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Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

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Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#171

Post by owenversteeg »

mvdtnz wrote: post #47

How does a town in the richest nation in the history of the planet not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?

The US is a huge country. In general it has excellent water; the US averages better than the EU. The Environmental Performance Index is a report that measures many things, and they have a handy section where they measure DALYs lost from sanitation and drinking water. For this section the US scores 96, within a few points of Switzerland (100), Sweden (97), Austria (96), Denmark (94), Belgium (93) and comfortably above the Netherlands (91), France (88), Poland (80), Czechia (79) and Japan (78.)

There are isolated incidents of poor water quality in each of those countries, and especially in small towns of eight hundred people in rural areas, but generally speaking, clear drinking water that is free of bacteria is standard.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#172

Post by zephen »

cjkaminski wrote: post #113
aliasxneo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the full picture. Activist judges have been a problem for awhile now, and it seems to be mostly influenced by ideology rather than purely money.

That's quite a claim. You need to cite your sources for this one, if you want to be taken seriously.

Anybody paying attention would know that there are several activist judges in Texas, feeding into the activist 5th circuit -- the only appeals court that has been very often overturned by the current supreme court for being too conservative.

Just in case you're being honest about your own ignorance on this matter, you can start here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Kacsmaryk

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#173

Post by jyounker »

stevepotter wrote: post #128
autoexec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have more than enough resources, but a lot of people don't want to pay taxes to clean it or restrain corporations from polluting our water supply inn the first place. I'm guessing that plenty of people in this woman's own town were cheering Trump's slashing of the EPA's budget and deregulating clean air and water. Just this week the administration announced plans to kill off or delay limits in the amount of PFAS i…

You are mixing local and federal politics. This is a town issue and would likely have happened regardless of who occupied the Oval Office

The poster was pointing out the irony that the town's residents support pro-water pollution policies at the national level.

[Given that Henderson county went for Trump by 30 points, the probably also support pro-pollution policies at both the local and state level too.]

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#174

Post by voidfunc »

hk1337 wrote: post #96
jazzypants wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you would find that they would make far fewer illegal mistakes if they actually had to deal with the consequences of those mistakes. Qualified Immunity didn't exist as a concept until the 1960s, and it was put in place to shield policemen enacting racist policies and corrupt cronies of Nixon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

I think we would see far fewer actions at all for fear of being sued.

Good. The police do too much as it is.

Every interaction with the police is a dice roll to see if someone lives or dies.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#175

Post by justech »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #162
ryandrake wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, an arrest on your record, even if you're acquitted and/or get a settlement for police wrongdoing, can still mess you up. There are employers and landlords who will ask you / check whether you were ever arrested, regardless of the outcome of the arrest . Mere involvement with Law Enforcement puts a permanent black mark on your record and can interfere with basic things for the rest of your life.

How would being arrested for memeing be a black mark? It would be a hilarious talking point that I would be more than happy to chat with a landlord, employer, or literally anyone else about. Anyone who would hold that against you is pretty much a textbook example of a bad person (banal evil or some such).

In a perfect world, sure. But realistically, people don't dig into the context. They see an arrest on your record and move to the next guy. Either that or, some automated system sees you checked 'yes I was arrested before' and filters you out automatically.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#176

Post by infinite_spin »

drbscl wrote: post #152
jazzypants wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could just buy insurance. You know, like doctors, lawyers, and a wide variety of other professionals that deal with liabilities in their field. Regardless, the police get sued all the time anyways. It's just that the burden currently falls on the taxpayers.

> They could just buy insurance. > the police get sued all the time anyways. It's just that the burden currently falls on the taxpayers. I fail to see how this would change anything other than increasing taxpayer costs further in the form of insurance profit margin.

Malpractice insurance might increase the cost of policing, but I'd wager the malpractice itself is costing tax payers even more.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#177

Post by array_key_first »

azinman2 wrote: post #58
umvi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water is handled at the city level, not the federal level. If you have incompetent local leadership, this can happen. Incompetent local leaders can (and have!) bankrupted their cities.

Texas also is all about no/low taxes.

Theoretically. In practice, the total tax burden in Texas is above average for US states.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#179

Post by dgoldstein0 »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #162
ryandrake wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, an arrest on your record, even if you're acquitted and/or get a settlement for police wrongdoing, can still mess you up. There are employers and landlords who will ask you / check whether you were ever arrested, regardless of the outcome of the arrest . Mere involvement with Law Enforcement puts a permanent black mark on your record and can interfere with basic things for the rest of your life.

How would being arrested for memeing be a black mark? It would be a hilarious talking point that I would be more than happy to chat with a landlord, employer, or literally anyone else about. Anyone who would hold that against you is pretty much a textbook example of a bad person (banal evil or some such).

Some won't ask for details and just reject. Which of course sucks but they may view it as less risky than trying to evaluate the details and make a judgement call.

That said if you do go into circumstances - "I did it to get arrested and get a payout" could also be viewed as a red flag - says "may screw you/the company for money". Probably not the employee / tenant / etc you might want.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#180

Post by gblargg »

cortesoft wrote: post #157
scoofy wrote: post #92

The charges have already been dismissed: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/charges-dismissed-against-... Good on the grand jury for not indicting this ham sandwich.

They always knew the charges wouldn’t stick. The punishment they were handing out was she had to spend a night in jail and spend money on a lawyer. They already dished out the punishment, so they don’t care that it was dismissed.

"The punishment is the process."
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