71–80 of 118 posts
"...Flowers said, "I believe personally that guilty people act defensively. If you don't have anything to hide, then it shouldn't be a problem." Oh boy, back to this crap again. If that's true, for you to be acting this defensively sure is sending some signal.
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In my opinion that should be enough to get some investigative journalists and private investigators poking around. Assuming investigative journalists are still a thing.
The problem is that this all hinges on what you think reasonable political positions are, and thanks to political polarization, everything on the other side is suspect. You support drilling for oil? You must be in the pocket of big oil! You support solar power? You must be in the pocket of chinese solar manufacturers. You support development? You must be in the pocket of luxury condo developers! You oppose developmen…
Well that's entirely up to the people. Anyone can be removed one way or another. This article is about a locality in Texas. Don't mess with Texans in a small town.
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And besides, these days no ones giving straight cash to bribe, it's always via other means that are harder to trace and maybe not even directly monetary (sending them on a vacation, golfing, donations to charity...). It's weird that people seem to act like lobbying doesn't exist at the city council level.
Or even just being their "friend". A little personal attention is often all that's needed to turn an otherwise aloof person into a champion.
How useful could it be if the poles are vandalized regularly?
Classic "all-or-nothing", "black and white" argument style
It's either one extreme or another
If the town wants to ban Flock cameras then surely it also wants to ban all outward-facing cameras, GPS-capable devices, cellular network devices, internet service and electronic record-keeping
There is no option to go back to a few years ago before Flock cameras were installed. Nope, the town must go back to "1880, paper ledgers and cash only"
Totally absurd
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The other day I half-jokingly said I was going to build a site to expose local council members for taking kickbacks and someone said "that isn't happening" It's literally happening and this story makes it really clear. I wish it was this easy to spot. It's usually Flock donating to some charity a council person is also a board member on
>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!"
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Or even just being their "friend". A little personal attention is often all that's needed to turn an otherwise aloof person into a champion.
I love how through the course of 3 comments, it went from "straightforwardly illegal" to "morally shady", then to "exactly how governments should work". What's the alternative here? Should people not be allowed to cultivate relationships with their representatives? Is it ethically dubious for you to go with a company with a responsive sales team that's friendly and answers your questions, compared to their competitor…
Does said company operate against the best interests of the constituents?
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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 a small town of 900 people, it seems odd a council member would be THAT upset about removing license plate reading camera systems, when it's clear the town doesn't want it. To get flustered enough to start proposing sarcastic bills, it's not a stretch to immediately think that there's at least some political maneuvering behind it, if not blatant kickbacks.
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Or even just being their "friend". A little personal attention is often all that's needed to turn an otherwise aloof person into a champion.
I love how through the course of 3 comments, it went from "straightforwardly illegal" to "morally shady", then to "exactly how governments should work". What's the alternative here? Should people not be allowed to cultivate relationships with their representatives? Is it ethically dubious for you to go with a company with a responsive sales team that's friendly and answers your questions, compared to their competitor…
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You imply that the population number is the reason we shouldn't care, but then you say explicitly that it's the fact that we don't live there. Both seem nonsensical without further elaboration?
Crime coverage is usually the easiest starting point. You can, and some people do, continually scan the country for crimes. Then when such a crime happens, you publish an emotive article declaring that it happened. Crime is of course bad, so each of these articles will make sense on its own terms; poor innocent victims who've been hurt or killed by evil men deserve sympathy! But if you only ever publish content on crime from within that framing, your readers will inevitably start to conclude that it's the only framing, and crime policy should primarily be focused on protecting us innocent potential victims from the hordes of evil men who want to hurt us.
Hopefully that makes sense. If it does, then I'd encourage you to take that critical eye and turn it to the 404Media Flock coverage (https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/). When you scroll through, does it seem like they're carefully studying Flock to keep you informed on the policy landscape surrounding it? Or does it seem like they're searching for the most sensational Flock-related stories they can find?