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FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

nytimes.com

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Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#61

Post by throwaway894345 »

xwolfi wrote: post #15
kyleamazza wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that was close to the original intent of "defund", as in reallocate funding for policing into different areas (and in some cases, I've heard more specifically splitting up police work into more granular area i.e. responding to mental health incidents vs. domestic abuse vs. a break in). But the "defund" quickly ran away into "remove all funding", which of course is a lot more radical and less palatable for any…

Defund was probably a bad choice of word, and reform a better one ? But if people can only deal with single-word manifestos, then you re bound to misinterpret.

I think this is ahistorical. Progressives were pretty clear that they believed American policing was fundamentally, irredeemably, and universally racist--that was the whole crux of the BLM movement, and if you believe that, then you aren't going to content yourself with mere reform (if you think police are racist, then you probably aren't going to advocate for "requiring more training for dealing with mentally ill citizens" or similar reforms). Moreover, when moderate Democrats (fearing for the upcoming election cycle) tried to say "what progressives really mean is 'reform'", progressives responded with "no, we really mean defund/abolish".

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#62

Post by fsociety999 »

The FBI is more or less a legalized criminal organization that is funded by U.S. taxpayers, but is unelected and unaccountable to them. This article is from 2013, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that this behavior has changed:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/04/fbi-in...

The important part to consider:

> The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation's top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

I know this is talking specifically about informants, and you could make a case that that is necessary, but what reason is there to believe that this doesn’t extend to members of the FBI as well?

Here is a more recent article about this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/11/18/fbi...

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#63

Post by NickC25 »

Zamicol wrote: post #27
theandrewbailey wrote: post #2

Defund the FBI, CIA, NSA, ATF, and DEA. They've proven themselves to cause more trouble than to solve problems.

We need public auditing of these organizations. Organization that operate secretly will always provide some refuge for corruption. There are always blind spots for management. If the public has no input, how can we ever trust them?

Good ideas, and ideas that I support 100%, but in practice it seems to be impossible. IIRC we still haven't gotten a full audit of the Pentagon / DOD, and a majority of their operations are probably a bit more public than the NSA's or other secretive-by-design bureaucracy.

How would we be able to audit an organization (in a timely manner) that puts up as many roadblocks as possible?

The Fed needs to be audited, too. As well as their staff, starting at the very top.

It seems in the government, secrecy and corruption is the name of the game. That's unacceptable and needs to end. The US taxpayer should demand full transparency of all organizations including intelligence services, and the agencies in question should have no choice but to fully comply except in genuine, individual cases of legitimate national security, which would be assessed by an independent reviewer.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#64

Post by jaywalk »

Zamicol wrote: post #27
theandrewbailey wrote: post #2

Defund the FBI, CIA, NSA, ATF, and DEA. They've proven themselves to cause more trouble than to solve problems.

We need public auditing of these organizations. Organization that operate secretly will always provide some refuge for corruption. There are always blind spots for management. If the public has no input, how can we ever trust them?

Ah, but the public can't know what they're doing! National security, of course. Just trust them.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#65

Post by djur »

prange wrote: post #48
pjc50 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is against the FBI because they're investigating him. It's not that deep.

It’s almost as if he thinks the FBI might stand in the way of his re-election.

He liked the FBI fine when they were investigating his opponent.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#67

Post by dclowd9901 »

fsociety999 wrote: post #62

The FBI is more or less a legalized criminal organization that is funded by U.S. taxpayers, but is unelected and unaccountable to them. This article is from 2013, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that this behavior has changed: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/04/fbi-in... The important part to consider: > The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single…

If you could make the case that it’s necessary then what are we even talking about here?

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#68

Post by bee_rider »

dwater wrote: post #10
jimbob45 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They just need more transparency.

In the past few years bodycams have become ubiquitous, and they haven't reduced misconduct. I wouldn't be surprised if they've increased civil payouts for police misconduct, but I'd rather have my life and health than my survivors get a few million bucks.

The police just turn off their bodycams when they want to do something illegal, it isn't really transparency unless there are serious questions any time the camera is turned off or footage mysteriously "goes missing" from a computer.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#69

Post by prange »

djur wrote: post #65
prange wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s almost as if he thinks the FBI might stand in the way of his re-election.

He liked the FBI fine when they were investigating his opponent.

Isn’t that the point? Do you think they shouldn’t have investigated Hillary Clinton?

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#70

Post by throwaway894345 »

lupire wrote: post #14
throwaway894345 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

"Defined the police" usually means "fund social welfare" with a side of "disarm the beat cops so they learn to deescalate". "Abolish the police" is the message of a much smaller group. And any count of crime surge should also include crimes committed by police under color of law.

No doubt "defund the police" implies using some of the funds for social programs, but you have to do some mental gymnastics to believe that it doesn't mean "reduce the amount of policing" particularly when the slogan was chanted in tandem with demands to remove or reduce police from communities of color and so on. The main thrust of "defund the police" was to reduce the amount of policing, which is what we got, and crime has surged as predicted (especially in communities of color, 80% of whom didn't want less policing, but it was demanded in their name anyway). Moreover "disarm cops so they learn to deescalate" is not markedly better than "reduce the amount of policing", but rather it seems differently predictably awful.

Granted, social program funds haven't increased, but there's no world in which we invest more in education or mental health services or anything else and it makes up for the drop in policing with respect to deterring crime. If you keep policing in tact and invest more in public services, maybe over decades you'll see a significant improvement (because investing in public services doesn't pay out immediately), but if we divest ourselves of policing, then crime becomes a much more powerful and immediate drag on underserved communities than the lift afforded by investment in (non-policing) public services. We need policing and public services.

> And any count of crime surge should also include crimes committed by police under color of law.

Even if you count every police shooting as an unjustifiable homicide (on the order of hundreds), they are completely dwarfed by the non-police homicides (on the order of tens of thousands). Indeed, the increase in annual homicides is about 10k since the pre-BLM era (a ~60% increase)--the increase alone completely dwarfs all officer-involved shootings.

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