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> On Wednesday, the DA's office said after reviewing McBride's case, they've decided to dismiss it. I feel like she's owed damages, not just dismissal. What m
by kodah 6y ago
> On Wednesday, the DA's office said after reviewing McBride's case, they've decided to dismiss it.
I feel like she's owed damages, not just dismissal.
What motivates a DA to charge someone with a felony over a VHS tape?
A similar situation is when DAs stack on extra charges for a crime. The addon charges almost never make sense to the actual crime too, it always reads more like a gotcha. It turns what should be a Class C misdemeanor into a Class A, extraordinary fines, and jail time.
- xvector 6y agoStories like this are infuriating. DA should be required to pay for 20 years of lost invested wages and missed career progression opportunities, alongside a hefty premium for the emotional distress caused by this issue. The lack of accountability of public offices towards citizens is problematic. I think is a general apathy in government jobs. It doesn’t matter how incompetent you are, and how many people you hurt - you’ll never go “out of business,” tax payers will pay for your mistakes, and you won’t be held responsible for the impact of your actions. So why even try? There ought to be some feedback loop that forces the public sector to improve itself.
- bluejekyll 6y ago“There ought to be some feedback loop that forces the public sector to improve itself.” There is. We live in a democracy. Work to elect better and more accountable officials. If none exist, consider running yourself.
- itake 6y ago> If none exist, consider running yourself. Setting expectations of "don't like it? Well quit your job, give up 12 mo of your life to campaign and fix it yourself!" is not healthy for our society.
- optimiz3 6y agoThe recursion in how one would effect change like this amuses me. But this is by design since policy affects all.
- throwaway2048 6y agoat a certain level, somebody has to think like that, otherwise nobody except power hungry psychopaths would be in politics. Direct action matters, and to dismiss it as "not my responsibility" is shirking the entire point of democracy.
- mondoshawan 6y agoAnd yet, this is how our system works. We all need to participate and realize that politics is not a career -- it is part of living in such a system, and a part of our responsibility as citizens. The only way we are going to fix things is if we fix it ourselves. I have tried in the past as well. Political apathy is a very real, very dangerous vulnerability in our system of government, and is being exploited all the time.
- Jeff_Brown 6y ago> The only way we are going to fix things is if we fix it ourselves. The word "we" is pulling a lot of weight in that statement. All politics suffers a free rider problem. We'll fix it if we fix it, sure, but I don't have to be part of that.
- simion314 6y agoCould you start small? if you live in a smaller city/village do you need to quit your job for 1 year to attempt to get a sit in the council?
- Jeff_Brown 6y agoPressuring your representatives to do something about it, and helping others get mad about it too, and encouraging them to encourage their representatives likewise, is probably the most bottom-up response possible. It can do enormous good, but of course can also go nowhere.
- yossarian1408 6y agoIt seems a fatal flaw of a system of government where my liberty might be at stake merely due to apathy of the citizenry. And it seems so much easier to excite the passions of a mob, than to engage the rational capacity of your fellow countrymen. Government was created by man. It's a good idea that where we can improve them mechanically, we should strive to do so. Same as is done for everything else created by man.
- lamontcg 6y agoYou can say the same about massive corporations as well, and every other day we hear about someone banned from FAANG companies and losing their livelihoods without any recourse other than trying to raise a stink on social media.
- xvector 6y agoAnd yet, from a customer service experience point of view alone, FAANG companies provide leagues better customer service than any government-provided service. It's not even comparable. Try to get anything done publicly versus privately and it becomes clear why people pay for private solutions.
- kodah 6y agoA solution that's being tested for corporations is ES&G metrics reporting. I wonder what ES&G would look like from a DA.
- macjohnmcc 6y agoIn Texas a speeding ticket is a Class C misdemeanor which feels overly punitive to me.
- Guest42 6y agoInteresting, to me it seemed that the drivers there were fairly aggressive with speed and lane changes.
- aaomidi 6y agoBecause selective enforcement exists. Not everyone is being slapped with the same charges.
- fredgrott 6y agoahem what is the lowest level of misdemeanor in the United States Of America? For those who do not know it's class A misdemeanor which actually means a felony in most states, not the C.
- quickthrowman 6y agoIt is different for every state. My state has a class of offense below misdemeanor, petty misdemeanor. Petty misdemeanors are not considered crimes in my state, the max penalty is a $300 fine. We also have a special class of speeding ticket for a dumb “parkway” freeway that rich white people lobbied for and received a 45 mph speed limit by state constitutional amendment. Any ticket in this zone for speeding between 45-55 mph is a simple $100 fine that is not even recorded or reported to insurance. This means the speed limit is effectively 55 mph, and an easy way around the constitutional amendment. This freeway is I35E between downtown St Paul, MN and Mendota Heights, MN.
- ARandomerDude 6y agoIn Texas a class C is the lowest level of misdemeanor, and A is the highest misdemeanor. So a speeding ticket is the lowest level of crime you can commit.
- dls2016 6y agoIt’s almost as if the justice system is designed to protect the owners of capital... same reason you can go to jail for shoplifting but not wage theft.
- totalZero 6y agoI'm not sure what the statistics are on enforcement, but wage theft is punishable with imprisonment in several states.
- dls2016 6y agoVirtually no one goes to jail for wage theft. https://www.gq.com/story/wage-theft https://www.gq.com/story/wage-theft
- totalZero 6y agoThat wasn't your original claim. > can
- throwaway2048 6y agoand how many states is theft from a store punishable by imprisonment?
- dls2016 6y agoA lot, and increasing. https://www.npr.org/2020/10/16/923844907/when-shoplifting-is-a-felony-retailers-back-harsher-penalties-for-store-theft https://www.npr.org/2020/10/16/923844907/when-shoplifting-is...
- sthnblllII 6y agoTheft of any kind generally requires intent to convict. The way laws are written is generally pretty fair because anyone can go review the laws (except secret law). So that's not how the oligarchs protect themselves for the most part. They use selective enforcement instead, à la Jeffery Epstein/Les Wexner.
- Zenst 6y agoWhole aspect that the media in question she rented out was a children TV show. So for her to be XXX crimed is certainly some grounds to explore for damages. Imagine if kids in later life had to live with the a sense of guilt knowing that their parent could be in jail because the forgot to return a video tape they wanted to watch. Would make a now adult turn a whole childhood into latent anxiety worries and were does it end.
- tzs 6y agoUsually the value of the property determines whether a property crime is a misdemeanor or felony. Anyone happen to know what the dividing line was in Oklahoma back then? A VHS tape could quite well be a lot more expensive than you would expect. If the studio expected that a tape would be mostly rented by consumers rather than bought by consumers they would often price it very high.
- TrackerFF 6y agoI can only assume it's because the DA wanted to pad their statistics. They run for that position, and can campaign with the conviction rate. "Tough on crime" sadly has a long and sordid history of similar convictions.
- Jeff_Brown 6y agoDoes charging someone with a crime, doing nothing about it for 20 years, and not even telling them, actually help a DA? Shouldn't the number of filed charges sitting idle count against them, if anything? It would seem like evidence that the DA is, so to speak, all talk and no action.