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Who will/would you pick?
Obama 74%  74%  [ 29 ]
Hilary 13%  13%  [ 5 ]
McCain 13%  13%  [ 5 ]
Total votes : 39
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:23 am 
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Ist Krieg
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rio wrote:
Oh well if Lou Dobbs says it... that legend of reason, accuracy and responsible reporting. Maybe if he frowns and bellows into a TV camera long enough people might take him seriously after all.

Haha, wait, now he has Christopher Hitchens in there as well! He's never completely and miserably wrong about anything at all. This is pretty much exactly what I mean by 6th form anti-religionism, except it's being conducted by middle-aged windbags. The story sounds like unmitigated bullshit to me. The UN must have hundreds of resolutions that the US takes not a blind bit of notice of, and Lou Dobbs is suddenly quaking in his boots over this one? Of course, because it's another stick to beat the muslims with.

Anyway, what on earth does this have to do with scholarships for non-Muslims, or is it just a bit of the good old collective punishment?


That's exactly what I meant by "bullshit" XD I also find it funny how they turn religious problems into anti-UN fear mongering.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:25 am 
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Azrael wrote:
on a sepparate issue, the left bloc in Portugal is campaigning to forbid companies with profits from firing people. do you agree with this policy?

personally i agree with it, although not flat-out. we have to put the brakes on this vicious cycle of
- companies don't make money
- companies fire people to stave off bankruptcy
- people have no money, don't buy things
- companies don't make money...

the last thing we need is for seeminly healthy companies to start doing the same too.

this raises a few issues: will employees start to slack off, if they feel that their job is assured? if incompetence is an exception to this rule, will companies abuse it?

with some tinkering regarding firing issues and target companies, i think it's a valid proposition. on the other hand how many profitable companies are thinking of firing people? just how much impact would this measure have?


Well, personally I take issue with this whole business idea that the coercive threat of redundancy is what is needed as a motivator to get people off their arses to work. It legitimates the entire mentality that employees are just resources that can be offloaded the moment profit margins get dicey.

IMO there is no shortage of other reasons why people are not committed to their work. One is alienation, a fairly standard Marxist idea that says when people are required to endlessly generate a commodity or service to which they have absolutely no connection at all- i.e. they are just making something for someone else to sell and keep the profits from- then there is a fundamental disconnect that is inherent to all capitalist societies.

Polanyi also wrote about commodification, saying that the process of being transformed from a human being into an economic unit is degrading and inevitably leads to some form of resistance.

IMO after years of being swept under the carpet now is the time that the truth in these ideas becomes very apparent. And it is only going to keep becoming more obvious the more employers try to lay off people to whom they should have a commitment. Recent riots, protests, demonstrations, strikes all over Europe bear this out, and even in sleepy Britain do we see an inexorable increase in industrial unrest.


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:28 am 
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so do you agree that profitable companies should not be able to fire people for now, if only to not exacerbate this crisis situation?

like i said i do, i just question the impact it would have as i have no idea how many profitable companies are thinking of firing people in the first place (not many, i daresay, but i haven't researched this so...).

do you think that states could help pay employees of firms that are usually profitable but have had a bad year?

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:38 am 
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Pragmatically, I think companies ought to be retaining people, and if this requires the support of the government then so be it.

But, if they are operating under state support then it cannot be business as usual for them. Their running has to be democratised.


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 9:24 pm 
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 16651R.DTL

Obama yielding Marijuana jurisdiction to states. good move imo


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 12:30 am 
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Azrael wrote:
so do you agree that profitable companies should not be able to fire people for now, if only to not exacerbate this crisis situation?

like i said i do, i just question the impact it would have as i have no idea how many profitable companies are thinking of firing people in the first place (not many, i daresay, but i haven't researched this so...).

do you think that states could help pay employees of firms that are usually profitable but have had a bad year?


Either way its a bad thing, and I speak from the perspective of outsourcing and laying off thousands of American workers. They save the money buy paying foreigners less and less funds for much need infrastructure . Government and Corporations are so far in symbiance that if one acts up say in Iraq like Blackwater they would turn a blind eye and only recently have we found some observable change.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 4:19 am 
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Americans and their negative opinions on immigration and not realizing that it is what our economy is built on.

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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 8:50 pm 
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Yeah but too much reliance on non-native workers and the locals complain. See, England, now. It's not like these foreign workers are being hired because of benevolence, it's because they're cheaper.


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 1:17 pm 
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Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

Niko J. Kallianiotis
February 12, 2009

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.

Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.

“I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. “All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”

The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.

The case has shocked Luzerne County, an area in northeastern Pennsylvania that has been battered by a loss of industrial jobs and the closing of most of its anthracite coal mines.

And it raised concerns about whether juveniles should be required to have counsel either before or during their appearances in court and whether juvenile courts should be open to the public or child advocates.

If the court agrees to the plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and resign from the bench and bar. They are expected to be sentenced in the next several months. Lawyers for both men declined to comment.

Since state law forbids retirement benefits to judges convicted of a felony while in office, the judges would also lose their pensions.

With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.

They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.

Prosecutors say the judges tried to conceal the kickbacks as payments to a company they control in Florida.

Though he pleaded guilty to the charges Thursday, Judge Ciavarella has denied sentencing juveniles who did not deserve it or sending them to the detention centers in a quid pro quo with the centers.

But Assistant United States Attorney Gordon A. Zubrod said after the hearing that the government continues to charge a quid pro quo.

“We’re not negotiating that, no,” Mr. Zubrod said. “We’re not backing off.”

No charges have been filed against executives of the detention centers. Prosecutors said the investigation into the case was continuing.

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Judge Ciavarella was unusually harsh. He sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a state rate of 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency made by prosecutors and probation officers.

“The juvenile system, by design, is intended to be a less punitive system than the adult system, and yet here were scores of children with very minor infractions having their lives ruined,” said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.

“There was a culture of intimidation surrounding this judge and no one was willing to speak up about the sentences he was handing down.”

Last year, the Juvenile Law Center, which had raised concerns about Judge Ciavarella in the past, filed a motion to the State Supreme Court about more than 500 juveniles who had appeared before the judge without representation. The court originally rejected the petition, but recently reversed that decision.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that children have a constitutional right to counsel. But in Pennsylvania, as in at least 20 other states, children can waive counsel, and about half of the children that Judge Ciavarella sentenced had chosen to do so. Only Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina require juveniles to have representation when they appear before judges.

Clay Yeager, the former director of the Office of Juvenile Justice in Pennsylvania, said typical juvenile proceedings are kept closed to the public to protect the privacy of children.

“But they are kept open to probation officers, district attorneys, and public defenders, all of whom are sworn to protect the interests of children,” he said. “It’s pretty clear those people didn’t do their jobs.”

On Thursday in Federal District Court in Scranton, more than 80 people packed every available seat in the courtroom. At one point, as Assistant United States Attorney William S. Houser explained to Judge Edwin M. Kosik that the government was willing to reach a plea agreement with the men because the case involved “complex charges that could have resulted in years of litigation,” one man sitting in the audience said “bull” loud enough to be heard in the courtroom.

One of the parents at the hearing was Susan Mishanski of Hanover Township.

Her son, Kevin, now 18, was sentenced to 90 days in a detention facility last year in a simple assault case that everyone had told her would result in probation, since Kevin had never been in trouble and the boy he hit had only a black eye.

“It’s horrible to have your child taken away in shackles right in front of you when you think you’re going home with him,” she said. “It was nice to see them sitting on the other side of the bench.”

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13 ... wanted=all

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:22 pm 
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^That's pretty fucked up.

Jails across the U.S. are attempting to replace orange jumpsuits with hot pink ones. I'm appalled by this attempt to emasculate criminals as if it would be better that they lacked self-esteem or self-respect. If people would just realize that prisons create criminals then we'd be so much better off.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 7:43 pm 
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I saw a documentary about the prison system here, and how some programs include education, and preparing the inmates for life outside of prison, and how it drastically reduces the probability rate that they'll commit crimes after release. I wish we'd incorporate that into the prison system more, because there's no point in just harboring criminals in one place if we're not gonna do anything to make sure they don't end up committing more crimes.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:11 am 
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Legacy Of The Night wrote:
I saw a documentary about the prison system here, and how some programs include education, and preparing the inmates for life outside of prison, and how it drastically reduces the probability rate that they'll commit crimes after release. I wish we'd incorporate that into the prison system more, because there's no point in just harboring criminals in one place if we're not gonna do anything to make sure they don't end up committing more crimes.


Prison should be rehabilitation, not punishment.


yeah i'm intelligent


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:27 am 
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No matter how much they educate prisoners unless they directly plant them into jobs, the people will never find jobs since they're labeled as felons. Then if they are planted into positions, companies treat them like shit and if they have any difficulties they can easily be let go by the company. I really think prisons suck.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 8:16 pm 
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heatseeker wrote:
Legacy Of The Night wrote:
I saw a documentary about the prison system here, and how some programs include education, and preparing the inmates for life outside of prison, and how it drastically reduces the probability rate that they'll commit crimes after release. I wish we'd incorporate that into the prison system more, because there's no point in just harboring criminals in one place if we're not gonna do anything to make sure they don't end up committing more crimes.


Prison should be rehabilitation, not punishment.


yeah i'm intelligent


its an extremely flawed concept man, i agree though if there were some way to 'reform' them to be the societally malleable (funny term) then we should be pouring the necessary funds into it. But given the statistics 9/10 committing crimes as soon as they are reintroduced to society its not their fault but the fact the system is fucked.
You dont keep a person locked in a cell for 23 hours and expect them to wire themselves back to normal and deem it 'rehabilitation' the human mind goes insane.
So its extremely illogical for all of the billions we spend building prisons when we could be putting them in educational programs.
I agree


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 3:14 am 
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stevelovesmoonspell wrote:
heatseeker wrote:
Legacy Of The Night wrote:
I saw a documentary about the prison system here, and how some programs include education, and preparing the inmates for life outside of prison, and how it drastically reduces the probability rate that they'll commit crimes after release. I wish we'd incorporate that into the prison system more, because there's no point in just harboring criminals in one place if we're not gonna do anything to make sure they don't end up committing more crimes.


Prison should be rehabilitation, not punishment.


yeah i'm intelligent


its an extremely flawed concept man, i agree though if there were some way to 'reform' them to be the societally malleable (funny term) then we should be pouring the necessary funds into it. But given the statistics 9/10 committing crimes as soon as they are reintroduced to society its not their fault but the fact the system is fucked.
You dont keep a person locked in a cell for 23 hours and expect them to wire themselves back to normal and deem it 'rehabilitation' the human mind goes insane.
So its extremely illogical for all of the billions we spend building prisons when we could be putting them in educational programs.
I agree


hahahaha. I can't tell if you agree or disagree with me. Dunno if you did that on purpose... if prison was rehabilitation-oriented, I guarantee that the 9 out of 10 statistic would go down if it's even true. And I'm not talking one day, I'm talking years.

And traptunderice, even if prisoners have difficulty finding jobs, at least they're better people when they come back into the world. Sure, it's not foolproof, but how can it not be better than what we have now?


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 4:03 am 
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Prisons have always claimed to be about rehabilitating yet they have never been successful because they aren't the proper way to help these people. There goals aren't rehabilitation no matter what they claim to be doing. Trying to claim that they are better people afterwards is a little off but whatever.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 4:36 am 
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traptunderice wrote:
Prisons have always claimed to be about rehabilitating yet they have never been successful because they aren't the proper way to help these people. There goals aren't rehabilitation no matter what they claim to be doing. Trying to claim that they are better people afterwards is a little off but whatever.


I'm saying they need to change...I'm not advocating prisons as they are now.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 10:23 am 
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Changing who you put into prison might be a good idea, too. Drug offenders, fo'ex.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:34 am 
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Yes. Less prison for drug users, more prison for people banally twanging out Oasis songs on street corners pretending to be proper buskers.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 2:18 pm 
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Btw Monbiot's take is quite interesting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... itan-jails

Quote:
The corrupt judges were paid by the private prisons not only to increase the number of child convicts but also to shut down a competing prison run by the public sector. Taking bribes to bang up kids might be novel; shutting public facilities to help private companies happens - on both sides of the water - all the time.

The Wall Street Journal has shown how, as a result of lobbying by the operators, private jails in Mississippi and California are being paid for non- existent prisoners. The prison corporations have been guaranteed a certain number of inmates. If the courts fail to produce enough convicts, they get their money anyway. This outrages taxpayers in both states, which have cut essential public services to raise these funds. But there is a simple means of resolving this problem: you replace ghost inmates with real ones. As the Journal, seldom associated with raging anti-capitalism, observes: "Prison expansion [has] spawned a new set of vested interests with stakes in keeping prisons full and in building more ... The result has been a financial and political bazaar, with convicts in stripes as the prize."


As usual filthy lucre is to blame for the worlds ills...


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