Maybe 1,000 lbs of weight, so instead of 40,000 lbs cargo trailer would be limited to 39,000 lbs, but lots of people would not get decapitated. There is also no reason why states could not allow extra 1,000 lbs of total vehicle weight when trailer is equipped with side-guards.
There is a public perception that the effect of this dirty experimentation (that also involved help from good ol' dirty German Nazis, which BTW could not have been any less evil or murderous than TK, but were spared the kind of prison term that he got) was not sufficiently considered during TK's trial and sentencing.
The emotional narrative that was initially gravitated toward is in fact correct.
Had there not been the entrenched environment of lawlessness in SF the perpetrator would not have even attempted his attack. And had the victim not been a prominent person the SF police would not have bothered to keep looking.
The only mistake the murderer made here is he underestimated the public outcry that forced the police and the DA to keep investigating in fear of theirs and the city's reputation.
By saying that US is one of the most free countries I meant in terms of freedom of expression and relatively better opportunities to pursue different careers and lifestyles, freedom to have almost any kind of hobby, freedom to not be bound by traditional cultural norms and freedom to go to and join any kind of party. Most prisoners in US are not in there for "insulting a government official", "insulting a royal subject", "blasphemy", "membership in an undesirable organization", being an Uighur, and so on.
You take those 1500k and put them into some other country and have them do the same thing they did that got them incarcerated in US prison, and unless they are friends with somebody important in the government there they'll get incarcerated there too. Furthermore, in lots of countries selling / smuggling drugs is an executable offense. Furthermore, many of these 1500k would not even be admitted to enter many Euro countries with the low incarceration rates that you envy.
As for me I used to go to SF at every opportunity. Now I only go there if it is absolutely necessary for some short errand, and as soon as I'm done I leave ASAP before my car gets broken into.
In my view the main problem is not the politicians but the ineffective opaque police that does not have to produce any metrics and is not subject to any kind of oversight, not in SF and not anywhere else either.
For example, I had a car window smashed not in SF but in Fremont, and when I went to the police, they informed me that that is not even an arrestable offense. Window was smashed in front of a hotel with a prominent security camera overlooking the street. The police told me they left a voicemail with the hotel asking if their camera caught anything. The hotel never returned the police voicemail, the police never bothered to follow-up with the hotel, and told me they don't have authority to take the security footage of the public street without hotel's consent. Some time later I noticed that the hotel removed that street-facing security camera they had, leaving just an empty pole.
I wrote a letter to the Fremont city council regarding their police not wanting to work and lying to victims of crime. And that's when I got back some police action -- in the form of a mental Fremont PD police sergeant calling me in the morning to harass me and bitch about my letter.
So even if SF is bad, outside SF it is not much better. Another nugget to consider is that back in 2014, back when crime was nowhere as bad as today, CA voters, not liberal politicians, voted for Proposition 47 "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" which made potential felonies chargeable only as misdemeanors.
Indeed. A massive country open to everybody and with civil freedoms not even comprehensible in most other countries is going to be a magnet for bad people no matter what. 500k incarcerated is actually not that much in this scenario.
Name another country just as free and open with fewer incarcerated. Not Switzerland for sure.
Re Tesla, now that I think about it, I think I witnessed a very mean nasty dude stealing a bike near Mission & 3rd. He did it so leisurely that I assumed he was just taking his own bike.
>> The most basic definition and purpose of the state is to hold the monopoly of violence. It must jealously protect this. The alternative is unsustainable anarchy followed by someone else filling that void.
Can we re-phrase "monopoly of violence" to maintaining the rule of law. The government has an obligation to maintain the rule of law. Monopoly on violence by itself does not provide real legitimacy.
They are not being forced to fill out that paperwork on their own time, it is part of their work shift for which they are compensated. I can think of no other occupation where an employee can refuse to fill out paperwork or refuse to do some other tedious task just because they don't like it and not get fired.
Did Boudin specifically refuse to prosecute the men who stabbed you, or did the police simply refuse to arrest them claiming as an excuse that Boudin will not prosecute?
No the only thing that can stop the cartels and the overdoses is a robust, effective, and non-corrupt law enforcement system deterring the drug dealing and smuggling with severe criminal penalties.
The US has in interesting system where new ideas are first tried on local levels like individual towns / counties / states, which all compete with each other. It would be interesting to see such a reform tried out somewhere small and if it works better than the current status quo.
And since the current status quo involves rape and murder, I argue that even if it sucks it would still be a huge improvement.
There are, but there are a lot less of them in countries with fair democratic elections, and those who are corrupt are on average a lot milder than in countries without fair democratic elections. On average we're talking theft vs murder / genocide.