The homeowners are angry at being forced into the municipality boundaries, and the restrictions that will cause for them (and with good cause, I think) but they’re apparently just fine with using zoning laws to keep the ski-resort property owners from doing what they want with their property, too.

So, as far as I’m concerned, they’re all bastards. The last guy quoted is mad because he sees the ski-resort as stealing $20k from him, but those zoning laws stand to cost the ski-resort millions.

Viewing the film “Training Day” is also instructive.

No, they only work with the Itunes *software*. You can transfer all your mp3 to there, but you´ll need to use that crappy software to do that.

You can´t use that as a pendrive, if you want to upload music or a podcast and you are far away the computer that is synchronized to it you also can´t.

+1 for owning 78s.

Very simple actually.

So you use the powers of the state to enforce your will on a private company. And then you curse the very same institution for doing the same to you? Thank god, I was worried you were an anarchist for a second.*

(Just joking, :) )

How is it “one man, one vote” to create a class of offices for which only one group of property holders in a new municipality gets to vote?

Cops lie on report, rookie cop eventually tells the truth, but his statements are summarily dismissed because “rookie cops see things differently than more experienced and mature cops.”

This is the truth of the matter, from the blog: haven’t yet been assimiliated into a culture of situational dishonesty in which lying is deemed appropriate to protect one’s “Brothers in Blue.”

We probably agree more than not. But I don’t think changing the police culture requires more bureaucracy. It would require consistency and predictability. It would certainly require mass-firings.

At the end of the day, cops are individuals. An individual who illegally victimizes another person can’t validly point at the laws he’s supposed to enforce as a reason for his or her illegal behavior. If an officer is expected by law to arrest a pot smoker, there is still no causal reason for the officer to use excessive force.

But I agree that the more “wars” there are, the more police feel entitled to treat citizens badly. I just think holding individuals accountable is more realistic than changing the culture that moves lawmakers to create these wars.

But I actually do care about tech stuff, and do think Apple is too restrictive, and do oppose the DMCA, but the electronics industry is too complex to know the “proper” level of integration a priori, and it’s extremely foolish to think politicians can effectively intervene in this market. So foolish, in fact, it’s a reasonable conjecture that David Coursey (the “Tech Inciter”) was deliberately trolling to drive up page views for his magazine.

“It’s hard to say someone else couldn’t do at least as good a job as Apple in bringing iPhone and iPod touch apps to market.”

Actually, that is easy (and correct) to say. With about a billion dollars worth of incentives to bring the suite of products to market, Apple has been the best. They’ll let anyone write on the intertubes.

America’s war on success, wealth, and talent is really freaking pathetic.

Re: Chance
I get pist at a corporation (often) and they don’t get my business or I sue them (with pretty good history of winning).

I get pist at the state (often) and I take their hog in my ass while a gun is pressed against my head.

Very simple actually.

The fact is that cops can now get away with anything up to and including murder. I don’t think this is new, per se, but the internet gets the information out.

The question is, though, what are we going to do about it?

I loved how she pointed out the justifications for some corruption because it’s for the greater good and how they see corruption that’s personally profitable as bad.

I love it, too. Too bad it’s fiction, eh?

If you think cops really care, read this:

http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-07-07/Cop_gets_life_for_offending_drug_dealers.html

Note that Sease was fired in 2005, after committing years of crimes as an officer. Rather than arresting him, they simply fired him (which, as we know around here, is actually quite an accomplishment). After he was fired, he continued committing the same crimes, only acting like an officer rather than actually being one.

It was the FBI that brought him down.

Drugs are illegal, but people still do them. People get the death penalty for murder, but murder still happens. People go to prison for securities fraud, but there will be another Bernie Madoff one day. Government oversight hasn’t stopped any of this stuff from happening. I believe that by limiting the scope of law enforcement’s mission, we limit the ability and the incentives for corruption. That seems more effective than relying on more government to monitor more government to get government to behave the way government says it should.

Law makers seem more concerned about using law enforcement as a means to push their agendas at all cost. I think it’s fair to say that they bare a fair amount or responsibility for the environment that creates. That environment is the main cause of police corruption in my opinion.

You’re right; cops are human at the end of the day. Humans aren’t perfect. We can influence their behavior. I just think that changing the scope of crime fighting would be more effective at behavioral change than trying to hold cops accountable through bureaucracy.

Jack – You probably shouldn’t buy an iPod.

#28
I see very little actual criticism of corporations unless, as I said, they are in cahoots with the big bad gub’mint.

Well, to my thinking, all (I can’t think of any counterexamples off the top of my head) evil things corporations are able to do, they’re able to do because the government directly or indirectly enables them to and/or shields them from the consequences.

So it’s not very useful to talk about how evil thing X corporation Y is doing this week (with the help of government). Sure, we could rant about evil corporation Y, and we’d probably even be right, but it’s not the fundamental problem.

Serious question: do you think it was in the capacity of American law enforcement to make Prohibition work? Did it fail because of a failure of those enforcing the law, or for some other reason?

We can fix some of the problems by better handling of the police, I totally agree. But the underlying problems come from criminalizing something that shouldn’t be criminal, and the corruption and military mentality that creates.

The only way to stop the corruption and dishonesty of law enforcement is get the law makers to end the various wars on crime they are fighting.

No amount of oversight or training? So if we fired every cop who broke the law, and trained new cops to respect the law, and respect citizens, with consistent terminations and prosecutions for failing to do so, cops would never change? And this is the fault of lawmakers? It just makes no sense.

Of course, cops need to stop fighting their wars and lawmakers need to end those wars, but it’s primarily the fault of cops and prosecutors that cops do what they want with no consequences. If cops knew that they would be fired and prosecuted instead of protected when they break the law, they’d change their behavior pretty fast. Like it or not, cops are human. And humans, unlike forces of nature, can be made to change their behavior.