I don't see how death penalty for white collar crime is left leaning. But I sure like the idea of significant incentive of the penalty. Hold out for the 20% discount on Zoro, it eventually comes to the physical mail box maybe 10 days after the 15% discount
I admit to feeling a frisson of satisfaction at the thought of the death penalty for someone who stole so much from so many, but can't help wondering how long the US would take to apply those laws to losing presidential candidates.
I would say that the electric chair for white collar crime is 'left coded' (as it were) in the sense that it's the lefties who feel joy at the thought of successful people burning (literally)
Man, NFS:MW had a 10x better soundtrack. I still belt these bangers. NFS:MW introduced me to ATL's Evol Intent, but this gem from Suni Clay seems to paint a more realistic picture than TI's bundles of cash:
If you hungry? Pizza man, he don't come around here / and I dare jehovah's witness to knock around here.
If you ain't never been to the ghetto, man? / Don't ever come to the ghetto, man.
Most Wanted (the good one from 2005, not the trash reboot from 2012) was the best they ever put out. Granted, that entire generation from NFSHP2 to Prostreet had wall to wall bangers.
Did you see someone recently made a real life clone of the MW BMW and was driving around a digitally edited Rockport? Warmed my heart a couple degrees. Fortunately I still have both games tucked away. Need to cobble up a second retro gaming station.
I did! Wicked cool. If I had the cash, I'd have a E92 V8 swapped E36 with that body kit for track days. I also know there's someone with the 240sx from Prostreet. If you've got a decent PC, that version of NFSMW might be the best and barring that, the 360 version would be the one to get. I've played it on everything else.
I remember hearing a few tracks of hers on Sirius XMU and enjoying them. She reminds me a little of Lana Del Rey, and the Karen Carpenter comparison is spot-on. I just want to put on my sweater, make a nice pot of tea, and curl up with my cat(s). Tell John to have patience.
horseshoe theory in action. i doubt you will get any disagreement from either extreme on the death penalty for a serial fraudster in the buh buh billion dollar range. anyone who would meet el salvadors current direction with applause but objects to the Vietnamese authorities trying to reel in corruption should understand that the two are separated by an inch on the yardstick of the political spectrum.
El Salvador's situation is a preview of what will start happening in the United States sooner or later. Violent crime is the kind of thing people will eventually stop tolerating and start demanding an end to. This will not be pretty or considerate of civil rights. Only in the United States part of it will look like certain parts of the country basically using large scale jury nullification to endorse the shooting of shitbags with extensive criminal histories regardless of the exact circumstances surrounding the event.
To quote a rural Georgia deputy, "Around here being from out of town is basically probable cause." It sounds awful from a civil rights perspective...at least until you realize that the people who live in that spot do so because they desperately want to avoid what's become of Atlanta and they will endorse almost anything to keep Atlanta's violent crime problems from becoming theirs.
We have an abundance of violent criminals on the street due to our severe under-incarceration problem. At some point the pendulum will swing really hard and that will no longer be the case.
We have seen the lowest level of criminal violence in our lifetimes. America is going to start seeing a lot more violence in the streets. It won't all be criminal violence. We're going to see a serious uptick in self defense and otherwise pro-social violence, too.
I don't want it to be true. I'd prefer that the criminal justice system actually does it's fucking job properly, but nobody cares what I think and so the whirlwind cometh.
No, we don't. It's an often used talking point but like so many talking points bandied about it is inaccurate at best, if not deliberately engineered to be so. Even using the numbers most favorable to the argument our incarceration rates have dropped dramatically since the 90's.
The truth of under-incarceration is seen very clearly in how many violent crimes are committed by people who have a history of convictions for...violent crimes. The areas of the country with the most severe violent crime problems have the lowest clearance rates for even "solving" violent crimes, much less actually convicting, sentencing, and jailing the people responsible for them.
Violent criminals serve, on average, truly paltry amounts of time in prison for serious violent crimes:
Also contrary to popular narrative, the system is not kicking out violent offenders on the street to make room for people who get caught with a dime bag. If you look at any actual published numbers from the states on prison populations or those under supervision of the penal system, you find that the vast majority of people in the state prison systems are there for offenses ranging from the big 4 violent crimes (rape, robbery, aggravated assault, murder) to other criminal acts like fraud, DUI, child abuse and neglect, etc. All things that we ostensibly think people should be locked up for.
Federal prison populations have a higher percentage of drug based offenses, but even there you aren't seeing dime bags. It's usually traffickers moving serious weight, and often traffickers who catch federal drug charges as part of a larger criminal empire which involves significantly worse offenses. Like "Rabbit", here:
That's a guy pleading to **murders** to get reduced charges on his federal drug trafficking convictions. And those are just the offenses he's pleading to, with a good many more that will never be dealt with. As with pretty much every violent criminal, the vast majority of which face criminal charges on only a fraction of the violent crimes they commit.
It's a sufficiently notable problem that multiple attempts have been made to try and do something about this category of violent criminal, always with some dramatic fainting couch pushback as was seen the last time a black politician in Maryland noticed that violent crimes in places like Baltimore were being perpetrated primarily by people with a history of violent crime convictions and thought it would be a good idea to keep them in a cage longer so they would stop harming the public:
You can look up the numbers for pretty much any state and find the realities of who is being incarcerated and for what. In practically every state you will find that between 80-90% of the prison population is incarcerated or under supervision for non-drug offenses, with somewhere on the order of 60-70% of those in prison or under supervision (parole, probation) for violent crimes.
There is simply a vast surplus of violent criminals and inadequate space to jail them where they can't do harm to the general public.
And the harm they do is mostly to the general public in the poorest neighborhoods.
You can spend years going into exactly how it is that so many violent criminals are being created. You can look hard at education and certainly there's plenty of correlation between the most violent places in America having the most poorly performing schools...even though said schools usually have considerably higher levels of funding per student than schools in less violent areas. And those schools are usually under the supervision of politicians who receive support from the teacher's unions. There's plenty to mine in the "why" of educational system failures in the US.
Baltimore's schools, for example, perform horribly. In a city that hasn't seen a Republican mayor since before Martin Luther King was murdered by the FBI. Single party control for a few generations doesn't seem to have produced great results.
You can look hard at the breakdown of the nuclear family, which will be seen at its highest levels in the places that have the worst problems with violent crime. Places where industry was moved out and government "assistance" was moved in, without seeming to actually improve the long term plight of any of the people being "assisted". That same phenomenon is evident in rural areas where the continued "giant sucking sound" Ross Perot warned about has produced very similar problems in the breakdown of family units and the prevalence of meth and opiates and increases in violent crime in those communities, too.
You can look at the impact of drugs. Alcohol. Both of which will have significant correlation to the prevalence of violent crime. You can even compare the complaints about the "epidemic" of fentanyl and synthetic opiates and demands for harsher penalties for the sales and distribution of it to urban community leaders saying the same thing about crack cocaine in the 80's.
There's lots of good avenues to pursue for the "why" of the violent criminal's existence, but the reality is that we do a piss poor job of locking them up when they rob, rape, assault, and murder. The only time they are unable to victimize the public is when they're in a cage. Outside of it, they generate more victims.
More than 90% of criminal cases are adjudicated by a plea deal, which means that whatever crimes they commit are often plead down to lesser offenses and sentencing is mild if not laughable for the offense. At least until they commit a serious enough crime or are unlucky enough that one of their violent crimes is so well documented that they are caught dead to rights and finally serve a sentence of a decade or more.
In short, the concept of "mass incarceration" is, like so many other popular narratives of our time, without merit. In fact we have exactly the opposite problem: Under-incarceration of violent criminals. Primarily because we have so many of them that we don't have room to lock them up.
And we're getting more mixed in with the mass migration waves coming over borders too porous to protect the interests and personal safety of our citizenry.
Well said, like most of your comments. Do you think the death penalty is a viable option for those perpetual violent offenders? What's the point of locking someone up for life because they can't behave in polite society as opposed to making sure they will never be a threat again, other than a moral dilemma?
At the moment we lack the fortitude to lock them up for significant sentences. I don't see the death penalty becoming any more practical, especially not while institutions charged with enforcing the laws continue to beclown themselves and prove unaccountable for bad acts and corruption. If you're smart, you don't trust the government's word on what you should eat or what shots you should take. Much less about who you should let them kill.
Warehousing violent criminals perpetually isn't a nice sounding solution, but as there is almost no chance violent criminal actors will reform and various efforts at rehabilitation have all proven to be complete duds, nobody has a better answer. At least in a cage they can't generate more victims among the innocent public.
Ah, yes. Quoting from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the actual bureaus of prisons from about a dozen states...all well known "alt-right" sources.
A lot of good info here, I don't have first hand experience, but I hear a lot about this stuff across the dinner table from my wife who has been a litigator for the past 13 years. One piece that I think you've overlooked is that we do nothing to look left and identify root cause. You touched on some possible causes with education, and home life, but from what I hear, again second hand, from a person who exclusively deals with indigent habitual felons. Is that 99% of the people in that situation are mentally ill. So much so that the prior 3 felony convictions they served (what is required to see your next charge tried as a habitual case in this state) doesn't register to the defendant as something they should change and thus the cycle continues.
I don't disagree that sentencing could use some reform since it seems to me it currently is a crap shoot that depends way to much on the individual prosecutor and judge involved as opposed to a systematic method. This often results in people let back out into the world without any expectations or support to not immediately repeat what ever act initially go them there in the first place.
All this to say, I think society would benefit more from the effort being placed on avoiding the problems that create criminals, i.e. prevent the cut from happening, as opposed to focusing on making a better band aid.
EDIT:
To clarify since I didn't make it explicit above, I am not at all for eliminating prison sentences when applicable. My intent above is to say that if we don't find the reason certain people are pre-disposed to commit crimes and fix those problems, longer sentences won't drastically improve the rate that crimes are committed.
On the "mentally ill" front, there is certainly untreated mental illness mixed up in the root cause analysis, but it is not anywhere close to explaining even the bulk of the phenomenon. There is a push to view any violent criminal act as "mental illness" when that is not true.
Someone who has a different value system than you or I is not necessarily mentally ill. Take the Hamas raid into Israel as an example. The Hamas terrorists that went into peaceful neighborhoods or a music festival and started raping and murdering people they'd never met before solely because they were Jewish were not mentally ill. They held a value system that blessed their actions as righteous.
It's inaccurate to assume that the reason a multi-time felon does not change their behavior is because they don't realize that it's "bad". You see the same thing when the authorities decry "senseless" acts of violence. Well, the reality is that almost all of those acts of violence makes perfect sense to the perpetrators.
Here's the thing about violence: It doesn't have to make sense. Not to you, me, or the victims. But the perpetrators of it often have reasons why they did it, and it's not because they were responding to auditory hallucinations. Violent criminals will often readily admit to committing their violent crimes and do so while claiming to be the aggrieved party.
A friend of mine interrogated an armed robber who shot a Dollar General clerk. While being hit with a gun she said "You're not going to shoot me??" which the armed robber took as a challenge to her authority and promptly shot her. His quote was "You don't tell someone who got a gun they ain't gonna shoot you!"
That man was not mentally ill. He's malevolent. Malevolence is not mental illness.
Everybody likes to talk about directing resources to preventing violent criminals from becoming violent criminals, but I don't see that happening. I'm all for preventing their creation as I'm absolutely certain the vast majority of the problem falls on the nurture side of the equation moreso than the nature. But in order to do that, the current crop will have to be dealt with as a part of cleaning up the environment enough to allow for the cycles to be broken.
Actual prosecutions of violent criminal acts and incarceration does, in fact, produce lower instances of crime. When Richmond, Va earned the nefarious title of murder capitol of the US, a deliberate effort was launched to actually prosecute federal laws already on the books which assigned a 5 year sentence to felons in possession of firearms. This produced a dramatic and immediate drop in violent crime.
If you look at the places with the highest rates of violence, they correlate with the lowest rate of prosecutions of violations of federal gun laws just as one example of crimes that aren't prosecuted which aren't being done because it's not the answer certain people with political power want. Police departments in large urban areas are routinely encountering violent offenders armed with "Glock switches", Chinese made devices that fit on the back of a Glock pistol's slide that turn it into a machinegun.
Possession of one of those if you are not a Type 7 FFL is a felony with a 5-10 year federal sentence. And yet how many of the people being arrested after committing a violent crime with those things are actually facing the federal prosecution? That's one of the first charges ditched in plea deals when it's a guarantee of a stiff sentence.
Scores of violent criminals could be put on ice for 5-10 years in no time flat IF the laws on the books were actually enforced. But they're not being enforced.
I'm not a city fan myself. I just don't like being around that many people all the time. But mostly it's the politics. Cities like Chicago and Atlanta and Pittsburg and Baltimore are run by corrupt systems that will make deals with people who rape children but will prosecute an otherwise honest person to the full extent of their powers just for bullshit narratives.
That happens in rural areas, too...but less often and usually with much less powerful political machines behind it.
On the death penalty: I thought leftists opposed that? But I agree with you on this one. That level of fraud deserves that level of punishment.
On Wrenches: I've got two sets of Imperial and three of Metric. A lot of them are craftsmen from 3 decades ago. Some are not (remember S&K? Whatever happened to them).
On the singers: I'm not usually a big fan of most women performers, -unless- they can also do songs that aren't about dating, failed relationships, successful relationships, etc. I want ones who can move beyond what the other 99 percent sing about. Harsh, I know. (What do you think about Justin Johnson's latest album?)
The NPR guy was funny. That bias goes WAAAAY back to the 70's. Because I used to listen to it back then. And they are very much supported with our tax dollars. If congress took that money away, they'd be out of business in a year.
I stopped reading the TFP article when he said that NPR's leftist bent only became apparent in the last few years in reference to the complaints of conservatives.
I'm not a leftist. I'm exactly the kind of person leftist would smear as a fascist even though that's not remotely close to being true. I believe in criminals meeting a violent end at the hands of their intended victims.
I don't trust the state to put people to death because I know how corrupt the state can be.
I'm actually a member of what used to be TWO 'protected' classes in our society. Minorities that you couldn't say anything bad about or you were a RACIST!!!!!!!!!!
I honestly think that's what led to this whole new 'Trans' movement. So they could call everyone else a racist because men putting on makeup and wearing a dress is just so reality altering. Because all of the LGB's had learned that the Left hated them, the democrats despised them, and they were only using them.
I mean look at the whole 'alphabet' movement. There are no L's, G's, or B's in it anymore. Hell, does anyone even REMEMBER it as the LGB movement? It was for decades! Now you got so many people tacked onto it, none of whom got the grief of the hassle that the LGB's did. They've not only made it worthless, but the T's run it completely.
As strange as it sounds the "alt right" (the real ones, not the not-left people) individuals I've interacted with are the most pro-family, pro-health, and pro-God people I've ever met. I think the desire to "return to tradition" has caused them to emulate the communities of old, and for the better.
Side question, I need a new helmet, any recommendations? Debating going back to Shoie. Also, what coms system are you using to listen to music & phone?
I have a Sena 30K 2-pack that I used on my cross-country adventure last year with my buddy and on rides around the New England forests.. it has worked flawlessly. No more goofy hand signals. Also got an extra mic and speaker set so I can use the 2 devices between 3 helmets, for different sized heads of fellow riders. I don't use the music feature much, but it works well too.
forgetting about economic damage for a second, stealing more money from me to accomplish goals that are against my wishes and kill people i likely would agree with not only makes me an accessory to murder but is the same type of fraud and theft as this lady is being put to death for.
Funny how the gop gets caught constantly yet those evil DEMON-crats don't .
That truthy thing can be a real pain in the ass unless of course you don't care like the alt-righties who lie endlessly and always try to project their guilt onto the dems .
I'm perfectly fine with capital punishment, and on the same page as you for white collar crime being included in there, as anything else means ignoring second order effects of said crimes.
I hadn't noticed that you are infatuated with being infatuated with female singers/songwriters.
Unless Mitski is out there in a maid outfit playing power chords and face-melting riffs on a PRS I'm not interested. (actually I really like Fiona Apple and I might check some of these ladies out-- their music, that is)
I just got on Caroline Polachek. I tried years back when you first recommended her, but it didn't stick. It does now, (has anyone other than NWA wrote two very similar songs about blowjobs?) but I would still like it better without autotune. Anyone ever heard of Pretty Reckless? Taylor Momsen from Gossip Girl decided early on to quit being an actress, maybe she ran into the likes of Harvey Weinstein and opted out, and she has made some incredibly good music. Early albums were hard rocking, energetic, rebellious, sometimes grungy, sometimes raunchy lyrics, while later albums were more introspective and meloncholy with blues and country influence. How do I describe her voice? You can smell the cigarettes on it. Rough enough for metal vocals, soft enough for ethereal highs. Got So High and Quicksand are recent rock and blues gems, respectively.
Funny enough, my wife turned me on to the Pretty Reckless. They played some music for the Victoria's Secret fashion show like 10 or 15 years ago and she showed me thinking I might like it. She was right. I like the one they did a year or two ago with those two guys from Soundgarden, "Only Love Can Save Me Now" or something.
In Caroline's defense, she isn't auto-tuning. She has taught herself to mimic autotune and often does it off the cuff live. What that says about culture and creativity is too involved for a comment response....
Thank you, I didn't know that. I found myself almost liking the effect, justifying to myself that it fits the tone, now I know why. I still don't feel good about not knowing where the voice and instrument end.
I really like the look of those Wright sockets… they sort of (but probably not really) remind me of my set of late 70’s vintage S-K standard sized sockets. I still have them and the original metal case, and they still look and work great.
At face value, the death penalty for Bank Fraud might seem somewhat severe; however, upon further review, the punishment does seem to fit the crime. People like Madoff and Bankman-Fried ruined countless lives with their insatiable greed. I might consider adding a "no appeal" when the decision is rendered. The woman who stole from the Saigon Commercial Bank, which, by all accounts, is located somewhere in Ho Chi Minh City, deserves whatever she gets. Perhaps she'll be sent to Hanoi, which is NOT located in Ho Chi Minh City, for re-programming, or possibly to an Ivy League University.
There is also the idea of _pour encourager les autres_. Boeing would not be where it is now if ANYBODY could feel empowered to say "terminating our competent engineers in favor of cheaper ones ~might~ be considered criminally negligent and, I don't know about the rest of you, but personally I'd rather not risk going to Leavenworth."
Right now the boards will say "What's the worst that can happen? We'll just get bailed out haha!" (Sherman will no doubt defend both the justice and utility of this policy.) I will never forget a picture of the Bank CEO's leaving bailout planning meetings in 2009: nice suits, nice watches, laughing in the early evening sun on the steps of a beautiful old building. Just another day in paradise for them.
but... but ... but vegetables and meat would cease to exist!!! (in my most Sherman voice). You couldn't get paid and couldn't buy anything. The world would stop spinning.
The bankers NEED the taxpayer to pay them a bonus so they don't have to turn in that new McLaren.
I have a slight, generic Southern accent, exhibiting neither the sing-song torturing of vowels characteristic of many Appalachian Americans nor the “Southern Aristocrat” accent (which is just about gone, these days).
Accents are funny, I am very self conscious about my own. It surprises me how many times people wile comment that I don't sound like I am from NY, and everyone else in my family does, so it is as if have an affected mid Atlantic accent. I think it comes from too much PBS growing up, or as my nemesis Billy Joel calls it, channel 13.
In short, if you sit next to me at a gentlmans's discussion groups, mock me gently!
So when the taxpayers “bailed out” the bankers by forcing most deposit-taking banks in the country to issue preferred equity with a 5% coupon (ratcheting to 9% in the future), how exactly did any of that money go to directly to “the bankers?”
The same (Fed member) banks who employ people who could - or would - purchase a McLaren are the same banks that paid back TARP as soon as they were allowed to do so, which is why it was such a profitable home run for the taxpayers!
Most banks in the US did not want TARP; Hank Paulson’s master stroke was forcing (almost) everyone to accept it, which meant that few knew which banks really needed it.
The bad paper, redlining, etc. thing is mostly a Fox News-watcher fantasy, because most residential real estate exposure is securitized and not held on a bank’s balance sheet.
The “only” industry? What about … Government Motors, Chrysler, the major airlines, and - soon - Boeing?
Which is the only reason it was in the black. They should have let the few fail. The made everyone take it so it could be a success and certain acf commenters could post about how successful it was. My point? Tarp was all an elaborate bailout for an 18 year old sherman mccoy commenter
What do you think would happen if all of the major banks went away overnight?
Would consumers be able to pay for anything? Would magic Amazon elves bring me all my household sundries? Would ANYONE go to work at all? Would companies be able to make payroll for the employees who did show up? Would companies be able to roll over debt obligations? Would people be able to trade equities? Would anyone deliver gasoline to your local station? How quickly would you lose power?
Well, I'm not going to engage in this game, I simply was advocating for the ones that get caught holding the bag of shit to eat it. I'm not saying at any point that banking needs to be done away with.
In the absence of all banks, economic activity wouldn't cease to exist. It might slow down, and need a new medium other than ones controlled by banks, but it'll still resume.
Banks Do not CREATE value or wealth by themselves. They're a medium for transactions, which can easily be replaced.
There is also fraud ruining lives and causing perhaps indirect deaths, vs. Bezos forcing unsafe warehouses to remain open through tornadoes and KBR and Halliburton electrocuting troops taking showers directly if unintentionally causing deaths, vs. the Sacklers intentionally killing people.
Jack, I'll give Weyes Blood some ear time (although on the first 30 seconds I think Mrs Baruth the First had a point) if you will try Nerina Pallot, starting with her 2006 album "Fires." She gave a very good performance to a packed London Palladium on Saturday, which is impressive for someone no-one has heard of.
Listening now. This is from a very different tradition -- my brother played in and around a lot of bands that did this sort of thing. Wow. She didn't manage to get a record sold until she was 30 years old. That's determination. I agree. She's a talent.
It's a tough world, the music business. There's another guy I like a lot, Martin Harley, who play fabulous slide guitar. I have been going to his gigs for years, but his last one in central London was in a church. No getting fat on that...
I'll compare the current 'immigration crisis' to your first thesis. When wealthy and powerful blood was eventually spilt by immigrant anarchists and na-er do wells back in the early 20th century, those gates closed fast and hard.
So yeah, hang 'em high.
Jack was really the stalker that inspired 'Possession'? Not surprised.
NPR has always been Red media but TDS really pushed it over the edge. It was palpable.
"Jack was really the stalker that inspired 'Possession'? Not surprised."
In all seriousness, to see her up close at the age of 23 was to immediately realize why people went insane and sent threatening letters. She was luminous.
Why doesn't your kid do what mine does: make a disgusted sound in the passenger seat, sulk, and put his headphones in to listen to Kanye at a reasonable volume?
I’m generally against expanding the death penalty to crimes other than murder, because it theoretically gives the criminal a “nothing to lose” attitude about then killing their rape or robbery victim to eliminate a witness.
Whether that rational calculation actually enters the mind of a serial rapist or armed robber in the heat of the moment is outside my knowledge, never having been either one.
I’m intrigued by the idea of using it for financial crimes; certainly I can make the case that a Madoff or SBF is a bigger drain on/threat to society as a whole than some anonymous gang-banger who shoots another gang-banger dead in the ghetto. Perhaps that’s just my upper middle class “privilege” talking.
Speaking of which, I was called up for jury duty yesterday and was excited to see what kind of trial I would be sitting in on. It was a child molester--that is, an alleged child molester and one of his vic--ahem, alleged victims, a 10-year-old girl would be testifying not 10 feet from where we sat. I got out of it by saying I would be negatively biased towards the defendant since I have an 11-year-old at home. No way did I want to hear ANY of that testimony, not even to get that guy to hang for it. Man, if only it could have been a murderer or an embezzler.
Adding murder on to a robbery is already a "nothing to lose" strategy. Parmuegr Singh was perfectly compliant and even gave Christopher Copeland even more money than he demanded at gunpoint originally, but Copeland executed him on his knees anyway.
Copeland was wearing an ankle monitor when he committed the murder, having violated multiple parole and probation requirements for previous violent crimes.
The kind of people who commit most of the murders in this country have already had half a dozen prior violent felonies without facing serious consequences to add on top of the dozens more they've committed without ever receiving charges.
I can assure there is absolutely no restraint against elevating violent crimes like rape or robbery to murder because of fear of punishment from the criminal justice system. The people who are committing those acts do not see or think about the system anything like you do.
I don't see how death penalty for white collar crime is left leaning. But I sure like the idea of significant incentive of the penalty. Hold out for the 20% discount on Zoro, it eventually comes to the physical mail box maybe 10 days after the 15% discount
It's old-school left-leaning in the vein of Abbie Hoffman and William Powell (and probably Malcolm X), not new-school left-leaning in the vein of AOC.
I admit to feeling a frisson of satisfaction at the thought of the death penalty for someone who stole so much from so many, but can't help wondering how long the US would take to apply those laws to losing presidential candidates.
Somehow I never remember anything I need on Zoro while my paper code is valid!
I would say that the electric chair for white collar crime is 'left coded' (as it were) in the sense that it's the lefties who feel joy at the thought of successful people burning (literally)
Call me trouble man, I’m always in trouble man,
Worth a couple hundred grand, Chevys, all colors man
Trap Muzik was the first uncensored CD I ever bought thanks to NFS underground.
Man, NFS:MW had a 10x better soundtrack. I still belt these bangers. NFS:MW introduced me to ATL's Evol Intent, but this gem from Suni Clay seems to paint a more realistic picture than TI's bundles of cash:
If you hungry? Pizza man, he don't come around here / and I dare jehovah's witness to knock around here.
If you ain't never been to the ghetto, man? / Don't ever come to the ghetto, man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj7VCaNMQIY
Most Wanted (the good one from 2005, not the trash reboot from 2012) was the best they ever put out. Granted, that entire generation from NFSHP2 to Prostreet had wall to wall bangers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fMvwUeix5M&list=PLKlbTXjy-F6olP4vg5M-iWW-CF6NbmaQ_
Whole-heartedly agree. Prostreet had an excellent mix of indie rock and electronic that perfectly fit the aesthetic and energy levels.
Did you see someone recently made a real life clone of the MW BMW and was driving around a digitally edited Rockport? Warmed my heart a couple degrees. Fortunately I still have both games tucked away. Need to cobble up a second retro gaming station.
I did! Wicked cool. If I had the cash, I'd have a E92 V8 swapped E36 with that body kit for track days. I also know there's someone with the 240sx from Prostreet. If you've got a decent PC, that version of NFSMW might be the best and barring that, the 360 version would be the one to get. I've played it on everything else.
White folks are always so scared on The Ghetto, it's not like they show on T.V. .
-Nate
I mean,
There's times and there are not times to keep one's head on a swivel.
The problem with folks that have never been in a fight is they can't tell the diff
Then there's getting old and not paying enough attention.....
-Nate
One of the best NFS games, arguably better than NFSU2.
I remember hearing a few tracks of hers on Sirius XMU and enjoying them. She reminds me a little of Lana Del Rey, and the Karen Carpenter comparison is spot-on. I just want to put on my sweater, make a nice pot of tea, and curl up with my cat(s). Tell John to have patience.
horseshoe theory in action. i doubt you will get any disagreement from either extreme on the death penalty for a serial fraudster in the buh buh billion dollar range. anyone who would meet el salvadors current direction with applause but objects to the Vietnamese authorities trying to reel in corruption should understand that the two are separated by an inch on the yardstick of the political spectrum.
one is very much better in results than the other; effectively no comparison
i am not prepared to discuss the difference here in writing
well at least I'm a philosophically consistent bad person!
El Salvador's situation is a preview of what will start happening in the United States sooner or later. Violent crime is the kind of thing people will eventually stop tolerating and start demanding an end to. This will not be pretty or considerate of civil rights. Only in the United States part of it will look like certain parts of the country basically using large scale jury nullification to endorse the shooting of shitbags with extensive criminal histories regardless of the exact circumstances surrounding the event.
To quote a rural Georgia deputy, "Around here being from out of town is basically probable cause." It sounds awful from a civil rights perspective...at least until you realize that the people who live in that spot do so because they desperately want to avoid what's become of Atlanta and they will endorse almost anything to keep Atlanta's violent crime problems from becoming theirs.
We have an abundance of violent criminals on the street due to our severe under-incarceration problem. At some point the pendulum will swing really hard and that will no longer be the case.
We have seen the lowest level of criminal violence in our lifetimes. America is going to start seeing a lot more violence in the streets. It won't all be criminal violence. We're going to see a serious uptick in self defense and otherwise pro-social violence, too.
I don't want it to be true. I'd prefer that the criminal justice system actually does it's fucking job properly, but nobody cares what I think and so the whirlwind cometh.
" our severe under-incarceration problem." America has the highest rates on incarceration per capita, kinda makes that comment look foolish .
Maybe you know, _teaching_ Citizens well then giving them opportunities to use said learning might help....
-Nate
No, we don't. It's an often used talking point but like so many talking points bandied about it is inaccurate at best, if not deliberately engineered to be so. Even using the numbers most favorable to the argument our incarceration rates have dropped dramatically since the 90's.
The truth of under-incarceration is seen very clearly in how many violent crimes are committed by people who have a history of convictions for...violent crimes. The areas of the country with the most severe violent crime problems have the lowest clearance rates for even "solving" violent crimes, much less actually convicting, sentencing, and jailing the people responsible for them.
Violent criminals serve, on average, truly paltry amounts of time in prison for serious violent crimes:
https://bjs.ojp.gov/featured/report-time-served-state-prison-2016
Also contrary to popular narrative, the system is not kicking out violent offenders on the street to make room for people who get caught with a dime bag. If you look at any actual published numbers from the states on prison populations or those under supervision of the penal system, you find that the vast majority of people in the state prison systems are there for offenses ranging from the big 4 violent crimes (rape, robbery, aggravated assault, murder) to other criminal acts like fraud, DUI, child abuse and neglect, etc. All things that we ostensibly think people should be locked up for.
Federal prison populations have a higher percentage of drug based offenses, but even there you aren't seeing dime bags. It's usually traffickers moving serious weight, and often traffickers who catch federal drug charges as part of a larger criminal empire which involves significantly worse offenses. Like "Rabbit", here:
https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_72a9b0a9-25f9-57ca-a7d7-7769476afd67.html
That's a guy pleading to **murders** to get reduced charges on his federal drug trafficking convictions. And those are just the offenses he's pleading to, with a good many more that will never be dealt with. As with pretty much every violent criminal, the vast majority of which face criminal charges on only a fraction of the violent crimes they commit.
It's a sufficiently notable problem that multiple attempts have been made to try and do something about this category of violent criminal, always with some dramatic fainting couch pushback as was seen the last time a black politician in Maryland noticed that violent crimes in places like Baltimore were being perpetrated primarily by people with a history of violent crime convictions and thought it would be a good idea to keep them in a cage longer so they would stop harming the public:
https://wtop.com/maryland/2018/03/md-crime-bill-sparks-strong-reactions-in-annapolis-in-closing-weeks-of-session/
You can look up the numbers for pretty much any state and find the realities of who is being incarcerated and for what. In practically every state you will find that between 80-90% of the prison population is incarcerated or under supervision for non-drug offenses, with somewhere on the order of 60-70% of those in prison or under supervision (parole, probation) for violent crimes.
There is simply a vast surplus of violent criminals and inadequate space to jail them where they can't do harm to the general public.
And the harm they do is mostly to the general public in the poorest neighborhoods.
You can spend years going into exactly how it is that so many violent criminals are being created. You can look hard at education and certainly there's plenty of correlation between the most violent places in America having the most poorly performing schools...even though said schools usually have considerably higher levels of funding per student than schools in less violent areas. And those schools are usually under the supervision of politicians who receive support from the teacher's unions. There's plenty to mine in the "why" of educational system failures in the US.
Baltimore's schools, for example, perform horribly. In a city that hasn't seen a Republican mayor since before Martin Luther King was murdered by the FBI. Single party control for a few generations doesn't seem to have produced great results.
You can look hard at the breakdown of the nuclear family, which will be seen at its highest levels in the places that have the worst problems with violent crime. Places where industry was moved out and government "assistance" was moved in, without seeming to actually improve the long term plight of any of the people being "assisted". That same phenomenon is evident in rural areas where the continued "giant sucking sound" Ross Perot warned about has produced very similar problems in the breakdown of family units and the prevalence of meth and opiates and increases in violent crime in those communities, too.
You can look at the impact of drugs. Alcohol. Both of which will have significant correlation to the prevalence of violent crime. You can even compare the complaints about the "epidemic" of fentanyl and synthetic opiates and demands for harsher penalties for the sales and distribution of it to urban community leaders saying the same thing about crack cocaine in the 80's.
There's lots of good avenues to pursue for the "why" of the violent criminal's existence, but the reality is that we do a piss poor job of locking them up when they rob, rape, assault, and murder. The only time they are unable to victimize the public is when they're in a cage. Outside of it, they generate more victims.
More than 90% of criminal cases are adjudicated by a plea deal, which means that whatever crimes they commit are often plead down to lesser offenses and sentencing is mild if not laughable for the offense. At least until they commit a serious enough crime or are unlucky enough that one of their violent crimes is so well documented that they are caught dead to rights and finally serve a sentence of a decade or more.
In short, the concept of "mass incarceration" is, like so many other popular narratives of our time, without merit. In fact we have exactly the opposite problem: Under-incarceration of violent criminals. Primarily because we have so many of them that we don't have room to lock them up.
And we're getting more mixed in with the mass migration waves coming over borders too porous to protect the interests and personal safety of our citizenry.
Well said, like most of your comments. Do you think the death penalty is a viable option for those perpetual violent offenders? What's the point of locking someone up for life because they can't behave in polite society as opposed to making sure they will never be a threat again, other than a moral dilemma?
At the moment we lack the fortitude to lock them up for significant sentences. I don't see the death penalty becoming any more practical, especially not while institutions charged with enforcing the laws continue to beclown themselves and prove unaccountable for bad acts and corruption. If you're smart, you don't trust the government's word on what you should eat or what shots you should take. Much less about who you should let them kill.
Warehousing violent criminals perpetually isn't a nice sounding solution, but as there is almost no chance violent criminal actors will reform and various efforts at rehabilitation have all proven to be complete duds, nobody has a better answer. At least in a cage they can't generate more victims among the innocent public.
Trust me, as a Canadian, I'm painfully aware of how fully retarded the government is.
I guess I was hoping for a better solution than "lock them up forever", but you're right, there aren't really any other options.
And, there you go .
Repeating known falsehoods is a certain tell of one is an alt-right who cares not for the truth .
Keep repeating the crap you hear of hate radio and faux noise, then wonder why America is becoming a third world country .
-Nate
Ah, yes. Quoting from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the actual bureaus of prisons from about a dozen states...all well known "alt-right" sources.
A lot of good info here, I don't have first hand experience, but I hear a lot about this stuff across the dinner table from my wife who has been a litigator for the past 13 years. One piece that I think you've overlooked is that we do nothing to look left and identify root cause. You touched on some possible causes with education, and home life, but from what I hear, again second hand, from a person who exclusively deals with indigent habitual felons. Is that 99% of the people in that situation are mentally ill. So much so that the prior 3 felony convictions they served (what is required to see your next charge tried as a habitual case in this state) doesn't register to the defendant as something they should change and thus the cycle continues.
I don't disagree that sentencing could use some reform since it seems to me it currently is a crap shoot that depends way to much on the individual prosecutor and judge involved as opposed to a systematic method. This often results in people let back out into the world without any expectations or support to not immediately repeat what ever act initially go them there in the first place.
All this to say, I think society would benefit more from the effort being placed on avoiding the problems that create criminals, i.e. prevent the cut from happening, as opposed to focusing on making a better band aid.
EDIT:
To clarify since I didn't make it explicit above, I am not at all for eliminating prison sentences when applicable. My intent above is to say that if we don't find the reason certain people are pre-disposed to commit crimes and fix those problems, longer sentences won't drastically improve the rate that crimes are committed.
On the "mentally ill" front, there is certainly untreated mental illness mixed up in the root cause analysis, but it is not anywhere close to explaining even the bulk of the phenomenon. There is a push to view any violent criminal act as "mental illness" when that is not true.
Someone who has a different value system than you or I is not necessarily mentally ill. Take the Hamas raid into Israel as an example. The Hamas terrorists that went into peaceful neighborhoods or a music festival and started raping and murdering people they'd never met before solely because they were Jewish were not mentally ill. They held a value system that blessed their actions as righteous.
It's inaccurate to assume that the reason a multi-time felon does not change their behavior is because they don't realize that it's "bad". You see the same thing when the authorities decry "senseless" acts of violence. Well, the reality is that almost all of those acts of violence makes perfect sense to the perpetrators.
Here's the thing about violence: It doesn't have to make sense. Not to you, me, or the victims. But the perpetrators of it often have reasons why they did it, and it's not because they were responding to auditory hallucinations. Violent criminals will often readily admit to committing their violent crimes and do so while claiming to be the aggrieved party.
A friend of mine interrogated an armed robber who shot a Dollar General clerk. While being hit with a gun she said "You're not going to shoot me??" which the armed robber took as a challenge to her authority and promptly shot her. His quote was "You don't tell someone who got a gun they ain't gonna shoot you!"
That man was not mentally ill. He's malevolent. Malevolence is not mental illness.
Everybody likes to talk about directing resources to preventing violent criminals from becoming violent criminals, but I don't see that happening. I'm all for preventing their creation as I'm absolutely certain the vast majority of the problem falls on the nurture side of the equation moreso than the nature. But in order to do that, the current crop will have to be dealt with as a part of cleaning up the environment enough to allow for the cycles to be broken.
Actual prosecutions of violent criminal acts and incarceration does, in fact, produce lower instances of crime. When Richmond, Va earned the nefarious title of murder capitol of the US, a deliberate effort was launched to actually prosecute federal laws already on the books which assigned a 5 year sentence to felons in possession of firearms. This produced a dramatic and immediate drop in violent crime.
If you look at the places with the highest rates of violence, they correlate with the lowest rate of prosecutions of violations of federal gun laws just as one example of crimes that aren't prosecuted which aren't being done because it's not the answer certain people with political power want. Police departments in large urban areas are routinely encountering violent offenders armed with "Glock switches", Chinese made devices that fit on the back of a Glock pistol's slide that turn it into a machinegun.
Possession of one of those if you are not a Type 7 FFL is a felony with a 5-10 year federal sentence. And yet how many of the people being arrested after committing a violent crime with those things are actually facing the federal prosecution? That's one of the first charges ditched in plea deals when it's a guarantee of a stiff sentence.
Scores of violent criminals could be put on ice for 5-10 years in no time flat IF the laws on the books were actually enforced. But they're not being enforced.
Are you a cop?
https://youtu.be/AHGik_FKdsk?si=gQLAjRZ2y5eOgY37
What part of GA are you in?
I'm not, but I have family and friends there I visit.
I grew up in (very) rural North Georgia but have lived in Atlanta and Chicago for the past 13 years.
The rural types don’t care for the big city, as you know.
I'm not a city fan myself. I just don't like being around that many people all the time. But mostly it's the politics. Cities like Chicago and Atlanta and Pittsburg and Baltimore are run by corrupt systems that will make deals with people who rape children but will prosecute an otherwise honest person to the full extent of their powers just for bullshit narratives.
That happens in rural areas, too...but less often and usually with much less powerful political machines behind it.
On the death penalty: I thought leftists opposed that? But I agree with you on this one. That level of fraud deserves that level of punishment.
On Wrenches: I've got two sets of Imperial and three of Metric. A lot of them are craftsmen from 3 decades ago. Some are not (remember S&K? Whatever happened to them).
On the singers: I'm not usually a big fan of most women performers, -unless- they can also do songs that aren't about dating, failed relationships, successful relationships, etc. I want ones who can move beyond what the other 99 percent sing about. Harsh, I know. (What do you think about Justin Johnson's latest album?)
The NPR guy was funny. That bias goes WAAAAY back to the 70's. Because I used to listen to it back then. And they are very much supported with our tax dollars. If congress took that money away, they'd be out of business in a year.
shithead neo-liberals will oppose it. leftists will tell you that all dissenters and white collar scammers need to be turned into fertilizer.
I stopped reading the TFP article when he said that NPR's leftist bent only became apparent in the last few years in reference to the complaints of conservatives.
Same here. He's a far lefty, he's just not AS far as the others.
I actually laughed out loud...
I'm not a leftist. I'm exactly the kind of person leftist would smear as a fascist even though that's not remotely close to being true. I believe in criminals meeting a violent end at the hands of their intended victims.
I don't trust the state to put people to death because I know how corrupt the state can be.
I'm actually a member of what used to be TWO 'protected' classes in our society. Minorities that you couldn't say anything bad about or you were a RACIST!!!!!!!!!!
I honestly think that's what led to this whole new 'Trans' movement. So they could call everyone else a racist because men putting on makeup and wearing a dress is just so reality altering. Because all of the LGB's had learned that the Left hated them, the democrats despised them, and they were only using them.
I mean look at the whole 'alphabet' movement. There are no L's, G's, or B's in it anymore. Hell, does anyone even REMEMBER it as the LGB movement? It was for decades! Now you got so many people tacked onto it, none of whom got the grief of the hassle that the LGB's did. They've not only made it worthless, but the T's run it completely.
And they even managed to make that flag uglier...
Well said Tim ;
Being Conservative means being honest and a whole raft of things the alt-right has zero interest in .
-Nate
As strange as it sounds the "alt right" (the real ones, not the not-left people) individuals I've interacted with are the most pro-family, pro-health, and pro-God people I've ever met. I think the desire to "return to tradition" has caused them to emulate the communities of old, and for the better.
That sounds good but is diametrically opposed to what they say and do in reality .
I don't much care what others say, I pay close attention to what they do .
-Nate
Which is entirely fair, and those I know are unique in their own right. No shortage of stupidity on either side.
SK held out as a USA business until about 3 years ago when a chinese investment firm bought them and sent the production "home"
Damn, that sucks. Craftsman, S&K, and Snapon used to be the 'big three'.
I blame it all on the attempts to convert to the Metric system. After all, it makes people stupid! :-)
We should all still be on the British Standard!
Side question, I need a new helmet, any recommendations? Debating going back to Shoie. Also, what coms system are you using to listen to music & phone?
I have had an excellent experience with scorpion.
I have a Sena 30K 2-pack that I used on my cross-country adventure last year with my buddy and on rides around the New England forests.. it has worked flawlessly. No more goofy hand signals. Also got an extra mic and speaker set so I can use the 2 devices between 3 helmets, for different sized heads of fellow riders. I don't use the music feature much, but it works well too.
I have an AGV K6, which is a wonderful helmet. It's light, quiet, and comfortable. I'd own another in a different color if they weren't made in China.
I suspect they're all made in China now. Anything to earn $5 more a unit...
That sucks, I've been holding onto a broken S-K tool for thirty + years trying to find anyone who'll warranty it .
Scrap bin next I guess .
-Nate
Speaking of things we haven't seen in a while, are classifieds going to return?
Try the Sunday Open Thread. Or the Wednesday Open Thread.
Anything you wanna sell, let me know and I'll promote the shit out of it. Or post and I'll pin it.
I'd like to know when Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will be held to account under the same statutes that sent Bernie Madoff to prison.
Stealing $65 billion-with-a-B is nothing compared to the economic damage a Federal tax hike does.
forgetting about economic damage for a second, stealing more money from me to accomplish goals that are against my wishes and kill people i likely would agree with not only makes me an accessory to murder but is the same type of fraud and theft as this lady is being put to death for.
This.
I don't want my tax dollars spent on the EPA, ATF, NHTSA or any of the other alphabet soup Eye of Mordor.
I'm more than happy to pay for a border wall and aggressive immigration enforcrment, though.
That’ll never happen, unless somehow the Democrats get outwitted in their cheating in November.
Funny how the gop gets caught constantly yet those evil DEMON-crats don't .
That truthy thing can be a real pain in the ass unless of course you don't care like the alt-righties who lie endlessly and always try to project their guilt onto the dems .
-Nate
I'm perfectly fine with capital punishment, and on the same page as you for white collar crime being included in there, as anything else means ignoring second order effects of said crimes.
I hadn't noticed that you are infatuated with being infatuated with female singers/songwriters.
Breaking: Uri Berliner has resigned. Apparently the crocodile did not save him for last.
Also, Mitski's best song is "Should've Been Me", from the album Laurel Hell a couple summers ago.
Unless Mitski is out there in a maid outfit playing power chords and face-melting riffs on a PRS I'm not interested. (actually I really like Fiona Apple and I might check some of these ladies out-- their music, that is)
She DOES scream into a Jazzmaster pickup in lieu of an actual mic.
I just got on Caroline Polachek. I tried years back when you first recommended her, but it didn't stick. It does now, (has anyone other than NWA wrote two very similar songs about blowjobs?) but I would still like it better without autotune. Anyone ever heard of Pretty Reckless? Taylor Momsen from Gossip Girl decided early on to quit being an actress, maybe she ran into the likes of Harvey Weinstein and opted out, and she has made some incredibly good music. Early albums were hard rocking, energetic, rebellious, sometimes grungy, sometimes raunchy lyrics, while later albums were more introspective and meloncholy with blues and country influence. How do I describe her voice? You can smell the cigarettes on it. Rough enough for metal vocals, soft enough for ethereal highs. Got So High and Quicksand are recent rock and blues gems, respectively.
Funny enough, my wife turned me on to the Pretty Reckless. They played some music for the Victoria's Secret fashion show like 10 or 15 years ago and she showed me thinking I might like it. She was right. I like the one they did a year or two ago with those two guys from Soundgarden, "Only Love Can Save Me Now" or something.
In Caroline's defense, she isn't auto-tuning. She has taught herself to mimic autotune and often does it off the cuff live. What that says about culture and creativity is too involved for a comment response....
Thank you, I didn't know that. I found myself almost liking the effect, justifying to myself that it fits the tone, now I know why. I still don't feel good about not knowing where the voice and instrument end.
Honest question, how do you know it's not running real time when she's on stage?
I really like the look of those Wright sockets… they sort of (but probably not really) remind me of my set of late 70’s vintage S-K standard sized sockets. I still have them and the original metal case, and they still look and work great.
At face value, the death penalty for Bank Fraud might seem somewhat severe; however, upon further review, the punishment does seem to fit the crime. People like Madoff and Bankman-Fried ruined countless lives with their insatiable greed. I might consider adding a "no appeal" when the decision is rendered. The woman who stole from the Saigon Commercial Bank, which, by all accounts, is located somewhere in Ho Chi Minh City, deserves whatever she gets. Perhaps she'll be sent to Hanoi, which is NOT located in Ho Chi Minh City, for re-programming, or possibly to an Ivy League University.
There is also the idea of _pour encourager les autres_. Boeing would not be where it is now if ANYBODY could feel empowered to say "terminating our competent engineers in favor of cheaper ones ~might~ be considered criminally negligent and, I don't know about the rest of you, but personally I'd rather not risk going to Leavenworth."
Right now the boards will say "What's the worst that can happen? We'll just get bailed out haha!" (Sherman will no doubt defend both the justice and utility of this policy.) I will never forget a picture of the Bank CEO's leaving bailout planning meetings in 2009: nice suits, nice watches, laughing in the early evening sun on the steps of a beautiful old building. Just another day in paradise for them.
"we'd be fools not to risk other peoples money"
but... but ... but vegetables and meat would cease to exist!!! (in my most Sherman voice). You couldn't get paid and couldn't buy anything. The world would stop spinning.
The bankers NEED the taxpayer to pay them a bonus so they don't have to turn in that new McLaren.
just realized i have no idea what he sounds like
i sat next to a dude at the detroit acf meet that had something of a aristocratic english accent and i wondered where he got it
also had a navitimer and green pants but i didnt see a 911 in the parking lot
I have no idea what he sounds like I was just being an ass.
I have a slight, generic Southern accent, exhibiting neither the sing-song torturing of vowels characteristic of many Appalachian Americans nor the “Southern Aristocrat” accent (which is just about gone, these days).
alright so it absolutely wasnt you lol
Accents are funny, I am very self conscious about my own. It surprises me how many times people wile comment that I don't sound like I am from NY, and everyone else in my family does, so it is as if have an affected mid Atlantic accent. I think it comes from too much PBS growing up, or as my nemesis Billy Joel calls it, channel 13.
In short, if you sit next to me at a gentlmans's discussion groups, mock me gently!
transatlantic accent is possibly the best accent to have
you can sound regal and dignified even if youre asking for a syringe of heroin
What, shooting speed is out now ? .
-Nate
So when the taxpayers “bailed out” the bankers by forcing most deposit-taking banks in the country to issue preferred equity with a 5% coupon (ratcheting to 9% in the future), how exactly did any of that money go to directly to “the bankers?”
The same (Fed member) banks who employ people who could - or would - purchase a McLaren are the same banks that paid back TARP as soon as they were allowed to do so, which is why it was such a profitable home run for the taxpayers!
Still waiting for my dividend check sherman!
🙄
I don't have a problem with the fact that they were paid back, just the fact that they were 'rescued' from their own business decisions.
I'm aware they were also forced to underwrite bad paper under racial equity and other bullshit criteria.
I understand the nuance to some degree, just that this is the only industry that can shit and the taxpayer is supposed to clean up.
Most banks in the US did not want TARP; Hank Paulson’s master stroke was forcing (almost) everyone to accept it, which meant that few knew which banks really needed it.
The bad paper, redlining, etc. thing is mostly a Fox News-watcher fantasy, because most residential real estate exposure is securitized and not held on a bank’s balance sheet.
The “only” industry? What about … Government Motors, Chrysler, the major airlines, and - soon - Boeing?
Let em all burn
Which is the only reason it was in the black. They should have let the few fail. The made everyone take it so it could be a success and certain acf commenters could post about how successful it was. My point? Tarp was all an elaborate bailout for an 18 year old sherman mccoy commenter
Also utilities. Just substitute "ratepayer."
Nobody knew it would turn out that way at the time, nobody is irreplaceable, especially businesses.
What do you think would happen if all of the major banks went away overnight?
Would consumers be able to pay for anything? Would magic Amazon elves bring me all my household sundries? Would ANYONE go to work at all? Would companies be able to make payroll for the employees who did show up? Would companies be able to roll over debt obligations? Would people be able to trade equities? Would anyone deliver gasoline to your local station? How quickly would you lose power?
🍿
Well, I'm not going to engage in this game, I simply was advocating for the ones that get caught holding the bag of shit to eat it. I'm not saying at any point that banking needs to be done away with.
In the absence of all banks, economic activity wouldn't cease to exist. It might slow down, and need a new medium other than ones controlled by banks, but it'll still resume.
Banks Do not CREATE value or wealth by themselves. They're a medium for transactions, which can easily be replaced.
There is also fraud ruining lives and causing perhaps indirect deaths, vs. Bezos forcing unsafe warehouses to remain open through tornadoes and KBR and Halliburton electrocuting troops taking showers directly if unintentionally causing deaths, vs. the Sacklers intentionally killing people.
Jack, I'll give Weyes Blood some ear time (although on the first 30 seconds I think Mrs Baruth the First had a point) if you will try Nerina Pallot, starting with her 2006 album "Fires." She gave a very good performance to a packed London Palladium on Saturday, which is impressive for someone no-one has heard of.
I only made it about 30 s into the first song, too. Not my thing.
Listening now. This is from a very different tradition -- my brother played in and around a lot of bands that did this sort of thing. Wow. She didn't manage to get a record sold until she was 30 years old. That's determination. I agree. She's a talent.
It's a tough world, the music business. There's another guy I like a lot, Martin Harley, who play fabulous slide guitar. I have been going to his gigs for years, but his last one in central London was in a church. No getting fat on that...
I'll compare the current 'immigration crisis' to your first thesis. When wealthy and powerful blood was eventually spilt by immigrant anarchists and na-er do wells back in the early 20th century, those gates closed fast and hard.
So yeah, hang 'em high.
Jack was really the stalker that inspired 'Possession'? Not surprised.
NPR has always been Red media but TDS really pushed it over the edge. It was palpable.
"Jack was really the stalker that inspired 'Possession'? Not surprised."
In all seriousness, to see her up close at the age of 23 was to immediately realize why people went insane and sent threatening letters. She was luminous.
Why doesn't your kid do what mine does: make a disgusted sound in the passenger seat, sulk, and put his headphones in to listen to Kanye at a reasonable volume?
He said Weather Report. For which I hold him in even higher esteem. No contest.
He's been drilling himself through Palladium and Birdland lately. It cracks me up that he can play Birdland without the music. There's a lot in there.
I’m generally against expanding the death penalty to crimes other than murder, because it theoretically gives the criminal a “nothing to lose” attitude about then killing their rape or robbery victim to eliminate a witness.
Whether that rational calculation actually enters the mind of a serial rapist or armed robber in the heat of the moment is outside my knowledge, never having been either one.
I’m intrigued by the idea of using it for financial crimes; certainly I can make the case that a Madoff or SBF is a bigger drain on/threat to society as a whole than some anonymous gang-banger who shoots another gang-banger dead in the ghetto. Perhaps that’s just my upper middle class “privilege” talking.
Speaking of which, I was called up for jury duty yesterday and was excited to see what kind of trial I would be sitting in on. It was a child molester--that is, an alleged child molester and one of his vic--ahem, alleged victims, a 10-year-old girl would be testifying not 10 feet from where we sat. I got out of it by saying I would be negatively biased towards the defendant since I have an 11-year-old at home. No way did I want to hear ANY of that testimony, not even to get that guy to hang for it. Man, if only it could have been a murderer or an embezzler.
Yeah I’d have been in exactly the same boat.
Whew ;
I've been a jurist on some nasty cases I was _sure_ we'd convict until we heard the truth of the matter.....
Jury duty makes one *think* if one does it properly .
-Nate
Adding murder on to a robbery is already a "nothing to lose" strategy. Parmuegr Singh was perfectly compliant and even gave Christopher Copeland even more money than he demanded at gunpoint originally, but Copeland executed him on his knees anyway.
Copeland was wearing an ankle monitor when he committed the murder, having violated multiple parole and probation requirements for previous violent crimes.
The kind of people who commit most of the murders in this country have already had half a dozen prior violent felonies without facing serious consequences to add on top of the dozens more they've committed without ever receiving charges.
I can assure there is absolutely no restraint against elevating violent crimes like rape or robbery to murder because of fear of punishment from the criminal justice system. The people who are committing those acts do not see or think about the system anything like you do.
Lets not forget that far more often the bangers miss and kill/maim children, grammas or some guy two blocks over just having a smoke .
Gotta always look at the bigger picture .
-Nate