5th Acorn video! How many are out there?

I'd say nice try, except ... well ... y'know?

Well, that's an answer.

Just to reiterate, the proposition was, "I'm just curious how you would rate or characterize your understanding of the prosecution of sex crimes."

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

80,000 unpaid organizations? Seems like a lot.

As for ACORN: according to their own site, they were on tap to get profits from NHTF. How much would that amount to? No idea.

Who's pitching a fit? I want a clear and proper investigation of an organization supposedly devoted to the public trust. But, my general statement, since you've asked for it, can be found. Want the link? Here it is.

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=96322

Bottom line: capitalism - of all kinds - is inherently wrong. Some people cut off their disapproval at one point or another. I, really, don't. There's the difference. For me, there's little point in going on about the inequities of a system that is all-pervasive and all-wrong. What am I going to do? Foment a revolution sweeping all of society? Really? Unlikely.

Or, more simply: there's no point arguing about what colour the sky is.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Not when you need to hire 1+ million temp workers in all corners of the second-largest country on Earth to survey hundreds of millions of people over the course of several months.

And, anyway, there's no real limit here, since all these organizations do is refer interested workers to the Census Bureau. Which ACORN can still do, really, just without the benefit of the various promotional materials that "partner" organizations are provided with.

So are you a liar, a fool, or just genuinely illiterate?

http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=1...irfaq_pi1[back]=P2lkPTE3ODU3&cHash=9a11cedf52

Oh get over it. If you can't see that what you're participating in is an hysteria-fed political hit-job, then you're a useful idiot.

I mean, it's great that you theoretically favor some kind of investigative, deliberative process here, presumably with a panoply of rights and safeguards, to be applied fairly to all national organizations.

But what planet are you on? Are we supposed to be so cowed by your Marxist schtick that we invest in the purity of your stated motives, despite the obvious variance with reality?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Re: 80,000 organizations

Re: 80,000 organizations

I, too, found the number a bit boggling. So I looked it up. The second link I found searching 80,000 organizations census:

Calling the ACORN-Census Bureau hookup a relationship is a far stretch. Facebook friends are all blood relations compared to the casualness of this "relationship." Various published reports count the number of such Census Bureau "partnerships" at between 50,000 and 80,000 different organizations. These are merely Census Bureau fan pages. No money changes hands for example. Neither ACORN nor any of the other gazillion "partners" would be involved in actually counting anyone out there in the vastness of America for goodness sakes, although this was the pretense for the right wingers assault.

(Rathke)​

And USA Today reported on Tuesday (the first link I found when I selected the "News" results for the search):

The Census Bureau severed ties with ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a national group that had been one of 80,000 unpaid partners to help the agency promote participation. The relationship was attacked by conservatives, including Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck. The House voted last week to cut all federal funding to the group after ACORN employees were caught on video advising a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute how to lie about their jobs and hide earnings.

(El Nasser)​

Eighty-thousand unpaid organizations is accurate. It would appear, however, that their participation is to encourage participation in the census, though they won't be doing any of the actual counting.
____________________

Notes:

Rathke, Wade. "Census Conservative Cave In". Chief Organizer Blog. September 13, 2009. ChiefOrganizer.org. September 25, 2009. http://chieforganizer.org/2009/09/13/census-conservative-cave-in/

El Nasser, Haya. "Census survey has something to rile everyone". USA Today. September 22, 2009. USAToday.com. September 25, 2009. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2009-09-22-censusmess_N.htm

 

More fool you, then: your only standard of accuracy is what ACORN says about itself?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Theoretically, meinen douchebag?

Boy, you wouldn't seem to know reality if it jumped up and bit you in the ass. Nor Marxism, apparently. Never you mind though: you seem to believe that I have somehow signed on to the Fox bandwagon to eradicate ACORN. Why don't you step back, check that your kefiyyah scarf isn't on too tight, and read what I actually wrote rather than providing a narrative that emerges from your fashionably middle-class neo-Marxist ass. Since I'm now allowed to take liberties with your opinions also; why are you ponying up to defend people who wanted to exploit underage South American girls? Guess the Marxism stops when the politicism starts, huh? Silly proles: Communism's not for you.

 

I completely forgot to add: the reason I'm so critical of my own side (and, to be fair, I dismiss capitalist interests completely) is precisely because of people like you and Tiassa, who seem to be so fixated on the media overload - and whose? From which organisations, specifically? - that they don't seem to mind that the front-line workers were perfectly happy to auction off a dozen kids as child prostitutes. Tiassa was more interested in getting the "stingers" themselves. What a fun system of Marxism you two are pretending to, where our own actions just don't matter.

 

I was reading that the people presenting this are full of shit. both in phillie and san diego offices have come forward refuting the claims that no did anything about they were asked to leave in both and reported them. The police in from what i have read have confirmed this is the case.

 

? Nobody is doing that. Why are you attempting to deflect the actual discussion down that alley?

 

When the issue in question - raised by yourself - is "what does ACORN say about itself on its own website," yes. That is exactly the appropriate standard.

Sure.

I don't see you decrying the pre-emptive punishment that has been visited upon ACORN by Congress, in advance of any investigations proper or otherwise.

In fact, you're right in the middle of defending it.

Stop repeating easily-debunked lies from the wingnut echo chamber, and I'll stop believing that you're participating in that bandwagon. Deal?

Well that's a new one. I've been called a fascist before, but where have I professed any sympathy for Marxism, of whatever prefix? I mean, I'm all for the glib reversal as a rhetorical tool, but it has to actually apply in some way if it's to sting.

Also I'm upper-middle class, thank you very much.

There are no such people in evidence here.

To the extent that there is any pretense of such, those people would be the agents provocateur, whom I condemn (obviously).

Please point me to where I defended the actions taken by the ACORN staffers, or disagreed with the bureaucratic response of the ACORN executives (which was to fire the staffers in question and institute new training and review policies to prevent future problems).

The issue here is with the disproportionate, myopic, pre-emptive media and political response to this minor, manufactured, already-properly-addressed occurence.

Speaking of glib reversals...

 

well first of all aside from attempting to hijack the thread with your antics ad innuendo what are you expecting?

for sex crimes i believe in the one strike rule. just like that garrido imbecile would not have been freed to do the same exact crimes again but then from what i can tell people like yourself or rather people who refer to themselves as liberal (for some reason) advocate light sentences for criminals and i do not. and really that is the main reason why we have repeat offenders.

 

Then double fool. That's not what I said.

Then you no readie so good. Go back, young Padawan. I said that their funding should not be cut as it relates to their original mandate of foreclosure. I said that was premature.

Again: look up, boy.

Hey! Me too, now. Congratulations.

Unnecessary: your written statements don't matter. It's just a schtick. No? If my written statements don't matter, neither do yours. Or point me to the place where I demanded they be shut down. Thanks.

It's a lesson in fair discourse. I think quad follows me better now.

 

John, I'm only dancing ....

From what you can tell? From what you can tell? As a general standard, that's not necessarily reliable. In your case?

How do you define a light sentence? Consider a psychopathic serial killer. I'd much rather he spend his life confined in a psychiatric facility. Sure, there's not much for treatment that will ever return him safely to sanity, but in the meantime the exercise will bring us further insight into how these minds work, and in the long run, that will save lives. And, frankly, I think that's a better return than simply putting him down so we can feel we got our revenge.

Furthermore, blaming liberals for "light sentences" really isn't appropriate. Certainly we have had our theories that simply didn't work out in practice, and many of those have cost lives. But another complication is what is often referred to as "nickel and diming", and that's a conservative cause. Public schools, social and health services, parole and probation, even incarceration itself. The cry to save money leads to corners cut, and some people fall through the gaps:

It appears Garrido didn't register as a sex offender in California until 1999, despite his 1976 convictions in Nevada for kidnapping and raping a female casino worker and the fact he was under federal parole supervision over those years.

It may be that nobody ever told him to register, a top federal parole official said.

There may be many others like him — people who were convicted of sex crimes in other states, moved to California and have since flown below the sex offender radar, a state Department of Justice official acknowledged.

"He (Phillip Garrido) came to us in 1999, when he was in that (unincorporated) Antioch address, and since then for 10 years he has registered as required," said Contra Costa County sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee. "I can't account for what happened before that, or even where he was."

(Simerman)​

When we stop to think of the fact that prison overcrowding and funding issues have compelled states to start turning loose inmates who haven't finished their sentences, it seems a bit more difficult to blame repeat offenders solely on liberals and "light sentences".

In the meantime, we can try one more time. Or many, if you want. I'm just curious how long you're going to duck the point:

How you would rate or characterize your understanding of the prosecution of sex crimes?​

Because, after all, you can keep up with your ignorant, self-righteous belligerence, or try making yourself useful for once.

The point, John99, is that—

"you should. or you can keep making stories up here."​

—you appeared to have no real clue whatsoever about the nature of sex crime prosecutions. And the more you run away from the question, the more you reinforce that appearance.

A couple other things:

Indeed, the court would not see entrapment here. But the same problem that the courts have with entrapment applies, which is why some people are using the word. The problem with entrapment is that any given person who may not ordinarily seek to commit criminal behavior might well decide to take a chance if offered. In other words, entrapment is an attempt to create more criminals. For instance, among marijuana users, at least in every market I've ever known, the unspoken principle is to consider how to engage in a transaction. In some places, you can walk down the street and occasionally hear someone making this noise that sounds like, "B'd. B'd. B'd." What he's saying is, "Bud." And the message is, "I'm selling, do you need?" It's supposed to be a signal that the dealer is not a cop, because he is attempting to entice people to buy. If he was a cop, he would be entrapping them. There was a night—I've told this story before—when I was walking back to my car along the edge of Belltown when a hooker propositioned me. I declined and thanked her for the offer. Then suddenly this massive, thug-looking pimp appeared out of an alley and tried to push the sale. Again, I declined politely. Then he offered me drugs, and I thanked him and told him I had connections and a phat stash waiting for me at home. I could have safely bought from this guy, though, insofar as they had offered. And that's how you work in with a new dealer; don't wait for him to offer. If you inquire, even obliquely, about supply, the dealer knows you're not a cop, because otherwise you would be entrapping him.

And police used to do this; they would go out and offer people hookers or drugs or whatever, and then bust them, and the courts finally put a stop to it.

And it's caused them trouble before. In Maryland, no less:

The Baltimore State's Attorney's office has brought felony charges in the past for what was alleged to be essentially the same act as that committed by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the two who did the secret taping at ACORN.

And one of the five persons whom the state's attorney's office charged in the past was John Stossel, the TV news journalist who this week made headlines for another reason by leaving ABC News to join the Fox News Channel.

I know this because I was one of two journalists who was believed to have heard Stossel allegedly admit that ABC News had violated the secret taping statute and was subpoened to testify at the trial. The case was reported in the "New York Times."

(Zurawik)​

The charges were eventually dropped:

Dr. Ziem agreed to be meet Stossel in a Baltimore hotel, but instead of a willing interview subject, what Stossel and his crew found was an assistant of Dr. Ziem's and two reporters he had contacted to witness what Stossel was up to. It was intended to be a reverse sting, if you will. The other reporter was Fern Shen, then of the "Washington Post."

Long story short, the case hung on what Stossel and his producer are alleged to have said to me and Shen when he and his producer came out of the hotel room after he realized what Dr. Ziem's assistant was doing ....

.... A preliminary hearing and a trial date were set in the case, but it was dropped before coming to trial.

For the record, the "Times" account quotes an ABC News spokeswoman calling the charges against Stossel and four other ABC employees "totally baseless," insisting, "No recording and tapes were made."

So, unless the law has changed (and I have found no evidence of that), there is clear precedent for the Baltimore State's Attorney's office in charging these two filmmakers, if a complaint is filed, with a felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years.

(ibid)​

There is no question in the Giles/O'Keefe case that secret recordings were made at ACORN offices. Including Baltimore. You know, as in, Maryland?

Or, as David Zurawik puts it:

So, unless the law has changed (and I have found no evidence of that), there is clear precedent for the Baltimore State's Attorney's office in charging these two filmmakers, if a complaint is filed, with a felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years.

And this time, Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia A. Jessamy's office won't have a case based on at least one journalist who won't testify and a network that says videotaping never took place. From what I've seen online, O'Keefe and Giles are saying openly that they secretly taped the ACORN employees in Baltimore with hidden cameras.​

_____________________

Notes:

Simerman, John. "Jaycee Dugard kidnapping: Phillip Garrido apparently avoided sex offender registration for years". San Jose Mercury News. September 23, 2009. MercuryNews.com. September 25, 2009. http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13401460

Zurawik, David. "ACORN precedent: John Stossel once charged in Baltimore secret taping case". Z on TV. September 12, 2009. BaltimoreSun.com. September 25, 2009. http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/zontv/2009/09/stossel_illegal_taping_acorn_b.html

See Also:

Carter, Bill. "Five From ABC Charged In Case of Secret Taping". New York Times. October 23, 1996. NYTimes.com. September 25, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/23/arts/five-from-abc-charged-in-case-of-secret-taping.html

 

It is exactly what you said in post #42 of this thread:

Not in this thread, you didn't. If you made some comment in some other location, feel free to provide a link to it.

Like glib reversals and applicability, dismissive condescension requires correctness.

Get a grip man. This is starting to look like a pathology...

Point me to the place where I said you demanded such?

So far the effect has mostly been to diminish your credibility and the good faith granted you.

 

has nothing to do with revenge and that is just a canned response. i have no problem telling anyone that i consider the victim first.

pro criminal release people shut down psychiatric facilities. there is no nice way of dealing with criminally insane people. they protested, went undercover with videos etc. and there is nothing to learn from studying these people. that has been proven with the multitudes of criminals that have been studied.

they are overcrowded with repeat offenders. letting them out for a year or two only to rearrest people and repeat the process does not lower prison populations. the populations may fluctuate slightly at time but they will remain fairly constant.

non violent criminals can get some consideration. remember you are specifically asking me about 'sex crimes'. personally i consider rape and murder to be close to even in terms of sentencing. none of this has much to do with the topic we are discussing though.

Phillip Garrido was let out because people advocate their release. they protest harsh sentences and feel that once they are released they are free to do what they want. i mean you are already using buzz words like revenge so i am pretty certain know where you stand.

and i already said, if it were up to me he would never have been released.

well for one your accusations have no way to be verified so why bring up stuff if no one here knows what you are talking about? and nothing you stated was in any way related to this thread.

you need to be more specific...iow's you are not asking me anything specific.

as for the rest, i really dont want to get into marijuana laws. did i mention that none of this is related to the op?

 

If you're going to complain, then don't go there in the first place

I'm sure you've heard of a man named Ronald Reagan:

Conventional wisdom suggests that the reduction of funding for social welfare policies during the 1980s is the result of a conservative backlash against the welfare state. With such a backlash, it should be expected that changes in the policies toward involuntary commitment of the mentally ill reflect a generally conservative approach to social policy more generally. In this case, however, the complex of social forces that lead to less restrictive guidelines for involuntary commitment are not the result of conservative politics per se, but rather a coalition of fiscal conservatives, law and order Republicans, relatives of mentally ill patients, and the practitioners working with those patients. Combined with a sharp rise in homelessness during the 1980s, Ronald Reagan pursued a policy toward the treatment of mental illness that satisfied special interest groups and the demands of the business community, but failed to address the issue: the treatment of mental illness.

(Thomas)​

While the colloquial expression that "Reagan let the loonies out" isn't exactly accurate, what he did was wreck the deinstitutionalization program:

Deinstitutionalization apart from the theoretical negation of the asylums incorporates the cost-benefit factor for discharging chronic inmates into the community, given the fact that the majority of them belong to lower middle or lower socioeconomic class (Bachrach 1976). In the middle of the 70's when N.I.M.H. in [the] USA initiated the nation-wide program of closing down the State Mental Hospitals, the first President's (Jimmy Carter's presidency) the Commission on Mental Health focused on the development of specialized programs for the discharged patients. However, when Ronald Reagan took over the Office in 1981, the mental health policy was not a federal priority, with serious budget cuts, and blocking of grants. In this period in [the] USA Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income and Section 8 housing, covered poorly the unmet needs of chronically mentally ill.

(Madianos)​

I never really thought of Reagan as "pro criminal release".

Well, let's see. In the first place, have you a reference for that extraordinary claim? I would be very interested in reading through that.

In later years, this has much to do with the War on Drugs. At the time our prison population hit 1% of the general population, some figures put the number of nonviolent (e.g., possession, use, minor trafficking) offenders as high as three-quarters of the total number of inmates.

Add to that the increasing funding challenges facing our correctional systems. Some cynics would even go so far as to point out the coincidence between the push for privatization of prisons in the '90s, prison overcrowding, and funding concerns.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, in The Scarlet Letter:

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.​

People are going to die, and people are going to break the rules.

Yet for all the virtues of American prosperity and liberty, we might pause to wonder how a nation with approximately five percent of the world's population carries twenty-five percent of the world's prison inmates (CNN). Certainly there is something to be said for not holding mass executions like China is known for, but if we consider as well that accounting for jail, prison, probation, and parole, the ratio comes all the way down to one in thirty-one adults in the United States are in the correctional system (ibid). And during the Drug War (in this case, 1985-95), eighty percent of the increase in the federal prison population came from drug offenses (CSDP). A 2008 report put drug offenders at nearly twenty percent of state inmates (SDW). It is estimated that "well over half" of the federal prison population is for drugs. The laws are structured in order to boost sentencing. For instance, Apprendi v. New Jersey, a hate-crime decision, should have struck down automatic distribution convictions, but didn't. The idea is that if you have drugs in two separate containers, a jury need only convict you of possession, and you are automatically convicted of intent to distribute. Thus, if you are caught outside a concert with, say, a roach and a painkiller, in some states you faced twenty-five to life (although that sentence might include carrier-weight laws, as well, that would make fifty milligrams of codeine mixed with three hundred fifty milligrams of acetaminophen equal to one gram of pure heroin).

While "tough on crime" is usually a conservative issue, much of the horror of the drug war was, unfortunately, crafted by Vice President Biden during the 1980s, when he served in the Senate.

Even ten years ago, the problems presented by the Drug War in terms of incarceration were becoming apparent:

John J. DiIulio Jr., a criminologist who has little patience with what he calls "the soft-in-the-head anti-incarceration left," is emblematic of this shift. DiIulio was initially skeptical of the notion that the drug laws imprison large numbers of people who are not menaces to society. But he recently completed research that provides some of the strongest evidence yet for this claim. Though he still supports prohibition--not surprising for a political scientist who trained with a prominent defender of the drug laws, James Q. Wilson, and co-authored a book on crime with former drug czar William Bennett--DiIulio has become an outspoken critic of current sentencing policy. "Basically, what you're getting from me is coerced by the latest data," he says. "It seems to me that with respect to these drug offenders, the mandatory minimums have begun to go haywire."

A 41-year-old Harvard Ph.D., DiIulio is a former professor of politics and public policy at Princeton and former director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Management. He is now a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and the Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. An expert on prison management who published influential books on that subject in 1987 and 1991, he later turned his attention to the cost-effectiveness of incarceration. Based on surveys of prisoners, he concluded that it costs less to keep the average predatory criminal locked up than it does to let him go, given the crimes he would commit if he were free. Publishing articles with titles like "The Value of Prisons," "Prisons Are a Bargain, by Any Measure," and "Let 'Em Rot," DiIulio was often cited by conservatives advocating more prisons and longer sentences. "No one--at least, no one in elite policy-wonk circles--is a bigger fan of incarcerating known, adjudicated adult and juvenile criminals than me," he wrote in a 1996 article for Slate.

But DiIulio's argument for the cost-effectiveness of prisons hinged on the ability of the criminal justice system to distinguish between offenders who would prey on their fellow citizens if released and offenders who would not pose a threat to others. Locking up people in the latter category would not only waste money; it would waste prison space that could otherwise have been used to incapacitate predatory criminals. Given this consideration, the question of how to deal with drug offenders was bound to come up.

(Sullum)​

And one of the effects is that prisons, faced with mounting inmate populations and tightening purse strings, have long decreased rehabilitative services until the colloquial expression has become that "prisons create criminals". Send a guy in for smoking pot, he might come out a hardened criminal. Any number of factors might contribute to this; the development of personal relationships with harder criminals combined with a lack of useful activity means some will simply develop and hone criminal (or prison survival) skills and knowledge as well as develop contact networks with other criminals. And a prison record severely diminishes gainful employment prospects once released.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Mule Creek State Prison, Ione, California.
Currently running over twice its designed capacity.
(image via StopTheDrugWar.org)​

And while, say, smoking crack is dangerous to both the self and others, the idea that five grams of crack should be a federal felony is absurd, especially when we consider that for years, the equivalent standard for powder cocaine was five hundred grams. That disparity, I believe, has since changed for the better, but the toll has been devastating. Five grams of crack? It's the same drug as powder cocaine (AFM, USSC), and, frankly, I've smoked powder before. And, you know, I walked away from cocaine; I'm one of the lucky ones, it seems, but the idea that possessing 0.176 ounces of crack is the criminal equivalent of possessing over a pound of cocaine is ridiculous. I certainly did more than one and a half eighths (0.1875 oz) in my time, but a pound of coke? I can't imagine doing that much in my entire life. If I got a pound of coke tomorrow, I'd be dead before Monday.

Still, though, try to imagine me a hardened felon. I mean, a felon, sure. I'm quite sure that if I try, I can find a felony in my history. Oh, hey, I know ... flying across the country with an eighth of pot and an eighth of mushrooms in my pocket. Right there, possession with intent to distribute (see above) and transporting controlled substances across state lines. Yep, there you go.

This is what makes the Drug War laughable. I mean, come on. The most dangerous thing I've done while intoxicated was drive with a 0.88 BAC, and that charge was dropped. And, yes, that's fairly dangerous, but when you consider that a snafu saw me miss my court date? Nine years later the prosecutor just wanted the file cleared. I gave the state some money for missing my court date and got on with my life. For nine years, with warrants out in my name, not only did nobody come to get me, but I managed to stay the hell off law enforcement radar. Even that particular hardassed King County prosecutor thought I wasn't dangerous.

But you don't even need to do what I've done to end up with a five year sentence.

While some might be inclined to blame liberal politics for light sentencing standards resulting in a revolving-door prison system, nothing about that notion applies to what is happening in California, where a failure by Governor Schwarzeneggar and legislative Democrats to muster any Republican votes for a prison reform plan threatens to miss a federal deadline to fix the problem, with the result that 40,000-58,000 inmates will be released (Cavanaugh and Crook, CNN).

Nor does it hold in Michigan:

In a presentation on Michigan's budget problems, the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council noted that if Michigan reduced its incarceration rate (then 499 inmates per 100,000 residents) to the regional average (356 inmates per 100,000 residents), the state would save $500 million ....

.... And how should Michigan cut?

"Cut the (prison) population," says Barbara Levine of the advocacy group Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending. "People are the big issue."

Actually, Michigan is cutting. From a peak of nearly 52,000 at the end of 2006, the state has reduced its prison population to 46,648, as of Aug. 28. And Gov. Jennifer Granholm's prison reform plan would cut thousands more by the end of the year.

But to get to $500 million, state leaders must embrace a larger, more aggressive version of what's already happening. Working from an average prisoner cost of $29,000 annually, it would take the release of roughly 17,000 prisoners to yield $500 million. But since the type of prisoners eligible for release would be in lower (and thereby cheaper) security levels, the necessary releases most likely would exceed 20,000.

A daunting prospect, to be sure. But not as much for public safety as for political comfort.

(Lansing State Journal)​

We might be seeing 80,000 convicted criminals returned to the streets early in the near future, and that's just two states. And liberal sentencing theories have nothing to do with it. Rather, it is money. And it always has been. Not just prison money, but educational money, police money, infrastructure money, and even private money such as that lost in the ongoing economic crisis, as unemployment and reduced private investment in communities contribute to a higher crime rate. Michigan's woes are astounding in some ways. While Detroit has long had a reputation as a hellhole, that hellhole has been devastated by the economic collapse. It's one of those places where it's nearly painful to imagine things getting worse. Or, if one actually lives there, well, I can't imagine that, except to say I would hope to go from a mind-bogglingly bad prospect to a mind-numbing prospect so that it hurts less.

Indeed, but we should consider the proposition that a large number of nonviolent criminals in prison shouldn't be there to begin with. The money we spend on them could be much better spent (A) rehabilitating the nonviolent offenders in the community and (B) securing dangerous convicts in prison.

Which topic do you mean? The thread topic, or the part where I asked you a simple question that you have thrice refused to answer while, most lately, simply unloading unsupported extraordinary assertion after unsupported extraordinary assertion?

What, you mean like his lawyer? Perhaps you could document for us this influential group of people who compelled a parole board to release him after eleven years out of a fifty-year sentence? And maybe you could show the connection between those influential people and Garrido's failure to register as a sex offender for over a decade? And how is it that they convinced his federal parole supervisor(s) to either overlook his failure to register or fail on their own part to instruct him to register? I mean, this is a fascinating story you're telling here. I'd love to see the details.

In that dictatorial utopia, sure, do what you want.

Do you document every moment of every day of your life?

Says you. To the other, and taking a bit of a guess since you're not being particularly specific, it's part of a running theme throughout Madanthonywayne's hyper-histrionics. Instead of discussing the legitimate issues surrounding ACORN's troubles, we're expected to endure some overcharged Puritanical outrage invested entirely in idyll and utterly disconnected from urban reality.

All of these little stories I'm "making up" are, whether or not you care to believe them, snippets from my life, which is apparently far more extraordinary than I've previously believed. Clusteringflux, for instance, suggests I've been through some hard things, but in truth, most of those are self-imposed. Compared to the people I'm describing, who are people I've known, I've had a pretty easy life. These anecdotes are intended to illustrate the difference between the idyll and reality.

Well, the original proposition was:

I'm just curious how you would rate or characterize your understanding of the prosecution of sex crimes.​

I've highlighted the word prosecution because that's the aspect you've been running away from. And the reason why I'm curious is that your blunt interjection—

"you should. or you can keep making stories up here."​

—doesn't really reflect any understanding of the nature of such crimes and the prosecution thereof. Thus, I tried explaining:

With the sort of issues I referred to at the Jesuit school, few, if any, of the reports would lead to prosecution. The thing is that the longer a sexual assault survivor waits to report the crime, the less likely prosecution becomes. At twenty-four hours, a vital portion of the crime scene—e.g., the victim's body—is problematic insofar as the evidence has been corrupted. When you find out about these things after the fact, there's really not much to do ....

.... In the end, all of that paperwork, all of those reports, would probably result in something very close to zero prosecutions.​

Put simply: By the time I heard about it, there was never any evidence left to collect, and no basis for prosecution.

It just seems to me that if you're going to go out of your way to write a belligerent post, you should probably know what you're talking about. To the other, I can't simply presume vapid ignorance on your part. Hence, I'm curious how you would rate or characterize your understanding of the prosecution of sex crimes.

And your response, rather than offering something genuine and useful, has been to troll.

Really, I'm still interested in your answer, if you're ever willing to give it.

I'm just curious how you would rate or characterize your understanding of the prosecution of sex crimes.​

Then perhaps you shouldn't have bothered with the distraction in the first place. I mean, I could simply accept that you have nothing of value to say, but that doesn't really accomplish much, does it?

Well, maybe it would. At least I wouldn't be wasting my time on you.
____________________

Notes:

Thomas, Alexandar R. "Ronald Reagan and the Commitment of the Mentally Ill: Capital, Interest Groups, and the Eclipse of Social Policy". Electronic Journal of Sociology. 1998. Sociology.org. September 25, 2009. http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html

Madianos, Michael. "Deinstitutionalization". International Encyclopedia of Rehabilitation. Ed. J. H. Stone and M. Blouin. 2009. Cirrie.Buffalo.edu. September 25, 2009. http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/encyclopedia/article.php?id=33&language=en

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 1850. Online-Literature.com. September 25, 2009. http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/scarletletter/

CNN. "Study: 7.3 million in U.S. prison system in '07". March 2, 2009. CNN.com. September 25, 2009. http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/02/record.prison.population/

CSDP. "Prisons & Drug Offenders". (n.d.) DrugWarFacts.org. September 25, 2009. http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/63

SDW. "Sentencing: US Jail and Prison Population Hits All-Time (Again) -- 2.3 Million Behind Bars, Including More Than Half a Million Drug Offenders". Drug War Chronicle #564. December 12, 2008. StopTheDrugWar.org. September 25, 2009. http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/564/US_jail_prison_population_all_time_high_drug_offenders

Sullum, Jacob. "Prison Conversion". Reason. August/September, 1999. Reason.com. September 25, 2009. http://www.reason.com/news/show/31101.html

AFM. "Cocaine & Crack". The Basics. (n.d.) Addictions Foundation of Manitoba. AFM.mb.ca. September 25, 2009. http://www.afm.mb.ca/Learn More/Cocaine&Crack.pdf

USSC. "Appendix B: Summary of Public Comment on Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Differential". Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy. United States Sentencing Commission. 1995. USSC.gov. September 25, 2009. http://www.ussc.gov/crack/APPNDXB.HTM

Cavanaugh, Maureen and Hank Crook. "Sacramento Update: Reducing Calif. Prison Population". KPBS, San Diego. September 1, 2009. KPBS.org. September 25, 2009. http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/sep/01/sacramento-update-reducing-calif-prison-population/

"Michigan must slash prison population". Editorial. Lansing State Journal. September 13, 2009. LansingStateJournal.com. September 25, 2009. http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20090913/OPINION01/909130624/1086

 

http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html

see the part: Growing Discontent.

this happened before Reagan, who i am no fan of btw. but you are wrong about your claims and a few links wont change history.

this goes back to the 70s and they were the same people who protested the nuclear research facilities for energy. they would chain themselves to the fences. dont you remember the no nukes concert. that was not about nuclear weapons but nuclear energy. and that group was the ultra liberals. and now...europe has developed their nuclear energy and the u.s got stuck in the mud.

no offense but you should try and condense your posts to relevant info.

you yourself have claimed here many times that cocaine is like the devil. so you just want it freely distributed to people or you want penalties imposed for distribution of this devil drug (your words).

trust me, i know first hand what destruction these hard drugs do. you go to any poor neighborhood and talk to people and the overwhelming majority of people who do not use or sell drugs want these people off their streets. there is a reason for that.

still, i would tell you to spend some time in a prison and see what is in there. i am also sure that people caught with a small quantity of weed do not go to prison at all and get a very small fine for it. this i know to be a fact. but you are clouding things up with too many unsubstantiated issues.

afa your other claims, (i deleted that, i assume you read it though)

 

Troll amok!

Already read it.

Well, let's see about that, John.

What the hell are you going on about now?

Look, as near as I can cobble together from your puerile trolling about liberals, "pro criminal release people" (whatever the hell that means), and anti-nuclear protesters (?!), you seem to think that liberal efforts to reform a problematic mental health system are responsible for the succeeding president's choice to deliberately interfere with and eventually abandon those reforms. If Reagan didn't like the Carter CMH plan, he should have tried one of his own. But he didn't. He cut budgets and started blocking grants that were essential to the CMH plan. It is illogical to blame Carter or the liberals or the "pro criminal release people" or the nuclear protesters for the failure of a program that Ronald Reagan refused to allow a chance to succeed.

Now, if I've somehow misinterpreted whatever point you think you're trying to make, I'm sorry. But you seem to insist on continuing to avoid making any sort of coherent argument, and I can only work with whatever you give me.

No offense, but you should try to stop trolling.

Would you like to try that again, and maybe make some sense this time?

So do something about it. Or, of course, you can keep making up stories.

Your point being?

Oh, do they rent rooms?

I don't know, man. An ounce gets you five years under an automatic trafficking charge in South Carolina. Possession of less than an ounce gets you thirty days in the hole on your first offense and a year for your second. Growing a plant for personal use gets you five years. See CriminalDefenseLawyer.com.

So much for being sure, eh?
_____________________

Notes:

"South Carolina Marijuana Laws". (n.d.) CriminalDefenseLawyer.com. September 26, 2009. http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/marijuana-laws-and-penalties/south-carolina.htm

 

An extraordinary claim

Alright, Geoff: You're on.

"The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."
(Pierre-Simon Laplace)

• • •

"A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."
(David Hume)

• • •

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
(attributed to Marcello Truzzi)​

An extraordinary claim:

"... the front-line workers were perfectly happy to auction off a dozen kids as child prostitutes."
(GeoffP, #2372348/46)​

This is, to my knowledge, a new claim in the escalating hysteria about ACORN. We await your demonstration of its validity.

 

well i am doing the best i can, under the circumstances.

you asked me three times to respond to you and when i do you call me a troll.

you started like nine different issues and even went on about the green river killer for a few pages. one or two of those issues can be interesting. start a thread on them.

 

First you complain it's off-topic, then you keep trolling

Well, think of it this way:

Bob: So what color is your new car?

Jack: I don't know any Jesuits.

Bob: No, I asked what color it is.

Jack: Ice cream has no bones.

Bob: The color, Jack?

Jack: Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon.

Bob: Never mind.

Jack: What? You asked me three times, and when I responded you just got upset.​

It's not like you ever actually gave a relevant answer.

I explained the purpose of those stories. If you are unsatisfied with that explanation, that's fine; indeed, you're welcome to tell me why. Just don't pretend you I didn't try to explain it:

To the other, and taking a bit of a guess since you're not being particularly specific, it's part of a running theme throughout Madanthonywayne's hyper-histrionics. Instead of discussing the legitimate issues surrounding ACORN's troubles, we're expected to endure some overcharged Puritanical outrage invested entirely in idyll and utterly disconnected from urban reality ....

.... These anecdotes are intended to illustrate the difference between the idyll and reality.​