Conflict erupts at Minneapolis, L.A. protests over George Floyd death

[MKSheppard]

Multiple shootings in Lousville, officer(s) down. Kind of confused as to WTF is going on.

[Elfdart]

Wanton endangerment for blind firing into nearby apartments when he panicked. None of his bullets hit Taylor.

So dry-wall is more worthy of legal protection than a black woman -that's Kentucky for you.

[Elfdart]

Multiple shootings in Lousville, officer(s) down. Kind of confused as to WTF is going on.

No doubt the police union will demand to know how much Fentanyl they were taking, right?

[Gandalf]

65 years since the courts released the guys who killed Emmet Till. That's certainly something.

Wanton endangerment for blind firing into nearby apartments when he panicked. None of his bullets hit Taylor.

So dry-wall is more worthy of legal protection than a black woman -that's Kentucky for you.

There might have been white people on the other side of those walls.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. If it's wanton endangerment when someone blindly fires into nearby apartments, it's damn sure something worse to actually specifically kill a woman who is asleep and cannot remotely possibly be a threat.

If the risk that you could have killed someone is worth charging someone with, then actually killing someone is worth charging someone with. Unless the argument is that killing Taylor was justified self defense when she was, again, asleep.

[Zaune]

If the risk that you could have killed someone is worth charging someone with, then actually killing someone is worth charging someone with. Unless the argument is that killing Taylor was justified self defense when she was, again, asleep.

I don't have a source to hand, but I gather that they're claiming the shots that hit Taylor were aimed at her partner -who was armed and firing at the police, albeit because they failed to identify themselves before breaking down the door and he believed he was being robbed- and her death was a result of stray rounds missing their target and/or over-penetrating and hitting her by sheer bad luck.

That wouldn't be a particularly convincing defence even if they hadn't been at an outdated address, looking for a man who'd already been arrested in a neighbouring county and allegedly used a certain amount of hyperbole at the hearing to acquire the search warrant, but since nobody's figured out a way for plainclothes officers to wear bodycams it's extremely hard to disprove that version of events beyond reasonable doubt.

Not that sacking or demoting pretty much everyone who was involved at any stage of the planning and execution of this complete goatfuck requires the criminal standard of proof, mind you.

[bilateralrope]

but since nobody's figured out a way for plainclothes officers to wear bodycams

How about we ban plainclothes officers from executing search warrants ?

Is there any good reason for officers to be on duty, without wearing a uniform, other than undercover investigations ?

[Zaune]

How about we ban plainclothes officers from executing search warrants?

That sounds like an eminently sensible idea. But implementing such reforms requires someone in whatever local government agency is responsible for civilian oversight of the police to be terribly bothered if poor and/or black people get gunned down for being in the wrong place at the wrong time thanks to faulty information and bad decisions.

And as noted, everyone responsible for this fiasco could have been sacked or demoted for gross incompetence even if there wasn't enough forensic evidence to make involuntary manslaughter charges stick. So far as I know this has not happened, which bodes poorly for the level of basic giving-a-fuck at the civilian oversight level.

[Ralin]

And as noted, everyone responsible for this fiasco could have been sacked or demoted for gross incompetence even if there wasn't enough forensic evidence to make involuntary manslaughter charges stick. So far as I know this has not happened, which bodes poorly for the level of basic giving-a-fuck at the civilian oversight level.

Turns out unions are a bad thing. Who knew?

[Simon_Jester]

Unions are a good thing, but police are an exception because unlike basically any other profession they can arrange matters to get paid to beat up and kill their "customers."

It's like, I'm a teacher. If one of our peers is a chronic fuckup, it hurts the kids (who we care about or we couldn't do the job), and it makes the job of all subsequent teachers of the same kid that much harder. If one of our peers is doing genuinely criminal shit like child abuse, we start wanting to punt them into orbit. We all want due process in place to protect us from false accusations of being a fuckup or a criminal, and we all want things like good employee benefits... but we generally don't feel a desperate All Costs need to protect actual fuckups and criminals.

Police unions don't seem to work that way. When a cop does something fucked up, or chronically commits errors that get people falsely arrested or beaten or even killed, other cops don't pull away from that. As such, the union becomes a mechanism for protecting deeply shitty behavior, on a level that teachers' unions do not.

[Ralin]

Nah, it's a natural outgrowth of what happens when you have a group of random people decide that they're entitled to dictate to someone how they can run their business on their property and strong-arm them if they don't comply. It's a historical accident that unions are treated any differently from the mafia, and hopefully that will change in the future.

Only difference is that with police unions you know that you might be on the receiving end of their crap.

[loomer]

Only a fuckwit could interpret the people actually doing the work as 'a group of random people' and demands over the conditions that they'll perform that work in as 'dictating to someone how they can run their business'.

[Simon_Jester]

Nah, it's a natural outgrowth of what happens when you have a group of random people decide that they're entitled to dictate to someone how they can run their business on their property and strong-arm them if they don't comply. It's a historical accident that unions are treated any differently from the mafia, and hopefully that will change in the future.

Only difference is that with police unions you know that you might be on the receiving end of their crap.

How is the owner of a business any less "random" than the workforce?

Your same pattern of argument could be used to argue "Amazon is a pyramid scheme and should be owned as a workers' co-op," because seriously, Jeff Bezos puts his pants on one leg at a time like any other man, so who died and made him the God of Online Shopping, anyway? It's a historical accident that anyone treats him as having any more power to tell other people what to do than Emperor Norton I, and hopefully that will change in the future.

Or, if you prefer, not...

But the reality remains, the workers at a business are massively affected by how that business treats its employees, and since nearly every-damn-body is an employee these days, that makes labor rights a pretty basic quality of life issue for the average citizen. Since the average employer has much less trouble getting their employees by the short hairs than the other way around (figuratively or literally), labor needs an equalizer of some kind.

And since "stage a socialist revolution" is hopefully off the table, by process of elimination you're left with "give labor some way to be represented and bargain on equal terms with employers."

[Lost Soal]

So, following a lawsuit by one of the Grand Jurors the DA has admitted that Wanton Endangerment is the ONLY charge he actually offered for the Breonna Taylor shooting. Doesn't matter what evidence he actually presented he never had any intention of even risking accountability.

[bilateralrope]

Is there anything stopping another grand jury having a go at the murder charge ?

[Simon_Jester]

There might be a double jeopardy issue? I'm not sure how that applies to grand juries though.

[Ralin]

How is the owner of a business any less "random" than the workforce?

Because he’s the one hiring people to work on his property.

Your same pattern of argument could be used to argue "Amazon is a pyramid scheme and should be owned as a workers' co-op," because seriously, Jeff Bezos puts his pants on one leg at a time like any other man, so who died and made him the God of Online Shopping, anyway? It's a historical accident that anyone treats him as having any more power to tell other people what to do than Emperor Norton I, and hopefully that will change in the future.

Not at all. Jeff Bezos has his online shopping empire because he built it. His wealth isn’t an accident; he earned it through a combination of good business decisions, investment and inheritance.

But the reality remains, the workers at a business are massively affected by how that business treats its employees, and since nearly every-damn-body is an employee these days, that makes labor rights a pretty basic quality of life issue for the average citizen. Since the average employer has much less trouble getting their employees by the short hairs than the other way around (figuratively or literally), labor needs an equalizer of some kind.

You seem confused. We’re talking about private businesses and individuals, not a welfare office. Outside of basic things like minimum wage laws and safety regulation (which are implemented by the government, not Vinnie the Squid) the quality of life for people who happen to work at a given business isn’t relevant because everyone concerned has no obligations to each other outside of the workplace.

There’s no need for an equalizer because you aren’t equal to someone else who is paying you to do work in their house. And if you think otherwise I’d invite you to message Wong about how you’re entitled to a say in how his forum is run.

And since "stage a socialist revolution" is hopefully off the table, by process of elimination you're left with "give labor some way to be represented and bargain on equal terms with employers."

Actually there’s a better solution. If you object to an employer’s terms and can’t negotiate better ones, leave. Remember, unions aren’t really about ‘collective bargaining.’ They’re about extortion.

[Simon_Jester]

How is the owner of a business any less "random" than the workforce?

Because he’s the one hiring people to work on his property.

Property is not a natural phenomenon of the universe.

There is no chemical element called title-deed-ium.

The fundamental forces of the Standard Model are gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces; "proprietorship" is not the mysterious fifth force that holds the cosmos together.

Property is a social convention that human beings in a civilization collectively agree to uphold. This is done for the benefit of the members of that civilization.

As such, when you argue that the proprietor of a given institution is inherently more 'special' than the workforce that carries out the institution's tasks, you are appealing to a social convention, not a law of nature.

For example, we agree that car-repairing is a good and useful thing, because we like having non-broke-ass cars. But while the process of car-repairing is physical and concrete, the question "so who repaired my car" is more complex. On some level, a specific mechanic fixed your car. It was their hands on the tools, their brain that decided what to do. On another level, someone is the business owner who coordinates that repair operation. Someone, perhaps a different someone, is the nominal owner of the land on which the repair operation stands.

It is purely a social convention that the person who owns the land upon which your car was repaired is even remotely relevant, and thus entitled to a share of the profits of, the act of repairing your car. Because there is, again, no such thing as title-deed-ium. There is no physical bond connecting your now-repaired car to the landlord whose space the repair shop rents out. The landlord never touched your car. The shop manager may not have done either. Their relevance to the situation, and their share of the profits, comes entirely from the social convention that such people should exist, have power, and get shares of the profits.

Now, we can argue that these social conventions are good and necessary. The point remains that they, and by extension the concept of "property" in general, ARE social conventions. Like politeness. Like nudity taboos. Like deference to one's parents.

But like politeness, nudity taboos, and deference to one's parents, the concept of 'property' has the potential to be abused, at which point it ceases to be beneficial.

And if you don't have social mechanisms in place to deal with that reality... your society is going to wedge itself in a pretty nasty crack in short order.

Your same pattern of argument could be used to argue "Amazon is a pyramid scheme and should be owned as a workers' co-op," because seriously, Jeff Bezos puts his pants on one leg at a time like any other man, so who died and made him the God of Online Shopping, anyway? It's a historical accident that anyone treats him as having any more power to tell other people what to do than Emperor Norton I, and hopefully that will change in the future.

Not at all. Jeff Bezos has his online shopping empire because he built it. His wealth isn’t an accident; he earned it through a combination of good business decisions, investment and inheritance.

See, that's the thing. Within the accepted social framework, yes- but you're appealing to a framework in which Jeff Bezos' decisions move the boxes around the country. When it is just as much an accurate description of physical reality to say "no, Jeff Bezos did not move any boxes today, a bunch of people in warehouses and trucks moved the boxes."

Your pattern of argument is to say "X did not have anything to do with Z. Y is responsible for Z, so Y deserves full power over Z." But if we honor that pattern of argument when both X and Y are part of the same institution, XY, that did Z... well, then the argument applies to X just as well as to Y.

But the reality remains, the workers at a business are massively affected by how that business treats its employees, and since nearly every-damn-body is an employee these days, that makes labor rights a pretty basic quality of life issue for the average citizen. Since the average employer has much less trouble getting their employees by the short hairs than the other way around (figuratively or literally), labor needs an equalizer of some kind.

You seem confused. We’re talking about private businesses and individuals, not a welfare office.

Yes, and there are some pretty important ideas implicit in this statement. Something like:

"Employers are not responsible for making decisions that are good for the welfare of their employees, or society at large, and also are allowed to own and control the bulk of society's capital."

These are ideas that civilization has agreed on, implicitly, as part of a deal between its own members for the betterment of our society. And if this particular social arrangement proves to be unsatisfactory for civilization at large, civilization will predictably alter the terms of the deal.

Indeed, civilization did alter the deal, when it proved grossly unsatisfactory in the 19th century. Civilization altered the deal by introducing labor unions, then business regulations and labor laws.

Pray that civilization does not alter it further.

And since "stage a socialist revolution" is hopefully off the table, by process of elimination you're left with "give labor some way to be represented and bargain on equal terms with employers."

Actually there’s a better solution. If you object to an employer’s terms and can’t negotiate better ones, leave. Remember, unions aren’t really about ‘collective bargaining.’ They’re about extortion.

This argument sounds a lot like an excuse for the small minority of the population who own medium/large businesses to say "do what we want, on the terms we want it, we own all of this stuff, and by extension we own you, we owe you nothing and we'll give you just barely what you need to not starve, and if you don't like it, well, good luck finding one of us lordly magnates who is feeling merciful enough to grant you a better offer."

Maybe it's morally wrong for the other 95% or more of the population to respond to that with "no, fuck you."

But the thing is... that "no, fuck you" is so very predictable and natural a response. It's farcical to construct a moral system which attempts to forbid it by saying "but it's immoral for workers to collectively refuse to work for an asshole, they should only be making that decision one by one, so the asshole can just replace them with some other poor bastard and continue asshole-ing!"

I'm reminded of King Alfred trying to order the tide to turn around. Though he, at least, was self-aware enough to be doing it to make a point to dumbass courtiers.

...

If the model "business owners have all rights and labor organization is tantamount to criminal extortion" fails to satisfy civilization's needs, civilization will alter the deal, one way or another.

And, bluntly, the model fails to satisfy civilization's needs. It has already failed, long before any of us were born. The alternative to labor unions is, eventually, violent revolution and the overthrow of the entire concept of property, just as the alternative to the French nobility doing what was in the public interest was, eventually, the storming of the Bastille and the nobles getting dragged to the guillotine.

[Darth Yan]

Unions are a good thing, but police are an exception because unlike basically any other profession they can arrange matters to get paid to beat up and kill their "customers."

It's like, I'm a teacher. If one of our peers is a chronic fuckup, it hurts the kids (who we care about or we couldn't do the job), and it makes the job of all subsequent teachers of the same kid that much harder. If one of our peers is doing genuinely criminal shit like child abuse, we start wanting to punt them into orbit. We all want due process in place to protect us from false accusations of being a fuckup or a criminal, and we all want things like good employee benefits... but we generally don't feel a desperate All Costs need to protect actual fuckups and criminals.

Police unions don't seem to work that way. When a cop does something fucked up, or chronically commits errors that get people falsely arrested or beaten or even killed, other cops don't pull away from that. As such, the union becomes a mechanism for protecting deeply shitty behavior, on a level that teachers' unions do not.

My uncles a teacher and he’s told me about how in NY the unions make it impossible to fire fuckup teachers so they just get sent in a room and sit there all day while still getting paid

[Zaune]

My uncles a teacher and he’s told me about how in NY the unions make it impossible to fire fuckup teachers so they just get sent in a room and sit there all day while still getting paid.

I've heard the same story, except framed as, "The school board can't prove actual wrongdoing according to the letter of the rules, so they're turning to constructive dismissal rather than admit they were wrong."

[madd0ct0r]

Can we split the union talk? It's interesting enough to deserve own thread.

Ralin's conclusion is shit, but he has is correct in his own observation that unions can have problem behaviour as well as societal benefits. Us unions seem to be unusually ineffectively corrupt.

[bilateralrope]

There might be a double jeopardy issue? I'm not sure how that applies to grand juries though.

How can it be double jeopardy when the murder charge was never put before the first grand jury ?

[Simon_Jester]

My uncles a teacher and he’s told me about how in NY the unions make it impossible to fire fuckup teachers so they just get sent in a room and sit there all day while still getting paid

All I know is, my experience as a teacher with a union is literally the opposite of that.

Mileage may vary, and that's all I'm going to say. Well, that and...

My uncles a teacher and he’s told me about how in NY the unions make it impossible to fire fuckup teachers so they just get sent in a room and sit there all day while still getting paid.

I've heard the same story, except framed as, "The school board can't prove actual wrongdoing according to the letter of the rules, so they're turning to constructive dismissal rather than admit they were wrong."

Also, this.

How can it be double jeopardy when the murder charge was never put before the first grand jury ?

I don't know. I may very well be wrong. I hope I am.