they already provide for those who don't/can't work. They need to add one more thing - regulate reproductive rights or at least have laws with that contingency in case it becomes unsustainable in the long term (I'm aware that population growth is down in many of those countries, but some people are still having more children than they can support, so if you keep breeding/"selecting" for such people, after a number of generations you will have a problem).
[1] I suspect most of them don't actually look far where the boat should be going. Many actually appear to be trying to give the voters AND the corporations what they want most, or at least appear[2] to be doing so ;). In many cases what the voters want most does not conflict with what the corporations want. How many corporations care about preventing/allowing same-sex marriage after all? How many voters care about copyright and patent laws? How many corporations care about the legalization of marijuana? So after a while when enough voters wanted legalization of marijuana bang you bunch got it. Same goes for other hot button stuff e.g. gun laws. You could say it's manipulative but "hot button" topics are by definition what matters most to the voters right?
[2] when the voters say they don't want to be spied on, they cut the budget for "searching" (not for collecting and storing the data ;) ). Go figure how much search actually costs...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:32AM
You know, I've never thought of it quite this way, but yes -- I think you may be on to something with that sentiment. I'm going to mull this over for a few days and see how it feels.
I firmly believe that 1969 was the pinnacle of humanity, with brief blip of awesome in the mid 1980's -- it's all been down hill from there, with various rates of decent.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:35PM
You're being US centric. Many countries have improved during that time period. Not every country believes in sticking half of its population in prison.
As for the "Baby boomers" being excessively narcissistic, many of them are, but by no means all of them. And that's been true in every generation. What's different now is that the bulge of the population is getting older, and attitudes have a tendency to change and become more selfish as one ages. I know that it's true of myself, even though I dislike noticing it. Back in the 1960's one group cried "Never trust anyone over 30!". They weren't being totally irrational. Goals change as one gets older. The healthy change is to be more centered around ones family and secondarily ones community. That's what we've evolved to do. Unfortunately, modern life is designed to make that difficult. Mobility means that one doesn't have a community or manageable size in any real sense. We are evolved for communities were we recognize every member, and can have some idea how trustworthy they are. These days such communities are not feasible. Someone once said most people are more dedicated to their bridge club than to their country. This makes a certain amount of sense, because at least one knows the people in the bridge club.
Ever wonder why Facebook was so popular? It's because it emulates that kind of a community. To the extent that it diverges from that, it will be weaker. (And it *must* fail, because the primitive communities provided emergency support.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0, Troll) by SacredSalt on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:33AM
I don't know California politics, but I know the ones here in Missouri. Ferguson may have presented a bad TV image because of having a pair of armored vehicles and a sniper on top (searching for anyone well beyond the immediate protestors -- looking for people with molotovs, and the second one brought there in response to a person who opened up on law enforcement with a high powered rifle who came down from Ohio just to shoot at police ...), but the real story of those events is pretty far from what most media portrayed.
The media left out, by and large, the tremendously bad behavior of our wonderful subsidized housing black population that is warehoused all around the area where the protests, and riots occurred. The entire incident cost St Louis County (which is footing most of the bill for this) 13.5 million dollars in police salaries, helicopter time, damaged vehicles, and medical from injuries sustained - and may yet rise as one officer is still being treated for injuries sustained when a brick fractured his skull. Some of those police cars sustained damage from weapons fire, a few were torched, and others just smashed up from the crowd. You notice the armored vehicles don't have a scratch -- they are perfectly suited for that environment -- one of the cars next to it had a round penetrate both doors. Had they all been using those armored vehicles in response to calls during the incident, several officers would not have bullet holes in their cars. There were dozens of ambush events with fake calls to try to draw first responders out. The county didn't draw bring out its armored vehicles without reason. You should also note that the state police eventually brought in their armored vehicles in response to a gasoline bomb thrown from the area where much of the media had set up. Its only because of the response of police and luck that we didn't have officers killed or a full scale melt down such as LA had.
Our local section-8 population burned down a business thought falsely to have made the initial call reporting the robbery (really a shoplifting and assault), and burned down the liquor store that actually did make the call -- both of them tagged with comments about "snitches". All of this over two people who robbed a store -- were on their way to their drug dealer to buy marijuana for their blunts, got stopped by a police officer unaware of the assault and robbery they had just committed, assaulted an officer, one of which didn't have the good sense to run that his friend did -- who then turned around (according to multiple witnesses) and got himself killed attempting to assault the officer again. People who actually witnessed the event were far too scared to come forward initially because of the anti-snitching climate that prevails there (fear of their neighbors rather than the police) -- long before any armored vehicles, or robo suited police officers appeared on the scene. They only became unafraid of doing so with increased police presence.
If you think an armored vehicle is excessive for dealing with a population this out of hand -- you don't live here, nor have to deal with our local future inmate population, nor does your city have the demographics of Ferguson. Davis is predominantly White and Asian -- a city with less than 2% (and declining) African Americans in its population can afford not to have an armored vehicle -- it wont need it.
Lets talk frank about race and crime in St Louis, Missouri: 23% of the black men from the community, aged 18-34 will be caught committing a serious felony offense (Class A and B -- Which in Missouri is represented by the following general categories of crimes: murder, first degree kidnapping, forcible rape of a child under twelve years old, first degree robbery, high quantity drug trafficking, manslaughter [under certain conditions], aggravated rape, and first degree burglary[meaning armed]). This is not a population you can take your eyes off of if you are a police officer. If you expand that out to less serious felonies, it goes up to 34% for black men from St Louis and its suburbs just between the ages of 18-34. The solution to the problem has little to do with what police can do -- they clean up the garbage on the other end of it so you don't have to deal with it. The solution is reducing the number of serious felons in the black population who come from environments such as subsidized housing -- whose crime rates are so atrocious that White people flee, and decent Black people (who are still a majority of the Black population) also eventually flee. The problem repeats itself as HUD becomes willing to pay higher and higher prices to move the problem elsewhere as housing, and neighborhoods get destroyed.
The solution to this is not more anti-poverty programs that create more suburban ghettos. Its financial opportunity, incentives to marry and keep families together. It is also recognizing that there are real differences between races and their propensities for violent crime, trying to limit the population of blacks in public housing by offering incentives to not have more kids -- instead of offering incentives to have more kids. The solution may even include financial incentives to not have children out of wedlock period, and some type of birth control compliance system for minors. If we keep offering incentives to having kids out of wedlock, we are going to keep breeding a population that garners the same results. It may not be politically correct to say these things, but it is the reality. Until we are willing to deal with reality -- get ready for a lot more Ferguson type events. If Katrina didn't convince you of the difficulty in dealing with this population, and the LA riots were not enough for you to get the message ... I don't know what will.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:07AM
The entire incident cost St Louis County (which is footing most of the bill for this) 13.5 million dollars in police salaries, helicopter time, damaged vehicles, and medical from injuries sustained - and may yet rise as one officer is still being treated for injuries sustained when a brick fractured his skull.
Lesley McSpadden lost her son.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:08AM
When the police refuse to do their jobs and are not held accountable for their many felonies, the citizens are left with no choice but to resort to vigilantism. Army Training Manual (TM) 31-210 and FM 7-8 will become important tools for the oppressed citizens if the delegates of the citizens' authority continue to run rampant and the rule of law is not restored.
(Score: 1) by SacredSalt on Thursday September 04 2014, @01:05PM
You mean people refusing to do their jobs like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccjMjqXEMxw [youtube.com] Where the police are reduced to running a catch and release program (much as they are in St. Louis City, and that fault lies with the judges), and the residents are trapped making repeated calls without any results to show for it! It would be equally easy to find examples from: Detroit, Gary (Indiana) or even Chicago ... (You likely also find similar problems in Oakland, but I haven't been there so I can only go by the stories I read in the paper, and I discount a lot of news from the media with good reason) I picked this example from Baltimore because its one of the cities I have also lived in, and seen the same things happen in. The areas around where the Ferguson riot occurred are indeed ringed by section 8, and subsidized housing. People drove in from surrounding neighborhoods, such as Dellwood, that are also filled with this same subsidized housing to loot and cause problems.
Baltimore and East St. Louis are what happens when police surrender to the problems I talked about rather pointedly in my prior post. St. Louis County Police, and thus far Ferguson police have not surrendered to this ... yet ... hence the extreme nature of the stop snitching program, and confinement of the drug markets to non-open air (largely) in Ferguson. To understand this, you need to understand many of the people that moved into Ferguson came from parts of St. Louis City where they understand reporting problems just means the person is back on the street the next day, the next week, and retaliation is quite a real factor by that persons associates if they do not get out for some reason. Which is why it took a commitment to increased police presence (by the way, St Louis County is back to supplementing the Ferguson police to honor this commitment) to make a few people feel safe enough to be willing to come forward as witnesses to the attack on the officer. The other "witness" spinning the far fetched tale of a police gunning down a person in cold blood on the street was a co-conspirator in the robbery of the store, and has convictions for false police reports among other things.
Of course the federal government will still continue its witch hunt for awhile longer, as will the county prosecutors office -- even though no charges are pending. I played in a band with a St. Louis City Police in the late 90's. In 1999 he had the misfortune of facing similar events. He was Asian, but that that didn't matter. Asian = White according to the newspapers and the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and Farrakhan are concerned. (Black racial agitators achieved the distinction or rather lack of distinction of the media ignoring actual race and going with White long before the Zimmerman case) The headline in the paper read "WHITE COP SHOOTS BLACK MAN FOR DRINKING BEER ON PORCH!" -- followed by the typical example of throwing years old photographs up, and beating the war drums by the press. This resulted in White people being drug from their cars in Tower Grove Park, but the media was clearly disappointed it wasn't able to generate the full scale riot it wanted. Not for lack of trying though.
Unfortunately, the headlines bore no resemblance to reality (just like this case). The police involved had spotted Mr. Ruffin (whom he had arrested before, and knew his local thugs well) and knew he was in front of a known drug house run by the Gangster Disciples (of which he was a member). He was drinking in public (which is no more than a ticket offense in St. Louis) and when the police called him out on it, all of the people left the porch of the house in different directions -- but they went after Mr. Ruffin as he was the only one they could visibly see was committing a crime at the time. The police officer chased him down a couple blocks, Ruffin ran into an alley, reached into his baggy pants, looked startled, and then took a lunge at the police officer. The officer fired a single shot, and over the next couple minutes Mr. Ruffin died.
The state investigated, the city police investigated, the FBI investigated -- he was cleared by all of them, but it was nearly a full year before Min was cleared on all of this because they couldn't find a weapon on Mr. Ruffin. This was not a trigger happy cop, he is the community liaison officer for Soulard now and has been decorated more than a dozen times for his ability to talk down people rather than resort to violence. If Min went for his gun, he had a genuine fear. This kind of thing can be destroying to a police. At a minimum, they go through the torture of dealing with having to take a life. Its torture to deal with, and they are enforced idle the entire time this is going on. I have seen up close, and personal what happens to police in cases like this. You can always tell a case like this is coming when they break out the old photographs and try to paint the child (even if they are well into their adult years they will be referred to as child) as a saint, and the story is so completely outrageous as to defy belief.
There is a world of difference between cities like San Jose (where Whites and Asians makeup 74.8% of the population, and Blacks paltry 3% of the population), and Davis (less than 2% and declining Black population -- also a majority White & Asian city) and Ferguson (70% Black, 27% White -- and the municipalities around it have similar if not Blacker demographics). Davis and San Jose are unlikely to find a genuine need for an armored vehicle any time soon. People in cities like San Jose, and Davis likely imagine that everyone behaves similar to how they do when dealing with things like: not dumping your trash in public lots, not robbing stores, not knifing people, not shooting people, not being a prostitute, not failing to pay your traffic tickets, not assaulting a police officers, not rioting because of imagined slights ... For an education in such matters I suggest a trip to your nearest majority-minority city that contains a large Black population (as you might find a majority Asian community that is law abiding, as Asians tend to be for the most part). Perhaps Oakland, where they are celebrating being dropped to only the fourth most dangerous city would be enough of an education without having to actually move to Detroit, St Louis, Chicago, or Baltimore. http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/4361-oakland-is-no-longer-2nd-most-dangerous-city-in-america [thebolditalic.com]
You folks that think an armored vehicle isn't needed have never considered things like: Your ambulance isn't armored -- what happens when first responders have to go through an active war zone to transport you out, but can't because the risks are too grave. If all it takes is a person getting shot for assaulting a police to set off a full scale race riot in the Black community -- what happens if the help you need is on the other side of that riot while you are having a heart attack or get injured from the rioters and police and paramedics can't get to you because they don't have one?
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday September 05 2014, @01:48PM
A minor tangent, but did anyone ever notice that no crimes ever seem to be committed with low powered rifles? I guess .32 rimfire just doesn't cut it...
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:51AM
There are two things to note here. First, God didn't take all the evil people and stick them in one generation. If a whole generation didn't turn out well, then there has to be some reason for it. My guess is the TV. Baby boomers were the first generation raised on TV. And of course, we're ranting away using more advanced technology that shares some of the same problems.
Second, the WWII generation created some of the structural problems that plague the US such as a huge, costly, and ineffective social safety net. And one can't blame the decline in a bunch of urban areas and urban ethnic groups (particularly, African Americans) on baby boomers' rise to power since the start of these problems predates them by decades. There's also the war on drugs, the military industrial complex, and urban sprawl (which may or may not be a problem depending on your point of view).
As to Gen-X through Millennials, you signed up for it. The skyrocketing costs of college aren't a mysterious secret nor what you'd get at the end - assuming you graduated. I probably could tolerate some degree of student loan forgiveness at the expense of banks. They should be rewarded for preying on the most gullible. But in the end, nobody forced college students to borrow a pile of money.
I believe a lot of us can. It's a big part of why I lean heavily libertarian.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @06:44AM
And rock music, also you forgot the lack of faith in god and how no christian....
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 05 2014, @12:04AM
No, the TV is very different from those other things. Currently, we have some idea that certain activities when done as children, tend to change how our minds develop and thus, change our behavior as adults. Having a heavily used push entertainment tool around as a child might well result in more narcissistic behavior as an adult.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Thursday September 04 2014, @01:45PM
Could also be lead. [telegraph.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 05 2014, @12:07AM
Older generations would have been and probably were also affected. Introduction of TV seems to be more in line with buswolley's complaint (assuming there actually is anything to it in the first place).
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 05 2014, @12:13AM
Sorry, I should have said Phoenix666 not buswolley.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Username on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:16AM
Didn’t solve anything race related, but at least it stopping some cops from pretending to be soldiers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:15AM
We've got 300 years of history to overcome, that doesn't happen overnight. Two babysteps forward, one babystep back.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:29AM
Are they just returning the vehicles or all of the automatic weapons and other military equipment that the police departments have been buying?
Sounds like they are just making a PR move to get rid of the "scary trucks" that everyone is talking about while continuing to become para military forces.
"We want them to feel comfortable about the tools that we use." Maybe they should just repaint them pink with flowers and rainbows.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:55AM
It's publicity. I don't know about San Jose but the Davis police have a SWAT team despite the cities 3ish murders per decade and otherwise low crime statistics. Being a college town we have more than our fare share of rape as well as theft and robbery but neither the SWAT team nor the now-returned armored vehicle help at all in those crimes. Having a few less SWAT members and instead a few beat cops on frat row might lower the incidents of rape but then the cops wouldn't get to play with all those fancy toys.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:19AM
yep. Same goes for every city/jurisdiction, get more uniformed cops walking the beat (walking/marked cars, unmarked/plain cloths does nothing to *prevent* crime) and the crime rate will go down.
And after reading that other article about how some police departments have *lost* some of the stuff they bought from the Pentagon its not hard to imagine that some of the M-16/15 rifles that have gone missing are now probably in some cops gun collection/private arsenal.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:58PM
Well there are a number that go missing because they are stolen out of the back of a squad car and then end up in the hands of criminals so I wouldn't imagine a few more missing would be noticed.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 4, Interesting) by novak on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:46AM
As an American, I'm glad to see anyone NOT trying to enslave me, these days. I applaud ANY slowdown in the militarization of our police force. Even though I doubt this will have any real wide spread effect.
It was surreal though, some of the imagery coming out of there. I grew up there but haven't been back in over a decade. Seeing familiar spots with rioting and burning was like some kind of strange nightmare, pulling from things I half remembered.
novak
(Score: 1) by richtopia on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:03PM
I doubt these APCs are being scrapped. Are we going to see these vehicles at other police departments?
Or perhaps they will be sold to the general public. Imagine rush hour on the 101 in an APC. Just put it in drive and go!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:13PM
Just rolled out their new strong arm of the Man.