I agree with almost every provision of this bill. It makes me bonkers when people weasel out of responsibility by saying that they didn't mean to hurt anyone with some horrific thing that they did. Talk about a standard set by men, which many women also use to excuse their harmful impact.
https://tlaib.house.gov/justice-for-all
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I have some questions.
1. I think there has to be some qualified immunity for government employees. You can't ask police officers to put themselves in danger every day and make them choose between killing someone who really is threatening them and being killed rather than to risk losing their jobs and going to jail.
A lot of police officers are stupid; they know it and they resent it. They are asked to protect a world that they know very little about when they start their careers. That's a cruel thing that the system does to police officers, sends them out there to figure everything out on their own other than how to hurt people. Training people to be beasts is dehumanizing.
Also, crime and its factors are complex and infinitely variable. It has to be upsetting for police officers when they walk into situations that they're neither trained to deal with nor have the psychosocial flexibility to adapt to. They won't admit to being upset, because policing is traditionally macho, so they look for the simplest answers. Power is always the simplest answer.
Why don't you work on raising the requirements to be a police officer and creating a lot more oversight? A more humanistic education could help. Also, the prospect of years of explanatory paperwork, and facing strict inquiries, can do a lot to deter people from unnecessary violence and prompt them to work harder at the peaceful resolution of crises. There's also a lot of job satisfaction to be gained from knowing how to negotiate; I think that the result will be a much more effective police force.
The police cannot be abolished. You try spending a few nights outside with nothing other than your phone to protect you and then you can let me know what you think about that.
2. I agree that employers have to be responsible for their work environments. However, I think that there need to be gradations of responsibility; no supervisor can be everywhere at once and there is never a guarantee that an employee won't be a disaster or that a customer or other employees won't lie. Work can be boring and there's always someone to pick on.
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My main concerns if Vice President Biden is elected are, so far:
1. The safety of Israel. You and a few others have toned it down as the election has approached; is the safety of Israel going to be an issue as of tomorrow morning?
2. Keeping the entertainment industry out of the White House and out of politics as much as possible. The extent to which that does not now seem possible is very depressing.
3. Confronting dictators and human rights abuses in foreign countries.
4. Confronting illness, starvation and economic disparity in foreign countries, so that less humanitarian aid is needed over time.
I am very poor, but I am not starving and have never been in danger of starving. Also, the pandemic has proven to a lot of people what I already know, which is that the current homeless support system is dysfunctional. That system has to be confronted; its abuses, negligence, waste of time and money and its dishonesty can't continue. I'm in favor of affordable housing, but only building more affordable housing won't permanently end homelessness. People always need transitional places to live.
What I didn't know before the pandemic is how much my having subsidized housing and a small but consistent subsidized income would make me a nonburden to all of the systems that were suddenly struggling to socially distance and support half a million homeless people. I was sick of not working months ago and have been looking for temporary work that I can do until the place where I was working re-opens. Guaranteed housing and a small amount of guaranteed money to get by did not disincentivize me to work or lead me to the path of drunkenness or other drug addiction. On the contrary, there is nothing more demoralizing than being homeless. Because I was already housed and haven't had to worry about not being able to pay my rent or my bills, I have been a financial, logistical and medical burden to absolutely nobody.
I don't know what the numbers are now for emergency spending on the homeless during the pandemic; what I know is that not a dollar of it had to be spent on me.
Before the pandemic, I never would have suggested that universally guaranteed housing and a universally guaranteed income were good ideas. Now I think that they are, and I think that implementing them immediately would be much less problematic than immediately implementing universal government health insurance. The pharmaceutical industry and its corruption of medical practice have to be confronted before universal health insurance can be passed, or they will bankrupt the government through the human beings that they use as vessels for their greed.
That's in addition to what I've been talking about every day for years. The privacy invasions being perpetrated against the innocent, unsuspecting public on a regular basis without warrants, authority or cause are setting the stage for totalitarianism. It's been very frustrating to try to explain that for years to people who hear or understand little to nothing of what I say, who think of political power as another flattering facet of celebrity which they can use against people whom they don't like, who pityingly or smugly assume that I'm just embarrassed, and who hasten to reassure me or taunt me at whim in their repulsive, manipulative, self-satisfied, CONDESCENDING ignorance.
