Boston police bought spy tech with a pot of money hidden from the public
propublica.org
propublica.org
Does not matter if police reform, abortion, welfare, or any other topic, the media chooses the examples that will most upset those opposing the reform.
This results in nothing getting reform, maintaining the status quo, and the media;s reoccurring revenue stream
The nation is hopelessly polarized as a direct result of media propaganda, I have encountered this everyday and when people are giving actual non-sensationalized facts it is very easy to come to compromise policy position.
Corporate media should not really be thought of as real journalistic entities.
Simple example. How in the world does CNN allow Chris Cuomo to interview his own brother. The fact that no one inside CNN publicly objected to this, walked away, protested, it tells me everything I need to know about the entire organization.
I don’t remember anyone at MSNBC making a fuss about it, nor at the Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/02/chris-cuo...
To be fair to CNN, they did ban that from 2013 until it was temporarily lifted in 2020 because "Chris speaking with his brother about the challenges of what millions of American families were struggling with was of significant human interest"[1].
It was definitely a bad judgement call but hardly damning of the whole organisation.
[1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/02/19/cn...
This site's articles and comments are often the most polarizing media that I subject myself to daily.
I think most polarization comes from media packaged with a comment section and low quality news outlets.
I don't believe or agree with everything that I read. I also read a fair amount of different opinions in these sources which leads me to believe it's more varied than you would like to believe.
It's interesting because I've always considered myself center/center right politically.
I read 100's of news sources weekly, and if topic I want information on I drill down beyond the news organization seeking out orginal sources (for example if a news organization is reporting on a COVID Study, I read the study. If they are reporting on the 6th circuits ruling, I go read the ruling.. etc)
It is ironic that someone the proudly proclaims they only consume information from 3 sources proclaims I am in an echo chamber but they could never be... lol
As for my political leanings, I more of a Political Compass person where by economics is Left/Right, under which I am almost exactly in the enter, but social is on a Authority / Liberty scale, of which I am on the extreme end of the liberty scale
As a simple test, do you think someone who says "I read the Federalist, Spectator and the WSJ" would notice a change if they read the NYT?
I know they all have some contributors that go against their own ideological grain, so to speak, but still, you provided a good example of what being in an echo chamber might look like.
Just being honest.
> Right Responds To Cancel Culture By Building Its Own Infrastructure, And The Left Goes Nuts
> 10 Christmas Songs That Must Be Cancelled By The End Of 2021
> BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ENDORSES MORE BABY KILLING BY GREEN-LIGHTING MAIL-ORDER ABORTION PILLS
NYT right now:
> Hidden pentagon records reveal patterns of failure in deadly airstrikes
> As COVID surges, experts say U.S. booster effort is far behind.
The Spectator or WSJ looks a lot better, if you told me Spectator was Atlantic or New Yorker at a glance I might believe you.
And again with Baby Killing vs Boosters - one of the two papers is much better at writing headlines, but both of those go to largely the same issue which is how the state should interfere with individual medical decisions.
If you ignore the fact that the Federalist is targeting people who don't appreciate good writing, the dismissal of one and favouring of the other isn't as obvious.
The "right" does not have to build it's own infrastructure, plenty of right wing media personalities and publications maintain a presence on Facebook/Twitter/etc... as long as they follow the rules of the platform. That headline is just clickbait nonsense.
That isn't an acceptable situation for a wing of politics. The right will need friendly, or at least neutral, versions of the big social media platforms and they will keep losing elections until they figure that out.
People may or may not agree about the specific case, but looking at the capabilities in a strategic sense and it isn't something that can be glossed over. The outrageous treatment Trump received on social media is a big deal; insofar as the right wing is a political entity it has to respond.
Which I'm happy about! The more competition, the better!
It baffles me why people act like Twitter is the only place on the web. It's popular, sure, but it's easily cloned and could be extended upon.
The real issue hindering competition is dollars.
Which are themselves politically bias to one world view, that of the US political left.
To be clear I am not talking about the enforcement of the rules, which is a problem in itself, but the actual rules as laid out are such they favor the identity politics of the modern "left" in the US.
Those that do not support, or agree with identity politics must do verbal, and ideological self censorship to exist on said platforms.
What you should be doing is reading them, agreeing with them is beside the point - that's what getting out of an echo chamber looks like.
They might be "US left of centre" but coming from the UK left, they're centrist at best, slightly right at worst.
I'm pro police and I believe they should be paid more, get more training, and be held to much higher standard which means relentlessly pursuing and strongly prosecuting corrupt police. It's a betrayal of an entire community in a profession where lives are often at stake.
Being pro police also doesn't mean making their job as easy as possible to the detriment of everybody else.
I am pro enforcement of laws that protect people from being victimized by others. That is a very narrow statement that does not require me to be "pro police" or "anti police"
>> I believe they should be paid more, get more training, and be held to much higher standard
This is often a position people take, but if fails root cause analysis. I am not convinced that more training, more pay, and higher standards will fix anything.
The root cause is 2 fold first over-criminalization of society, and the use of police to enforce things that should not be crimes in the first place, or should be left to civil enforcement. The second is then giving police more power than average citizen, and I am not just talking arresting power there is a solid case there. However governments pass all kinds of laws written that have specific carve outs for police, this creates a "higher class" member of society that allows the member of this class to believe they are the sovereign and we are the vessels this fly's in the face of governance "For the people, by the people" aka self governance.
IMO the law itself creates the logical end result of the policing we have today, unless we change the law the police no matter the pay, training, or standards will still be a problem
This is a really good way of describing what people are really angry about. Cop worship in the states is only second to God.
Weird examples that never go away, you can see instances of these every single day:
- Tons of LAPD drive with illegal tints & no tags on their personal vehicles
- Tons of NYPD park in the bike lane or on the actual sidewalk
There are twitter accounts that follow these easy to spot examples. Harder to track: abuses of power in small towns when no cameras are rolling.
DAs have even more leeway in some states than others, for instance in New York felonies can only be charged via grand jury unless waived by the defendant. This gives a DA unilateral power to sandbag any indictment they don’t feel like prosecuting without looking soft on bad cops (see the Buffalo shoving incident) with zero transparency.
It doesn't appear to be a thing in quite a few states, and where it is, it seems quite limited. Thus, the only legal remedy is lawsuits, which is why qualified immunity is such an injustice.
The most common attempt at a solution to this problem has been "civilian oversight," which typically takes the form of a new department of the city government that is responsible for auditing the police department and/or investigating department actions (in response to citizen complaints or on other triggers). The civilian oversight department is typically firewalled from the police department through means like a prohibition on staff moving from one to the other and an independent governance structure.
Because of collective bargaining agreement constraints there's usually still a PS division and some confusing work breakdown, where one audits the others work or the two perform independent parallel investigations or similar. There are some good reasons for that (doesn't necessarily make sense to have an independent civilian oversight agency reviewing every minor policy violation), but it often feels like waste.
I find it mentally exhausting. It's like walking on eggshells.
I guess it will have to get a lot worst before it gets better...
If you'll forgive a moment of polemic: In my judgment, civil-asset forfeiture is a crime, full-stop.
As a regular citizen without special legal training, it seems like as blatant a violation of the 5th Amendment as one could imagine.
Perhaps with more legal training I'd judge it differently. But I'm not ready to give the court system the benefit of the doubt on this. And I would be deeply skeptical of any argument to the contrary.
If the SCOTUS can justify civil-asset forfeiture (in its current form), then I don't see how the Bill of Rights offers any protection at all.
Living in a free society or not, you are fit to judge the rectitude of the law. To suggest otherwise implies a servile relationship of the citizen to the state. All manner of abominable laws have existed and been upheld under all forms of the US constitution. Qualified advocates argued against, and supreme court judges ruled against Dred Scott (7 - 2), for instance. As long as it has existed, the supreme court has been in a crisis of legitimacy, and upholding the appearance of legitimacy has been its prima causa.
What separates you and a fine judgement of what is just? Three years of sophistical "scholarship" and two summers of internships?
Also, TSA gets kickbacks from homeland security. If they see large sums of cash in your bags, they will contact the police in order to try and get it taken via civil asset forfeiture, and then they'll get a kickback for it.
I plan to start traveling with wads of prop money with a couple hundreds on the outside to get a lel out of the interaction when the cops inevitably show up to try and confiscate it.
Insecurity shuts down rational thought. Lew and order only works where insecurity exists.
> plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle who appear to act at the whim of police lobbies.
Insecurity gets you unelected.
https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/
They are consistently fighting these kinds of abuses in the courts and through lobbying.
Exactly. They can either go the way of urban democrats and persist by promising to solve problems you never solve (not that republicans have served rural voters any better) or they can go the way of MADD and actually make progress and then see interest wane. They chose the former.
Civil forfeiture is a dumpster fire. I don't know who thought giving an organization that has the power to extort -with legal backing, would result in anything else.
Good comparison. Other federal organizations have these, too. Many NASA launches have a black project that the public does not hear about. We should probably change the phrasing from black to something else, though.
illegal budget sounds good to me...
need to force law enforcement to get warrants.
Maybe Apple (and/or browser makers) could get away with a blanket "you're not connected to a publicly registered cell tower; proceed with caution" alert, like happens with SSL certs and HTTPS.
Apparently there are public databases of known cell towers (e.g. https://opencellid.org) some of which are crowd-sourced.
[1] the theoretical average citizen who holds the average beliefs about everything
Everyone knows the Speaker of the House is the most powerful politician in MA.