Baltimore Riots

Over 18 ONLY! For grown-ups. . .

Moderators: Sluggo, Amskeptic

User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by Amskeptic » Mon May 04, 2015 7:16 pm

wcfvw69 wrote: There is a large portion of this country's population that are very complacent and lazy and are content with their social/economic status. Living paycheck to paycheck is perfectly fine for them. I'm not knocking these folks, what so ever. There is a strong need for their labor in business. I just don't think these same people should bitch and moan about their wages when EVERYONE in this country can better themselves with the right motivation.
They have more of a right to bitch and moan about their wages than the rich bastard who bitches about the same people as moochers who have to apply for food stamps because they are not being paid enough to live on! Have you ever listened to a rich guy bitch about his taxes? And that doesn't piss you off worse?

Do you UNDERSTAND that you cannot live on minimum wage? Wouldn't you bitch? There were some 400 applications for each position advertised during the 2008 recession. Would you give them a pep talk to better themselves? To who?

You tell me stories about people you know, I have mine. One of my employees' husband was let go at Kodak after thirty years of loyal service. They told him that they were "downsizing". They escorted him off the premises as though he might go postal on them. Thirty years! AND they hired a replacement at a third of his pay.
wcfvw69 wrote: As I mentioned before, businesses can not afford to pay a position $25 dollars an hour based only on tenure w/a company. There is market value for jobs. Trust me, I had to have plenty of conversations with semi drivers that had maxed out on the company pay skill. They were upset that their was no further upward mobility compensation wise. These same drivers where making $22+ dollars an hour and w/overtime where making $70k a year. The market value for their positions per hour in this city was around $16 dollars an hour.
I don't have the time to retread my own "as I mentioned before" but I mentioned before that the minimum wage in 1969 was $22.00/hr in today's dollars, and you fall right into the rabbit hole of capitalist bullshit lying excuses that they "can't afford to pay" their workers but they sure can afford the multi-million dollar parachutes for releasing lousy chief executive officers? And how do you deem (how?? how??) that the market value for their position is $16.00/hr? Seriously? They would have to work an hour's worth of take home pay to buy a gallon of milk, a twelve pack of Mountain Dew, a box of Great Grains cereal and maybe a quart of yogurt? And what is the market "value" for a mortgage bundler? Last year's minimum wage had to work all damn day for a tank of gas?
wcfvw69 wrote: That's what makes this country great. There are opportunities for everyone to be successful. They just have to put some effort into it to get there.
That used to be the case. Read up. Times have changed. Seriously, fundamentally, the playing field has changed dramatically. You know that over 40% of American workers are forced into part time hours to save their employers from paying full-time benefits, you do know this, yes? And to make sure that "part time" is documented, they make sure not to offer enough hours? You do know that the America you love has corporations who happily screw their workers with every possible trick in the book, including doctoring the time cards so they can get free cleaning off the clock (WalMart) and forcing their employees to use mayonnaise as a burn ointment (McDonalds, who also chiseled people out of legitimate overtime).

Opportunities for everybody to be successful? We have lost millions!!!!!!!! of middle class jobs to automation and downsizing and outsourcing, we have opportunities for everybody to be successful?
No, we don't. We can run a super tanker with twelve people, we can run assembly lines with ten, we have self check-outs killing retail, we have fully automated warehouses and loading docks, come on! Do the math. Show some mercy for the people who have stampeded to job openings that pay $7.85 (we expect you can find a full time position some time in the next eighteen months, maybe), show some understanding of the people who wracked up thousands of dollars in debt to a private college that sucked federal funds for their administrative class and left students with debt and worthless degrees, this country is eating its young, its middle class, its poor, and its soul.
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

User avatar
hippiewannabe
Old School!
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by hippiewannabe » Mon May 04, 2015 9:17 pm

Amskeptic wrote: I don't have the time to retread my own "as I mentioned before" but I mentioned before that the minimum wage in 1969 was $22.00/hr in today's dollars,
You may have mentioned it before, but it is incorrect. The peak minimum wage in today's dollars is under $11 per hour, and has usually averaged much less than that.

Image

The world of the '60s was much different than today. The U.S. represented a huge percentage of the world economy, and could afford to pay workers many times what the rest of the world paid. Now that the world economy is so integrated, such anomalies are unsustainable. An unskilled American worker can make four times what a more highly skilled Asian worker can, but not ten times.

Having said that, I still worry. The other day, on the show "How It's Made", I saw a robot with vision picking randomly scattered candy canes off of a conveyor belt and packing them in boxes. That job was done by a wage earner just a couple of years ago. Even at minimum wage, sight and dexterity are not enough to allow a human to compete with a robot. So raising the minimum wage will only exacerbate that equation and put more people out of work.

When we went from most people working on farms to less than 2% of workers being able to feed everyone else, the capitalist manufacturing economy absorbed all those workers and provided a huge increase in living standards. The knowledge economy is creating increased wealth, but the rewards are going to a smaller number of the elite. It's not an evil conspiracy, it's just the returns increasing to capital and knowledge, and decreasing to labor.

Taxes on us wage slaves are high enough, but I would say it's reasonable to raise the capital gains tax above the current 15% after the first couple of million. But that's not the answer; the bigger question is how to find meaningful work for millions of people whose skills are not really necessary.

Oh yeah, a bit over a hundred black men a year are killed by the cops. Thousands are murdered by other black men. Prosecute wrong-doing where it exists, but the cops are not the problem.
Truth is like poetry.
And most people fucking hate poetry.

72Hardtop
Old School!
Location: Seattle, WA./HB. Ca./Shizuoka, Japan
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by 72Hardtop » Mon May 04, 2015 11:22 pm

Amskeptic wrote:
wcfvw69 wrote:when I used the term "lazy Americans", it was in the context of people who chronically bitch and moan about their wage yet doing NOTHING to make themselves more valuable at their job or on the job market. An example-

You have a person with no skills that washes cars as a car dealership. He bitches and moans about his low pay. His co-worker doing the same job RECOGNIZES that to earn a better wage, he needs to INVEST in his skill set. So, he keeps his job and takes mechanic classes after work. He then gets PROMOTED to a better paying position as a mechanic which provides better pay.

I would NEVER pick on anyone who drags his ass to a poor paying job each day and works his butt off. I will however tell the same person to shut his pie hole when he bitches about his lousy pay while doing nothing to get better skills for a better job or better pay. At some point, folks need to take ownership for their positions in life.
This is where we diverge, then. Job mobility in this country is a losing proposition. The numbers do not allow everybody to better themselves. The loss of jobs has been staggering as we have automated. We are becoming a service economy. It is a cop-out to accuse people of not wanting to better themselves. I see motel maids WalMart cashiers, you name it, trying to go to school, and their employers put them on stand-by "if it gets busy" and how the hell can they organize and improve their lives? I say, if you put in your time, you deserve to have a living wage. Period. No contempt allowed.
wcfvw69 wrote: American capitalism has gone off the rails due to GREED. The question is how does it get reined back in when the 1% are the ones controlling who's elected and the laws that are set for their benefit..
That is the question. Let's start with understanding that they will not voluntarily give up their ill-gotten gains. So we have to look at history. What has happened every single time in all of human history when the upper class lost respect for everyone else?
Colin :cyclopsani:
We'll start with the Romans.
1972 Westy tintop
2056cc T-4 - 7.8:1 CR
Weber 40mm Duals - 47.5idles, 125mains, F11 tubes, 190 Air corr., 28mm Vents
96mm AA Biral P/C's w/Hastings rings
42x36mm Heads (AMC- Headflow Masters) w/Porsche swivel adjusters
71mm Stroke
Web Cam 73 w/matched Web lifters
S&S 4-1 exhaust w/Walker 17862 quiet-pack
Pertronix SVDA w/Pertronix module & Flamethrower 40K coil (7* initial 28* total @3200+)
NGK BP6ET plugs
002 3 rib trans
Hankook 185R14's

User avatar
wcfvw69
Old School!
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by wcfvw69 » Tue May 05, 2015 6:17 am

Amskeptic wrote:
wcfvw69 wrote: There is a large portion of this country's population that are very complacent and lazy and are content with their social/economic status. Living paycheck to paycheck is perfectly fine for them. I'm not knocking these folks, what so ever. There is a strong need for their labor in business. I just don't think these same people should bitch and moan about their wages when EVERYONE in this country can better themselves with the right motivation.
They have more of a right to bitch and moan about their wages than the rich bastard who bitches about the same people as moochers who have to apply for food stamps because they are not being paid enough to live on! Have you ever listened to a rich guy bitch about his taxes? And that doesn't piss you off worse?

Do youy UNDERSTAND that you cannot live on minimum wage? Wouldn't you bitch? There were some 400 applications for each position advertised during the 2008 recession. Would you give them a pep talk to better themselves? To who?

You tell me stories about people you know, I have mine. One of my employees' husband was let go at Kodak after thirty years of loyal service. They told him that they were "downsizing". They escorted him off the premises as though he might go postal on them. Thirty years! AND they hired a replacement at a third of his pay.
wcfvw69 wrote: As I mentioned before, businesses can not afford to pay a position $25 dollars an hour based only on tenure w/a company. There is market value for jobs. Trust me, I had to have plenty of conversations with semi drivers that had maxed out on the company pay skill. They were upset that their was no further upward mobility compensation wise. These same drivers where making $22+ dollars an hour and w/overtime where making $70k a year. The market value for their positions per hour in this city was around $16 dollars an hour.
I don't have the time to retread my own "as I mentioned before" but I mentioned before that the minimum wage in 1969 was $22.00/hr in today's dollars, and you fall right into the rabbit hole of capitalist bullshit lying excuses that they "can't afford to pay" their workers but they sure can afford the multi-million dollar parachutes for releasing lousy chief executive officers? And how do you deem (how?? how??) that the market value for their position is $16.00/hr? Seriously? They would have to work an hour's worth of take home pay that would buy a gallon of milk, a twelve pack of Mountain Dew, a box of Great Grains cereal and maybe a quart of yogurt? And what is the market "value" for a mortgage bundler? Last year's minimum wage had to work all damn day for a tank of gas?
wcfvw69 wrote: That's what makes this country great. There are opportunities for everyone to be successful. They just have to put some effort into it to get there.
That used to be the case. Read up. Times have changed. Seriously, fundamentally, the playing field has changed dramatically. You know that over 40% of American workers are forced into part time hours to save their employers from paying full-time benefits, you do know this, yes? And to make sure that "part time" is documented, they make sure not to offer enough hours? You do know that the America you love has corporations who happily screw their workers with every possible trick in the book, including doctoring the time cards so they can get free cleaning off the clock (WalMart) and forcing their employees to use mayonnaise as a burn ointment (McDonalds, who also chiseled people out of legitimate overtime).

Opportunities for everybody to be successful? We have lost millions!!!!!!!! of middle class jobs to automation and downsizing and outsourcing, we have opportunities for everybody to be successful?
No, we don't. We can run a super tanker with twelve people, we can run assembly lines with ten, we have self check-outs killing retail, we have fully automated warehouses and loading docks, come on! Do the math. Show some mercy for the people who have stampeded to job openings that pay $7.85 (we expect you can find a full time position some time in the next eighteen months, maybe), show some understanding of the people who wracked up thousands of dollars in debt to a private college that sucked federal funds for their administrative class and left students with debt and worthless degrees, this country is eating its young, its middle class, its poor, and its soul.
You're NOT going to get any arguments out of me that corporate greed is rampant in this country. It's been allowed to run rampant as a result of the policies and laws that our politicians put into place. Oh yea, who funded the campains of these politicians? Hum..

We're NOT going to agree on the fundamental responsibilities and opportunites each American has in this country. Automation? Come on.. Job's have been lost to it for decades. Part timing positions to save that 30% for wages? It's also NOT new and has been used for decades as well. Out sourcing jobs overseas? Remember NAFTA, Bill Clinton's wonder bill that had a MASSIVE negative impact on manufactoring and farm jobs? That was two decades ago. Now Hillary is trying to distance herself from it.

People HAVE TO ADAPT to the current American job market. Yes, some folks do better at it than others. If you don't like the crappy wages and part time status of Wal-mart, DO SOMETHING about it. I also remember how horrible 2008 was. I was one of the folks having to put long tenured employees on the street. Our company went thru 5 different downsizings in effort to stay solvent and not put 100's of more employees on the street due to bankruptcy.

Let's NOT lose sight of the fact that MANY of the richest 1% in this country are self made folks. There's also millions of other examples of people living white collar lives. Many grew up in horrible conditions, dirt poor, and with other massive obstacles in their path to success. Despite it all, they prevailed and achieved what everyone would like to.

It shows it's still possible for the people who want to work for it.
1970 Westfalia bus. Stock 1776 dual port type 1 engine. Restored German Solex 34-3. Restored 205Q distributor, restored to factory appearance engine.

User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by Amskeptic » Tue May 05, 2015 11:06 am

hippiewannabe wrote:
Amskeptic wrote: A) I don't have the time to retread my own "as I mentioned before" but I mentioned before that the minimum wage in 1969 was $22.00/hr in today's dollars,
You may have mentioned it before, but it is incorrect. The peak minimum wage in today's dollars is under $11 per hour, and has usually averaged much less than that.


B) Oh yeah, a bit over a hundred black men a year are killed by the cops. Thousands are murdered by other black men. Prosecute wrong-doing where it exists, but the cops are not the problem.
Your chart deviates from Reality pretty noticeably. $7.85 is the current average minimum wage, with a low of $5.25 in Georgia to $9.00 in California.

The $22.00/hour equivalent I mentioned factors in purchasing power. If you look at minimum wage earners in 1969, they were more likely to be able to live on it.

B) Thousands of whites are murdered by whites. What does that have to do with anything?
93% of all black murder victims are killed by blacks.
84% of all white murder victims are killed by whites.
What does the above have to do with the fact that you are well and truly ten times more likely to be killed by cops if you are a black? N-o-t-h-i-n-g . . .
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

User avatar
hippiewannabe
Old School!
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by hippiewannabe » Tue May 05, 2015 9:33 pm

Amskeptic wrote:The $22.00/hour equivalent I mentioned factors in purchasing power. If you look at minimum wage earners in 1969, they were more likely to be able to live on it.
What you said was "today's dollars", which means inflation adjusted, which means $10.76.
Amskeptic wrote: B) Thousands of whites are murdered by whites. What does that have to do with anything?
93% of all black murder victims are killed by blacks.
84% of all white murder victims are killed by whites.
What does the above have to do with the fact that you are well and truly ten times more likely to be killed by cops if you are a black? N-o-t-h-i-n-g . . .
Colin
It means the issue of blacks being killed by cops is a nit, a rounding error, compared with all the real problems facing blacks. It makes good fodder for the media and the racial grievance industry, but it is a distraction from the truth.
Truth is like poetry.
And most people fucking hate poetry.

User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by Amskeptic » Thu May 07, 2015 1:59 pm

hippiewannabe wrote: the issue of blacks being killed by cops is a nit, a rounding error, compared with all the real problems facing blacks. It makes good fodder for the media and the racial grievance industry, but it is a distraction from the truth.
A distraction? from the numerous other issues facing all of us and blacks in particular?
A distraction? If police in the United States have killed more people this past March than the police in Britain have killed since the turn of the century, we have a problem.

There is no way I can perceive it as a mere distraction, a nit. You do know that I hate anyone! getting killed by those who "protect and serve", I hate cops getting shot by lowlifes, I seriously despise all of the killing that so many pass off as nits and distractions. Fodder for the media, "racial grievance industry", very very harsh.

This country is roughly comprised of 77% whites, and 13% blacks.
Difficult to get accurate stats, but according to the FBI, as of the last few years, an average of 123 blacks were killed in interactions with police. We should expect the white fatality rate to average out to 738, but in reality, it is averaging at 414 a year.

INTERESTINGLY, black cops kill black suspects at 3.5 times the rate they kill white suspects.
White cops kill white suspects at nearly twice the rate they kill black suspects.
Go to the FBI stats and check it out. Since I am not an overfocused member of Racial Grievance Industries, LLC, I do not think it is about "racism" per se, but how we humans interact with each other, like I am interacting with you, testing assumptions and outlooks.
Look at the above, black cops are trying too hard to be police-ically correct, and white cops are just too trigger-happy, and the **culture** of police work shows us that both whites and blacks are exercising "reverse discretion"!

I want us to get a grip. A nit-less grip, a non-distracted a respectful grip on ourselves.
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

72Hardtop
Old School!
Location: Seattle, WA./HB. Ca./Shizuoka, Japan
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by 72Hardtop » Sun May 31, 2015 1:29 am

It goes to say that every so often we hear of social security is running out of money. However, why is it that we never hear of welfare running out of money? Those that payed all their life get nothing in the end. While those that never pay get everything.
1972 Westy tintop
2056cc T-4 - 7.8:1 CR
Weber 40mm Duals - 47.5idles, 125mains, F11 tubes, 190 Air corr., 28mm Vents
96mm AA Biral P/C's w/Hastings rings
42x36mm Heads (AMC- Headflow Masters) w/Porsche swivel adjusters
71mm Stroke
Web Cam 73 w/matched Web lifters
S&S 4-1 exhaust w/Walker 17862 quiet-pack
Pertronix SVDA w/Pertronix module & Flamethrower 40K coil (7* initial 28* total @3200+)
NGK BP6ET plugs
002 3 rib trans
Hankook 185R14's

User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by Amskeptic » Mon Jun 01, 2015 4:53 am

72Hardtop wrote:It goes to say that every so often we hear of social security is running out of money. However, why is it that we never hear of welfare running out of money?
Social Security can be fully self-funded if Congress would not raid its funds. Remember Al Gore's "lockbox" plea in the 2000 elections? Social Security was fully capable of living off its own interest back then. Instead, we blew the surplus.

Now we can raise the cap, but politicians catering to the rich refuse to consider it.

As for welfare, the average time on welfare is 27 months, single white mothers are the most represented demographic. We have been demonizing welfare for a long time at the same time we refuse to raise wages and refuse to stop out-sourcing.
72Hardtop wrote: Those that payed all their life get nothing in the end. While those that never pay get everything.
Heavy on bathos, light on facts.
Colin :bom:
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

72Hardtop
Old School!
Location: Seattle, WA./HB. Ca./Shizuoka, Japan
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by 72Hardtop » Mon Jun 01, 2015 6:42 am

"peak minimum wage"...

Buh wah wah wah wah haha hahaha buh wah wah wah wah!

You do realize there is only 1 real min wage. If adjusted for inflation is roughly (as Colin mentioned earlier) ~$20+ dollars per hour. That is a well known fact.
1972 Westy tintop
2056cc T-4 - 7.8:1 CR
Weber 40mm Duals - 47.5idles, 125mains, F11 tubes, 190 Air corr., 28mm Vents
96mm AA Biral P/C's w/Hastings rings
42x36mm Heads (AMC- Headflow Masters) w/Porsche swivel adjusters
71mm Stroke
Web Cam 73 w/matched Web lifters
S&S 4-1 exhaust w/Walker 17862 quiet-pack
Pertronix SVDA w/Pertronix module & Flamethrower 40K coil (7* initial 28* total @3200+)
NGK BP6ET plugs
002 3 rib trans
Hankook 185R14's

User avatar
hippiewannabe
Old School!
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by hippiewannabe » Mon Feb 08, 2016 7:19 pm

I am so pissed off. This wonderful man played the steel drum during the cocktail hour at my daughter's wedding. He was just so happy and fun to be around. It was a difference maker for the event that people commented on for weeks.

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index ... _in_d.html
http://www.wxyz.com/news/most-wanted/ne ... ans-murder

He didn't run, he didn't resist, they just executed him in cold blood.

We might have never known, except for clicking on a random link while surfing the web. Where is the outrage, where are the demonstrations? Where are the Black Lives Matter people? His life mattered. This is what I'm talking about. Getting killed by cops (usually while resisting arrest) is like being struck by lightning. Getting killed by a low-life thug is like catching a cold.
Truth is like poetry.
And most people fucking hate poetry.

User avatar
JLT
Old School!
Location: Sacramento CA
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by JLT » Mon Feb 08, 2016 7:52 pm

hippiewannabe wrote:Where is the outrage, where are the demonstrations? Where are the Black Lives Matter people? His life mattered.
As somebody who has had more than loved one torn away by violence, I think I can share your grief, to some extent. But please don't single out the "Black Lives Matter" organization in your grief. That movement was created to bring to light a specific injustice: that of people of color being unjustly targeted by police departments. So as horrifying as this event was, it was out of their purview.

What makes the BLM cause different from other examples of violence is that this targeting was, and is, not just random violence against innocent people, but was perpetuated by law enforcement people, as an entrenched part of their policy of racial subjugation. And, for a long time, it was covered up by those higher up in the hierarchy. In other words, your tax dollars were used to support it, and the people you elected were administering it. That makes it an entirely different ballgame from the incident in which your friend was killed.

I agree that we should howl in anger every time an innocent person meets with a violent end, whether by a carjacking or a school shooting or a civil war in Syria. And we should do what we can to prevent that sort of thing from happening in the future. But BLM is concerned with just a small subset of that violence, and can't be expected to widen its focus. It's like using a magnifying glass to focus sunlight to start a fire. Lose the focus, and you diffuse the energy to the point where it won't burn anything.
-- JLT
Sacramento CA

Present bus: '71 Dormobile Westie "George"
(sometimes towing a '65 Allstate single-wheel trailer)
Former buses: '61 17-window Deluxe "Pink Bus"
'70 Frankenwestie "Blunder Bus"
'71 Frankenwestie "Thunder Bus"

User avatar
Amskeptic
IAC "Help Desk"
IAC "Help Desk"
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by Amskeptic » Thu Feb 11, 2016 8:11 am

hippiewannabe wrote:I am so pissed off. This wonderful man executed him in cold blood.

Where is the outrage, where are the demonstrations? Where are the Black Lives Matter people?
His life mattered. This is what I'm talking about. Getting killed by cops (usually while resisting arrest) is like being struck by lightning. Getting killed by a low-life thug is like catching a cold.
What are you saying here?
What does this have to do with Black Lives Matter? BLM is specific in their focus for a reason. We have to compartmentalize sometimes.

Getting killed by a moronic idiot yapping on a cell phone or a habitual drunk driver is your "catching a cold" example.
Where's the outrage? Well, we have recently passed legislation against cell phone/texting while driving. We have MADD.

Getting killed by car-jackers? We have innumerable church/community activists working on inner city violence and its sometimes hard-to-see causes. We have some people trying to push back against easy availability of guns. We have some people working against out-sourcing the jobs that might haven these thugs something to spend their time on, like work.

Your last sentence was illuminating and inflammatory.
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

User avatar
hippiewannabe
Old School!
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by hippiewannabe » Wed Feb 17, 2016 10:09 pm

It's about priorities and return on investment. Dozens of black men are killed by cops each year, the majority of them justified and unavoidable. Thousands of black men are killed every year by other black men. Assume all the effort put towards BLM results in perfect success. Statistically, that would take the risk of being killed by cops from essentially zero to actually zero. If the same effort was put in to combatting the cultural taboo against "snitching", i.e. helping get the killers and terrorizers off the streets, the impact in reduction of deaths would be far greater, and the impact in freedom of movement and enjoyment of life would be huge.

Inflammatory? A scumbag who kills an innocent person in cold blood for no reason is a lowlife thug. That's a simple fact. Race has nothing to do with it.
Truth is like poetry.
And most people fucking hate poetry.

User avatar
JLT
Old School!
Location: Sacramento CA
Status: Offline

Re: Baltimore Riots

Post by JLT » Thu Feb 18, 2016 3:44 pm

hippiewannabe wrote: If the same effort was put in to combatting the cultural taboo against "snitching", i.e. helping get the killers and terrorizers off the streets, the impact in reduction of deaths would be far greater, and the impact in freedom of movement and enjoyment of life would be huge.
The two are not mutually exclusive. There's a lot of effort being put into reducing gang violence, and it seems to be doing some good, at least in some areas. I would point out, however, that it's a false argument to state that doing one thing detracts from the importance of doing something else. I keep hearing that the US shouldn't accept refugees until our own homeless problem is solved, that we shouldn't send foreign aid abroad to relieve hunger and sickness until our own population is well-fed and healthy. Can't we do both?

There is something else that I think you're missing. I will grant you that numerically, the number of minorities killed by policemen is very small, compared to other causes of death. That isn't much reassurance for any minority person confronted by a policeman, with the policeman already convinced that the person is not only guilty of something, but that he can exceed the limits of his office with impunity and not be held to account for it. Maybe you've never been in such a situation, but I have ... not as a black person, but as a freek driving through Arizona in a VW bus, being stopped at midnight by a roadblock of state policemen who hustled us out of the car and ransacked the bus while holding us at gunpoint. And they told us that there wasn't a goddamn thing we could do about it, and they were right.

So when my black friends talk to me about being pulled over when they drive through a white neighborhood, or asked to do things that a cop wouldn't ask a white person to do, I can relate. They can't expect the same fairness that white people take for granted. And that's what BLM is all about: building trust between communities and the policemen who patrol them, so each side respects the other's rights and duties.
A scumbag who kills an innocent person in cold blood for no reason is a lowlife thug. That's a simple fact. Race has nothing to do with it.
I agree with you 100% on that.
-- JLT
Sacramento CA

Present bus: '71 Dormobile Westie "George"
(sometimes towing a '65 Allstate single-wheel trailer)
Former buses: '61 17-window Deluxe "Pink Bus"
'70 Frankenwestie "Blunder Bus"
'71 Frankenwestie "Thunder Bus"

Post Reply