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Australian police also raid media outlets. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51526607 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51526607 Decreasing demo

Australian police also raid media outlets. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51526607 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51526607 Decreasing democratic accountability by centralizing control and installing appointees does not improve things, except sometimes in the very short term, if the political establishment is, for example, set on "reforming" an institution. It's also my experience that the press, though still often fawning over (local) governments in the US, is much more adversarial than it is in other developed Western countries, which sweep a lot under the rug.

defrost 3y ago
Regularly? Really? That's the standout case that everybody was in an uproar about .. a 2019 raid regarding a 2017 news story that was alleged to have been sourced from classified military documents from a war zone. You'd have a point if this was a common occurence, which it isn't. You'd have a point if this hadn't rippled backwards and forwards between multiple levels of media coverage and legal engagement, which it did. You'd have a point if this was raiding journalists over trivial petty personal small town shit, which it wasn't. What you have here is occassional line crossing not swept under a rug, in a full media and legal spotlight .. given that it's impossible to stop line crossing, it counts as success to have such things made public and investigated.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  Sure, and the article here is about a standout case that deviates from the norm and was made into a national spotlight, which was then investigated and people have been punished. Do you regard this as a success story too? Maybe you regard it as “small town” petty BS, but local governance is the most important impactful daily politics in most people’s lives, which is why having the democratic process involved at that level is so important. Further, the newspaper is defending their actions as “likely” legal, which suggests even if the cops had ulterior motivations, maybe the journalists in question were not saints. They did at least convince a judge to approve it, though I would agree judges often exhibit the exact same problem as the commissions you applaud. There are other examples of Australian police abuse too, of course - the Human Rights Watch report on Australian police got much less coverage.
  - skissane 3y ago
    > local governance is the most important impactful daily politics in most people’s lives, which is why having the democratic process involved at that level is so important The US has an unusually large degree of local democracy by international standards. But, do people from other rich Western countries which have weaker local governments feel jealous of America over this? In my experience, largely no. Which calls into question how valuable it really is > There are other examples of Australian police abuse too Nobody claims Australian police are saints, but I think everyone would agree they have less of a problem with abuse and brutality than US police do. On a per capita basis, annual numbers of people killed by law enforcement in the US is over 20 times higher than Australia (28.54 per 10 million in 2020 versus 1.7 per 10 million in 2016-17 per [0]) [0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-killings-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-ki... Edit: Wikipedia’s figures are different, and show higher rate of police killings in Australia, but still have the US at over 6 times the rate per capita than Australia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_by_law_enforcement._Rates_and_counts_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_by_law_enforcement....
    - themadturk 3y ago
      > The US has an unusually large degree of local democracy by international standards. But, do people from other rich Western countries which have weaker local governments feel jealous of America over this? In my experience, largely no. Which calls into question how valuable it really is Which, I suppose, depends largely on whether you're an American or not. Having created a polity that broke completely from the European monarchic traditions, the whole idea was to have a vigorous collection of local democratic entities. For the most part it has proven to work well over the past 200-plus years. Do we care that those who don't share this level of local democracy don't miss having it? Do they know what they're missing? No, and probably not, but that doesn't mean it's not valuable.
      - skissane 3y ago
        > Having created a polity that broke completely from the European monarchic traditions The US system is actually more monarchical than the parliamentary systems found in most of Europe and the Commonwealth, whether we are talking about constitutional monarchies or parliamentary republics such as Germany, Austria or Ireland – https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32741802 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32741802 "Great Britain is a republic with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king" (The Knoxville Journal, 9 February 1896) > For the most part it has proven to work well over the past 200-plus years When you look at various measures on which the US performs below average compared to comparable countries – such as police brutality – you have to ask to what extent this contributes to that. > Do we care that those who don't share this level of local democracy don't miss having it? Do they know what they're missing? No, and probably not, but that doesn't mean it's not valuable. What percentage of Americans think the way you do? Surely, it isn't 100%. Indeed, I wonder what percentage have ever seriously thought about this issue at all.

defrost 3y ago

Regularly? Really? That's the standout case that everybody was in an uproar about .. a 2019 raid regarding a 2017 news story that was alleged to have been sourced from classified military documents from a war zone. You'd have a point if this was a common occurence, which it isn't. You'd have a point if this hadn't rippled backwards and forwards between multiple levels of media coverage and legal engagement, which it did. You'd have a point if this was raiding journalists over trivial petty personal small town shit, which it wasn't. What you have here is occassional line crossing not swept under a rug, in a full media and legal spotlight .. given that it's impossible to stop line crossing, it counts as success to have such things made public and investigated.

Amezarak 3y ago
Sure, and the article here is about a standout case that deviates from the norm and was made into a national spotlight, which was then investigated and people have been punished. Do you regard this as a success story too? Maybe you regard it as “small town” petty BS, but local governance is the most important impactful daily politics in most people’s lives, which is why having the democratic process involved at that level is so important. Further, the newspaper is defending their actions as “likely” legal, which suggests even if the cops had ulterior motivations, maybe the journalists in question were not saints. They did at least convince a judge to approve it, though I would agree judges often exhibit the exact same problem as the commissions you applaud. There are other examples of Australian police abuse too, of course - the Human Rights Watch report on Australian police got much less coverage.
- skissane 3y ago
  > local governance is the most important impactful daily politics in most people’s lives, which is why having the democratic process involved at that level is so important The US has an unusually large degree of local democracy by international standards. But, do people from other rich Western countries which have weaker local governments feel jealous of America over this? In my experience, largely no. Which calls into question how valuable it really is > There are other examples of Australian police abuse too Nobody claims Australian police are saints, but I think everyone would agree they have less of a problem with abuse and brutality than US police do. On a per capita basis, annual numbers of people killed by law enforcement in the US is over 20 times higher than Australia (28.54 per 10 million in 2020 versus 1.7 per 10 million in 2016-17 per [0]) [0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-killings-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-ki... Edit: Wikipedia’s figures are different, and show higher rate of police killings in Australia, but still have the US at over 6 times the rate per capita than Australia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_by_law_enforcement._Rates_and_counts_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_by_law_enforcement....
  - themadturk 3y ago
    > The US has an unusually large degree of local democracy by international standards. But, do people from other rich Western countries which have weaker local governments feel jealous of America over this? In my experience, largely no. Which calls into question how valuable it really is Which, I suppose, depends largely on whether you're an American or not. Having created a polity that broke completely from the European monarchic traditions, the whole idea was to have a vigorous collection of local democratic entities. For the most part it has proven to work well over the past 200-plus years. Do we care that those who don't share this level of local democracy don't miss having it? Do they know what they're missing? No, and probably not, but that doesn't mean it's not valuable.
    - skissane 3y ago
      > Having created a polity that broke completely from the European monarchic traditions The US system is actually more monarchical than the parliamentary systems found in most of Europe and the Commonwealth, whether we are talking about constitutional monarchies or parliamentary republics such as Germany, Austria or Ireland – https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32741802 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32741802 "Great Britain is a republic with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king" (The Knoxville Journal, 9 February 1896) > For the most part it has proven to work well over the past 200-plus years When you look at various measures on which the US performs below average compared to comparable countries – such as police brutality – you have to ask to what extent this contributes to that. > Do we care that those who don't share this level of local democracy don't miss having it? Do they know what they're missing? No, and probably not, but that doesn't mean it's not valuable. What percentage of Americans think the way you do? Surely, it isn't 100%. Indeed, I wonder what percentage have ever seriously thought about this issue at all.