Serious question: why are private bets on private games illegal? Is it because money changes hands without the gov't taking a slice?
“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
161–170 of 428 posts
Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
#162Is this really the America that America wants? The article mentions one case where a judge refused to issue a search warrant for a narcotics investigation and instead the police brought representatives from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and raided the place with a swat team to conduct an alcohol inspection. What did they find? Two sample bottles of beer that weren't labeled as samples and a bo…
No, of course it's not the America we want. It's the America we get though due to our longstanding apathy and inability to curb special interest groups and corporate control of politics. I think things will change though. Things have been pretty nice in the US for a while. We're now seeing the dark side of apathy and people are starting to care again (in my opinion). It had been pretty easy to shrug off politics as c…
I agree with much of what you say, but I'm not sure I agree that "Americans won't accept that".
- Obama has a secret "kill list" and has bragged about killing Americans without due process of law.
- We have widespread surveillance of our phones and email.
- The FBI admits that drones are now being used for domestic surveillance.
- The activist Supreme Court is continuing to gut our laws and give Big Business everything they want.
- The TSA is groping and nude scanning everyone, they've never caught a single terrorist, but are expanding beyond airports.
- Half of the inmates at Guantanamo have been cleared for release but are still detained a decade after incarceration.
- Half of America is in poverty.
- The Obama administration is trying to gut the Freedom of Information Act by denying certain doesn't even exist.
- The Supreme Court and various politicians are finding more ways of restricting the right to vote.
But people won't shut the fuck up about Kim and Kanye's baby.
It's 1984 meets Brave New World.
Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm astonished by the total lack of conversation around the actual data here. Both the article itself and the discussion below are predicated on the assumption that this is a rampant problem in the USA, but not a single subthread on the actual incidence of this. I'd expect better from Hacker News. For what it's worth, Wikipedia has a complete list of people killed by US Police Officers and the police reports from the…
We (US residents) haven't posted annotated lists because this is in our face via newspapers and TV news and viral videos passed around on the Internet. http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/29-black-p... Here's one take, which is focused on black folks shot and killed over the past year. Note how many were armed.
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Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm astonished by the total lack of conversation around the actual data here. Both the article itself and the discussion below are predicated on the assumption that this is a rampant problem in the USA, but not a single subthread on the actual incidence of this. I'd expect better from Hacker News. For what it's worth, Wikipedia has a complete list of people killed by US Police Officers and the police reports from the…
We (US residents) haven't posted annotated lists because this is in our face via newspapers and TV news and viral videos passed around on the Internet. http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/29-black-p... Here's one take, which is focused on black folks shot and killed over the past year. Note how many were armed.
I wrote a response here, but with the current state of government surveillance programs, I thought it was better to remove it.
Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few don't, but most politicians run on a platform of being tough on crime and tough on terror, then do exactly what they said they'd do.
Well, yes, but you can't elect politicians who aren't like that because that's all of them.
Survival bias. Those who are not like that have trouble getting elected.
Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
#166Is this really the America that America wants? The article mentions one case where a judge refused to issue a search warrant for a narcotics investigation and instead the police brought representatives from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and raided the place with a swat team to conduct an alcohol inspection. What did they find? Two sample bottles of beer that weren't labeled as samples and a bo…
Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. I think this is where efforts to fight these problems fall down. They're almost all based on the assumption that the populace doesn't want this stuff to happen, but that the government pushes it through by abusing power, subverting democracy, etc. But from what I see, this is not the case. Most Americans want this. Whether it's gun-wielding mania…
Ok so now we can all see why the founders created a union of states, rather than "America". The correct place to address topics that "America" can't agree on (clearly this community doesn't agree with the "America" that we're talking about) is at the state level. It's a much easier task to get a smaller group of people to agree on something than a large one, and if I could move to a state that had some sane regulations on police power I would probably move there.
Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
#167Again and again we see questionable or outright illegal police shootings of dogs and people and nothing ever comes of it. The responsible parties are never charged with manslaughter or even fired. I want to support the police, but the thin blue line bullshit has to stop! I get that police work is often dangerous but individuals that have shown poor judgement are retained on the force. That police officer that shot th…
That police officer that shot the dog 4 times had already shot and killed a developmentally disabled guy who was brandishing a knife but could have been tazed or bean-bagged.
It gets worse. The person being arrested already had a lawsuit filed for police brutality. According to his lawyer on NBP, he recognized the police officer who killed his dog - that was one of the officers who had been part of giving him the beating that his lawsuit was about.
Let's just say there is a history there.
Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
#168Again and again we see questionable or outright illegal police shootings of dogs and people and nothing ever comes of it. The responsible parties are never charged with manslaughter or even fired. I want to support the police, but the thin blue line bullshit has to stop! I get that police work is often dangerous but individuals that have shown poor judgement are retained on the force. That police officer that shot th…
Police shoot dogs because black and brown people own dogs.[0]
The developmentally disabled guy was black.
Of the people raided by SWAT teams in the article, the ones who did not go to court (regardless of whether or not they won excessive force settlements) and had a violent or lethal encounter were all black or in that one case, hispanic.
Police officers aren't punished because the victims of police brutality are overwhelmingly nonwhite. It's not that the victims are poor, or of mysterious sexual orientation. It's really because they are black and hispanic.
To get a good grip on how segregated U.S. cities are, here is the Census rankings of "dissimilarity," or measure of how unmixed the population is geographically[2], of every metro area.[1] The lowest of all metro areas is 32%, which suggests that about 1/3 of black people would have to move to white parts of town to achieve balance.
Routine brutality against blacks, as opposed to routine brutality against protesters (an equally heinous but different problem), is ignored because the victims don't live next to us.
[0] http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=police+shoot+dog [1] http://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_dissimilarity_white_black... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_dissimilarity
Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there any reliable statistics quantifying this? I found some numbers for Germany on Wikipedia [1] but not for the US. The article states that per year for the period of 2007 to 2011 the German police fired between 36 and 57 bullets at humans killing between 6 and 12 of them. Older numbers are less reliable but similar regarding the number of people killed (peak since 1970 24 in 1983) but with a larger number of b…
I'm astonished by the total lack of conversation around the actual data here. Both the article itself and the discussion below are predicated on the assumption that this is a rampant problem in the USA, but not a single subthread on the actual incidence of this. I'd expect better from Hacker News. For what it's worth, Wikipedia has a complete list of people killed by US Police Officers and the police reports from the…
A lot of the abuses don't have good statistics around them.
I personally know a guy who was put into a private jail on trumped up charges and denied bail. He fought in court, won, and has been presented with a large bill from the private jail. The kicker? The DA, the sheriff and many in the police force are investors in the private jail!
Can you say "conflict of interest"?
Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. I think this is where efforts to fight these problems fall down. They're almost all based on the assumption that the populace doesn't want this stuff to happen, but that the government pushes it through by abusing power, subverting democracy, etc. But from what I see, this is not the case. Most Americans want this. Whether it's gun-wielding mania…
My thoughts exactly. One way of changing public opinion would be to use the same tactics that the opposition uses. Mainly taking back the airwaves and presenting unbiased information, rather than pre-chewed, here's what you should think, distillation of ideas. Unfortunately that takes tons of money and those with the money aren't going to do something that takes their own power away. Fortunately there are future gene…
Ben Swann[1] isn't having much luck at raising funds for that either.
[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/439668500/liberty-is-ris...