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If you're not going to argue with his specific points about Chavez, then you shouldn't, in my opinion, throw it out for the mere purposes of smear-by-associatio

If you're not going to argue with his specific points about Chavez, then you shouldn't, in my opinion, throw it out for the mere purposes of smear-by-association. In other threads, I've seen people attack him for his parents, which also is really wrong, both in terms of blaming him for his parents' actions and in terms of letting people make wrong assumptions about what they were. In order to find out who Boudin is, I read the Wikipedia page at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin I can see how people can disagree with some of the things he's done and blame him for various things. But it's also clear from reading it that he's been honestly trying to reform things, and many of the things he's done don't at all require you to be some sort of extremist, Marxist, whatever, to think they are reasonable. Some of the reforms have been echoed in other places recently, too.

spoonjim 5y ago
You shouldn’t attack someone for their parents but how they react to their parents. Boudin has always claimed that his murderer parents are the ones who were somehow wronged. Whereas other children of much worse parents, like Adolf Eichmann, have fully repudiated the acts of their parents.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  His parents were convicted of felony murder. That is not a violent crime per se. I think if you just say "murderer" it is dishonest by omission, but I doubt "felony murder" is widely understood either without an explanation. I think most people are like "oh, felony murder, yeah, obviously those durn liberals have reduced murder to a misdemeanor in most cases, must have been really heinous to be a felony". And every time I see someone bring it up regarding Boudin, I assess them as a particularly nasty propagandist who for some reason doesn't care about their personal credibility. I'm not saying that his father should or shouldn't be released from prison, but the sentence clearly was a lot longer than many actual murderers get, like for instance the guy who killed George Floyd. I don't think I need to read extensively about the events and trial for it to be obvious that at the time, it was about terrorism, and so they were being punished for being part of a group of terrorists. One may agree or disagree with it for political reasons, but it's not at all the same sort of thing as the ordinary murders in SF that people are blaming on Boudin now. It's not universally agreed that felony murder should be a thing at all, although people of all types generally salivate at using it against their political enemies as for example after the Jan. 6th events.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    lol. You want me to replace “murderer” with “terrorist” and think that will elicit more sympathy from the reader.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      I don't know, it depends on the person. Some people have heard of COINTELPRO, and also have eyes and ears and see how political the definition of "terrorist" always is. If you are a patriotic person, you likely have noticed and disagreed that for political reasons people who work on national defense are sometimes equated with terrorists. The point of calling someone a terrorist is generally to imply a lot of associated things without specifically lying. If it were worse than accurate specifics, people wouldn't substitute it.
      - spoonjim 5y ago
        I have heard of COINTELPRO but don’t see how that has anything to excuse people who killed two police officers to rob $2 million from an armored truck. Kathy should have never seen the outside air and Chesa should never have been elected with his supportive comments about them.
        perl4ever 5y ago
        >people who killed two police officers to rob $2 million from an armored truck I don't see what that has to do with his parents. As I understand it they weren't even onlookers to the killings.
        spoonjim 5y ago
        Well that’s just wrong, Kathy Boudin was driving the truck when they killed the police officer. These people were a complete menace and if you hire a DA who makes excuses for terrorists/murders you get the results you get.
wahern 5y ago
By 2009 Venezuela had already seen explosive amounts of crime and other ill effects of Chavismo--by neglect and absence of more normative policies, if not a direct consequence of the policies themselves. And Chavez had already revealed himself to have an amoral personality much like Donald Trump, one whose primary ambition was self aggrandizement. IMO the only way one could defend Chavez at that point (and almost nobody in the international arena did, including most European and American Socialists) was to be a true Marxist ideologue. Why does Boudin maintain such exceptionally lenient policies wrt property crime, even more than those proposed in other cities, and even when suspects are multiple repeat, even professional offenders? Given that Boudin seems highly intelligent and sincere, I must conclude it's because he rejects on principal the salient effects of private property rights. Which isn't to say he would reject them outright in all cases, but that he sees private property rights principally as a tool of oppression, and so has no compunction jettisoning them if he feels that the harm done to minority communities in defending those rights outweighs the risk of capitalists walking away with their ball. Which also is pretty much the only way one could have honestly--albeit naively--defended Chavez. I'm somewhat sympathetic to that view, at least intellectually. But I'm nowhere arrogant enough to believe anything good would come of imposing such radicals views. And as someone with a legal education, I think it's particularly unethical of him to use his particular office to impose such views. There are few schools of thought, Marxism and offshoots being the most well known, that believe such reforms can be effective without deep and abiding support within the broader society. Boudin is a modern day American revolutionary, and not necessarily in a good way IMNSHO. Our politics is already far too extremist, and only getting worse. I recognize that he comes from a family that espouses similar beliefs. (Not just his parents, but his guardians and their circle of friends as well.) But I see no reason to speak to that--his own expressed views, personal and as an office holder, far more directly reflect his thinking.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  It's possible to have been lukewarm towards Chavez, not so much because you're keen on Marxism, but because you weren't entirely sure about the opposition being genuinely pro-democratic. I don't think you have to be particularly left-wing, let alone Marxist, to look back at history and see that fighting democratic movements because they were labeled as Communist or Marxist may not have been the right approach. You compare Chavez to Trump. What if instead of having an election, Trump's opposition had forcibly removed him when it was clear impeachment was going nowhere? Some people would have made a sincere case for the negative consequences of that even if they opposed Trump. >he rejects on principal the salient effects of private property rights I think this accusation needs more support, surely Boudin constantly does things that imply private property rights.
iammisc 5y ago
It's not boudins heritage that people attack him over. He has publicly praised his parents for their attacks and portrayed himself as the ultimate victim of their prosecution.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >their attacks What does that mean? What attacks? And what praise?
  - iammisc 5y ago
    His father and mother were involved in terrorist bombings
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      Details seem to be lacking on the Wikipedia pages for his parents. Did the bombings injure anyone? How were his parents involved, and how did he defend their actions? It just says (on David Gilbert's page) "Most Weather members were not prosecuted and did not serve time in prison, despite having been sought by the police for years; police misconduct led to the dropping of many charges (see: COINTELPRO)" Everybody's heard of COINTELPRO, right? Every thread like this, the anti-Boudin stuff sounds like the sort of propaganda they did back in the day. They didn't like MLK Jr. either.
      - sbuttgereit 5y ago
        "The 1981 Brink's robbery was an armed robbery and three related murders committed on October 20, 1981, which were carried out by six Black Liberation Army members: Mutulu Shakur, Kuwasi Balagoon, Solomon Bouines (Samuel Brown), Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata, Edward Joseph, and Cecilio "Chui" Ferguson;[1] and four former members of the Weather Underground, now belonging to the May 19th Communist Organization, consisting of David Gilbert, Judith Alice Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Marilyn Buck.[2]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brink%27s_robbery_(1981) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brink%27s_robbery_(1981) DA Boudin's parents are David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin.

spoonjim 5y ago

You shouldn’t attack someone for their parents but how they react to their parents. Boudin has always claimed that his murderer parents are the ones who were somehow wronged. Whereas other children of much worse parents, like Adolf Eichmann, have fully repudiated the acts of their parents.

perl4ever 5y ago
His parents were convicted of felony murder. That is not a violent crime per se. I think if you just say "murderer" it is dishonest by omission, but I doubt "felony murder" is widely understood either without an explanation. I think most people are like "oh, felony murder, yeah, obviously those durn liberals have reduced murder to a misdemeanor in most cases, must have been really heinous to be a felony". And every time I see someone bring it up regarding Boudin, I assess them as a particularly nasty propagandist who for some reason doesn't care about their personal credibility. I'm not saying that his father should or shouldn't be released from prison, but the sentence clearly was a lot longer than many actual murderers get, like for instance the guy who killed George Floyd. I don't think I need to read extensively about the events and trial for it to be obvious that at the time, it was about terrorism, and so they were being punished for being part of a group of terrorists. One may agree or disagree with it for political reasons, but it's not at all the same sort of thing as the ordinary murders in SF that people are blaming on Boudin now. It's not universally agreed that felony murder should be a thing at all, although people of all types generally salivate at using it against their political enemies as for example after the Jan. 6th events.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  lol. You want me to replace “murderer” with “terrorist” and think that will elicit more sympathy from the reader.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    I don't know, it depends on the person. Some people have heard of COINTELPRO, and also have eyes and ears and see how political the definition of "terrorist" always is. If you are a patriotic person, you likely have noticed and disagreed that for political reasons people who work on national defense are sometimes equated with terrorists. The point of calling someone a terrorist is generally to imply a lot of associated things without specifically lying. If it were worse than accurate specifics, people wouldn't substitute it.
    - spoonjim 5y ago
      I have heard of COINTELPRO but don’t see how that has anything to excuse people who killed two police officers to rob $2 million from an armored truck. Kathy should have never seen the outside air and Chesa should never have been elected with his supportive comments about them.
      - perl4ever 5y ago
        >people who killed two police officers to rob $2 million from an armored truck I don't see what that has to do with his parents. As I understand it they weren't even onlookers to the killings.
        spoonjim 5y ago
        Well that’s just wrong, Kathy Boudin was driving the truck when they killed the police officer. These people were a complete menace and if you hire a DA who makes excuses for terrorists/murders you get the results you get.

wahern 5y ago

By 2009 Venezuela had already seen explosive amounts of crime and other ill effects of Chavismo--by neglect and absence of more normative policies, if not a direct consequence of the policies themselves. And Chavez had already revealed himself to have an amoral personality much like Donald Trump, one whose primary ambition was self aggrandizement. IMO the only way one could defend Chavez at that point (and almost nobody in the international arena did, including most European and American Socialists) was to be a true Marxist ideologue. Why does Boudin maintain such exceptionally lenient policies wrt property crime, even more than those proposed in other cities, and even when suspects are multiple repeat, even professional offenders? Given that Boudin seems highly intelligent and sincere, I must conclude it's because he rejects on principal the salient effects of private property rights. Which isn't to say he would reject them outright in all cases, but that he sees private property rights principally as a tool of oppression, and so has no compunction jettisoning them if he feels that the harm done to minority communities in defending those rights outweighs the risk of capitalists walking away with their ball. Which also is pretty much the only way one could have honestly--albeit naively--defended Chavez. I'm somewhat sympathetic to that view, at least intellectually. But I'm nowhere arrogant enough to believe anything good would come of imposing such radicals views. And as someone with a legal education, I think it's particularly unethical of him to use his particular office to impose such views. There are few schools of thought, Marxism and offshoots being the most well known, that believe such reforms can be effective without deep and abiding support within the broader society. Boudin is a modern day American revolutionary, and not necessarily in a good way IMNSHO. Our politics is already far too extremist, and only getting worse. I recognize that he comes from a family that espouses similar beliefs. (Not just his parents, but his guardians and their circle of friends as well.) But I see no reason to speak to that--his own expressed views, personal and as an office holder, far more directly reflect his thinking.

perl4ever 5y ago
It's possible to have been lukewarm towards Chavez, not so much because you're keen on Marxism, but because you weren't entirely sure about the opposition being genuinely pro-democratic. I don't think you have to be particularly left-wing, let alone Marxist, to look back at history and see that fighting democratic movements because they were labeled as Communist or Marxist may not have been the right approach. You compare Chavez to Trump. What if instead of having an election, Trump's opposition had forcibly removed him when it was clear impeachment was going nowhere? Some people would have made a sincere case for the negative consequences of that even if they opposed Trump. >he rejects on principal the salient effects of private property rights I think this accusation needs more support, surely Boudin constantly does things that imply private property rights.

iammisc 5y ago

It's not boudins heritage that people attack him over. He has publicly praised his parents for their attacks and portrayed himself as the ultimate victim of their prosecution.

perl4ever 5y ago
>their attacks What does that mean? What attacks? And what praise?
- iammisc 5y ago
  His father and mother were involved in terrorist bombings
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    Details seem to be lacking on the Wikipedia pages for his parents. Did the bombings injure anyone? How were his parents involved, and how did he defend their actions? It just says (on David Gilbert's page) "Most Weather members were not prosecuted and did not serve time in prison, despite having been sought by the police for years; police misconduct led to the dropping of many charges (see: COINTELPRO)" Everybody's heard of COINTELPRO, right? Every thread like this, the anti-Boudin stuff sounds like the sort of propaganda they did back in the day. They didn't like MLK Jr. either.
    - sbuttgereit 5y ago
      "The 1981 Brink's robbery was an armed robbery and three related murders committed on October 20, 1981, which were carried out by six Black Liberation Army members: Mutulu Shakur, Kuwasi Balagoon, Solomon Bouines (Samuel Brown), Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata, Edward Joseph, and Cecilio "Chui" Ferguson;[1] and four former members of the Weather Underground, now belonging to the May 19th Communist Organization, consisting of David Gilbert, Judith Alice Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Marilyn Buck.[2]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brink%27s_robbery_(1981) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brink%27s_robbery_(1981) DA Boudin's parents are David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin.