Love this idea: replace statue of Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest with one of country music star @DollyParton https://t.co/m4PDjvxk6u
— Sewell Chan (@sewellchan) June 15, 2020
Tributes which created a spontaneous memorial for racial justice following the killing of George Floyd are being collected for a more permanent home at the Smithsonian Institution https://t.co/4Ws7jXPKN9 pic.twitter.com/c0VIjeWpg4
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 15, 2020
Muriel Bowser writes in Opinions: The protests show why D.C. statehood matters https://t.co/Qnl29AAOCE
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 15, 2020
Annnnd…
I’ve just signed a petition about this bridge to dignity as seen in SELMA. It is named after a KKK grand wizard and confederate warlord. Edmund Pettus Bridge should be the John Lewis Bridge. Named for a hero. Not a murderer. Join this call. It’s past due. https://t.co/EZqu7ic0bU
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) June 13, 2020
More than 95,000 signatures so far. I know, it’s Change.org, but I managed to get my ‘signature’ approved after (only) two website fails & an approval glitch…
Not especially. Pettus escaped once but got swapped twice. And at least two of his times as a prisoner were formal surrenders. Helped to be a rich boy officer. https://t.co/LXkSwq6Nm9
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) June 14, 2020
Plus his promotion to Brigadier General came immediately after his third capture. The way he managed to fail upwards really made him the Jared Kushner of the confederacy.
— Beer and Football (@beer_football) June 14, 2020
Baud
I look forward to one day seeing the people rise up and sand that everything named after Reagan be renamed or torn down.
Betty Cracker
I love the idea of replacing Nathan Bedford Forrest’s statue in the capitol with a Dolly Parton statue and renaming the Edmund Pettus Bridge the John Lewis Bridge. Both changes should be made immediately so these living legends can enjoy the honor.
PS: Love the characterization of Pettus as the “Jared Kushner of the Confederacy.” I hope Kushner’s name becomes synonymous with the failing-up-fuck-up phenomenon.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I’m OK with keeping the library.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
If I live to be 1000, I’ll never completely grasp the immorality involved in the public as to why his campaign didn’t go down in flames the moment it was announced that he was opening it in Philadelphia MS on a states rights theme, a mere 16 years after those guys were murdered there.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker:
If we’re teaching by statues, I’d like some more Nat Turner statues sprinkled about the South.
Forrest can be represented only by copies of that monstrosity in Tennessee, where the eyes are an accurate reflection of his psychosis.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
The curve for Unqualified White Men has always been REAL in America?
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Same reason Trump didn’t go down in flames in 2016, I suspect.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nope. Library, gravesite, everything.
raven
Black protester who carried injured white man through angry crowd says he was trying to avoid catastrophe
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: The gravesite makes for a nice place for rattlesnakes to sun themselves, why do you hate rattlesnakes, Baud?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: They were both running against someone named Bush?
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That does make it easier.
Baud
Politico is better than it was during Obama’s time, but they still feel to act like the GOP’s press office.
Kay
This will be really interesting. I’m so pleased someone is trying it. I think it will get law enforcement attention too, because as much as police complain about these calls they’re a huge percentage of their total calls. If they’re taken off these calls you need far fewer of them, which is obviously a problem for them as far as staying employed.
What if people prefer this approach? They may! I’ve always thought it made more sense.
Ken
@Baud: Perhaps tolerable if the sub-head was something like “Sober reminder to avoid the brown acid”.
Baud
@Ken:
There’s a reason I didn’t include a link. It’s all “This is good news for
John McCainDonald Trump.”Kay
The US crime-solving rate is horrible, too. We fail at crime solving. We’re good at harassing and bothering people, bad at solving murders. If we took police off these calls they could go back to crime-solving.
Maybe even start including white collar crime, which is rampant and completely unchecked and a blight on our communities :)
Ken
They could transfer to the new (unarmed) social services. I wonder if they’ll also re-paint half the squad cars.
I also expect arguments that they have to be armed when responding to (say) domestic disputes, in case it turns violent. But if that happens they should call the armed cops, the same as social workers, pastors, neighbors, and anyone else who gets into those situations would do.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud:
That quote is hilarious.
Geminid
All the statues memorializing fuckups tend to expose the fatuous side of the Lost Cause narrative. For all his prestige Lee was not a great general, maybe not even a good one. And Jefferson Davis probably did more to take down the Confederacy than any man besides Abraham Lincoln and Ullysses Grant.
Baud
@Kay:
The police understand that they wouldn’t get as much deference if they starting killing unarmed CEOs.
Baud
@Geminid:
Have you ever committed treason in defense of slavery? It’s not as easy as it looks.
low-tech cyclist
Didn’t the worst of the original Politico founders spin themselves off into Axios? IIRC, that’s why Politico/TBOTP, while still less than good, isn’t as completely and totally awful as it once was.
Baud
@Baud:
Before the pessimists chime in, I’m not saying Trump can’t win. But the Republicans haven’t had a landslide since 1988. Trump isn’t going to get there.
Baud
@low-tech cyclist:
I think there were some muckety mucks who jumped ship. I couldn’t tell you their names or where they went.
MattF
@Baud: And when you quote a rural Tennessee Republican operative’s 2020 prediction as ‘news’, there’s a problem.
Betty Cracker
Our local paper published responses to a use-of-force questionnaire it sent to four leading candidates for sheriff (including the incumbent). All vowed to improve deescalation training (the incumbent pointed out that use of force during arrests in the county is already far below the national average).
I thought it was interesting that none took the position that no policy changes or additional training is needed for cops. These are all hard-right Republicans, including one who got busted for making a racist remark about protesters on Facebook.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
a/k/a the “frontrunner”. :-)
Geminid
It was a a terrible cause with little chance of success given the disparity in resources between North and south. But the south had a narrow possibility to win a defensive war, so it’s just as well that Davis, Lee et al did not make the most of that chance.
Frankensteinbeck
Dolly Parton is heritage, not racism, an actual cultural element of the South and if she has a bad side, nobody’s found it yet. A statue of her is a great idea.
@Ken:
Those turn violent constantly, which is exactly why there is no way in Hell the responders should be armed.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: We see this kind of statement as an expression of complacency. They see it as central to the message that their side is the winner side. People like winners, right?
It works for them, to some degree. I go back and forth about whether it would help us. We seem more prone to react to the belief that we’re ahead with infighting and purity battles.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
Wait, WHAT?!??
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: I agree. Achieving the right balance is more complicated for our side.
rikyrah
@Baud:
It’s not called Tiger Beat on the Potomac for nothing ??
low-tech cyclist
@Kay:
If I understand things correctly, a lot of this stuff got dumped on the police to begin with over the past few decades as the GOP forced social-service cuts, and the police (as the only public agency the ‘Pubbies were willing to give more money to) were the backstop that had to pick up the slack.
So if this moment is used to reverse all that, to have actual social workers employed to handle situations that should be handled by social workers, and have other unarmed agencies handle other situations that don’t generally require weaponry, that would be a major step forward in how this country deals with everyday shit like this.
Here’s hoping.
Kay
@Ken:
They have a ton of information on those, so they could break them out into categories. They already do that for child abuse/neglect calls. It would probably be based on how many prior police contacts with the household, which is what they use for child abuse/neglect.
This is something that will actually get their attention, because it directly threatens their jobs and funding for the police. She’s going to shift funding from police to the new responders. She’ll have to.
NotMax
Blast from the past. Before so-called social media, before contemptible web sites, before FOX, before prolific hate radio, Walt Kelly’s Pogo had the RWNJ and holy roller media landscape’s number.
(And no, not the more famous Pogo panel which you might have expected.)
Joe Falco
@Geminid:
The Confederacy, like Donald Trump, thought war was easy to win. They, like Donald Trump, were wrong.
OzarkHillbilly
@Geminid: The south was never capable of winning the Civil War, a fact that Lee recognized early on. Their only hope was that the North would lose the war.
low-tech cyclist
Another thought about policing reforms: just what percentage of the police’ workload involves either (a) responding to a crime in progress, or (b) trying to apprehend a potentially dangerous criminal?
I bet it’s pretty small.
I’d think that the rest of it could mostly be handled by people who didn’t carry guns.
Geminid
Back to the 21st century: weekend news in 5th Va. District was that congressman Denver Riggleman was rolled Saturday night at a Republican convention. His challenger, Bob Good, pulled in 58% of the vote. Good calls himself “a Biblical and constitutional conservative.” The Democrats will select one of four good candidates in a primary June 23. The Cook political report shifted the Virginia 5th from “likely Republican to “lean Republican.” I think that in a few weeks they’ll shift the race to “toss up.”
low-tech cyclist
Or that they could fight the North to a draw for long enough that the North would get tired and give up.
rikyrah
Kay
@low-tech cyclist:
I think you have to try it and San Francisco is one of the places you COULD try it- there won’t be the intense law n order fear-mongering there. It’s politically possible to try it there.
NotMax
@low-tech cyclist
Time was budgets throughout Maryland were balanced (and then some) by speed traps.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
Damn, that’s vicious. Her story about her daughter makes me wince, as well.
debbie
@Baud:
What, are they relying on their Spidey sense again?
Kay
@low-tech cyclist:
One of the chants at one of the marches (a march where police went nuts on the peaceful protestors, so perhaps chant hit home) was “protect AND SERVE”
The “serve” part shouldn’t be ignored. It’s the key to the whole thing.
RSA
… who died more than thirty years before the bridge was built and named after him in 1940. I’m imagining various Lost Cause organizations maintaining lists of prominent Confederate names to plaster on any new structure that went up, for a century or so. “This is just a small bridge–let’s use one of our less-competent local generals.”
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, the only hope the south had was northern military incompetence and war weariness. But in July of 1864 the possibility of a Democratic win in the fall elections was real enough that Lincoln wrote a short memo concerning unspecified measures he would take to preserve the Union before a new president took office. He put it in a sealed envelope and had his cabinet members sign the envelope. We’ll never know what he would have done because Union victories on Atlanta, Mobile Bay, and the Shenandoah Valley ensured Lincoln’s victory in November.
Frankensteinbeck
@RSA:
I think Rikyah’s “The curve for unqualified white men is real” is not just accurate, it’s part of the point here. Incompetent white men are the most pissed off that any minority might ever be better than them, and want to celebrate incompetent white men. It’s definitely part of Trump’s appeal to his base.
rikyrah
OzarkHillbilly
@low-tech cyclist:
=
Lee’s “strategy”, if one could call it that, was to inflict so much pain on the North that the North would just give up as it wasn’t worth the cost of continuing to fight. He knew damn well he did not have the men or the resources to do anything more than that.
Something that Grant (and Sherman and Sheridan and…) also recognized early on.
Raven
@low-tech cyclist: If the Union had lost The Battle of Atlanta they very well might have.
rikyrah
cmorenc
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Ask yourself why Trump’s campaign for 2016 didn’t go down in flames right at the outset, despite his obvious racism re: the Central Park 5, as well as running 3 casinos into bankruptcy, and you should be able to formulate the answer to your Reagan question. Both were showmen who understood how to provoke the underbelly of the American electorate. A better question would actually be: why is such a substantial portion of the electorate susceptible to seduction by such bigoted snake-oil salesmen.
WaterGirl
My experience with change.org is that it can be tricky the first time you sign one of their petitions, and I did have to try 2 or 3 times, or there were 2 or 3 steps, but it was so long ago that I don’t remember the details.
But mine sailed right through, so please don’t let yourself be held back by thinking it will be complicated.
How wonderful it would be for John Lewis to see the John Lewis Bridge in his lifetime! I love John Lewis so much.
Brachiator
@cmorenc:
With Trump, his base got exactly what they were looking for. They weren’t seduced or fooled. They are suckers, though. Neither Trump nor his plutocrat buddies really care about these people. They are sheep to be fleeced.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
The nature of misogyny is that misogynists view women as vulnerable and are more willing to attack them. Damn, do you see that play out constantly in public. Mention Hillary Clinton on Twitter and watch the frenzy as assholes leap out of the woods to insult her.
Booger
@low-tech cyclist: IIRC, there was a medium-sized city in California which began dispatching teams of “Emergency Responders” who were crossed trained in Fire/EMS/Social Services/LEO to all calls, rather than choosing Fire/Police/Ambulance et cetera. Seemed to work for them.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, the only hope the south had was northern military incompetence and war weariness. But in July of 1864 the possibility of a Democratic win in the fall elections was real enough that Lincoln wrote a short memo concerning unspecified measures he would take to preserve the Union before a new president took office. He put it in a sealed envelope and had his cabinet members sign the envelope. We’ll never know what he would have done because Union victories on Atlanta, Mobile Bay, and the Shenandoah Valley ensured Lincoln’s victory in November.
rikyrah
WaterGirl
@raven: I watched the video. That was powerful. I also appreciated the interviewer who asked a couple of good questions and then let the man talk!
My first tears for today. How crazy it is that it’s not crazy to have to say something like my first tears for today.
cmorenc
@Geminid: @OzarkHillbilly:
It’s a good thing Robert E. Lee didn’t figure out that essentially all he militarily had to to to “win” the war was to keep a strong army in the field long enough to wear down Northern support for continuing the war. Where the south really began to come undone was during Lee’s military misadventure taking the war into norther territory that ended up at Gettysburg, where his army couldn’t long-term sustain or replenish the losses suffered in that battle, whereas the North could, provided the North didn’t run out of political will first
True, one of Lee’s constant big-picture objectives was always to capture Washington DC as a quicker way to demoralize Northern support, and the northern adventures did include trying to create the threat of that. But Lee was seduced by the vision of outright victory, not wearing down the North, which worked for the good for the Union cause in the end via inflicting unsustainable losses on Lee’s army.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
That was my favorite part, too.
WaterGirl
@Kay:
The plan is similar to the CAHOOTS program…
I don’t know what the letters stand for, but that might be the best name for a program. Ever.Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets
germy
WaterGirl
@Kay: There must be a white collar crime unit – there was even a TV show! :-)
Hungry Joe
I’d be okay with ALL statues being replaced by statues of Dolly Parton.
Brachiator
@Ken:
This San Francisco program is based on an Oregon program that has been around for 31 years. It should be possible to measure its effectiveness and potential problems.
Posting from my smartphone, I think there are links in the story Kay referenced.
ETA. Ah, I see a reference above to the Oregon program.
WereBear
@Geminid: My favorite book on this subject is:
The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won by Edward H. Bonekemper
Jeffro
@Geminid:As I noted to buddies on FB:
So…knowing next to nothing about the Dems contending to be Good’s opponent…what do you think? Who’s the strongest candidate?
NotMax
@Hungry Joe
Full statues when for display purposes busts will be ample?
:)
Ken
@WaterGirl: I sometimes worry that more thought has been put into the acronym than the program – particularly for Congressional bills.
debbie
@germy:
Simon & Schuster’s the publisher, so that’ll drive him nuts. On the other hand, there’s already a book out with that title about one woman’s odyssey into veganism and juicing (like a wannabee Eat, Pray, Love). Hope people pay attention when they order!
rp
@rikyrah: She shouldn’t have confronted him, but the guy didn’t exactly cover himself in glory. Why didn’t he say “yeah, it’s my house” at the outset? He was being a dick and looking for a confrontation.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think it will be an interesting experiment, too. I think one point of resistance will be them losing the ability to write reams of tickets from these calls. I think that’s why the cops tried to arrest the man in Atlanta rather than just calling him a cab after he moved his car. They see $$$$$ whenever they can write something like a DUI. I don’t think the average citizen realizes that much of policing these days isn’t financed by tax dollars, but by fines and fees from tickets. There’s a whole industry that’s grown up around DUI’s, for example, and the person who gets arrested has to pay all of them! From the bullshit “high-risk insurance” you have to buy even if you already have car insurance (it’s mandatory, and no one has ever been able to tell me that it’s actually paid out anything) to the $300 for a 20-minute evaluation done by a private company, to the mandatory driving classes also done by a private company, to now in MO even first-time offenders have to have one of those breathalyzer locks put on their vehicle for a year, all paid for by the offender. I had a friend whose breathalyzer was set off when she cleaned her windshield! Every time it goes off, not only do you have to pay to have it reset, your time of having it resets again too. I understand punishing drunk driving, but I think all this is way too much for a first offense. It’s popular because people are afraid of drunk drivers so they don’t care how much punishment they pile on these people. It’s too much. Then there are the onerous fees you have to pay if your vehicle is towed. And on and on. It’s easy to get people to agree to this stuff because they think they’ll never be affected by it.
Barbara
@OzarkHillbilly: Which is why so many Union generals were not inclined to cut Lee any slack after the war on bringing him up on charges of treason. They held him personally responsible for the astronomical level of casualties. Even some officers on his own side expressed dismay at his willingness to sacrifice such a high number of soldiers, e.g., at Pickett’s Charge in Gettysburg.
germy
@debbie:
This might have him worried:
Cheryl from Maryland
@cmorenc: Agreed, and I think this lack of understanding and focus on DC makes Lee a mediocre general at best. And it’s why George Washington was an outstanding general — he knew his job was to keep his army intact and in the field and not suffer a catastrophic loss. He wore the British out (with some help from the French).
Geminid
@Jeffro: I think they are all good in different ways, but I’m voting for J.D. Hufstetler.
Barbara
@Soprano2: This issue has been reported on. The percentage of municipal revenue from fines and citations exceeded 30% in Ferguson, MO. Think about what that would mean if that revenue went away, or went way down because police were no longer given quotas to fulfill. It would mean fewer police (not good if you are a member) or higher property taxes, or whatever else the locality is authorized to impose, such as supplemental sales tax or so-called hospitality taxes.
raven
@Soprano2: How about this, don’t fucking drink and drive?
Ken
Why? Has Trump got some history with them, or (quick google) ViacomCBS?
Jeffro
@Geminid: Awesome – thanks! I will take a look at all of them and see how it shakes out.
Geminid
@Barbara: I just read a battlefield guide to Chancellorsville prepared by the Army War College. It was mostly excerpts from commander’s reports written in the weeks after. The two things stood out: after talking tough Union commander Hooker lost his nerve as soon as the fighting started. And each side had 1500 soldiers killed with a corresponding number of wounded, even though Lee had half as many troops. Lee’s aggressive tactics were unsustainable if opposed by competent generals.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay:
Oh, it’s not that WE are bad at solving crimes, it’s that the POLICE are bad at it. Investigators in prosecutor’s offices and public defender’s offices routinely get more and better evidence, find more and better witnesses, and get more and better case resolutions than the police. The police are basically a bunch of lazy fuck-ups who too often follow biases down rabbit holes and substitute violence and threats for real detective work. Hell, if their paychecks were based on confirmed crime solving, they’d fucking starve.
debbie
@germy:
Right. She was the one who caught him trying to steal Fred’s entire estate from him and the rest of the family.
debbie
@Ken:
S&S is impossible to intimidate.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Braxton Bragg (who Fort Bragg is named after) is the same way, apparently Confederate General is the longest Bragg held a job in his life. Most of the time Bragg would be fired or resign after six months, this is including selling insurance for Jefferson Davis after the Civil War (boy howdy does insurance selling sound Trumperian). And what makes Bragg the perfect useless White Boi his went to the Great Gated Community in the Sky after stoking out while walking down the street and arguing.
Dorothy A. Winsor
My niece’s husband, James Hessler, has several well-written books about Gettysburg. He’s a docent for the battlefield. I first read one because we’re related, but he turned out to be an engaging writer.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: Been demanding it for years. Absolutely start with the damned airport.
The only Nathan Bedford Forrest statue they should keep is the one where he looks like a killer cyborg.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
On a happy note, RWNJ mom was complaining that her cable provider was having serious signal issues in her house. Fox News was either pixellated or jumpy all weekend, and that they’ve had three service calls over it (she even sleeps to Fox News.
She sounded like a junkie on withdrawals.
WaterGirl
@low-tech cyclist: I guess if we called it Undoing Some Of The Terrible Things Reagan Put Into Motion – USOFTTTRPIM – it wouldn’t have the same ring as CAHOOTS.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
What did you do?
H.E.Wolf
One of Dolly Parton’s many good qualities is that she would mind.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Happy to report that I did nothing, nor would I have the skills to.
This was just the universe doing something nice for once!
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I had seen the original video, but I had no idea whether the police had been called (they had) or whether there were any consequences for racists white woman and her husband.
Thanks for the followup info!
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Sweet! Got his Peach Orchard book.
Lately enjoying military history with Mr WereBear.
WereBear
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: It is an addiction.
germy
@Chief Oshkosh:
Or they’d lock up more innocent people.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Another OT, but Jesus Fuck, people in fraught child custody/termination cases would do well to delete all social media and get a goddamned flip phone.
I just had a client deservedly eat it over his inexcusable and threatening Facebook content. I can’t fix that sort of thing, and I’ll be damned if I have to say “you can’t physically threaten your child’s mother, social workers or the judge on social media” every goddamned time I interact with somebody.
WaterGirl
@Ken: Congressional bills promoted by Republicans? Absolutely?
But in this case, I disagree. I see people complaining about DEFUND the POLICE because not enough thought went into that word.
(There was a really good discussion of that word choice on a recent Lawfare podcast, and there were people on both sides of the argument, by the way.)
So I’m sure not going to criticize a city that is trying to do the right thing AND picked a good name for the program.
The Pale Scot
4 years ago I would say this is a troll, now?
MINORITY Actors and Actresses needed for upcoming rally June 20 Tulsa
Redshift
@Baud: The day the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage came down, I soooo wanted to put a rainbow wig on the Reagan statue at National Airport, but since it’s on the grounds of an airport, I was pretty sure I’d get arrested
Chief Oshkosh
@germy:
I completely agree with you. That’s why I wrote “confirmed case solving” — currently their paychecks are more-or-less based on doing SOMETHING, even if that something produces the exact opposite of what we pay them to do.
Barbara
@The Moar You Know: One of my funniest travel stories: On a return flight from Minneapolis, circa late 90s, my meeting ended early so I was trying to get an earlier flight. I told the lady at the counter that I was going to National/DCA, and she laughed and said she was going to upgrade me to first class because I didn’t call it Reagan. Wouldn’t happen today, but it always tickles me to think about it. Reagan was not popular among employees in any sector of the airline industry.
Redshift
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: My mother in law, who was not a RWNJ, started watching Fox when she started developing dementia, and I’m convinced it was because they repeat a few things endlessly, so it was easier to follow.
Fortunately, that also meant I could set her cable box to block it and she wouldn’t actively miss it.
Barbara
@WaterGirl: It might be okay to ask if you are the owner or have the owner’s permission, but when he said he WAS the owner and they challenged him by saying that they knew he wasn’t, when, apparently, he has lived there longer than they have and the police KNEW he was the owner, well, there is just not a lot to say.
PST
@cmorenc:
Much like there was no possible way for the colonies to beat the British Empire, but they could persist and make war politically and economically too draining to sustain. The South needed a Washington but got Lee.
Redshift
@WaterGirl:
I would vote for any candidate who pledged to introduce that bill.
Soprano2
@raven: Sure, I have no problem with that. My problem is with all the bullshit that surrounds the punishment. I don’t have any problem with people being punished, but IMHO the punishment for a first offense has gotten out of hand, especially considering that now a campaign is starting to lower the legal limit to .05. I don’t think it’s reasonable to charge someone $300 to take a 20-minute evaluation before the mandatory two-day “don’t drink and drive” course. If you already have car insurance, why do you have to buy bullshit “high-risk” insurance that doesn’t seem to actually pay for anything? It’s gone from a punishment to a whole industry that’s supported just by these arrests. I have no problem at all with coming down hard on a second offense, but I think the penalties for a first offense (especially if you’re pretty close to the legal limit) are getting ridiculous.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: +1
Similarly with “user fees” and salaries for elected officials.
We all benefit from sensible rules and we all should pay for it (to the extent we’re able). If only the well-to-do can run for office, or find ways to avoid taxes, or find ways to avoid punishment and fines, then society will eventually crumble (more than it is now).
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
They could also do a statue of Forrest gunning down a man in an hotel lobby too.
My though on this reading about the lives these Confederate Generals these Proud White Bois venerate; the common theme in all of these generals is they are utter failures at everything they did (yes Forrest one a few battles and second line Union troops, but Sherman merely ignored Forrest and got on with destroying the South’s infrastructure and winning the war) yet other white folks keep giving them job after job rather then forcing them to learn from their mistakes. This is really what racism is about in the US; a bunch of bums holding the blacks as hostage to the rest of the society gives these bums good jobs they don’t deserve.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Except the South didn’t have the time for that; the USN had petty much captured all but two of the major ports in the South by summer 1861. The South was having food problems in the cities by 1864 and there was a lot of Southern whites who were against succession and wouldn’t endure years of poverty just so rich plantation owners could keep on abusing their slaves.
Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
An important part of police reform is going to be fixing this. I think every local government should get their baseline funding for public safety from the state, and that in exchange they should have to send their income from fines back to the state government. Having policing be a profit center for local government turns it into an extortion racket under color of law.
catclub
@Kay:
Looking at numbers of police and the crime rate may be unfair, if all these other problems are also thrown onto the police. But if those ‘other’ tasks are gone, and the crime rate is substantially lower than in 1991 – why not lower numbers of police, too?
The Pale Scot
@cmorenc:
IIRC, Lee went to Gettysburg because there was a shoe factory there. Shoes being one of things the slavers couldn’t make on their own. Except for bespoke, custom riding boots for the officers. Keeping anyone other than themselves shod, not the slavers problem
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
Part of the problem, though, is that Missouri limits the tax rate local governments can charge. It undermines the ability of poor cities to maintain a reasonable level of public services.
Jinchi
@The Pale Scot: The ad for minority actors ends with the line
I’m not sure whether it’s a right wing troll or a parody of one, but I don’t believe even Brad Parscale is stupid enough to include a racist line like that in a legitimate call.
Miss Bianca
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Yeah, you’d think that would be a no-brainer, but…an abundance of smarts is probably *not* one of the reasons your clients are dealing with their situations in the first place.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The problem for the North was that it’s citizens’ war weariness could have resulted in the election of a Democrat in 1864 who would have negotiated a peace. The U.S. Navy did take a lot southern ports by May 1862, most notably New Orleans which was also the South’s largest city. But the most important port by far was Wilmington, and the U.S. did not get around to taking it until Frbruary 1865. Right up to end the South received very large quantities of war materials and tinned beef through Wilmington and sent them up the Weldon railroad to Petersburg and Richmond.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
I’m thinking landslide too, but not a Republican one.
St. Pete Stephanie
@Soprano2: Good point. I lived in Atlanta for 25 years and it is well known that making money off of traffic violations is a huge part of policing there. The police have quotas. A friend of mine is a cameraman for one of the local news stations in Atlanta and his team did a special report on the amount of money brought in by the police from various traffic tickets. For example, not coming to a full stop at a stop sign will land you with a $300 ticket (I speak from experience).
Uncle Cosmo
Mmm, close but no cheroot. Their best hope was that they controlled a resource that more powerful nations (specifically Britain) needed (specifically, cotton for its cloth mills) and that they could persuade the former to intervene to protect their supply (on favorable terms) of the latter (meanwhile denying it to competing mills in the North). Though their best strategy was in fact defensive – render it too costly for the North to force them back into the Union.**
** Harry Turtledove had an interesting take on this in his 11-volume Southern Victory series – Lee’s Special Order 191, with the dispositions and plans for invading the North via Maryland, does not fall into the hands of the Union, and without that intel, Antietam (mishandled by McClellan into a bloody draw) turns into a bloody rout, which persuades the Brits (& French) that the Confederacy can hold off the North; they recognize the CSA, the Union Navy can’t maintain its blockade of the South against them, and the war ends with secession accepted.
(I don’t claim his concept is compelling – among other things, other sources of cotton [Egypt, India] were coming on line at about that time, and the Brits had outlawed the slave trade in 1808 and slavery itself in 1833. Turtledove posits a remorseful Britain eventually pressuring the Confederacy into abolishing slavery, but the Rebs simply reclassify slaves as “serfs.” Broadly-racist 19th-century Britain’s guilty conscience is soothed, but “serf” existence remains somewhat, but only somewhat, worse than Jim Crow in our timeline.)
J R in WV
@Uncle Cosmo:
I used to enjoy Turtledove’s work, but eventually it began to leave me cool, if not actually cold. Not enough character development, so I didn’t care about them enough for the sometimes thin plot to hold my attention.
Haven’t read one in years now.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@The Moar You Know: Thr first time I drove past that thing, and every time since, I’ve felt it really needed the rest of the miniature golf course.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: U S. Grant wrote an interesting letter to his seccessionist-minded father in law before the war started. He pointed out that Cotton wasn’t King, that Great Britain would find sources other than the south to supply its mills. Jefferson Davis accelerated this process by embargoing cotton shipments. The South should have exported as many bales as it could before the U.S. blockade became effected, banked the gold, and delayed the development of alternate sources. One of many mistakes made by Davis. Sorry about the jibe at the Ravens the other day. I was feeling petty.
Uncle Cosmo
@J R in WV: I mostly agree with you – I don’t go out of my way to read Turtledove precisely because his handling of character development strike me as weak. And because in literary quality his prose resembles nothing so much as an elephant tapdancing in hip boots.** But I do find his alternate history thought-provoking (as it should be, the guy was trained as a Byzantine historian fercrapsake, and there are excellent reasons why [with a lower-case “b”] the term is synonymous with “hopelessly convoluted”). When a new volume shows up I usually make time to pore over a plot summary.
** FTR I feel the same way about much of Clarke and most of Asimov, though I treasure Childhood’s End and “Nightfall.”
Uncle Cosmo
@Geminid: Um, I must’ve missed your “jibe about the Ravens the other day.” What thread? I’ll go back & look, I might find it amusing. (A fan of Poe’s Crows on this blog needs reactive armor for skin, I won’t take it poisonously. :^D ) Are you a fan of the Squealers, Brownstains, Cheatriots, or do you just generally loathe the sport?
(ETA: Didn’t know about that Grant letter. Interesting! Another somewhat subtle fact is that the Say-owth was deficient in railroads & had to rely on water transport to get goods from one side of the CSA to the other – making a close blockade even more effective.)
Miss Bianca
@J R in WV: Plus, I have to say that I think the very idea of a “What if the Confederacy won” alt-history to be…unnecessary. Even insulting.
I mean, hell, you could argue that it *did* essentially win, if you go by the last 150 years of our racial history. We’re still fighting for Reconstruction.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: I was a Washington fan. Now I’m in recovery.
tokyokie
@Geminid:
The one I really don’t understand is putting Braxton Bragg’s on the big Army base in North Carolina, other than Bragg being a native North Carolinian. Bragg was arguably the Confederacy’s worst general. Other than Chickamauga, Bragg lost every battle he fought, and is generally regarded as quick-tempered and a miserable human being. Instead name the fort after George Henry Thomas, a native of Virginia who didn’t turn traitor, whose series of flanking maneuvers ran Bragg’s ass out of Chattanooga, and whose troops subsequently ran Bragg’s ass off Missionary Ridge.
cain
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You should call them up and tell them you’d pay them money to deny fox news. Hell I bet we could get a movement going where we pay for cable providers to not broadcast fox news to loved ones.