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Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

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Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#181

Post by dotancohen »

petertodd wrote: post #28
mywittyname wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those things that sounds good in theory, but is terrible in practice. It would incentivize prosecution to avoid court at all costs. Which means de facto immunity for wealthy people who can easily afford to go to court. And it will probably make law enforcement even worse about railroading people who can't afford any legal representation.

> It would incentivize prosecution to avoid court at all costs. Their job is to prosecute. Their only option is to pick cases that can be won. Which isn't hard, as the average person who is charged with some criminal act is not only guilty, but clearly guilty. > Which means de facto immunity for wealthy people who can easily afford to go to court. Money can't make a guilty man innocent. If you've actually done someth…

  > Money can't make a guilty man innocent.
Possibly, but the legal system does not deal with guilty or innocent. The legal system deals with probabilities (e.g. probable cause among others), deals with attempts to display intent, deals with interpretations of human language, deals with emotional arguments, and many other things that are not deterministic. Money most certainly can influence those aspects.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#183

Post by phone8675309 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #173
webspinner wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's about a 50/50 split in the libertarian party so it really isn't. Actually, I would say most of the people there lean left, or center.

Oh, come on. Face it: The US Libertarian party has been totally been taken over by far right wing racist populist LINO assholes who like to snort coke and bang underage hookers and are embarrassed to call themselves Republican but always vote that way just to stay in power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Gaetz >Gaetz has self-identified as a "libertarian populist".[102] Observers have described his views as far r…

The only three things libertarians care about:

1) Taxation is theft

2) Legalize weed

3) The age of consent should be lower

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#184

Post by yareal »

gadders wrote: post #174
yareal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they described the situation fairly? The folks who legislate against sex work tend to tick most of those boxes.

There is a feminist case against prostitution as well. EG https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/june-2022/women-should-not-be...

Certainly. There's a feminist case for it as well. Interestingly, that article opens with a left/right framing.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#185

Post by yareal »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #133
yareal wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have many conservative Muslim or Jewish legislators? I would figure they tend to come from more progressive districts...

Don't be surprised. I'm sure there is at least one Jainist Republican American. Religion and conservatism seem to be correlated positively with one another. No particular group or identity membership mandates membership in another. And I'm sure there are a zillion libertarian agnostics and atheists who follow some styles of the broad tent of conservatism without the authoritarian forcefulness of others who want to li…

The people who make the laws about prostitution are the set of people under discussion. Not Americans at large.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#186

Post by yareal »

petesergeant wrote: post #148
concordDance wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few distinct axes commonly labelled "left". The Democrats are quite left on some axes (e.g. concern about racism) and less so on others (e.g. siezing the means of production).

We used to call this liberalism

Some of us still do, as a useful delimiter between leftist politicians vs the centrist positions held by the democrats.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#187

Post by deno »

eitland wrote: post #19
ALittleLight wrote: post #14

Seems like there should be an optional trial end, in addition to conviction or acquittal, for "prosecution shouldn't have brought this case", where the accused would get some kind of compensation. I don't know the details of this case, but I remember hearing about it many years ago. I can't imagine the expense and stress of such a trial, dragging on for so long, and then at the end it's just "Okay, guess you're not g…

In Norway we have two different "not guilty" outcomes: - "frifunnet på grunn av bevisets stilling" (~"acquitted because of the situation with the evidence" my best translation at 00:02 in the night) which I think in practice means it wasn't proven that the person did it and so (s)he is acquitted. - "henlagt som intet straffbart forhold" (~"acquitted as no punishable offense" my best translation at 00:04 in the night)…

How is that better? "Insufficient evidence" verdict is basically slander. It shouldn’t exist. You’re supposed to be presumed not guilty unless proven otherwise. What recourse do you have if you end up with such a verdict? Should you then have to prove your own innocence? That’s exactly what we tried to avoid in the first place.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#188

Post by yareal »

inglor_cz wrote: post #139
yareal wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's much Left in US politics, unless you mean in the language of US politics, where somehow Democrats are considered "Left".

The Left no longer means pushing for worker unionization or trying to expand welfare programs, at least not in the rich countries. This traditional left has become fringe almost everywhere in the top 20 economies. The Left is now a mostly academic movement dealing in obscure words.

The leftists I know are socialists, anarchists, and communists. They are very much doing the work both politically (I live in the Pacific Northwest, where socialists are on the ballot regularly) and locally (e.g. via Food Not Bombs or restoring land to natural states).

There definitely are academics, in organizations like the DSA. But there's practical folks too.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#189

Post by busterarm »

paganel wrote: post #151
busterarm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we know that trying to destroy Backpage was the personal crusade of Cindy McCain and it became very personal. This has long been written about.

> She is the widow of U.S. Senator John McCain from Arizona, who was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. Nepo-wife. And they were saying the Soviets were a decrepit society at the top, the US from today is not much better.

It's worse than that. She was a rich heiress that he left his first wife for because Cindy had the bankroll to fund his political aspirations. He was as much of a leech as she is.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#190

Post by rayiner »

yareal wrote: post #188
inglor_cz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Left no longer means pushing for worker unionization or trying to expand welfare programs, at least not in the rich countries. This traditional left has become fringe almost everywhere in the top 20 economies. The Left is now a mostly academic movement dealing in obscure words.

The leftists I know are socialists, anarchists, and communists. They are very much doing the work both politically (I live in the Pacific Northwest, where socialists are on the ballot regularly) and locally (e.g. via Food Not Bombs or restoring land to natural states). There definitely are academics, in organizations like the DSA. But there's practical folks too.

Virtually no one who calls themselves socialists in America are actually socialists. They’re social libertarians and neoliberals cosplaying as socialists.

You can’t have a workable left-wing movement that prioritizes social libertarianism because workers invariably will be more traditional than elites. You can’t tell factory workers they can’t say this or that and that they need to learn to like foreigners. You can think it, but you can't say it, and you certainly can't call them "racist, sexist, and homophobic." If your platform morally reforming workers and their manners becomes core to your platform, then it's not a workable left-wing platform. All you'll do is split the workers and push them away: https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/postcard-from-the-hispanic-....

What you'll end up with is a coalition where economic left-wingers are the rump of a neoliberal party. The neoliberals will never give the left-wingers anything, because they don't have to. Neoliberals have no reason to do anything other than pay lip service to leftists who can't actually unify and rally the mass of workers.

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