Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality(reclaimthenet.org) |
Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality(reclaimthenet.org) |
For a long time saying tabaco creates lung cancers was basically a conspiracy theory and saying it is healthy was free speech.
Saying nothing of the future of abortion & contraception, U.S. conservatives base their worldview on sexuality & reproduction and seek to burden it with fixtures that we have already spent hundreds of year to free ourselves from. At the same time, they take their eye off the ball of keeping our country competitive in the world. How embarrassing it is now to have the Chinese president suggest that the U.S. is in decline and that it shouldn't get caught in a Thucydides Trap.
Yet, that is where Trump has put us indeed.
It's strange how this 59-year-old incident keeps getting brought up. Friendly fire happens all the time, and Israel apologized and paid reparations ages ago.
The idea that you could blame the genocide that started under a Democratic administration on the Republican administration that happily continued it is absurd. There's total continuity - you're flailing because your worldview has been designed by partisan media strategists, and you've fallen into a Manichean delusion with a cosmology consisting of one tiny private political club that has to be the force of good, and the other that has to be the force of evil.
They're actually both bad. You can't offload your thinking to aggressively imposed abstractions, especially when they're being whiteboarded by people on the payrolls of billionaires and plutocrats. You have to look at what's actually happening.
The Democratic Party still doesn't know that genocide is bad. They're too busy astroturfing "No Kings" rallies without any demands other than "Trump!" They're like his PR department. Least popular president in history, and still Democrats are even less popular (because the citizenry are shrewd, you're the slowpoke.) They're enabling him.
> Yet, that is where Trump has put us indeed.
You guys just get fixated on individuals. It's like distracting a child with a puppet. I spent years with freaks bombarding me with Trump and Elon as if they were the coolest things in the world, and now the same freaks are bombarding me with Trump and Elon like they're the next coming of Satan. Celebrity-obsessed.
The problem is that our barely-existing democracy is completely gone post-9/11. Congress has completely abdicated its responsibility for the graft of personal wealth, and left "legislating" to the Executive and the Judiciary.
Ask yourself how Trump can do so much, while the Democrats claimed to be able to do nothing, and billionaires just got the run of the place no matter who was supposed to be running things?
> keeping our country competitive in the world.
And strangely, "liberals" have reverted to Libertarianism when it comes to economics. "Free Trade" and anti-feminism - that's not what I'm looking for in my opposition party to a "Free Trade" and anti-feminist administration.
edit: The Democratic Party hasn't even run a fair primary even on its own superdelegate-packed terms since 2008, and I think that H. Clinton makes a good argument that even that one was fixed because they knew that the orgasm of smug self-satisfaction that white people would have after electing Obama (who they pretended had something to do with US slavery because they only see color*) would give them the cover to indemnify the bankers and the CIA torturers and snoops. They were right. Over those 20 years, they've somehow taught their own extreme partisans to hate democracy, and to hate Americans themselves.
use a 5micron, and 1micron particulate filter in series, and it looks like it came from a bottle.
you would be well advised to test for heavy metals, esp. arsenic
most people here dont use softening or reverse osmosis
It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual. The State Health Services or TCEQ would need to conduct that investigation and ask those questions. Both of those are state level agencies and would require significant momentum for a small town like Trinidad to trigger their attention. Ironically, it sounds like her social media post and the Streisand effect around it have triggered a TCEQ boil water notice and (likely) an investigation.
It is absolutely bizarre for a municipal or county law enforcement agency to take interest in this kind of thing. Texas Rangers and federal authorities should be looking at what triggered her arrest and whatever investigation came before it. That's assuming Greg Abbot, Dan Patrick, or Ken Paxton haven't totally compromised them at this point.
Same for the guy in TN who got arrested for posting that anti-conservative meme. Nobody thought they would win, but they want to make everyone else think twice about criticizing a particular political side.
some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand.
i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially life-changing payday. so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.
> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.
They know the charges won’t stick, they are using the process of fighting the charges itself as the punishment.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-email-inventor_n_...
YC and its founders worship him like a hero.
Those who have lots of money will get fair hearings under the court, but those with less power might not. There's a reason people like Elon Musk write into agreements that they must be settled in particular Texas courts.
Texas is larger (in both population and economy) than most countries in the world.
https://scontent.fcps4-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/6654022...
> An Enemy of the People [..] is an 1882 play [..] that [..] centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who discovers a serious contamination issue in his town's new spas, endangering public health. His courageous decision to expose this truth brings severe backlash from local leaders [..]
> The Court held that "government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known."
It seems to me that a reasonable person would know this violates constitutional rights if you arrest people that criticize the government.
The idea that officials aren't personally liable for mistakes made in good faith isn't bad. But somehow the US tends to produce a lot of cases where good faith requires a lot of faith :)
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
The issue isn't qualified immunity itself, but rather the maximalist interpretation that seems pervasive in the US justice system, and the overwhelmingly broad definition of "honest mistake" that seemingly applies to the police, and the police alone.
Good on the grand jury for not indicting this ham sandwich.
They already dished out the punishment, so they don’t care that it was dismissed.
Maybe they could dock the Chief's retirement account?
How long should water pipes remain useful? Am I outrageously naive to think more than 75 years?
Perhaps they have been doing no maintenance....
This woman shouldn't settle for anything less.
We just had the Broadview 6 case dismissed (with prejudice) this week. The Broadview 6 included former Chicago Congressional primary contender, Kat Abugazaleh. It was a bullshit set of charges for daring to protest an ICE facility. It was always going away but what was more disturbing is the prosecutorial misconduct [1]. The level of misconduct should rise to the level of disbarment. It will get referred to the bar and it'll probably be some slap-on-the-wrist sanctions however.
Prosecutors hold a lot of power and can make your life hell. They need to be held to a very high standard and any whiff of this kind of misconduct should forever bar you from being a prosecutor or a judge.
In this case the prosecutor basically engaged in witness tampering (effectively) with the grand jury proceedings and then tried to cover it up by redacting those parts of the grand jury transcripts. Those redactions basically amount to committing perjury, making false filings to the court under oath.
That's the lengths prosecutors will go to to crush protests. This goes equally for exposing incompetence, negligence or corruption by the town for mismanaging the water supply. This kind of overreach and misconduct is all too common.
[1]:https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/broadview-6-trial-cance...
Source: I was threatened with a lawsuit by my own town for criticizing them online, but the ACLU helped me counter sue and win a settlement for violating my first amendment rights.
Then they'd probably be forced to drink DEI water!!!
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the US. I’m a nonviolent cripple. Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged. Totally depends what team you’re on right now.
A great candidate to get some money from the lawfare fund.
Money does not grow on trees, you know!
There are isolated incidents of poor water quality in each of those countries, and especially in small towns of eight hundred people in rural areas, but generally speaking, clear drinking water that is free of bacteria is standard.
The taste of chlorinated water generally isn't tolerated.
It doesn't matter in the US. Just pretend.
I've honestly grown absolutely sick of this type of comment as I get older. If you're not from the states, it's maybe understandable, but throughout my life most of the folks with me on the left that make these statements are completely ignorant of how their own government works and just assume "shit should be taken care of" without actually having to put any work in. It drives me crazy.
The vast majority of our electorate doesn't pay attention to politics, and then votes for feel-good measures (often very expensive), and almost universally avoid actual long-term net positive investments, like urban density and avoiding bond issuances wherever they are impractical.
As you see small towns welcoming -- even courting -- data centers while everyone in the town hates and protests them... yea, it's almost certainly because the town is broke, and the only folks who realize it are the city officials.
>How does a town ... not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Many, many, many, towns in America are functionally insolvent! The amount of cost it takes to maintain our road/sewer/water/refuse/emergency/energy systems is very often more than the tax revenue that the town can bring in. This is literally the entire point of the Strong Towns organization: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt...
Rebuilding a water system is one of the most significant municipal finance events that a city will have to deal with, and more and more cities across the nation are requiring federal bailouts; e.g., the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi,_water_cr....
It's just so frustrating as someone who cares about municipal finances that American cities' sustainability that most people think that it's just supposed to work itself out when cities are just lighting money on fires... often to the cheers of the electorate who voted for it.
https://observer.com/2010/07/the-collapse-of-east-hampton-ho...
Imo, speaking like this normalizes their behavior - it was crazy then and it's crazy now.
I get the point that there should be some limited immunity so they can do their jobs. Debatable, but worth the debate.
The argument about the repercussions of eliminating immunity is logical. It just seems like one of those things where there are multiple factors contributing to undesirable outcomes, and that makes it necessary to talk to experts.
(though realistically speaking yes there's probably some level of procedural immunity that probably makes sense, similarly with business bankruptcies not ruining the people who start the business)
Its a bit like saying driving dangerously is OK because you have insurance. Until everyone drives dangerously and insurance is sky high for all.
That said, they should be sued.
No change will happen until cities stop using police revenue for discretionary spending.
[Given that Henderson county went for Trump by 30 points, the probably also support pro-pollution policies at both the local and state level too.]
https://www.pelrb.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Public-S...
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/06/police-unions-spend...
To add slightly more flavoring, I think its a pretty reasonable view to assume that the massive fracturing happening in the American political scene is most likely affecting the judicial branch. Perhaps you disagree. Take it as an opinion. Don't take it seriously. Whatever floats your boat.
Just in case you're being honest about your own ignorance on this matter, you can start here:
It's one of the (many) reasons why I immediately moved out of the state when I had a chance. There's only so much that can be done when a lot of the states politics and environment is wholly self-destructive.
Qualified Immunity didn't exist as a concept until the 1960s, and it was put in place to shield policemen enacting racist policies and corrupt cronies of Nixon.
Regardless, the police get sued all the time anyways. It's just that the burden currently falls on the taxpayers.
Every interaction with the police is a dice roll to see if someone lives or dies.
How many other jobs can we apply this to?
More "you say X we say Y here's your options you are Z days over with a W% rate", rather than "Ah hah! $50 dollars error, time to make an example outta this poor bastard."
Or maybe police training should be longer than a coding bootcamp... in some countries, police work is an undergraduate major and the programs are quite competitive. Similarly, there are countries without qualified immunity as a policy, and it doesn't seem to fundamentally undermine policework there.
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
This is basic engineering, you don't want runaway feedback loops, the underlying system is unstable so we need a control system.
What does this even mean?
Plus, many powerful people in government are not that rich.
C'mon, HN users forgot how to think? Forgot to ask Claude?
What an awful data environment
The fact that you were arrested, charged even, if not convicted should not be discoverable by third parties
Uncivilised
That said if you do go into circumstances - "I did it to get arrested and get a payout" could also be viewed as a red flag - says "may screw you/the company for money". Probably not the employee / tenant / etc you might want.
Particularly if you're young and poor.
Humans don't really work the way you're implying from your armchair.
That’s precisely how I thought - getting involved with a “get money now” scheme was not worth the “no money ever again” it often came with. I watched friends do things like this and face consequences later.
Not to discourage anyone from protesting, but not all poor people think alike.
Yup, sounds about right.
How many people didn't get media attention, don't have the ability (time/money) to sue, lost that case, and those where the intimidation and "punishment" was successful?
At some level the people doing this intimidation believe it'll be successful. Is that from experience?
Those ones are the easiest though, are they not? Someone going into it with convictions (or even chickening out because they are aware of the consequences) have consolation and inner reserves. Some kid angry that he can't get a six figure salary at age 22 fresh out of college might regret it as soon as they're in the clink, but if that doesn't get them... the 6-10 years of lawyer-wrangling and stress certainly will. All for the payday to not even go half as far as they think... it'll pay down some bills, there won't be any sports cars.
nothing? maybe a laugh? it’s a meme not a murder
Convicted, sure. Merely arrested, with no conviction? Then you'd be an asshole
I fail to see how this would change anything other than increasing taxpayer costs further in the form of insurance profit margin.
Now you'll do the same thing with police, as if police wages and salaries won't increase proportionally, but 20 years from now you'll wonder why that costs so much. It's bizarre how economically imperceptive everyone is.
We are already paying increased taxes to deal with all the lawsuits we already incur because these people know they are above the law and they think it isn't their problem.