The Sad Redundancy Of 'Hate' Prosecution

[Wabash82]

7 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

I would be, but I'll be out of town with my spouse.

 

I hope you have a pleasant time.

[Muda69]

2 hours ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

Kind of like using airplanes and cars instead of bicycles and imaginary high speed trains but still working for a Green New Deal.

But how can you have a Green New Deal while still using airplanes and cars?  Don't those machines contribute mightily to global warming?

 

[gonzoron]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

But how can you have a Green New Deal while still using airplanes and cars?  Don't those machines contribute mightily to global warming?

 

The same way you can advocate educational choice while abolishing one of the choices?

[Muda69]

9 hours ago, gonzoron said:

The same way you can advocate educational choice while abolishing one of the choices?

If the choice is a government choice, yes.

 

[Muda69]

https://reason.com/blog/2016/08/18/gary-johnson-on-hate-crimes

Quote

...

 The problem isn't that hate-crime laws punish people for merely thinking hateful thoughts or holding unpopular beliefs—they don't—it's that they empower the carceral state.

It's also silly to say (as Joyce does) that we punish manslaughter differently than murder based on a person's motivation and hate-crime laws are no different. With the former charges, the motivational difference is the difference between intentionally taking someone's life and doing so accidently or through negligence, not a matter of arbitrarily deciding some criminal intentions are worse than others.

The logic of hate-crime laws, meanwhile, says that while many murders, assaults, rapes, acts of vandalism, and other crimes are committed out of rage and hatred, it's only a narrow type of rage and hatred that deserves extra opproprium—and punishment. A hate crime enhancement can lift misdemeanors into felony territory and potentially double prison sentences.

All of this might make social-justice advocates feel good, but it serves little public-safety purpose. People who commit the kinds of crimes we define as hate crimes, whether calculatedly or spur-of-the-moment, aren't bound by rational thinking—they're not going to be deterred by the fact that their particular bias could, if caught and convicted, add additional time to a theoretical sentence. There's similarly little evidence that extra severe sentencing somehow benefits "hateful" offenders more than offenders of other varieties, thereby facilitating a rehabilitative function.

So what remains as a justification? Vengeance.

And in this way—pushing for punitive sentencing enhancements that serve no deterrent or rehabilitative role—modern progressives fall prey to an all-too-common hypocrisy on criminal justice. That is, their stated preference for sentencing reform, ending mass incarceration, and being "intersectional" in analysis of social and civil issues comes in conflict with their demands for ever more and tougher criminal penalties and a willingness to trust police and prosecutors—the same "public servants" so readily demonized in other contexts—to use their expanded tool-sets for good. But what we've already seen with hate crime laws (and hate speech laws in countries that have them) is that people in power will always use these tools in ways that serve power.

In one early hate-crime case, in 1991, Florida police officers tried to enhance penalties on a man charged with domestic violence because he called the officer arresting him a "cracker." More recently, places like New York City and Louisianahave been pushing to include police as their own protected category within in hate-crime statutes. These "Blue Lives Matter" measures have "always been the unavoidable endpoint of [hate crime] laws," writes Hamilton Nolan at Gawker. "Eventually, every single sub-group of people will have their own hate crime law."

....

"Seeking another pound of flesh has us veering toward vengeance rather than justice," wrote longtime gay activist Bill Dobbs in 2013. "While racism and homophobia, for example, are deplorable prejudices, social problems cannot be solved with more prison time."

New York University law professor James B. Jacobs concurs: "Sending more people to prison for longer is hardly likely to contribute to a more tolerant society. To the contrary, jails and prisons are breeding ground for hate groups."

"The term 'hate crime laws' is commonplace, but people often do not understand the intent or ramifications of such laws," noted a 2013 piece in The Nation.

Many Americans simply accept the unproven assumption that these laws act as a deterrent. Wade Henderson,president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, states, 'We recognize we cannot outlaw hate. However, laws shape attitudes. And attitudes influence behavior.' He is correct. Laws do shape attitudes. But our legal system does not write laws to shape attitudes; it writes them to justly and fairly punish explicit behaviors. [...] The place to change social attitudes, hearts, and minds is not in prisons.

Hate-crime laws may make us feel good about doing something, said Harvard Media Studies Professor Michael Bronski, co-author of Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness, and Justice in American Culture and Politics," in a 2015 NPR interview. But this comes at the cost of ignoring the root causes of social issues. Bronski also cautioned that hate-crime laws are selectively enforced.

"In any case that involves a slur or an element of bigotry, prosecutors can choose to bring hate-crime charges, automatically boosting the penalty that the defendant might face," noted Jacob Sullum back in 1992. And as with all such situations calling for prosecutorial discretion, there's ample room for abuse, as prosecutors wield hate-crime enhancements to coerce deals from defendants or satisfy public bloodthirstiness.

"Hate-crime laws can give prosecutors added leverage in plea bargaining, whether or not the charges would stand up in court," Sullum wrote.

Rather than cheering hate-crime measures (or jeering politicians, like Johnson, who critique them), we should focus on making the laws and justice-system we do have work more equitably for everyone. As Nolan wrote at Gawker, "That is a far thornier and more useful task than watching grandstanding politicians of all political persuasions crank up penalties on specific crimes for purely demonstrative reasons. You would think that after incarcerating two million people we would be skeptical of such remedies, but apparently not yet."

Institutional vengeance. Is this truly a function we want our justice system to perform?

 

[BARRYOSAMA]

11 hours ago, Muda69 said:

But how can you have a Green New Deal while still using airplanes and cars?  Don't those machines contribute mightily to global warming?

 

You can live in today's reality and fight for a better tomorrow.  Not mutually exclusive.  Weak argument. 

[foxbat]

11 hours ago, Muda69 said:

But how can you have a Green New Deal while still using airplanes and cars?  Don't those machines contribute mightily to global warming?

 

Didn't the Founding Fathers establish a nation, and write a Declaration of Independence and Constitution, predicated on the idea that all men are created equal, yet still left the issue of slavery to be fully addressed until after the founding of said nation and acceptance of said declaration and constitution?  They certainly addressed it to start with and then nixed it when it was clear that it was a sticking point that would never allow for passage of the Declaration in particular.  Did not the US, which still had slavery, enact new policies to curb that while still allowing it by admitting states to the Union in alternating slave/non-slave for a while?  As @BARRYOSAMA said ...

31 minutes ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

You can live in today's reality and fight for a better tomorrow.  Not mutually exclusive. 

 

[Muda69]

So when will the cars and planes be outlawed?

 

[Impartial_Observer]

17 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

So when will the cars and planes be outlawed?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=r1SCu9yiBlo

[swordfish]

16 hours ago, Wabash82 said:

Your hypothetical requires us to know the specific language of the possibly-applicable "hate crime" statute. Typically, these statutes say something like, "If in committing the underlying crime [in this case, the murder of dear old SF, may he rest in peace], the perpetrator was motivated by prejudice against the victim based on the victim's race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation or physical or mental disability, then a sentencing enhancement of "x" years will be added on." 

So if your hypothetical perpetrator made it clear in connection with killing you that he was motivated by prejudice against you because you were white, then he could be charged with a hate crime.

But none of that addresses the point Gonzo has made that form a functional definition perspective, "black racism" is a non-issue in this country. 

Thought so.....

So either black racism CAN exist, or someone (who is black) killing me because I am white is not racist just hateful?

[swordfish]

14 hours ago, Muda69 said:

But how can you have a Green New Deal while still using airplanes and cars?  Don't those machines contribute mightily to global warming?

 

For this argument, you are assuming man-made global warming exists.......

FTR - If natural occurring global climate change can happen in a way that melted the glaciers that formed the Great Lakes 15,000 years ago, SF isn't too worried that mankind will have much (if any) influence on the crisis being perpetuated as "global warming" today.  If you want to discuss mankind's mismanagement of worldwide pollution and better ways to handle that - open the door.

[Impartial_Observer]

34 minutes ago, swordfish said:

For this argument, you are assuming man-made global warming exists.......

FTR - If natural occurring global climate change can happen in a way that melted the glaciers that formed the Great Lakes 15,000 years ago, SF isn't too worried that mankind will have much (if any) influence on the crisis being perpetuated as "global warming" today.  If you want to discuss mankind's mismanagement of worldwide pollution and better ways to handle that - open the door.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/

[swordfish]

5 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/

Economic Systems: The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man's stewardship of the environment. But we know that's not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this.

At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

"This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," she said.

Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: "This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history."

The only economic model in the last 150 years that has ever worked at all is capitalism. The evidence is prima facie: From a feudal order that lasted a thousand years, produced zero growth and kept workdays long and lifespans short, the countries that have embraced free-market capitalism have enjoyed a system in which output has increased 70-fold, work days have been halved and lifespans doubled.

BING-frickin-O.......

[Impartial_Observer]

As is the case in anything, follow the money. 

[swordfish]

[Wabash82]

12 hours ago, swordfish said:

Thought so.....

So either black racism CAN exist, or someone (who is black) killing me because I am white is not racist just hateful?

As I said before, you and Gonzo are defining the word differently. But again, you are focused on trying to draw some false equivalency that has nothing to do with the real world problems of racism in this country.

[Bobref]

19 hours ago, swordfish said:

For this argument, you are assuming man-made global warming exists.......

FTR - If natural occurring global climate change can happen in a way that melted the glaciers that formed the Great Lakes 15,000 years ago, SF isn't too worried that mankind will have much (if any) influence on the crisis being perpetuated as "global warming" today.  If you want to discuss mankind's mismanagement of worldwide pollution and better ways to handle that - open the door.

This, in a nutshell, is the “global warming” issue for me. The Al Gore disciples, and their ilk, primarily use a “misdirection” argument to support their position. They trot out lots of statistics about temperatures in the Arctic and polar bears swimming in open water. There’s no denying it’s getting warmer. But, in my mind, the link between that and human activity is what is missing. Simply showing that temperatures are on the rise is meaningless, as there have been innumerable such cycles in the earth’s history. 

[BARRYOSAMA]

1 hour ago, Bobref said:

This, in a nutshell, is the “global warming” issue for me. The Al Gore disciples, and their ilk, primarily use a “misdirection” argument to support their position. They trot out lots of statistics about temperatures in the Arctic and polar bears swimming in open water. There’s no denying it’s getting warmer. But, in my mind, the link between that and human activity is what is missing. Simply showing that temperatures are on the rise is meaningless, as there have been innumerable such cycles in the earth’s history. 

97% of scientists disagree but in a world where alternative facts rule....it is the new normal.

[Muda69]

50 minutes ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

97% of scientists disagree but in a world where alternative facts rule....it is the new normal.

'97% Of Climate Scientists Agree' Is 100% Wrong: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-100-wrong/#619404d33f9f

Quote

If you've ever expressed the least bit of skepticism about environmentalist calls for making the vast majority of fossil fuel use illegal, you've probably heard the smug response: “97% of climate scientists agree with climate change” — which always carries the implication: Who are you to challenge them?

The answer is: you are a thinking, independent individual--and you don’t go by polls, let alone second-hand accounts of polls; you go by facts, logic and explanation.

Here are two questions to ask anyone who pulls the 97% trick.

1. What exactly do the climate scientists agree on?

Usually, the person will have a very vague answer like "climate change is real."

Which raises the question: What is that supposed to mean? That climate changes? That we have some impact? That we have a large impact? That we have a catastrophically large impact? That we have such a catastrophic impact that we shouldn't use fossil fuels?

What you'll find is that people don't want to define what 97% agree on--because there is nothing remotely in the literature saying 97% agree we should ban most fossil fuel use.

It’s likely that 97% of people making the 97% claim have absolutely no idea where that number comes from.

...

Because the actual 97% claim doesn’t even remotely justify their policies, catastrophists like President Obama and John Kerry take what we could generously call creative liberties in repeating this claim.

On his Twitter account, President Obama tweets: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” Not only does Obama sloppily equate “scientists” with “climate scientists,” but more importantly he added “dangerous” to the 97% claim, which is not there in the literature.

This is called the fallacy of equivocation: using the same term (“97 percent”) in two different ways to manipulate people.

....

But it gets even worse. Because it turns out that 97% didn’t even say that.

Which brings us to the next question:

2. How do we know the 97% agree?

To elaborate, how was that proven?

Almost no one who refers to the 97% has any idea, but the basic way it works is that a researcher reviews a lot of scholarly papers and classifies them by how many agree with a certain position.

Unfortunately, in the case of 97% of climate scientists agreeing that human beings are the main cause of warming, the researchers have engaged in egregious misconduct.

One of the main papers behind the 97 percent claim is authored by John Cook, who runs the popular website SkepticalScience.com, a virtual encyclopedia of arguments trying to defend predictions of catastrophic climate change from all challenges.

Here is Cook’s summary of his paper: “Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97 percent [of papers he surveyed] endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.”

This is a fairly clear statement—97 percent of the papers surveyed endorsed the view that man-made greenhouse gases were the main cause—main in common usage meaning more than 50 percent.

But even a quick scan of the paper reveals that this is not the case. Cook is able to demonstrate only that a relative handful endorse “the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” Cook calls this “explicit endorsement with quantification” (quantification meaning 50 percent or more). The problem is, only a small percentage of the papers fall into this category; Cook does not say what percentage, but when the study was publicly challenged by economist David Friedman, one observer calculated that only 1.6 percent explicitly stated that man-made greenhouse gases caused at least 50 percent of global warming.

Where did most of the 97 percent come from, then? Cook had created a category called “explicit endorsement without quantification”—that is, papers in which the author, by Cook’s admission, did not say whether 1 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent of the warming was caused by man. He had also created a category called “implicit endorsement,” for papers that imply (but don’t say) that there is some man-made global warming and don’t quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labeled as endorsing a view that they most certainly didn’t.

The 97 percent claim is a deliberate misrepresentation designed to intimidate the public—and numerous scientists whose papers were classified by Cook protested:

“Cook survey included 10 of my 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral.”

—Dr. Richard Tol

“That is not an accurate representation of my paper . . .”

—Dr. Craig Idso

“Nope . . . it is not an accurate representation.”

—Dr. Nir Shaviv

“Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument . . .”

—Dr. Nicola Scafetta

Think about how many times you hear that 97 percent or some similar figure thrown around. It’s based on crude manipulation propagated by people whose ideological agenda it serves. It is a license to intimidate.

It’s time to revoke that license.

 

[BARRYOSAMA]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

'97% Of Climate Scientists Agree' Is 100% Wrong: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-100-wrong/#619404d33f9f

 

Ill listen to experts...  https://www.pbs.org/video/97-of-climate-scientists-really-do-agree-vl3snl/   you can listen to Forbes.

Tol is debunked https://skepticalscience.com/climate-contrarians-accidentally-confirm-97-percent-consensus.html

Idso is a geologist, not a climate scientist, who is paid nearly 12K a month by the Heartland institute to deny human caused climate change.

As Im sure you know, the Heartland Institute also thinks there is no connection from smoking tobacco and lung cancer.   Lots of credibility.

Heartland, as Im sure you know, has historically been funded my big oil, big tobacco, big polluters.

Shaviv and Scafetta both think cosmic rays and other planets are the reason it is getting warmer.  They are the outliers with wacky research who are also paid by Heartland.

I'll stick with the 97%

[Muda69]

29 minutes ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

Ill listen to experts...  https://www.pbs.org/video/97-of-climate-scientists-really-do-agree-vl3snl/   you can listen to Forbes.

Tol is debunked https://skepticalscience.com/climate-contrarians-accidentally-confirm-97-percent-consensus.html

Idso is a geologist, not a climate scientist, who is paid nearly 12K a month by the Heartland institute to deny human caused climate change.

As Im sure you know, the Heartland Institute also thinks there is no connection from smoking tobacco and lung cancer.   Lots of credibility.

Heartland, as Im sure you know, has historically been funded my big oil, big tobacco, big polluters.

Shaviv and Scafetta both think cosmic rays and other planets are the reason it is getting warmer.  They are the outliers with wacky research who are also paid by Heartland.

I'll stick with the 97%

I will continue to listen to Forbes while you continue to get the wool pulled over your eyes.

 

[BARRYOSAMA]

5 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

I will continue to listen to Forbes while you continue to get the wool pulled over your eyes.

 

Cosmic rays. must be blinding you while also heating the Earth.  

[Muda69]

3 minutes ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

Cosmic rays. must be blinding you while also heating the Earth.  

No, actually it's chemtrails.

 

[BARRYOSAMA]

Cosmic Rays and Chemtrails - Pseudoscience for the Modern Conservative by Bill D. Nye

[swordfish]

Then explain to SF ......PLEASE.......How did mankind or fossil fuels melt the glaciers years ago that formed the Great Lakes and uncovered Canada?