61–70 of 118 posts
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First Law of Message Boards: bribery is fun to talk about, people just disagreeing about stuff and having little temper tantrums when they lose arguments is boring, ergo: bribery is everywhere.
> The First Law: Every forum is always in a state of constant decline. > All forums start off good, enjoy a "honeymoon period" in which they continue to be good, and then steadily decline... from the point of view of each individual observer... https://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2005/11/20/charles_rules_of_on... I like this first law better.
The link under "would be introducing measures"[1] has the full statement from the councilmember where he describes the proposals he will be bringing: > A Modest Proposal for Digital Device Prohibition: A total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits. > A Modest Proposal for Total Surveillance Abolition (Residential & Commercial): A total ban on all outward-facing cameras > A…
Third one makes no sense.
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> Nobody's bribing a councilmember in an 800-person rural township. I suspect this happens a lot more often than people assume. It does not take much to bribe people to change their minds based on the publicly known international spy/espionage cases. People will sell out their country for like $5k.
First Law of Message Boards: bribery is fun to talk about, people just disagreeing about stuff and having little temper tantrums when they lose arguments is boring, ergo: bribery is everywhere.
Just box office baseball tickets, just a $2k steak dinner with high end wine, just a phone call with the governor, just a gift card, just an advisor position with some equity, etc, etc, etc.
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No, the municipal policy ALPR debate generally does boil down to people who have a principles opposition to technology specialized for surveillance, and other people who believe it's no different from the cell towers that already track you. Nobody's bribing a councilmember in an 800-person rural township.
> Nobody's bribing a councilmember in an 800-person rural township. I suspect this happens a lot more often than people assume. It does not take much to bribe people to change their minds based on the publicly known international spy/espionage cases. People will sell out their country for like $5k.
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I think it may be useful to send a message to other rookie politicians that there will be blow-back when they have a temper tantrum and threaten to disable the internet. The world if full of these people. Some only become temporary HOA officers but a handful make it past that filter.
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Dismissing the action of local politics is exactly how we fall to the wayside in larger elections. Most politicians start somewhere, and actions like this should be shamed early on. Secondly, singular emotional appeals work a lot better on convincing a populace than broad statistics. Stories like this will likely be better to push if your goal is changing the mind of the common citizen. People relate more to people t…
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The argument about surveillance isn't whether it helps catch criminals (which obviously prevents some further crime), it obviously does. And yes, security cameras make places harder targets for thieves and robbers and criminals are intimidated by prison time. This seems almost axiomatically so to me, not sure what your argument against this could conceivably be. The argument about surveillance is whether the negative…
I responded to OP but he correct that criminals are not overly concerned by amount of prison time but the act of being apprehended itself https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398 . Flock is still awful though
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I think it may be useful to send a message to other rookie politicians that there will be blow-back when they have a temper tantrum and threaten to disable the internet. The world if full of these people. Some only become temporary HOA officers but a handful make it past that filter.
What blow-back? He literally can't do any of this and he knows it. Municipalities can't ban cell phones. He's just trolling.
Potential removal from office. Exclusion from all the things. Anything else their community has the wherewithal to implement. It's all up to them really. In a way he self reported to the people in a small Texas town. They know what's up. Now I have a song stuck in my head.
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>It's literally happening and this story makes it really clear A council member "crashing out" (ie. proposing some satirical bills) is "really clear" evidence of kickbacks? Seems like a stretch. At the very least I'd want evidence of some transaction having occurred, rather than "wow you strongly support something I can't possibly imagine anyone would support? You must be getting kickbacks!"
In my opinion that should be enough to get some investigative journalists and private investigators poking around. Assuming investigative journalists are still a thing.