You're arguing that high rates of success aren't unusual because there are things like TBills and others which can do that. This is correct. It is certainly possible to have very high rates of success on conservative investments.
You're also arguing that it's possible to take spectacular risks and get outlandish rates of return. This is also correct.
However Hillary had both of those things. 6000% return in combination with 80% success in trades.
And she also had the whole 'consistently trade on the best price of the day' for which there's no possible legit answer.
And she's did all of this with someone who benefited financially from her husband's office.
And she very clearly got "preferential treatment".
And that office has a history (during that time period) of assigning good trades to certain customers.
And the amount of luck needed for 80% success leading to 6000% returns seems like it'd be outlandish, serious people who publish in serious journals who have calculated the odds claim it's at best 10,000x less likely than winning the lottery. Notice they could be off by 1,000,000 fold and it'd only make the odds 30 million to one.
So... your conclusion from all this is she ran scary risks and made that money legitimately.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on that one.
My conclusion is that "misuse of the levers of power" is the more reasonable answer, and I'll add that imho it's destructive to a democracy for this sort of thing to happen more or less openly.
If all it took was “not dealing with police brutality” to get crime under control, crime would have been under control a long time ago.
The big, massive discussion about control over the police consumes all the oxygen we have to talk about social policies. Ergo we're NOT talking about what's fueling crime. Get rid of the war on drugs and the violence associated with it goes away, the economic damage associated with it goes away, the militarization of the police goes away, etc.
So we're going to reform the police and live with the war for another 30 years. Do you think this is a fair trade?
1) Wonder if it’s possible that some of the 1186 deaths last year that we don’t have video of might not have been entirely justified, even if the report says they were.
I expect this is true.
1) Officers make mistakes and lie a certain constant percentage of the time and we’re sampling it with increased frequency.
I expect this is also true.
What we saw on camera may or may not have been the worst thing that happened that day. It’s just the worst thing with witnesses and video.
Agreed, although but we may be looking at the worst (on camera) for a week or month considering how many news cycles I expect it to stick.
You appear to be arguing against the notion that police violence is worse than cancer and heart disease and war. I’m totally with you on the idea that it’s not. Consider that point fully conceded.
Let's go back in time to the 1950's: The number one reason blacks couldn't advance was racism.
Because of mass media, society got a good look at what 'typical' meant and exposed those brutal facts to everyone, everywhere. The weight of society was brought to bear. Racism, while not totally eliminated, was vastly reduced to the point where Obama's race was probably a net positive for his advancement.
These are all good things.
So then, what is keeping blacks back now? I'd argue the top three are crime, education, and culture. We could and probably should break those into sub categories (the war on drugs imho should be #1, single parent households would be in the top 5, etc) but whatever. Police Brutality/Racism would be... where? Number 10? Further down the list? The media attention driving this is the same thing which fuels lottery ticket sales, by making the rare look typical.
Right now, arguably the #1 problem is crime, and the gov agency which is most devoted to making black lives matter is the police. There are strong arguments that the police should do a better job, there are various suggestions for doing so, some hit the radar as pretty good, some less so.
The rarest resource in the universe is the attention of upper management. These reforms may be what we do for the black community for the next 30 years. And we're going to spend that energy on their number #10 problem. Further, if we handle their #10 problem poorly, we might be making #1 worse.
Imagine if the 1960's had dealt with cigarettes and had ignored racism.
Imagine if today, instead of police reform, we just ended the war on drugs.
Forgive me for not being all that enthusiastic about all this but imho we could do so much better and at best we're not going to do much.
I would assume the Russians want Hillary in the White House. Presumably they have all the emails from her server and can blackmail her with whatever she wanted to hide from the public.
More than a decade ago I got a call from them claiming they had my resume and wanted me down for an "interview". I went, and it was a ra-ra-sell-our-products thing. That right there made it a total waste of my time, but the marketing techniques were this large series of non sequitur statements, and I also realized that half the people in the room (the half who were really into this) were 'plants'.
pillsy: ...mean there can’t possibly be bad outcomes due to reduced community trust in the police.
We are going to have "bad outcomes" no matter what we do. All we can do is trade one set of problems/risks for a different set, which is where trying to get a cost-benefit analysis is a good thing... which ideally means trying reforms in individual cities to see what works.
pillsy: Also, it’s hardly like all of the violence is due to the drug war. Indeed, it’s unclear how any of the recent high profile, gratuitous shootings have anything to do with it.
That's actually my point. These high profile exceptions are something like 0.1% of the drug war's shootings.
So if "reform" makes the drug war worse, then we could easily end up hurting the people we're trying to help. If it makes the drug war much worse then later generations won't be thinking well of us and our 'reform'.
That doesn't mean I'm against reform, but we need to keep in mind the bigger picture. And yes, we absolutely need to worry about unintended consequences and keep in mind that good intentions don't buy a cup of coffee.
Stillwater: It seems to me that someone with such a reflexively cynical view of gummint wouldn’t permit themselves to believe that a law was passed on the basis of “good intentions”. It seems too convenient, actually.
If memory serves, President Clinton expanded the war on drugs with the support and approval of the black sections of Congress and the black community in general. The "racist" parts of the war and it's expansion have mostly been (as far as I can tell) that the blacks are being hurt worse by drugs and so need more "help", which means harsher laws to "save" them.
Taking race totally out of the picture and looking at "helping" pregnant women and children (which narrows the scope so we're entirely looking at good intentions)... over the decades three of my female relatives have each decided to not get married to the father of their unborn child, so they could get more aid from the government. Each was open to the family as to what they were doing and why, eventually two of them did get married (mostly because of social pressure).
Good intentions can easily lead to bad outcomes when dealing with social issues and complex interactions.
Can your cynicism about government account for why you think allowing those riots to potentially continue is a better outcome?
My cynicism says giving out blank checks in the name of "reform" is a bad idea. That is NOT the same as saying "no reform". However I expect some reforms are good, some necessary, some won't work but will be harmless...
...some can make bad social issues (which hurt lots more people and are actually bigger problems), worse.
Now, with people of your ideological bent, it’s hard to tell if a criticism of an institutional structure can be equated with a desire to revise it, but it sure appears you’re saying dismantling the cop union would be a net positive (unintended consequences included in the calculus, obvs).
Oh, I wouldn't stop there. I'm seriously not a fan of gov unions across the board. (Thanks for asking directly though).
I think we've had them long enough to see the problems...
1) Tax increases and increasing gov power are always in their interest, gov reform is not.
2) They have the ability to negotiate with themselves by electing their boss, and then hand any bills to the taxpayers.
And I could go on but this thread isn't about that.
So, yes, I'm in favor of dismantling the police union. What's more, if we want any reforms to stick, we probably should.
Thank you, that was probably the best post I've read in terms of overcoming the numbers in making the case for reform. It's very convincing.
Things to point out:
1) After reform, within the margin of error, the number of killed-by-police probably won't go down (mental illness and the drug war are the big movers there).
2) If reform is a stand in for "my life sucks, fix it", that's probably not going to work.
3) Police work intrinsically deals with ugly, sometimes unusual, situations. If reform tries to pretend it doesn't and it's poorly handled, we could make other situations worse. What "poorly handled" means may not be clear until after the fact.
4) We're still going to have incidents like Ferguson's "Mike Brown" where minorities die, the press presents it as racism, his family presents him as a saint, and in the real world he got himself killed. Worse, I fully expect the number of these to *increase*, just because the number of cameras out there is increasing.
None of this should be read as disagreeing with the case for reform, but expectations should be realistic and I'm not sure they are.
EVERYONE should have the protection of a union lawyer and lots of teenytiny fine print to protect them from being fired.
When I see a dysfunctional local gov institution (which in this conversation is the police) there's often an overly strong union which has put it's interests above that of the consumers. In the free market, very long term (say 50-70 years), that results in the bankruptcy of the host company.
Yes, clearly we only need to worry about the unintended consequences of preventing cops from needlessly inflicting violence on black people; surely there are no possible unintended consequences of continuing with the status quo. Well, beyond the direct effects of the needless violence.
Where is the bulk of that "needless violence" coming from? Oh, yes, the drug war. The one we fired up to 'help' people, based on good intentions.
Pity about the unintended consequences, but hey, good intentions excuse all sorts of bad outcomes because things can't possibly get any worse.
Being stoned or fat doesn’t change their age. I don’t remember any pique when people called the Stanford rapist a kid, and he’s 2yrs older than Brown. So let’s be consistent.
I don't remember anyone calling Stanford a kid, I certainly never have (and yes, the judge went way to easy on him). And it's disingenuous to call them kids. The cop wasn't involved with them because they were kids, or in spite of them being kids.
"Criminals" is FAR more accurate, descriptive, and on point. One was 22 years old and had an active warrant out for his arrest, the other was 290 lbs and had an 8-minute old 911 call out about his crime.
Although no eyewitnesses directly corroborate Wilson’s account of Brown’s attempt to gain control of the gun, there is no credible evidence to disprove Wilson’s account of what occurred inside the SUV.
And what evidence we do have, including the indirect eyewitnesses, supports it.
Half the credible witnesses say he was charging and half say he was walking towards Wilson.
Let's just review the link again. http://i.imgur.com/eNdviOl.png
We have 8 witnesses who say "charging", one is the cop, 3 others should get tossed for partially conflicting with physical evidence.
We have 7 witnesses who say "walked", 6 of whom should get tossed for partially or totally conflicting with the physical evidence (or with their own testimony). Further, the one that's left has notes in the margin saying "extremely inconsistent account, still guessing about Brown being shot while fleeing...".
So what we have is 5 to 1, and that 1 is a mess. If we exclude the cop and the mess it's 4-0.
And Wilson’s erratic behavior, coupled with the culture at FPD, means we have no a priori reason to trust his story. Again, much of this mess could have been avoided if the FPD simply treated their officers like civilians, never mind *servants* that they claim to be.
Those cops hit the radar as a group of clueless ticket-writing incompetents. That explains the riots, and the cops over reaction to the protests, etc.
Which doesn't change that we have a ton of evidence, serious people have looked at it, and it's really one sided favoring the cop.
Now reading between the lines, IMHO Dorian Johnson seems likely to have been far more involved than the reports mention. He's the one with the history of involvement in drugs, he's the one with the history of theft, he's the one with the history of lying, he's the one with the warrant. My unsupported assumption is that the drugs those two smoked were his, as was the idea of robbing the store, and all those lies he told people were to cover that he got his 'friend' killed.
I like how the problem of white people in positions of power and authority treating black people with disrespect and brutality seems to always be presented as some sort of mystifying puzzle, some sort of intractable riddle for the ages.
It is as simple as….white people need to behave better and stop treating black folks like second class citizens.
IMHO changing the skin color of the police wouldn't change much (witness Baltimore).
Do you think law enforcement is going to be more effective in a community where people are afraid to call the cops because they think, if they do, they’re likely to be shot, or beaten, or just hauled off to jail for no good reason?
How about if the people in that community know for a fact (correctly) that the criminal class *will* *kill* *them* if they trust the police? That the police simply can not protect them?
Would there be less criminality on Wall Street if the FBI were to gun down a few bankers in their offices?
Whatever method Wall Street uses to train wreck the economy is normally *legal* at the time.
The solution isn't more complex laws or an all powerful regulator, the solution is to make them eat their losses.
Bailing out banks is less damaging to the economy than not bailing them out, so fine, bail them out, but fire the top two or three layers of management with no golden parachutes and claw back their last X years of bonuses.
Don Zeko: Again, this isn’t just about saving the lives of x people per year. if that was all we cared about, we’d lower speed limits...
A very good example. We are willing to tolerate a certain number of dead people per year because the cure is worse than the disease.
Any policy we choose is going to have certain costs and benefits. It is very possible to make things worse in the name of making things better, especially when dealing with complex social issues and the gov.
That's not a reason to do *nothing*, but it is something to keep in mind as we go forward.
trizzlor:
So we’re all on the same page, here’s a sample BLM agenda:
which of these points do you think will make community-police relationships worse?
That list is a lot saner and more defined than I was expecting, Thank you.
IMHO some of those are clearly good on the face of them, body cams, training, end profit.
Demilitarization is going to be good in most situations (the problem with having a really cool swat team is they need things to do).
"Fair Contract" is itself a laundry list of subitems, some of which I think are fine, a few of which aren't (releasing faces/names seems like a call for the lynch mob).
I get nervous that some of these are going to have unintended consequences. Something to keep in mind is that, if we assume ALL police created deaths was un-needed, then it was about 10% of the total (roughly 14.5k murders, the police killed roughly 1.1k). If we assume that 90% of police created deaths were needed, then the police are roughly 1% of the total.
When we reform the police, we should be deeply concerned that we're reducing the 1% at the expense of increasing the 99%. The police have to obey rules, criminals don't, how some of this plays out in practice may not follow the desired script.
That but right there tells me most everyone that I need to know about @dark-matter’s credibility on these issues.
I'll interpret that as a request for sources. Links at the bottom. I'm reading from wiki and the DOJ report as I'm writing this. If you want to dispute what I'm saying I suggest you do the same.
RE: Criminals
Dorian Johnson (Brown's friend)
wiki used to do a better job at detailing his criminal record but whatever.
"...arrested for lying to cops three years ago and currently has an outstanding arrest warrant..."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2732122/Revealed-Key-Michael-Brown-shooting-witness-Dorian-Johnson-arrest-warrant-theft-busted-lying-cops.html "An ABC News affiliate in St. Louis reported that Johnson is wanted in Jefferson City, Mo., on a 2011 theft charge and also for filing a false police report that same year." http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/dorian-johnson-the-boy-who-cried-wolf/
And he was in the papers the following year for being arrested on drug charges.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/dorian-johnson-figure-in-michael-brown-case-arrested-in-st/article_578b535b-bfb3-5216-8fa7-ee7e53f0a3f9.html
Mike Brown "...at approximately 11:53 a.m., Brown stole several packages of cigarillos. As captured on the store’s surveillance video, when the store clerk tried to stop Brown, Brown used his physical size to stand over him and forcefully shove him away. As a result, an FPD dispatch call went out over the police radio for a “stealing in progress.” " (DOJ page 6)
BTW this was at 11:53 a.m. His encounter with the cop was at 12:01 and his death was at 12:03.
RE: High
According to Dorian Johnson, the entire point of going to the store was to get cigarillos so they could smoke marijuana.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/14/justice/ferguson-dorian-johnson-statements/
A toxicology test performed by a St. Louis University laboratory revealed the presence of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in Brown's blood and urine. The presence of THC indicates that Brown had used marijuana within a few hours of his death, but it could not be determined whether or not Brown was impaired at the time of his death.[81] (wiki)
Notice this is VASTLY different that other cases where they claim the level of THC was too low to affect him. Notice also the number of times Brown's actions simply make zero sense.
1) He has a bright future but he uses force to steal something cheap from a store.
2) He then walks down the middle of the street obstructing traffic until the police arrive.
3) He attacks the cop, apparently without provocation, and tries to get his gun.
-) He gets shot, runs away (this is fine).
4) He turns around and charges him.
5,6,7) The cop fires three volleys of shots at him, after every volley Brown pauses and then charges again.
The bullet which kills him is the last one, so by that time he's been shot multiple times and *still* decides that charging the gun is a good idea.
(multiple witnesses in wiki plus the audio recording of the shots).
On a personal note, I knew a guy in college who, when high on weed, not only got stupid but stupidly violent. Brown's actions simply make no sense unless "because he was high" is the answer.
DavidTC: Erm, this is the cattle future market. Last I checked, the fees there were pretty damn low for heavy investors.
A thousand dollars isn't a "heavy investor". The minimum amount you were supposed to have was $12k.
DavidTC: His *return* doesn’t have anything to do with what *percentage* of his trades are profitable. 100% of his trades might be 17% profitable, or 99.999% of them might be slightly unprofitable and that last single trade is 100000% profitable.
Absolutely right. If you want apples to apples he has a return of 17% and she had 6000%.
DavidTC: Oh, so it’s not even two-thirds.
Absolutely perfect, with no loses ever, would be 100%, she's scary close to the theoretical perfect.
DavidTC: And, not to be too blunt about it, but people didn’t understand probability. I don’t trust anyone who quotes odds without actually seeing the math. People *talking about* a model I can’t even see the results of, on data I have no access to?
People don't understand probability? The fluff newspapers were her backers, the stats you're ragging on were by economists from the University of North Florida and Auburn University published in the Journal of Economics and Finance. That's over and above the editor of the Journal of Futures Markets who said something similar without the stats (he compared what she did to buying a pair of ice skates and then winning the olympics the next day).
The people who are in the trade understand numbers like these are simply impossible. You're trying to justify a 6000% profit and claim somehow that it's "normal" or not unusual.
If that paper is off by 5 orders of magnitude, then we're looking at a politician's wife literally winning the lottery (how often has that happened), when the lottery was being run by someone actively being helped by her husband. If they're not wrong about the odds then it's more like she's winning the lottery consistently.
DavidTC: For example, it’s not the least bit unlikely for someone to win the lottery, despite what you seem to think. People win the lottery literally every day.
If the lottery were consistently won by the wife of the guy running it, it'd be a problem. This was a business who was actively being helped by her husband, and the broker's office is now known for this sort of thing.
Further, these are *scary* risks she was taking. The expected result was not only the loss of her money, but that she'd actually owe multiple years worth of income. If she'd lost $100k, how would she have paid it back and what would that have done to her and her husband's careers?
Imagine the governor declaring bankruptcy because his wife was betting on the cattle futures market. Is that really a good risk for a pair of really smart people?
DavidTC: No, meaning if you held anything long enough, and managed to sell it at the right place, it will eventually make you money.
That is the trick. If it were easy I'd still be doing it. 3/4 of the people who do what she did lose money. The odds are *that* bad.
DavidTC: I find this a weird discussion. I mean, you’re the one asserting that she *did* that, and it was mysterious. Why am I having to explain it actually happens? It clearly does happen, or, uh, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
So you're good with a politician's wife pulling in a 6000% profit under conditions multiple experts claim are somewhere between shockingly unlikely and impossible, while dealing with someone being helped by her husband?
DavidTC: ignoring the fact the market dropped pretty seriously from the start of May 1979
Let's just post what came up in court when that brokerage was investigated in a other matter (wiki).
Two brokers at Springdale, Bill McCurdy and Steven Johns, testifying about another trader's case, said they participated in a cover-up of block trading on a day in June 1979 that happens to coincide with the opening of what would become Rodham's single most profitable trade.[8]
I might buy that if we were just talking about homicides, but that’s part of a larger pattern and perception that black folks have of being unfairly hassled, roughed up, etc by the cops.
The police functioning to raise money for city hall is a serious problem. This is an example of the police 'creating' problems.
But a lot of that perception is simply the result of other problems. I'm not sure what, short of ending the war on drugs, we should do. The carnage that is Black on Black crime suggests a much higher level of police involvement just as a matter of course.
We could certainly reduce police involvement in Black areas... say, impose quotes for who they can arrest, but that would quickly become something like investigating a black's murder only if we've recently investigated a white's murder (and yes, imho this is just as insane as it sounds).
Besides, how many unjustified and unpunished shootings of innocent civilians by cops is too many? As with wrongful criminal convictions, even a quite small number still ought to be a cause for serious concern.
If you want to get it down to zero, then we probably need to get rid of the police and live with it being "Lord of the Flies".
There are other models we could try, perhaps even on a 'one city' level. Say moving to the medical 'review what happened without punishment' idea.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “CNN: Man shot by cops while lying down with hands up, lawyer says [+Video]”
I don't understand what point you're trying to make.
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2016.07.19.T}”
DavidTC,
You're arguing that high rates of success aren't unusual because there are things like TBills and others which can do that. This is correct. It is certainly possible to have very high rates of success on conservative investments.
You're also arguing that it's possible to take spectacular risks and get outlandish rates of return. This is also correct.
However Hillary had both of those things. 6000% return in combination with 80% success in trades.
And she also had the whole 'consistently trade on the best price of the day' for which there's no possible legit answer.
And she's did all of this with someone who benefited financially from her husband's office.
And she very clearly got "preferential treatment".
And that office has a history (during that time period) of assigning good trades to certain customers.
And the amount of luck needed for 80% success leading to 6000% returns seems like it'd be outlandish, serious people who publish in serious journals who have calculated the odds claim it's at best 10,000x less likely than winning the lottery. Notice they could be off by 1,000,000 fold and it'd only make the odds 30 million to one.
So... your conclusion from all this is she ran scary risks and made that money legitimately.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on that one.
My conclusion is that "misuse of the levers of power" is the more reasonable answer, and I'll add that imho it's destructive to a democracy for this sort of thing to happen more or less openly.
On “CNN: Man shot by cops while lying down with hands up, lawyer says [+Video]”
The big, massive discussion about control over the police consumes all the oxygen we have to talk about social policies. Ergo we're NOT talking about what's fueling crime. Get rid of the war on drugs and the violence associated with it goes away, the economic damage associated with it goes away, the militarization of the police goes away, etc.
So we're going to reform the police and live with the war for another 30 years. Do you think this is a fair trade?
"
I expect this is true.
I expect this is also true.
Agreed, although but we may be looking at the worst (on camera) for a week or month considering how many news cycles I expect it to stick.
Let's go back in time to the 1950's: The number one reason blacks couldn't advance was racism.
Because of mass media, society got a good look at what 'typical' meant and exposed those brutal facts to everyone, everywhere. The weight of society was brought to bear. Racism, while not totally eliminated, was vastly reduced to the point where Obama's race was probably a net positive for his advancement.
These are all good things.
So then, what is keeping blacks back now? I'd argue the top three are crime, education, and culture. We could and probably should break those into sub categories (the war on drugs imho should be #1, single parent households would be in the top 5, etc) but whatever. Police Brutality/Racism would be... where? Number 10? Further down the list? The media attention driving this is the same thing which fuels lottery ticket sales, by making the rare look typical.
Right now, arguably the #1 problem is crime, and the gov agency which is most devoted to making black lives matter is the police. There are strong arguments that the police should do a better job, there are various suggestions for doing so, some hit the radar as pretty good, some less so.
The rarest resource in the universe is the attention of upper management. These reforms may be what we do for the black community for the next 30 years. And we're going to spend that energy on their number #10 problem. Further, if we handle their #10 problem poorly, we might be making #1 worse.
Imagine if the 1960's had dealt with cigarettes and had ignored racism.
Imagine if today, instead of police reform, we just ended the war on drugs.
Forgive me for not being all that enthusiastic about all this but imho we could do so much better and at best we're not going to do much.
On “The DNC Email Leaks”
I would assume the Russians want Hillary in the White House. Presumably they have all the emails from her server and can blackmail her with whatever she wanted to hide from the public.
On “Herbalife Revisited”
More than a decade ago I got a call from them claiming they had my resume and wanted me down for an "interview". I went, and it was a ra-ra-sell-our-products thing. That right there made it a total waste of my time, but the marketing techniques were this large series of non sequitur statements, and I also realized that half the people in the room (the half who were really into this) were 'plants'.
The whole setup seemed really really slimy.
On “CNN: Man shot by cops while lying down with hands up, lawyer says [+Video]”
We are going to have "bad outcomes" no matter what we do. All we can do is trade one set of problems/risks for a different set, which is where trying to get a cost-benefit analysis is a good thing... which ideally means trying reforms in individual cities to see what works.
That's actually my point. These high profile exceptions are something like 0.1% of the drug war's shootings.
So if "reform" makes the drug war worse, then we could easily end up hurting the people we're trying to help. If it makes the drug war much worse then later generations won't be thinking well of us and our 'reform'.
That doesn't mean I'm against reform, but we need to keep in mind the bigger picture. And yes, we absolutely need to worry about unintended consequences and keep in mind that good intentions don't buy a cup of coffee.
"
If memory serves, President Clinton expanded the war on drugs with the support and approval of the black sections of Congress and the black community in general. The "racist" parts of the war and it's expansion have mostly been (as far as I can tell) that the blacks are being hurt worse by drugs and so need more "help", which means harsher laws to "save" them.
Taking race totally out of the picture and looking at "helping" pregnant women and children (which narrows the scope so we're entirely looking at good intentions)... over the decades three of my female relatives have each decided to not get married to the father of their unborn child, so they could get more aid from the government. Each was open to the family as to what they were doing and why, eventually two of them did get married (mostly because of social pressure).
Good intentions can easily lead to bad outcomes when dealing with social issues and complex interactions.
My cynicism says giving out blank checks in the name of "reform" is a bad idea. That is NOT the same as saying "no reform". However I expect some reforms are good, some necessary, some won't work but will be harmless...
...some can make bad social issues (which hurt lots more people and are actually bigger problems), worse.
"
Oh, I wouldn't stop there. I'm seriously not a fan of gov unions across the board. (Thanks for asking directly though).
I think we've had them long enough to see the problems...
1) Tax increases and increasing gov power are always in their interest, gov reform is not.
2) They have the ability to negotiate with themselves by electing their boss, and then hand any bills to the taxpayers.
And I could go on but this thread isn't about that.
So, yes, I'm in favor of dismantling the police union. What's more, if we want any reforms to stick, we probably should.
"
I'd be shocked if they weren't.
Very, very thought provoking analogy.
And the rest of your post was very well written and the points are well taken.
"
Thank you, that was probably the best post I've read in terms of overcoming the numbers in making the case for reform. It's very convincing.
Things to point out:
1) After reform, within the margin of error, the number of killed-by-police probably won't go down (mental illness and the drug war are the big movers there).
2) If reform is a stand in for "my life sucks, fix it", that's probably not going to work.
3) Police work intrinsically deals with ugly, sometimes unusual, situations. If reform tries to pretend it doesn't and it's poorly handled, we could make other situations worse. What "poorly handled" means may not be clear until after the fact.
4) We're still going to have incidents like Ferguson's "Mike Brown" where minorities die, the press presents it as racism, his family presents him as a saint, and in the real world he got himself killed. Worse, I fully expect the number of these to *increase*, just because the number of cameras out there is increasing.
None of this should be read as disagreeing with the case for reform, but expectations should be realistic and I'm not sure they are.
"
When I see a dysfunctional local gov institution (which in this conversation is the police) there's often an overly strong union which has put it's interests above that of the consumers. In the free market, very long term (say 50-70 years), that results in the bankruptcy of the host company.
"
Where is the bulk of that "needless violence" coming from? Oh, yes, the drug war. The one we fired up to 'help' people, based on good intentions.
Pity about the unintended consequences, but hey, good intentions excuse all sorts of bad outcomes because things can't possibly get any worse.
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I don't remember anyone calling Stanford a kid, I certainly never have (and yes, the judge went way to easy on him). And it's disingenuous to call them kids. The cop wasn't involved with them because they were kids, or in spite of them being kids.
"Criminals" is FAR more accurate, descriptive, and on point. One was 22 years old and had an active warrant out for his arrest, the other was 290 lbs and had an 8-minute old 911 call out about his crime.
And what evidence we do have, including the indirect eyewitnesses, supports it.
Let's just review the link again. http://i.imgur.com/eNdviOl.png
We have 8 witnesses who say "charging", one is the cop, 3 others should get tossed for partially conflicting with physical evidence.
We have 7 witnesses who say "walked", 6 of whom should get tossed for partially or totally conflicting with the physical evidence (or with their own testimony). Further, the one that's left has notes in the margin saying "extremely inconsistent account, still guessing about Brown being shot while fleeing...".
So what we have is 5 to 1, and that 1 is a mess. If we exclude the cop and the mess it's 4-0.
Those cops hit the radar as a group of clueless ticket-writing incompetents. That explains the riots, and the cops over reaction to the protests, etc.
Which doesn't change that we have a ton of evidence, serious people have looked at it, and it's really one sided favoring the cop.
Now reading between the lines, IMHO Dorian Johnson seems likely to have been far more involved than the reports mention. He's the one with the history of involvement in drugs, he's the one with the history of theft, he's the one with the history of lying, he's the one with the warrant. My unsupported assumption is that the drugs those two smoked were his, as was the idea of robbing the store, and all those lies he told people were to cover that he got his 'friend' killed.
On “From the Journal of Reince Priebus…”
Someone is telepathic. This is exactly what the GOP leaders are thinking.
On “CNN: Man shot by cops while lying down with hands up, lawyer says [+Video]”
Very well said, and agreed.
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I suspect a white Mike Brown would still have been shot. Does anyone have any stats on Class vs. Race for these things?
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IMHO changing the skin color of the police wouldn't change much (witness Baltimore).
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How about if the people in that community know for a fact (correctly) that the criminal class *will* *kill* *them* if they trust the police? That the police simply can not protect them?
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Whatever method Wall Street uses to train wreck the economy is normally *legal* at the time.
The solution isn't more complex laws or an all powerful regulator, the solution is to make them eat their losses.
Bailing out banks is less damaging to the economy than not bailing them out, so fine, bail them out, but fire the top two or three layers of management with no golden parachutes and claw back their last X years of bonuses.
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A very good example. We are willing to tolerate a certain number of dead people per year because the cure is worse than the disease.
Any policy we choose is going to have certain costs and benefits. It is very possible to make things worse in the name of making things better, especially when dealing with complex social issues and the gov.
That's not a reason to do *nothing*, but it is something to keep in mind as we go forward.
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That list is a lot saner and more defined than I was expecting, Thank you.
IMHO some of those are clearly good on the face of them, body cams, training, end profit.
Demilitarization is going to be good in most situations (the problem with having a really cool swat team is they need things to do).
"Fair Contract" is itself a laundry list of subitems, some of which I think are fine, a few of which aren't (releasing faces/names seems like a call for the lynch mob).
I get nervous that some of these are going to have unintended consequences. Something to keep in mind is that, if we assume ALL police created deaths was un-needed, then it was about 10% of the total (roughly 14.5k murders, the police killed roughly 1.1k). If we assume that 90% of police created deaths were needed, then the police are roughly 1% of the total.
When we reform the police, we should be deeply concerned that we're reducing the 1% at the expense of increasing the 99%. The police have to obey rules, criminals don't, how some of this plays out in practice may not follow the desired script.
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I'll interpret that as a request for sources. Links at the bottom. I'm reading from wiki and the DOJ report as I'm writing this. If you want to dispute what I'm saying I suggest you do the same.
RE: Criminals
Dorian Johnson (Brown's friend)
wiki used to do a better job at detailing his criminal record but whatever.
"...arrested for lying to cops three years ago and currently has an outstanding arrest warrant..."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2732122/Revealed-Key-Michael-Brown-shooting-witness-Dorian-Johnson-arrest-warrant-theft-busted-lying-cops.html
"An ABC News affiliate in St. Louis reported that Johnson is wanted in Jefferson City, Mo., on a 2011 theft charge and also for filing a false police report that same year."
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/dorian-johnson-the-boy-who-cried-wolf/
And he was in the papers the following year for being arrested on drug charges.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/dorian-johnson-figure-in-michael-brown-case-arrested-in-st/article_578b535b-bfb3-5216-8fa7-ee7e53f0a3f9.html
Mike Brown
"...at approximately 11:53 a.m., Brown stole several packages of cigarillos. As captured on the store’s surveillance video, when the store clerk tried to stop Brown, Brown used his physical size to stand over him and forcefully shove him away. As a result, an FPD dispatch call went out over the police radio for a “stealing in progress.” " (DOJ page 6)
BTW this was at 11:53 a.m. His encounter with the cop was at 12:01 and his death was at 12:03.
RE: High
According to Dorian Johnson, the entire point of going to the store was to get cigarillos so they could smoke marijuana.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/14/justice/ferguson-dorian-johnson-statements/
A toxicology test performed by a St. Louis University laboratory revealed the presence of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in Brown's blood and urine. The presence of THC indicates that Brown had used marijuana within a few hours of his death, but it could not be determined whether or not Brown was impaired at the time of his death.[81] (wiki)
Notice this is VASTLY different that other cases where they claim the level of THC was too low to affect him. Notice also the number of times Brown's actions simply make zero sense.
1) He has a bright future but he uses force to steal something cheap from a store.
2) He then walks down the middle of the street obstructing traffic until the police arrive.
3) He attacks the cop, apparently without provocation, and tries to get his gun.
-) He gets shot, runs away (this is fine).
4) He turns around and charges him.
5,6,7) The cop fires three volleys of shots at him, after every volley Brown pauses and then charges again.
The bullet which kills him is the last one, so by that time he's been shot multiple times and *still* decides that charging the gun is a good idea.
(multiple witnesses in wiki plus the audio recording of the shots).
On a personal note, I knew a guy in college who, when high on weed, not only got stupid but stupidly violent. Brown's actions simply make no sense unless "because he was high" is the answer.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2016.07.19.T}”
DavidTC: Erm, this is the cattle future market. Last I checked, the fees there were pretty damn low for heavy investors.
A thousand dollars isn't a "heavy investor". The minimum amount you were supposed to have was $12k.
DavidTC: His *return* doesn’t have anything to do with what *percentage* of his trades are profitable. 100% of his trades might be 17% profitable, or 99.999% of them might be slightly unprofitable and that last single trade is 100000% profitable.
Absolutely right. If you want apples to apples he has a return of 17% and she had 6000%.
DavidTC: Oh, so it’s not even two-thirds.
Absolutely perfect, with no loses ever, would be 100%, she's scary close to the theoretical perfect.
DavidTC: And, not to be too blunt about it, but people didn’t understand probability. I don’t trust anyone who quotes odds without actually seeing the math. People *talking about* a model I can’t even see the results of, on data I have no access to?
People don't understand probability? The fluff newspapers were her backers, the stats you're ragging on were by economists from the University of North Florida and Auburn University published in the Journal of Economics and Finance. That's over and above the editor of the Journal of Futures Markets who said something similar without the stats (he compared what she did to buying a pair of ice skates and then winning the olympics the next day).
The people who are in the trade understand numbers like these are simply impossible. You're trying to justify a 6000% profit and claim somehow that it's "normal" or not unusual.
If that paper is off by 5 orders of magnitude, then we're looking at a politician's wife literally winning the lottery (how often has that happened), when the lottery was being run by someone actively being helped by her husband. If they're not wrong about the odds then it's more like she's winning the lottery consistently.
DavidTC: For example, it’s not the least bit unlikely for someone to win the lottery, despite what you seem to think. People win the lottery literally every day.
If the lottery were consistently won by the wife of the guy running it, it'd be a problem. This was a business who was actively being helped by her husband, and the broker's office is now known for this sort of thing.
Further, these are *scary* risks she was taking. The expected result was not only the loss of her money, but that she'd actually owe multiple years worth of income. If she'd lost $100k, how would she have paid it back and what would that have done to her and her husband's careers?
Imagine the governor declaring bankruptcy because his wife was betting on the cattle futures market. Is that really a good risk for a pair of really smart people?
DavidTC: No, meaning if you held anything long enough, and managed to sell it at the right place, it will eventually make you money.
That is the trick. If it were easy I'd still be doing it. 3/4 of the people who do what she did lose money. The odds are *that* bad.
DavidTC: I find this a weird discussion. I mean, you’re the one asserting that she *did* that, and it was mysterious. Why am I having to explain it actually happens? It clearly does happen, or, uh, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
So you're good with a politician's wife pulling in a 6000% profit under conditions multiple experts claim are somewhere between shockingly unlikely and impossible, while dealing with someone being helped by her husband?
DavidTC: ignoring the fact the market dropped pretty seriously from the start of May 1979
Let's just post what came up in court when that brokerage was investigated in a other matter (wiki).
Two brokers at Springdale, Bill McCurdy and Steven Johns, testifying about another trader's case, said they participated in a cover-up of block trading on a day in June 1979 that happens to coincide with the opening of what would become Rodham's single most profitable trade.[8]
On “CNN: Man shot by cops while lying down with hands up, lawyer says [+Video]”
The police functioning to raise money for city hall is a serious problem. This is an example of the police 'creating' problems.
But a lot of that perception is simply the result of other problems. I'm not sure what, short of ending the war on drugs, we should do. The carnage that is Black on Black crime suggests a much higher level of police involvement just as a matter of course.
We could certainly reduce police involvement in Black areas... say, impose quotes for who they can arrest, but that would quickly become something like investigating a black's murder only if we've recently investigated a white's murder (and yes, imho this is just as insane as it sounds).
If you want to get it down to zero, then we probably need to get rid of the police and live with it being "Lord of the Flies".
There are other models we could try, perhaps even on a 'one city' level. Say moving to the medical 'review what happened without punishment' idea.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.