The Baltimore riot...

[Boethius]

No, no and no. Do people stopped by police have the right to assault the cops for doing their job? How about then being all indignant about getting their heads bust like they have a right to hassle everyone?

Of course not.  But Eric Garner was not assaulting the police.  Freddie Gray, on arrest, did not assault the police.  Akai Gurley was not assaulting the police.

You are mixing apples and oranges.   Policing is difficult, no doubt about it.  But, that does not give police the right to kill people.  How do police in other countries function without resorting to killing people?

Euro police don't kill their own citizens because they don't have to. They have a general respect for law and order. Unlike Detroit. Hope this clears things up for you.

That, again, is something in your society which causes this lack of respect for law and order, were I to accept your premise. 

[Boethius]

Then why is he allowed to swear at people while his forum antagonists are not?

Because his post likely was not reported.  You can see the report to moderator button.  If you think it should be used, please do so.

[Boethius]

Because most the population is still stuck in the mentality that existed since the 1960s, crime is out of control and needs to be cracked down on. Never mind since the 1990's, crime rates dropped to a postwar low. I think most of the population has yet to appreciate the effects that the more hard nosed legal tactics have unintentionally sucked in a lot of people into the justice system that shouldn't. To dare to suggest so is a dangerous position to hold, especially among politicians.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/upshot/perceptions-havent-caught-up-to-decline-in-crime.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

And, evidently, a fair number of middle aged men.

[LiveFromUkraine]

Never been to the big city I see. You and Boethius should both come to Detroit and show everyone how things should be.

Like the South Carolina cop who shot the guy in the back for running?   I think some of you guys are out of touch with reality here.

[BillyB]

But Eric Garner was not assaulting the police.  Freddie Gray, on arrest, did not assault the police.  Akai Gurley was not assaulting the police.[/font][/size]

When and officer took Eric Garner's wrists behind his back, Eric swatted them away. That's when the cops got rough with him. Eric should have cooperated the first time instead of giving them the impression he's going to fight his way out of an arrest.


Freddy Gray may have had spinal surgery shortly before his death. A fellow prisoner in the same van said Freddy was purposely trying to injure himself. Interestingly people are willing to destroy their own city without all the facts.


Spinal surgery


Witness testimony


Akai Gurley wasn't being arrested by the cops. An officer accidently discharged his gun, the bullet ricocheted off the wall and hit Akai in the staircase of a building.  The officer was Chinese and had many black friends. Hardly a case of racism or police brutality.

That, again, is something in your society which causes this lack of respect for law and order, were I to accept your premise. 

If those rioters lived in your country, Canada, they'd be the same unlawful citizens who look for something unjust as an excuse to break the law. Blaming all society for the behavior of a few is ridiculous. Most cities and towns in America isn't Baltimore or Detroit.

Like the South Carolina cop who shot the guy in the back for running?   I think some of you guys are out of touch with reality here.

The guy running didn't get shot for running, he got shot after he turned around and went for the cop's taser. He was unsuccessful but if he got a hold of the weapon, I'm sure he'd use it on the cop. The cop hadn't done this to other citizens in the many years he's wore a badge. In this case the cop did use unnecessary force and he should be tried for murder.

[LiveFromUkraine]

The guy running didn't get shot for running, he got shot after he turned around and went for the cop's taser. He was unsuccessful but if he got a hold of the weapon, I'm sure he'd use it on the cop. The cop hadn't done this to other citizens in the many years he's wore a badge. In this case the cop did use unnecessary force and he should be tried for murder.

I'm not sure I follow here.  The guy was running away from the cop.  How can the cop be in danger if the guy is running away from him?

I believe I read somewhere the cop tased him a couple of times prior.  Maybe that is what you're talking about. 

The video clearly shows the guy running away with the cop shooting at him.  He shot the guy in the back.  Then he dropped the taser next to the body.   


Wasn't all of this over delinquent child support payments?


I do think this is more common than people suspect.  Just look at the cop trying to plant the taser next to the body.  I hope everyone starts video taping cops to hold them accountable.  It's a tough job for sure, but they shouldn't be above the laws they are supposedly there to enforce.

[Bee Farmer]

And the societal problem is that some feel they can get away with fighting with police.  The more they can get away with, the more it will encourage others.  Anyone stupid enough to fight with a cop should have their ass stomped!

Americans have the right to question authority, and to make sure cops are acting professionally at all times.  Courts have maintained that citizens are allowed to videotape cops as long as they are not interfering with a police investigation.  Yet, we have case after case of police strong arm actions against anyone who will question them or try to hold them accountable.  Cops view any questioning of their behavior as a physical confrontation.

Cops are supposed to be public servants, not a professional military force against the citizens.

I told him cops work with the worst elements of society everyday and they get stressed. If you're the worst person they encounter on a bad day, they may just lose it.

You're trying to rationalize and justify bad behavior.  Yes, cops deal with the dirtballs of society.  But not all citizens are the dirtballs.  Cops get paid to be professional with ALL citizens.  They are not allowed to "lose it" with ANYONE, dirtball or respectable citizen.

The problem is that cops have an us vs. them mentality, and view all citizens as dirtballs.  They view people as guilty until proven innocent, even though the law requires that people are innocent until proven guilty.

I honestly wonder if police brutality happens more than we realize.  I live in a rural area.  Recently, the cops arrested a scrawny kid for disorderly conduct and took him to jail.  While at the jail, he allegedly became aggressive with a cop who picked the kid up and bodyslammed him onto his head.  The kid was sent to a hospital, where he died 2 days later.

There was a tiny blip in the local paper of a guy dying 2 days after being in police custody, and the info above.  I have heard nothing else, and no public comment.  Folks have been brainwashed to believe that cops are infallible, and incapable of doing wrong.

I wonder how often cops do misdeeds, and no one ever knows about them.  I suspect that 90% of the time, cops are acting inappropriately.  But their code of ethics is that they protect their fellow uniformed officers first and foremost, before they worry about protecting the rights of civilians or heaven forbid, actually following and upholding the Constitution.

[AC]

There was a tiny blip in the local paper of a guy dying 2 days after being in police custody, and the info above.  I have heard nothing else, and no public comment.  Folks have been brainwashed to believe that cops are infallible, and incapable of doing wrong.

I wonder how often cops do misdeeds, and no one ever knows about them.  I suspect that 90% of the time, cops are acting inappropriately.  But their code of ethics is that they protect their fellow uniformed officers first and foremost, before they worry about protecting the rights of civilians or heaven forbid, actually following and upholding the Constitution.

I agree with you that there are some bad cops.  And that many times when somebody dies in their custody, it goes unnoticed.  That is the difference from when a white person dies in their custody (no media outrage, no outside agitator outrage) and when something happens like what led to the Baltimore riots. 

Since the thread is about the Baltimore riots, do you believe it was an appropriate response to throw large bricks at firemen and fire trucks trying to do their best to put out fires?  Do you believe it was appropriate to set the fires in the first place?  Was it appropriate to break into businesses and steal millions in inventory, from the very business that gives jobs to many in the community (Sportmart for example)?  Was it appropriate for the Mayor of the city to give a stand down order to the police?

There is a big difference between peaceful and lawful assemblies and those who lie in wait and then take advantage of a situation which has been whipped into a frenzy of lawlessness, often by outside agitators.

[2tallbill]

Last time I looked, Bill, Democrats were American.  Living in the People's Republic of Kalifornia, I can attest that just because a State is Blue does not mean that there aren't Americans living there.

First, I didn't write the article I just posted it here. Second, the article didn't say that
Democrats aren't Americans it said that it was a problem caused exclusively by Democrats
being in power and not a problem emblematic of Americans in general.

The liberal press in other articles tries to make it look as if all of America is racist and
that is causing all these problems. The truth is that these problems have only been found
in places where Democrats run things.

[2tallbill]

TED CRUZ: OBAMA INFLAMED RACE TENSIONS

“President Obama, when he was elected, he could have been a unifying leader,” Cruz lamented in a question and answer session hosted by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Instead, the presidential candidate argued, Obama “has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions, that have divided us rather than bringing us tougher.”

As evidence of Obama’s poor record on the matter, Cruz pointed to vice president Joe Biden’s comments during the 2012 campaign, in which Biden claimed Republicanswould put African-Americans “back in chains.” Pressed by reporters at the Chamber of Commerce event to name a specific case where the president inflamed racial tensions, Cruz cited the 2011 “beer summit,” in which Obama invited black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to have a beer at the White House with white police Sgt. James Crowley, who had arrested Gates at his home.

Obama “has not used his role as president to bring us together,” Cruz said. “He has exacerbated racial misunderstandings.”

The conservative firebrand also accused Obama of “building a straw man of the opposition to vilify and caricature” the Republican Party.

read the entire article here
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/04/29/ted-cruz-obama-inflamed-race-tensions-vilifying-cops-fundamentally-wrong/

[2tallbill]

[Boethius]

So why don't all the "socialist" countries of the West, such as Norway, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Belgium, and yes, even Canada, each and every one a Liberal loving hellhole, have these problems?

[Larry1]

So why don't all the "socialist" countries of the West, such as Norway, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Belgium, and yes, even Canada, each and every one a Liberal loving hellhole, have these problems?

An insufficient critical mass of feral urban "youths" with proclivities to assault, loot, etc.

[Boethius]

"Feral youths" don't just appear from the forest.  Something in your society creates them.

[LiveFromUkraine]

"Feral youths" don't just appear from the forest.  Something in your society creates them.

From what I have seen, many think it is easy to get out of the poverty if they just work hard.  It just so happens most of the people who think it is easy are the people who were born into middle to upper level classes.   It seems the majority of men on this board are white old dudes    which also tends to slant the perception. 


The reality is it is extremely difficult to move up classes.  While it is easier to do so in America, it is still not possible for most.  When looking at the quality of education and access to resources, it's amazing to witness anyone doing so. 


I also blame the media for stroking the fires.  I just saw a great video of a intelligent black man telling Geraldo why he didn't want him there and he had a huge point.  The media will show up when a riot pops out but nowhere to be found to report the poverty and other issues going on within the city. 

[2tallbill]

So why don't all the "socialist" countries of the West, such as Norway, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Belgium, and yes, even Canada, each and every one a Liberal loving hellhole, have these problems?

The USA is more violent than the Socialist Western countries like the ones you've mentioned.
We always have been.

[2tallbill]

From what I have seen, many think it is easy to get out of the poverty if they just work hard.  It just so happens most of the people who think it is easy are the people who were born into middle to upper level classes.   It seems the majority of men on this board are white old dudes    which also tends to slant the perception. 


The reality is it is extremely difficult to move up classes.  While it is easier to do so in America, it is still not possible for most.  When looking at the quality of education and access to resources, it's amazing to witness anyone doing so. 

The USA doesn't really have a class system. We have people move up in income levels
all the time. The average youth that starts working makes a relatively small amount
of money and as they gain education and work experience their incomes go up. As a
matter of fact most people go up in income over the years. It's more of an oddity that
somebody stays in the same income range for a long period of time.


If you want to read about this you can read this article.
http://www.creators.com/conservative/thomas-sowell/income-confusion.html

[Boethius]

The USA is more violent than the Socialist Western countries like the ones you've mentioned. We always have been.

Europe's history until 1945 is one of war.  Hardly non violent societies.

[Larry1]

The USA is more violent than the Socialist Western countries like the ones you've mentioned.
We always have been.

This reminds me of an exchange between a Scandinavian economist and the Nobel Prize* winning economist Milton Friedman:

A Scandinavian economist, for example, once stated to Milton Friedman: "In Scandinavia, we have no poverty." To which the caustic Nobel Prize winner replied: "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either."

*In order to forestall some of the more pedantic members from telling me it wasn't actually a Nobel Prize in Economics. It should properly be called the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

[2tallbill]

From the Foundation for Economic Education

The big liberal lie “The Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor Are Getting Poorer”

"Imagine you could go back in time 50 years. Suppose the reason you are doing so is to put policies into place that would ensure that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. (Why anyone would want to do this is beside the point, but stay with me.) What policies would you set?
 

You would want to price poor, unskilled people out of the labor market with an ever-increasing minimum wage;
You would provide special favors, artificial competitive advantages, and taxpayer subsidies to the politically well-connected (i.e., those already rich);
You would stifle new, small businesses with stacks of regulations and bureaucratic paperwork;
You would (literally) pay people to stay in poverty, to be dependent on government, so that any work ethic would be suppressed and eroded.
You would implement an erratic and largely inflationary monetary policy that erodes savings and creates destructive booms and busts.

All five of these in combination might do the trick. Throw up barriers to the progress of the poor, or pay people to stay poor, or rig the system so the rich and politically well-connected get artificial economic advantages and chances are, the poor will indeed get poorer and the rich will get richer.

By now you have probably noticed that every one of the policies above has been implemented to varying degrees since the Great Society. And yet the poor have still not gotten poorer in the United States."


read the entire article here
http://fee.org/freeman/detail/40-the-rich-are-getting-richer-and-the-poor-are-getting-poorer

[LiveFromUkraine]

The USA doesn't really have a class system. We have people move up in income levels
all the time. The average youth that starts working makes a relatively small amount
of money and as they gain education and work experience their incomes go up. As a
matter of fact most people go up in income over the years. It's more of an oddity that
somebody stays in the same income range for a long period of time.


If you want to read about this you can read this article.
http://www.creators.com/conservative/thomas-sowell/income-confusion.html

Thanks for the article, I'll take a gander at it.


We will have to disagree on the classes.  I do believe we have economical classes.  I would agree if we were talking more like a caste system you would see in countries like India. 



We have roughly 50% who pay no taxes.  Even if they are able to add more to their income, as time goes, is it really enough to have a decent life? 


I do think this is going to get worst.  With technological changes, there will be more automation and lesser jobs.  More and more jobs will require a more specific skill set and many of those skills are just not learnable for the majority of people.   


The city I was raised is what you would consider a middle class, blue collar city.  The good jobs were in the foundry at GM.  Now, the jobs are at he hospital with the foundry closed.  There were roughly 100k population within the city at it's peak while there is now 50k and decreasing. 


Soon, there will be no hospital jobs since that is where everyone is looking.  After that, it will be mainly hospitality positions that don't pay very well.  The economy here has turned to more service oriented.


I do believe this will get worst and riots that we are seeing happen will become more frequent.  A lot of pent up frustrations and it won't take much of anything to set it off. 

[2tallbill]

Europe's history until 1945 is one of war.  Hardly non violent societies.

They aren't even close to the USA₁.


1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade

[Steamer]

Europe's history until 1945 is one of war.  Hardly non violent societies.

European violence is more about nations against nations or religion against religion. In the US it's about individuals or gangs against individuals. It's a big difference.

[2tallbill]

Economic mobility is the ability of an individual, family or some other group to improve
(or lower) their economic status—usually measured in income.

Economic mobility is often measured by movement between income quintiles.

read here to learn more about how the US
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368952/inequality-fallacies-thomas-sowell

A talk between my two favorite economists Thomas Sowell and Walter E Williams

[LiveFromUkraine]

Bill, this is what I was talking.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_States

Obviously, you have heard of these "poor, middle and rich classes" before.   Education isn't the same across all levels.  The push for education isn't the same at all levels.  When you are barely surviving, getting a good education isn't a priority.   Being brought up in that type of environment also lends to how you view education.

Edited:  I tried to post a quote but the formatting is all out of whack.