Those who have lots of money will get fair hearings under the court, but those with less power might not. There's a reason people like Elon Musk write into agreements that they must be settled in particular Texas courts.
Texas is larger (in both population and economy) than most countries in the world.
It's one of the (many) reasons why I immediately moved out of the state when I had a chance. There's only so much that can be done when a lot of the states politics and environment is wholly self-destructive.
> An Enemy of the People [..] is an 1882 play [..] that [..] centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who discovers a serious contamination issue in his town's new spas, endangering public health. His courageous decision to expose this truth brings severe backlash from local leaders [..]
The idea that officials aren't personally liable for mistakes made in good faith isn't bad. But somehow the US tends to produce a lot of cases where good faith requires a lot of faith :)
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
The issue isn't qualified immunity itself, but rather the maximalist interpretation that seems pervasive in the US justice system, and the overwhelmingly broad definition of "honest mistake" that seemingly applies to the police, and the police alone.
Qualified Immunity didn't exist as a concept until the 1960s, and it was put in place to shield policemen enacting racist policies and corrupt cronies of Nixon.
Regardless, the police get sued all the time anyways. It's just that the burden currently falls on the taxpayers.
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
Good for the grand jury for not indicting this ham sandwich.
Maybe they could dock the Chief's retirement account?
This woman shouldn't settle for anything less.
Imo, speaking like this normalizes their behavior - it was crazy then and it's crazy now.
I prefer to work my way up the chain of command first and find the head(s) of the snake. Sure, punish the cops but don't let their corrupt chain of command play The Game otherwise we all just lost and the problem just repeats.
[1] - https://gov.texas.gov/
I get the point that there should be some limited immunity so they can do their jobs. Debatable, but worth the debate.
The argument about the repercussions of eliminating immunity is logical. It just seems like one of those things where there are multiple factors contributing to undesirable outcomes, and that makes it necessary to talk to experts.
(though realistically speaking yes there's probably some level of procedural immunity that probably makes sense, similarly with business bankruptcies not ruining the people who start the business)
This is basic engineering, you don't want runaway feedback loops, the underlying system is unstable so we need a control system.
What does this even mean?
C'mon, HN users forgot how to think? Forgot to ask Claude?
No change will happen until cities stop using police revenue for discretionary spending.
Money does not grow on trees, you know!
I've honestly grown absolutely sick of this type of comment as I get older. If you're not from the states, it's maybe understandable, but throughout my life most of the folks with me on the left that make these statements are completely ignorant of how their own government works and just assume "shit should be taken care of" without actually having to put any work in. It drives me crazy.
The vast majority of our electorate doesn't pay attention to politics, and then votes for feel-good measures (often very expensive), and almost universally avoid actual long-term net positive investments, like urban density and avoiding bond issuances wherever they are impractical.
As you see small towns welcoming -- even courting -- data centers while everyone in the town hates and protests them... yea, it's almost certainly because the town is broke, and the only folks who realize it are the city officials.
>How does a town ... not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Many, many, many, towns in America functionally insolvent! The amount of cost it takes to maintain our road/sewer/water/refuse/emergency/energy systems is very often more than the tax revenue that the town can bring in. This is literally the entire point of the Strong Towns organization: https://www.strongtowns.org/about
Rebuilding a water system is one of the most significant municipal finance events that a city will have to deal with, and more and more cities across the nation are requiring federal bailouts; e.g., the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi,_water_cr....
It's just so frustrating as someone who cares about municipal finances that American cities' sustainability that most people think that it's just supposed to work itself out when cities are just lighting money on fires... often to the cheers of the electorate who voted for it.
https://observer.com/2010/07/the-collapse-of-east-hampton-ho...
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the US. I’m a nonviolent cripple. Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged. Totally depends what team you’re on right now.
A great candidate to get some money from the lawfare fund.
Source: I was threatened with a lawsuit by my own town for criticizing them online, but the ACLU helped me counter sue and win a settlement for violating my first amendment rights.
For a long time saying tabaco creates lung cancers was basically a conspiracy theory and saying it is healthy was free speech.
Saying nothing of the future of abortion & contraception, U.S. conservatives base their worldview on sexuality & reproduction and seek to burden it with fixtures that we have already spent hundreds of year to free ourselves from. At the same time, they take their eye off the ball of keeping our country competitive in the world. How embarrassing it is now to have the Chinese president suggest that the U.S. is in decline and that it shouldn't get caught in a Thucydides Trap.
Yet, that is where Trump has put us indeed.
It’s been five years since multiple COVID-19 vaccines have been widely available and administered worldwide, and just about the worst common side effects have been a small risk of mild, self-resolving myocarditis in mRNA vaccines and an increased risk of clotting for adenoviral vector vaccines which have been either discontinued or fallen out of use.
Past those, there have been rare (~5 per million doses) cases of Guillain-Barré or anaphylaxis, but those are broadly in line with risk profiles for other vaccines.
Despite repeated insistence from chronically-online nutjobs, the sky has not fallen, and the well-known, well-published, and well-studied risks of these vaccines remain drastically lower than the risks of actually contracting the disease they inhibit. Which is the whole goddamn point.