> In Minneapolis they want to dismantle the existing police force and replace it with another. A big reason for wanting to do this is to get rid of the problem cops.
So throw out the whole bunch because of a few bad apples? And what happens when the replacements have problem cops? Do it over again?
Five police officers in Miami recently attacked two men while thirteen of their fellow officers watched. [1] The idiom "bad apples" comes from the saying, "A few bad apples spoil the whole bunch," so it's an appropriate term here.
And only charged with misdemeanor "battery" without any enhancements. Had the perps not been police it would be multiple felonies + enhancements for things like gang activity and firearm possession. Looks to me like the DA does not want to upset the police and their unions and is only doing the very minimum to make an impression that he is working.
"Bad apples" should lose their jobs before more shit happens under their watch. Instead, they become a symptom of something bigger: the police is unable to police itself.
Presumably the so called good apples will get hired by the newly formed police force. Though I would argue there are very few good apples. You aren’t a good cop when you allow and fail to report on your fellow officers meting out non judicial punishments.
I'm not trying to be a troll with this, but is that true?
I don't mean the fact that Iraq and Afghanistan were failed missions. But I've heard that 90% of the money spent on those wars went to Americans in some way or another, military contractors, suppliers, etc. all the way down the line to people like me in tech who may work on software used by the military.
Right now, the money went to Americans and the result was we blew up countries the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia. Imagine instead if the money went to Americans anyway, AND we had much better national infrastructure. You could even pitch it as necessary for national defense anyway.
According to this Adam Tooze article the wars cost around 800,000 dead people. Then there is the incalculable emotional cost to survivors and participants. This alone means that spending $6 trillion building trains would have been much better than on war.
Dont forget that the some of the kids who watched their parents being killed by American drones would have the desire to take revenge later when they grow up.
If it’s a choice between paying Americans to dig and fill 2.5 trillion dollars worth of holes and the only deliverable after 20 years is dead Americans and Afghanis, versus paying Americans 1/3 that amount, and the deliverable is a durable high speed rail network and all the economic knock-on effects that would bring in coming decades, what rational person would choose the former?
You could spend all that money employing contractors producing weapons and weapons research. Or you could spent that money employing contractors producing high speed rail.
Or, more interestingly, you could abandon the "contractor" model which is just a way to siphon public money into the hand of private shareholders, and fund self-organized public services. Self-organized, as in not centralized/authoritarian bureaucracies, but actual field workers coming together and deciding on strategies to do their job (turns out they're usually much better than managers at doing that).
More interestingly, if instead of bombing Afghans you built them a nice high speed rail network along a nice freight network, economically integrating the traditionally independent regions, they may be grateful enough to make the Taliban lose political power.
In my mind it used to be a respectable profession, but now it's just partisans against partisans. Even for issues that aren't on their face overly political.
I'm saying that censoring political discourse using Section 230 is a sure-fire way to get politicians mad at you and start thinking about how to amend Section 230 so you can't do that ever again.
Using Section 230 for means like this is potentially very self-destructive and self-defeating.
