StrangeSox

kaannnnnnnnnnnerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

wooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Anyone ever take a Wilderness First Aid class like this one offered through REI? http://www.rei.com/class/46423/market/340

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 29, 2014 -> 03:32 PM) Daryl Van Schouwen ‏@CST_soxvan 1m Jose Abreu leads majors with 10 HRs and 32 RBI and is first in the American League with 17 extra-base hits and slugging percentage (.626). so good

I'm not sure why we should assume that only the wealthy have "specific requests" and the non-wealthy don't. edit: insomuch as the wealthy represent a special interest group and "average citizen" doesn't represent anything in particular, you may have a point. But there are plenty of advocacy/interest groups out there that have very specific policy requests but do not have the influence of the wealthy.

The estate tax only applies to the wealthy in the first place. The Republicans just made it even better for them by increasing the exemptions and lowering the maximum rate. see also: capital gains tax rate, which is almost exclusively beneficial to the wealthy. edit: of course the political rhetoric may not always be so explicit as "we want to cut taxes for the Job Creators so that they can trickle down the wealth," but it often is and even when it isn't the effects of their proposals are pretty clear.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 1, 2014 -> 09:15 AM) Not specifically. They wanted tax breaks for everyone. And when people specified they wanted taxes raised on people making over x, they responding that they didn't. I've never, ever heard a republican candidate say they wanted to cut taxes on the rich and NOT the middle/lower class. something something estate tax reform while blocking payroll tax cuts

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 1, 2014 -> 08:49 AM) If you follow this non-peer-reviewed "study", the politicians are no longer even giving you the time of day when election time runs around unless you're writing a check. something something does not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption edit: I didn't think it was all that uncommon to publish drafts and working papers?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 1, 2014 -> 08:52 AM) Rich people are generally business owners who are looking for some kind of government break/exception. It would make sense that specific requests for change in the law are met more frequently than an average citizen, who wants what specifically? I would think the average citizen (me) wants about 15 different things, but can't really articulate them to anyone in power or lobby them to change/create the law. In other words: "lower my taxes, i'm tired of giving the government more money" is not going to work on anyone, but "lower taxes on sale of X good which will allow me to create 1,000 jobs" will. Who are you kidding, the business owners are doing the former, not the latter.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 30, 2014 -> 12:33 PM) Why? Like I said, I don't care that this guy suffered for a few minutes. He shouldn't have been subjected to it, but if it happens i'm certainly not going to lose sleep over it. And the response shouldn't be "this is a perfect example of why we should abolish the death penalty!" But it is. I think people are more using it as an example of why lethal injection, despite often looking very peaceful and procedural, is inhumane. As I said before, I'm morally opposed to the DP, but some forms of it carry much less risk of unnecessary suffering (long-drop hanging by a competent hangman; guillotine) than other forms (LI, electrocution).

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 30, 2014 -> 12:13 PM) Well now wait, if you're using this logic, jail time isn't always necessary either. Maybe in a small percentage of cases, but not the majority. Necessity isn't a relevant factor here. I get what you're saying, but again, take that argument to the extreme and there's no necessary reason to do half of what we do in the criminal justice system. We over-incarcerate in this country, especially for non-violent crimes, but I wouldn't agree that some form of incarceration (whether it's a full-on prison or some sort of rehabilitation for drug users) is only necessary in a small percentage of cases. Even then, we could expand from "necessary" to "serving a useful purpose" (removal from society for a period of time, deterrence) that the DP just doesn't really meet.

(I think that was Jake's point)

But it was done completely unnecessarily. Again, that's the major disconnect between torture that results from the DP and pain and suffering caused by war or incarceration in general. War is, unfortunately, sometimes necessary, and death and pain will result. The same is true for incarceration. But the death penalty is never actually a necessary thing.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 30, 2014 -> 11:19 AM) I think this is a pretty distorted view of what happened and what torture really means. A mistake was made somewhere. That's not torture, it was a mistake. That's like saying in war when you shoot at someone and you blow their arm off you're committing torture. It wasn't done with purpose. I think results are more important than intention in this case. Whether they intended to or not, this man suffered severe pain that was caused by the criminal justice system. Again the war analogies really just don't work. In a war, if I'm shooting at someone, they're likely trying to shoot at me as well. This prisoner was in the complete control of the DoC. If he had been left in his cell, nothing bad was going to happen to anyone else. Administering the lethal injection drugs was not something that had to be done. The improper administration of the unnecessary drugs resulted in severe pain and suffering. Taking completely unnecessary actions against a person who's completely controlled by you that have a known chance of causing severe pain and suffering and do end up causing that pain qualify as torture to me, regardless of your intent. edit: but more importantly, you're shifting around your justifications here. bmags was replying to your previous justification that we shouldn't care if he was tortured because of the torture he put those other people through. This view means that torture is sometimes justified, which is something both bmags and I strongly reject.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 30, 2014 -> 11:17 AM) Well we know a restorative justice system has never worked, so there's really no other alternative here. We do? How thoroughly has one ever been implemented? And where RJ has been partially implemented, is it actually a failure? But even if that's true, that doesn't mean the only other possible choice is a highly punitive system. A majority of countries get by without a death penalty. Many produce better results than our system without the DP or LWOP or solitary confinement. There's a huge excluded middle between some academic concept of a completely RJ system and what we have in the US today. It's not a value proposition. Executing one innocent person is a horrendous moral crime. Getting it wrong at least 4% of the time is a travesty. Do we know that these two are not actually capable of rehabilitation? Do we know that their crimes are truly unforgivable for the victims (victims of violent crimes and their families don't universally support the DP)? And even if they are, there is no reason to conclude that people who cannot be rehabilitated or forgiven therefore deserve death. Charles Manson seems to be a pretty clear case of unrehabilitated bats*** crazy, yet he's still (properly, imo) eligible for parole every so often. The point in not having the state unnecessarily kill someone is not having the state unnecessarily kill someone. No, but their better outcomes do mean it's better and shows that a death penalty isn't actually a necessity. That is where your justified killing breaks down for me; killing in war is a necessity whereas the death penalty is not. It's done improperly enough that it results in people being tortured to death, like what happened in Oklahoma. We euthanize animals more humanely.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 30, 2014 -> 10:27 AM) Here's another question - the estate of the dead criminal will obviously be filing a lawsuit over this. Are you ok giving the family millions of dollars for the pain and suffering endured by this kind of criminal, a criminal whose victim suffered more than he did? Yes. His crimes do not exonerate the state of their wrongdoing.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 30, 2014 -> 10:23 AM) Because to me there are certain killings that are justified - self defense, war, etc. And it's justified based on context. Here, with convicted criminals who performed horrific acts, I think we're justified in killing them too and I think it's justified because of that context. It doesn't undue the damage, it doesn't bring anyone back to life. But it also doesn't cost the state 60k a year or whatever for the rest of their lives either. Do you think certain killings are justified? Or are they always morally wrong? If some are justified, you have to be taking something into consideration in determining that killing a convicted criminal who raped and murdered an 11 MONTH old girl doesn't deserve to die. And the only one I can think of is some kind of sympathy for him. "I don't want the state to kill people" doesn't work if you're also ok with the state killing enemies during war. In a (necessary and justified) war, killing people is a necessity. In the criminal justice system, it is not. I don't think a criminal justice system should be taking "does it cost more for us to kill them or keep them alive?" into account, either. That's pretty damn immoral in and of itself. I don't agree with a punitive view of a justice system, but that's less appalling than a "what costs us less" version. Even setting aside the many issues with a death penalty (it's barbaric, it has a decently high rate of killing innocent people, it has a hugely disparate racial application, it's actually more expensive than LWOP, it's not actually a deterrent), it's simply not necessary to kill someone in order to achieve justice or prevent them from harming society again. Most of the world gets by without a death penalty. This argument proves far too much. By this argument, burning people alive, stoning them to death, drawing and quartering and numerous other horrible acts are okay because they've been done for thousands of years. Putting aside whether or not the DP itself is C&U, lethal injection pretty clearly is. Botched executions happen, and when they do, they result in substantial suffering. I'd actually agree with you that, if we absolutely must have the state kill people convicted of certain crimes, there are more humane ways of doing it (guillotine or a competent hangman can be nearly instantaneous). But they don't look as calm and peaceful as LI, so we don't do those much these days. Solitary confinement is definitely cruel. It seems to me that other justice systems that have maximum sentences of 20-30 years with judicial review that work as parole boards after that are more effective than ours (fwiw, that's essentially the situation Charles Manson is in, and nobody really thinks he's getting out anytime soon or that he should).

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 30, 2014 -> 09:56 AM) This guy suffered for minutes. How long did his victim suffer as she was shot with a sawed off shotgun and buried alive? Probably immensely. Probably more than him. I don't see why that excuses or justifies cruel and unusual punishment, though. Killing him and doing it in a painful manner doesn't undue the damage he did, doesn't bring anyone back to life. I think what he did was morally wrong, and I think that the state killing and in this case torturing him is also morally wrong. I'm not asking or expecting you to agree with my moral stance on the death penalty, but I really don't know why you think that morally opposing the death penalty and torture necessarily requires sympathy for criminals.

Also, end of the month really is the best time to shop. There's often huge incentives for both individuals and the dealership to meet their monthly quotas. They might be willing to take a loss on an individual sale if it means they'll meet that quota. This American Life had an episode done entirely at one dealership in NY that highlighted that

I'm also not sure why torture is in scare quotes there. This sounds like straight-up legitimate torture, even if it wasn't done deliberately:

Because I'm morally opposed to torture and killing and do not believe that the state should be doing these things. It does not mean I have sympathy for this specific individual or don't think his crimes were horrible. It seems very odd to me to equate not wanting to torture or kill someone (or having the state do it in your name) with having sympathy for the target of the torture or killing. I'm not quite sure how you get there.

I don't feel sympathy for that man. I feel that we're better than him and shouldn't be torturing and killing people.

zing!

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Apr 30, 2014 -> 09:06 AM) Why is it so difficult to knock someone off in a reasonably quick and painless way? These supposedly humane methods like gas chambers and lethal injection seem needlessly complicated and prone to being botched. How about like 5 ambien to knock them out and then a bullet to the brain/decapitation while they're asleep? You could kill someone with a quick and massive overdose of opiates, but the body can react pretty violently to that. They give a bunch of muscle relaxants first for the viewing audience's sake. Also something that might be worth noting, doctors do not administer the lethal injection. They'd be reprimanded by the AMA if they were involved in the actual execution.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 30, 2014 -> 08:36 AM) A bit of back of the envelope math suggests that by forcing Sterling to sell, he'll be out about $100 million on the cap. gains tax hit compared to the estate tax hit he'd have to take passing the Clippers on after death. Well, his heirs are out that, he's not out anything once he's dead.