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oooyay 2 hours ago [-]
> The statute requires that a person knowingly circulate a false report. Combs says she was repeating what people told her. Gregory says she should have verified it with the hospitals first
It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual. The State Health Services or TCEQ would need to conduct that investigation and ask those questions. Both of those are state level agencies and would require significant momentum for a small town like Trinidad to trigger their attention. Ironically, it sounds like her social media post and the Streisand effect around it have triggered a TCEQ boil water notice and (likely) an investigation.
It is absolutely bizarre for a municipal or county law enforcement agency to take interest in this kind of thing. Texas Rangers and federal authorities should be looking at what triggered her arrest and whatever investigation came before it. That's assuming Greg Abbot, Dan Patrick, or Ken Paxton haven't totally compromised them at this point.
themafia 2 hours ago [-]
> It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual.
If multiple people told her they were hospitalized then you could ask and answer about that in a general way without violating HIPPA. "Were the multiple cases of hospitalization due to water quality issues in the recent month?" As long as individual data isn't revealed then there is no violation. Which is obvious when you think about any generalized health statistics.
Which isn't to defend the Trinidad Police department, but to point out, if their concern was community awareness, then they could have asked any news outlet to do this same reporting as a matter of public interest.
Instead the police decide that it's better to use their limited resources to take a citizen into custody over factually ambiguous statements. We live in disappointing times so it's not hard to imagine a friend or colleague pressured the police into violating this woman's civil rights in an effort to shut everyone up about the sorry state of their infrastructure.
Vaslo 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
margalabargala 1 hours ago [-]
What do you mean? Abbott and politicians like him are well known for disregarding the law for their own advancement/benefit. There's a long list of court cases they've lost if you want to look this up.
Your desire that more politicians behave this way doesn't make them not corrupt.
throwaway902984 2 hours ago [-]
Didn't greg abbot spend a lot of time trying to make political hay out of persecuting a Muslim charity? Not from the state, so correct me if I am wrong.
mcphage 2 hours ago [-]
You wish your state had more politicians that disregarded the constitution?
vjvjvjvjghv 5 hours ago [-]
I assume she will get a settlement, the city (the taxpayer) will pay for it and nothing else changes. There will be even less money for infrastructure repair and people will keep voting for the same people.
ryandrake 3 hours ago [-]
The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
Same for the guy in TN who got arrested for posting that anti-conservative meme. Nobody thought they would win, but they want to make everyone else think twice about criticizing a particular political side.
john_strinlai 3 hours ago [-]
>They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand.
i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially life-changing payday. so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.
ryandrake 3 hours ago [-]
Yea, an arrest on your record, even if you're acquitted and/or get a settlement for police wrongdoing, can still mess you up. There are employers and landlords who will ask you / check whether you were ever arrested, regardless of the outcome of the arrest. Mere involvement with Law Enforcement puts a permanent black mark on your record and can interfere with basic things for the rest of your life.
vitally3643 2 hours ago [-]
You must not have ever been poor because the idea of several thousand dollars right now completely obliterates any notion of "maybe less money later, possibly"
Particularly if you're young and poor.
Humans don't really work the way you're implying from your armchair.
borski 2 hours ago [-]
I was poor (as in, well below FPL), the son of two immigrants, for many years.
That’s precisely how I thought - getting involved with a “get money now” scheme was not worth the “no money ever again” it often came with. I watched friends do things like this and face consequences later.
Not to discourage anyone from protesting, but not all poor people think alike.
rolandhvar 2 hours ago [-]
There's poor and stupid, and then there's poor and smart
fc417fc802 2 hours ago [-]
How would being arrested for memeing be a black mark? It would be a hilarious talking point that I would be more than happy to chat with a landlord, employer, or literally anyone else about. Anyone who would hold that against you is pretty much a textbook example of a bad person (banal evil or some such).
dgoldstein0 2 hours ago [-]
Some won't ask for details and just reject. Which of course sucks but they may view it as less risky than trying to evaluate the details and make a judgement call.
That said if you do go into circumstances - "I did it to get arrested and get a payout" could also be viewed as a red flag - says "may screw you/the company for money". Probably not the employee / tenant / etc you might want.
Ekaros 19 minutes ago [-]
I could see less savoury companies(which is nearly all of them) to see potential whistle-blower like this as a risk in future. Most people are bad people after all. Especially those in hiring roles.
tardedmeme 2 hours ago [-]
You don't even get a chance to explain it. Their background check software sees that you were arrested once, and discards your résumé.
justech 2 hours ago [-]
In a perfect world, sure. But realistically, people don't dig into the context. They see an arrest on your record and move to the next guy. Either that or, some automated system sees you checked 'yes I was arrested before' and filters you out automatically.
borski 2 hours ago [-]
You’d be more than happy to chat. They often won’t give you that chance.
cebert 2 hours ago [-]
I could see firms doing background checks not caring about those nuances or taking the time to consider why the individual was arrested.
daheza 57 minutes ago [-]
Especially if it’s just an AI review
michaelmrose 26 minutes ago [-]
For low level jobs the biggest risk is being automatically filtered out early in the job application process then dying in a cardboard shelter on the sidewalk
buzzerbetrayed 2 hours ago [-]
I wouldn’t rent my house to someone who has been arrested for memeing. It’s an unnecessary risk with absolutely no upside for me. What happens when they decide to meme on their landlord?
john_strinlai 2 hours ago [-]
>What happens when they decide to meme on their landlord
nothing? maybe a laugh? it’s a meme not a murder
LocalH 2 hours ago [-]
Then you're part of the problem.
Convicted, sure. Merely arrested, with no conviction? Then you'd be an asshole
fc417fc802 28 minutes ago [-]
> Convicted, sure.
Convicted ... for memeing? I think that would still be absurd. I don't think landlords should be denying tenants for obviously unrelated matters.
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
Then make part of the settlement having the arrest expunged.
alexanderh 2 hours ago [-]
This is really far from true, unless you're talking about federal security clearances.
tamimio 6 minutes ago [-]
Which is why I believe criminal records should only be kept for serious crimes (killing, etc.), anything less, the record gets deleted after few months completely. Otherwise, just as you said, the black mark on the records are worse than serving a whole year in prison, and can be used to exploit others.
1 hours ago [-]
beepbooptheory 3 hours ago [-]
As someone who lives this reality (arrest but no conviction), it's in practice not really so bad. It's never come up with a landlord. The last time it came up was after being accepted to grad school and I had to fill out a form about it. You do just carry with you the knowledge that if you ever get pulled over the cop can pull it up about you and have reason to hassle you more.
theendisney 1 hours ago [-]
Not sure, would you (as a cop) help them with content creation?
zephen 2 hours ago [-]
"I'm going to hassle you because my brethren have hassled you before."
Yup, sounds about right.
antonvs 39 minutes ago [-]
They don't call it a brotherhood for nothing.
worik 2 hours ago [-]
> Yea, an arrest on your record
What an awful data environment
The fact that you were arrested, charged even, if not convicted should not be discoverable by third parties
Uncivilised
jMyles 1 hours ago [-]
> The fact that you were arrested, charged even, if not convicted should not be discoverable by third parties
That's how people get disappeared in failed states.
It's perfectly fine to force the state to clearly declare whom they have detained and their reasons for doing so. We also need to recognize that arrests are very often preposterous (or worse, retaliatory) and not hold it (absent other information or further proceedings) against people.
kimixa 2 hours ago [-]
And the ones who get the "payday" are just the ones we've heard of.
How many people didn't get media attention, don't have the ability (time/money) to sue, lost that case, and those where the intimidation and "punishment" was successful?
At some level the people doing this intimidation believe it'll be successful. Is that from experience?
borski 2 hours ago [-]
Yes; it works. That’s why they do it.
ponector 3 hours ago [-]
Students are young and often have nothing to lose, aside from missing opportunities.
borski 2 hours ago [-]
Opportunity cost is a real cost.
robocat 1 hours ago [-]
I have some alternative timeline SpaceX shares available - they are very valuable.
Are you interested in buying some from me using your money on this timeline?
NoMoreNicksLeft 2 hours ago [-]
>so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.
Those ones are the easiest though, are they not? Someone going into it with convictions (or even chickening out because they are aware of the consequences) have consolation and inner reserves. Some kid angry that he can't get a six figure salary at age 22 fresh out of college might regret it as soon as they're in the clink, but if that doesn't get them... the 6-10 years of lawyer-wrangling and stress certainly will. All for the payday to not even go half as far as they think... it'll pay down some bills, there won't be any sports cars.
obsidianbases1 3 hours ago [-]
Mostly this
> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.
cortesoft 3 hours ago [-]
This is why the saying “you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride” exists.
They know the charges won’t stick, they are using the process of fighting the charges itself as the punishment.
efitz 3 hours ago [-]
The process is the punishment.
eduction 3 hours ago [-]
Much like peter thiel’s lawsuits against Gawker, which included funding a guy who dubiously claimed to have invented email and sued Gawker for pointing out this was absurd.
That's not a fair assumption in the current political environment.
Those who have lots of money will get fair hearings under the court, but those with less power might not. There's a reason people like Elon Musk write into agreements that they must be settled in particular Texas courts.
aliasxneo 3 hours ago [-]
I don't think that's the full picture. Activist judges have been a problem for awhile now, and it seems to be mostly influenced by ideology rather than purely money.
majormajor 3 hours ago [-]
It's certainly obviously true that one political party used "we will find judges who will overturn one particular court case" as a fundamental part of their campaigning for decades...
epistasis 3 hours ago [-]
You can't really venue shop for an "activist" judge but you can for one who will side with the powerful over the weak. Your comparison is itself not a full picture.
3 hours ago [-]
cjkaminski 3 hours ago [-]
That's quite a claim. You need to cite your sources for this one, if you want to be taken seriously.
aliasxneo 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not sitting on a precompiled list I can just drop into a comment. But I do have a pretty hard rule about investing more effort than someone else already has. So this would be an unequal trade for me to go spend the rest of my Saturday building a list for someone who wrote two sentences on the internet.
To add slightly more flavoring, I think its a pretty reasonable view to assume that the massive fracturing happening in the American political scene is most likely affecting the judicial branch. Perhaps you disagree. Take it as an opinion. Don't take it seriously. Whatever floats your boat.
antonvs 36 minutes ago [-]
How about this: what's an example of an activist judge, according to you?
Bonus question: do you enjoy watching Fox?
stirfish 60 minutes ago [-]
I read somewhere that aliasxneo eats turds with a fork and knife. I'm not sitting on a precompiled list of sources, and it would be unfair to ask me to spend my Saturday building a list for someone whom I read eats turds with a fork and knife.
I won't say what aliasxneo does to add slightly more flavoring, but I think it's a pretty reasonable to assume it's gross and lazy.
zephen 2 hours ago [-]
Anybody paying attention would know that there are several activist judges in Texas, feeding into the activist 5th circuit -- the only appeals court that has been very often overturned by the current supreme court for being too conservative.
Just in case you're being honest about your own ignorance on this matter, you can start here:
What’s an activist judge? Do you believe a judge can just rule whatever they want outside the framework of law?
snazypaparazzi 4 hours ago [-]
I think everything is consistent with the perspective Texas represents toward the united states. It's fine if Texas doesn't implement reforms and fails. (There are 49 other states and may the ones that invent or adopt the best practices survive.)
smt88 4 hours ago [-]
What do you think “fails” means exactly? How does Texas fail in a way that doesn’t harm innocent people in both Texas and the rest of the country/world?
Texas is larger (in both population and economy) than most countries in the world.
snazypaparazzi 4 hours ago [-]
The Federal government enforces a few rules and then leaves things to the state and people. Obviously that means the state and people have no nanny to protect them from consequences of their decisions. If they drain their budgets fighting the civil rights of their population instead of fixing a problem then they might look like a lot of bankrupt municipalities. The US is obligated to let that happen.
1659447091 59 minutes ago [-]
> If they drain their budgets
If Texas seceded from the US (which there is an actual movement here that gets loud with Democrat presidents) it would be the 8th or 9th largest economy in the world. The oil propping up the US while the US admin is/was grifting large paychecks for friends and family with the Iran thing -- comes from Texas. No one posting words online then getting payouts is going to bankrupt them.
autoexec 3 hours ago [-]
Not really. The federal government bails Texas out of the messes they get themselves into all the time (like their shitty power grid). Historically, Texas has often received more in federal funding than it contributes in federal taxes.
1659447091 32 minutes ago [-]
> The federal government bails Texas out of the messes they get themselves into all the time (like their shitty power grid)
What (federal) bailout did Texas receive for the power grid? Unless something changed, Texas refuses fed help for the power grid because it wants to stay independent. Texas bailed itself out of the 2021 power grid failure with a couple/few billion dollars that Texas pays for. And while not great, Texas refused hundreds of millions in federal money to shore up flood protections, which came to light last year. Texas is not your typical southern state that takes and does nothing for itself.
golem14 3 hours ago [-]
Is the Texas power grid shitty? Say, compare to California’s?
Yes. Both are shitty, but CA is at least shared with the national grid.
johnny22 2 hours ago [-]
it's that texas has it's own power grid. Other states tend to share grids.
snazypaparazzi 3 hours ago [-]
Sure, most of the South is in a hypocritical position of claiming to want the federal system I described, I want them to get it..
girvo 1 hours ago [-]
People are arguing with you as if you’re not making the same point they are, amusing
fzeroracer 4 hours ago [-]
This is true, but Texans as a whole keep enabling these outcomes by both voting and supporting politicians that create it, as well as the state as a whole generally refusing aid.
It's one of the (many) reasons why I immediately moved out of the state when I had a chance. There's only so much that can be done when a lot of the states politics and environment is wholly self-destructive.
luxuryballs 3 hours ago [-]
fine for who? Texans? this is a silly mentality, no need to compare any other location, Texas as a standalone entity and the many stakeholders wouldn’t reasonably think it’s fine
snazypaparazzi 2 hours ago [-]
I'm supposed to force social darwinists to do what's best for them and make sure all policies prevent them from failing even if their goal is to invalidate those policies. Texas can make laws in its state legislature to prevent municipalities from creating liabilities. If they are good other states can adopt them. If they don't they can get bent which is also good for other states that make better choices to see benefit in making better choices. As the old curse goes, may they get everything they want.
nnutter 3 hours ago [-]
It seems suspicious to me that they do not include the "offending" Facebook post. It seems like this is it, and it seems completely in the realm of journalism,
It's facebook post. Firefox's "copy text from image" gives this unformatted blob:
> Southern Belle Watch • 1h • 2 Author We have received reports that some citizens have been hospitalized due to bacteria in the water. This is a serious public health concern that deserves immediate attention. If your water looks discolored, contains sediment, has a strong odor, or you have experienced related health issues, please send us a message. We are gathering information and reporting findings to the state. We are aware that not all areas of Trinidad are experiencing these issues. However, if your water is affected, your information could help identify patterns and ensure the problem is addressed properly. Please include: • Your area or neighborhood (no exact address needed • Photos or videos of the water (if available) • Dates and times the issue occurred • Any notices you may have received • Any health concerns you're willing to share Your information can help bring attention to the issue and support efforts to improve water quality for everyone. If you have information or your water looks like this, please send us a message Reply
jolmg 3 hours ago [-]
The domain only has an IPv6 address, so the link doesn't work on IPv4.
fc417fc802 2 hours ago [-]
To make matters worse, some of us filter fbcdn (among other domains).
SV_BubbleTime 2 hours ago [-]
Seems like someone is aiming for the future.
tardedmeme 2 hours ago [-]
IPv6 is the present. IPv4 is the past. IPv8 is the future.
_zoltan_ 37 minutes ago [-]
I disable v6 on all my networks.
rami3l 3 hours ago [-]
I was immediately reminded of this old piece on water quality issues and local politics...
> An Enemy of the People [..] is an 1882 play [..] that [..] centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who discovers a serious contamination issue in his town's new spas, endangering public health. His courageous decision to expose this truth brings severe backlash from local leaders [..]
I'm not a lawyer, but I think qualified immunity should not apply to constitutional violations. Giving an opt-out for those violations is antithetical to the very substance of our (US) constitution.
cortesoft 3 hours ago [-]
It literally is not supposed to. The ruling that is currently used for the precedent is Harlow v Fitzgerald, which states:
> The Court held that "government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known."
It seems to me that a reasonable person would know this violates constitutional rights if you arrest people that criticize the government.
It's weird to me that courts don't at-least attempt to review if the conduct was in good faith and plausibly reasonable given the facts know at the time.
The idea that officials aren't personally liable for mistakes made in good faith isn't bad.
But somehow the US tends to produce a lot of cases where good faith requires a lot of faith :)
Gibbon1 2 hours ago [-]
You would think using your office to file false charges against someone would be corruption just like using your office to embezzle money.
jazzypants 4 hours ago [-]
Qualified Immunity should not apply ever. Period. No one should be above the law for any reason ever.
pdpi 4 hours ago [-]
Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
The issue isn't qualified immunity itself, but rather the maximalist interpretation that seems pervasive in the US justice system, and the overwhelmingly broad definition of "honest mistake" that seemingly applies to the police, and the police alone.
jazzypants 3 hours ago [-]
I think you would find that they would make far fewer illegal mistakes if they actually had to deal with the consequences of those mistakes.
Qualified Immunity didn't exist as a concept until the 1960s, and it was put in place to shield policemen enacting racist policies and corrupt cronies of Nixon.
I think we would see far fewer actions at all for fear of being sued.
jazzypants 3 hours ago [-]
They could just buy insurance. You know, like doctors, lawyers, and a wide variety of other professionals that deal with liabilities in their field.
Regardless, the police get sued all the time anyways. It's just that the burden currently falls on the taxpayers.
drbscl 3 hours ago [-]
> They could just buy insurance.
> the police get sued all the time anyways. It's just that the burden currently falls on the taxpayers.
I fail to see how this would change anything other than increasing taxpayer costs further in the form of insurance profit margin.
vajrabum 2 hours ago [-]
Make the police officer like the Doctor pay for their own insurance.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2 hours ago [-]
The doctor's own fees just rise. You, the patient pays for it. There's this 10-20% of revenue parasite on the entire industry, and you're paying that while complaining that prices are too high.
Now you'll do the same thing with police, as if police wages and salaries won't increase proportionally, but 20 years from now you'll wonder why that costs so much. It's bizarre how economically imperceptive everyone is.
jazzypants 2 hours ago [-]
No, the people who can't afford their insurance wouldn't be able to work as policemen. Ideally, they would also eventually lose a license of some sort-- just like the doctors who commit malpractice.
We are already paying increased taxes to deal with all the lawsuits we already incur because these people know they are above the law and they think it isn't their problem.
NoMoreNicksLeft 53 minutes ago [-]
I explained the problem in very simple terms. But your rebuttal is "nuh uh, here are all the details that irrelevant that I think are really cool".
The people still pay for it. They pay for all the settlements, plus they pay another big slice on top for the insurance industry (since they do nothing for free). Then cops do the same thing, and lobbyists push on the insurance industry to allow them to keep breaking heads because "you can't do this job without breaking heads once in awhile". And nothing changes, except to get worse.
I'm sure the idea seems really clever to you. I mean, you invented it. Or maybe just read a blurb about it on reddit once.
In the medical world, insurance premiums have never forced an incompetent quack out of the field. They have their licenses pulled by the board (but only after some small number of tragedies). And you can't use that model on police either, because there's a big difference between a professional/academic who must study and train over a decade to even be able to operate independently, and grunts that you need in large numbers to go insert themselves into fights, troubles, and disputes. It's very likely that if there is a sophisticated, intelligent solution to our problems with police you wouldn't even like the proposal upon hearing it. I will search the rest of this thread for things you criticize, since that might be a good signal that it's worth reading.
infinite_spin 2 hours ago [-]
Malpractice insurance might increase the cost of policing, but I'd wager the malpractice itself is costing tax payers even more.
switchbak 2 hours ago [-]
Change the incentives, you change the behaviour. Granted, this might have lots of unintended consequences, many of them bad.
array_key_first 2 hours ago [-]
As it currently stands the police already do almost nothing. Any kind of push back or critique of the police leads to inaction by the union. Meaning, police twiddle their thumbs and take your tax money because they can. It's a very effective technique from them to get what they want, because ultimately we need them and we can't actually force them to work.
voidfunc 2 hours ago [-]
Good. The police do too much as it is.
Every interaction with the police is a dice roll to see if someone lives or dies.
switchbak 2 hours ago [-]
Hey I have plenty of reasons to distrust the police - more than most, but this statement is a bit over the top.
kortex 60 minutes ago [-]
I agree with voidfunc. A lot of what police do could be offloaded to other occupations. A lot of needless deaths could be prevented if there were more rungs on the escalation ladder between "do nothing" and "folks with guns show up". Like the same vibe as firefighters and EMS but just like for mild social disruption.
3 hours ago [-]
wildzzz 2 hours ago [-]
Where I work, we follow quality management systems to ensure mistakes don't happen. Of course they do, people are human, but the point is to find why something happened and enact a corrective action to ensure it doesn't happen again. Is it a personnel problem that requires more training? Do procedures need to be updated to cover something new? Do we need new tools? Sometimes it really does boil down to a personnel issue where someone has been instructed, trained, and given all of the tools they need yet they still error. That's when management steps in and either transfers or fires them. That same system needs to be applied to police. When camera phones came out, suddenly cops were faced with people recording them. We have had many lawsuits where the cops have been told that people are allowed to film them and there are plenty of department manuals that state the same. At this point, a cop should never have the excuse of qualified immunity for violating someone's right to film because how much it's been harped on and any that do should be personally liable.
wvenable 3 hours ago [-]
"Doctors and nurses will make mistakes in performing medicine. Making those doctors and nurses personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive."
How many other jobs can we apply this to?
ceejayoz 3 hours ago [-]
And does it apply to, say, my tax returns?
Terr_ 2 hours ago [-]
AFAIK the IRS has historically been more, er, disinterestedly nitpicky as opposed to disproportionately vindictive.
More "you say X we say Y here's your options you are Z days over with a W% rate", rather than "Ah hah! $50 dollars error, time to make an example outta this poor bastard."
jshier 2 hours ago [-]
Generally, yes. If you make a mistake in your return, the IRS is perfectly happy to accept an amended return, and you pay (or get paid) the difference (perhaps with a penalty fee). They usually only go after you criminally if they think you committed fraud.
girvo 1 hours ago [-]
Other jobs don’t require this kind of shield. Instead, they require insurance.
Qualified immunity isn’t qualified, and it’s a horrific distorting function on your society, as officers get to act with impunity.
They’re given more and more power, and less and less responsibility.
isityettime 3 hours ago [-]
> Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
Or maybe police training should be longer than a coding bootcamp... in some countries, police work is an undergraduate major and the programs are quite competitive. Similarly, there are countries without qualified immunity as a policy, and it doesn't seem to fundamentally undermine policework there.
mpalmer 3 hours ago [-]
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
Your own usage of "honest mistake" is overwhelmingly broad, so it's not at all clear what alternative definition of qualified immunity you are advocating.
pfdietz 59 minutes ago [-]
The problem with that is sometimes it's not clear if something is a constitutional violation. Here, it was clear, but in general you don't want to do that.
Something that should be exempt from qualified immunity are actions that go against court orders.
balderdash 4 hours ago [-]
yup, i think a majority of people would agree with you, so why hasn't it happened? I think the answer is that elected representatives are more beholden to public sector unions than their constituents.
estearum 4 hours ago [-]
Texas: Famously pro-union
balderdash 3 hours ago [-]
yeah texas is definitely not pro-union - except that the only public sector unions that are allowed are for police and firemen... with Texas police unions contributing the the 3rd highest amount to politicians (behind CA and NY) - so its a real thing.
Good on the grand jury for not indicting this ham sandwich.
cortesoft 2 hours ago [-]
They always knew the charges wouldn’t stick. The punishment they were handing out was she had to spend a night in jail and spend money on a lawyer.
They already dished out the punishment, so they don’t care that it was dismissed.
gblargg 2 hours ago [-]
"The punishment is the process."
odie5533 2 hours ago [-]
The common saying is "you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride".
cindyllm 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
pfdietz 3 hours ago [-]
That town now has not just a bad water problem, but a large free speech lawsuit problem.
Maybe they could dock the Chief's retirement account?
conductr 3 hours ago [-]
Should be a “cut and dry” decision just like how he described the arrest
p_j_w 3 hours ago [-]
The chief of police stands proudly by his decision. This will happen again.
nkrisc 4 hours ago [-]
Yikes, they’ll have to arrest most of the current federal administration if they ever set foot in Texas if that post meets the criteria for that particular law. That’s going to cause problems.
dpe82 4 hours ago [-]
Oh don't worry, the enforcement is extremely selective.
kibwen 4 hours ago [-]
Never heard of Ken Paxton, I suppose?
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
ahem, that's senator paxton /s
skrebbel 4 hours ago [-]
who?
LocalH 2 hours ago [-]
"For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law."
thekingshorses 3 hours ago [-]
This week, there was two different settlement close to $800K related to someone posting and getting arrested about what charlie kirk said.
This woman shouldn't settle for anything less.
p_j_w 3 hours ago [-]
Do you have information on this? I’m curious to see.
The city issued a boil water advisory about about 13 or 14 days after her arrest.
luxuryballs 3 hours ago [-]
they said to make sure you boil it slowly though, so the local frogs don’t jump out! /s
ninjahawk1 5 minutes ago [-]
I see so many shitpost twitter and facebook pages that claim actually harmful misinformation, absolutely disgusting levels of picking one and ignoring the other. Especially when given the evidence now, she was sharing legitimate information.
All arrests that don't result in a conviction should be completely expunged.
sigbottle 1 hours ago [-]
And they said it wouldn't happen.
Everything is an accident, an anecdote, only trust the state with your authoritative quantitative data! There's surely no philosophical issues with that! There's no issues with definitional authority!
xtiansimon 2 hours ago [-]
> "[Chief Charles] Gregory says she should have verified it with the hospitals first."
What is a hospital going to tell a member of the public with HIPPA laws? As police chief he has a great deal of deferred power. Officials will talk to him. Private citizen making an inquiry is going to get crickets. Heck--have you ever been walking down the street or walked outside your home and found a police or fire department cordon? Asked what's going on and the fire department won't respond to your questions and the police department will tell you to go back in your house or move along.
One point of Devil's Advocate. Social media, YouTube and mobile phone video has created a very difficult situation. People who are untrained in reporting are making wild statements. And Evil People are undermining good faith everywhere (news, politics, public safety, health, citizenship, the rule of law).
I've never ever seen so many legal cases taking this strong line against free speech in my lifetime. These are extraordinary times.
3 hours ago [-]
vsgherzi 4 hours ago [-]
This is dumb af. There should be an extremely small subset of things you can say online that get you arrested. This is definitely not one of them. I hope she she’s and it’s sets a precedent for cases after. I’d hate to see a ruling like the UK. While is vervently disagree with some of the awful things they post they shouldn’t be arrested for it.
metalman 3 hours ago [-]
I once stated to one of my fathers aqaintences in the local town council that I was considering refuseing to pay my water bill on the grounds that water is defined as a coulorless, odourless liquid, and what comes out of my tap is niether, his imediate request was "can I use that?"
and so, not too long after we got a significant upgrade to the towns water, which is now of a much better quality, withmore upgrades all the time.
worik 2 hours ago [-]
> The city’s mayor, Dennis Haws, told reporters the pipes date back to the 1950s
How long should water pipes remain useful? Am I outrageously naive to think more than 75 years?
Perhaps they have been doing no maintenance....
jmyeet 2 hours ago [-]
If you look at the legal system through the lens of "what benefits the wealthy or powerful?" you will more accurately guess what is going to happen and this goes from local issues such as this one all the way to the Supreme Court.
We just had the Broadview 6 case dismissed (with prejudice) this week. The Broadview 6 included former Chicago Congressional primary contender, Kat Abugazaleh. It was a bullshit set of charges for daring to protest an ICE facility. It was always going away but what was more disturbing is the prosecutorial misconduct [1]. The level of misconduct should rise to the level of disbarment. It will get referred to the bar and it'll probably be some slap-on-the-wrist sanctions however.
Prosecutors hold a lot of power and can make your life hell. They need to be held to a very high standard and any whiff of this kind of misconduct should forever bar you from being a prosecutor or a judge.
In this case the prosecutor basically engaged in witness tampering (effectively) with the grand jury proceedings and then tried to cover it up by redacting those parts of the grand jury transcripts. Those redactions basically amount to committing perjury, making false filings to the court under oath.
That's the lengths prosecutors will go to to crush protests. This goes equally for exposing incompetence, negligence or corruption by the town for mismanaging the water supply. This kind of overreach and misconduct is all too common.
The craziest part is the police defending this action as a “cut and dry” case. Meanwhile the lawsuit this woman just filed will hurt taxpayers and not the corrupt city officials and police that caused this. We need to ban all forms of immunity - none for cops, politicians, or judges. They need to be personally liable for their actions.
thot_experiment 4 hours ago [-]
It's absolutely not the slightest bit crazy if you've paid attention to how cops behave at any point in the last history of the country. 100% agree about personal responsibility. You must understand that when the cops says that oversight means they can't do their job, that means they view their job as bullying, harassing and killing citizens, so yea, we should put a stop to that. 1312
ggoo 4 hours ago [-]
> It's absolutely not the slightest bit crazy
Imo, speaking like this normalizes their behavior - it was crazy then and it's crazy now.
p_j_w 3 hours ago [-]
GP isn’t entirely wrong, our governing apparatus has made this something to be expected.
Bender 4 hours ago [-]
I will not put the blame on the bobbies, that's too convenient. Someone had to order them to do this. That's who needs to be permanently ousted from all levels of government and their voting rights rescinded.
abofh 4 hours ago [-]
Nobody has to order people to do anything if it's in their self interest. Yes corruption flows downhill, but until they flip, just following orders isn't a defense.
Bender 4 hours ago [-]
Just following orders of course does not excuse anyone but I would rather not play whack-a-mole. That is how they expect us to play "The Game" by throwing one of their tools under the bus.
I prefer to work my way up the chain of command first and find the head(s) of the snake. Sure, punish the cops but don't let their corrupt chain of command play The Game otherwise we all just lost and the problem just repeats with new tools.
thot_experiment 2 hours ago [-]
Sure, I definitely agree that the highest impact work would be to shine the light on the corruption among the leadership and hold them to account, in all cases. However in the institution of American police the corruption is endemic.
queenkjuul 4 hours ago [-]
Lmao no this is just American police chiefs doing what they love to do, guarantee this whole thing starts and ends in that PD
Bender 4 hours ago [-]
From the PDF looks like Trinidad City Councilwoman Marie Bannister and Trinidad Police Chief Charles W. Gregory, may have started this. The Texas governor [1] needs to start pruning both up and down from there. Actually the governor should take full control of that county, oust everyone and fix the water problems.
[redacted] all police but don't pretend it isn't crazy. Not every country is like this.
Bilal_io 4 hours ago [-]
I hear you, but there has to be some balance between full immunity and no immunity at all. The one thing that comes to mind is rich and powerful people, because they have unlimited resources to sue and ruin the lives of cops, judges and politicians, which would lead to these officials avoiding to hold rich and powerful individuals accountable even when they have committed crimes.
ben_w 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not a lawyer, but what you're describing sounds to me like an example of strategic lawsuits against public participation, just where the targeted "public" isn't a member of the general public but a public servant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
jghn 4 hours ago [-]
These lawsuits need to be charged against the police pension funds, not the city coffers
Bilal_io 4 hours ago [-]
I agree with you
mcdonje 4 hours ago [-]
"would"? There is currently a disparity in how rich and poor people are policed.
I get the point that there should be some limited immunity so they can do their jobs. Debatable, but worth the debate.
The argument about the repercussions of eliminating immunity is logical. It just seems like one of those things where there are multiple factors contributing to undesirable outcomes, and that makes it necessary to talk to experts.
thot_experiment 4 hours ago [-]
You're so close! Instead of patching the issue maybe let's solve the root problem of spiky power distribution among humans. We don't need to make sure cops have immunity to prosecute powerful people. We need to not have powerful people.
(though realistically speaking yes there's probably some level of procedural immunity that probably makes sense, similarly with business bankruptcies not ruining the people who start the business)
Ar-Curunir 4 hours ago [-]
I agree with you, but most people aren’t ready to engage with basic anarchist arguments
thot_experiment 4 hours ago [-]
I don't know if anarchy helps in this situation, I actually think you need robust social systems with buy in from citizens to prevent the natural accumulation of power. The fundamental problem is that there's a diminishing cost to acquiring power as you acquire power, this relationship should be inverted. The more powerful you are the harder it should be to get more powerful.
This is basic engineering, you don't want runaway feedback loops, the underlying system is unstable so we need a control system.
BrenBarn 2 hours ago [-]
Weird that you're getting downvoted for this. You're spot on.
p1esk 4 hours ago [-]
We need to not have powerful people
What does this even mean?
thot_experiment 4 hours ago [-]
It's very easy to get started on this, you tax the shit out of people who have a lot of money because the old adage is true.
p1esk 2 hours ago [-]
Even if you could achieve that, there would still be rich people. Musk would still be a billionaire even if he had to pay 90% tax.
Plus, many powerful people in government are not that rich.
queenkjuul 4 hours ago [-]
Make currently powerful people less powerful and currently powerless people more powerful.
C'mon, HN users forgot how to think? Forgot to ask Claude?
p1esk 3 hours ago [-]
To do that you first need to become more powerful than those powerful people, right?
BrenBarn 2 hours ago [-]
Well, no, you just a need a coalition that collectively is more powerful.
rightbyte 4 hours ago [-]
Exactly which types of politicians, judges etc would be targeted by liability do you think? The unrighteous politicians? The judges in favour of those in power?
SilverElfin 3 hours ago [-]
I mean that when someone files a lawsuit to defend their civil/constitutional rights and wins, the penalty must be paid by the offenders and not taxpayers. For example the police who made the arrest and their supervisors.
crnkofe 3 hours ago [-]
This entire debacle weirds me out. Surely the police is aware of the water issues. They drink from the same tap as the locals do. What would a sane person call arresting people that publicly call out that your water supply is obviously contaminated?
georgeecollins 3 hours ago [-]
That would not necessarily be the case in my town. We have police who don't live in the county and fireman who don't live in the state. (Los Angeles)
nozzlegear 4 hours ago [-]
In my experience (I sued my town for violating my first amendment rights), the city will have insurance that will cover any damages or settlement they have to pay. Their premiums will likely go up, but the impact to taxpayers is probably minimal.
sirsinsalot 3 hours ago [-]
Perhaps in the first order, but when premiums go up and go up across all policies due to the acceptability of litigation... Everyone pays eventually.
Its a bit like saying driving dangerously is OK because you have insurance. Until everyone drives dangerously and insurance is sky high for all.
That said, they should be sued.
casey2 4 hours ago [-]
Even making them pay their own lawsuit insurance premiums would be enough to stop 90% of abuse.
No change will happen until cities stop using police revenue for discretionary spending.
z3c0 4 hours ago [-]
Nazi Germany wasn't chaos, just a lot of people following "cut-and-dry" protocol.
thinkingtoilet 4 hours ago [-]
Just more actions from free speech loving Republicans. Exactly like that guy in Tennessee who got $800k.
userbinator 3 hours ago [-]
Apparently people here will also censor speech that doesn't align with their narratives, but will complain loudly when speech that does is censored.
computersuck 2 hours ago [-]
so much for democracy
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
you forgot to date that properly, 20 January, 2025
gigatexal 24 minutes ago [-]
I hope she sues the city and everyone involved personally for tens of millions. This is insane. The water is brown. Do not drink it. Instead boil it. Posts that it’s bad. Get jailed. Wtf?
rolph 3 hours ago [-]
upon inspection of images pertaining to water at the point of usage, i declare said water to be Alaskan well water.
use a 5micron, and 1micron particulate filter in series, and it looks like it came from a bottle.
you would be well advised to test for heavy metals, esp. arsenic
most people here dont use softening or reverse osmosis
2 hours ago [-]
thiht 2 hours ago [-]
Is America great yet?
nadermx 5 hours ago [-]
Imagine the town of flynt getting arrested for having your government fail you.
mvdtnz 4 hours ago [-]
How does a town in the richest nation in the history of the planet not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
1659447091 8 minutes ago [-]
> How does a town in the richest nation [...] not have the resources to get clear drinking water
It's a large country. Texas is a very large state, larger in size than France.
Texas recently voted to approve a $20 billion investment in water.
Presumably because they are spending their money prosecuting people complaining about bad water.
Money does not grow on trees, you know!
umvi 4 hours ago [-]
Water is handled at the city level, not the federal level. If you have incompetent local leadership, this can happen. Incompetent local leaders can (and have!) bankrupted their cities.
azinman2 4 hours ago [-]
Texas also is all about no/low taxes.
array_key_first 2 hours ago [-]
Theoretically. In practice, the total tax burden in Texas is above average for US states.
SJMG 4 hours ago [-]
You must not own property in Texas
nxm 3 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile in Flint Michigan…
owenversteeg 2 hours ago [-]
The US is a huge country. In general it has excellent water; the US averages better than the EU. The Environmental Performance Index is a report that measures many things, and they have a handy section where they measure DALYs lost from sanitation and drinking water. For this section the US scores 96, within a few points of Switzerland (100), Sweden (97), Austria (96), Denmark (94), Belgium (93) and comfortably above the Netherlands (91), France (88), Poland (80), Czechia (79) and Japan (78.)
There are isolated incidents of poor water quality in each of those countries, and especially in small towns of eight hundred people in rural areas, but generally speaking, clear drinking water that is free of bacteria is standard.
lysace 2 hours ago [-]
On the other hand the US often relies on relatively crude chlorination to reach those levels, which those 'top' European countries don't. They instead put a strong emphasis on protecting the source water and then treating it via ozone, UV, biofiltration and slow sand filtration.
The taste of chlorinated water generally isn't tolerated.
owenversteeg 48 minutes ago [-]
The US isn't a monolith and neither is Europe. Overall, yes, the US uses more chlorine than Europe, but Spain and France both have _minimum_ water chlorination levels (about 0.2-0.3 mg/L depending on the regional situation) and France has no cap on max chlorine, which is very different from the US, where you can drink completely unchlorinated water in countless places around the country and there is a nationwide cap of 4 mg/L. For example NYC (average 0.5 mg/L and many places with zero.)
lysace 8 minutes ago [-]
Oh, but you were comparing the US to the top-ranking European countries. Or maybe just I was. Oh well.
Also: It's a bit of a culture shock to be served soft drinks made from very obviously chlorinated water in e.g. California. Is it an acquired taste? I don't understand how this is tolerated.
scoofy 4 hours ago [-]
>How can X in the richest nation in the history of the planet be...
I've honestly grown absolutely sick of this type of comment as I get older. If you're not from the states, it's maybe understandable, but throughout my life most of the folks with me on the left that make these statements are completely ignorant of how their own government works and just assume "shit should be taken care of" without actually having to put any work in. It drives me crazy.
The vast majority of our electorate doesn't pay attention to politics, and then votes for feel-good measures (often very expensive), and almost universally avoid actual long-term net positive investments, like urban density and avoiding bond issuances wherever they are impractical.
As you see small towns welcoming -- even courting -- data centers while everyone in the town hates and protests them... yea, it's almost certainly because the town is broke, and the only folks who realize it are the city officials.
>How does a town ... not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Many, many, many, towns in America are functionally insolvent! The amount of cost it takes to maintain our road/sewer/water/refuse/emergency/energy systems is very often more than the tax revenue that the town can bring in. This is literally the entire point of the Strong Towns organization: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt...
Rebuilding a water system is one of the most significant municipal finance events that a city will have to deal with, and more and more cities across the nation are requiring federal bailouts; e.g., the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi,_water_cr....
It's just so frustrating as someone who cares about municipal finances that American cities' sustainability that most people think that it's just supposed to work itself out when cities are just lighting money on fires... often to the cheers of the electorate who voted for it.
sirsinsalot 3 hours ago [-]
Because the US is a third world country cosplaying as a developed nation. Much like their president is a corrupt and morally bankrupt fool cosplaying as a politician.
It doesn't matter in the US. Just pretend.
autoexec 4 hours ago [-]
We have more than enough resources, but a lot of people don't want to pay taxes to clean it or restrain corporations from polluting our water supply inn the first place. I'm guessing that plenty of people in this woman's own town were cheering Trump's slashing of the EPA's budget and deregulating clean air and water. Just this week the administration announced plans to kill off or delay limits in the amount of PFAS in the drinking water. They argue it's too expensive to limit or filter the poison but then give no-bid contracts out to their unqualified friends for tens of millions of dollars and spend a trillion bombing other countries for no reason so it's pretty clear where the priorities are and it isn't with us.
stevepotter 3 hours ago [-]
You are mixing local and federal politics. This is a town issue and would likely have happened regardless of who occupied the Oval Office
jyounker 2 hours ago [-]
The poster was pointing out the irony that the town's residents support pro-water pollution policies at the national level.
[Given that Henderson county went for Trump by 30 points, the probably also support pro-pollution policies at both the local and state level too.]
balderdash 4 hours ago [-]
complete and utter incompetence by local elected officials. If one of the richest towns in America (average home price of >$2m) can do it - just imagine how bad it can be in "average" towns...
Cuz all that wealth belongs to about 14 people and everyone else gets police harassment and poison water
stefantalpalaru 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
dfxm12 4 hours ago [-]
The country is the richest, but the money is not distributed equally. One factor to keep in mind is that the state would rather give the richest man in the world tax breaks rather than make sure everyone has safe drinking water.
6stringmerc 5 hours ago [-]
Not surprised. Tarrant County told the US Marshals my styrofoam cooler with vomit in it was a “bomb threat” and charged me with use of a DEADLY WEAPON. Honestly. If my public defender hadn’t colluded with the Prosecution it wouldn’t be on my record today.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the US. I’m a nonviolent cripple. Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged. Totally depends what team you’re on right now.
vjvjvjvjghv 5 hours ago [-]
"Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged."
A great candidate to get some money from the lawfare fund.
Duwensatzaj 1 hours ago [-]
Is this from 2024? The news article mentioned a threatening note. Curious what it said.
jimnotgym 2 hours ago [-]
Saving this one for the next time an American says, 'In your stupid European country you can get arrested for simply saying something online'
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
You left out the word legally. You can legally be arrested for simply saying something online. This was not a legal arrest. Small difference
wokkel 2 hours ago [-]
Semantics. The result is the same. The cause: no repercussions for missing the system that is in place is a bigger fallacy imho
dylan604 48 minutes ago [-]
How is it semantics? If someone posts something in a land that has laws preventing it, then they know the possible repercussions. Someone posting something where it is legal gets arrested, they have recourse for the violations done to them.
It's so not the same, I'm straining to understand what you think the point you are making is.
gib444 28 minutes ago [-]
Doesn't 'legal arrest' have a specific legal meaning? How have you ascertained it was an illegal arrest? And what made it illegal?
johnea 3 hours ago [-]
Its a good thing they don't have libtards running that city!
Then they'd probably be forced to drink DEI water!!!
joshuafuller 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
breck 4 hours ago [-]
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cboyardee 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
userbinator 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
stouset 5 hours ago [-]
I would imagine it’s hard to be reminded of things that didn’t actually occur.
userbinator 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
stouset 4 hours ago [-]
Indeed the brainwashing is still alive and well.
It’s been five years since multiple COVID-19 vaccines have been widely available and administered worldwide, and just about the worst common side effects have been a small risk of mild, self-resolving myocarditis in mRNA vaccines and an increased risk of clotting for adenoviral vector vaccines which have been either discontinued or fallen out of use.
Past those, there have been rare (~5 per million doses) cases of Guillain-Barré or anaphylaxis, but those are broadly in line with risk profiles for other vaccines.
Despite repeated insistence from chronically-online nutjobs, the sky has not fallen, and the well-known, well-published, and well-studied risks of these vaccines remain drastically lower than the risks of actually contracting the disease they inhibit. Which is the whole goddamn point.
4 hours ago [-]
galangalalgol 4 hours ago [-]
To make it more explicit. Censorship is always bad. There is no censorship for the good of the people. If fewer people had gotten vaccines because we didn't censor claims it was dangerous, maybe more people would have died. Maybe hospitals would have shut down from crowding. We can't know for sure. But because that was censored, amongst other things, the trust in government dropped even lower. This in turn is allowing populists from both parties to win and local state and national levels. Populists always hurt the economy and damage individual freedoms. There is no substitute for trust, and it is a generational project to rebuild it. Censorship of any speech errodes it and harms all of us more than letting people who are probably wrong speak.
thinkingtoilet 4 hours ago [-]
Provide proof of someone getting arrested for a social media post.
userbinator 4 hours ago [-]
Did the ones posting about the water provide "proof" also?
queenkjuul 4 hours ago [-]
Rtfa
nilslindemann 4 hours ago [-]
Lying is not free speech.
GaryBluto 4 hours ago [-]
It very much is.
nilslindemann 4 hours ago [-]
It may be a necessary mechanism to prevent harm, but it is not free speech. Whenever you are lying you are not a free being, because you need to invest a part of your energy to uphold the lie.
breck 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
gdulli 4 hours ago [-]
We should call this obsession "longest Covid". Certain people will be on this until they die.
charcircuit 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gblargg 2 hours ago [-]
When not being arrested is your only singular concern, this is a good approach.
ShinyLeftPad 2 hours ago [-]
Someone is speedrunning getting a thread to comparison with you know who's Germany in you know what years...
samrus 2 hours ago [-]
This country got where it did because people refused to follow the bullshit your peddling
userbinator 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
pstuart 4 hours ago [-]
This is a textbook free speech issue, versus not being able to post your conspiracy theory on some web site which has nothing to do with free speech.
Lionga 3 hours ago [-]
Who decideds what is free speech and what is a conspiracy theory?
For a long time saying tabaco creates lung cancers was basically a conspiracy theory and saying it is healthy was free speech.
jyounker 3 hours ago [-]
Since at least the 70s everyone knew that it caused lung cancer. It's just that industry spending prevented anyone from doing something about it, in the exactly the same way that we've been seeing with global warming.
markoman 4 hours ago [-]
This type of treatment of citizenry by the State of Texas, and its various (and especially red) localities should be all one needs to see of where conservatives (and Christian Naitonalism) will take our country in the future -- should they get their way. Republicans hope to enable just such a future by scaring Americans with made-up visions of transsexuals 'grooming' their children, yet they cleverly hide what awaits behind the curtain. The is the same curtain that hides why Israel is supposed to be so very, very important to the U.S. but not so much that we make them state #51. This is the magical (read: Biblical) rationale that the U.S. makes excuses for Israel's attack on its own USS Liberty in 1967.
Saying nothing of the future of abortion & contraception, U.S. conservatives base their worldview on sexuality & reproduction and seek to burden it with fixtures that we have already spent hundreds of year to free ourselves from. At the same time, they take their eye off the ball of keeping our country competitive in the world. How embarrassing it is now to have the Chinese president suggest that the U.S. is in decline and that it shouldn't get caught in a Thucydides Trap.
Yet, that is where Trump has put us indeed.
dlubarov 3 hours ago [-]
> the U.S. makes excuses for Israel's attack on its own USS Liberty in 1967.
It's strange how this 59-year-old incident keeps getting brought up. Friendly fire happens all the time, and Israel apologized and paid reparations ages ago.
markoman 60 minutes ago [-]
Except they don't happen all the time, because this incident killed 34 Americans & wounded 171. Is that not remarkable enough for a 'blue-ribbon' commission of investigation? If one of our European allies had done this, wouldn't a commission be held to review all the evidence and make a determination as to cause?
One needn't dig too deep to see there isn't too much wiggle room for mere misunderstanding. The nearly defenseless ship suffered 2 hours of withering attack by both waves of jets and torpedo boats; this with an American flag and its hull number in open display as it operated in international waters. The context was that this ship was an intelligence ship bristling with antennas and recording everything it could from the combatants in the ongoing six-day-war in 1967.
If there's any conspiracy, its how for years afterward whenever a congressman sought an investigation as requested by one of the family of those killed, the effort was silently killed despite its impact, over and over.
There are a lot of details involved and many actions to be assessed on both sides, but it should merit more than a Navy Court of Inquiry. When the captain of the ship received his Medal of Honor for saving his ship while injured, it was awarded to him by the Secretary of the Navy quietly at the Washington Navy Yard. The usual procedure is that the MoH be presented by the president in the White House in a ceremony. So, there's that.
samrus 2 hours ago [-]
The conspiracy theory is that it wasnt just friendly fire but an attempted false flag. Make if that what you will
jyounker 3 hours ago [-]
Well said.
pessimizer 2 hours ago [-]
Using the word "transsexual" would have gotten you banned from social media two years ago as transphobic. But that was back when when every resistance lib was screaming about "freeze peach" and "nothingburgers" and before they realized that the tools that they allowed the government to use to enforce their own opinions online would be used against them. When Democrats were rounding up Gaza protesters under Biden, was that Trump's fault?
The idea that you could blame the genocide that started under a Democratic administration on the Republican administration that happily continued it is absurd. There's total continuity - you're flailing because your worldview has been designed by partisan media strategists, and you've fallen into a Manichean delusion with a cosmology consisting of one tiny private political club that has to be the force of good, and the other that has to be the force of evil.
They're actually both bad. You can't offload your thinking to aggressively imposed abstractions, especially when they're being whiteboarded by people on the payrolls of billionaires and plutocrats. You have to look at what's actually happening.
The Democratic Party still doesn't know that genocide is bad. They're too busy astroturfing "No Kings" rallies without any demands other than "Trump!" They're like his PR department. Least popular president in history, and still Democrats are even less popular (because the citizenry are shrewd, you're the slowpoke.) They're enabling him.
> Yet, that is where Trump has put us indeed.
You guys just get fixated on individuals. It's like distracting a child with a puppet. I spent years with freaks bombarding me with Trump and Elon as if they were the coolest things in the world, and now the same freaks are bombarding me with Trump and Elon like they're the next coming of Satan. Celebrity-obsessed.
The problem is that our barely-existing democracy is completely gone post-9/11. Congress has completely abdicated its responsibility for the graft of personal wealth, and left "legislating" to the Executive and the Judiciary.
Ask yourself how Trump can do so much, while the Democrats claimed to be able to do nothing, and billionaires just got the run of the place no matter who was supposed to be running things?
> keeping our country competitive in the world.
And strangely, "liberals" have reverted to Libertarianism when it comes to economics. "Free Trade" and anti-feminism - that's not what I'm looking for in my opposition party to a corporate-run and anti-feminist administration.
edit: The Democratic Party hasn't even run a fair primary even on its own superdelegate-packed terms since 2008, and I think that H. Clinton makes a good argument that even that one was fixed because they knew that the orgasm of smug self-satisfaction that white people would have after electing Obama (who they pretended had something to do with US slavery because they only see color) would give them the cover to indemnify the bankers and the CIA torturers and snoops. They were right. Over those 20 years, they've somehow taught their own extreme partisans to hate democracy, and to hate Americans themselves.
bfkwlfkjf 5 hours ago [-]
Land of the free
nozzlegear 4 hours ago [-]
This is newsworthy because it's a clear and flagrant violation of her rights.
Source: I was threatened with a lawsuit by my own town for criticizing them online, but the ACLU helped me counter sue and win a settlement for violating my first amendment rights.
poly2it 4 hours ago [-]
Was the comment you are replying to edited?
vjvjvjvjghv 5 hours ago [-]
I assume you mean "Land of the fee"
nxm 3 hours ago [-]
Yea compared to Europe where you get arrested for memes
markoman 4 hours ago [-]
'Equal Justice Under Law'
4 hours ago [-]
6stringmerc 5 hours ago [-]
World Cup Tourists about to get some “civic lessons” if they buy that too much, mmmhmmm.
4 hours ago [-]
arjie 3 hours ago [-]
These small towns are often just armed HOAs and the law is usually secondary to administration whim. One would imagine that state and federal police are the weapons to bring to bear on them.
opengrass 3 hours ago [-]
If 911 calls are going on hold because the line's all backed up with schizos then it's justified.
It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual. The State Health Services or TCEQ would need to conduct that investigation and ask those questions. Both of those are state level agencies and would require significant momentum for a small town like Trinidad to trigger their attention. Ironically, it sounds like her social media post and the Streisand effect around it have triggered a TCEQ boil water notice and (likely) an investigation.
It is absolutely bizarre for a municipal or county law enforcement agency to take interest in this kind of thing. Texas Rangers and federal authorities should be looking at what triggered her arrest and whatever investigation came before it. That's assuming Greg Abbot, Dan Patrick, or Ken Paxton haven't totally compromised them at this point.
If multiple people told her they were hospitalized then you could ask and answer about that in a general way without violating HIPPA. "Were the multiple cases of hospitalization due to water quality issues in the recent month?" As long as individual data isn't revealed then there is no violation. Which is obvious when you think about any generalized health statistics.
Which isn't to defend the Trinidad Police department, but to point out, if their concern was community awareness, then they could have asked any news outlet to do this same reporting as a matter of public interest.
Instead the police decide that it's better to use their limited resources to take a citizen into custody over factually ambiguous statements. We live in disappointing times so it's not hard to imagine a friend or colleague pressured the police into violating this woman's civil rights in an effort to shut everyone up about the sorry state of their infrastructure.
Your desire that more politicians behave this way doesn't make them not corrupt.
Same for the guy in TN who got arrested for posting that anti-conservative meme. Nobody thought they would win, but they want to make everyone else think twice about criticizing a particular political side.
some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand.
i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially life-changing payday. so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.
Particularly if you're young and poor.
Humans don't really work the way you're implying from your armchair.
That’s precisely how I thought - getting involved with a “get money now” scheme was not worth the “no money ever again” it often came with. I watched friends do things like this and face consequences later.
Not to discourage anyone from protesting, but not all poor people think alike.
That said if you do go into circumstances - "I did it to get arrested and get a payout" could also be viewed as a red flag - says "may screw you/the company for money". Probably not the employee / tenant / etc you might want.
nothing? maybe a laugh? it’s a meme not a murder
Convicted, sure. Merely arrested, with no conviction? Then you'd be an asshole
Convicted ... for memeing? I think that would still be absurd. I don't think landlords should be denying tenants for obviously unrelated matters.
Yup, sounds about right.
What an awful data environment
The fact that you were arrested, charged even, if not convicted should not be discoverable by third parties
Uncivilised
That's how people get disappeared in failed states.
It's perfectly fine to force the state to clearly declare whom they have detained and their reasons for doing so. We also need to recognize that arrests are very often preposterous (or worse, retaliatory) and not hold it (absent other information or further proceedings) against people.
How many people didn't get media attention, don't have the ability (time/money) to sue, lost that case, and those where the intimidation and "punishment" was successful?
At some level the people doing this intimidation believe it'll be successful. Is that from experience?
Are you interested in buying some from me using your money on this timeline?
Those ones are the easiest though, are they not? Someone going into it with convictions (or even chickening out because they are aware of the consequences) have consolation and inner reserves. Some kid angry that he can't get a six figure salary at age 22 fresh out of college might regret it as soon as they're in the clink, but if that doesn't get them... the 6-10 years of lawyer-wrangling and stress certainly will. All for the payday to not even go half as far as they think... it'll pay down some bills, there won't be any sports cars.
> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.
They know the charges won’t stick, they are using the process of fighting the charges itself as the punishment.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-email-inventor_n_...
YC and its founders worship him like a hero.
Those who have lots of money will get fair hearings under the court, but those with less power might not. There's a reason people like Elon Musk write into agreements that they must be settled in particular Texas courts.
To add slightly more flavoring, I think its a pretty reasonable view to assume that the massive fracturing happening in the American political scene is most likely affecting the judicial branch. Perhaps you disagree. Take it as an opinion. Don't take it seriously. Whatever floats your boat.
Bonus question: do you enjoy watching Fox?
I won't say what aliasxneo does to add slightly more flavoring, but I think it's a pretty reasonable to assume it's gross and lazy.
Just in case you're being honest about your own ignorance on this matter, you can start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Kacsmaryk
Texas is larger (in both population and economy) than most countries in the world.
If Texas seceded from the US (which there is an actual movement here that gets loud with Democrat presidents) it would be the 8th or 9th largest economy in the world. The oil propping up the US while the US admin is/was grifting large paychecks for friends and family with the Iran thing -- comes from Texas. No one posting words online then getting payouts is going to bankrupt them.
What (federal) bailout did Texas receive for the power grid? Unless something changed, Texas refuses fed help for the power grid because it wants to stay independent. Texas bailed itself out of the 2021 power grid failure with a couple/few billion dollars that Texas pays for. And while not great, Texas refused hundreds of millions in federal money to shore up flood protections, which came to light last year. Texas is not your typical southern state that takes and does nothing for itself.
It's one of the (many) reasons why I immediately moved out of the state when I had a chance. There's only so much that can be done when a lot of the states politics and environment is wholly self-destructive.
https://scontent.fcps4-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/6654022...
https://media.reclaimthenet.org/2026/05/N35Bezr1GdxG.jpg
It's facebook post. Firefox's "copy text from image" gives this unformatted blob:
> Southern Belle Watch • 1h • 2 Author We have received reports that some citizens have been hospitalized due to bacteria in the water. This is a serious public health concern that deserves immediate attention. If your water looks discolored, contains sediment, has a strong odor, or you have experienced related health issues, please send us a message. We are gathering information and reporting findings to the state. We are aware that not all areas of Trinidad are experiencing these issues. However, if your water is affected, your information could help identify patterns and ensure the problem is addressed properly. Please include: • Your area or neighborhood (no exact address needed • Photos or videos of the water (if available) • Dates and times the issue occurred • Any notices you may have received • Any health concerns you're willing to share Your information can help bring attention to the issue and support efforts to improve water quality for everyone. If you have information or your water looks like this, please send us a message Reply
> An Enemy of the People [..] is an 1882 play [..] that [..] centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who discovers a serious contamination issue in his town's new spas, endangering public health. His courageous decision to expose this truth brings severe backlash from local leaders [..]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Enemy_of_the_People
> The Court held that "government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known."
It seems to me that a reasonable person would know this violates constitutional rights if you arrest people that criticize the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlow_v._Fitzgerald
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-imm...
The idea that officials aren't personally liable for mistakes made in good faith isn't bad. But somehow the US tends to produce a lot of cases where good faith requires a lot of faith :)
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
The issue isn't qualified immunity itself, but rather the maximalist interpretation that seems pervasive in the US justice system, and the overwhelmingly broad definition of "honest mistake" that seemingly applies to the police, and the police alone.
Qualified Immunity didn't exist as a concept until the 1960s, and it was put in place to shield policemen enacting racist policies and corrupt cronies of Nixon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
Regardless, the police get sued all the time anyways. It's just that the burden currently falls on the taxpayers.
I fail to see how this would change anything other than increasing taxpayer costs further in the form of insurance profit margin.
Now you'll do the same thing with police, as if police wages and salaries won't increase proportionally, but 20 years from now you'll wonder why that costs so much. It's bizarre how economically imperceptive everyone is.
We are already paying increased taxes to deal with all the lawsuits we already incur because these people know they are above the law and they think it isn't their problem.
The people still pay for it. They pay for all the settlements, plus they pay another big slice on top for the insurance industry (since they do nothing for free). Then cops do the same thing, and lobbyists push on the insurance industry to allow them to keep breaking heads because "you can't do this job without breaking heads once in awhile". And nothing changes, except to get worse.
I'm sure the idea seems really clever to you. I mean, you invented it. Or maybe just read a blurb about it on reddit once.
In the medical world, insurance premiums have never forced an incompetent quack out of the field. They have their licenses pulled by the board (but only after some small number of tragedies). And you can't use that model on police either, because there's a big difference between a professional/academic who must study and train over a decade to even be able to operate independently, and grunts that you need in large numbers to go insert themselves into fights, troubles, and disputes. It's very likely that if there is a sophisticated, intelligent solution to our problems with police you wouldn't even like the proposal upon hearing it. I will search the rest of this thread for things you criticize, since that might be a good signal that it's worth reading.
Every interaction with the police is a dice roll to see if someone lives or dies.
How many other jobs can we apply this to?
More "you say X we say Y here's your options you are Z days over with a W% rate", rather than "Ah hah! $50 dollars error, time to make an example outta this poor bastard."
Qualified immunity isn’t qualified, and it’s a horrific distorting function on your society, as officers get to act with impunity.
They’re given more and more power, and less and less responsibility.
Or maybe police training should be longer than a coding bootcamp... in some countries, police work is an undergraduate major and the programs are quite competitive. Similarly, there are countries without qualified immunity as a policy, and it doesn't seem to fundamentally undermine policework there.
Something that should be exempt from qualified immunity are actions that go against court orders.
https://www.pelrb.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Public-S...
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/06/police-unions-spend...
Good on the grand jury for not indicting this ham sandwich.
They already dished out the punishment, so they don’t care that it was dismissed.
Maybe they could dock the Chief's retirement account?
This woman shouldn't settle for anything less.
Everything is an accident, an anecdote, only trust the state with your authoritative quantitative data! There's surely no philosophical issues with that! There's no issues with definitional authority!
What is a hospital going to tell a member of the public with HIPPA laws? As police chief he has a great deal of deferred power. Officials will talk to him. Private citizen making an inquiry is going to get crickets. Heck--have you ever been walking down the street or walked outside your home and found a police or fire department cordon? Asked what's going on and the fire department won't respond to your questions and the police department will tell you to go back in your house or move along.
One point of Devil's Advocate. Social media, YouTube and mobile phone video has created a very difficult situation. People who are untrained in reporting are making wild statements. And Evil People are undermining good faith everywhere (news, politics, public safety, health, citizenship, the rule of law).
I've never ever seen so many legal cases taking this strong line against free speech in my lifetime. These are extraordinary times.
How long should water pipes remain useful? Am I outrageously naive to think more than 75 years?
Perhaps they have been doing no maintenance....
We just had the Broadview 6 case dismissed (with prejudice) this week. The Broadview 6 included former Chicago Congressional primary contender, Kat Abugazaleh. It was a bullshit set of charges for daring to protest an ICE facility. It was always going away but what was more disturbing is the prosecutorial misconduct [1]. The level of misconduct should rise to the level of disbarment. It will get referred to the bar and it'll probably be some slap-on-the-wrist sanctions however.
Prosecutors hold a lot of power and can make your life hell. They need to be held to a very high standard and any whiff of this kind of misconduct should forever bar you from being a prosecutor or a judge.
In this case the prosecutor basically engaged in witness tampering (effectively) with the grand jury proceedings and then tried to cover it up by redacting those parts of the grand jury transcripts. Those redactions basically amount to committing perjury, making false filings to the court under oath.
That's the lengths prosecutors will go to to crush protests. This goes equally for exposing incompetence, negligence or corruption by the town for mismanaging the water supply. This kind of overreach and misconduct is all too common.
[1]:https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/broadview-6-trial-cance...
Imo, speaking like this normalizes their behavior - it was crazy then and it's crazy now.
I prefer to work my way up the chain of command first and find the head(s) of the snake. Sure, punish the cops but don't let their corrupt chain of command play The Game otherwise we all just lost and the problem just repeats with new tools.
[1] - https://gov.texas.gov/
I get the point that there should be some limited immunity so they can do their jobs. Debatable, but worth the debate.
The argument about the repercussions of eliminating immunity is logical. It just seems like one of those things where there are multiple factors contributing to undesirable outcomes, and that makes it necessary to talk to experts.
(though realistically speaking yes there's probably some level of procedural immunity that probably makes sense, similarly with business bankruptcies not ruining the people who start the business)
This is basic engineering, you don't want runaway feedback loops, the underlying system is unstable so we need a control system.
What does this even mean?
Plus, many powerful people in government are not that rich.
C'mon, HN users forgot how to think? Forgot to ask Claude?
Its a bit like saying driving dangerously is OK because you have insurance. Until everyone drives dangerously and insurance is sky high for all.
That said, they should be sued.
No change will happen until cities stop using police revenue for discretionary spending.
use a 5micron, and 1micron particulate filter in series, and it looks like it came from a bottle.
you would be well advised to test for heavy metals, esp. arsenic
most people here dont use softening or reverse osmosis
It's a large country. Texas is a very large state, larger in size than France.
Texas recently voted to approve a $20 billion investment in water.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/04/texas-elections-2025...
Money does not grow on trees, you know!
There are isolated incidents of poor water quality in each of those countries, and especially in small towns of eight hundred people in rural areas, but generally speaking, clear drinking water that is free of bacteria is standard.
The taste of chlorinated water generally isn't tolerated.
Also: It's a bit of a culture shock to be served soft drinks made from very obviously chlorinated water in e.g. California. Is it an acquired taste? I don't understand how this is tolerated.
I've honestly grown absolutely sick of this type of comment as I get older. If you're not from the states, it's maybe understandable, but throughout my life most of the folks with me on the left that make these statements are completely ignorant of how their own government works and just assume "shit should be taken care of" without actually having to put any work in. It drives me crazy.
The vast majority of our electorate doesn't pay attention to politics, and then votes for feel-good measures (often very expensive), and almost universally avoid actual long-term net positive investments, like urban density and avoiding bond issuances wherever they are impractical.
As you see small towns welcoming -- even courting -- data centers while everyone in the town hates and protests them... yea, it's almost certainly because the town is broke, and the only folks who realize it are the city officials.
>How does a town ... not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Many, many, many, towns in America are functionally insolvent! The amount of cost it takes to maintain our road/sewer/water/refuse/emergency/energy systems is very often more than the tax revenue that the town can bring in. This is literally the entire point of the Strong Towns organization: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt...
Rebuilding a water system is one of the most significant municipal finance events that a city will have to deal with, and more and more cities across the nation are requiring federal bailouts; e.g., the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi,_water_cr....
It's just so frustrating as someone who cares about municipal finances that American cities' sustainability that most people think that it's just supposed to work itself out when cities are just lighting money on fires... often to the cheers of the electorate who voted for it.
It doesn't matter in the US. Just pretend.
[Given that Henderson county went for Trump by 30 points, the probably also support pro-pollution policies at both the local and state level too.]
https://observer.com/2010/07/the-collapse-of-east-hampton-ho...
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the US. I’m a nonviolent cripple. Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged. Totally depends what team you’re on right now.
A great candidate to get some money from the lawfare fund.
It's so not the same, I'm straining to understand what you think the point you are making is.
Then they'd probably be forced to drink DEI water!!!
It’s been five years since multiple COVID-19 vaccines have been widely available and administered worldwide, and just about the worst common side effects have been a small risk of mild, self-resolving myocarditis in mRNA vaccines and an increased risk of clotting for adenoviral vector vaccines which have been either discontinued or fallen out of use.
Past those, there have been rare (~5 per million doses) cases of Guillain-Barré or anaphylaxis, but those are broadly in line with risk profiles for other vaccines.
Despite repeated insistence from chronically-online nutjobs, the sky has not fallen, and the well-known, well-published, and well-studied risks of these vaccines remain drastically lower than the risks of actually contracting the disease they inhibit. Which is the whole goddamn point.
For a long time saying tabaco creates lung cancers was basically a conspiracy theory and saying it is healthy was free speech.
Saying nothing of the future of abortion & contraception, U.S. conservatives base their worldview on sexuality & reproduction and seek to burden it with fixtures that we have already spent hundreds of year to free ourselves from. At the same time, they take their eye off the ball of keeping our country competitive in the world. How embarrassing it is now to have the Chinese president suggest that the U.S. is in decline and that it shouldn't get caught in a Thucydides Trap.
Yet, that is where Trump has put us indeed.
It's strange how this 59-year-old incident keeps getting brought up. Friendly fire happens all the time, and Israel apologized and paid reparations ages ago.
One needn't dig too deep to see there isn't too much wiggle room for mere misunderstanding. The nearly defenseless ship suffered 2 hours of withering attack by both waves of jets and torpedo boats; this with an American flag and its hull number in open display as it operated in international waters. The context was that this ship was an intelligence ship bristling with antennas and recording everything it could from the combatants in the ongoing six-day-war in 1967.
If there's any conspiracy, its how for years afterward whenever a congressman sought an investigation as requested by one of the family of those killed, the effort was silently killed despite its impact, over and over.
There are a lot of details involved and many actions to be assessed on both sides, but it should merit more than a Navy Court of Inquiry. When the captain of the ship received his Medal of Honor for saving his ship while injured, it was awarded to him by the Secretary of the Navy quietly at the Washington Navy Yard. The usual procedure is that the MoH be presented by the president in the White House in a ceremony. So, there's that.
The idea that you could blame the genocide that started under a Democratic administration on the Republican administration that happily continued it is absurd. There's total continuity - you're flailing because your worldview has been designed by partisan media strategists, and you've fallen into a Manichean delusion with a cosmology consisting of one tiny private political club that has to be the force of good, and the other that has to be the force of evil.
They're actually both bad. You can't offload your thinking to aggressively imposed abstractions, especially when they're being whiteboarded by people on the payrolls of billionaires and plutocrats. You have to look at what's actually happening.
The Democratic Party still doesn't know that genocide is bad. They're too busy astroturfing "No Kings" rallies without any demands other than "Trump!" They're like his PR department. Least popular president in history, and still Democrats are even less popular (because the citizenry are shrewd, you're the slowpoke.) They're enabling him.
> Yet, that is where Trump has put us indeed.
You guys just get fixated on individuals. It's like distracting a child with a puppet. I spent years with freaks bombarding me with Trump and Elon as if they were the coolest things in the world, and now the same freaks are bombarding me with Trump and Elon like they're the next coming of Satan. Celebrity-obsessed.
The problem is that our barely-existing democracy is completely gone post-9/11. Congress has completely abdicated its responsibility for the graft of personal wealth, and left "legislating" to the Executive and the Judiciary.
Ask yourself how Trump can do so much, while the Democrats claimed to be able to do nothing, and billionaires just got the run of the place no matter who was supposed to be running things?
> keeping our country competitive in the world.
And strangely, "liberals" have reverted to Libertarianism when it comes to economics. "Free Trade" and anti-feminism - that's not what I'm looking for in my opposition party to a corporate-run and anti-feminist administration.
edit: The Democratic Party hasn't even run a fair primary even on its own superdelegate-packed terms since 2008, and I think that H. Clinton makes a good argument that even that one was fixed because they knew that the orgasm of smug self-satisfaction that white people would have after electing Obama (who they pretended had something to do with US slavery because they only see color) would give them the cover to indemnify the bankers and the CIA torturers and snoops. They were right. Over those 20 years, they've somehow taught their own extreme partisans to hate democracy, and to hate Americans themselves.
Source: I was threatened with a lawsuit by my own town for criticizing them online, but the ACLU helped me counter sue and win a settlement for violating my first amendment rights.