Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lectryk]

10 minutes ago, archer said:

46.4% of the prison population are there for drug offenses. The website doesn't break that down between violent and non-violent but I should be able to get at least some estimates from advocacy groups (and be able to compare their estimates against real numbers, which is sometimes needed when dealing with information from advocacy groups).

 

 

I think sentencing guidelines/mandatory minimums play a bigger part in Federal punishment than discretionary decisions about violent/non parameters.  

 

I'd be interested to see what your research turns up about the perennial reform efforts.

 

 

 

This is from - https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R45074.html#_Ref503372497 (a very small clip out) for ref; the link has the full report.  If you look further down the chart, you'll see that's it's very easy to draw a 20-life charge for what is considered by some to be a minor amount - it depends on what message the prosecutor wants to send with the charges brought, or the target of the operation, or.. etc.  Politics.= 

 

Mandatory Minimums for Drug Crimes

Table 1 below describes the mandatory minimum sentencing provisions for various drug and drug-related offenses.⁴⁰

Table 1. Federal Drug Offenses: Mandatory Minimum Terms of Imprisonment

Substance	Minimum	Maximum
Trafficking 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A)/960(b)(1) substances (e.g., 1 kilo or more of heroin)	10 years	life
if death or serious injury results	20 years	life
with prior drug felony conviction	20 years	life
with prior drug felony conviction if death or serious injury results, or with two or more drug felony convictions	life	life

 

 

 

 

[unclevlad]

5 hours ago, archer said:

Twitter permanently bans My Pillow CEO due to “repeated violations” of its civic integrity policy. 

 

He wouldn't quit posting baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

 

Dominion Voting Systems is considering suing him for claiming that their voting machines were rigged.

 

Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s have said that they would stop carrying My Pillow’s products.

 

He doesn't have to worry about a shareholder revolt, fortunately for him.  It's not publicly held.  Turns out, too, this isn't new.  QVC dropped him after he continued ads on Laura Ingraham's Fox News show, after Ingraham bashed a Parkland student.  9 big sponsors backed out...but not My Pillow.  So QVC dropped them.

Affirm also dropped them a week ago.  Bed Bath & Beyond also argues it was based on sales numbers, which certainly is possible.  They're expensive pillows and there are a LOT of options out there, even in the "deluxe, healthy" pillow market.  A store doesn't need a marginal performer that *also* will irritate many of its shoppers.  So the truth may well lie somewhere in the middle.
 

[DShomshak]

I admit there is one drug offender, so far nonviolent AFAIK, whom I would like to see get 20-life. Early last year I posted about J. P., the deranged tweaker ex-con who tried squatting in my mother's childhood home (which she still owns and hopes to pass to my sisters), who had stolen stuff and caused damage in his insane search for an imaginary trove of Klondike gold. J. P. is back and not dissuafded by the burglar alarm we installed. He smashed in the rear door (possibly during the big early January storm, while the power was out) and, at some point, removed the topp few feet of the house's chimney. We don't know how he got the mass of masonry down to the ground without wrecking the roof.

 

J. P. has been arrested several times in the last year, but apparently is impossible to jail. It's discouraging when a sheriff's deputy tells you, "The system is broken." We've begun the insurarance process for the damage, but who knows what J. P. will do next?

 

Dean Shomshak

[Starlord]

[Old Man]

37 minutes ago, Starlord said:

I wish there was a facepalm option in the like menu. 

[archer]

Washington and Lincoln are out. S.F. school board tosses 44 school names in controversial move

 

The 6-1 vote followed months of controversy, with officials, parents, students and alumni at odds over whether Abraham Lincoln and George Washington high schools, Dianne Feinstein Elementary and dozens of others needed new names with no connection to slavery, oppression, racism or similar criteria...the committee didn’t know whether Roosevelt Middle School was named after Theodore or Franklin Delano....

 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/Washington-and-Lincoln-are-out-S-F-school-board-15900963.php

 

I haven't tried to make a secret of the fact that I think that renaming things is, at best, something that's abysmally stupid to focus upon when there's real problems that can be effectively addressed like inappropriate police behavior.

 

But if no one literally knows who the school is named after and can't figure it out, why should anyone be offended at the name?

 

I doubt there's half a dozen kids in the school which could tell you which Roosevelt they should be ticked off at and why that should be ticked off at him in the first place. Much less who Dianne Feinstein is and why they should, in theory, be ticked off at her.

[Lord Liaden]

11 hours ago, Starlord said:

 

Hey TC, "free speech" doesn't mean, "free of rational thought."

[Starlord]

[Pariah]

My high school was named after Roosevelt, and I know which one. Our mascot was the Rough Riders.

[archer]

1 hour ago, Pariah said:

My high school was named after Roosevelt, and I know which one. Our mascot was the Rough Riders.

 

The Rough Riders were Teddy's outfit during the war.

[Cygnia]

3 minutes ago, archer said:

 

The Rough Riders were Teddy's outfit during the war.

[Hermit]

13 hours ago, archer said:

Washington and Lincoln are out. S.F. school board tosses 44 school names in controversial move

 

The 6-1 vote followed months of controversy, with officials, parents, students and alumni at odds over whether Abraham Lincoln and George Washington high schools, Dianne Feinstein Elementary and dozens of others needed new names with no connection to slavery, oppression, racism or similar criteria...the committee didn’t know whether Roosevelt Middle School was named after Theodore or Franklin Delano....

 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/Washington-and-Lincoln-are-out-S-F-school-board-15900963.php

 

I haven't tried to make a secret of the fact that I think that renaming things is, at best, something that's abysmally stupid to focus upon when there's real problems that can be effectively addressed like inappropriate police behavior.

 

But if no one literally knows who the school is named after and can't figure it out, why should anyone be offended at the name?

 

I doubt there's half a dozen kids in the school which could tell you which Roosevelt they should be ticked off at and why that should be ticked off at him in the first place. Much less who Dianne Feinstein is and why they should, in theory, be ticked off at her.

 

IMO, This sort of thing one of the reasons Democrats are going to lose in 2 years. This is what moderates are going to see. Good intentions turned into historical purity tests gone too far while there are real problems to be solved.  

[Lord Liaden]

I don't know whether it will carry any weight for the Dems to point out that they have absolutely nothing to do with San Francisco's school boards. But if I were them I'd start messaging that now.

[Hermit]

7 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I don't know whether it will carry any weight for the Dems to point out that they have absolutely nothing to do with San Francisco's school boards. But if I were them I'd start messaging that now.

 

It's why I said 'this sort of thing'. Though we do have School Board elections over here with folks touting their party in East TN (almost always proudly declaring themselves proud conservatives at least) so perhaps I am jumping to conclusions that the San Fran School board has likewise folks doing this in the name of progressive values etc. And yeah, the Dem PARTY might want to stress that, because in a country where optics are used as weapons like they are the US, you can bet Fox news will be talking about 'the democrats want to erase history' and some will eat it up.

 

 

[Starlord]

Does anyone pass a historical purity test?

[Hermit]

2 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Does anyone pass a historical purity test?

 

I believe there was a great space cowboy philosopher who once said  "It's my estimation that... every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sumbitch or another. "

 

 

[TrickstaPriest]

 

[Ranxerox]

33 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

 

This is a relief to me.  I was wondering how many of these reddit investors were going to be left holding the bag when the game that they were playing with the hedge funds ended and prices returned to some semblance of sanity.

[TrickstaPriest]

8 minutes ago, Ranxerox said:

This is a relief to me.  I was wondering how many of these reddit investors were going to be left holding the bag when the game that they were playing with the hedge funds ended and prices returned to some semblance of sanity.

 

Yes and no?  It's not like futures, or shorts, the money they put in is the maximum owed.  So if they lose it all, unless they were raiding their own investments/coffers...

[Ranxerox]

7 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

Yes and no?  It's not like futures, or shorts, the money they put in is the maximum owed.  So if they lose it all, unless they were raiding their own investments/coffers...

 

I know, but if they got in after the stock was already on the way up they could lose most of what they invested after the bubble pops.  Not a real problem as long as they were only using money that they could afford to lose, but people aren't always sensible like that.

[TrickstaPriest]

7 minutes ago, Ranxerox said:

I know, but if they got in after the stock was already on the way up they could lose most of what they invested after the bubble pops.  Not a real problem as long as they were only using money that they could afford to lose, but people aren't always sensible like that.

 

Yeah, a legitimate concern.  But arbitrarily selling people's stock (and at half or less of what it was valued at the time) is...

[Old Man]

47 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

Yeah, a legitimate concern.  But arbitrarily selling people's stock (and at half or less of what it was valued at the time) is...

The word you’re looking for is “illegal”.

 

And to be clear, a runaway short squeeze is not a bubble. It’s what happens when a hedge fund literally shorts more shares of a stock than actually exist. They are paying interest on all those “borrowed” shares, and they can’t unwind their position without buying real shares, allowing actual owners of real shares to name their price. 

[Pariah]

Wow.

 

'You almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago': AOC rejects Ted Cruz's support for her criticism of Robinhood

[Lord Liaden]

How long do you think until Congress looks like the Taiwanese Parliament?

 

 

[unclevlad]

I've also seen articles saying the hedge funds have been playing games like this extensively already.  Their complaint boils down to, THEY aren't the ones manipulating the markets.