Sorry - can't delete a post so I left that. http://www.ijreview.com/2014/12/213153-eric-garners-widow-says-nobody-wants-admit-black-white-thing/
First of all I didn't say anything about white people. The police do not police themselves in too many circumstances. Yes, technically Internal Affairs is part of the force, but they are separated from line members of the force precisely because they otherwise would be ineffective. Putting aside whether IA's are effective enough, the principle that dictates their form of organization is what is NOT being carried forward into the running of the prosecutor's office in managing grand jury investigations of police misconduct. The present approach too often does not work well enough. It needs to be looked at.
Isn't this is the big government the left wants? They're taxing us to near poverty and over policing to enforce the black market created by ridiculous taxes. We should never have taxes so high it creates a black market and we should never have a police force dedicated to enforcing god damn cigarette tax evasion. I'll bet a lot of the people pushing for government control of everything are the same ones out in the streets protesting. The whole thing is insane. God bless this guys family.
I disagree with that,because in academy cops are taught to make it home every night. If we let the public,like Ferguson dictate what polices the police,they will he helpless against a society that (in those areas) tend to victimize the criminal. The public has no idea what its like to police the public,and most areas of the public that have the biggest problem with police are also littered with criminals.
You can talk about problems the police face all day long, but if you do not recognize before your eyes how power corrupts, and how the police do not really police themselves effectively enough, then I don't know what world you are living in.
Don't you think that part of the problem is that the cops were even involved here? We have a police force dedicated to stopping illegal cigarette sales? I mean really?
I am guessing we would disagree about many things in politics. I consider myself a progressive because the economic game is rigged in favor of the rich, and the GOP is all in on if anything rigging it even more. But I also don't like too much social engineering, whether from the right (anti-abortion laws) or the left (the kind of taxes you are talking about). Yes, when you look at it here, in the Garner case, we see the unintended consequences of the do gooder notion that cigarettes need to be suppressed. Such attempts imo go too far in limiting personal freedoms, and the unintended consequences in effect backfire on the effort in question. But another context here you do not mention is the imo becoming outmoded policing theories called broken windows approaches. To be clear the tax on cigarettes is merely the specific law involved here; the police tactics and overall strategy of being very heavy handed on what objectively are relatively harmless offenses are what made this situation what it was. Anyway, yes, too few on the left see the connection between heavy social engineering efforts, the loss of personal freedom that results, and police using too heavy a hand in enforcing the laws that result from those efforts. But I do. Heh.
When it comes to politics it's easy to have opposing views. Progress can usually be made where common ground is found. Hopefully they can find some here, as I believe we have.
I find it difficult to believe you want to find common ground when I see you make blanket, outrageous statements like "Isn't this is the big government the left wants? They're taxing us to near poverty " without any facts backing your statement up, mostly because there aren't any. Who are this "They" you refer to- the leftist, overtaxing Feds? Research the historical income tax rates, including FICA, over the last 50 years and you'll see a range of at most +/- 2- 3% in all that time, and that's unlikely to break any of us. The amounts and totals have changed drastically over the years but the percentage paid has not. Here's some good info to digest- http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/revenue_history
left = these guys who wants this huge government with its hand in everything. The tax portion wasn't meant to be specific to the left, but I poorly worded it. I meant the government in general. They keep finding new ways to tax us and make little to no effort to reduce wasteful unnecessary spending. The tax comment was also more directed at the ridiculous cigarette taxes that created the black market to begin with. I don't care too much about finding a common ground either. Just making a general comment about where I can see our wonderful politicians actually making real progress.
Well, the common ground I think that SHOULD be present here is that there should be some kind of default setting, an overall principle, that unless there is a persuasive enough basis for restrictive laws governing personal freedom, that there should be a presumption in favor of personal freedom. An example of that was the imo ill considered attempt by the Bloomberg admin to tax soda. Even a very liberal city like NYC rejected that sort of notion. Personally I also put deBlasio's current attempt to ban carriage horses in Central Park to be similarly ill considered. Let's see if the populace, which polls show is against the ban, will in effect allow the City Council to pursue it. Having laid out the basic principle, the obvious tension is in what is a persuasive enough basis for restricting personal freedom. That is where the disagreements will occur. I also think my fellow progressives need to acknowledge the basic notion that all bureaucracies, both private and public, tend to have an interest in self-perpetuation, even where the need for what that bureaucracy does has either proven counter-productive or has outlived its usefulness. In other words we should believe not merely in government but good government. Unfortunately the right has too many people who believe there is no such thing as good government, which is a triumph of ideology over the facts. In your case you seem to be unaware that by historical and other comparative measures certainly the rich are undertaxed, not overtaxed. But, we surely have digressed from the Garner discussion, and I do not really want to pursue the tax debate here. Except to the extent that yes, in this case the cigarette tax seems to have caused an unintended consequence that frankly I could have predicted.
the folks on the right want "big government" just as much as the folks on the left. Reagan and Bush II wrote the book on big government. Its a common criticism of those NOT in power to suggest they don't want big government like IN power, but if/when they gained power they'd be doing the same thing and those on the left would be arguing for less government. It's B.S. Those on the right want the government's hands in who we can marry, what grass we grow and smoke, just for quick example... thats not advocating a big government with it's hands in our lives?
bush ii is a dickweed. those two examples should not be supported by the right but they are and it's hypocritical of them to do so IMO.
How do you mean police themselves? Like punish officers for doing their job just because the ghetto wants to cry injustice? What we will end up with is a lot more dead cops and unprotected victims because they will be forced to hesitate instead of react.
