[scaredyclassic]

One thing about me, I have always felt incredibly insecure about my place in the world at least for the first 40 odd years. . Not sure it worked to my benefit.

[scaredyclassic]

studies show happiness only rises with income to a certain point.

I wonder about a feeling of security though. I wonder if trust fund kids in general feel more secure of their place in the world, and if so, whether that generally turns out to be a good or bad thing, longterm..

[scaredyclassic]

High student debt is different today than in the past.

It crushes lives.

[scaredyclassic]

this month’s issue of MONEY magazine lists best 20 year ROI for degrees, from no. 1 to no. 10:

1 harvey mudd
2. caltech
3. stevens inst of tech.
4. co. school of mines (in state tuition
5. babson coll.
6. stanford
7 MIT
8 georgia institute of tech
9. princeton
10. co. school of mines (out of state tuition

20 year r.o.i. ranging from a high of 985k for no. 1 (over and above tuition paid) to 771k for no. 10

princeton barely clawed its way on there to represent for the ivies, presumably harvard yale etc do less well…

there ya have it. straight from money mag. a magazine i hate, but which for some reaosn I subscribed to last yr. this is my last issue. i hate this magazine. hate it. the offer was so cheap whowever i just sent the damn thing on in on a whim. dumb. i cant even articulate why i despise this magazine so much.

was gonna renew my oldsubscription to adbusters, sort fo the anti-money magzine but itwas too much money. no discounts. 50 bucks for 4 issues. just horrifically depressing, dystopian disaster. no stats on ROI for university degrees. just screeds against corporate evil destruction. althugh now i see its a little cheaper if i subscribe ont he internet.

since harvey mudd is 50k a year tuition, kid ahs to make 100k to get that million dolalr return over 20 years.

i think a kid is way more likely to get a better return on investment from a mere 8k investment as an engineering student at a cal state school.

obviously theres more to the equation than just ROI, but still…

point is…

ivies dont get the return on investment these schools do, on average…

[scaredyclassic]

Have you guys seen the video of the 10 San Bernardino cops beating the guy who fled on a horse.

Sure doesn’t look like split second decisionmaking.

Looks like a standard street beatdown.

Question is, is that standard street procedure.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=Blogstar]Police don’t work for me I know that,most of them would bash my head in in a minute if told to do so, same with military. No need to point that out. My point simply was, everyone lies in court, or uses the potential to do so as power. However the incentives(for the attorney and the client) or ethics want to be construed.[/quote]

Can you see how the public trust and the system might be damaged in a far more severe way when police intentionally lie in court than when a defense attorney puts out an unlikely theory?

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=CA renter][quote=FlyerInHi]It’s all a question of incentives.

Cops will lie and the department will back up the cops because the incentives are to sustain a corrupt system, usually from the top on down. The incentives are self-preservation. It’s up to the leadership to not tolerate lies.

Defense attorney don’t have incentives other than winning a case, which in itself is powerful. But there is no personal investment on the part of the attorney.

Attorney may win cases on technicalities. But that’s due to inept prosecutors and cops who failed to follow the law.[/quote]

Cops back each other up because they are the only ones who truly understand what they are dealing with, day in and day out. They often have to make life-or-death decisions in split seconds. Decisions that will have lasting impacts on many people.

Sometimes, mistakes are made. But cops are judged by people who have absolutely no concept, whatsoever, of what they have to deal with every day. Cops have seen the ugliest underbelly of human society, and they have their hands in it every single day. They see dead husbands, wives, babies, unidentified girls or boys who look like their own kids, etc. They see torture, the extremes of mental insanity, and they see pure evil. They know, on a very personal level, how evil people can be…how people can have a total disregard for human lives. They deal with psychopaths and sociopaths on a regular basis. Sometimes, it’s not easy to tell the difference between an evil psychopath and a violent (but innocent, for the moment) punk when that decision has to be made in less than a second or two.

Cops back each other up because they know that their coworkers might be the only thing that keeps them from losing everything they’ve worked for in their lives — their families, homes, jobs, and freedom — if they make a single mistake during the course of their job. Just one single mistake is all it takes for them to lose everything, and they are all keenly aware of it.

I agree that some cops deserve to be fired, even jailed, and I agree that we need to do everything possible to keep innocent people out of jail; but most cops are just trying to do their job…an insanely difficult, stressful job.[/quote]

and therefore…

(a) we should believe them?

(b) we should not be surprised when they become as ugly as what they fight?

(c) we should not think that police officers routinely lie?

(d) other…

[scaredyclassic]

Buffalo Springfield – For What It’s Worth Lyrics

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It’s s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, now, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

[scaredyclassic]

one thing is certain; the system would shut down next week if every defendant demanded a trial. the Overwhelming majority of cases plead out. Only a tiny sliver go to trial.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=Blogstar][quote=scaredyclassic][quote=Blogstar]The defense attorneys don’t know what happened? I think often times they do.
At that point the alternative story is a lie. Protected legal lie maybe, but it’s still a lie. Those lies empower criminals to hit the streets again much earlier than if the defense refused with honesty, to bargain with them well before court. When they go to court with a lie , that’s what it is.[/quote]

No. They do not know. The story may seem unlikely, or implausible, but if that’s true, the factfinder should be able to see through that.

Sometimes very unlikely implausible stories turn out to be true. it is not up to the attorney to judge whether it is true or not, because she simply doesn’t know.[/quote]

Lets say “she” is defending me and I tell “her” ,yes, I robbed the bank but I don’t want to plead guilty because I have a pretty bad criminal history and that will be considered in sentencing. Now “she” knows , do attorneys drop those cases or present some alternate story that I did not rob the bank?[/quote]

Regardless of whether the client confesses to the lawyer, the People still ahve to prove the case beyonda reasonable doubt. if there are holes in the proof, the lawyer would still be ethically obligated to point those out. In generaldefendants rarely confess to their lawyers.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=Blogstar]Do cops/ DA know how much lying their cases will come up against? Yes. They live with this every day. How many cases are settled with a hand slap because it is too costly to fight against defense lies, I mean alternate versions? Are the cops kind of powerless to do their jobs because of it , some might think so.[/quote]

Police officer duties are completely separate and apart from penalties under the law. The police officer is not the jduge or the jury and has no impact on sentencing. The police are only there to gather facts and arrest suspects. They shoudl not dispense street justice.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=Blogstar]The defense attorneys don’t know what happened? I think often times they do.
At that point the alternative story is a lie. Protected legal lie maybe, but it’s still a lie. Those lies empower criminals to hit the streets again much earlier than if the defense refused with honesty, to bargain with them well before court. When they go to court with a lie , that’s what it is.[/quote]

No. They only very rarely know the truth. The story they tell may seem unlikely, or implausible, to themselves or others, but if that’s true, the factfinder should be able to see through that.

Sometimes very unlikely implausible stories turn out to be true. it is not up to the attorney to judge whether it is true or not, because she simply doesn’t know.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=Blogstar]Defense attorneys don’t fabricate on behalf of their clients? Parade a bunch of liars through the court. People who they put together for some bullshit Con whether the result is possibly to revictimize actual victims and society at large? Maybe get some scumbag off who killed plenty of times, who killed maimed and in other ways traumatized people? Yeah they do and sometimes they get the tax payer to pick up the tab for most of it or all of it too.[/quote]

Prosecutors and Defense attorneys almost never know what actually happened, because they a re not witnesses. They put on witnesses and make arguments to try to prove a theory. Neither the statements of prosecutors nor defense attorneys are evidence. theya re simply what they expect the evidence to show. It is up to the judge or jury to determine what the evidence means, what weight to give it, and what the truth is.

The correct outcome doesnt always occur, but it is not expected to be perfect. The system is set up to maximize letting innocent people go by establishing a high burden of proof …proof beyond a reasonable doubt…that’s our ssystem when it works correctly.

Stating a prosecution or defense theory that is not true is not lying, because the truth is almost never known to either side. In that sense, one side is “lying” in every trial where different theories of the facts are presented, since often both stories cannot be true. That doesn’t undermine the purpose of the system; in fact, that is the purpose of the system..to see if the evidence supports the charges, or if there is some reasonable alternative explanation that creates doubt about the truth of the charge. We expect one side’s story to not hold up after careful examination.

When the police interview witnesses, they are in a similar position to prosecutors or defense attorneys. They don’t know what the truth is. They are simply gathering in a critically examining manner evidence to be later considered in the context of the whole.

However, in other situations, the police are direct witnesses. In that case the police ACTUALLY DO know what happened.

When police make stuff up, it is bad. It is bad in a way that is utterly different than presenting an incorrect prosecution or defense theory to a jury, which as noted above, is normal. Because police hold a position of high regard in society, because jurors and judges trust them, when they fabricate evidence, it is highly likely it will be believed to be true, and that the outcome may therefore be very, very wrong, because innocent people might get convicted.

Alternatively, if that trust in police decayed over time, say by videotapes proving bold lies, and people started doubting everything the police said, it would also be terrible, because we as a society want jurors to be able to trust police, because that trust is necessary to enforcing laws and getting convictions of the guilty.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=svelte][quote=FlyerInHi]What about in states where there are open carry laws.
.[/quote]

You need to read up on the situation before you comment.

Also..you breezed right by the custom rims part…he can sell those effing things on craigslist, give his kids some of what he owes them, and ride on steel rims like I did when I had no dough! But to ride around with a customized ride with nice rims and tinted windows…nah….he should get himself an old POS (like I did when I was broke) and give his kids the difference. No sympathy from me!

Scaredy – you’re sounding more and more like a defense lawyer every day! If he got pulled over illegally, then he should STAND RIGHT THERE, let’em haul his ass in and get it thrown out in court! Maybe even sue the police and get a tidy bunch-o-cash! I’m all for that! But don’t run! That disrespects the very foundation of American society. If he thinks he got a raw deal, then plead his case in court, not via the Adida Hustle.

I’ve been shortchanged and even lied to by police before…I know they aren’t always honest or right. But I never ran. Never.

Do police have prejudices? You betcha, like every other white AND black AND Asian person in the United States. Every stinkin’ person!

But to assume it is a racial thing is a little too much for me to take.

Let me give you a real world example.

I typically don’t put front license plates on my sports cars, for a variety of reasons. I have driven that way for over 20 years during the day, at night, around bars, everywhere. Never been pulled over once for it. Never.

My sons and their friends emulated this and didn’t put the front plates on their cars when they were in high school. It seemed like monthly there were getting stopped for it…so much so they gave up and put the plates back on. They were ticked at me and the profiling that police were doing. They were young so of course they must be up to no good, right?

These boys were as lilly white as they come. They could never be mistaken for a person of color.

Now. Imagine the same cars, same driving patterns, same everything but turn my son and his friends black.

Do you suppose folks would be saying the cops were pulling them over due to racial profiling?

Do I think the young man should have been shot in SC? No I do not. The cop should stand trial and I bet he will rightly be convicted.

But I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the victim.

Before you all run off and misconstrue that comment, here is an analogy.

My heart gets heavy when I read of a person dying in a car accident that was not their fault. Pure bad luck, I feel bad for them.

But, when I hear of a person dying while skydiving, I don’t get a heavy heart. They knew their behavior was risky, they did it anyway. Oh well. I wish it didn’t happen, but no tears will be hitting my pillow. Same way I feel if someone runs from the police. Wish it wouldn’t have happened, cop should stand trial. But no tears on my pillow.

Tired of talking about this – I’m out.[/quote]

i get what you’re saying.

I think the bigger problem in this case is that it highlights just what a bunch of coldblooded liars police can be.

I mean ok, say you don’t feel sorry for the guy. I see your point of view.

The fact remains the police officers (plural) lied about the whole scenario. LIED. and would neevr have been found out but for a tape.

they lied about giving CPR to the fellow.

Lied about the location of the taser.

planted evidence, allegedly.

lied about the circumstances of the shooting.

and were just so coldblooded about it on the tape that frankly, i got a little chilled watching it…

so this kind of thing makes it very difficult for normal people to trust the police. even if you think the victim had it coming for participating ina risky activity. you still should feel a little queasy about a bunch of lies from police officers…because its very difficult to beleive that this is some unvbelievably rare incident of lying.

call me crazy, but i require honesty from the police. it makes it very difficult to run a criminal justice system if you don’t ahve faith that the overwhelming majority of police officer tell the truth the overwhelming majority of the time, with perhaps slight shadings here and there…

i guess the response might be, well, if you didn’t run, we wouldn’t have to become a bunch of dishonest liars. and if wr’re lying you’ll just have to beleive we are lying because the fellow had it coming, in our opinion.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=bobby]let’s see…
* first business & first check (never did frame that)
* first home (scared but felt good)
* first office building (happy to not have increasingly expensive rent)
* 7 figure net worth (never kept a close eye on this but found out when refinanced office building)
* first Ferrari (a childhood dream. the drive home was pretty sweet)
* paid off business loan (big smile that day)

I feel opposite of scaredy on student loan. I would never be in my financial situation without student loan.[/quote]

well…it can work out well…but it’s risky..

[Author]

Posts