The article doesn't mention how the police disconnected his security cameras and stole $400 (which they later returned). Also, it seems to fail to link to the source video itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y
Afroman says they confiscated ~$5,000 and returned it $400 short.[0]
An 'independent' investigation (by another sheriff's office, two counties over) claims the bags were miscounted multiple times and the correct amount of money was returned.[1]
Strap in, Afroman's next single is gonna be wild...
Not to mention whatever was in their paperwork for the warrant was a fabrication, apparently!
That should be the entire story: if a raid is performed and the warrant doesn’t pan out the cops behind the warrant should be immediately investigated by another agency (which, they’re cops too so who knows if this would help).
And lose their pension. That’s the only thing which motivates cops. There should be a citizen review board that has the power to hand down the verdict. I’m primarily thinking of the Daniel Shaver incident in Mesa AZ, where Daniel was effectively murdered by a Mesa police officer. The officer had to leave the force, but he’s still collecting his pension. Effectively an early retirement plan.
That was more or less my first thought, but most likely the result would be that it would never happen, because it is not so difficult for someone with a warrant to search your house, to "find" something there. Right now, there's no motive, but if you knew that coming up empty would be, not embarrassing, but legally dangerous, the temptation to make sure you always bring backup evidence to be "found", would be large. I think it would make things worse, not better.
I have been saying this for a long time, as in, why are other police departments investigating the police departments. This is one of the few agencies where the agency investigate themselves, and the government just let it happen.
> if a raid is performed and the warrant doesn’t pan out the cops behind the warrant should be immediately investigated by another agency (which, they’re cops too so who knows if this would help).
As long as we're talking about shoulds, we should have an independent body reviewing police misconduct and major screw ups. There should be very little "police policing themselves".
Police can police themselves when it comes to the kinds of things any other workplace handles themselves, like people showing up late for their shifts, or stealing office supplies. When police end up violate the rights of Americans though, let police handle that however they want internally, but that should always be in addition to what an outside body decides.
Honestly, the police should welcome the idea too. I'm sure there are plenty of officers who would rather be doing their job than spending time busting down the doors of innocent people and searching for fake kidnapping victims they'll never find.
There were quite a few videos on Afroman's youtube channel relying on the security cam footage. I'm perusing these and it seems to me Will You Help Me Repair My Door (the one you linked to) works best as a video, but Lemon Pound Cake (sung to the melody of Under The Boardwalk) seems like the best song. Funny stuff.
Basically he moved to a new bougie neighborhood and the neighbors called the cops on him accusing him of "selling dope" (the primary hook of the 1 minute song). So he took his security footage and made a music video out of it
You can see the SWAT team members casually talking to the neighbors peeking over the fence too lol
The article doesn’t read as if they are claiming they were filmed illegally.
It looks mostly like a claim about using their likeness commercially —- their personality rights. i.e. the rights someone would sign over in a modeling contract.
…Like how you can’t put Tom Hanks face on a box of cigarettes and sell it without permission. He may sue and claim that you’ve tarnished his image.
But yeah, it’s a stretch here too given the circumstances, but these laws vary by state so I have no clue how this state handles it.
I guess the "damages" claims don't arise from filming them, but from making the video public.
Still, it seems to me (IANAL) that the suit doesn't stand a snowflake's chance in hell. In particular, they reckon their damages not based on any actual damage, but on the earnings Afroman made from publicising them.
Well, that's what the report says; but it's from The Grauniad, and the quality of reporting in that organ has been declining rather quickly (whatever Wikipedia says about "reliable sources").
"Kidnapping" basically allows you to legally SWAT someone as long as you're in earshot of their house. Some years back a friend of mine had a SWAT team show up because someone "heard a girl screaming"; when he refused to answer the door, they flashbanged his apartment and busted in (then he was evicted because of a clause that said your landlord can kick you out for being merely suspected of a crime).
> Afroman responded to the lawsuit, telling TMZ the deputies have no grounds to sue, especially since they lifted a stack of money from his property and at first, didn’t return $400 of the seized cash.
In all the discussion about qualified immunity, it seems to me police unions don't get discussed enough.
Police unions appear to be a significant reason why police officers are shielded from accountability. They make police disciplinary records private [1], are why officers receive excessive overtime pay [2], sometimes including kickbacks to their municipality/town, issue cringeworthy statements [3], and pour $ millions into elections [4]. The more I learn about them, the more disappointment I have in American policing.
Why does the American public tolerate police unions?
Perhaps the better question is, who are the politicians that accept their money?
I somewhat support unions for private corporations (except when membership is obligatory),
but unions for public employment just don't make sense!
For private corporations, there's an obvious balance - if the union strikes too much, the whole company goes under (because all production stops).
But for public jobs (e.g. cops, or notoriously, London tube workers), the union can literally demand anything, and the employees can't be fired, and the employer (the government) can't go bankrupt... it's just the population that suffers.
> but unions for public employment just don't make sense!
Seriously? You think it makes no sense for firemen, teachers, nurses, paramedics and waste collectors to act collectively to protect their pay and working conditions? Do you really think that the only bad employers are private employers?
I'm not convinced it is the fact that they have a union is critical for their extensive protections, even in the US there are many other classes of jobs that have unions and they do not enjoy anything like the protection the US police does.
The most reasonable explanation for benefits far in excess of what other unions can muster is the fact that they have a privilege simply by being police, which makes sense since they are largely the force used to suppress other challengers to the authority of employers.
In other words, they got these protections because their employers were willing to accept them, safe in the knowledge that they didn't need those avenues to extract accountability, not simply because their union asked for it.
Afaik no labor unions recognize police unions as labor unions. For the simple fact that police unions never join actions in solidarity with labor, but often do against them even to the point of violent strike breaking.
We also need cops to be prosecuted by an independent authority tasked with this. Having the DA do it is a huge conflict of interest, the DA is highly dependent on the local cops.
I'd like to see an end to police officers bouncing from one department to another after they've been fired (or resigned) for misconduct.
Also, I'd like to see cops held liable for settlements, not the tax payer!
Both of these can be achieved by forcing cops to carry liability insurance. The more claims they get, the higher their premiums, and eventually bad cops will be uninsurable - thus unemployment.
> Why does the American public tolerate police unions?
Corporate media shapes public opinion shapes political campaigns. Violent crime is historically low, but the public thinks crime is rampant and rising.
Because real money is on the line. From manufactured outrage (advertising) to the schools-to-prison pipeline to the penal industry.
Witness the Democrats ongoing "tough on crime" measures. Total kabuki. With real world consequences.
Witness the success rate of "progressive" prosecutors. Every one of them chewed up and spit out by The System.
--
FWIW, my best guess is successful reform will come from urban courts and judges.
My city's and county's benches are very progressive. Stuff like creating separate courts for vets, bringing wrap around social services to the court room, innovations such as restorative justice, a traveling court that brings proceedings to the communities, shepherding student courts, etc, etc.
(Not sure why the downvote, it's a legit question)
I'm of a mind there should be more union protections for everyone, not fewer. The strong protections that police have should be the norm.
As for police reform, I moved from the US to a Nordic country known for professional and committed cops. Mind blowing, how calm and peaceful and unfraught dealing with cops are, here. When I first moved here, it was the police department that handled immigration matters and I nearly had a panic attack. Completely unnecessary fear.
To be a cop here requires 4 years of training, a degree, as well as ongoing psych evals. Everyone including the police are just so freaking reasonable it can be disconcerting!
I'm not sure what is going on in the US that makes the government so extractive. That corruption is the root cause of any police corruption. But more training and exclusivity couldn't hurt.
> The strong protections that police have should be the norm.
I agree the US generally doesn't have great worker protections and the situation should probably be improved.
On the other hand, when the public seeks redress against police misconduct, they have the unions to thank for serious obstacles they must face. Unions historically have succeeded in hiding disciplinary records from the public, apparently help "bad apples" quickly get re-hired the next town over, inflate salaries and are behind very expensive defined benefit pensions. It seems hard to argue that police unions are furthering the public interest. Combined with qualified immunity, which is nonsensical overreaching judicial activism, and the Supreme Court ruling officers have no duty to protect [0], American policing seems to fail its public terribly.
I've noticed certain YouTube channels seem to easily and consistently get endless examples of obvious police misconduct [1][2][3].
Meanwhile I've previously seen people argue that improving the pay [4] may help, but at least in some states when factoring in overtime and weird contractual rules+bonuses, total pay seems to be already very high.
Some leftists argue that police are essentially an extension of state power, and so not labor in the traditional sense. To have a Union that protects state power only serves to doubly oppress the people state power is used against. These people then argue that police unions are a corruption of the idea of unions, and should not exist. Laborers should have Union protection, but not the state.
I should say I’m not too well versed in this argument, so this is my vague recollection of its high level points.
There was a time when even union members and liberals agreed that a public sector union was a nonsense concept. I think it was JFK that first permitted them, and since then they've grown to such enormous political power that questioning their existence has become wrongthink.
In theory public sector unions cannot legally strike or engage in work actions but this constraint is ignored whenever they find it inconvenient.
They create a feedback loop between public expenditure and political power which is very bad for liberal democracy.
I don't understand either. Unions for public service jobs seems strange. An extreme example would be the military. Could you imagine if the military had unions?
What I don't understand and have been unable to find the answer to is that this warrant was granted based on accusations of drug trafficking and kidnapping--where is the justification for that?
What was the probable cause which prompted the judge to grant a home search warrant for drug trafficking and kidnapping here?
Why is there seemingly no accountability going on?
Armed police broke into someone's home, looking for drug trafficking and kidnapping, and it seems that evidence of neither was found. Why were they allowed to do this by the signing judge?
There's no accountability because there's no account to hold. The police have qualified immunity and the judge has absolute immunity. Unless you can prove that he knew he was doing the wrong thing with the intent to cause harm there is absolutely nothing to be done.
All of those supposed protections are meaningless in the face of the superior protection granted to police, judges, and prosecutors.
It's so insane. It should be three exact opposite. If you hold public office, the punishment should be amplified not reduced or outright impossible. IMO if a judge gets caught even for a minor offense like shoplifting, they should get a year in prison and lose their job. If cops steal from suspects, manufacture or plant evidence they should look at the death penalty. The impact of the crime when committed by an official goes way beyond the immediate damage since it undermines the entire system. A cop being exposed as corrupt is much more harmful to the system than a private individual vomiting a murder. The punishment needs to be in accordance with that.
> Why is there seemingly no accountability going on?
Warrants are petitioned for by district attorneys, who are elected officials. In principle, the means of redress for inappropriately pushing for warrants and improperly using prosecutorial discretion is at the ballot box.
That's an unworkable solution if much of the electorate actually enjoys the prosecution using such frivolous warrants to target the "wrong" kinds of people.
One of the more equalizing things about bullies, especially the adult variety, is they’re often non-thinking and inevitably hoist themselves by their own petard.
Maybe this parallel is obvious, but being the aggressor and seeing yourself as the victim is completely characteristic of some popular political groups and a certain warfaring dictator. They always seem to destroy themselves given enough time.
bullies, especially the adult variety, is they’re
often non-thinking and inevitably hoist themselves
by their own petard
Wow, absolutely the opposite experience here.
Adult bullies are in my experience typically waging some kind of information warfare -- spreading rumors and allegations. Either personal or work related. And/or they are exploiting some power asymmetry.
These are people who play political games at work or in other organizations, and/or spread rumors online. They know how to build social/political currency and then "spend" it by making allegations that are either difficult or impossible to disprove.
Essentially, unless massively incompetent, they hold all of the power. And most of them have been practicing this since their school days.
It takes easily 10x the effort for you to disprove something as it does for them to make the allegation in the first place. Sometimes it's 100x, sometimes it's just impossible. And God forbid you're facing more than one of them. You really can't win, unless they lose interest in you.
As far as "non-thinking" goes? I dunno. Some are totally non-thinking, and some are sociopathically doing it "for the lulz," but a lot of them have thought deeply about what they're doing and are absolutely convinced that they are right.
The man in question will live out his final years as an international pariah, paranoid about appearing weak in front of any potential rivals domestically, unable to freely travel internationally and with his legacy tarnished beyond repair.
I’m not sure we will see him in a jail cell, but currently he’s not exactly living his best life …
In general that’s not a great heuristic to go by. In college, when I came across a bully who was much, much smarter than me it was terrifying. The lesson was avoid at all costs.
It's simply exploiting the desire that people have to protect the vulnerable; extremely social people are competing to be the "underdog." People who say they are being victimized by other people's claims of victimhood are a subset of that same group.
I'd guess it's that everyone is often non-thinking. I'm not sure if there's a correlation between intelligence and kindness and which way it would go. But the thing is you get more free passes when you're kind. If it was all his friends throwing him a surprise party and forgetting of course he'd notice on his cameras, it would just be funny.
My impression is that, among humans, there is a somewhat positive correlation between intelligence and benevolent behavior.
(But I would expect the tails to come apart somewhat.
Also, among non-human minds I wouldn’t necessarily expect this to show the same pattern.)
Unfortunately fighting with bad cops is like fighting with a rude low-level customer service rep. It may be true that they suck, but the ultimate source of the bad situation is the result of intentional decisions by people wearing nice suits somewhere, who through many layers of beauracracy, hired these low-level people to do their dirty work.
The whole State at this point is oriented against the People. Fighting the police is at best very inefficient, even when you're in the right. This whole neocon/neolib uniparty and corporatocracy running our country has to be ousted first. Local level policy will follow naturally from that.
> This whole neocon/neolib uniparty and corporatocracy running our country has to be ousted first.
IMO the most direct and safest route to that outcome is relentless and brave advocacy for election reform. Duverger's Law holds that first-past-the-goalpost-winner-take-all virtually guarantees a party duopoly. It may take a constitutional amendment, but proportional representation is the only way that could happen. All other fixes are useless band-aids or dangerous.
I'm originally from a country that has proportional representation. Let me tell you - it's a total disaster.
One serious problem is actually the law you mention - in proportional rep there's a plethora of parties, most of whom have no chance of ever governing or influencing policy. Two-party states are better in that the population can punish party A by voting for party B and vice versa. In a many-party-state, some people stop voting for party A but they split their votes between B, C, D, and E, none of which are effective in opposing A.
The other serious issue is that each party has a completely unaccountable and opaque system for deciding on a list of representatives. Getting on that list presents wonderful opportunities for corruption for bad politicians.
I now live in first-past-the-post Canada and it's so much better. I have an actual politician who is motivated to help me when I ask and read my letters because a couple of thousand votes can swing the local election; whereas before I was a faceless, undifferentiated citizen and went completely ignored.
National proportionality, abolishing state representation, would take an amendment. Using STV or party list proportional within the bounds of each states house seats would not.
The US, though, has a strongly Presidential system, which would favor duopoly without radical Cobstitutional reform, and the Senate is problematic as well.
Multi-party system is no guarantee either. Usually a newcomer party cannot rise quickly enough and by its second or third term will be completely assimilated by the system.
Unfortunately it's not just the federal government that's captured by these monied interests - it's the states, too. Just look at the private prison industry and their lobbying. I agree overall, though, decentralization and re-fragmentation is the only way this status quo is going to change.
This is getting ridiculous. In a free country, the people should be able to hold the police accountable. If police officers did their jobs properly, having a video posted should not cause any distress.
This is a one-way system, and their legal complaint is to shut down the only avenue this person has to get any form of justice. If the police want to be able to sue us, then we should be able to sue them.
I hope it goes to court; popcorn time. But I doubt the PD will let it get that far. I imagine there'll be a settlement (compensation to Afroman), with undisclosed terms.
I love the dude with the hard-ass tough-guy haircut: all shaved except the top of the scalp. It looks like a marine haircut, I think.
Readit News
https://www.complex.com/music/afroman-sued-by-ohio-sheriffs-...
Afroman says they confiscated ~$5,000 and returned it $400 short.[0]
An 'independent' investigation (by another sheriff's office, two counties over) claims the bags were miscounted multiple times and the correct amount of money was returned.[1]
Strap in, Afroman's next single is gonna be wild...
[0] https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2022/12/01/afroman-hom...
[1] https://www.fox19.com/2023/02/16/investigation-into-afromans...
That should be the entire story: if a raid is performed and the warrant doesn’t pan out the cops behind the warrant should be immediately investigated by another agency (which, they’re cops too so who knows if this would help).
As far as I'm concerned, the Ohio state government should step in and entirely dismantle this county's police department and replace everyone.
As long as we're talking about shoulds, we should have an independent body reviewing police misconduct and major screw ups. There should be very little "police policing themselves".
Police can police themselves when it comes to the kinds of things any other workplace handles themselves, like people showing up late for their shifts, or stealing office supplies. When police end up violate the rights of Americans though, let police handle that however they want internally, but that should always be in addition to what an outside body decides.
Honestly, the police should welcome the idea too. I'm sure there are plenty of officers who would rather be doing their job than spending time busting down the doors of innocent people and searching for fake kidnapping victims they'll never find.
The funny thing is this is basically the exact same story for J. Cole's "Neighbors"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nfVWiXY3WY
Basically he moved to a new bougie neighborhood and the neighbors called the cops on him accusing him of "selling dope" (the primary hook of the 1 minute song). So he took his security footage and made a music video out of it
You can see the SWAT team members casually talking to the neighbors peeking over the fence too lol
It looks mostly like a claim about using their likeness commercially —- their personality rights. i.e. the rights someone would sign over in a modeling contract.
…Like how you can’t put Tom Hanks face on a box of cigarettes and sell it without permission. He may sue and claim that you’ve tarnished his image.
But yeah, it’s a stretch here too given the circumstances, but these laws vary by state so I have no clue how this state handles it.
Still, it seems to me (IANAL) that the suit doesn't stand a snowflake's chance in hell. In particular, they reckon their damages not based on any actual damage, but on the earnings Afroman made from publicising them.
Well, that's what the report says; but it's from The Grauniad, and the quality of reporting in that organ has been declining rather quickly (whatever Wikipedia says about "reliable sources").
https://www.adamscountycourts.com/images/REG.jpg
> Afroman responded to the lawsuit, telling TMZ the deputies have no grounds to sue, especially since they lifted a stack of money from his property and at first, didn’t return $400 of the seized cash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwZxxa8f-HA
And: Lemon Pound Cake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xxK5yyecRo
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqIRTkgukr2/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Police unions appear to be a significant reason why police officers are shielded from accountability. They make police disciplinary records private [1], are why officers receive excessive overtime pay [2], sometimes including kickbacks to their municipality/town, issue cringeworthy statements [3], and pour $ millions into elections [4]. The more I learn about them, the more disappointment I have in American policing.
Why does the American public tolerate police unions? Perhaps the better question is, who are the politicians that accept their money?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/nyregion/nypd-discipline-...
[2] https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Police-overtime-spen...
[3] https://www.nycpba.org/miscellaneous/anti-cop-city-council/
[4] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/06/police-unions-spend...
but unions for public employment just don't make sense!
For private corporations, there's an obvious balance - if the union strikes too much, the whole company goes under (because all production stops).
But for public jobs (e.g. cops, or notoriously, London tube workers), the union can literally demand anything, and the employees can't be fired, and the employer (the government) can't go bankrupt... it's just the population that suffers.
Seriously? You think it makes no sense for firemen, teachers, nurses, paramedics and waste collectors to act collectively to protect their pay and working conditions? Do you really think that the only bad employers are private employers?
The most reasonable explanation for benefits far in excess of what other unions can muster is the fact that they have a privilege simply by being police, which makes sense since they are largely the force used to suppress other challengers to the authority of employers.
In other words, they got these protections because their employers were willing to accept them, safe in the knowledge that they didn't need those avenues to extract accountability, not simply because their union asked for it.
Also, I'd like to see cops held liable for settlements, not the tax payer!
Both of these can be achieved by forcing cops to carry liability insurance. The more claims they get, the higher their premiums, and eventually bad cops will be uninsurable - thus unemployment.
Corporate media shapes public opinion shapes political campaigns. Violent crime is historically low, but the public thinks crime is rampant and rising.
Because real money is on the line. From manufactured outrage (advertising) to the schools-to-prison pipeline to the penal industry.
Witness the Democrats ongoing "tough on crime" measures. Total kabuki. With real world consequences.
Witness the success rate of "progressive" prosecutors. Every one of them chewed up and spit out by The System.
--
FWIW, my best guess is successful reform will come from urban courts and judges.
My city's and county's benches are very progressive. Stuff like creating separate courts for vets, bringing wrap around social services to the court room, innovations such as restorative justice, a traveling court that brings proceedings to the communities, shepherding student courts, etc, etc.
I'm of a mind there should be more union protections for everyone, not fewer. The strong protections that police have should be the norm.
As for police reform, I moved from the US to a Nordic country known for professional and committed cops. Mind blowing, how calm and peaceful and unfraught dealing with cops are, here. When I first moved here, it was the police department that handled immigration matters and I nearly had a panic attack. Completely unnecessary fear.
To be a cop here requires 4 years of training, a degree, as well as ongoing psych evals. Everyone including the police are just so freaking reasonable it can be disconcerting!
I'm not sure what is going on in the US that makes the government so extractive. That corruption is the root cause of any police corruption. But more training and exclusivity couldn't hurt.
I agree the US generally doesn't have great worker protections and the situation should probably be improved.
On the other hand, when the public seeks redress against police misconduct, they have the unions to thank for serious obstacles they must face. Unions historically have succeeded in hiding disciplinary records from the public, apparently help "bad apples" quickly get re-hired the next town over, inflate salaries and are behind very expensive defined benefit pensions. It seems hard to argue that police unions are furthering the public interest. Combined with qualified immunity, which is nonsensical overreaching judicial activism, and the Supreme Court ruling officers have no duty to protect [0], American policing seems to fail its public terribly.
I've noticed certain YouTube channels seem to easily and consistently get endless examples of obvious police misconduct [1][2][3].
Meanwhile I've previously seen people argue that improving the pay [4] may help, but at least in some states when factoring in overtime and weird contractual rules+bonuses, total pay seems to be already very high.
The problems seem to run very deep.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@AuditTheAudit
[2] https://www.youtube.com/@LongIslandAudit
[3] https://www.youtube.com/@LackLusterMedia
[4]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35235677
I should say I’m not too well versed in this argument, so this is my vague recollection of its high level points.
Deleted Comment
In theory public sector unions cannot legally strike or engage in work actions but this constraint is ignored whenever they find it inconvenient.
They create a feedback loop between public expenditure and political power which is very bad for liberal democracy.
Deleted Comment
Police should carry insurance against malpractice. When malpractice is carried out, the policeman (or union's) insurance should pay, not the taxpayer.
Let the God, aka invisible hand of capitalism, aka the greed of insurance companies, sort them out.
No need to imagine: https://dfwa.org.au/about/
What's so strange about public sector unions?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_and_Public_Sector_Un...
The problem with the US Police unions is they act to cover up bad behaviour, etc.
What was the probable cause which prompted the judge to grant a home search warrant for drug trafficking and kidnapping here?
Why is there seemingly no accountability going on?
Armed police broke into someone's home, looking for drug trafficking and kidnapping, and it seems that evidence of neither was found. Why were they allowed to do this by the signing judge?
All of those supposed protections are meaningless in the face of the superior protection granted to police, judges, and prosecutors.
Warrants are petitioned for by district attorneys, who are elected officials. In principle, the means of redress for inappropriately pushing for warrants and improperly using prosecutorial discretion is at the ballot box.
Maybe this parallel is obvious, but being the aggressor and seeing yourself as the victim is completely characteristic of some popular political groups and a certain warfaring dictator. They always seem to destroy themselves given enough time.
Adult bullies are in my experience typically waging some kind of information warfare -- spreading rumors and allegations. Either personal or work related. And/or they are exploiting some power asymmetry.
These are people who play political games at work or in other organizations, and/or spread rumors online. They know how to build social/political currency and then "spend" it by making allegations that are either difficult or impossible to disprove.
Essentially, unless massively incompetent, they hold all of the power. And most of them have been practicing this since their school days.
It takes easily 10x the effort for you to disprove something as it does for them to make the allegation in the first place. Sometimes it's 100x, sometimes it's just impossible. And God forbid you're facing more than one of them. You really can't win, unless they lose interest in you.
As far as "non-thinking" goes? I dunno. Some are totally non-thinking, and some are sociopathically doing it "for the lulz," but a lot of them have thought deeply about what they're doing and are absolutely convinced that they are right.
Things we say to make ourselves feel better. A certain warfaring dictator has enjoyed a long life of unlimited power, riches, and indulgences.
I’m not sure we will see him in a jail cell, but currently he’s not exactly living his best life …
Dead Comment
It is rooted in narcissism to be sure (which is probably where a lot of bullying is rooted in too).
The whole State at this point is oriented against the People. Fighting the police is at best very inefficient, even when you're in the right. This whole neocon/neolib uniparty and corporatocracy running our country has to be ousted first. Local level policy will follow naturally from that.
IMO the most direct and safest route to that outcome is relentless and brave advocacy for election reform. Duverger's Law holds that first-past-the-goalpost-winner-take-all virtually guarantees a party duopoly. It may take a constitutional amendment, but proportional representation is the only way that could happen. All other fixes are useless band-aids or dangerous.
One serious problem is actually the law you mention - in proportional rep there's a plethora of parties, most of whom have no chance of ever governing or influencing policy. Two-party states are better in that the population can punish party A by voting for party B and vice versa. In a many-party-state, some people stop voting for party A but they split their votes between B, C, D, and E, none of which are effective in opposing A.
The other serious issue is that each party has a completely unaccountable and opaque system for deciding on a list of representatives. Getting on that list presents wonderful opportunities for corruption for bad politicians.
I now live in first-past-the-post Canada and it's so much better. I have an actual politician who is motivated to help me when I ask and read my letters because a couple of thousand votes can swing the local election; whereas before I was a faceless, undifferentiated citizen and went completely ignored.
National proportionality, abolishing state representation, would take an amendment. Using STV or party list proportional within the bounds of each states house seats would not.
The US, though, has a strongly Presidential system, which would favor duopoly without radical Cobstitutional reform, and the Senate is problematic as well.
Such a massive civil uprising, with no legislative response except to perhaps retrench qualified immunity, is not the sign of a free country.
Yes, well ...
I love the dude with the hard-ass tough-guy haircut: all shaved except the top of the scalp. It looks like a marine haircut, I think.
Deleted Comment