[flagged]
In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
111–120 of 457 posts
Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dirty and thuggish cops are way more common than Americans think. The more benign form is detail and overtime fraud. But I'd bet the dollar amount easily rivals property crime value in your town. Theft and fraud in businesses is more common than software people think. Kickbacks to purchasing managers, for example. You're less likely to encounter this than a casually dirty cop, but it's out there.
These are often-repeated arguments; we really need some facts to work with. Is there research on this?
How reliable do you think research into the amount of undetected crime is?
Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
#113"Two men were released after The Times asked about them, half a year after their sentences had been completed." Horrific. This egregious human rights violation is something you'd think you read about in a developing nation, not a developed nation.
I think at this point the general consensus of most Europeans is that the US has more in common with a developing nation than with a developed nation when it comes to equality in the eye of justice, equal access to health care, support for the downtrodden and freedoms...
Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
#114Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. 90% of it is about extorting the population for funding for the courts and cops. If you can't afford a lawyer, they will provide you with a joke. And if you can afford a lawyer, now its just a question if you are willing to spend more on your lawyer than the state is hoping to extort from you. If you are, you will get…
Is this where the whole Europe bashing on social media comes from? US needing to believe that a better society, rule of law, social services isn’t real in Europe and impossible in general?
There's a similar phenomena with how Russians view Ukraine.
"Who allowed them to live so well?".
Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
i wish people, before they commented on really really serious things, did a bit of reflection. > effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever the agency of individuals in totalitarian/authoritarian institutions has been examined/analyzed/written about at enormous length since the rise of fascism in the early 1900s. the short answer is you're wrong but i'm not going to try to convince you (you have to want to lear…
The vast majority of bad outcomes of big systems are not because they’re principally designed for evil and just lacking a few dissenters. Most systems today are intended to produce outcomes that most people agree would be good, and they’re full of people trying to achieve those outcomes, and yet reliably failing to produce them. There have been books written about this topic as well, but it’s not as flashy as compari…
Because the underlying meta-system is the one that produces the people. Complete with their understanding of what "good" is.
The important thing is for that energy to be expended in the pursuit of certain outcomes; the goals themselves are already self-contradictory.
The meta-system uses that to reproduce itself. Our lives are secondary to that goal.
Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
#116Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. 90% of it is about extorting the population for funding for the courts and cops. If you can't afford a lawyer, they will provide you with a joke. And if you can afford a lawyer, now its just a question if you are willing to spend more on your lawyer than the state is hoping to extort from you. If you are, you will get…
Is this where the whole Europe bashing on social media comes from? US needing to believe that a better society, rule of law, social services isn’t real in Europe and impossible in general?
no, not really, this is a separate issue.
yes, American exceptionalism relies on a comparing itself to the worst countries in the world and ignoring that developed nations exist and work out decently.
but there really is a skepticism about some Europe nations, can they - and the bloc - sustain its 21st century advances and social safety nets while adequately paying for its own defense? inquiring minds would like to know, and now we don't have to debate it anymore. Is the budget really balanced if all commitments were funded as agreed? Can European nations really tolerate each other with the rearmaments?
stay tuned
Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
#117Merely "fails"? That sounds like apologetic underemphasis to me, like so many other Times stories. The system described is more like active oppression.
It's amazing how understated some parts are. Like they just casually mention > Like most Texas county judges, he does not have a law degree. I'm sorry, what? Anyone off the street can be a judge? That one line begs soo many questions, and at least some outrage, which is simply glossed over. Doing my own research, I guess I see why it's glossed over, because apparently this isn't uncommon - a quick search says that on…
The jurors are the fact finders (if it's a jury trial). They don't need to know the law, it will be explained to them by the judge.
In a bench trial, the judge is both the fact finder and the law interpreter. The argument in favor of non-lawyer judges is that for misdemeanor cases the facts dominate the law, ie whom do you believe, not what's larceny or drug dealing.
Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the most inconvenient thing is actually that it’s both (largely) accidental and systematic. If you go looking for the source of “evil” breaking these systems, you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anything. The vast majority of these systems’ behavior (good or bad) is effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever.
There's a long running historiographical debate about the relative influence individuals have over the ultimate course of historical events compared to systemic factors For many years, it was popular (particularly in revisionist circles) almost entirely to deny individual agency and to rely instead exclusively on systemic arguments which highlighted the power of geography, ecology, culture, technology, and other comp…
What are some of your favorite history books?
Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this where the whole Europe bashing on social media comes from? US needing to believe that a better society, rule of law, social services isn’t real in Europe and impossible in general?
no, not really, this is a separate issue. yes, American exceptionalism relies on a comparing itself to the worst countries in the world and ignoring that developed nations exist and work out decently. but there really is a skepticism about some Europe nations, can they - and the bloc - sustain its 21st century advances and social safety nets while adequately paying for its own defense? inquiring minds would like to k…
These are separate issues. Healthcare aint cheap anywhere for the state, but its perfectly fundable for any but the most poor and broken countries in the world, to a very decent level. But US is broken in another way - everything is for-profit, no real oversight, and unrestricted capitalism full throttle. Then you get what you got.
There are 2 absolutely basic pillars of modern free society worth living in - 1) how it takes care of its weak and injured ones (healthcare and social services); 2) and how it builds a better future via good available public education. US fails in most if not all of those. There are aspects it excels in but they are not primary markers of happiness, life fulfillment, low stress and such.
Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this where the whole Europe bashing on social media comes from? US needing to believe that a better society, rule of law, social services isn’t real in Europe and impossible in general?
There's a similar phenomena with how Russians view Ukraine. "Who allowed them to live so well?".
You should have seen what Ryssians say about Europe