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Author Topic: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders  (Read 25765 times)

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Classic

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #80 on: May 12, 2012, 11:54:37 AM »

Yeah, like 40 times. Ganon is foreshadowed throughout. Agahnim is revealed at his final defeat to be a modest fraction of Ganon's power. Agahnim, while he serves other purposes as a villain exists primarily to foreshadow and psych you up for the fight with Ganon. That ultimate evil and total dick who you've known is the cause of all your problems for the whole game.

And don't go, "Oh! Ganon's not as tough as Agahnim," or, "But! You only fight Ganon once," or, "But that's how it always is in Legend of Zelda! It doesn't differentiate the titles to say Ganon is the big bad!"

Really? Did you finish Adventure of Link? I did. Where was the Ganon fight there guys? Answer: Nowhere.
In the 16 bit era, there wasn't a precedent in Zelda that guaranteed Ganon was a boss. But we knew he was going to be, because he was foreshadowed and talked up every time you fought Agahnim, and by golly he was tougher to beat than Agahnim. In part because Agahnim, unlike the other bosses, gave you a practice fight earlier in the game.
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Shinra

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #81 on: May 12, 2012, 11:56:23 AM »

You're assuming that minimum sentencing and stand your ground are not subcategories of racism.

I hate to agree with Classic on this, but I don't see how either of these are racist. If anything, minimum sentencing prevents judges from giving whites shorter sentences, and stand your ground is a misguided self-defense law, no racism is actually implied.One could argue about implementation, or that violent crime is predominately perpetrated by minorities, but in the case the former that's idiotic and/or racist judges and prosecutors, and in the case of the former, if we're going to go that route why don't we just erect the full strawman and say that we should abolish all law because poor minorities are more likely to break it, and :racist:

edit: before somebody takes my statement out of context, it is not racist to state that minorities commit more crimes because that's a proven fact. It'd be racist if I was saying that minorities commit more crimes because they are racially more inclined to do so. I'm aware that minorities are responsible for such a lopsided chunk of crime because crime is predominantly committed by the extremely poor, and fewer opportunities are available for minorities to succeed, mostly due to institutionalized racism.

Having said that, I still don't see how stand your ground is an extension of the institutionalized racism that plagues our society. If you want to blame anything for the potential issues it causes with race relations, blame laws like Right to Work and the various immigration "reforms" that have done such a fine job of putting young black and hispanic men out of jobs and onto the streets, or No Child Left Behind that makes sure that any school that can't afford to buy textbooks, pay competent teachers or keep toilet papers in the fucking stalls stays that way forever.

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Classic

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #82 on: May 12, 2012, 12:02:54 PM »

Strictly speaking Shinra, because there's apparently a racial bias in the judicial system, it's more accurate to say members of minoirity races are "convicted of more crimes".

It's surprisingly easy to either get out of, or remove, a DUI conviction from your record if you're white and "know the rules" for breaking the law.
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Thad

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #83 on: May 12, 2012, 12:08:34 PM »

Before we get back on track:

Dude.  Agahnim IS Ganon.
Zelda link to the past Boss fight Agahnim (2 time) 96
Zelda : A Link to the Past - Final Boss - GANON

If anything, minimum sentencing prevents judges from giving whites shorter sentences

Assuming whites were convicted at the same ratio as minorities.

and stand your ground is a misguided self-defense law, no racism is actually implied.

Bullshit.

Stand Your Ground is inherently racist.  "Feeling threatened" is thinly-veiled code for "SCARY BLACK MAN".

The Zimmerman/Martin example is not an anomaly.  It is the exact thing the law was written for.  You see a Scary Black Man, you shoot him, the police let you go.

edit: before somebody takes my statement out of context, it is not racist to state that minorities commit more crimes because that's a proven fact.

Saying "it's a proven fact" is not actually proof.

What's your source?  What's your source's rubric?

It's certainly true that minorities are disproportionately CONVICTED of violent crimes.
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Classic

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #84 on: May 12, 2012, 12:16:12 PM »

Agahnim IS Ganon.
I was pretty sure it was a plot point that Ganon was trapped in the dark world by the sages' seal. I'm also pretty sure Agahnim makes it out like he's part of some kind of Evil Trinity, or something. That he's an Evil Jesus. But I have VC, I have a SNES. I CAN DOUBLE CHECK THIS SHIT FOR MYSELF.

and stand your ground is a misguided self-defense law, no racism is actually implied.

Bullshit.

Stand Your Ground is inherently racist.  "Feeling threatened" is thinly-veiled code for "SCARY BLACK MAN".

Thanks Thad. I didn't have the heart to straight out tell Shinra he's been picking up racist talking points from someplace.

EDIT:
I almost missed an opportunity to use a pluralized possessive! What's wrong with me?
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Shinra

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #85 on: May 12, 2012, 12:22:20 PM »

I don't disagree, but the fact remains that more minority offenders are arrested and convicted for violent crime. Again, I'm not saying they're more likely to offend out of racial bias, but being poor and not having any opportunities makes you do some desperate shit. I'm not ashamed to say that during times of unemployment I've stolen to eat and considered (more than once) robbing a store to keep my goddamn power on. And that's the desperation I feel as a white person with a reasonable education and good job skills. A lot of black and hispanic men never get the opportunity to develop those skills or even complete their education, and when the best thing you can hope for is to get a ten dollar an hour job at the steel mill, it's not exactly shocking that racial minorities are more likely to be involved in robberies, muggings and gang related crimes. The government in the wake of desegregation instead created a world where ethnic communities are stuck, pereptually, in low-income areas with low standards of education. And every time some new standard is raised up, a new law comes into play to block it. It's not exactly a secret that No Child Left Behind specifically targets and leaves behind low-income schools , and it's not exactly a secret that laws like Right to Work were designed to target industries like unskilled labor and manufacturing, which tend to be the places unskilled workers go to find jobs that are actually worth doing. While, like Stand your Ground neither of these laws deliberately target minorities (only low income/low education areas), they still have a more direct effect than SYG, which is pretty unambiguous in what it sets out to do. Minorities dying because of SYG is a symptom of institutionalized racism, but SYG itself is not a cause or even directly a part of that system.

Quote from: Thad
Saying "it's a proven fact" is not actually proof.

What's your source?  What's your source's rubric?

It's certainly true that minorities are disproportionately CONVICTED of violent crimes.

OK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States

Quote
Murder
Homicide victimization by race, 1976-2005. [1]

    UCR, Murder Victims by Age, Sex, and Race, 2009: [4]
    UCR, Murder Offenders by Age, Sex, and Race, 2009: [5]
    UCR, Race and Sex of Victim by Race and Sex of Offender, Single victim/single offender, 2009: [6]

A United States Department of Justice report which surveyed homicide statistics between 1974 and 2004 stated that of the crimes surveyed, 52.2% of the offenders were Black, 45.8% were White, and 2% were Other Races. Of the victims in those same crimes, 50.9% were White, 46.9% were Black, and 2.1% were Other Races. The report further stated that "most murders are intraracial" with 86% of White murders committed by Whites, and 94% of Black murders committed by Blacks.[21] However, the document does not provide any details concerning what races or ethnicities are included in the designations "White", "Black", or "Other Races".

The report cited:
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_03.html

Quote
Race / Ethnicity    Number    Percentage of
U.S. population
Americans    308,745,538    100.0 %
White    223,553,265    72.4 %
Black or African American    38,929,319    12.6 %
American Indian or Alaska Native    2,932,248    0.9 %
Asian    14,674,252    4.8 %
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander    540,013    0.2 %
Some other race    19,107,368    6.2 %

Demographic breakdown of the US population shows that black and hispanic americans make up, combined, about 20% of the population, but, combined, account for some 60% of murders alone in the US.

Quote
Thanks Thad. I didn't have the heart to straight out tell Shinra he's been picking up racist talking points from someplace.
Pointing out that numbers line up isn't racist, guys. I don't know what to say. I already went over the rationale of why this is the case, but I guess you can pretend I'm fucking posting from Stormfront or something?

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TA

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #86 on: May 12, 2012, 12:29:25 PM »

The issue is that you're assuming those numbers are comprehensive.  "Minorities commit more crimes than whites" is the racist conclusion to be drawn from the data point of "Minorities are arrested, tried, and convicted at disproportionately high rates for their population count, as compared to whites".

You've talked in the past about having shoplifted perfume and stuff from grocery stores.  Were you arrested, tried, and convicted every single time you did that?  If not, do you think the times you weren't are included in any of those statistics?  Do you understand the point being made here?
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TA

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #87 on: May 12, 2012, 12:31:29 PM »

Agahnim IS Ganon.
I was pretty sure it was a plot point that Ganon was trapped in the dark world by the sages' seal. I'm also pretty sure Agahnim makes it out like he's part of some kind of Evil Trinity, or something. That he's an Evil Jesus. But I have VC, I have a SNES. I CAN DOUBLE CHECK THIS SHIT FOR MYSELF.

I'll save you the effort.  Here's the script.  Ganon specifically refers to Agahnim as his "alter ego".
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Shinra

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #88 on: May 12, 2012, 12:31:53 PM »

Oh:

Quote from: Thad

Bullshit.

Stand Your Ground is inherently racist.  "Feeling threatened" is thinly-veiled code for "SCARY BLACK MAN".

The Zimmerman/Martin example is not an anomaly.  It is the exact thing the law was written for.  You see a Scary Black Man, you shoot him, the police let you go.

I'm not saying the law does not set up situations like these, I am saying the law is not (as you are implying) inherently racist and is not directly furthering the pervasive racism in our society. I will not deny that, as a symptom of other factors, it has managed to for lack of a better term, put a racial group in it's sights. Get rid of SYG because it let an idiot like George Zimmerman with extremely poor judgement murder a child, not because of some perception that it's making racism worse in this country.

edit: And you know what, for that matter, get rid of it because somebody thought it'd be a good idea to go back to confront her husband with a firearm and fire a loaded weapon in the direction of her fucking children. I used to support laws like this, but it's really become apparent that people can't be trusted with the fucking responsibility of gun ownership in the first place.
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Shinra

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #89 on: May 12, 2012, 12:37:03 PM »

The issue is that you're assuming those numbers are comprehensive.  "Minorities commit more crimes than whites" is the racist conclusion to be drawn from the data point of "Minorities are arrested, tried, and convicted at disproportionately high rates for their population count, as compared to whites".

You've talked in the past about having shoplifted perfume and stuff from grocery stores.  Were you arrested, tried, and convicted every single time you did that?  If not, do you think the times you weren't are included in any of those statistics?  Do you understand the point being made here?

I'm not assuming that they're comprehensive, but I'm also not buying the opposite assumption that Whites are committing enough crimes to equalize the table but they're just not being tried for any of them.

Can we agree that a greater amount of crime is committed by persons at, just above, and below the poverty line?

Can we agree that a greater percentage of persons at, above and below that line are minorities, mostly due to institutionalized racism as I've already discussed?

(here's a source for minorities and poverty, didn't dig too deep into it though: http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/)

I know it's a controversial point, but that doesn't make it a false one.
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Classic

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #90 on: May 12, 2012, 12:40:19 PM »

Do you get, at least, why we're insisting on emphasizing "CONVICTED" instead of "COMMITTED". Those stats are for convictions and a quick wiki for wrongful execution (since we're not holding ourselves to better sources) show why equating conviction to actually committing a crime isn't accurate. Not to mention all sorts of plea and informational bargains that get struck.
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Classic

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #91 on: May 12, 2012, 12:43:08 PM »

Ganon specifically refers to Agahnim as his "alter ego".
Obviously, I now have to gather the full script for the SNES (Japanese???) version, so that we can argue what the real "Ganon" is here.
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Shinra

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #92 on: May 12, 2012, 12:46:40 PM »

Except that's not for convictions, that's for the actual perpetrators of actual crimes. That includes plea bargains, no contest, etc. Please read the actual article instead of dismissing what I am saying outright.

I am not going to deny that, and have not denied, at ANY POINT IN THIS THREAD, that black people are inordinately represented in American prisons and are inordinately wrongfully convicted of crime. Even if you account for wrongful convictions and white crime being ignored, minorities in America STILL make up a disproportionate amount of violent offenders regardless, simply by virtue of being MUCH more likely to be poor.
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Brentai

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #93 on: May 12, 2012, 12:49:53 PM »

SYG is not racist, it's classist.

This is still a fucking problem.

EDIT: That was not an counterpoint to anyone.  If you get defensive about this post I will poke your eyes right out.

DOUBLE EDIT: Oh, nevermind then.
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Shinra

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #94 on: May 12, 2012, 12:51:56 PM »

Not disagreeing.
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Classic

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #95 on: May 12, 2012, 12:54:07 PM »

Can we agree that a greater amount of crime is committed by persons at, just above, and below the poverty line?
I'm not sure we can even agree on this point. The further that you drift away from this presumably "high risk" level of wealth, the more resources you have to deflect conviction for a committed crime.
If you wanted to prove your assertion, It might also make sense to refer describe a "convicts per capita" rather than a straight number of convictions to deflect questions of population size and recidivism.
It might also be interesting to see, the breakdown of court cases that actually result in conviction based on the race of the defendant or the rate of their tax returns.
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Classic

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #96 on: May 12, 2012, 01:11:23 PM »

Except that's not for convictions, that's for the actual perpetrators of actual crimes. That includes plea bargains, no contest, etc. Please read the actual article instead of dismissing what I am saying outright.
I don't actually see where in which article this is explained, but don't think I'm dismissing what you're saying outright. I'm trying to point out an important, if subtle, difference in the way lots of people like to characterize DoJ statistics.

Also:
SYG is not racist, it's classist.
Classist, all too often, is code for, "It's not racist, because sometimes it disenfranchises white people too!"

Granted, I don't think many lawmakers actually think to themselves, "How do I keep those damned minoirities down?" So much as, "How do I protect my own wealth?" But the difference is negligible to the people crushed by poorly conceived laws.
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Royal☭

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #97 on: May 12, 2012, 06:41:07 PM »

I know it's a controversial point, but that doesn't make it a false one.

The problem is the point you're trying to make is vague and you're just stating numbers without any actual exploration of them. It is true that minorities are arrested more than whites, but in spite of this you're still trying to argue that it's situational rather than systemic. Basically, that even though they have poor living conditions, minorities are still more likely to be criminals. I dispute this claim, as the numbers I crunched don't add up.

According to the 2012 census abstract (See: People Below Poverty Level by Selected Characteristics: 2009), the following are numbers and percentages of three main races below poverty line:

White: 30,888,000 or 15.7% of 196.8 million
Black: 10,575,000 or 28.06% of 37.7 million
Hispanic: 12,350,000 or 24.47% of 50.5 million

Of note, each of those is the percentage of poverty within their own population, rather than the aggregate. IE White is percent of whites in poverty, not how many whites make up the total.

Now just from those numbers, you can see evidence of a systemic imbalance.

But, once you enter in the FBI records on Arrests, you can get some interesting insight:

Of the 10.7 million arrests in 2009, 7.39 million were white, 3.03 were Black, and the rest were American Indian and Asian Pacific.

As a percentage of their overall population:

3.75% of Whites were arrested
8.03% of Blacks were arrested

That's a pretty staggering difference in arrests, with blacks, at 12.2% of the population, being arrested at more than double the amount of whites, who make up 63.8% of the population. If whites were arrested at the same rate, there would be 15,745,404 arrests of whites. That's a pretty staggering number. Even more staggering when you consider that for the purposes of this document, the FBI is counting Whites and Hispanics as the same*.  If I did the same, that puts the White population at 247,295,146 and bumps the rate down to 2.99%. Even crazier! And that bumps the number of Whites who should be arrested up to 19.8 million.

Now, Shinra posited that a lot of crime was poverty based. So let's take a look at the rates of arrests vs the rate of poverty. For the purposes of this exercises, let's assume that ALL crime is the result of poverty.

If you compare the amount of whites in poverty with the amount arrested, you find that 23.9% of impoverished whites have been arrested.
For blacks, you find that 28.6% of impoverished blacks have been arrested.

Again, you're starting to see the systemic bias.

BUT, if you compare the White + Hispanic total of 43,238,000 you find that only 17.1% of Whites are arrested. Staggeringly lower, that's more than 10 points difference.

So while the data shows, empirically, that Blacks are arrested for more crimes at a higher rate than other ethnic groups, even in just their poverty, it's impossible to tell the WHY of that situation. And personal factors like economics, disposition, welfare and race cannot alone explain the discrepancy. If they did, the rate of arrests among the impoverished would be nearly equal. I chose arrests because I sought to show the systemic problem, namely that for some reason blacks are more likely to be arrested for a crime than a white. Go figure.

The reason I bring all of this information up is become this number is often cited as to why minorities (blacks especially) are The Thugs. But, it more highlights how little insight this gives us to the relation of race and crime. For one thing, we actually no very little about how many of a particular race COMMITs a crime. This only tells me how many are arrested for crimes, but in the abstract doesn't tell me how many were bad or incorrect arrests. If I had more resources, I could probably find and crunch the numbers on the percent that go to trial and get arrested. That's more interesting.

That said, this information IS pertinent to societal assumptions about race and crime. As the Martin shooting was starting to gather steam in the national press, there were supporters from Zimmerman's neighborhood who came out to defend him by stating that Zimmerman was trying to stop a series of burglaries. Nearly everyone who stated this information also backed it up by saying the perpetrators were also black. What's significant is that this assumption went unchallenged (remember: If people were getting away with break-ins and nobody could catch them, how did they know they were all black?).

It plays nicely into the longstanding American myth that the black man is just a violent thug, barely restrained by society. And while this myth still exists, things like increased police patrols of black neighborhoods will happen. You also get things like police just stopping black men on the street to inspect them, which helps to up the arrest numbers.

Hope all of this made sense. For a more eloquent take on what I'm trying to say, read Chauncey DeVega's piece on Alternet

Shinra

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #98 on: May 13, 2012, 07:59:40 AM »

Quote
but in spite of this you're still trying to argue that it's situational rather than systemic. Basically, that even though they have poor living conditions, minorities are still more likely to be criminals. I dispute this claim, as the numbers I crunched don't add up.

I maybe didn't word it properly except I had a disclaimer in one of the early posts that said that's exactly not what I was saying.

What I said is that across all economic lines, per capita, minorities are more likely to be the perpetrator of a crime. And I stated that because of a pattern of systemic racism throughout our culture, they are more likely to be involved in crimes because they are more likely to be poor, and because the poor have more reason to rob a car, rob a grocery store, mug somebody, operate in a gang, etc.

The argument I was making wasn't that blacks are bad and criminals and they're just naturally criminallin' it up, the argument I was making is that SYG is not directly contributing to the great mesh of institutionalized racism that makes up the American justice and political system. SYG is not cutting funding to schools in low-income areas, SYG is not allowing employers to more easily fire unskilled laborers and tradesmen in the manufacturing industry, SYG is not busting up unions for the manufacturing sector.

I argued that if you are going to look at a law that is deliberately furthering the racial oppression of blacks and hispanics in America, look at No Child Left Behind, which insures that low-income poorly testing schools will never stop being low-income poorly testing schools and Right to Work, which makes it easier than ever for an employer in the manufacturing sector to fire and underpay and underinsure what used to be middle class workers. Both of these laws have far reaching effects on people of all walks of life, but they negatively effect the poor more than any other group. Given that black and hispanic people are much more likely to be poor, statistically (I think I linked this earlier, I'm a little too out of it to dig it up right now) it is not a stretch to say that these laws are both actively and deliberately contributing to racial oppression in America.

Stand your Ground was intended to be a bandstandy Gun Rights Fuck Yeah law, and to be honest with you I think the reason it was passed in the first place wasn't "People need to be able to protect their families" so much as "Statistically speaking, I think i'm going to lose fewer constitutients from gun deaths than I am from gun supporters who don't vote for me if this bill doesn't pass". There's a lot of laws out there that oppress minorities and are allowed to, but the first really, truly egregious misuse of this law only a few years after it's passage is enough to get politicians around the country questioning it's continued use due to the incredible mass outrage it sparked. Yes, SYG definately has a worse effect on minorities than whites, for a lot of reasons (not the last of which is perception) but I don't think I would say that SYG is continuing to further racism in the US. I feel the same way, no, even the opposite about minimum sentencing - get rid of it and we go back to a white guy getting 3 years for burning down and killing a church full of black people. The pendulum swings both ways, here, and we already know that society gives white people lighter sentences to begin with. No need to encourage that any further.

Of course that's not to say that the criminal justice system in America doesn't have a lot of problems, not the least of which is our tendency to treat criminals like animals, not provide them any serious kind of help while in prison to insure that they exit the place as a functioning member of society, etc... I could go on all day about prision and justice reform. But I don't think minimum sentencing is part of that structure that needs to be cut - reworked, perhaps. But shit, if you'd just take 3 strikes out of the equation I don't even think minimum sentencing would be that bad.
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Classic

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Re: License to Go Plan Recreational Murders
« Reply #99 on: May 13, 2012, 11:07:36 AM »

Little point of nothing that's been bugging me here:
Most (if not all) criminal law in Illinois already has minimum and maximum sentences. Though, having never been punished by them, I don't have any calculus by which to determine if a minimum is cruelly high. That said, what I think we're actually complaining about in the Marissa case is fixed sentences, rather than minimum ones. And I don't know what, if any, white collar crime calls for prison time. So yes, that most of these fixed sentences and high minimums falls on violent crime is a "regressive" policy (scare quotes used because I have a bad feeling that I'm misusing a technical term while complaining about people misusing technical terms).

Non sequitor to post relevant to Shinra's comments regarding laws and how relatively racist they are.
Anyway, here's the thing: No Child Left Behind is a bunch of cock smoking businessmen lounging in their money jacuzzis in a great big circle jerk about how efficient their companies are (at making them money) and deciding to apply the same kind of shortsighted, brain-dead schemes that make businesses "efficient" to institutions that are fundamentally not businesses. For example, institutions that don't and should not function under a profit motive.

The objective isn't to marginalize the powerless, although No Child Left Behind does this very well. It's to encourage competition between schools. Which makes sense, because competition is the driving force for improvement in a capitalist system (exception given for [insert unbusted monopoly here]).

Every law, even racist ones, are designed so that there's some mental construction or gymnastics in which they're not racist. Like Shinra, I'm even willing to give high minimum sentences a pass on being racist, and until the Marissa case, I might have said that SYG isn't as inherently racist or marginalizing as No Child Left Behind. But here we are with two examples putting into sharp relief the unforgivably racist reality of Stand Your Ground and its implementation.
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