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incoherent posted:Oklands Gentrification is the byproduct of the hellish NIMBY conditions in SF proper. No way to honestly build new affordable housing and that only accelerated what's happening to oakland. There's lots of brownfield we could develop into transit centric housing/mixed used development. But you probably won't be able to sell a luxury condo building in Oakland or Richmond, so why bother building housing at all?
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Dec 5, 2016 17:56
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The profiteering landlord, the abusive scumbag running the collective, and the decision to throw a for-profit party in a space that was the very definition of a death trap. I can understand that gentrification is an easy place to lay the blame, but there was a whole lot of wrong that happened there. It's terrible that so many people died, especially because it was totally preventable. I've helped studios and art collective spaces get up to code in the past, and I've worked in artists' spaces where we had to make the decision to not throw parties (even though parties can be very effective fundraisers) because there wasn't a way to do it safely in the space. There seems to be an undercurrent of "artists have to live this way" emerging from some of the think-pieces that have come out about the fire. That's unfortunate, because there are plenty of artist's spaces, even ones operating in legal grey areas, that are able to do so safely. They may not be 100%-up-to-code safe, but they're nowhere near the willful negligence of Ghost Ship and Derick Ion. It would be as though the days after The Station nightclub fire in 2003, there had been people talking about how the negligent things they did there were somehow necessary for a place to be a rock club. EDIT: As a friend of mine put it, "If they had just gotten the place 20% of the way to code a lot of tragedy could have been prevented. Now there are a lot of spaces that are doing that 20%, if not more, but they're going to get shut down because there are going to be inspectors going out looking for things to be at 110% of code." LanceHunter fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 18:53
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You're right, and those are good points. Everything I've been reading about Derrick Ion indicates he's a scumbag of nearly cinematic proportion. His reaction to a massive fatality fire that he figures as highly responsible for was to make a Facebook post about how unfair it was that he lost a bunch of fun stuff he liked owning.
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Dec 5, 2016 19:34
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LanceHunter posted:EDIT: As a friend of mine put it, "If they had just gotten the place 20% of the way to code a lot of tragedy could have been prevented. Now there are a lot of spaces that are doing that 20%, if not more, but they're going to get shut down because there are going to be inspectors going out looking for things to be at 110% of code."
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Dec 5, 2016 19:43
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Leperflesh posted:And judges should have to be both, for years, but we just elect them, too. Doc Hawkins posted:(That other stuff sounds good though.) The "judges should have to serve as both a PD and DA" bit is unworkable, due to the aforementioned conflicts of interest, (would you want your prosecutor to be someone who had previously been your legal counsel?) and because the end result would be climbers with eyes on the DA's chair or a judgeship bouncing into the PD office for the minimum amount of time, trying not to do anything that might pass off their political benefactors, and leaving before accumuting relevant experience. It's not a recipe for competent, aggressive representation. I'm not sure what exactly you plan to replace traffic and family courts with, or how to have a legal system that doesn't have a working relationship between police and prosecutors. Why do police need an associates degree? What problem exactly would that solve? I'm pretty sure Oakland PD didn't have their issues because they didn't take the college class where they tell you that you can't gently caress underage prostitutes you meet on the job. Adding an arbitrary education requirement sounds like a great way to exclude minorities and the disadvantaged. Jail is necessary, because the cops can't just leave someone in the back of their car while they wait for them to sober up, or until their trial date. Did you mean prison? I like the idea that rapists and MS13 members are confined by something more restrictive than an ankle bracelet. If by mens rea defense you mean letting ignorance of the law being a defense, it would make prosecuting crime, especially white collar crime, effectively impossible. Are you working on some esoteric definition of statutory law, or mens rea? Literally all of his suggestions are impractical, vague, or just a really bad idea. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 19:47
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Restaurants are routinely inspected for code violations, because if you don't, the public gets sick. I was surprised to learn yesterday that fire code inspections are not similarly proactive: rather, they're reactive. You get inspected for fire code if/when you make (permitted) changes to your building, or if someone (you, or a complaint) request an inspection, but there is no program of routine inspections. Presumably there's no budget for such a thing. I would like to see a reaction to this tragedy include a strong push for money for routine fire safety inspection of all places open to the public, plus apartments and other buildings where compliance is the responsibility of someone other than the tenant. Dead Reckoning posted:I'm not really sure that removing any incentive for DAs to push for anything less than the maximum sentence is going to help out defendants any. I believe that the system actually permits DAs to push for - and get - sentences beyond what they would get (on average) if they had to prosecute. The fundamental premise of a plea bargain is that the DAs office assesses the risk of a trial, and offers a lesser charge in exchange for avoiding that risk. Meanwhile, the person charged with the crime avoids the risk of trial by pleading guilty to a lesser charge. But this is a fundamentally unjust system. The vast majority of defendants are under-represented, and the risk of a trial incorporates not just the risk of a conviction, but very likely the loss of employment even if they are eventually acquitted. Many defendants also believe - justifiably - that they have no chance in court, because the evidence against them includes the testimony of one or more police officers. Public defenders routinely and habitually recommend accepting a plea bargain to their clients. Their case loads are such that they could not possibly handle full trials for all or even a majority of their cases. They are strongly incentivized to convince their clients that a plea bargain is their best or only option. The consequence of all of this is bleak: innocent people plead guilty to avoid losing their jobs, and defendants who are "guilty" - in the sense that they know they broke the law, but would have been acquitted because of poor police procedure or prosecutorial incompetence - are convicted. The results are very bad. Disproportionately, poor people become felons for crimes they didn't commit in order to avoid harsher charges, cultures of sloppiness and cheating become ingrained and routine among DAs and the police, DAs prefer to pad their conviction rates with the cases most easily bargained (drug possession is #1, mainly due to mandatory minimum sentencing) rather than the cases that represent the greatest threats to the public (for example, successfully prosecuting rapists is notoriously difficult, so DAs can avoid those trials by offering plea bargains down to minor sexual assault charges). A White Guy posted:No. My stepbrother is a recovering addict and he was caught with a felonious amount of heroin this time a few years ago. Under the terms of his plea bargain, he avoided a felony and went to rehab and has so far, hasn't used again. Without plea bargaining, he would be doing ten to twenty years in a federal prison for possession with intent to sell. This actually highlights my point really well. Firstly, of course, possessing heroin or any other drug, as an adult for the purpose of adult consumption, shouldn't be a crime. Secondly, "with intent to distribute" ought to require actual proof of intent to sell, but right now the law also allows it to be based simply on how much of a specific drug a person possesses: prosecutors do not have to have actual evidence of intent, because of course, that would require more police work and effort. You'd have to bother to catch people actually selling, or at least, being in possession of scales, packaging, baggies, etc. - paraphernalia used as part of a sales operation. Maybe your stepbrother had all that stuff, but very often, it's just based on having "too much" of the drug, by whatever standard lawmakers decided that should be back in the 1970s and 1980s. Thirdly, of course, the way we treat drug addicts as criminals rather than victims is horrible, and has to change. Prison is not an effective tool for helping drug addicts to quit and recover. If your stepbrother's only "crime" was actually just having some heroin and being a heroin addict, he should have been handled and treated as what he was: sick. Sick people who are engaging in destructive self-harm need medical help, and sometimes in severe cases, that includes involuntary institutionalization, which might have to involve a court... but the entirety of the effort should be aimed at helping the sick person get better. Charging them with crimes is not helpful and is actually pretty loving evil. But fourthly and perhaps most directly relevant to my position: your stepbrother likely accepted a plea bargain on the premise that a full trial for possession with intent to sell would probably have resulted in his conviction. You certainly seem convinced of that. Maybe it was a likely outcome, I don't know what evidence there was in his case... but in general, the police and the DAs office are let off the hook by these kinds of plea bargains. They didn't have to prove anything, the evidence against your stepbrother went untested and unchallenged. The police might have mishandled that evidence (and mishandling of evidence is epidemic)... a good attorney might have been able to challenge the evidence and get it thrown out. The presumption of innocence prevails only in the courtroom: police get to make arrests based on mere suspicion, and then held if evidence meets just some very basic and minimal standards. The DA gets to use threats and coercion to strong-arm frightened and desperate people under tremendous immediate stress into pleading guilty to a crime, thus avoiding any testing of the evidence against them, while underpaid, overworked, and often badly jaded public defenders basically play along, at best using any immediately obvious weakness with the evidence as a bargaining chip to get the lightest charge possible from a guilty plea. The presumption by all parties is that the defendant would be proven guilty in court, and that presumption goes untested. And even if the evidence was strong enough for a conviction, absent mandatory sentencing laws, which I'm strongly against, your stepbrother would have faced a judge who had the opportunity to consider the entirety of your stepbrother's case, and, on conviction, give him an appropriate sentence that took into account his priors, his personal situation, his likelihood to repeat offend, and his needs. A good judge working with good laws would have been able to decide that your stepbrother was an addict who needed a shot at rehab and recovery, rather than a lengthy prison term. My desire to eliminate plea bargaining doesn't work in a vacuum, if it were the only change made to our criminal justice system. It's just one bullet point on a long list of changes, and would have to go hand in hand with rationalizing our laws, eliminating mandatory sentencing, recognizing that jail isn't effective as a deterrent or for rehabilitation, finding ways to incentivize prosecutors to seek justice over maximum numbers of convictions, serious and comprehensive reform of policing, and reform of statutory laws, among other items. If your description of your stepbrother's case is accurate - that is, he wasn't running a major drug selling operation peddling heroin to children and you just forgot to mention that - then under my dream scenario he'd never have even been charged with a crime. Even if heroin sale remained illegal, people selling heroin in order to feed their addictions would be treated first as addicts. We can and should fight black marketeers in dangerous illegal contraband using the legal system, but at the bottom street-level, a lot of the participants are basically impoverished victims. There's an unlimited supply of impoverished victims, so incarcerating them accomplishes nothing by itself but destroying lives, filling prisons, filling court dockets, and padding the conviction numbers of DAs offices.
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Dec 5, 2016 19:53
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So you think that PDs are under-resourced, and your solution is... That everyone charged has to go to trial? Because I don't think that is going to solve your problem. Are you hoping that, by slowing down the justice system by forcing every case to go to trial, you will over crowd the jails until criminals start getting released based on speedy trial or overcrowding grounds? Because the sort of people who are too poor to afford defense lawyers by definition can't afford lawyers to file those sort of motions. And remember, your plan is based around giving PDs even more work, so they won't be doing it. Not to mention that you're turbo-loving all the people who don't qualify for a PD or legal aid but know they have a losing case. Oh, and you are eliminating a primary tool for getting information on criminal conspiracies. If the prosecution's only options are to not charge an informing member at all (letting him completely off the hook) or taking the case to trial, there is no reason for a witness to cooperate or turn state's evidence. The idea that, if the police catch someone with $10,000 in uncut heroin, they should have to prove they were planning to distribute, rather than having just stopped off at drug Costco to stock up for the year, is absurd.
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Dec 5, 2016 20:29
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incoherent posted:Oklands Gentrification is the byproduct of the hellish NIMBY conditions in SF proper. No way to honestly build new affordable housing and that only accelerated what's happening to oakland. Not entirely. Oakland is full of NIMBYs too. The lack of housing is a regional problem (really it's a national one, that happens to be extra bad here), it's not just SF's fault, and SF is actually building a good amount of housing right now. As of May, there were 7,300 housing units under construction in SF (it's estimated that there needs to be 5,000 per year for a sustained period for rents to drop), with 11,800 more units that had building permits, and 27,000 more units in projects that were approved but not yet permitted. And there are another 17,000 units proposed on top of that. Housing still isn't getting built fast enough, but it's better than SF was doing a few years ago, and is more housing than Oakland is building (As of late 2015, Oakland only had 14,000 housing units under construction/approved/proposed). poo poo, SF recently raised a bunch of old NIMBY height limits and is building a new tallest skyscraper, with another one planned, along with two more that are almost as tall as the transamerica pyramid, all of which would have been unthinkable a couple decades ago ("my precious views! You're destroying the city's character, and making parking difficult, this is a quaint fishing village, not a major city!!"  )...poo poo is far from perfect, but it's definitely becoming less of a NIMBY stronghold.Trabisnikof posted:you probably won't be able to sell a luxury condo building in Oakland Except people are building luxury condos in Oakland.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:06
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Dead Reckoning posted:No, not really. I probably shouldn't have thrown out a laundry list like that. My intent was to show that I'm dissatisfied by many different aspects of the system, which I think needs reform at every level, including some changes that would be huge departures from how things have been done for a couple centuries. But, undoubtedly at least some of my ideas wouldn't work. I think we should be entertaining major ideas like these, though. The status quo, as I see it, is focused on generating revenue from citations, political success for criminal prosecutors, feeding into and reinforcing the racially-biased and extremely ignorant misconceptions of the public, and maximum punishment with little or no interest in long-term outcomes. At best, our current system puts a lot of "bad guys" into prison (and excuse me, yes, I meant prison not jail, the distinction is technically important although the terms are used interchangeably as colloquialisms), as long as they did one of the crimes the system really cares about and finds easy to prosecute, drug possession being the #1. I think prison is a bad idea that we are probably stuck with at least to some degree, until/unless we figure out how to cure people of violent urges, sociopathy, and psychopathy without simultaneously crushing people's free will and human rights. But, like a man who only owns a hammer seeing every problem in terms of nails, prison has become our go-to catch-all tool for every kind of problem involving unacceptable behavior. But prison is provably ineffective for many of the purposes for which we try to use it: it's really bad as a deterrent, especially for the most violent kinds of crime; it's so bad at reforming people that it actually makes a lot of people more prone to crime than they were before they went to prison, and of course, imprisoning people does not directly help victims, beyond the basic fact of (usually temporarily) separating a victim from their victimizer. Prison is also extremely expensive and provably less cost-effective than many of the alternatives. "I'm glad this murderer is locked up" makes tons of sense until you compare it to a plausible alternative of "I'm glad this person will no longer want to or try to murder anyone." The latter does not provide satisfaction for our desire for punishment, but it might be a lot better for all of us in the long term.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:18
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Dead Reckoning posted:So you think that PDs are under-resourced, and your solution is... That everyone charged has to go to trial? Of course not! Defendants are not prevented from pleading guilty. I would only prevent prosecutors from fishing for a guilty plea by dangling the threat of the harshest possible charges, even though the prosecutor knows perfectly well they probably couldn't prevail in court with those harsh charges. The current system is abusive. We need a less abusive system. Undoubtedly you can poke holes in any suggestion I make, since I'm not a lawmaker nor am I an expert on the legal system. I am convinced that the system we have right now systematically abuses the poorest defendents by coercing guilty pleas from people who are either innocent, or would only actually have been convicted of a lesser charge had the evidence against them been challenged in court. quote:And remember, your plan is based around giving PDs even more work, so they won't be doing it. I failed to mention that we need to radically increase the amount of money we spend on public defenders. Essentially we've radically increased the amount of arrests over the last century while failing to grow the system adequately to defend those arrested. And overcrowding of courts is due to similar issues. Ending the war on drugs would go a very long way towards fixing the problems of the overburdened system, but if we're not willing to do that, we need to spend a lot more money. What we have now isn't justice, it's a people-destroying machine. quote:Not to mention that you're turbo-loving all the people who don't qualify for a PD or legal aid but know they have a losing case. quote:Oh, and you are eliminating a primary tool for getting information on criminal conspiracies. If the prosecution's only options are to not charge an informing member at all (letting him completely off the hook) or taking the case to trial, there is no reason for a witness to cooperate or turn state's evidence. Yeah, that's a problem. The fact is, coercion and threats can be very effective. quote:The idea that, if the police catch someone with $10,000 in uncut heroin, they should have to prove they were planning to distribute, rather than having just stopped off at drug Costco to stock up for the year, is absurd. I don't think so. Why can't the police take a picture of them selling some heroin? Or get the testimony of someone who bought heroin from them? Or collect any other evidence that they've been selling heroin? And, just to be clear, the amount that constitutes defacto possession with intent to distribute Are often very low. A little googling suggests four grams of heroin is about $200 to $800 worth or so, depending on type and region. And of course, they're famously far harsher for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, for blatantly racist reasons. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 21:38
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cheese posted:From a backpacking and outdoor sports perspective, it does sort of suck that the Sierras are so tame now. Worst you will run into is a skittish black bear the size of a big dog stealing your food at night. Being in a place like the Canadian Rockies or Yellowstone that has 1k pound grizzlies out there really adds a little something else to the experience. I had to chase one away one time I was in the Sierras (near Bishop), and that fucker was much larger than a dog. It took 3 of us to act all huge for it to finally move on. It was over 10 years ago though.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:37
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Have you seen my apex seals? I seem to have lost them.
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Trabisnikof posted:But you probably won't be able to sell a luxury condo building in Oakland, so why bother building housing at all? That's a majority of what they're building in Oakland right now. SF is old stale hat, Oaktown is the new best city 
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Dec 5, 2016 21:50
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Rah! posted:Not entirely. Oakland is full of NIMBYs too. The lack of housing is a regional problem (really it's a national one, that happens to be extra bad here), it's not just SF's fault, and SF is actually building a good amount of housing right now. As of May, there were 7,300 housing units under construction in SF (it's estimated that there needs to be 5,000 per year for a sustained period for rents to drop), with 11,800 more units that had building permits, and 27,000 more units in projects that were approved but not yet permitted. And there are another 17,000 units proposed on top of that. Housing still isn't getting built fast enough, but it's better than SF was doing a few years ago, and is more housing than Oakland is building (As of late 2015, Oakland only had 14,000 housing units under construction/approved/proposed). poo poo, SF recently raised a bunch of old NIMBY height limits and is building a new tallest skyscraper, with another one planned, along with two more that are almost as tall as the transamerica pyramid, all of which would have been unthinkable a couple decades ago ("my precious views! You're destroying the city's character, and making parking difficult, this is a quaint fishing village, not a major city!!" Xaris posted:My poor sweet summer child...... Sure there are a few luxury places, but there is oodles of brown field near transit in Oakland that would be rented to capacity if someone would develop non-luxury housing there. But it's hard to get big investment for lower margin real estate. The problem stopping livable developments in Oakland isn't nimby it is developers don't want to do it.
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Dec 5, 2016 22:32
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Sure, middling marketish rate housing isn't very good investment since it's often a long battle with some group or another, and some change in conditions or other delays can easily make it go into the red. I would say it's both nimby's (and all it takes is a minority, even if general majority is yimby), and feedback loop with developers/investment groups. Easier to get approval for "smaller modest 3-6 story luxury apartment" = less risk, faster to get built and cheaper to build + higher returns on units (and more quickly), makes it no brainer why no one is. So they are building luxury apartments and condos and poo poo all over, and people are buying them. And that's OK, not ideal but ok because yesterday's luxury apartments are tomorrow's market-rate apartments and still reduces competition over any stock. It's also mostly been the past two-three years that Oakland has become a hot piece of sweet rear end commodity, and I'd expect more and more permit applications to start coming through in the next year or two. Took SF awhile to really start kicking in after a big lull as well.
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Dec 5, 2016 23:04
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Leperflesh posted:Of course not! Defendants are not prevented from pleading guilty. I would only prevent prosecutors from fishing for a guilty plea by dangling the threat of the harshest possible charges, even though the prosecutor knows perfectly well they probably couldn't prevail in court with those harsh charges. Why on earth would someone plead guilty instead of rolling the dice on a trial if the prosecution has no discretion to recommend anything other than the maximum sentence? Doubly so if the state will pay for their lawyer? Leperflesh posted:The current system is abusive. We need a less abusive system. Undoubtedly you can poke holes in any suggestion I make, since I'm not a lawmaker nor am I an expert on the legal system. I am convinced that the system we have right now systematically abuses the poorest defendents by coercing guilty pleas from people who are either innocent, or would only actually have been convicted of a lesser charge had the evidence against them been challenged in court. I'm not a lawyer or legal expert either, so if I can trivially point out problems with your suggestions, you might want to consider the implications there. Leperflesh posted:I failed to mention that we need to radically increase the amount of money we spend on public defenders. Leperflesh posted:Yeah, that's a problem. The fact is, coercion and threats can be very effective. Leperflesh posted:I don't think so. Why can't the police take a picture of them selling some heroin? Or get the testimony of someone who bought heroin from them? Or collect any other evidence that they've been selling heroin?
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Dec 6, 2016 00:12
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Leperflesh posted:Undoubtedly you can poke holes in any suggestion I make, since I'm not a lawmaker nor am I an expert on the legal system. That's basically all that guy does in this thread. He's a reactionary who hates idealism and dedicates himself to nitpicking any progressive proposal without offering any solutions of his own.
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Dec 6, 2016 00:19
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The East Bay Times has an excellent overview of art and artists in Oakland warehouses, and of the pressures put on the art scene by rising warehouse rents.
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Dec 6, 2016 00:25
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so the new legislative session started, and already there's a bill being pushed to give state funding for immigration attorneys to fight deportation under the next president. california is wasting no time here.
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Dec 6, 2016 00:30
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Dead Reckoning posted:Why on earth would someone plead guilty instead of rolling the dice on a trial if the prosecution has no discretion to recommend anything other than the maximum sentence? Doubly so if the state will pay for their lawyer? Just go down the list, man: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/plea-bargains-defendants-incentives-29732.html The #1 reason why people accept a plea bargain is because they've been held in jail (often for weeks before even getting to speak to a lawyer), are frightened and miserable, and cannot readily afford bail. When an assistant DA says "plea guilty to this charge and you can immediately go home," that is a very, very powerful incentive. The consequences of gaining a criminal record that will haunt them for the rest of their lives are not always immediately obvious, or seem like secondary concerns to be dealt with later. (And good luck finding a public defender who carefully explains to each of their several hundred cases what the full, long-term consequences of their guilty plea will actually mean to them!) The immediate concern is being reunited with family, attempting to salvage a job (if it isn't already gone), find a way to pay rent (if they're not already facing eviction), etc. Going to trial can mean staying in jail for weeks or often months more, if you can't make bail. quote:Where does this certainty come from? I'm not a PD, but if you asked nm or one of the others, I would be incredibly surprised if the number of clients they had who legitimately believed that they didn't do the thing they were charged with, and that the evidence would bear this out at trial, but decided to take a plea anyway because they couldn't miss work is more than single digits, most likely zero. Anecdotes, news stories, and convincing critical analysis. It is of course impossible to gather statistics on how many innocent people plead guilty, because we can only take such people's word for it that they were innocent, and surely many such people were actually guilty. Conveniently, this makes it very difficult to use statistics to prove that our current system convicts a lot of innocent people. [quote I'm not a lawyer or legal expert either, so if I can trivially point out problems with your suggestions, you might want to consider the implications there.[/quote] As a point of debate, an idea or suggestion that can be criticized on some basis is not automatically invalidated. Constructive criticism involves identifying useful ideas even if they have problems, and helping to refine them; even when an idea is just totally unworkable, if it at least identified a serious problem, it was worthwhile. quote:That's nice, but if your solution depends on California suddenly being a state with enough money to fund every state office to an arbitrary level of use, you probably need to consider other solutions. For perspective: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/aclu-lawsuit-public-defense-fresno-california 60 public defenders for 42,000 cases a year is completely absurd, wouldn't you agree? quote:It isn't a threat though, it is a reward or incentive for people who agree to help the state catch other criminals. LOL yeah, "do this or I'll hit you" is a threat. I guess your reward and incentive is not being punched? Come on. Threatening to punish someone and then offering reduced punishment in exchange for something is coercion. It's literally how racketeering works. Gee, it sure would be a shame if quote:I think you're betraying your lack of real world understanding again. The police don't always seize drugs in a raid (something else people advocate eliminating) they often seize them incident to arrest, or during a vehicle stop, or while serving an unrelated warrant. If the cops pull over someone who turns out to have warrants, and during the subsequent vehicle search they find a few pounds of coke in the trunk, they can't do some Tom & Jerry poo poo where they put everything back, tiptoe away, let him go, and wait for him to sell the drugs. The whole point of being able to charge mules and traffickers is to keep them from offloading the risk to the street level dealers. Yeah actually I'm ok with the occasional drug mule or dealer randomly caught with a lot of drugs in their trunk only being convicted of what they've actually been caught doing - possession - if in exchange we stop ferociously crushing suffering drug addicts under the boot of the war on drugs. That doesn't preclude judges handing down harsher sentences at their discretion when someone has like actual bricks of coke or whatever. What we have right now, is addicts with a few ounces more than whatever some politician decided was "normal" getting shoved into jail for multiple years on felony convictions, because War On Drugs.
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Dec 6, 2016 01:16
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Cali continues to be the only state in this dumb nation that seems to realize exactly how badly everyone just hosed up between this and Becerra's "come at me bro" last week, im looking forward to four years of trolling the president
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Dec 6, 2016 17:53
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^^^ It's going to be real fun watching the Trumpenstates v California these next few years. More of that "California added 1% more jobs this month, while <Redstate> lost x%" Of course, Up is Down in America 2016, so maybe our nice little liberal paradise will collapse. incoherent posted:Oklands Gentrification is the byproduct of the hellish NIMBY conditions in SF proper. No way to honestly build new affordable housing and that only accelerated what's happening to oakland. quote:I mean we had a whole sweep in the 1920s about deplorable living conditions for poor and working class people, I think we need revisit this to educate the population. This could backfire however because it's starving creative types, and not meatpackers family 5 to a room. FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 19:35
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FilthyImp posted:^^^ that's already happening with Kansas and Louisiana
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Dec 6, 2016 19:53
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Let's not kid ourselves. If the US economy tanks - and it's well overdue for a correction after an 8-year runup - California will not just merrily keep chugging along on its own. Our economy is inextricably linked to the rest of the country. A huge amount of commerce goes in and out through the ports of LA and Oakland, our tourist industry relies to a substantial degree on other Americans coming to visit, we're a center for not just technology but finance, oil, entertainment, agriculture, construction, etc. We can likely prevail on social policies, and perhaps also be a focal point of protest if we can sustain that, but economic prosperity is not going to neatly divide along red state/blue state lines.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:00
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paranoid randroid posted:Cali continues to be the only state in this dumb nation that seems to realize exactly how badly everyone just hosed up Just a reminder from the state of Texas: When we spent all that time over the last 8 years suing Obama, not only was it a drag on the state budget, but it also lead to some landmark SCOTUS decisions where we were the loser.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:01
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Leperflesh posted:Let's not kid ourselves. If the US economy tanks - and it's well overdue for a correction after an 8-year runup - California will not just merrily keep chugging along on its own. Probably. But even during the recession, it still felt different compared to the rest of the country. At least in Los Angeles. Rent actually went up for a bit since people were flocking to it in droves as the rest of the country burned. It'll hurt but more in the pan and less in the fire.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:10
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LanceHunter posted:Just a reminder from the state of Texas: When we spent all that time over the last 8 years suing Obama, not only was it a drag on the state budget, but it also lead to some landmark SCOTUS decisions where we were the loser. Also some big wins, like stopping the overtime rules, undoing a bunch of NLRB rulings, stopping deferred action and stopping implementation of the Clean Power Plan. So we'll see how bad we have to fight.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:13
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I think it's important to highlight the ways in which modest socialism, strict regulation and active reinvestment in education and infrastructure usually result in stronger economies. A lot of conservatives say things like "sure, I'd love to have free college or <insert leftist policy that benefits the working class here> but we can't pay for that and the government is literally incapable of doing anything without loving it up and making it worse so the best thing we can do for working people is keep taxes as low as possible." This is demonstrably false, but the left has just kind of waited for people to realize it on their own while making moral appeals that don't register. I think what we're going to see in the next four years is a spectacular failure of conservative economic ideas, and that will (hopefully) lead a lot of people to look for answers. But if the left isn't ready with a understandable vision of why they went wrong and example of how things could work better, then the moment will pass and people will just become more entrenched in bad policies.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:42
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LanceHunter posted:Just a reminder from the state of Texas: When we spent all that time over the last 8 years suing Obama, not only was it a drag on the state budget, but it also lead to some landmark SCOTUS decisions where we were the loser. Considering that the new Congress will get to install Anton Scalia 2.0: Especially more hatred and bigotry, I think it would be best if we avoided the SCOTUS for the next 4 years.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:42
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Baby Babbeh posted:I think it's important to highlight the ways in which modest socialism, strict regulation and active reinvestment in education and infrastructure usually result in stronger economies. A lot of conservatives say things like "sure, I'd love to have free college or <insert leftist policy that benefits the working class here> but we can't pay for that and the government is literally incapable of doing anything without loving it up and making it worse so the best thing we can do for working people is keep taxes as low as possible." This is demonstrably false, but the left has just kind of waited for people to realize it on their own while making moral appeals that don't register. so you're saying we should bring up examples like kansas under brownback more? poo poo i'm down.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:46
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Actually I don't think it's effective to rationally point out how some policies are more successful than others, because people don't pick conservatism vs. liberalism rationally. The important lesson of this last election cycle is that you need to: A) Really play up very hard how many problems we have. Make up some if you can. Drive the national conversation to focus on these problems to the exclusion of all else. Make sure you pick problems that work for B and C: B) Find a convenient Other to blame for the problems. You can pick more than one (Immigrants and Washington Insiders were the two big ones this cycle) as long as they're targets that a lot of people already really hate. It's no good blaming cute puppies or something, the point here is to play on people's existing prejudices. C) Claim to have solutions to all the problems. Actually spelling out your policy positions and having detailed, nuanced solutions is not only unnecessary, it's a huge liability. It just gives people something concrete to nitpick about. You just need to be absolutely 100% clear that YOU know how to fix all this stuff. Obviously. Because you're you. D) Slander your opponents incessantly. You do not need to have any facts here either: just repeat the same lies over and over. You don't have to convince everyone... even if like ten percent of your opponent's potential supporters start to think ill of them because of your lies, that's enough. If you can, attack them in ways that fit well-established biases and prejudices: women are weak and manipulative; minorities are sneaky and drug-addled and got where they are today due to unfair help; old people are frail and mentally disabled; rich people are greedy and have unfair power; the well-educated are elitists who think they're better than you; etc. (Obviously we have to find and lean on the prejudices that work best against conservative elites.) E) Be super charismatic. Understand how to play to a crowd and seem genuine about what you're saying (even if you know it's a pack of lies). Believe your lies while you say them, but have no trouble abandoning them at any point and then pretending you never said them. You can only get away with this if you're oozing charisma. Being visibly smug about how right you are is way more effective than just woodenly quoting whatever statement your focus groups and speech writers decided you should be promoting this week. If you can arrange to also be quite attractive in a non-threatening way, that's even better. Also, don't be really old if you can avoid it... if you are old, make it seem like you're especially healthy and energetic. Liberalism in American national politics cannot succeed unless it either adopts the above tactics, or - if we just can't do that - find actually effective defenses against them. And as a reminder, Obama won not because of superior policy positions or because the Democrats had claim to the best solutions for problems - he won because A) Hope and B) Iraq and C) Charisma and D) Youth (oh, and E) Change), against opponents who were old, less attractive, pro-war, and - especially in Romney's case - focused too much on policy details and not enough on one big easy to convey Idea. And who could not reasonably claim to be capable of making sweeping changes. We might well get another democrat into the oval office in four or eight years, especially if the economy tanks. But we're not going to see the kind of success the Republican party lays claim to - winning both houses of congress, and the presidency, and sweeping governorships nationwide, and owning a majority of state legislatures - until we figure the gently caress out that politics is not about good governance, it's about popular appeal, and the vast majority of voters are low-information irrational gut-feels triablists who just want someone they can unequivocally believe is on Their Team. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 21:05
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paranoid randroid posted:Cali continues to be the only state in this dumb nation that seems to realize exactly how badly everyone just hosed up At best, those values are no longer the United States' values. At worst, they never were. Even if we assume the United States' best natures, those won't be its values again until most of the thread is old and gray. dont be mean to me fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 22:04
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A White Guy posted:Considering that the new Congress will get to install Anton Scalia 2.0: Especially more hatred and bigotry, I think it would be best if we avoided the SCOTUS for the next 4 years. We found a dude that shoots epithets from his fingers like lasers at petitioner's.
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Dec 7, 2016 05:54
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A White Guy posted:if we avoided the SCOTUS for the next 4 years. Wow, that's super optimistic
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Dec 7, 2016 06:55
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Leperflesh posted:Just go down the list, man: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/plea-bargains-defendants-incentives-29732.html  Most of those reasons are explicitly benefits of reducing the charge/penalty the defendant faces. If the prosecution has no leeway to recommend a reduced sentence, the defendant has no reason to plead guilty, because a plea means accepting the worst possible outcome of a trial, that being whatever sentence the court would impose. You haven't even touched on the prosecutor's discretion in choosing what charges to bring. A big part of their job is deciding what charges they can reasonably prove based on the evidence against the accused. How would you even formalize that without discretion?Leperflesh posted:The #1 reason why people accept a plea bargain is because they've been held in jail (often for weeks before even getting to speak to a lawyer), are frightened and miserable, and cannot readily afford bail. Leperflesh posted:The consequences of gaining a criminal record that will haunt them for the rest of their lives are not always immediately obvious, or seem like secondary concerns to be dealt with later. (And good luck finding a public defender who carefully explains to each of their several hundred cases what the full, long-term consequences of their guilty plea will actually mean to them!) Leperflesh posted:Anecdotes, news stories, and convincing critical analysis. Leperflesh posted:As a point of debate, an idea or suggestion that can be criticized on some basis is not automatically invalidated. Constructive criticism involves identifying useful ideas even if they have problems, and helping to refine them; even when an idea is just totally unworkable, if it at least identified a serious problem, it was worthwhile. I would also note that you did not start by identifying a problem. That would involve coherently defining and identifying the scope of an unwanted result. You lead off by offering a series of sweeping policy provisions on the basis that they would be a Good Thing. Like many self-styled change makers, you have done so before taking the time to understand why things are currently done the way they are. The fundamental problem you are encountering is that identifying dysfunction is far easier than diagnosing problems, which is easier still than creating solutions. Any idiot can stand outside a power station and tell you that it is not working because the lights in town are off. It takes an engineer to identify the source of the fault and implement a solution. You are the person standing outside and saying, "I think you should try flipping the switch on and off." While it is certainly possible that there exists a switch whose manipulation will resolve the issue, people with experience will prefer to logically identify the switch by tracing the fault, because trying solutions at random has a strong chance of making things worse, or at best wasting time that could have been used productively. Leperflesh posted:Conveniently, we live in an extremely wealthy country. Leperflesh posted:LOL yeah, "do this or I'll hit you" is a threat. I guess your reward and incentive is not being punched? Come on. Threatening to punish someone and then offering reduced punishment in exchange for something is coercion. It's literally how racketeering works. Gee, it sure would be a shame if The just and normal result of being caught committing a bunch of fraud or trafficking a bunch of guns is a lengthy jail sentence. The government choosing government you a less harsh sentence in light of your cooperation in bringing down other criminals is a reward, not a protection racket. Leperflesh posted:Yeah actually I'm ok with the occasional drug mule or dealer randomly caught with a lot of drugs in their trunk only being convicted of what they've actually been caught doing - possession - if in exchange we stop ferociously crushing suffering drug addicts under the boot of the war on drugs. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 10:00
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Dead Reckoning posted:[citation needed] The number one reason? Really? I'm going to say the number one reason that people take pleas is that they can't beat the rap.
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Dec 7, 2016 22:57
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Hooookay. We'll keep doing this, I guess. Dead Reckoning posted:
Thank you for reminding me that prosecutors should not be in control of sentencing. That's actually the reason plea bargaining happens so much. Mandatory sentencing is a one-size-fits-all approach to justice, which relies on several bad premises: that everyone who does something that fits the definition of a crime deserves to be treated the same way, that judges were giving too-short sentences for various crimes and had to be overruled, and that legislators were the ones best equipped to decide what constitutes an appropriate sentence. The follow-on effect is that prosecutors are now the ones who decide what a suspect's sentence will be, before the case is heard and before any challenge to the evidence is allowed. If prosecutors were instead forced to simply identify which charges matched most closely with the alleged conduct of the arrested suspect, not only would this undermine their ability to coerce that person into a guilty plea with threats of more severe mandatory sentences, it would also reduce the excessive complexity of finely-sliced laws. E.g., we would not need to carefully differentiate between degrees of murder, plus manslaughter (voluntary or involuntary), etc. if you simply charged the person with murder and then the judge (and where applicable, jury) had the discretion to investigate the actual unique circumstances of the crime and criminal and determine an appropriate punishment. quote:[citation needed] The number one reason? Really? I'm going to say the number one reason that people take pleas is that they can't beat the rap. That would be nice to believe, yeah. Obviously most people who are arrested and charged have the education and experience to rationally evaluate their chances in court, despite having no access to the evidence against them and only the most cursory legal advice. Yes. That's highly plausible. quote:I really doubt most people pleading out their first felony are unaware of the consequences of a criminal record, since most people already have one by the time they pay their first visit to felonyville. Also, an advantage of the current system is that it lets people their first felony or without a record to plead down to a misdo. Plea bargains are often someone bargaining a felony down to a misdemeanor. Having a misdemeanor record is not consequence-free, either, of course. But: without plea bargains, a prosecutor would still have the discretion to charge the suspect with a misdemeanor instead of a felony. The only difference is that they would not be able to use the threat of a felony to coerce a guilty plea for the misdemeanor. I understand that you are very concerned about the added burden to the court system, if people had more incentive to see their cases through trial. I feel there are at least two really serious problems with that outlook, though: -It implies there's a maximum price to be put on justice, beyond which we just shrug and look away from injustice... and that we are already at that maximum. -It implies that guilty people would take their chances in court rather than plead guilty, as if that were not their constitutional right. We have a loving right to a fair trial, and it's simply wrong to use coercion and threats to convince people at a severe disadvantage to plead guilty and waive their right, simply out of expediency. Compared to the amount of money we spend in this country on military, social programs, health care, and in many other areas, our legal system exclusive of the prison costs is relatively affordable. If we had to double how much we spent on courts and judges, I would be comfortable with that. quote:Yo, your convincing critical analysis admits that he has no idea the scope of the problem, and his proposed solution is to extend the pre-trial phase with a non-binding resolution process, presumably while the suspect remains in custody, further slowing down the justice system and extending the pre trial confinement you are complaining about. Yeah, what does that experienced and well-regarded retired federal judge know? Also see the other judges who submitted commentary on his article. Yeah I think actually these people have more of a sense of what could work or be practical than you do. quote:This is a spectacularly weak-sauce defense of offering suggestions from a place of ignorance. The issues I am raising are not minor quibbles about how your ideas are less than perfect, they are fundamental failings you have not and likely cannot address. I am not offering constructive criticism because your ideas are not useful or salvageable, and contrary to what you seem to think, presenting unworkable ideas is only useful for eliminating them. You are like a man who presents his design for a perpetual motion machine, and, after being told that the design will fail due to unaccounted friction between the bearing surfaces, insists that the design is otherwise solid except for this minor detail. Actually, I am like a man who made the following comment in a forum: Leperflesh posted:And judges should have to be both, for years, but we just elect them, too. You're welcome to point out problems in these suggestions, of course, but let's not act like I'm actually proposing legislation or anything. And, unlike a perpetual motion machine - which cannot work due to the laws of physics - we are talking about questions of laws and public policy. We know that legal systems without plea bargaining can work because in addition to our own working that way for a long time, most other countries have functioning legal systems without plea bargaining, too. This is actually the focus of serious academic study and a great deal of discussion and debate. For example: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1532&context=fss_papers You will not see serious discussions in academic papers and serious proposals by retired physicists for why perpetual motion machines can work. quote:I would also note that you did not start by identifying a problem. That would involve coherently defining and identifying the scope of an unwanted result. You lead off by offering a series of sweeping policy provisions on the basis that they would be a Good Thing. Like many self-styled change makers, you have done so before taking the time to understand why things are currently done the way they are. Yeah, when I say "lets get rid of plea bargaining?" that is actually a suggestion that I think there's a problem with plea bargaining. It's also an invitation to discussion, if anyone agrees or disagrees strongly, or cares to talk about it. So far, that's just you. Similarly, a throw-away line like "I'm pretty sure jail doesn't work" should be obviously not the same thing as a detailed critical analysis and thorough proposal. It's a loving opinion, man, like "I'm pretty sure it's wrong to kill whales" or "I'm pretty sure we need campaign finance reform." So no, I don't feel as though - even in the D&D subforum - I should be compelled to fully develop and research a coherent and flawless set of constitutional and legal reforms, before I should be allowed to express an opinion about some of the things that I think are wrong with our legal system. quote:The fundamental problem you are encountering is that identifying dysfunction is far easier than diagnosing problems The fundamental problem you are encountering is that firstly, you weren't prepared for me to actually defend my throw-away opinions with references to facts, authoritative and experienced people who hold similar opinions, and a willingness to fully engage with you in this style of line-by-line nitpicking. It is not actually my job to propose functional solutions: that's why we have a representative democracy in this country. We're supposed to elect people whose full-time job is to develop those functional solutions, after spending far more time and money investigating and analyzing them than the average citizen could possibly devote. As a voter and a commenter on a forum, my job is to express my opinions to whatever degree I find convenient, and - if I'm a good citizen - be reasonably informed as to the facts, and be willing and open to changing my opinions when presented with new facts. So, if you want to convince me, personally, that I'm wrong about plea bargaining being horrible and unjust, fine, feel free to try. So far you're not doing too well. But I don't think its reasonable to attack me on the basis that I haven't proposed viable legal reforms, since I never claimed to do so. quote:Failing to account for resources available is the mark of an impractical suggestion. The costs are not outrageous, man. For example, the total budget of the entire Federal judiciary in 2015 was $6.70 billion. By comparison, the total budget request for the US Dept. of Justice for Federal prisons and detention was $8.5 billion. And the total US federal budget in 2015 was $3.688 Trillion. So, spending on courts + jails was about 0.04% of total Federal expenditures. quote:One of your complaints is that DA offices are under resourced at current levels. quote:Just to make them effective now will require resources that have to come from somewhere, and your suggestions would create even more work for them. I have not agreed that my suggestions would create even more work for DAs. But certainly it might, depending on the details of what we implemented. quote:Assuming that someone else will figure out how to produce these resources is a cop out. No it isn't. It'd be impossible to guess what sweeping policy changes would cost, until you have the details of those changes in hand. What I can do is confidently assert that as the richest country on earth, whose people enjoy lower tax rates on average than most other industrialized countries, and whose entire criminal justice system is a tiny fraction of our overall public spending, we absolutely can afford to make sweeping reforms of our criminal justice system, even if the price of justice quadruples or more. quote:If I said I had a plan to maintain California agriculture and also maintain water flow into the delta, but insisted that politicians and experts should be the ones to come up with more water to make it work, no one would take me seriously. On the other hand, if you made a basic statement of opinion like "we need to maintain California's agriculture but also maintain water flow into the delta", that would be a totally reasonable opinion, and it'd be ridiculous for someone to demand that you already have in your back pocket a comprehensive plan. quote:It is funny that you see being involved in a criminal enterprise as some sort of natural function that just sort of happens to people before the government tries to swoop in and extract sentences at its own expense, like a Dadaist Al Capone. Why can't the police and district attorneys leave these criminals alone? We were talking about drug addicts, man. To the best of my knowledge, Al Capone wasn't a heroin addict. Refusing to acknowledge that people who are addicted to horribly destructive and powerfully debilitating drugs are victims, even when they're also committing crimes, is counterproductive. As a reminder, this thread is about my assertion that the rules in place that presume "intent to sell," where based entirely and solely on possession of a quantity above an arbitrary limit (for example, four ounces of heroin or crack), are bullshit. And they are, they're basically racism codified into mandatory minimum sentences. quote:The just and normal result of being caught committing a bunch of fraud or trafficking a bunch of guns is a lengthy jail sentence. Normal, yes, absolutely. We need to have a proper national discussion about exactly how and why we think lengthy jail sentences equate to "justice." But in any case, culpability is or should be a critical component of any conviction and (especially) sentence. Non-statutory criminal law actually explicitly recognizes this: I referred to mens rea earlier. The law says that one of the tasks of the jury is to judge the mind of the accused - decide what their intent was, based on the evidence. You referenced this earlier with "ignorance of the law is no excuse" or similar. Being drunk does not excuse you from the decision to drive, and the consequences; but, we can and should consider what is justice for people who "choose" to become addicted to heroin or crack. And then, yeah, get involved in dealing, perhaps. I personally think a heroin addict getting involved with low-level heroin dealing isn't the same kind of criminal, and deserves different treatment, than someone involved in illegal gun trafficking at a low level, for example. But my opinions about what constitutes good or effective punishment aren't tightly coupled to my opinions about the evils of our plea bargaining system. I do think that if we want people - especially poor people - to behave well, we need to give them strong reasons to believe that the criminal justice system they'll be captured by if they behave poorly, will treat them fairly. Especially since they are also the most likely victims of those poorly-behaving people. A just society promotes good behavior. quote:The government choosing government you a less harsh sentence in light of your cooperation in bringing down other criminals is a reward, not a protection racket. You continuing to assert this does not make it true. Many of the people involved in this system, including multiple judges whose writings I have now referenced, describe plea bargaining as coercion. For example, from the Yale paper by Langbein I cited earlier, quote:Because our constitutions guarantee adjudication, we threaten the criminal defendant with a markedly greater sanction if he insists on adjudication and is convicted. This sentencing differential, directed towards inducing the defendant to waive his right to trial, makes plea bargaining work. It also makes plea bargaining intrinsically coercive. I have elsewhere had occasion to point to the host of irremediable deficiencies - moral, juridical, practical - that inhere in the plea bargaining system.' That was in 1979. Plea bargaining has only grown to dominate even more fully since then, and be made incrementally worse by the adoption of harsher minimum sentencing laws in the 1980s. quote:Without being able to flip dealers, mules, and henchmen in exchange for reduced sentences, prosecuting the leadership of organized drug trafficking would be nigh impossible. Perhaps judges, given back the power to sentence, would have the ability to offer reduced sentences based on cooperation - after there's been an opportunity by the defense to examine and challenge the evidence. In any case, it seems to me that other countries with legal systems that don't use plea bargaining for 97% of their convictions, somehow manage to prosecute the leaders of organized criminal enterprises. The key reform here is taking away from prosecutors the sole and total power of sentencing. Prosecutors are biased, and sentencing properly should take place after evidence has been challenged and the suspect's right to defend his or her actions been exercised, not before. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 00:30
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Yes California is having some meeting in San Luis Obispo today in a random mobile home park in town. The Facebook event time was set for noon UTC+05 instead of noon UTC-08. Because the guy who runs Yes California lives in Russia and is pro-Russia. 
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Dec 10, 2016 20:30
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So California's secession movement is actually a Russian astroturf? Amazing.
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Dec 12, 2016 18:52
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Just Yes California. The California National Party, which was apparently founded by the same guy, ultimately forced him out and are a bit more level-headed. So, naturally, @YesCalifornia frequently takes shots at @Vote_CNP.
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Dec 12, 2016 19:20
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Oh goody, we've gone full People's Front of Judea.
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Dec 12, 2016 21:37
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