***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[wavycrocket]

 

[rexanglorum]

Eff it, I want the police to be punished. I want their culture destroyed. In addition to freeing up funding for other, more socially beneficial programs, I also want what peace officers that remain to be folded into the the civil service system in a given city or county. I don’t want police and sheriff departments who act like a lavishly compensated, insulated para military wing of capital and white supremacy. The best way to change that behavior is to stop our policy of having police and sheriff departments that are lavishly compensated, politically insulated paramilitary wing of capital and white supremacy. I don’t want them to be a “brotherhood” any more than are the other city and county workers.

 

[Fozz]

Trump: 1/50. lmaoooo

 

[elpablo21]

 

[biggie62]

if you and wifey band together y’all can get a PS5off stockx.Trump knows exactly what he’s doing

 

[wavycrocket]

I cannot wait to see Lou Donna go OFF tonight

 

[Nike Jordan]

Trump: 1/50. lmaoooo

 

[dinyc3st]

$600?! it's almost as if the government doesn't understand what's dropping on snkrs and supreme this month! imma need much more than $600
hopefully they do another round of the EIDL so i can @dwalk31 it and flim flam the government too.

No cap, I flipped the $1200 + extra via Dior 1's lmao

 

[Methodical Management]

and the fact that the union opposes, is a really absurd retort, what is that evidence of? would they be more likely to endorse defund the police?

Try to keep up, please. You argued that we need to maintain or increase funding to expand patrols, because you apparently think New York City got it right in the 90's. I'm telling you that spending more money isn't necessarily going to yield any of that.
Increased overtime pay isn't "more cops performing more patrols."

If your response to this is, "well, maybe we should stop wasting all that money on overtime," congratulations: you've graduated from "1) cut budgets 2) ????? 3) better police" and recognize that there's MASSIVE waste in the current system, the continuation of which would only be counterproductive to your goal of increasing public safety.

We need to move beyond the budgetary ransom payments of cutting blank checks to the police and military in exchange for White suburban peace of mind.

Pre-corona America was not in a time of rising poverty. It was a hot job market with real wage growth at the bottom of income distribution. post vaccine I imagine there's gunna be a pretty robust recovery.
we are were however in a time of rising violence in cities.

So if violence was rising at a time when police spending was reaching record levels, are you claiming that we're not spending enough?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/07/over-past-60-years-more-spending-police-hasnt-necessarily-meant-less-crime/

This is not the strong linear correlation you seem to think it is.

You don't need to hold a graduate degree in social science to recognize that complex social phenomena resist univariate explanations.

You conveniently handwave away how other countries - including your own - are able to maintain lower crime rates with fewer police officers.


Do you think the US national defense budget is too high? We've been spending $10 billion per year on F-35 fighter planes. How effective have those been at fighting the coronavirus?

If anyone says, "hey, maybe we should spend less money on fighter planes and more money protecting Americans from disease, poverty, and hunger", do you think the appropriate response would be to argue, "no, we should retrofit F-35s to help with all those things. They can perform aerial supply drops to distribute face masks! Improving the F-35 program costs money!"


Policing has an outsize role in maintaining American safety - especially while police officers constitute an active threat to public safety for so many Americans.

You talk a lot about public opinion polls (while ironically ignoring the stunning unpopularity of your arguments in this thread, because what's popular isn't always right - unless it happens to be something with which you agree), yet you are completely ignoring the public's aversion to increased government spending generally.

If you think "defund the police" is unpopular, try "raise middle class taxes." If most Americans are averse to tax increases associated with Medicare for All, even when it would result in a net decrease in their healthcare spending, and oppose a Green New Deal designed to ensure the planet's continuing habitability, how realistic do you think your "more is more" notion of adding a suite of new public services would be without so much as touching the low hanging fruit of reducing spiraling police overtime pay or militarization to help offset those costs?

If anyone is being naïve here, it's you.

on a side note I find this Coates "black bodies" language that's permeated to be totally absurd, it was a fine literary device in a book you can just say black people it's cool.

When used in a way that is synonymous with "Black people," I would agree with you. It's become this decade's version of "Black nihilism": a faddish form of social currency for dilettantes and poseurs to prove awareness of the season's most fashionable social justice pocket read.

In this instance, however, we're talking about the reduction of Black people to Black bodies, by a system that dehumanizes and disenfranchises Black Americans.
I used the term to reference how those patrols you're so fond of function as resource acquisition for bond and "corrections" industries.

You're propping up a corrupted system by accepting its current spending levels as valid. That's not reform.

absurd fascicle comparisons

Don't tell me you found a green mask in an otherwise sparkling Canadian alley and decided to try it on.

now if you wanna "defund prisons" that I can get behind.

Really? You think spending less on something could *gasp* improve it?! Magical thinking, I say!

"It's a bizzare I thought only fiscal consertives thought "we spend less on government and it gets better" made sense."
"my point I don't see why you would shift those prison guards to more useful crime prevention and solving functions."
"my larger point is that reform costs money. Things that improve prisons cost money."

Prison rape allegations have tripled since 2011. As of 2010, roughly one in five prisoners experienced assault. "Closing prisons doesn't improve prison conditions!"

"1. Spend less
2. ????
3. better prisons."

What about paying off prison wardens to coax them into retirement? What about improving training for prison staff, expanding counseling and rehabilitation programs, and upgrading facilities to allow compliance with CDC guidelines? Assuming you're not in favor of prison labor, how are we going to offset those funding sources without tax dollars?

You're so fixated on your fasicissicle slogan that you failed to explain how this will actually produce better conditions!


Any of this still sounding sophisticated and compelling to you?

Welcome to your argument: All strawmen, no crops.

 

[IATT]

 

[whywesteppin]

Was there a not-so-subtle reference to ninja in there?

I love it.

 

[IATT]

 

[elpablo21]

Vilsac seems to be garnering the most displeasure out of Biden's picks

 

[Based Jesus]

Monsanto? Yeah he could've done better there.

 

[gry60]

 

[tomdiginson]

Baltimore is like the 20th largest city in the country but top 5 in Police per capita...All these cops in the city resulted in 300+ murders a year (like only 15% solved in a good year), and a known rep as one of the most grimiest departments in the nation...More funding n boys on the street don’t seem to be fixing crime issues there...Most of the high crime places in the USA already have big budgets n lots of police around, but that’s probly not one of the stats that yo looked up for his arguments

At this point, I think dude is just looking for attention. He's arguing just for the sake of and this is probably the most replies he's ever gotten on the site.

 

[IATT]

 

[fargin]

He read that script, like there was a gun pointed at him off camera.

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[swendro]

 

[Brownstone]

They don't want news, they want Pro-Trump coverage. Say what you want Trump about to cake up by starting his own news station. They should make it as accessible as possible, because there is no way their viewers actually read or write.

 

[dinyc3st]

Ya know, that's a perfect comparison on how the GOP look right now lmao

 

[dinyc3st]

That's a big deal, actually. Seeesh Trump really runs a cult

 

[dinyc3st]

He read that script, like there was a gun pointed at him off camera.

He definitely look shook af! lmao