Mandela Barnes: ‘Foolish to Assume the Wealth of America Was Earned Justly

Breitbart ^ | 09/19/2022 | WENDELL HUSEBØ

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "It's not illegal when you have crooks creating the laws.
I think it should be much harder to pass laws.
That way only those agreed upon by a supermajority can go into effect.
Corruption might get you to 50%, but it likely won't get you to 2/3rds majority."

It does already take 2/3 vote in the Senate to make most laws.
So, I think the real problem is in the way bills are written & processed, with often thousands of pages that no single lawmaker can read all of, much less understand its complexities, before they have to vote on it.
The last time Republicans were in charge of Congress, they attempted to return to the old methods (sometimes called "zero based budgeting") of first working separate bills up in committees, then passing each (or not) after debates, based on its own merit.

I'm not certain how it worked out, but as soon as Democrats were back in charge, they scrapped the old ways in favor one massive annual continuing resolution, in which they could hide whatever their latest nefarious vote-buying schemes were.

DiogenesLamp: "Or "necessity", which we've discussed many times before as being in the "eye of the beholder." :)"

Both "necessity" and "robber baron" should be legal accusations which require legal proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

[DiogenesLamp]

It does already take 2/3 vote in the Senate to make most laws.

It does now. I think the 2/3rds thing in the Senate is only according to the rules of the Senate, and is not a legal statute requiring it. I don't think it was around in the 1850s.

Both "necessity" and "robber baron" should be legal accusations which require legal proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Judging by my decades of observation of the legal system in action, it is now clear to me that "legal proof" is not the same thing as actual proof.

You don't get so many false convictions using real proof. Time and time again we've seen the legal system "prove" that someone committed a crime, when later evidence reveals absolutely conclusively that the convicted person did not actual commit the crime.

So how do you prove someone committed a crime when they did in fact not commit the crime?

The system is very broken. It's garbage.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I think the 2/3rds thing in the Senate is only according to the rules of the Senate, and is not a legal statute requiring it. I don't think it was around in the 1850s."

The filibuster was first created in 1806 as an unintended by-product of a rules change but was not used until 1837 in a political battle between Whigs and supporters of Democrat President Andrew Jackson.

The filibuster was seldom used before 1917 Congressional battles over arming US merchant ships during the First World War.
President Wilson was for it; Sen. William Jennings Bryan was again' it and filibustered to prevent it.
So, Wilson's allies voted in the 2/3 cloture rule to stop unpopular filibusters.
Senate rules changes in the 1960s made filibusters easier and so there were more of them, then in 1975 2/3 for cloture was changed to 3/5 = 60 votes, which it is today.

The bottom line is that today all but the least controversial bills require 60 votes for cloture on filibusters whether the filibuster is real or just threatened by the minority party.

So, does 60 votes in the Senate provide protection against corruption in omnibus continuing resolutions?
Not that I've ever noticed.

DiogenesLamp: "So how do you prove someone committed a crime when they did in fact not commit the crime?
The system is very broken. It's garbage."

And yet... and yet... where have you seen a better system?
It's certainly true that newer scientific Criminal Investigative Service techniques have retroactively proved some previously guilty to have been innocent, and discovered others thought innocent to be guilty.
And the Democrats' responses to this and other SJW issues has been to 1) defund police, 2) effectively decriminalize "minor" crimes, 3) reduce the overall prison population through lighter sentences and early releases.

The latest numbers I can find come from 2019 and say the US prison population is already 30% below its previous peak and that was before Covid mass releases.

The inevitable results include much higher crime rates.
Is that a better outcome than the previous system?

[DiogenesLamp]

X, I wish to draw your attention to this post by BroJoeK.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4094503/posts?page=72#72

It reinforces a point I keep trying to make. There is a corrupt criminal class which runs things behind the scenes in a manner that has been referred to as a "good ole boys" network.

And that class has controlled DC since the 1820s.

[DiogenesLamp]

So, does 60 votes in the Senate provide protection against corruption in omnibus continuing resolutions? Not that I've ever noticed.

Both sides of the congress love them some pork. That IS a long lasting problem with congress.

And yet... and yet... where have you seen a better system?

Damning with faint praise?

That everyone else is worse is no excuse for us not to be better. There should be an objective standard of measuring the success of a justice system. It should not be graded on a curve against worse systems.

It's certainly true that newer scientific Criminal Investigative Service techniques have retroactively proved some previously guilty to have been innocent, and discovered others thought innocent to be guilty.

Again my point is how do you prove someone did something, when in fact they absolutely did not do this thing?

In my understanding of reality, if they did not do the thing, it is impossible to prove that they did. But yet, here we are. We are confronted with bungles as far as the eye can see, and these are the sort of mistakes that leaves the wreckage of lives in their wake.

And the Democrats' responses to this and other SJW issues has been to 1) defund police, 2) effectively decriminalize "minor" crimes, 3) reduce the overall prison population through lighter sentences and early releases.

Well yes, but they are idiots and crooks and you cannot expect anything useful from them. The judicial system is broken. It does not work properly and it has too high of an error rate.

The inevitable results include much higher crime rates. Is that a better outcome than the previous system?

In my view of the system, I favor much more draconian methods in some cases, and much more Christian methods in others.

Some people just need to get shot and buried to alleviate the world from the trouble of dealing with them. Those that can be reformed or evolved into becoming benign members of society should be given opportunities to grow in their lives into something better than what they are.

[BroJoeK]

BJK: "And yet... and yet... where have you seen a better system?"

DiogenesLamp: "Damning with faint praise?"

No, it's a serious question because it may not be possible to construct a justice system which produces better outcomes.
Further, especially when DNA evidence was new, there were a good many old cases reviewed to learn if new evidence produced different results.
Those old cases found to be in error were given great publicity, but what percentage of the total, really, were they?
some say it was 4%, but I doubt that.
Less than 1% or 2% sounds more likely to me.

The US murder rate is up now to something like 20,000 per year, of which only about half get "solved".
Of those, how many convicted were later found innocent by more scientific review of evidence?
Some claim it's as much as 4%, but I don't believe that, because the total averages fewer than 100 per year for all crimes, not just murder.
How does anyone get wrongly convicted? 2/3 of the time it's eyewitnesses misidentifying a suspect.

Today things are quite different.
On the positive side I already mentioned more scientific CIS methods and a second factor is ubiquitous cameras in high-crime areas.
If these were combined with effective policing and prosecutions then the results could make many areas livable again.

But it would take political will, which right now seems to be sorely lacking.

[DiogenesLamp]

Those old cases found to be in error were given great publicity, but what percentage of the total, really, were they? some say it was 4%, but I doubt that. Less than 1% or 2% sounds more likely to me.

Impossibilities should not be breaking reality by the margin of 4% or 2% or even 1%.

These men factually did not commit the crime, yet they were "proven" to have committed it.

And this is just what we know of it. These are the easy cases in which we had a robust tool for proving culpability. What of the cases where no such tool exists?

In my lifetime, i've personally seen several examples of our court system in action, and of the examples I can remember, the verdicts were absolutely wrong.

And this does not deal with cases elsewhere like the McMichaels (Ahmed Arbery) and Derick Chauvin (George Floyd) bullsh*t cases.

What *I* see is courts USUALLY getting it wrong. It's like they are either liars or idiots. Probably both.

[CodeJockey]

The goal of these grifters will be to enact legislation to confiscate your wealth. Don't believe it can't happen.

[CodeJockey]

Bottom line is that for capitalism to function as intended it calls for a somewhat intelligent population of citizens.

We’re to the point where many in America do not have what it call for to be self sufficient. Namely brains.