Posted on 10/19/2013 8:26:20 AM PDT by BeadCounter
A group of Boy Scouts leaders may face criminal charges after purposely knocking over an ancient Utah desert rock formation and posting a video of the incident online, authorities say
The men were leading a group of 14 to 16-year-old Boy Scouts on a trip to Goblin Valley State Park when they said they noticed the top of the rock formation was loose and feared it was dangerous.
"This is about saving lives," Dave Hall, who shot the video, told The Associated Press on Friday. "One rock at a time."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
You pissants are sure persistant, I'll give you that. Don't confuse that with comradery, punk.
Apparently, according to our local news, the Yahoo who pushed the rock over has a permanent disability, and a law suit filed against a 16 year old driver from 4 years ago. Pain suffering and severe loss of ability to function due to his injuries. Makes you go hummm.
Punk? OK. Maybe now that you’ll have 0bamaCare you can see about having that bow removed from your neck. Or not; I don’t give a rat’s ass. FOAD.
Because trying to defend fat assed thugs vandalizing million year old rock formations in a state park is a strange position to take on this forum. By the way that fat ass who used all his might to disloge the boulder...and must have taken a ling hike to get there is on disability. Authorities are now looking into that. Earlier on this thread I said that’s no scout master that’s a thug, whose already been in handcuffs. Now he very well be facing judges on a lot of charges for a long time. Only the stupidest of criminals Visio themselves.
I wasn't defending the "fat assed thug".
As a gun owner, I am very sensitive to the unbridled attempt to jail people for victimless crimes. I personally don't feel victimized by the loss of this particular rock. Perhaps you do and I can live with that.
What I was pointing out is that the danger to the public of encountering a rock as unstable as this one was is extreme. If I were to have only a single jail cell available, then I would be looking at whether our public servants had exposed the public to unnecessary danger.
My analysis of the physics is consistent with a very high possibility that the man could have been almost instantly killed by having a ton of rock falling on him.
I don't believe that the man thought that he was destroying something at the time he did. He was simply fascinated with the fact that he could move the rock and he pursued that fascination to a somewhat unexpected end. The video shows his surprise at the instant the rock let loose.
What do you think his punishment should be for putting a rock into a place where nature was destined to put it?
I liken the response to my comments to what I often receive when responding to opinions about Richard Nixon. I would much rather see Richard Nixon in jail than this "fat assed thug". Usually I am accused of being aligned with the liberal media for persecuting a conservative, when in fact I am perfectly capable of finding fault in conservatives without compromising my own conservatism.
Stupid argument and getting old. We can multitask and be concerned about more than one thing.
“What do you think his punishment should be for putting a rock into a place where nature was destined to put it?”
Put it back. As it was.
I could go along with that, although the value of doing so is probably much, much less than the cost.
Also, if that rock later on DID harm somebody, I would expect the government to pay dearly for having not only tolerated such a dangerous situation but for having caused it to be re-created.
Respectfully disagree.
Use of national parks means assumed risk. It’s not the government’s fault if I get eaten by a bear, trapped in an avalanche or die of hypothermia. At least around here the idiots who need to be rescued after ignoring posted warnings get charged for the cost of their rescue.
What's also fascinating is that one of the guys had filed a personal injury lawsuit alledging "serious, permanent, and debilitating" from a car accident. Specifics were an injury to his back serious enough to cause "loss of joy of life".
But maybe we're losing site of the true wonder of this in our haste to condemn him for his moronic and mindless act of vandalism. Now, thanks to You-Tube, we have witnessed a miracle. Mr. Taylor's injuries are gone. He has been healed. He is capable of pushing over half-ton rocks without pain and without any problem. The "joy of life" has returned, if his high fives are any indication. And his bogus lawsuit will no doubt be dropped.
I don't have a problem with that. The money spent on prosecuting him for tipping over a rock could be better spent investigating what we know is an avalanche of false disability claims in this country.
I'm fine with that, but I think the public needs to assume the risk that a rock is going to be tipped over once in a while. Without the video there would be no case. Even with the video, it would be hard to quantify just how unreasonable it was for that rock to be dislodged.
If the government can argue, "This man is obviously not disabled, look at how easily he dislodged this rock", then the man can argue, "Look how dangerous this rock was. It was easily dislodged by a disabled man".
I was pretty astounded at the danger people put themselves into at the Grand Canyon. They were off the trails and taking pictures while standing on rocks the stability of which was as questionable as the rock in this story.
I would have no sympathy for anyone falling to their death due to a dislodged rock off the trail at the Grand Canyon and I would never dream of holding them accountable for the movement of the rock.
But isn't that just another unbridled attempt to prosecute someone for what is essentially a victimless crime? Nobody got hurt. The insurance companies are out a little money but they're just faceless corporations so personally I don't feel they're victimized. The person he was suing isn't out anything. No harm no foul.
I feel hardly victimized at all by an unstable rock being dislodged in a park. I am plenty victimized by false disability claims, both through higher insurance rates in the private sector and the ballooning burden of disability payments from my taxes and the future taxes of my grandchildren.
I don't have a policy with that insurance company so I don't feel victimized at all. I guess we cancel each other out.
Even if the insurance industry was completely free-market driven, the necessity of one company to raise prices opens up the opportunity for its competitors to raise prices.
Eventually one might hope that insurance companies that tolerate fraud would go out of business, but this can take some time.
I don't know about the disability business, but my understanding is that insurers of real property sell off some of their risk to other companies as a way to insure themselves against catastrophic loss and they buy the risk of others. This would slow down the demise of incompetent companies even more and spread the cost of the incompetence.
I don’t agree. Just because you assume the risk doesn’t give you the right to vandalize. I just don’t see how they are comparable. Just because I go sailing and assume the risks doesn’t mean I have the right to dump sewage overboard as I please. the guy is a vandal, pure and simple; the kind of jerk that litters and the older brother of the sort that ‘tag’ their grafitti all over the place.
I hope is is made an example of that would shock all of Singapore ( a place that knows how to deal with vandals)
You knock a rock off of another rock and we will come down on you like a ton of.... er... rocks
“”Look how dangerous this rock was. It was easily dislodged by a disabled man”. “
that would be like saying “look how dangerous a gun is - the trigger can be pulled by even a two year old. If nature boy wasn’t where he had no business being he couldn’t have toppled the rock. Now if he had been able to topple it from the trail, without being where he didn’t belong, you’d have a point. Hell, I could wander around on a sub or a machine shop and break all sorts of stuff with one finger, and it would be because I was somewhere doing something I shouldn’t, not because the situation was dangerous.
If these bloated morons were really concerned about avoiding dangerous situations, they would quit the scouts and stay at home swilling lite beer, something they’ve obviously done quite a lot of.
Great example they set for the scouts.
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