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In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

nytimes.com

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Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#171

Post by lawn »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #138
AngryData wrote: post #38

Anyone 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…

I agree 100%. I've written about this here before, but I've been involved in two civil lawsuits in my life. One was in the USA, the other was in mainland China. I should stress that I am an American, and I wasn't even in China when the lawsuit over there was moving along. The Chinese process was very fast -- it went before a judge who reached a verdict in something like ten months -- and it was extremely inexpensive.…

> I don't know how things are in Europe, and hope I never have to find out

In Sweden at least this level of insanity is only heard about as anecdotes online...

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#172

Post by modo_mario »

yieldcrv wrote: post #116
kubb wrote: post #65

Earlier 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…

>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?

Yes. The EU's defence is a political unity issue. Not a spending one. It needs a unified foreign policy where that makes sense and the like. Not countries receiving preferential gas pricing and pusyfooting when it comes to giving arms to Ukraine or the like. It's greatest single threat is russia. One may think they spend a far greater share on it's military and so Europe should too. But it's economy is smaller than Italy's and it has no capacity to fight the block.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#173

Post by lurk2 »

briandear wrote: post #158
kubb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does rule of law require the same investments as healthcare? Isn't America spending the most per capita on healthcare in the world with horrible outcomes (life expectancy 4 years behind poor countries like Portugal)? Aren't there public healthcare systems outside of Europe? Doesn't America have an insane amount of natural resources and the benefit of controlling world's exchange currency to make up for any additional…

> life expectancy 4 years behind poor countries like Portugal Demographics has a big impact on life expectancies. Asian Americans have a life expectancy of 84 years for instance. Which is better than Portugal by 3 years. Comparing life expectancies on a per country basis is fraught with error if attempting to attribute differences to health systems. Genetics, climate, diet — all have huge impacts on life expectancy.…

> Puerto Rico has a life expectancy of over 82 years

Where are you getting that figure from? I’m seeing 79 years, which is still higher than I would have guessed, but not higher than Portugal at 81.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#174

Post by lurk2 »

briandear wrote: post #160
jajko wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> no real oversight The US health system is excessively regulated. It’s anything but unrestricted capitalism. I would argue that the regulation is what makes the system so broken.

Which regulations do you believe are contributing to the system being broken?

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#175

Post by smcl »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #66
ty6853 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're aware Yugoslavia had an ethnic war not long after that right?

Yes, i still live here. But being third world doesn't mean that everything is shitty and everything bad should be compared to that.

"third world" is often US shorthand for "the foreign places I don't know much about but the guys who live inside my TV tell me are bad"

If someone's using it to describe poor conditions (especially in their own country) you can just smile and move on safe in the knowledge that their contribution to the conversation isn't really worth spending much time thinking about

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#176

Post by jwsteigerwalt »

praptak wrote: post #132
mmooss wrote: post #99

Could any attorneys comment on why habeas corpus actions aren't used here. Isn't this sort of thing exactly what habeas is for?

You are bringing up chess rules while the opponent flips the table and draws a knife.

No, as a society we apparently don’t really care about these inmates. The social justice movement has chosen plenty of questionable causes, but neglected ones like this one.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#177

Post by raincole »

lawn wrote: post #114
kubb wrote: post #65

Earlier 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?".

Ukraine is and was literally the poorest european country. Even before this war.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#179

Post by tpm »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #156
tpm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations and oligarchs effectively own European governments too. Just possibly a bit less than in the US.

They own European governments far more. They just have several hundred years of extra practice at being subtle.

Going by "The purpose of a system is what it does", I think European (specifically EU-member) states do a lot more for their citizens than the US does, in welfare, healthcare, environment, infrastructure and so on, so either the oligarchs are very subtle indeed (looking at our Slovakian oligarchs... I don't think so) or they just don't own the governments far more (yet). They are certainly trying though.

I think this is because effectively influencing European politics as a whole (as opposed to individual countries) is much more complicated than the US because of the diversity of languages, cultures and media, but then the EU-level politics will also influence state politics. But also every country has a commissioner in the commission and a vote in the EC, so there are several levels of feedback. Of course many internal and external actors are trying to own or destroy the EU, I just hope they won't be succesful.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#180

Post by StefanBatory »

lawn wrote: post #114
kubb wrote: post #65

Earlier 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?".

As a context because I see people downvoting it - that slogan was on a semi-famous picture of how the invaders left one of the houses. It was painted on there.
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