Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 457 posts

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

#241

Post by freeone3000 »

yieldcrv wrote: post #123
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…

correct, but Americans as a whole aren't envious of what other countries are doing. There is very little consensus to suggest envy - as the supposition above had suggested was the root of European bashing. There is more consensus on accessing these things - healthcare and higher education - via wealth, or programs within the state of residence. Some individual states/cities do offer free higher education, and free he…

Some people existing near a shipping lane thousands of kilometres away in a foreign sovereign country does not constitute a “problem” that Europe needs to “solve”.

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

#242

Post by EB-Barrington »

hollerith wrote: post #219
barrkel wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Russian soldiers are from the poorest areas of Russia. Most of the poor schlubs getting fed into the meat grinder are never going to get their payday.

If the Russian volunteer gets killed, his family gets paid.

[dead]

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

#243

Post by watwut »

chollida1 wrote: post #236
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> . Two years on, and we were just at the beginning of "discovery" -- an amazingly invasive process that appears to be unique to the US legal system. This is common in almost all legal systems. How else would the defendant get to examine the evidence against them and how else would you provide evidence if there was no discovery process? Its hard to imagine there would be a legal system without it.

You are basing that claim on the "it is impossible to not have the same problem as US have" assumption.

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

#244

Post by monkey_monkey »

hollerith wrote: post #209
Viliam1234 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why do the Russian invaders keep steeling the toilets and washing machines? When you measure wealth, it makes a huge difference how exactly you calculate it. Having a few astronomically rich oligarchs in your country increases the arithmetic mean, but does nothing about the median. This is how Russia can have better numbers in national statistics, and yet the average Russian soldier can feel the other way round in…

Your making stuff up. [del: Most Russian soldiers are paid over $100,000 a year to volunteer to fight in Ukraine. :del] In contrast, most of the Ukrainian soldiers are conscripts. Here's a Youtube channel by a Brit who moved to Russia in 2002 or 2003: https://www.youtube.com/@SamsRussianAdventures/videos At the current time, the top video (i.e., the latest video) in that list is titled, "I'm Much Happier Here in Russ…

[flagged]

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

#245

Post by 999900000999 »

lurk2 wrote: post #170
SauciestGNU wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but it explains the disdain for Europe in the current American government. European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government. Fascists hate a counterexample.

> European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government. Europeans have far more restrictions on their rights of speech, self-defence, and freedom of conscience than the Americans. They are also substantially poorer than Americans, and those numbers get worse when you account for America’s average being skewed…

America has more ultra rich people and high income earners.

But if you’re poor and have an easily treatable illness, say type 1 diabetes, you’ll die begging for insulin.

It’s very easy to lose everything within a few months.

You get sick, lose your job, your entire family loses health insurance. We have this stupid prosperity gospel idea which conversely means poverty is your fault. Can’t afford medicine for your kids, well I guess it’s their fault for having a loser dad.

Taxes are still absurdly high in America for what you actually receive. Have any serious medical issues and you’ll be spending thousands upon thousands per month on top of 600 to 700$ for essentially useless health insurance.

We’re also a fear based society. When I visited London it’s perfectly normal to see single women waiting for the bus at 2am or whatever. Here as a grown man I got freaked out when I was approached by a stranger around 7pm. Was he going to rob me ?

He actually was a local politician passing out flyers , but we live in paranoia land.

America is closer to a developing country in both medical care and violent crime. I know I’d rather raise a family in Berlin than almost any American city.

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

#246

Post by watwut »

soco wrote: post #159
watwut wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have seen what Ryssians say about Europe

Before or after they emigrate to Europe? Or are they coming to Switzerland out of spite?

Majority is not emigrating and believe what state media says.

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

#248

Post by mopsi »

hollerith wrote: post #219
barrkel wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Russian soldiers are from the poorest areas of Russia. Most of the poor schlubs getting fed into the meat grinder are never going to get their payday.

If the Russian volunteer gets killed, his family gets paid.

Provided that things like paperwork are in order, which often they are not, on purpose. For example, there are so many examples of Russian command refusing to collect the bodies of dead soldiers. No body, no death certificate, no payout.

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

#249

Post by skyyler »

StefanBatory wrote: post #182
givemeethekeys wrote: post #7

Standing out in any way in a small, socially conservative community can have some pretty terrible consequences.

An American colleague of mine got beat up in Idaho for being gay :<

I have friends that have been attacked on the street for being trans in San Francisco.

America's a rough place to stand out.

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

#250

Post by lupusreal »

mixologist wrote: post #161
robertlagrant wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they just want to stop feeling as though they have to fund all that defence out of their taxes and then be made fun of by the people they're defending that they don't spend enough taxes on US social safety nets.

No sane person will tell you that EU should accept all the consequences of US starting wars in our neighborhood and also pay for that privilege. Nobody is forcing US to field the largest army in the world. It is their own choice. We all would much rather if they didn't have such an incentive to arbitrarily start wars just to justify their defense budget. BTW, if US is such a mighty nation as they advertise themselves…

European NATO members were well within their rights to refuse to participate in Afghanistan when America invoked Article 5 (read it!). They should have in fact, because it was a bullshit war and they knew it at the time. They chose to participate anyway and have been whining about it ever since. Fine, mistakes were made, but now you lot should be happy to put distance between yourselves and America and take on full responsibility for your own defense.

As for America starting wars in the region, if you think America started the wars Russia has waged and is waging against Georgia and Ukraine, you've been huffing Kremlin retard gas. You lot have a problem on your border, America didn't make it and its not America's responsibility to fix it. Maybe the American people would be more eager about helping Europe if Europeans didn't take every opportunity they could to gloat about how they're better than America, how Americans are stupid to spend so much on the military. Doesn't matter now though, the damage is done. Take care of yourselves.

Post reply on HN