arkrud wrote:

holfresh wrote:

arkrud wrote:

misterearl wrote:FACTORIAL

The disparities appear to be even starker for unarmed suspects, according to an analysis of 2015 police killings by the Guardian. Racial minorities made up about 37.4 percent of the general population in the US and 46.6 percent of armed and unarmed victims, but they made up 62.7 percent of unarmed people killed by police.

More than half of murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, and fraud in US are committed by black Americans.
African Americans represent 13% of population.
http://civilrightsmovement.net/us-crime-statistics-by-race/
I know that there are unfortunate historical reasons for this.
But it clearly explains why law enforcement is getting into conflict and killing black people more that anybody else.

I had to come out of retirement for this one...Maybe you and CashMoney, who claims he works in the Criminal Justice system but goes to a Financial website to get stats on Crime, need a few pointers on where to find stats to support your arguments...

According to the FBI, the people who are responsible for gathering these stats, as of 2014:

1. Whites in America commits 69.4% of all crime versus 27.8% by blacks
2. Whites in America commits 59.4% of all violent crimes versus 37.7% by blacks..Cash Money had non-whites including blacks committing 90% of all violent crimes...

According to a study by the Washington Post, Unarmed blacks are 7 times as likely to killed by police than unarmed whites...SEVEN TIMES!!!!

In 2015, The Post documented 990 fatal shootings by police, 93 of which involved people who were unarmed. Black men accounted for about 40 percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police and, when adjusted by population, were seven times as likely as unarmed white men to die from police gunfire, The Post found.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-43
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/study-finds-police-fatally-shoot-unarmed-black-men-at-disproportionate-rates/2016/04/06/e494563e-fa74-11e5-80e4-c381214de1a3_story.html

Thank You.
The correction is taken...
Pretty close correlation between violent crimes and unarmed black people killed by police.

This shouldn't be viewed as an black problem. It should be viewed as an American problem. Many of our ancestors fought in Wars and helped build America to be America. Everyone should be discussed whenever seeing these type of numbers because they point to injustice for American citizens.

When you have have a race of people go to jail at a waaay higher rate for the SAME crimes. There is no way to spin that. There is no excuses for it. Its pure injustice. People can't claim we are one in one breath and then back the bigots by trying to create excuses for injustice the next.

If there wasn't video camera's and social media spreading actual visual evidence world wide about racism and injustice. We would still be told that racism is dead.

Neill Franklin is a black man. But he'll admit that after decades of working at the Baltimore Police Department and Maryland State Police, he harbored a strong bias against young black men.

Franklin, now executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which opposes the war on drugs, explained, "When I'd see a young black male in a particular neighborhood, or his pants were sagging a little bit, or he walked a certain way … my first thoughts were, 'Oh, I wonder if he's selling drugs.'"

As the media has increased its scrutiny of police killings of black men, some of the cases have involved black police officers. In the case of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, for example, three of the six police officers charged for Gray's death are black. This has led to some questions about whether racial bias is really at play — can a black cop be racist against his own racial group?

RelatedUnderstanding the racial bias you didn't know you had
But social psychologists and criminal justice experts say this question fundamentally misunderstands how institutional racism affects everyone, regardless of race. Racial bias isn't necessarily about how a person views himself in terms of race, but how he views others in terms of race, particularly in different roles throughout his everyday life. And systemic racism, which has been part of the US since its founding, can corrupt anyone's view of minorities in America.

In the case of police, all cops are dealing with enormous cultural and systemic forces that build racial bias against minority groups. Even if a black cop doesn't view himself as racist, the way policing is done in the US is racially skewed — by, for example, targeting high-crime neighborhoods that are predominantly black. And these policing tactics can actually create and accentuate personal, subconscious bias by increasing the likelihood that officers will relate blackness with criminality or danger — leading to what psychologists call "implicit bias" against black Americans. Combined, this means the system as a whole as well as individual officers, even black ones, by and large act in ways that are deeply racially skewed.

"The culture of policing is one that's so strong that it can overwhelm individual racial differences," L. Song Richardson, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, said. "People are cops first, and they're their race second."

Police enforce the law in a racially skewed manner

Scott Olson/Getty Images
Police detain a black man in Ferguson, Missouri.
A lot of US police work is inherently racially biased. Cops are told to patrol predominantly poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods that are so segregated that most of the residents are black. And since police are mostly present in these neighborhoods, most of the arrests and actions they take end up impacting a disproportionate numbers of black people.

"When departments concentrate enforcement efforts, for example, in high-crime areas, those areas are likely to be areas with disproportionate numbers of minority residents," David Sklansky, a law professor at Stanford Law School, said. "That means minority residents of the community are getting policed more intensely than people that live in other neighborhoods that have smaller proportion of minority residents and lower crime rates."

The problem is police aren't just deployed in predominantly black neighborhoods; they're also encouraged to arrest and ticket as many people as possible while on the job. Until 2014, a federal grant program financially incentivized local police departments to make as many arrests as possible for drug crimes. Many police departments also use number of arrests as a measure for evaluating individual police officers for raises and promotions. Coupled with deployment in certain areas, these incentives effectively encourage cops to arrest minority residents in large numbers.

"Our criminal justice system and different aspects of our criminal justice system are racist in application," Franklin, the retired police major, said. "Even if there was no intent in the design for racism, we've gotten to a place where it's the result of our policies."

Take, for instance, policing in Chicago. This map from Project Know, a drug addiction resource center, shows drug arrests were concentrated in the Windy City's low-income neighborhoods, which are mostly black, between January and October 2014:

drugs and poverty Chicago
Project Know
The disproportionate enforcement in black neighborhoods helps explain broader disparities across the US justice system. For example, black Americans are much more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, even though they're not significantly more likely to use or sell drugs.

Franklin, echoing findings from a Sentencing Project report from earlier this year, said the reason for higher drug arrests among black people is linked to how people in poorer, urban areas use and sell drugs, which makes it easier for police officers to catch them in the act. "Drug selling and use among whites tends to be more indoors, among friends, word of mouth, and there's generally no violence associated," Franklin said. "But overall, the drug selling and dealing in black communities tends to be in outdoor areas, because of the urban design and the [economic] competition that's involved in a community with blight, poverty, and a lack of jobs."

drug use and arrests
Joe Posner/Vox
Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Program, said this type of racially disparate enforcement is what caused so many problems in Ferguson, Missouri, where a scathing Justice Department investigation uncovered a pattern of racial bias in the local police force following the police shooting of Michael Brown.

In Ferguson, cops were pressured by the city government to raise as much revenue as possible by ticketing residents. Since they were most active in neighborhoods that are predominantly black, these residents were targeted at hugely disproportionate rates: Ferguson is about 67 percent African-American, but from 2012 to 2014, 85 percent of people stopped, 90 percent of people who received a citation, and 93 percent of people arrested were black.

"It's not necessarily what's happening with one police officer," Parker said. "There are structural reasons for this happening."

What's worse, Sklansky said this type of disproportionate enforcement can create "a vicious cycle" in which black residents are fearful of police, making them more likely to display discomfort around cops, which in turn makes officers more likely to perceive black residents as suspicious. "Part of the way police patrol is to look for people who look like they're acting suspicious," Sklansky said. "So even a police officer who tries not to be racist can wind up giving more of his attention and having more of his suspicion directed to members of minority groups than to white citizens."

Individual cops are conditioned to discriminate against black people

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
A woman faces off with police officers during the Baltimore riots.
Of course, racism can and often does show up at the individual level. Some of this may be explicit — like in North Miami Beach, Florida, where police officers used mug shots of black people as target practice. But very often, this type of racism culminates at the implicit level, where people's subconscious biases guide their choices even when they're not fully aware of it.

Over time, police officers are effectively conditioned toward implicit bias. When cops are thrown into situations every day in which black people are viewed as criminal suspects, they begin to identify people's race as an indicator for crime and danger.

"Just by virtue of watching the news every night you learn the unconscious bias, because you will always see young black men being connected to criminality," Richardson of the UC Irvine School of Law said. "Police officers are engaging in proactive policing in urban neighborhoods that may be majority nonwhite. And as a result, they're constantly practicing the association of nonwhite with crime."

But it can get even more complicated, Richardson said, because stops of innocent people can still reinforce implicit bias. "If [a cop] were to frisk someone and find no evidence of criminal activity, what he's likely to say to himself is, 'Oh, well, this guy's guilty, he just got away with it this time,' thereby strengthening the association and affecting his memory of the event later," she said. "In that messed-up way, he actually strengthens his unconscious bias."

"IN MANY WAYS THE COLOR BLUE BECOMES MORE IMPORTANT THAN BLACK AND WHITE"

A review of the research on implicit bias, conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and California State University Northridge, found police officers possess this type of subconscious bias, although it's less pronounced than the general public's bias in use-of-force simulations.

Josh Correll, a psychology professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, tested these biases through a video game simulation in which people were tasked with quickly identifying whether virtual suspects possessed a weapon and should, as a result, be shot. The results: subjects of all races were quicker to shoot black suspects compared with white ones.

Correll explained to Vox's Jenée Desmond-Harris, "We think this represents an awareness of a cultural stereotype — not that our participants believe necessarily that black men are more dangerous than white men, but by virtue of movies they watch, music they listen to, etc., they're getting the idea that black male goes with violent. The group and the idea are linked together in their minds whether they agree with that stereotype or not."

It's also possible that being a police officer and integrating into the culture of the job could make a cop, even a black one, racist. Adam Waytz, a social psychologist at Northwestern University's Kellogg of School of Management, pointed to the concept of "de-individuation," which says that people lose their sense of self-awareness while in groups. This changes the self-identity of all police officers, regardless of race. So black cops may think of themselves as members of the police department rather than members of a certain race while on duty, making it easier for them to act in ways that discriminate against members of their own race.

"When you're talking about police interactions, in many ways the color blue becomes more important than black and white," Parker of the ACLU said. "People identify more with their role as a police officer and all of the cultural things that entails more than their race."

There are no perfect solutions to institutional racism

Andrew Burton/Getty Images
A man gestures the shape of a heart in front of police in Baltimore.
Given how deeply ingrained racism has been in America throughout history, none of these problems will likely go away in the foreseeable future. But there are things police departments can do to diminish the effects of racial biases.

Awareness can go a long way by forcing police officers to consider and try to control their own biases. Waytz pointed to research that found National Basketball Association referees became less racially biased once their propensity to call more fouls on black players were exposed by previous studies and widespread media coverage. This indicates, Waytz said, that racial bias can be diminished through awareness.

But awareness can also backfire. Richardson of the UC Irvine School of Law pointed to what's called "stereotype threat," which can lead people to act out in dangerous ways if they're nervous about reinforcing stereotypes attributed to a group they belong to. Preliminary results from unpublished studies, she said, have found that if a cop is aware of the stereotype that cops are racist, he may get nervous about reinforcing that stereotype during encounters with black suspects — and that increased anxiety may make him more likely to use force.

AWARENESS CAN FORCE COPS TO CONSIDER AND CONTROL THEIR OWN BIASES

As another step, Richardson suggested that police officers may be able to diminish their own implicit biases by taking greater steps to engage and interact with the community in ways that aren't inherently confrontational. If police are exposed to the daily lives of black residents in a very personal way, they may come to realize — particularly at a subconscious level — that they shouldn't associate blackness with crime or danger.

Training could also help diminish some racial biases. But Richardson emphasizes that this training shouldn't just focus on split-second decisions about whether to use force, but rather more slow-taking decisions about whether a police officer should make a stop that could lead to a use-of-force scenario. For example, in the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, better training may have pushed former police officer Darren Wilson to not stop Brown for a petty crime like jaywalking — and, as a result, avoid the escalating circumstances that led Wilson to shoot Brown to death.

"The time frame that I want to look at is how that interaction began in the first place," Richardson explained. "So if they're about to stop and frisk someone, maybe they should slow down first and ask themselves, 'Would I find this behavior suspicious if the person were a young white man instead of a young black man?'"

"NOTHING SOLVES RACISM COMPLETELY"

Creating more diverse police forces can also help police departments build trust, according to Sklansky of Stanford University. "There's less likely to be an us-and-them attitude between police and the community," he said. "A diverse department can still have problems keeping the trust or even gaining in the first place the trust of minority communities, but it's likely to have fewer problems than a department that's monolithically white or doesn't reflect the demographics of the community."

More broadly, new policies and reforms could help address the problems that lead to systemically skewed enforcement. Policies could be reformed to put less emphasis on arrests for petty crimes, which could help diminish some of the day-to-day harassment black communities experience at the hands of police. And businesses and lawmakers could do more to invest in impoverished neighborhoods to address the socioeconomic issues that make certain places more prone to crime.

But while all of these ideas could all lead to improvements, they most likely won't eliminate all racial biases in police departments.

"Nothing solves racism completely," Sklansky said. "Racism in general is a deeply entrenched problem in all societies, including America's. We've made enormous strides in the United States in confronting that problem in some ways but not in others."

newyorknewyork wrote:

arkrud wrote:

holfresh wrote:

arkrud wrote:

misterearl wrote:FACTORIAL

The disparities appear to be even starker for unarmed suspects, according to an analysis of 2015 police killings by the Guardian. Racial minorities made up about 37.4 percent of the general population in the US and 46.6 percent of armed and unarmed victims, but they made up 62.7 percent of unarmed people killed by police.

More than half of murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, and fraud in US are committed by black Americans.
African Americans represent 13% of population.
http://civilrightsmovement.net/us-crime-statistics-by-race/
I know that there are unfortunate historical reasons for this.
But it clearly explains why law enforcement is getting into conflict and killing black people more that anybody else.

I had to come out of retirement for this one...Maybe you and CashMoney, who claims he works in the Criminal Justice system but goes to a Financial website to get stats on Crime, need a few pointers on where to find stats to support your arguments...

According to the FBI, the people who are responsible for gathering these stats, as of 2014:

1. Whites in America commits 69.4% of all crime versus 27.8% by blacks
2. Whites in America commits 59.4% of all violent crimes versus 37.7% by blacks..Cash Money had non-whites including blacks committing 90% of all violent crimes...

According to a study by the Washington Post, Unarmed blacks are 7 times as likely to killed by police than unarmed whites...SEVEN TIMES!!!!

In 2015, The Post documented 990 fatal shootings by police, 93 of which involved people who were unarmed. Black men accounted for about 40 percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police and, when adjusted by population, were seven times as likely as unarmed white men to die from police gunfire, The Post found.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-43
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/study-finds-police-fatally-shoot-unarmed-black-men-at-disproportionate-rates/2016/04/06/e494563e-fa74-11e5-80e4-c381214de1a3_story.html

Thank You.
The correction is taken...
Pretty close correlation between violent crimes and unarmed black people killed by police.

This shouldn't be viewed as an black problem. It should be viewed as an American problem. Many of our ancestors fought in Wars and helped build America to be America. Everyone should be discussed whenever seeing these type of numbers because they point to injustice for American citizens.

When you have have a race of people go to jail at a waaay higher rate for the SAME crimes. There is no way to spin that. There is no excuses for it. Its pure injustice. People can't claim we are one in one breath and then back the bigots by trying to create excuses for injustice the next.

If there wasn't video camera's and social media spreading actual visual evidence world wide about racism and injustice. We would still be told that racism is dead.

Racism will be dead when we will stop categorize people by race and start accepting them for what they are.
Most of the people need generations of growing up to get to this blissful state.
Especially in America.

Creed
by Steve Turner

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy's OK
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated.
You can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes,
UFO's and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha
Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think
his good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation sin heaven hell God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it's compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behaviour that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
If chance be the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten! Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting! Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

Interesting poem to analyze and toss around.

CashMoney wrote:

NardDogNation wrote:

CashMoney wrote:

NardDogNation wrote:

nykshaknbake wrote:What's sad now is that all the stereotyping and biased are being made to be true. Black people killing police because they are police will cause police to be more trigger happy with black people in general, So both sides will be right. Blacks will be more dangerous to police officers on the job and police officers will be more dangerous to black people. This will be fed and encouraged by our politicians and media. No way out of this one.

Police were already trigger-happy with Black people. That's why we've reached this boiling point. Even my Bryant Gumbel-sounding ass has had a police officer threaten to draw on him because I reached for my ID....which the idiot instructed me to do. I guess speeding 15mph over the limit (on a ****ing parkway) makes me a dangerous criminal.

Statistically speaking whites are killed more often by police than black people. Non whites (blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc.) commit 90% of all violent crime in the USA. Since white people commit less violent crime yet are killed more often by police one could argue that being white is more likely to get you killed by police.

I find it interesting that the main stream media is all over the MN and LA shooting but little attention is being given to the black off duty officer that shot and killed an unarmed black man in Brooklyn or the Fresno shooting where police shot and killed Dylan Noble, an unarmed white teenager.

I could get more into this as well as media bias and BS but have to leave for work but I'll be happy to discuss further manana if I have any takers. BTW, not trying to stir anything up but as a minority and a member of law enforcement I'm finding it harder and harder to hold my tongue.

And since it seems you're unaware of the context for the outrage being felt across the country, this video will help clarify...

This is exactly what I'm talking about. There is no proof that black people with guns are killed more often than white people with guns. Every police interaction with an armed suspect does not result in a shooting death regardless of race.

The outrage being felt nation wide stems from the result of UNARMED Black men, innocent of any legal infraction being executed by police. If they are armed, I doubt they'd even stand a chance. Can you even name me two examples of armed AND HOSTILE Black men that have lived to tell the story?

Because I can name you a score of Caucasian men armed to the "T" that have managed to be apprehended alive: James Holmes, Dylan Roof, James Wesley Howell, Jared Loughner, Joseph Arthur Stetson, Robert Lewis Deer Jr....shall I keep going?

nykshaknbake wrote:

misterearl wrote:

arkrud wrote:

newyorknewyork wrote:

arkrud wrote:Interesting that the discussion went into the same dead end of separation and hate.
No one talking about what brings us together but just about things that divide us.
Everyone has an argument which proves some group of people being victimized and another being an oppressor.
If some white people suck so all white people suck, and if some black people suck so all black people suck.
The only thing that can bring us together is the law to which everyone is unanswerable regardless of who he is.
This is the only known way for society to survive.
If low is bad, outdated, did not serve the purpose anymore lets fight together to make it better.
I think this is what Melo message is about and this is exactly how athletes, celebs, whoever can approach the solution.
This how slavery and segregation came to the end and this how race inequality of today should be resolved.

African Americans have been voicing there concern over these issues for yrs upon yrs upon yrs. Only to be told that there are no problems. That we are only playing the victim. What would have brought us together would have been general care for our well being. If instead of claiming were acting as victims. Investigation and research to actually see if the complaints are valid and justified should have been the response. Then actual solutions be put in place to fix these issues. Showing understanding and effort which all could have been happening over the yrs to avoid where we are now. Shit had to hit the fan though instead and a boiling point had to be reached for ppl to now claim to want to come together. And even that might just be a hustle waiting foebish to blow over.

The ideal of us being one has been the hustle African Americans have been falling for since segregation has ended. And while it is the ideal senario. Prove that we are one with actual results that back it.

The prove is millions of African American and African emigrants of 20-21 century who work every possible way of live in US and are as successful as any other Americans who leave there for generations and new emigrants. At the end is is always a personal effort, the family effort, and community effort.
Do we have plenty of bigots of any color and national descent? Sure. Do we have low broken and disregarded, and not enforced. Absolutely.
Is this the reasons to kill each other? No its not.
It is the reason to talk about it and use any possible platform to make it better.

arkrud - your meandering response is tone deaf and lacks nuance.

"In the interest of time, would ye noble patriots please provide a list of infractions punishable by spontaneous public execution? Thanks!"

Getting into a physical alteration with someone who has firearm.

Not being still when a police officer has a weapon drawn and tells you to do so.

These fall mostly under Darwinian precepts.

...the men that have been executed by police have seldom been "getting into physical altercations". Most of the time, they seem to be killed for reaching for a wallet when being instructed to do so, holding a toy gun in Walmart, or within 2 seconds while holding a BB gun. White men could miraculously be walking around with arsenals but continually are apprehended alive but for some reason unarmed, non-threatening Black men are continually victims of lethal force. But don't let these facts get in the way of your propaganda.

holfresh wrote:

arkrud wrote:

misterearl wrote:FACTORIAL

The disparities appear to be even starker for unarmed suspects, according to an analysis of 2015 police killings by the Guardian. Racial minorities made up about 37.4 percent of the general population in the US and 46.6 percent of armed and unarmed victims, but they made up 62.7 percent of unarmed people killed by police.

More than half of murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, and fraud in US are committed by black Americans.
African Americans represent 13% of population.
http://civilrightsmovement.net/us-crime-statistics-by-race/
I know that there are unfortunate historical reasons for this.
But it clearly explains why law enforcement is getting into conflict and killing black people more that anybody else.

I had to come out of retirement for this one...Maybe you and CashMoney, who claims he works in the Criminal Justice system but goes to a Financial website to get stats on Crime, need a few pointers on where to find stats to support your arguments...

According to the FBI, the people who are responsible for gathering these stats, as of 2014:

1. Whites in America commits 69.4% of all crime versus 27.8% by blacks
2. Whites in America commits 59.4% of all violent crimes versus 37.7% by blacks..Cash Money had non-whites including blacks committing 90% of all violent crimes...

According to a study by the Washington Post, Unarmed blacks are 7 times as likely to killed by police than unarmed whites...SEVEN TIMES!!!!

In 2015, The Post documented 990 fatal shootings by police, 93 of which involved people who were unarmed. Black men accounted for about 40 percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police and, when adjusted by population, were seven times as likely as unarmed white men to die from police gunfire, The Post found.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-43
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/study-finds-police-fatally-shoot-unarmed-black-men-at-disproportionate-rates/2016/04/06/e494563e-fa74-11e5-80e4-c381214de1a3_story.html

Welcome back, man. Hope you're back for good this time.

dk7th wrote:1) the nra needs to be demolished and gun shows heavily proctored where all invitees are thoroughly checked.
2) the second amendment needs to be re-written to ban semi-automatic weapons from both citizenry and the regular police forces. possessors of any such weapons should be tried for treason and put in jail for lengthy prison terms. **** "originalism."
3) marijuana needs to be legalized and heavily regulated and taxed
4) the very wealthiest should be taxed heavily and the majority of funds should be diverted to pre-k through grammar school programs for inner city minorities
5) teachers in inner city pre-k through grammar school programs should be amply rewarded to the degree they are trained and vetted for this work
6) police forces must be representative of the communities they are meant to serve, and if a demographic changes rapidly, such as in ferguson, then the policemen need to be relocated to other communities or furloughed by some federal oversight. this is similar to members of the army and their families.
7) every citizen between the ages of 18-24 must serve in the military for two years in a defensive capacity, defending our borders and ports.

that would be a good start.

This are cool points but you will need to first amend US constitution for p1 and p2. Good luck with that.
Agree on drugs and I will legalize all of them not only pot.
If you will unreasonably tax wealthiest they will move their money outside the country or invest all of it before tax and you will get close to nothing.
If you hire police based on race % of population you are creating the new segregation environment.
What do you prefer - clean professional policeman or policemen of you own race regardless of his skills and corruption scale?
Should it be also proportional by gender, sexual orientation, religion, and political affiliation?
Why we need draft if we have enough professional solders? Better to use more robots.
Not all people need to go to army to set their brains right to became good citizens.
As per teaches we do not have enough to put in the classrooms as it is not talking about assistants.
Making classes size less will solve same purpose.
But in general it is about quality not quantity.
So ideas are cool but very naive.

Couple of thing I would propose:
1. Make permit for semiautomatic weapons very expensive - around 20K per unit. It is not useful item for civilians, just a collectible for enthusiasts. Criminals will get them if they want regardless of any laws and regulations.
2. Make changes to add mental health check and background check mandatory for every gun permit. And doctors and clerks who do the check have to be liable if person who get the gun happens to be mentally sick, on terror suspect list, of with criminal or violence history.
3. Increase minimal police compensation to 25% over national income average.
4. Introduce more non-lethal means for police enforcement - gas, dogs, robots, tranquilizes, stun-guns, etc. Discourage used of guns by police or even remove from operation except of special police units.
5. Stop corrupted practice of collecting money by local municipalities from driving violations.
6. Increase minimum mandatory compensation for teaches with special bonuses for working in pure and dangerous neighborhoods.
7. Do the above but reducing the salaries for education boards bureaucrats and reduce their stuff.

WaltLongmire wrote:Did not know about the Steve Turner poem, but in the interest of accuracy...this is the entire poem:

Creed
by Steve Turner

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy's OK
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated.
You can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes,
UFO's and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha
Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think
his good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation sin heaven hell God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it's compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behaviour that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
If chance be the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten! Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting! Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

Interesting poem to analyze and toss around.

Wow, that definitely brings the rest jrod posted into some context. Thanks for that, Walt.

arkrud wrote:

DrAlphaeus wrote:

WaltLongmire wrote:Did not know about the Steve Turner poem, but in the interest of accuracy...this is the entire poem:

Creed
by Steve Turner

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy's OK
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated.
You can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes,
UFO's and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha
Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think
his good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation sin heaven hell God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it's compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behaviour that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
If chance be the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten! Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting! Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

Interesting poem to analyze and toss around.

Wow, that definitely brings the rest jrod posted into some context. Thanks for that, Walt.

A lot irony in this... and a lot of truth.
Our live is our perception about our live.
And the truth about our live is irrelevant.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying truth about life is irrelevant?
Perfect.

NardDogNation wrote:

dk7th wrote:1) the nra needs to be demolished and gun shows heavily proctored where all invitees are thoroughly checked.
2) the second amendment needs to be re-written to ban semi-automatic weapons from both citizenry and the regular police forces. possessors of any such weapons should be tried for treason and put in jail for lengthy prison terms. **** "originalism."
3) marijuana needs to be legalized and heavily regulated and taxed
4) the very wealthiest should be taxed heavily and the majority of funds should be diverted to pre-k through grammar school programs for inner city minorities
5) teachers in inner city pre-k through grammar school programs should be amply rewarded to the degree they are trained and vetted for this work
6) police forces must be representative of the communities they are meant to serve, and if a demographic changes rapidly, such as in ferguson, then the policemen need to be relocated to other communities or furloughed by some federal oversight. this is similar to members of the army and their families.
7) every citizen between the ages of 18-24 must serve in the military for two years in a defensive capacity, defending our borders and ports.

that would be a good start.

Not bad proposals. I'd also want to expand no.5 to include the creation of teaching assistants for the classroom. I think it is simply unreasonable in this day and age to expect teachers to handle classrooms of 20 or more students without some assistance in helping keep the room orderly. We're able to spend $500,000 or your standard conventional bomb....we should be able to pay for programs like this.

And if funding does become a problem, I'd like to see Estate Taxes increased exponentially. I feel no one person should be inheriting more than $5 million worth of net assets under any circumstance. The last thing this society needs are more Donald Trumps of the world that clearly are not worthy of being a leader of anything simply by birth-right. You want to be a part of the ruling class, earn it and prove your utility to the whole.

My prescription? Jobs and more jobs. When communities have plenty of jobs to offer, the crime rate and drug use plummets. They have tax zones to encourage growth but it would be more effective IMO to support the creation of black owned busineses by giving the same kind of loans the government has been giving to the big banks since the great recession, zero interest, to qualified candidates. End the use of how wealthy communities are determining how well schools are funded. Has to be more equitable. Wealthy communities have the tax base to properly fund schools, poor communities (of all colors) do not, even with govt help.

Rigorous psychological testing of prospective and current law enforcement should be mandatory. Something effective, while at the same time protect an officer's right to challenge any finding. I would also have a transaction tax on Wall Street to pay for much needed infrastructure improvements, education funding, and reduce military spending by at least a third (no cuts to vets) If we didnt already spend more than all the other rival powers combined, I would be more concerned about the effect of such cuts. There are many generals who say they dont need a new system, but get one expensive system after another shoved down their throats anyway. This isn't about defense. They wanted to replace the A-10 Warthog, and it took a groundwell of protest from the troops fighting overseas to stop it. Its out of control.