Radley Balko is one of the few Libertarians I don't want to punch in the throat. He's horrible on other issues, but on police misconduct he's been great for a very long time.
It's sort of interesting that no amount of being right on a pretty major issue, one with pretty far-reaching implications, even touches the depths of wrongness on more or less everything else. Libertarianism is deep brainrot.
What happened between 2007 and the last few months to make you decide to come out with the external abuses so openly?
It's been a gradual progression. I got my master's degree. The critical thinking required to earn my degree helped me more fully process those revelations I had in 2007. It taught me to think about things differently, to evaluate information in different ways.
Five minutes of being slightly less cynical about higher education.
As a teen, I was never going to get arrested for having a dime bag in my pocket, because no one would ever have known. There was just no possibility that a cop was ever going to stop me and search me.
I feel that we aren't quite at the point where everyone whose mind would be changed by this insight knows it already, and the rest would just rationalize it away somehow. I'd be happy if there were some year when it got hammered into the public consciousness and remained mainstream knowledge ever after.
Is he anywhere near as effective at rallying support for bad libertarian causes as he is with this police brutality beat? I've never heard his name in any other context.
Is he anywhere near as effective at rallying support for bad libertarian causes as he is with this police brutality beat? I've never heard his name in any other context.
He's quite prominent on civil forfeiture as well.
To be clear, he's on the side of the angels with civil forfeiture as well.
I was in a salad restaurant in a fancy suburb and the cops were getting their dinner. The younger one, a woman, was talking about how her review had cited her for not issuing enough tickets-in March, a pretty snowy month. The older one, a guy, said that that was BS and something about everyone being in it together. It's not egregious brutality, but it's pretty unreal hearing cops talk about something out loud- a quota system- that isn't supposed to exist.
Also, eating salad is a bit nontraditional.
Is he anywhere near as effective at rallying support for bad libertarian causes as he is with this police brutality beat? I've never heard his name in any other context.
Yes and no? He used to have his own blog, with a pretty extensive following (which following probably earned him the points needed for him to move to more mainstream gigs, bringing his own fan base with him) ... but by the time I ever looked at that blog, most of his posts were criminal justice related. The commenters/fan base were basically all libertarians.
I dunno: I think he came out of Cato and/or Reason. I don't feel like looking it up. I haven't seen him say much lately in a very public manner beyond the criminal justice stuff, but then I don't follow the twitter. Last I knew, he supports Rand Paul and is dubious about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which is not a problem because the free market can and will correct for discriminatory behavior).
What, did you people not fix the country while I was on vacation?
I suspect Wood's timing on deciding to come clean is because he's got something to sell. He's seen some legit stuff but some of this song and dance is laughable to the point that he's either an outright scam or at best a total idiot. Suddenly realizing you're watching real people like you're De Niro the mercenary with the natives? Really? And you didn't really fully process some of the things you saw because of all that critical thinking you did getting a masters degree? Come on.
Suddenly realizing you're watching real people like you're De Niro the mercenary with the natives? Really? And you didn't really fully process some of the things you saw because of all that critical thinking you did getting a masters degree? Come on.
Reads to me like every shitty/abusive relationship I've ever been in or heard of.
I recently learned that Ethan Allen looks like Marlon Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty. That's probably on topic.
He has a book (or something) to sell is a such a good way to dismiss. Also, this is old news, why now?. Ho hum.
Leaving a context in which everyone is basically complicit in what is going on and reaffirms the basic okay-ness of it and moving into a context where people are probably going to be poking around those same issues from a very different perspective, and in a critical way seems to me like exactly the sort of thing that leads to this kind of reevaluation. There's nothing magical about getting a masters degree itself, but it's a decent example of the kind of situation where you'd see that.
Reads to me like every shitty/abusive relationship I've ever been in or heard of.
And abusive closed religious communities.
13: AKA the Bush administration's stock-in-trade. Throw out the first one when the news originally breaks, then the second when it gets expanded on later.
We'll see. It's too neat. The Marines stripping the fear from him, his fight to bring down the good old boy network from within, the "these are real people" revelation, etc. The whole package is too perfect, too exactly what people are looking to hear. It feels too much like a sales pitch to me.
But, maybe something good will come out of this. I'm basing this impression on one interview with Balko, who I don't trust at all.
I should probably add that I'm jaded as hell and he might very well be a good dude who's 100 percent legit and above board. I really want that to be the case.
I'm kind of surprised to hear you say that you don't trust Balko, gswift. Can you elaborate? My experience of his stuff is that it's pretty meticulously documented.
OT: So, Obama just changed the FLSA level at which you can be except from overtime to $50,000. Why didn't he do that before?
You had it right that first time. And I think the answer is that he's gotten bolder about making administrative rule changes because he's realized it's the only way he's going to get anything (else) done.
Anyway, being "salaried" at $24,000/year is fucknuts.