You’re completely right. People just want to keep their blinders on and hate on this because it’s Texas. They don’t want to think critically and acknowledge a state that often does the wrong thing can also do the right thing.
I guarantee there wouldn’t be as many critical comments if this were New York or California.
In your metaphor b is closer to c than a so it’s a good thing. But if b is on a one way street to a cliff it doesn’t make it a good thing to drive there.
Person has a bad day after losing their job or some other real life event like losing their mother. Accidentally runs a red light and kills someone. Officer says they were drunk. Breathilizer says 0.0 and person says they were sober. Poof. They go to prison, and you are now asking someone to go to their house, sieze all their assets and throw their children and spouse out into homelessness because of an accident that involved one of the MANY incidents that occur where people get charged with DUI/DWI without being intoxicated.
Go live in your manufactured world that cops are dealing out fair and unbias judgement against citizens. If you need me to show you where it says they are allowed to give you a dui without you failing a breathilizer/ blood test I can
I agree, pleading up to guilty is dumb. But I do have to question the wisdom of this law anyway: Do you not normally go to prison for manslaughter in Texas? According to www.findlaw.com/…/texas-manslaughter-laws.html you can end up in prison for up to 20 years (though it can be as little as two, but I’d assume it’s not two in the case of drunk driving.) Intoxication manslaughter is also usually accompanied by a fine of up to $10,000.
Even two years imprisonment for a felony will result in the felon (1) selling up all their possessions to pay for lawyers, etc, and (2) losing their jobs and being unable to get jobs for years afterwards. Something that’ll be made worse if they’re on the hook for child support they’re unable to pay for and therefore will, I assume, be unable to get a driver’s license, in a state where driving is mandatory.
So, other than theater, what is this for? Making child support “someone else’s problem” so the state can avoid helping people in dire financial circumstances by pointing at someone else and saying “Well they should be paying for it.”?
I appreciate a lot of people are posting here agreeing with the bill because it sounds like something they should support. But it’s either not thought out, or the intentions behind it are rotten. Given it’s Texas, the latter seems probable.
Touché. Maybe to bring it back into the realms of ‘worth keeping’, it could be means-tested (so of you have assets then this stands and you gotta liquefy that wealth, but if you’re essentially unable to pay its recognized as a barrier to rehabilitation?)
It’s theater. People go to prison for intoxication manslaughter. How are they making money to pay for child support? What kind of job will they really get after getting out of prison for essentially murder?
A cynical person might even say this is an attempt by the state and insurance companies to justify not having any sort of security net for victims’ families. If one person can be held financially responsible for the kids, why should anyone else have to step in?
That is exactly what it is, aimed at drunk drivers first because everyone will be on board with that demographic first. Then it will be expanded over time.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. – H.L. Mencken
So, if they have a family and kids, I guess they’re on the street now? The parent involved is likely going to prison, so they’re not going to be able to provide support. This is “tough on crime” theater that would likely do nothing but cause more harm.
If someone is unable to pay the restitution because they’re incarcerated, they’re expected to make payments no “later than the first anniversary of the date,” of their release, the law says.
From the article. So seems like they thought of that too
So how long do you get for manslaughter in the us? 8 years? So at best the child gets support like 9 years later and only if the person manages to get a good enough job… Maybe the life of a child shouldn’t be a lottery but just backed by the state
They did something that wasn’t evil, just stupid. I guess that is a win for texas. There are already systems to make people pay damages to other people without having the child go trough the indignity of getting child support from a murderer.
Indignity of receiving child support? Are you kidding?
We’re talking about a child/children’s parent being killed, and you think it’s somehow unjust that they’re receiving the smallest amount of financial restitution from the person who killed them. I’d love to hear you explain how this is somehow stupid or insulting to a single parent and the surviving children.
All the words in my comment are important and you seem to have cut out a large part of them like some kind of weird ransome note.
I said that damages, that means the same as financial restitution, should be and is payed out in these kinds of cases. There is already a legal framework for that and it doesn’t involve child support like the drunk driver is the kids new dad. It is a gross way of looking at it and if it is truly child support like child support is handled then they have suddenly introduced a criminal aspect to a system that doesn’t normally interface with the justice system.
I am not going to oppose anything that gets more support to single parents and children who lose a parent.
Being opposed to this because of what it’s called is a ridiculously short sighted view to take. I don’t care what this is called, but it is not gross, and it is not stupid.
Seems like they have come along way since the grousing about the laws in the 80s coming into effect to ban a hard working person from enjoying a couple on the way home from work…
Mix this in with the freeway speed limits are 80MPH on the highway in. Texas and often 65 for work zones on the smaller 2 lane highways. One can’t even go that fast on the I5 in Oregon with the Max being only 60 mph without construction delays. Can’t imagine adding a couple of drinks into the mix on the way home from a 12 hour day…
Conservatism is bigotry, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, antisemitism and generalized hate. Conservatives absolutely delight in the misery of the vulnerable.
Teach your children why good people don’t do business or keep relationships with conservatives. Marginalize hate by marginalizing the hate group.
the idea of "the company man" was really already gone by the time Gen X got to the professional workplace.. nobody expected to spend a career in one place, although there were still "career companies" around trying to create that atmosphere, and the promise of the older attitudes of being "part of a culture" and things like that.. any attempts by recruiters to peddle those ideas now has to be pure pantomime..
I saw Wells Fargo discard peers of mine because they were older. Despite, their ability to perform. And they were with the company for 20-25 years. This is my upbringing in the corporate world. They sure loved celebrating someone retiring after that time and would send out emails and throw parties but when the dust settled, you didn’t matter to them as an employee. People got to see that especially in the 2008 downturn.
the 90s saw a really hard erosion of labor bargaining power for blue and white collars, and that power and money moving up into the boardroom.. it seems to have just gone downhill since, although workers are more mobile than ever, especially in the white collar world.. but it just means less security in the end, especially when you have to consider health care in this country..
The song Margaritaville is about an alcoholic. It’s for the best that he didn’t live that lifestyle. Yes, he stopped drinking then because of the sugar, but still health reasons.
That’s his most recognizable song. It makes sense he’s build his brand on that name.
The cops arrested him and then said social services was coming to take his son who was with him at the time. Then the cop was told the charges wouldn’t stick and still did it.
I mean if the police wanted to enjoy their job they each would get a day to park a cruiser up the street … and then change into civilian clothes and sit in a lawn chair up the street drinking a beer smoking a cigar holding a sign saying “speed trap ahead” and then calling in anyone that ignores it with it being tracked by the squad car’s camera.
that would be how you police if you want to have fun.
(this is my most brilliant idea ever. and i yield it freely to law enforcement)
Pretty telling that they’re not really about safety when officers will speed after someone at 100+ cause they got their feefees hurt in the exact same area the speed trap is.
People hate it, but as someone who leans towards fuck-cars, well sign-posted automated traffic cameras remove this problem. Stop cops from chasing people in cars like some dumb movie, and endanger both parties by parking on the freeway - just mail them a ticket.
So an automated speed trap is the solution? That’s just a flat tax. And for the wealthy it’s not even an inconvenience, just the cost of driving as they please.
it is, yes. I don’t think that’s an issue because a lot of countries that use it also couple it with a system that if you continuously break the law there are further sanctions
Meanwhile in reality they can craft these traps to maximize revenue by doing things like changing speed limits for specific sections of the same road for no apparent reason other than to charge people for speeding.
What you’re describing may be an issue. I suspect it is a tiny minority of the speeding tickets written. The above poster is advocating for well advertised limits and automated ticketing. I think this is a very reasonable solution to an undeniable problem: driving is dangerous, speeding more so.
The situation your describing a contrived edge case and is not a valuable contribution to the discussion at this stage.
“Just don’t speed” is, by and large, a very reasonable thing to ask of drivers.
Just because you can’t see the obvious issue of deriving revenue (and thus eventually relying on it) from traffic violations, doesn’t mean it’s a contrived edge case. Here are a couple of articles to help you along: nytimes.com/…/police-ticket-quotas-money-funding.…
I read the article second article, the first is paywalled. I still think cameras are a good solution. The argument in the article sounds a lot like “some police are bad, we shoud disband the police” or “some government officials are greedy, we should disband the government”.
Frankly, it sounds like the real issue if that they have privitized the production and configuration of the traffic cameras. If there was legislation in place that ensured fair and consistent implementation of the devices much of the issues identified by the author would be moot.
Any system that we put in place to enforce rules can be abused by those in power, but that doesn’t mean the system is bad or wrong. The reality again is that cars are dangerous, and I argue we should prioritize protecting the public.
It’s easy to hop in a discussion and say “no that’s bad”, but a lot more productive to say “here’s an alternative”.
Privatization is an issue, but also cities or police departments that rely on such revenue will also push for systems that drive revenue since it is a significant portion of their budget. Here’s another piece that explains it: npr.org/…/paved-paradise-examines-how-parking-has…
It’s a pretty long piece which covers other aspects of parking, but if you start reading from this excerpt: “GRABAR: I think so. Essentially, parking enforcement serves as a subset of what is now known as revenue-driven policing. And the idea here is that cities take advantage of these parking laws to try and get as much money out of people as possible, but not in the way that you would think, right?” and onward, it covers how underlying problems aren’t solved because the revenue derived from the existing situation is too convenient for the city. They even build around that by giving certain companies discounts on parking tickets because of how often they get them from just trying to do their job.
In addition to your point, there are certain places (I’m looking at you, Houston) where a whole lot of people just have paper tags. They’re all faked. So where are we sending those tickets?
There are also a load of unregistered motorcycles with plates from three owners ago. It’s not their fault that no one bothered to register after that.
TXTag tried sending me bills for someone who bought my car after I traded it in. I proved it was no longer mine. They dropped those charges. Then it started over the next time whoever owns the car drove on their tollway. Went on for two years.
I’m sure long-term they will improve the system and things like this will happen less and less. I’m sorry that happened to you, but it doesn’t mean the idea as a whole is bad.
I’m literally arguing against privatization in the adjacent post. Again, this is not productive discourse. “Burn everything down” isn’t a realistic or helpful suggestion.
the residents and the police are both happy with this solution and it exactly describes my proposal, but it seems like you’re using this as proof it’s a bad idea?
the only criticism is someone saying “it’s a bit of a money grab,” which - yeah, isn’t that the point of capitalism? So is selling bread, water, electricity, internet, books…
but why I’m proposing it is because it decreases confrontation - in the context of someone being extra judiciously killed by police, so - which would you rather lose, $100? or your life?
It does nothing to increase safety. Mailing someone a citation after the fact does nothing to stop the crime as it is being done. And, as is the case in Lindale, it doesn’t even make any money as a large majority of the recipients just throw them away.
i dont mean to be rude but are you absolutely sure you’re speaking from a place of “I want to increase road safety in general with methods that actually work” and not from a place of “I don’t want to pay a $100 fine?”
Are you not reading what I said? It doesn’t make the area safer. Receiving a ticket WEEKS after the fact does nothing to prevent or curtail the dangerous behavior WHEN IT IS OCCURRING. And it doesn’t make the actual street any safer because people slow down for that 100yd stretch then speed back up. Never mind the fact that a huge number of the tickets go straight into the trash.
Ive admitted it three or four times. So for clarity, again, yes it is predicated on money. Yes, it is a cash grab. Yes it is a tax. It is a tax grab, it is a cash tax. It is a cash grab. I personally feel the term “cash grab” is a little loaded emotionally and isn’t necessarily the best and most accurate way to describe it. But it seems you care a great deal about me saying the words, so I have said them. it is a cash grab.
All transactions are a cash grab. Name something that isn’t. I have said from the start that the “cash grab” “tax” etc is part of the deterrent, but, to me, at least, that is better than death.
Furthermore - cops issuing tickets is a cash grab. Cops arresting people and them going to court and getting fined is a cash grab. Forfeiting your car is a cash grab. Paying to attend remedial driving school is a cash grab. We live in a capitalist society, everything is a cash grab.
I have from the start said that prevention (the cash grab) is part of the desired outcome, it is in my original comment. It is good to fine people who do bad things because it makes them do it less- as evinced by the sources I have provided - and it helps repay the cost of their antisocial behavior back to society.
Now that we are very clear that we both agree
it is a cash grab
why I think that cash grab is a good thing
that the good thing is the decrease in speeding
I am curious to hear why you think the cash grab - or to use my preferred nomenclature - a deterrent - is a fate worse than death?
Have you read anything I’ve been writing? It is does not deter speeding. Outside of the 100 yards the camera it’s business as usual. People receive tickets AFTER THE FACT. It would be more effective to have actual police enforcing limits ON THE SPOT. They do not care about safety, they are literally just trying to generate money for themselves and their cronies.
according to your unsourced opinion with nothing to back it up except that you “live near there” - it doesn’t. I’ll change my opinion when you can provide some facts like I did. (although I retain the right to scrutinize and offer my opinion on those facts).
it would be more effective… to enforce… on the spot
I disagree. You can enforce for every car with a camera, you can enforce 1 car with a person in another car - so by what metrics of efficacy are you holding this to? It seems like you’re saying it’s better to stop one person now than it is to stop thousands of people regularly.
If they don’t care about safety, why is the person who doesn’t care about safety better in person, with a gun, giving chase in a dangerous location?
If a person is speeding and unknowingly gets tagged by a speed camera, it doesn’t stop their speeding at the time. Hence it is not about safety.
If someone is speeding then slows down just long enough to avoid getting tagged by the speed camera, then resumes speeding, it is not about safety.
If the tickets can be literally thrown in the garbage without a second thought and the issuing party can’t do a thing about it, it is not about safety.
There are better ways to make people aware of their driving habits. A shitty unmanned speed camera is not one of those ways.
a) only true if not signposted, and I specifically said it should be. isn’t cops stopping you also only a deterrent if you get caught at that time? if a camera is there permanently you know not to speed after getting caught, if a cop is there on Monday they might not be on Tuesday
b) we disagree, that’s exactly what safety is to me. I don’t wear a condom if I’m not having sex, and you don’t need to slow down if you’re in an area where you can go fast — are you assuming I mean to make people slow down on the freeway? i am not, i am talking about accident prone areas where slowing down would save lives
c) so don’t make the tickets be able to be thrown in the garbage?
A government agency is using a flimsy excuse to extort money from it’s citizens, accusing people of a crime without due process… and you’ve made it clear that you think it’s a worthy trade off for the illusion of safer roads.
Normal people don’t step in front of moving vehicles in order to create a situation where you can justify murdering someone. The cop should have taken one step to the side, or simply not put himself in harm’s way to begin with. Even a normal person knows you don’t jump in front of a moving vehicle. Cops are trained to keep themselves out of harm’s way, but this idiot skipped “don’t play in traffic” day at the academy. Cops are also trained not to shoot into moving vehicles because that creates a totally uncontrollable danger to bystanders. He skipped that day too.
They could just let her go. They know what she looks like and they know the car she’s in. Unless she goes on the lam for a few bottles of booze it seems easier and safer to follow up with her a day or two later for what is presumably a misdemeanor.
Thank God the brave officer decided to stand in front of the car and shoot her to death, otherwise she may have escaped with the $30 of alcohol. Also she might have drank the alcohol, so it doesn’t really matter that her and her child are dead.
Have you not kept up with American news. Chips be killing people and then getting away with it. Be asleep in your bed, dead. Answer your door, dead. Cops only shot first and make excuses why it’s your fault later.
In that situation and really most involving cops, the have guns you aren’t.
The cops are generally cool when the the people are
This is a lie. I wish we lived in a world where cops were good and could be trusted but that’s not the world Americans live in.
I don’t understand why the cops couldn’t just arrest her at home. They would’ve had positive identification, AND footage of her committing another crime by fleeing the scene. This was escalated into a life or death situation, and I can’t honestly say that’s entirely her fault.
oh don’t get me wrong, she’s certainly not blameless. she did all those things while pregnant as well, putting both her and her unborn child at risk.
i just feel like the cops could’ve recognized it was escalating and not allowed it to become a life or death situation. and i don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect something like that from a keeper of the peace.
edit: fetus is probably better in place of unborn child, i’m not trying to make a lowkey pro life statement
bottom line, sober or not, evasion is not reason enough to kill someone.
i don’t think anyone should run from the police, provided the system is working the way it should. but i also don’t think police should put themselves in front of an evading vehicle either. that’s needless danger, and any force used with that danger as justification is needless force.
in this case, unless she’s in a stolen car there’s no way the cops couldn’t find her basically immediately after this crime. obviously for violent/dangerous criminals the approach should be different, but for shoplifting? are we serious here?
this many officers being dispatched for fucking shoplifting is already a waste of resources, are we gonna die on the hill that it’s totally fine for police to facilitate the escalation of that into death? there’s so many ways this coulda gone that aren’t death, and if cops can’t figure that out then they need more training at the very least.
i mean no disrespect by the way, you’re making your points very well and i appreciate the discourse.
Police step in front of cars quite a bit. There’s a lot of footage out there showing incidents of vehicles trying to flee for whatever reason and an officer deliberately positioning themselves in front of the vehicle.
The vehicle heading towards the officer or striking the officer opens the door to escalated action on the part of the officers and that includes shooting and killing occupants.
It’s straight up bullshit justifying the use of deadly force.
This woman shoplifted. They have the car license plate, her on video conducting the theft with witnesses to the fact…she’s not going to get away with it. Yet the solution is to position oneself in front of the car, where any fool knows you might get struck, to kill someone over booze?
You can blame the thief for being a dumbass, but fuck cops for escalating something like this to deadly force when they could’ve stepped out of the way and picked her up later. Fucking drop a couple rounds into the engine, it won’t make it more than a couple blocks after it dumps the oil and coolant out…
Wow, you’re really bending over backwards to defend a murder. The cops started with guns. They had her on video and had her license plate. They didn’t even have to stop here then and there. They shot her and her child dead when the only thing they had to do to secure their safety was back down, but they are incapable of anything but escalation so instead of any one of the infinite possible peaceful reasonable paths to resolution…murder.
What they said is a lie, anyways. Collective action is the core of worker power. “Mobility” is a feature of a low worker power environment where we aren’t able to extract our demands from our work places. Who would want to spend time looking for new jobs if we could just get good raises, advancement, and work life balance out of the jobs we’ve already got?
Don’t trust fortune.com to talk about worker issues honestly, it’s a rag for the other side of the equation.
Yeah, you can probably plot a graph that shows union membership declining at the same pace as ‘company loyalty’ or whatever. The job hopping phenomenon is largely caused by corporations themselves, who stopped giving raises and promotions and started doing regular layoffs.
She was taken into custody at the home of Jodi Hildebrandt, who owns a counseling business that she says teaches people to improve their lives by being honest, responsible and humble.
2 statsments down
Prosecutors allege Franke and Hildebrandt either caused or allowed someone to torture Franke’s 12-year-old son and injure her 10-year-old daughter. Both children were starved and harmed emotionally, prosecutors said.
Brought to you by the "don't tread on me" folks who eagerly tread over anyone they don't like.
In this case, children with loving families. No one is forcing.left hands transness on kids you absolute ghouls. Let go of those perals, stop shouting "save the children" and stop telling kids they are wrong for writing (or living) that way.
You should! I mean, yeah, of course it has! As things become less stigmatized and especially in the case of autism, more ways are used to detect/diagnose then... Why wouldn't it?
The difference is that if ANYONE drinks and drives, there is a high chance of harming another. No one else is harmed, or even affected atll by someone transitioning. And the regret/detransition rate is astonishingly low. Never mind thr fact that puberty blockers and all options available to minors is reveraable.
You are simply just trying to regulate what people do with their own body.
My god you are a fucking smoothbrain. If we dont let kids drink or drive we sure as fuck shouldnt let them try and physically alter their sex organs or their hormones. And the regret rate and suicide rate is notoriously high what the fuck are you even saying.
Have you ever stopped to consider social stigma and the things you are saying why people experince regret? Societal pressure is immense for trans folk.
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