Nashville had already decriminalized weed as of 2016. I only find one other case (Houston) where it was a prosecutor making a policy decision not to prosecute weed, ahead of the rest of the government. Honestly, just read the rest of the article you cited -- it matters that a lot of the rest of the city government was on board for it, but it still left a little bit of a confusing way to go about it even after decriminalization, which the chief of police among some other people pointed out, along with the idea that yes weed should be legal so maybe it's a good thing.
Left unsaid in among all of that is that selective enforcement by police and prosecutors in almost every case works out, in practice even up to the modern day, to be racist selective enforcement. Honestly it's better for the legislature just to make it legal. I'm not trying to throw cold water on any prosecutor who wants to take the initiative to do a good thing if they can make sure it'll work out right, but generally, the prosecutorial portion of the government isn't where you want to be making your creative departures from the law the way the legislators wrote it down.
Honestly the whole thing that she "eviscerated" her in the debate (as the New York Times put it) is a bunch of horseshit.
Here's the exchange. I think Harris was a little taken aback because it was at least 50% complete fabrications, and that's harder to deal with in a debate setting than in a prosecutorial setting. It's fair to say she handled it a little poorly and Gabbard did a good job at landing the dishonest attacks. But most of what it accomplished, at the end of the day, was to accelerate the putting of those lies into the public discourse in a big way as talking points, alongside the idea that if anyone in Harris's office was prosecuting people who broke the law at the time, that represents a fair reason to attack Harris today because obviously what she should have been doing was letting them go and instructing every prosecutor in California to do the same, and that wouldn't have caused any problems.
I have no idea, and people do do some ignorant shit in the name of protests sometimes, but I’m just waiting to hear that this was either (a) some kind of horseshit exaggeration of an underlying reality that bears only a vague resemblence to what the Jewish students are saying happened, or else (b) a false flag.
Yeah. I agree with queermunist about the inaccuracy of using the lower bound as if it was the estimate, which almost all of the media is currently doing. 😢
The Lancet estimated 186,000 dead which would be 8%, but noted that there's no real way to know. Since they were a little conservative with their guesswork and about 6 weeks have passed since then, I think 10% dead out of Gaza's population of 2 million is highly likely by now.
Presumably they don't post the ones where it works and the drone crashes
I suspect it is useless just because of the pace of technological development on the Ukraine side vs. the Russian side, but just the existence of some videos where the EW isn't working doesn't mean it's not working.
Both race and the circumstances of the crime are going to impact their being charged as an adult, and the sentence they receive. The existence of racism doesn’t mean that the circumstances of the case will now have 0 bearing on their punishment - it’s not one or the other; it is both.
Like I say, the system is racist, yes. It feels like you just seized on an opportunity to lecture about racism and deny the existence of literally any other factor being possible except for race. It’s childish and reductive and hostile to things that are necessary for understanding the world. Stop doing that. This will be my last message to you on this topic.
My assumption that the trend in this article is based on racism is because that is absolutely a thing that happens.
I could say that people order vanilla ice cream more than chocolate because of racism, and then if someone said that wasn’t true I could cite a bunch of statistics about how racism is absolutely a thing that happens and get mad at them for denying the impact of racism, and it would make an equal amount of sense as your argument here.
What is more likely is that more of the minors who are charged as adults are minorities, which is already known to result in disproportionately longer sentences.
Why in your theory doesn't that happen for 1st and 2nd degree felonies?
The racism in the system applies across all levels -- for adults and kids, for 1st and 2nd and 3rd degree felonies. It could be that this particular effect is a result of some kind of unequal application, sure. But I wouldn't automatically assume that racism applies very specifically to 3rd degree felonies committed by juveniles in a way it doesn't for 2nd degree felonies, or for 3rd degree felonies committed by adults, or what have you.
It sort of sounds like you're assuming that something you already know (that the system is racist) is definitely responsible for anything and everything about the system, and anyone who doesn't see it that way automatically must just not know the system is racist, and you need to explain that to them. Yes, I know the system is racist.
So as long as we are both speculating, mine is based on actual disproportionate outcomes in criminal sentencing and yours is based on an assumption that the disparity had a logical explanation.
It seems like you're just not grasping the mathematical concept I'm trying to explain (or maybe, just not even understanding that there might be anything to grasp other than that the system is racist.) And then saying the only explanation for anything in the criminal justice system is always racism. IDK man. I tried twice to explain it, and it seems like it failed both times.
If you want to understand, let me know, and I'll try again. If you just want to tell me that the system is racist (which, again, it is) and the problem is just that I'm too stupid to know that it is racist and need you to explain it to me, I think I'll go off and do something else instead.
Seriousness of charges isn’t necessarily the same as seriousness of crime.
And:
it sounds like them departing from sentencing guidelines for armed robbery happened for the same reason as them wanting to charge him as an adult - I.e. that his actions were worse than you would think just from reading the name of the charge.
Not every third degree felony is identical to every other third degree felony. There are ones where the circumstances of the case are going to warrant a longer sentence, and those are probably going to overlap with the ones where the circumstances of the case would warrant charging a juvenile as an adult.
And, the least serious felonies are going to have more "space" for more serious circumstances to exist, and so it would make sense how those have this anomalous thing exist with them, that doesn't exist with the more serious felonies where the charge better encompasses the full seriousness of the crime.
Seriousness of charges isn’t necessarily the same as seriousness of crime. I read more about Knight’s case and it sounds like them departing from sentencing guidelines for armed robbery happened for the same reason as them wanting to charge him as an adult - I.e. that his actions were worse than you would think just from reading the name of the charge.
For serious offenses, they get treated the same. The only difference is for third-degree felonies, which it sounds like would be the main circumstance where that correlation would come into play. Why wouldn’t there be a difference in sentencing, when you’re specifically selecting for the more serious circumstances on the juvenile side and not on the adult side of the data you’re comparing?
In an email to students and faculty on Wednesday, Ms Shafik wrote that she has overseen a "period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community".
Yeah that's the most essential part of running a university, is you gotta overcome any divergent views
"This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community."
Imagine if they were in pieces, in a rubble strewn ditch somewhere. Or buried under a bunch of concrete. But yeah having your decisions criticized must be tough too.
“It has been distressing - for the community, for me as president and on a personal level - to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse.”
Yeah I mean imagine if the police came up and tackled and pepper sprayed you
That would certainly be distressing if that had happened
Lady: NONE OF THIS IS ABOUT YOU. It wasn't back when it was happening, and it still isn't, now.
Yeah. Dates where something HAPPENS are in my experience an S tier idea. Walking around the park, playing a game, interacting in some way. All good things. Like I say, getting buzzed and playing ping pong and flirting was fuckin magic. But both of us being in our go karts with helmets on and 0 interaction and the stress of “wtf I am going way too fast what if I crash this thing I hate this so much” is a little bit less of an S tier idea. Definitely for a first date at least.
I wanted to take a girl out. But I wanted to do something fun. I was sick of getting coffee; watching movies is worse. It’s just fuckin awkward. I had taken a girl some time before for beers and ping pong one time, and we had a fuckin BLAST. And so, I thought to myself, what is fun? Like ping pong fun? I know! Go karts are fun! Let’s do some go karts!
And so for my first date with this poor girl we went to a go karts place and got in our little go kart suits and raced go karts around the track. That was the day that I learned that not all girls like go karts. Idk; she thought I was unique I guess; she tried to have a good time and we kept seeing each other after. But she referred to the go karts date as her “trauma” and regularly gave me shit for it after, and for my general lack of any kind of adult understanding of women or life in general.
My aunt did the same thing. She said the cat she adopted never forgot about it, either - just super sweet every day, happy to have a home and a good friend in the world.
If you have not, and it is still available, I would highly recommend to check out “Servant of the People” on Netflix. The depiction of the Yanukovich era politics and the youthful Zelensky before the whole fuckin country exploded on him was fascinating to me.
Nashville had already decriminalized weed as of 2016. I only find one other case (Houston) where it was a prosecutor making a policy decision not to prosecute weed, ahead of the rest of the government. Honestly, just read the rest of the article you cited -- it matters that a lot of the rest of the city government was on board for it, but it still left a little bit of a confusing way to go about it even after decriminalization, which the chief of police among some other people pointed out, along with the idea that yes weed should be legal so maybe it's a good thing.
Left unsaid in among all of that is that selective enforcement by police and prosecutors in almost every case works out, in practice even up to the modern day, to be racist selective enforcement. Honestly it's better for the legislature just to make it legal. I'm not trying to throw cold water on any prosecutor who wants to take the initiative to do a good thing if they can make sure it'll work out right, but generally, the prosecutorial portion of the government isn't where you want to be making your creative departures from the law the way the legislators wrote it down.