Maybe it is OK to have some things where making money is not the prime objective, and maybe not even an objective at all. I live in a place where the city is constantly renting out public parks to private, for-profit, interests. Not just an occasional festival, but often multiple times a week. The city does not see them as parks, but as revenue-generating venues. This is not what parks are for. Parks are for people, not for profit. I understand the reasons, too, but it is still a shame to see so much on the Internet swallowed up in the same way.
Cop quotas have always been an excellent example of both bad outcomes of Goodhart's Law. When a measure becomes a goal, not only does it cease to be an effective measure, but it corrupts the system and produces distorted results. And in the case of police quotas, these distorted results are always bad. In addition to innocent people being unnecessarily harassed, ticketed, charged, convicted, or whatever, the corrupted statistical and historical data becomes useless. Rebranding quotas as 'metrics' or 'activity indicators' is just putting lipstick on the pig.
is also known as evidence laundering, which is a much more accurate and less euphemistic term. "Parallel construction" sounds innocuous, or maybe even like something positive, and laundering of illegally obtained evidence is anything but. We should try to avoid using the terms coined by law enforcement to give cover for their criminal activities. These terms are misleading and should not be propagated. When such a term has already taken hold, as 'parallel construction' has, it can always be expanded to 'parallel construction, also known as evidence laundering.' A bit wordy, perhaps, but it clarifies what it really is, and indicates that we are not being fooled by their methods or their terminology. Just because they use doublespeak does not mean we must use it also.
But [Captain William] Braconi wrote that in his nearly two decades as an investigator “rarely if ever” did an assistant district attorney review a search warrant before it was submitted to a judge.
The leaked coroner's report in question was apparently about the death of Jeff Adachi, a deputy public defender with San Francisco Public Defender's Office.
Wikipedia quotes the coroner's reported cause of death as:
acute mixed drug toxicity with cocaine and ethanol, with hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease as a contributing factor.
Apparently the San Francisco Public Defender's Office would rather people think he died of natural causes, instead.
I am not sure why any of this information should be confidential in the first place, nor why the SFPD would go to such (apparently normal) lengths to harass the journalist to whom it was leaked. What does it matter to the cops that people know how a PD died? All I can think of is that the SFPD suspects that they have a rare "good apple" in their midst (the one who leaked the report to Carmody) and they are determined to do whatever they can to eradicate such an abomination.
Very unsympathetic characters are frequently used as an excuse to pass bad laws and set bad precedent. It is a favorite government tactic in the war on our rights.
When it comes to our rights, we must all be as close to 'absolutist' as possible. As Benjamin Franklin [is said to have] said "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."
You are just talking about income taxes. I said all of their taxes. Big difference.
Add in sales taxes, property taxes, licensing fees, gas tax, phone tax, airline tax, etc etc and myriad other even more well hidden taxes that really only show up (to most people) in the form of increased prices for all goods and services, and you are talking about a completely different, and much larger, ball of tax.
And with a 74,608-page-long federal tax code, the tax rate, and the amount of income that is actually taxed at that rate, often bear little relationship to someone's actual income (not just what is defined as income / taxable income in those 74K+ pages).
Also, given the outraged response when the price of gasoline goes up, or when a local jurisdiction tries to increase the millage rate for property taxes, I think the only questions about a tax revolt would be "How fast?" and "How violent?"
Re: Re: Re: Re: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need
Gullibility v. lack of critical thinking
You may be trying to make a distinction where there isn't any real, practical, significant difference. Semantic technicalities that do not matter to the point being made. Kind of like the "to-may-to versus to-mah-to" or "po-tay-to versus po-tah-to" things (I know these are aural and pronunciation distinctions, but I tried to write them out to illustrate the point).
In any case, the problem of widespread gullibility / lack of critical thinking ability can generally be traced to an abysmal education system, where critical thinking is actively and aggressively discouraged.
Yeah, in addition to the murders, rapes, beatings, robberies, false imprisonments etc, etc, that cops routinely engage in, when the cops basically get in the face of the legislature, the courts, and the public and tell them all to "get f****d," it is difficult to see any of this ending well in a civil manner.
Requiring cops to have malpractice insurance isn't a new idea. This article takes a look at it. One key line to pay attention to:
Most of the country’s larger cities “self-insure,” meaning they simply pay out awards and settlements from public funds.
This problem, where the taxpayers pay for the cop's crimes, is a big part of the whole out-of-control cop problem. Most taxpayers think that when "the city" pays a settlement, that means someone else, not them. This is the same blindness / stupidity that has most taxpayers thinking they do not pay any Federal income taxes. They don't grok "withholding." They actually think the Federal government pays them a magic bonus every year! And they love it! As I have said before, if each American had to write a check every month for all of their taxes (like they do with most other bills) within two months there would be a tax revolt in this country the likes of which the world has never seen before.
There's basically no chance it will pass, not with Senator Mitch McConnell deciding what bills get voted on.
Another fine example of the extremely damaging effects of having let our government devolve to the point where just a few individuals are in near total control of the Federal shit-show.
a set of police reforms that includes. . .
It will be interesting to see if any of these minor half-measures will have any noticeable effect. Somehow I doubt it.
But there's a lot of bad news to go along with this good news.
Government once again engaging in one of it's favorite distraction techniques: Pass laws that will generate favorable headlines and soundbites, but don't really do much of substance.
That is a legitimate question to ask, and one that should constantly be asked, about all government agencies and programs. While the answer for most will not be as lopsided as the answer for some (looking at you ICE, CBP, IRS, ATF and too many more to list), an unbiased harm / cost / benefit analysis will quickly reveal that most government agencies and programs should be abolished, or at the very least seriously overhauled. Putting lipstick on pigs does not count, here. Of course, hundreds of thousands of useless petty bureaucrats may cause some pushback.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need
Yeah, I try not to do the trope thing, but sometimes the setup is so on-the-nose that one slips out, particularly when one is tired. There are many things that can tire one out: One tires of living in a country and a world where one's rights are continually violated and one's opportunities are constantly restricted by these lying control freaks who maintain their grip on power for countless generations. One tires of constantly hearing people say "We cannot change anything, so why bother even trying." One tires of people who lack the foresight to even make an effort to merely attempt to nudge the Overton window on good governance in the right direction, in the hope that someday, eventually, their society might be improved.
Re: Re: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need To Lie?
Yes, it is a tired joke, but one also tires of having to explain why it is unfortunately very close to the literal truth: Few people that are not serial, facile liars (as well as having various other psychological disorders) even attempt to enter the political sphere. Of those that do, most are not particularly successful and do not last very long. And most of the rest become serial, facile liars. Unfortunately, these liars tend to remain in politics because many people are gullible enough to believe the lies, or because they have no alternatives to vote for (see above). Of course, there are some (limited) exceptions: politicians who tend to be at least somewhat honest, at least about a certain range of topics. But one would do well not to examine even these too closely, lest one find things that one would rather not find.
It is unfortunate that things must get to this point for people to figure out that downloading and using Signal is a good idea. We can only hope it will help some of them make good their escape before they get caught with it, but I suspect it may already be too late for even that.
The US government has long since lost all credibility in the espionage / national security arena (as well as all the other arenas), at least with anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention. And now to add an FBI "informant" and chronologically impossible "evidence" to the mix? Wow. Wouldn't it be easier to just tell Putin he badmouthed Russia?
It may be too late for contact tracing to be a viable concept
I am not sure if this is true or not, but it does make sense. At some point you have so many infections that even with a theoretical ideal contact tracing system the answer would be "Everyone has potentially been exposed."
The other is how, even if they could find legal cover, could they physically ban it? How could you prevent people from downloading the app or prevent connection to Tik-Tok's servers?
Ever hear of The Great Firewall? The US could do something similar, and somehow I think it could probably be done much faster than we would like to believe. And if Tik-Tok servers are located in the US, it would be that much easier to simply shut them down.
On the post: We Shouldn't Call Michelle Obama's (And Joe Rogan's) Proprietary Exclusive Audio From Spotify A 'Podcast' Any More
Re: Re: Silo Value
Maybe it is OK to have some things where making money is not the prime objective, and maybe not even an objective at all. I live in a place where the city is constantly renting out public parks to private, for-profit, interests. Not just an occasional festival, but often multiple times a week. The city does not see them as parks, but as revenue-generating venues. This is not what parks are for. Parks are for people, not for profit. I understand the reasons, too, but it is still a shame to see so much on the Internet swallowed up in the same way.
On the post: Three LAPD Officers Facing Criminal Charges For Faking Gang Database Records
Cop quotas
Cop quotas have always been an excellent example of both bad outcomes of Goodhart's Law. When a measure becomes a goal, not only does it cease to be an effective measure, but it corrupts the system and produces distorted results. And in the case of police quotas, these distorted results are always bad. In addition to innocent people being unnecessarily harassed, ticketed, charged, convicted, or whatever, the corrupted statistical and historical data becomes useless. Rebranding quotas as 'metrics' or 'activity indicators' is just putting lipstick on the pig.
On the post: Companies Are Selling Cops Access To Personal Data Harvested From Malicious Hacking And Data Breaches
Parallel construction
is also known as evidence laundering, which is a much more accurate and less euphemistic term. "Parallel construction" sounds innocuous, or maybe even like something positive, and laundering of illegally obtained evidence is anything but. We should try to avoid using the terms coined by law enforcement to give cover for their criminal activities. These terms are misleading and should not be propagated. When such a term has already taken hold, as 'parallel construction' has, it can always be expanded to 'parallel construction, also known as evidence laundering.' A bit wordy, perhaps, but it clarifies what it really is, and indicates that we are not being fooled by their methods or their terminology. Just because they use doublespeak does not mean we must use it also.
On the post: Detroit PD Now Linked To Two Bogus Arrests Stemming From Facial Recognition False Positives
SSDD
I wonder if this will work as well as it has in San Francisco?
From yesterday:
On the post: Documents Show SFPD Ignored The Press Pass The Department Had Issued To Brian Carmody In Order To Place Him Under Surveillance
Motives?
The leaked coroner's report in question was apparently about the death of Jeff Adachi, a deputy public defender with San Francisco Public Defender's Office.
Wikipedia quotes the coroner's reported cause of death as:
Apparently the San Francisco Public Defender's Office would rather people think he died of natural causes, instead.
I am not sure why any of this information should be confidential in the first place, nor why the SFPD would go to such (apparently normal) lengths to harass the journalist to whom it was leaked. What does it matter to the cops that people know how a PD died? All I can think of is that the SFPD suspects that they have a rare "good apple" in their midst (the one who leaked the report to Carmody) and they are determined to do whatever they can to eradicate such an abomination.
On the post: Reverse Warrant Used In Robbery Investigation Being Challenged As Unconstitutional
Re: Re: I guess if you are going to rob a bank
Very unsympathetic characters are frequently used as an excuse to pass bad laws and set bad precedent. It is a favorite government tactic in the war on our rights.
When it comes to our rights, we must all be as close to 'absolutist' as possible. As Benjamin Franklin [is said to have] said "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."
On the post: Colorado Government Dumps Qualified Immunity For Cops
Re: Re: Re:
You are just talking about income taxes. I said all of their taxes. Big difference.
Add in sales taxes, property taxes, licensing fees, gas tax, phone tax, airline tax, etc etc and myriad other even more well hidden taxes that really only show up (to most people) in the form of increased prices for all goods and services, and you are talking about a completely different, and much larger, ball of tax.
And with a 74,608-page-long federal tax code, the tax rate, and the amount of income that is actually taxed at that rate, often bear little relationship to someone's actual income (not just what is defined as income / taxable income in those 74K+ pages).
Also, given the outraged response when the price of gasoline goes up, or when a local jurisdiction tries to increase the millage rate for property taxes, I think the only questions about a tax revolt would be "How fast?" and "How violent?"
On the post: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need To Lie About Section 230?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need
Gullibility v. lack of critical thinking
You may be trying to make a distinction where there isn't any real, practical, significant difference. Semantic technicalities that do not matter to the point being made. Kind of like the "to-may-to versus to-mah-to" or "po-tay-to versus po-tah-to" things (I know these are aural and pronunciation distinctions, but I tried to write them out to illustrate the point).
In any case, the problem of widespread gullibility / lack of critical thinking ability can generally be traced to an abysmal education system, where critical thinking is actively and aggressively discouraged.
On the post: L.A. Newspaper Sues Sheriff's Department Over Its Repeated Refusal To Comply With The Law
Re:
Yeah, in addition to the murders, rapes, beatings, robberies, false imprisonments etc, etc, that cops routinely engage in, when the cops basically get in the face of the legislature, the courts, and the public and tell them all to "get f****d," it is difficult to see any of this ending well in a civil manner.
On the post: Colorado Government Dumps Qualified Immunity For Cops
Re:
Requiring cops to have malpractice insurance isn't a new idea. This article takes a look at it. One key line to pay attention to:
This problem, where the taxpayers pay for the cop's crimes, is a big part of the whole out-of-control cop problem. Most taxpayers think that when "the city" pays a settlement, that means someone else, not them. This is the same blindness / stupidity that has most taxpayers thinking they do not pay any Federal income taxes. They don't grok "withholding." They actually think the Federal government pays them a magic bonus every year! And they love it! As I have said before, if each American had to write a check every month for all of their taxes (like they do with most other bills) within two months there would be a tax revolt in this country the likes of which the world has never seen before.
On the post: Colorado Government Dumps Qualified Immunity For Cops
Another fine example of the extremely damaging effects of having let our government devolve to the point where just a few individuals are in near total control of the Federal shit-show.
It will be interesting to see if any of these minor half-measures will have any noticeable effect. Somehow I doubt it.
Government once again engaging in one of it's favorite distraction techniques: Pass laws that will generate favorable headlines and soundbites, but don't really do much of substance.
On the post: Universities Ask Court To Block ICE's Directive Ordering The Removal Of Foreign Students Engaged In Remote Learning
Re:
That is a legitimate question to ask, and one that should constantly be asked, about all government agencies and programs. While the answer for most will not be as lopsided as the answer for some (looking at you ICE, CBP, IRS, ATF and too many more to list), an unbiased harm / cost / benefit analysis will quickly reveal that most government agencies and programs should be abolished, or at the very least seriously overhauled. Putting lipstick on pigs does not count, here. Of course, hundreds of thousands of useless petty bureaucrats may cause some pushback.
On the post: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need To Lie About Section 230?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need
Yeah, I try not to do the trope thing, but sometimes the setup is so on-the-nose that one slips out, particularly when one is tired. There are many things that can tire one out: One tires of living in a country and a world where one's rights are continually violated and one's opportunities are constantly restricted by these lying control freaks who maintain their grip on power for countless generations. One tires of constantly hearing people say "We cannot change anything, so why bother even trying." One tires of people who lack the foresight to even make an effort to merely attempt to nudge the Overton window on good governance in the right direction, in the hope that someday, eventually, their society might be improved.
Better?
On the post: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need To Lie About Section 230?
Re: Re: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need To Lie?
Yes, it is a tired joke, but one also tires of having to explain why it is unfortunately very close to the literal truth: Few people that are not serial, facile liars (as well as having various other psychological disorders) even attempt to enter the political sphere. Of those that do, most are not particularly successful and do not last very long. And most of the rest become serial, facile liars. Unfortunately, these liars tend to remain in politics because many people are gullible enough to believe the lies, or because they have no alternatives to vote for (see above). Of course, there are some (limited) exceptions: politicians who tend to be at least somewhat honest, at least about a certain range of topics. But one would do well not to examine even these too closely, lest one find things that one would rather not find.
On the post: Hong Kong's National Security Law Allows Police To Censor The Internet, Compel Decryption
It is unfortunate that things must get to this point for people to figure out that downloading and using Signal is a good idea. We can only hope it will help some of them make good their escape before they get caught with it, but I suspect it may already be too late for even that.
On the post: Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need To Lie About Section 230?
Why Does Richard Blumenthal Always Feel The Need To Lie?
Because he is a politician? Because he is a pathological liar? Oops, I'm being redundant, sorry.
On the post: New Indictment Tries To Tie Julian Assange To A Hacking He Had Nothing To Do With
Doing things the hard way
The US government has long since lost all credibility in the espionage / national security arena (as well as all the other arenas), at least with anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention. And now to add an FBI "informant" and chronologically impossible "evidence" to the mix? Wow. Wouldn't it be easier to just tell Putin he badmouthed Russia?
On the post: Unbridled Surveillance Will Not Save Us From COVID-19
It may be too late for contact tracing to be a viable concept
I am not sure if this is true or not, but it does make sense. At some point you have so many infections that even with a theoretical ideal contact tracing system the answer would be "Everyone has potentially been exposed."
On the post: Pompeo Says US May Ban TikTok; It's Not Clear That It Can
Re:
Ever hear of The Great Firewall? The US could do something similar, and somehow I think it could probably be done much faster than we would like to believe. And if Tik-Tok servers are located in the US, it would be that much easier to simply shut them down.
On the post: Pompeo Says US May Ban TikTok; It's Not Clear That It Can
Maybe not yet . . . but that is the way we are headed.
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