Fuck the Police State

[buttslinger]

I can't make a serious post here because I have absolutely no qualifications in this field, jack-off of all trades, masturbator of none.
Basically you have only two real choices- law and order candidate, or social awareness candidate. I am a Democrat, but I believe in giving the Devil his due.
Until you can stop spending a trillion in Iraq, borrowed from China, you simply cannot AFFORD to address social ills, then that leads to more crime, then that leads to more prison costs.
Obama has said time after time that everybody has to donate a few weekends to come out and meet your neighbors and together, tackle the problems at our cumulative feet. But nobody wants to give up their weekend after a week of strum and drang. I mean, it's bad....but it's not THAT bad........

[trish]

As a tax paying citizen it makes much more sense to throw a guy in jail who pays for his 24/7 party lifestyle with crime, rather than a middle class guy who sniffs cocaine on the weekend.

As a tax paying citizen, I would like to see Wall Street bankers, Corporations and their CEO, and other assorted billionaires pay an appropriate share of the revenue that is requisite to the maintenance of a huge democratic-republic such as ours. If we’re to run the government as a business, then tell me please: What business thrives by strangling its revenue stream? Our economy suffers more from the under-the-table practices of our monied elite than it does from gang bangers, petty thieves, meth heads and vandals.

I live in an rural town. The three big sources of jobs are the university, the one large department store belonging to a national franchise, and one factory owned by a large national corporation. Since only the university has a union (although the governor is posed to bust it) most of the workers in town are underpaid. We have a higher than average poverty rate and it is the poor and middle class homeowners who shoulder the brunt of the State and local taxes, not the university (which as a State entity can’t be taxed, the corporate owned department store or the corporate owned factory (which have their own loopholes and strategizing for paying next to zero taxes) or the CEOs (who never stepped foot in our town). We make sure impoverished children are fed at a discount in the school cafeteria. We just increased the tax on homeowners to cover some necessary road repairs which is used by the trucks that supply the store and factory.

Meth is the drug of choice around here. You should know that’s not really a black person thing. Even though the local meth chemists and junkies steal from homeowners, farmers (who store tanks of nitrates used in the “manufacture” of meth), and are sometimes a threat to person as well as property, I frankly don’t see how throwing them all in jail forever for their 24/7 party lifestyle would allow us to hire more teachers or repair the not-up-to-code bridge just south of the square on Main Street. I would suggest we raise taxes on the two corporate presences in town, except if we did that, they’d pull up roots and move to another town or state (because they can get tax breaks and loopholes elsewhere) taking their low paying jobs with them. Then even more of our local people would find themselves partying 24/7. To get dragged off to that ‘party’ you don’t need to be of a particular race, or be too lazy to work.

[buttslinger]

.. I would like to see Wall Street bankers, Corporations and their CEO, and other assorted billionaires pay an appropriate share of the revenue that is requisite to the maintenance of a huge democratic-republic such as ours...What business thrives by strangling its revenue stream? Our economy suffers more from the under-the-table practices of our monied elite than it does from gang bangers, petty thieves, meth heads and vandals.

I live in an rural town....Meth is the drug of choice around here. You should know that’s not really a black person thing. ....

You can bet the Kings of Wall St have CPAs that have calculated just how much they can starve the horse before it stops pulling the cart.
In 1946, any Milkman could own a little house and support a wife and three kids. There was a movie that year about the panic caused by a murderer loose on the streets of New York!!!! I think my point, if I have one, is that "society" and the "individual" share blame in where we find ourselves now.
You can't blame a Corporation for making money. As was done when Monopolies used their power to crush their competitors, it is up to the Government to come up with laws that maintain a level playing field. A balance between Labor and Management. How boring.
It's important to come up with questions that can be answered. There are many mysteries that can never be solved. It is much easier to throw a junkie with a gun in jail than a Corporate CEO with an army of lawyers. You can't ignore some punk robbing houses because a CEO isn't nice.
Every American is expected to carry his own weight. There is no question that every American is carrying much more weight than in 1946, you tell me who to blame.
When I talk about the 24/7 party lifestyle, I'm not talking yachts and caviar, I'm talking about people who have given up on the American Dream, and get high and do crime all day. Outside of the Green Bay Packers, most people in Wisconsin are White, why they're into meth, I have no idea.
Most criminals aren't born criminal, it's a slow descent. Every criminal is different, but I think there is no question that Prisons are overcrowded because of DRUGS. It makes absolutely no sense why people would want to live as a two bit criminal until you factors drugs into the equation. I don't really think you can blame CEOs for Drug Abuse.
The WAR on DRUGS has been a dismal failure, it would probably be better to get rid of drugs rather than CEOs, but this is one more real problem that nobody has figured out how to solve yet. Maybe you should outlaw drugs. Oh yeah, they are outlawed. That's why the prisons are packed.

[trish]

You can't blame a Corporation for making money...You can't ignore some punk robbing houses because a CEO isn't nice...Most criminals aren't born criminal, it's a slow descent.

What I don’t understand is why you seem to drawn so to false dichotomies and other weird and fallacious steps of ill-logic.

Apparently, I can blame society, the government and individuals for “where we find ourselves now,” or I can blame corporations...but not both. I don’t mind sharing the responsibility, but I’m not shouldering it all. We can and we should blame corporations, bankers, CEOs and all the other billionaires who benefit greatly from “where we find ourselves now”.

You’re right, we can’t excuse a burglar from breaking and entering a home in some town somewhere in the USA, just because a CEO isn’t nice. But if the CEO and his corporation is in large part responsible for that town’s desperate economic conditions, conditions that directly induced that act of burglary, than we can’t excuse the CEO either, nor the corporation. Making the punishments for burglary stiffer and stiffer while further lessening the tax burden on corporations (which are already zero in some cases) and paying the CEO even more exorbitantly really doesn’t seem to be working, does it?...nor does it seem fair.

You're right that people aren’t born criminals. They go to Wall Street, or they move up the corporate ladder and find themselves gradually screwing the public more and more...at first merely to secure their jobs, then for the bonuses and later to line their own pockets on sly, perhaps so they can buy that beach house on the shore, or a luxury limo, or jet plane, or a politician or two. But apparently we have to let these guys go, so we can concentrate on the burglar who broke into your home a decade or so ago. If you’re rich enough you can burgle money right and left and have your particular criminal scheme declared technically legal.

[buttslinger]

I would say from an Economic standpoint that big corpa is more to blame than why so many black people are in prison. The majority of poor people aren't criminals. If I sell you a used car and you overpay, is that my fault? That's business.
It's just unrealistic to think that a Nation that killed it's parent England, imported slaves, killed Indians, even went to war with itself is going to suddenly start giving everything to poor people.
STUPIDITY is on my side. If you can talk all your associates into forming a union, I can talk them out of it. People are stupid. People in jail are the stupidest. In the end your friends let you down. They turn on you and get new friends.

[trish]

I would say from an Economic standpoint that big corpa is more to blame than why so many black people are in prison. The majority of poor people aren't criminals. If I sell you a used car and you overpay, is that my fault? That's business.

If you made clear to me exactly what it was that I was buying, then the deal was fair. But saying "That's business" doesn't absolve you of blame if you knowingly hid problems that would have influenced the deal. In Trump-language, you'd be a winner and I'd be a loser; but in the estimation of a decent person, I got rooked and you were being shady.

If you say you're willing to rook stupid people to further your own ends, that's fine...in the sense that at least you're being up front. But to say that the people who operate this way aren't blameworthy is to stupidly buy into their con.

[buttslinger]

My dinner arrived, chicken and snow peas.
I have said in the past that the Big Corporations are to blame, and to some extent that's true, but they're an easy target. Most businesses fail, they usually fight amongst themselves, and without businesses and factories we'd all be dirt farmers.
The rest of the World hates us because we unfairly stick it to them to up our own standard of living. Whiners.
It used to be the entire family would work in the factories long hours for pennies. Not because the Govt condoned it, because there really wasn't much of a regulatory Govt back then. After the Depression and the A-bomb, the lights are always on in D.C.
Even in a Perfect Society, you're going to have people picking up the garbage, cleaning the toilets, shingling roofs in the hot sun. Who chooses who they are? Whose idea was that? Lots of CEOs and Slush Fund slime made excellent grades in prestigious Universities. Smartest guys in the room.
Most guys in prison didn't make it through high school.
I assure that the guys who end up in prison are no more honorable than golden parachute one percenters. The bottom one percent are most certainly more dangerous than the top one percent. They're both predatory.
If it seems I'm unclear and trying to muddy the waters I am. In a college dorm you can figure out the entire world, but when you go outside somebody stole your bike. When you go to a job interview you smile in clean clothes and make sure not to make eye contact with the janitor.
Everybody wants to score.
We've got the most Liberal President we've ever had in office, and good intentions are crucial at the top, but that doesn't mean 330 million people are going to step out into the sunshine. If anybody's to blame for the state of the Union, it's those 330 million people.

[buttslinger]

if you made clear to me exactly what it was that i was buying, then the deal was fair...
.

caveat emptor

[trish]

Even capitalism's most beloved magical incantations won't absolve you.

[buttslinger]

While I might agree with you that Corporations are the Fourth Reich, and may bring down the entire world economy, I don't think it plays much in the struggle between cops and robbers. Throughout history, there have been guys that will cut your throat for a dollar, and just because Scrooge caused the Cratchit family much sorrow, they remained good people.

I've mentioned a few times about how I used to embezzle money from my job to live a double life at the strip clubs, my actual job was a boring cakewalk compared to the Jedi mind games I had to play with my coworkers, even my boss knew I was stealing, but there was a sympathy as well as a fear we all dealt with, so I'm glad I got out of there without time in Club Fed.
I graduated from strippers to whores, and at the end I would hang out with the girls that had rooms of their own. This is where I came into contact with the 24/7 get high folks. By the time I was buying large quantity of crack cocaine, I could also get all the young pussy I wanted, stolen jewelry, guns, anything I wanted. Except by that time all I wanted was crack. One of the girls I really liked ODed, one went to prison, one died on the operating table, and one got knifed to death. Compared to my life in the suburbs, these people lead lives of adventure as well as sorrow.
I wouldn't call any of those girls evil, but until I learned the ropes I met lots of girls who wouldn't hesitate to rob me blind. Some of them just never had a chance. Broken family types. And you can bet that whatever they got arrested for, they had gotten away with a hundred times before. I tried to help one of the girls with stuff, but she would trade it for drugs. I kind of tried to stay aloof from it all, sometimes the conversations between the girls and the cops were really funny.