He was given an indeterminate sentence, known as imprisonment for public protection (IPP). This meant that while he could be released after 19 months and 27 days, he could also be jailed for up to 99 years. IPP was first used as a sentence in England and Wales in 2005, having been introduced by Labour in 2003 to detain in prison people who posed a significant risk of causing harm to the public. It was a controversial sentence. Critics said that jailing people for what they could do, rather than what they had done, contradicted the basic principle of justice: that people are innocent until proven guilty.
I can almost understand the idea when applied to extremely dangerous individuals. There should absolutely be some kind of separate system for people who are too dangerous to be able to reintegrate into society.
A one size fits all justice system is a terrible way to run a society
In most cases, though, you can get those individuals on actual charges. People aren’t usually violent completely out of the blue and a suspicion of future violence might come from prior acts of violence or securing materials for mass violence (like building explosive devices)…
The rationale for detaining someone for public safety is almost always coming from prior acts that we have laws for. We should force law enforcement to actually use those laws since they’ll have a burden of proof to enact enforcement… the IPP loophole is awful because it leaves no legal recourse - there was no trial you can appeal or at least argue against.
What difference are the protestors making? That’s a genuine question as I’ve not paid much attention to the topic. From what I know the war continues pretty much as it has for months.
I’m more basing it on the huge, coordinated reaction against and mischaracterization of the protests. I’m assuming it is backed by AIPAC pressure. Even Biden felt like he had to respond. AIPAC has done everything possible to thwart BDE actions by university students. The current climate is the most promising I’ve seen in a long time.
I don’t think the protests will stop the war immediately, but they are setting up a foundation for a strong political base. If the protestors and media outlets start using the word genocide, I think it will be a good sign the pressure is working. Biden can’t ignore this forever, he knows he’s politically vulnerable.
Everyone should deserve a home. Maybe that home should be a cell if you’re a racist power tripping murderer, but if you out here genuinely trying to protect your community/country, you deserve a home.
And full healthcare, especially for rural volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians, many of them are volunteers. They deserve to be protected and treated fully by the services they put their lives on the line to provide for.
Some even have to pay for their training and their equipment. I get needing barriers for entry to dangerous positions but that feels like an economic barrier for an essential service.
It’s funny in a depressing way. The people who may save your life in a car crash are running off 4 hours of sleep and debating wether to spend money on food or cell service. An ambulance ride can easily cost north of 1k for you. The EMTs might get like $40 each.
I might not feel as bad for them, they certainly made their choice of career to be cops, but at the end of the day its the institutions under capitalsim that hurt us the most, the individuals are just tools of the system, if Billy-bob McOfficer quits being a cop, Randall DiCopper will be there to replace them and the system continues.
And even though they are cops, they are also human beings too, also caught up in an abusive and exploitative system.
Maybe the silver lining is that an FBI employee gets paid roughly the same as every other federal agency employee, barring some weird locality and specialization pays.
It’s not as powerful to say a national parks employee or a bureau of X worker is struggling to make ends meet because they’re typically not exciting or sexy conversation points. I wholeheartedly believe that this is affecting way more than just the FBI workforce.
What we’re seeing is that costs have risen above and beyond what every single typical government employee is making and that lawmakers have not made any deliberate efforts to increase federal pay outside of the yearly sub-inflation pay increases. Add to that the inability to pass budgets on time and you have a few million people who aren’t getting paid enough to match their lifestyle for the previous year, every year, with added stressors of somehow saving money to account for not being paid for indeterminate amounts of time thanks to government shutdowns which are solved literal hours before coming into effect. Federal service isn’t a glamorous or high paying career field, but it’s supposed to be a stable one which provides enough to live with. Now, we’re seeing that slowly erode.
I see two solutions. Lawmakers can increase federal schedule pay or the private sector (retail, landlords?) can reduce their prices.
Expecting companies to drop prices of most goods and services even 10% to match pre-COVID values is unrealistic and unlikely. Expecting some mass movement to reduce revenue and profit in the name of humanity is some sci-fi utopian plot line.
Lawmakers increasing pay is more realistic, but still unlikely. We’re slowly seeing more people aware of the dysfunction from within congress, but millions of people still vote in representatives that poison budget bills that directly affect their livelihoods.
It’s almost like the reverse of that quote that I’ll butcher: “it’s hard for a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.” I almost want to say they get what they deserve, but they make the same bed as so many others who have to suffer the consequences and are trying to make a difference.
And a pension plan eating 4.4% of every paycheck that they totally promise won’t go the way of social security and be empty by the time most new hires will be able to retire (lol retirement, good one). There is a MASSIVE block of federal employees approaching retirement, and already eligible for it.
A major difference between FBI agents and most other government positions, is that FBI agents don’t get to decide where they want to work. They list their “preferences” about what city they would like to work in and then those preferences are largely ignored. In other words, the local cost of living whenever they end up is completely out of their control.
It doesn’t matter if the agent lives in Phoenix, and listed it as their top preference, the LA, NY and Chicago branches are the largest, so that’s where many agents will end up. What might be a great salary for living in Phoenix, is probably totally unmanageable for living in NYC.
Apparently this has to be explained since many people are making this mistake: FBI agents are not cops. They are investigators. They investigate crimes. They don’t sit around eating donuts or drive around a local “beat”.
They are the main organization investigating hate crimes and all those Jan 6 nuts. They didn’t arrest your friend for a joint back in 2015.
Which is why they are asking for more time for more reviews of pandemic spending.
“Lawmakers and the White House are asking to extend the deadline to prosecute pandemic fraud and authorize inspectors general to continue their reviews of pandemic spending.”
Perhaps they needed more time to find the yacht he bought with his PPP.
Yeah, I mean, the divine commandment kind of places her in a difficult position. God doesn’t have a lot of tolerance of people that don’t do what He wants them to.
Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.
Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.
there was also that time that Elisha, when a certain king came to him to; basically, cast auguries. (oh yeah, that’s not wish craft when a prophet does it, huh?) so he tell this king… who god doesn’t really like anyhow… to shoot an arrow out the window. “Oh good. you’ll defeat that one asshole. now, take up a bundle of arrows. hit the ground.”
Of course, the king, being used to weird rituals and stuff, strikes the ground 3 times. (what’s not mentioned is why- 3 is a holy number. You see it in all sorts of places in semetic religions.)
So elisha says to him, “You idiot, you should have struck the ground more times. five or six, at least. Now… you’ll beat that other asshole 3 times, but you won’t defeat him totally. so, you know. He’s gonna come back.”
so, basically, god decided to let the israelites suffer under some douchenozzle’s rule because… his prophet couldn’t give clear instructions and the king went for symbolism over maximum effort…
It’s dumb that this story got turned into an anti-masturbation edict. Onan was pulling out because he wanted his brother’s inheritance, he was punished for his greed.
I don’t know, that sounds like it might take a while. What if we just changed the Earth’s oil filter and consulted VW on how to get past an emissions check?
I’ve actually heard people make that argument. “Plants need CO2. This will increase crop yields.” Which is technically true, global greening is part of climate change, but it also applies to weeds. So…
No it is a minority, they just happen to be very spread out and vocal. And our system of government was setup to give them a massively oversized voice on the national scale.
A lot of statistics about dangers in society seem to be entirely centred around deaths. Which is understandable of course, but underplays the many other harmful outcomes that can occur short of that.
The idea is to offload violence from the society to the police (to give lawful monopoly on violence to the police). The alternative is wild west where everyone can do policing/violence as they see fit.
Granted that the policing should always be scrutinized and improved as needed, having completely "defund police" is not something we want to do.
The idea is to offload violence from the society to the police
My point is that conferring such enormous authority and power without enormous responsibility and accountability (and careful selection and training) is a mistake.
The alternative is wild west where everyone can do policing/violence as they see fit.
I’m 99% certain there are other possibilities in between the two extremes.
having completely “defund police” is not something we want to do.
As I understand it, the “defund the police” movement is not about abolishing police. (And is a bit off topic, so I’ll save that discussion for another time.)
May be you think “defund police” is actually train police or create additional department of people who can deal with things mentally ill (both of it costs money, the opposite of “defund”) but I bet most of the people do not think so, and treat “defund police” and ACAB exactly as it sounds.
In any case I have answers a very specific question in my previous post.
I beg you Lemmy, dont be like a redditor that just reads the purposefully inflammatory headlines and gets mad over it. Always assume a headline is supposed to get a specific emotional response from you and read the article.
For this one the environmental concerns people had were not about carbon emissions, they were about groundwater contamination
It faced a constant barrage of criticism over safety concerns, however, particularly around the leaking of radioactive material into groundwater and for harm caused to fish when the river’s water was used for cooling.
The plant as well as NYs other plants that face a lot of criticism were built in the 60s long before much of the modern saftey measures and building techniques that make Modern reactors so safe. And thats why they were decommissioned, they were almost 60 years old and way past their initial life span. Not because of “Dumb environmental activists think taking nuclear power offline will decrease carbon emissions” like whoever wrote this headline is trying to get you to assume.
Modern is a misnomer. Most of our plants are 30+ years old. After 3 Mile Island, nuclear development ground to a halt in the US. No new nuclear power began development after 1979 except 2 new reactors at the existing Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia that were approved in 2009.
And only one reactor at Indian Point came online in the 60s. Units 2 and 3 came online 12 and 14 years after unit one. And unit 1 was decommissioned in 1974 as it is, shortly after unit 2 came online.
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
Three natural gas-fired power plants have been introduced over the past three years to help support the electric supply needed by New York City that Indian Point had been providing: Bayonne Energy Center II (120 MW), CPV Valley Energy Center (678 MW), and Cricket Valley Energy Center (1,020 MW).
In any case, why not fix the issue rather than just shutting the plant?
Because just patching up an old faulty nuclear power plant thats past its expected service life is a recipe for disaster. Hence why we have service lifetimes for these things in the first place?
And that does not make the headline “inflammatory.” It is accurate
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
Citation needed. It received a 40-year permit to start because that was the max permit issued.
Lots of things last well past their “expected service life.” That is why there is the word EXPECTED. The problem was in the spent fuel pools. They could build brand new ones.
Tell me, what was the expected service life of the Brooklyn Bridge? Should people avoid it because continuing to use it is “a recipe for disaster?”
The fact is, intensive inspections would have been required for another permit to continue operating.
Listen, if you think we should build newer and better nuclear power plants, I am right with you. But until that happens, we cannot just flush what we have down the toilet.
Should we build wind and solar? Absolutely. But we also need green power that works when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, and that is what Indian Point gave the state of NY for decades.
It absolutely is inflammatory. Its specifically trying to conflate environmental concerns of polluted groundwater with carbon emissions, to make it seem like the people who voiced those concerns are idiots.
It cites a “green win.” The groundwater issue is absolutely a green issue.
But even then, those pushing to close it down claimed it would be replaced by green energy. The National Resourced Defence Council claimed that “Indian Point Is Closing, but Clean Energy Is Here to Stay.” The claimed that “because of New York’s landmark 2019 climate legislation and years of clean energy planning and investments by the state, New York is better positioned today than ever to achieve its ambitious climate and clean energy goals without this risky plant.”
So, yes, it was absolutely advertised as a climate win that the NY would easily replace it with renewable energy, even when those 3 gas turbine plants were being bought online.
You cant really just keep “modernising” ancient reactor designs forever. Eventually you’ll need to close them down and build something else.
And realistically it makes way way more sense to build Wind power than nuclear to get us to carbon neutral. We can build a 50mw wind farm in 6 months.
For comparison Hinkley Point C in the UK was announces in 2010 and is currently expected to be commissioned by 2029.
That means if we built wind instead we would have built 1900MW of capacity in the time it would have taken to build the NPP and by the time the reactors would generate power for the first time the wind farms would already have generated 17 GW/years of power. If we stopped building more wind farms when the NPP completed it would take the reactor 14 more years just to catch up to the wind farms. And if we continue to build wind farms nuclear literally never catches up as total wind capacity would overtake the capacity of the NPP by year 13.
Yes you can make arguments about the uptime of wind, but I think ive made my point. And thats not even factoring in the cost/MW of capacity.
This is a great point about renewables: A partially finished solar or wind power installation can produce some power and start recouping costs. A nuclear plant doesn’t start bringing in income until it’s completely finished, so all those billions tied up in design and construction are a liability for a lot longer.
You didn’t factor in that nuclear only takes forever because we haven’t done it in a long time and have lost all of the knowledge and skilled builders that know how to do it. If we properly pursued new nuclear plants in the US on a federal and state level it would absolutely be the best option.
I know you touched on it but the battery storage needed to make wind reliable would be enormous.
I’m a firm believer nuclear and renewables are what we need to be spending our time and money, not one or the other but both.
You didn’t factor in that nuclear only takes forever because we haven’t done it in a long time and have lost all of the knowledge and skilled builders that know how to do it.
I didn’t, because its not true.
France has been building new reactors consistently since they started in the 50s and yet their latest reactor Flamamville 3 has been under construction since 2007.
The only people that can do Nuclear quickly are China through a combination of lesser safety standards, their totalitarian government, and the massive scale at which they are building them.
know you touched on it but the battery storage needed to make wind reliable would be enormous.
You don’t need batteries to make windows viable, there are lots of solutions, the most obvious being to just overbuild it.
I’m a firm believer nuclear and renewables are what we need to be spending our time and money, not one or the other but both
I’m not, nuclear just doesn’t make sense to build right now, nuclesr is a medium tern solution to a long term problem that needs immediate solutions.
You get way way more MWs per $ with wind. Wind farms can be built in 6 months and start generating power immediately. Even the fastest NPPs can’t compete. Wind farms can be built anywhere because they take no workers to operate and requite much less lightly skilled workers to maintain and no water to oeprate (so arent affected by droughts). They are less hindered by planning regulations, nimbys and protest groups, can be built onshore or offshore and also don’t have the chance to make an area uninhabitable for generations.
The only advantages nuclear has is a smaller footprint which is mitigated by wind being dispersed and stable output. Which is something that can be compensated for in wind.
Besides the text of the article, there is the issue that environmentalist fear-mongering about nuclear energy caused extreme hesitance to build a new plant and that has lead directly to greenhouse gas emissions increases.
Well when you consider that reactors at the time werent as safe as they are now, and that we had several high profile nuclear reactor failures at around the same time, that were all pretty narrowly stopped from becoming even worse disasters and all those reactors were “Perfectly safe” until they werent and also just how deeply awful the effects of radiation is. Do you think its actually “fear mongering” or reasonable concern? I suppose the difference depends mostly on which side of the argument you are on.
Environmentalists can’t stop oil and gas companies from drilling and fracking and spilling and polluting. If nuclear was profitable environmentalists wouldn’t be able to stop it either.
The only reason we have so many nuclear plants is because the government subsidized them because they produce material that can be used in weapons. Just the reactor on its own isn’t profitable for decades, which is too long for a company to wait for a return even in the good old days before profits needed to grow every quarter.
Well, nuclear can be profitable. It’s just that fossil fuels are more profitable.
But this is also where the government needs to step in. There should be a carbon tax to account for the climate change externality. Also, clean sources of power including nuclear should be subsidized.
Keep in mind that while environmentalists maybe can’t stop it, some of them happily join a coalition with NIMBYs and indeed, fossil fuel companies to stop nuclear.
Even if the government did start heavily subsidizing nuclear, it will take a decade for new plants to come online. In the meantime, hundreds of gigawatts of renewables will come online, and storage and efficiency technologies will improve immensely. Like I said in another comment, if renewable power lowers the price of electricity, the nuclear plant will take even longer to be profitable.
We can keep the existing plants we have going. And even in the future, I believe there is space for nuclear. It is still far more consistent at generating power.
And I doubt renewables will make power cheaper.
Listen, the companies building gas turbine generators are not stupid. They know they will run for decades. Renewable energy, while good, just cannot meet increasing demands for power on its own.
Except it already has. It’s cheaper (hence a lower electricity price) to build new wind or solar than it is to continue operating a coal power plant. And because they’re renewable the only real costs are the initial construction and some fairly easy maintenance. Without the fuel costs the real price of electricity will go down over time. A rooftop solar system will pay for itself after 7-10 years and from then on the electricity is essentially free.
Meanwhile, when Vogtle 3 came online last year electricity prices in Georgia went because they passed along the cost of construction to customers.
Plus, building a nuclear power plant takes decades. Vogtle 3 started planning in 2006, and took a decade to build and didn’t come online until last year. In the meantime the price of solar dropped by 75%, and we’ve added 38 GW of solar capacity. Wind went down in price about 25% and added 130 GW of capacity.
So I’d rather wait a decade to tear down the gas turbine generators - or power them with biofuel somehow - than wait for a nuclear plant to come online.
I’ve checked and rechecked my power bill. Definitely not cheaper.
I live in the Great Lakes, where essentially it is cloudy 90% of the time from October-April. My home has a relative roof that faces east and west, not south. Rooftop solar does not pay for itself here so easily. And that is besides the regulations the power companies have placed on it, essentially eliminating even net metering and only giving you pennies for excess power production.
I guess the regulatory environment in PA is nicer, because I can buy 100% renewable electricity for around 3¢/kWh cheaper here than the standard price for dirty energy from the utility. I don’t have rooftop solar either and can’t because of a big tree, but I still benefit from more renewables.
But I agree that if we’re going to have nuclear be a significant component of greenhouse gas reductions we’re going to have to keep the ones we have. Mostly because new ones won’t produce anything but carbon emissions for 10 years while they’re being built, while solar and wind will start producing power even before the projects are finished.
P.S. The fact that we don’t have offshore wind on the Great Lakes is a waste of good cold air.
The Great Lakes presents a difficult problem for offshore wind. Since it is fresh water and not salt water, you have to deal with far more ice. Ice beats the shit out of anything left on the lake. Though, with climate change going the way it is, maybe it won’t be a problem at all.
Yeah, here in Ohio things are run by Republicans. The party of small government wants to block most renewable development in the state. And renewable energy is certainly no cheaper here. They have also helped utilities more to more fixed cost billing that makes solar (and also electrifying in place of natural gas) not economically feasible for many.
And I’m not sure picking a supplier that promises renewables, anyway. It’s not like you get to pick and choose the electrons that come to your home. You get whatever is on the grid.
There was a pretty big scandal about companies promising 100% renewable and not giving it a few years back, so they cracked down on that and I’m confident that I’m at least paying for renewable electrons to get put onto the grid.
PA does a lot of things bad (cough PennDOT cough) but it does a good job of electricity supply and is pushing renewables hard.
Go further, nationalize the MIC. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend the United States doesn’t need to manufacture arms for itself and it’s allies, but we absolutely do not need thousands of useless C-suite middlemen making millions of dollars from the process. Boeing is just the canary in the coal mine, I would not be surprised if other frequent contractors have also significantly decreased their ability to produce useful goods in favor of growing their profit margins. Great for profits, but not exactly what you’re looking for to protect troops.
This is true for both parties. They could come in to everyone’s home and shit on our kitchen tables and they’d still get elected because everyone is too afraid to vote for anything else but these two shitty parties.
Those 2 parties are the only ones that can possibly win in a first past the post vote with 2 major parties. Third parties by definition tank the side they are most like when they start to get real traction long before they can actually win elections. If you don’t like it voting third party isn’t a fix you actually have to fix how the electoral system works.
Sure, just keep voting for the guy shitting on your table and arguing about his opponent because his steaming log of shit stank a little bit more. You’re definitely making the right call and it should only take 50 or 60 more elections before things start turning around for us.
Trump doesn’t suck a bit more than Biden. He’s a monster whose plans for this country and the world will lead to millions of deaths and the damage he will do will last for generations. Understand what your actual options are. Nothing you can do will logically reform the electoral system in 6 months but we can stop our country from going entirely to crap.
The only reason why Trump is even a contender is because of these two shitty parties and the Democratic leadership backing some of the worst candidates in existence. Every election is going to have people claiming the opponent “will lead to millions of deaths and destruction” because nothing is going to change which is why we had to vote against him in 2016, again in 2020, and now again in 2024. Even after he dies there will be another Trump popping out of the woodwork.
By continuing to support these two parties, you’re just ensuring this will continue until the sun burns out. Neither party has any reason to improve things because they’ll get your vote regardless of how awful they become. Even aiding in genocide isn’t enough to alter your decision.
Trump is a threat because an overwhelming majority of Republicans are willing to vote for a monster. Assigning blame for a full 45% of the population for the Democrats not running someone more to your liking is completely crazy. You call Biden one of the worst candidates in existence but the American people voted for him for Vice President of the United States twice and for President once already.
The states had the ability to elect someone else for this round if they were really so against him. Spoiler alert they aren’t going to. In fact of the states and territories that have held a primary the only one which awarded votes to anyone other than Biden was American Samoa which… doesn’t actually get to vote in the presidential election. The truth is anyone on team blue would by now be hated by our divided country. Trump and co have done NOTHING but lie since they lost. A Democrat moderate enough to win by definition will be disliked by nearly 100% of the right leaning folks and at least 10–20% of the most progressive if he hews close enough to the middle to actually have a chance to win. 37% is the new normal.
You call Biden one of the worst candidates in existence but the American people voted for him for Vice President of the United States twice and for President once already.
If you recall, in 2016, this guy lost to Clinton in the primaries, who was then defeated by Trump. He won in 2020 because people wanted to oust Trump. Both him and Clinton are both completely unappealing candidates to the populace but darlings to the party, which is how they got the support and backing to win the primaries.
In fact of the states and territories that have held a primary the only one which awarded votes to anyone other than Biden was American Samoa
And why do you think that is? Is it because he’s the very best person to lead out of 330 million or is it because he has the party leaders in his pocket with the added bonus of the incumbent advantage? I haven’t even been able to vote in the primaries in my state but the race is already over since enough states had theirs already.
Are you more concerned with winning elections or putting a good leader in office? It sounds like the former.
Biden was dealing with the death of his son from cancer in the season leading up to the primaries and didn’t compete in 2016. Your assertion that Trump > Clinton > Biden falls on its face. The only time Biden ever went head to head with Trump he won. Primary season is over and with an incumbent you and I pretty much knew it was over before it started. Third parties can’t win and for practical purposes parties are unlikely to change horses with an incumbent and actually win elections. Yes winning elections vs allowing the other side to elect a genocidal fascist is an overriding concern because of course it is. This go round was always going to be Trump v Biden v2. If we go with Biden we get slow change and investment in America. If we go with Trump he gets 4 years to try to destroy democracy and our country at best crashes as he guts the government in a way that takes us 10 years to recover from while millions of Taiwanese and Ukrainians die. At worst we fight a civil war to restore democracy like Spain too.
If you want to really reform the way we do elections you can’t do it by bitching on lemmy. The most achievable changes are ranked choice voting in primaries and general in the states. That is something the states can legally do. The next most achievable is getting rid of the filibuster in the senate followed by expanding the supreme court. Even though this really only requires a simple majority it probably practically requires 55 in the senate.
We can start on these reforms that Republicans oppose vehemently by voting for Biden in the coming election and democrats down ballot while pushing for these reforms at home. In my state—Washington—we have an initiative process. Maybe they do in your state too.
Schiff spent money on ads on Fox News to boost the Republican in the race so he’d be #2 instead of Porter. He spent more money boosting him than the Republican himself did.
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