Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't British police ignore the rape of a thousand children in one city alone?
No. Citation? And Fox News doesn’t count
A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
61–70 of 286 posts
Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
#62What is the rationale behind civil forfeiture? Besides a convenient way to get more funds into the state pocket if you don’t like someone’s face?
I first saw it in The Shield (still one of my favorite shows) and remember thinking that it looks more like some army controlled region in Africa or something than a civilized country. But yeah, so does privatising prisons.
Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
A thousand times this. I'm not saying the UK is some shining beacon of how to run a country but I do think overall our governmental systems are pretty sensible . I think being sensible might be a stereotypical English trait, but it's true. For example you have to comply with the spirit of a law, not the exact text. Also our QC's are pretty level headed and the same goes for our police force. Nobody is overly nitpicky…
>UK Your government currently arrests people for criticizing the government online, covers up child-rape gangs, arrests people for reporting on those cover ups, and mandates whether citizens should receive health care or die, regardless of whether they have the money to pay for it in a foreign country. Your government took 1984 and used it as a blueprint. Your government see you as an actual human, they see you as th…
What you have said is all spun propaganda, especially the health care bit. "Death panels" much?
I suggest you visit sometime and expand your world view.
Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem I have with this line of argument is that's used to excuse the government of these kinds of actions. Once you believe that government is simply incapable then you stop demanding that it becomes any better. Even what you describe, limiting the power of government, is a governmental solution. You simply have to elect people who want to make the system better rather than those who want to tear it down. It's…
As I stated in the opening of my post, the government is capable of good and exists for a reason. Regulations can be good. But people should recognize how much power the government has and see issues like civil asset forefeiture as an example of what can go wrong. I’m not saying the government cannot work. I’m saying that when it doesn’t work, the result can have an overwhelming negative impact, so we should be skept…
I think the real resolution here is that assumption of innocence works for all the other cases and in the one case where assumption of guilt until proven innocent exists we have real trouble. Civil forfeiture laws are terrible and end up generally being selectively enforced against minorities.
Nearly everyone I speak with about civil forfeiture thinks it's a bad idea with terrible incentives, so let's just enact some common sense and fix this one little thing, eh?
Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
#65It amazes me when people think the government should be the go-to solution to society's problems. The government can indeed be used for good, and it has solved many problems, and regulations can be a good thing. But government should be applied very carefully, and probably as the last solution, after we see the failures of non-government solutions. The government is all powerful. They can destroy any business, destro…
Not last. Not first. Not all powerful. Not feckless. Americans act like their government is representative of governments. It isn't. They act like everything needs to be invented there. It doesn't. They believe that America is the greatest country in the world. It isn't. If people in America just stopped to look around at how other countries do things they'd be doubly as well run. Most parts of Europe, Japan, Canada,…
> If people in America just stopped to look around at how other countries do things they'd be doubly as well run. Most parts of Europe, Japan, Canada, and many other places are well run and have a great deal of governmental involvement.
One big problem with this approach is that it basically pretends that the American citizenry is interchangeable with those of the countries you mentioned. It's not. Identity politics problems, legacies of slavery and of the colonial / revolutionary mindset are still big issues.
The people of Detroit and of Baltimore and of other ruined American cities are not the same as the people of Norway or of Japan. The solutions that work in high-intelligence, high-trust, coherent communities with strong traditions of work ethic won't work in every environment.
You want to use PHP as a metaphor? I'll use NFSv3/NIS. They're simple to run and work great on a small network where you trust everyone completely. The moment there's a malicious party at work they become hopeless and you need to either put in incredible amounts of work to try to lock them down, or switch to a much more restrictive, secure-by-default option.
Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean like arresting people when they say something the gov't doesn't like? [1] I'll take a pass, thank you. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-for-offensive-...
Couple of thousand fines in a city of 8,700,000 seems sensible to me. Not everyone values free speech quite as highly as the USA. It's important, sure, but it's not live or die. There are limits and spreading vile hate speech is one of them. I also like the complete focus on the free speech aspect, completely ignoring the "we actually deal with racists here" aspect. How narrow minded.
Let's keep in mind here that there are many definitions of hate speech. In Canada, it's carefully defined as speech that actually incites people to a criminal act - so racism or other "vile speech" on its own doesn't qualify, you have to be actively making a credible threat or incitement to have others commit real actions.
Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
A thousand times this. I'm not saying the UK is some shining beacon of how to run a country but I do think overall our governmental systems are pretty sensible . I think being sensible might be a stereotypical English trait, but it's true. For example you have to comply with the spirit of a law, not the exact text. Also our QC's are pretty level headed and the same goes for our police force. Nobody is overly nitpicky…
Didn't British police ignore the rape of a thousand children in one city alone?
[deleted]
Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean like arresting people when they say something the gov't doesn't like? [1] I'll take a pass, thank you. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-for-offensive-...
Couple of thousand fines in a city of 8,700,000 seems sensible to me. Not everyone values free speech quite as highly as the USA. It's important, sure, but it's not live or die. There are limits and spreading vile hate speech is one of them. I also like the complete focus on the free speech aspect, completely ignoring the "we actually deal with racists here" aspect. How narrow minded.
“Vile hate speech” can cut both ways unfortunately. Both of us agree that racism is a bad thing. But the American South during Jim Crow declared progressive speech as “hate speech” and tried to ban it.[0] So it’s better to not empower the government to decide what is hate and what isn’t, or you may elect a government that decides what you say is hate speech.
[0] “As we have seen, during the days of slavery and later segregation, laws suppressing free speech were often aimed at abolitionists and civil rights advocates, not at slave owners or Jim Crow advocates. This reflected social and political power in local states and communities where attitudes towards race were very different than today.“ https://www.hoover.org/research/harm-hate-speech-laws
Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't British police ignore the rape of a thousand children in one city alone?
No. Citation? And Fox News doesn’t count
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...
Get a clue, man. Denying this kind of thing doesn't help anyone, even minority groups you might fear getting tarred by association. If you can ignore the rape of thousands of children because the political ramifications of it make you uncomfortable, you're part of the problem.
Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it
#70I come from a country that borders Albania... Albania has a 60% muslim population, and given our current administration and mood toward islam, it is highly doubtful they were after his money but rather after something that went off on their 'threat to national security' radar. Could be a mistaken identity too, it's not unheard of .. many names on those watch lists sound similar or are not the same person at all. I'm…
Civil asset forfeiture does not return anything without a fight... it's a guilty until proven innocent system. It's been a big problem with anyone carrying even a few hundred dollars in a LOT of places in the US. It needs a Supreme Court smackdown is what it needs.
[deleted]