Followed by 

 

25 minutes ago, Tracker said:

This sort of attitude demonstrated here is why it is so difficult to change things for the better. 

Says the person who is out of touch with modern day society.   

27 minutes ago, Brandon said:

Says the person who is out of touch with modern day society.   

Says the guy who used "back in the olden times"- cuz nothing says "hey, i'm in touch with modern day society!" More than "back in the olden times".  😁😁

Edited April 12, 20214 yr by wanna-b-fanboy

If Education is the answer, and I think it's part of the answer, then we can fix it without saying that poor guy didn't have any choice but to commit a crime.

We can't eliminate poverty because those with money aren't willing to give it to those without money and the Governments are on the side of those with money. Minimum guaranteed income would certainly help, but suggesting $1500 a month maximum still leaves the recipients in poverty.

We could make the tax system fair in 3 steps:

1. All income is taxed equally. It doesn't matter if you work for someone else, yourself, make money in the market, or by donations or any other income.

2. All deductions are capped at $100K of income. 'Rich' folks don't get more deductions than middle class and poor folks.

3. All income is taxed where it's made. All $ made in Alberta is taxed n Alberta.

None of the above will happen because the 1% who own the world and the 10% who run it for them don't want to pay their fair share.

15 hours ago, TBURGESS said:

Why? So you can 'fix' it somehow? How would you do that? Folks are calling colour a root problem. That's not 'fixable' and only a problem in some peoples minds. Poor upbringing? Can't fix that. Poor? Can't fix that. Single parent? Don't even try to fix that.

That just leaves to excuse the conduct based on the murderers 'root problems'.

Jesus this might be the most pathetic way to look anything that I've seen in a very long time. "I can't imagine a possible solution to any problems, so there's no use in trying!"

Yeah @17to85 explain to me on this internet forum how you would "fix" these immense problems facing our society....I'll wait...lol honestly what do you want him to say here?

I'm not even going to start arguing. But I 100% think people who see the world through this type of lens are useless.

19 minutes ago, TBURGESS said:

If Education is the answer, and I think it's part of the answer, then we can fix it without saying that poor guy didn't have any choice but to commit a crime.

We can't eliminate poverty because those with money aren't willing to give it to those without money and the Governments are on the side of those with money. Minimum guaranteed income would certainly help, but suggesting $1500 a month maximum still leaves the recipients in poverty.

We could make the tax system fair in 3 steps:

1. All income is taxed equally. It doesn't matter if you work for someone else, yourself, make money in the market, or by donations or any other income.

2. All deductions are capped at $100K of income. 'Rich' folks don't get more deductions than middle class and poor folks.

3. All income is taxed where it's made. All $ made in Alberta is taxed n Alberta.

None of the above will happen because the 1% who own the world and the 10% who run it for them don't want to pay their fair share.

Good suggestions. I think the UBI is still important. As robotics / AI and Mega corparations continue to advance the world has 2 choices, more people on sub human wages or UBI that is paid for by a tax system that is truly equitable.  I just don't know how we can make it happen ( the 2nd  choice )

23 minutes ago, Bigblue204 said:

Jesus this might be the most pathetic way to look anything that I've seen in a very long time. "I can't imagine a possible solution to any problems, so there's no use in trying!"

Yeah @17to85 explain to me on this internet forum how you would "fix" these immense problems facing our society....I'll wait...lol honestly what do you want him to say here?

I'm not even going to start arguing. But I 100% think people who see the world through this type of lens are useless.

Provide solutions to the problems or else your just whining for no reason. Dare I call that useless?

Solutions, if they exist, won't stop people from murdering people and they aren't excuses for people murdering people. They exist outside the murder conversation, but you want to attach them to it. Is that to excuse murder?

14 hours ago, Tracker said:

And how realistic is that when many of the religious services that try to evangelize the poor advocate against contraception? Education is the antidote to both poverty and unwanted pregnancies.

Government should provide free vasectomies and tube tying. Solves a lot of problems.

Also dental!

Edited April 12, 20214 yr by FrostyWinnipeg

Again, all this straw man arguing points no one is making. We are simplying using this as an opportunity to talk about some systemic issues in parts of society that contribute to people making poor choices. 

There are ways to combat these things, but it takes a will to do it, and people shrugging their shoulders saying "meh, nothing to be done" won't convince any government to actually do anything. So the cycle repeats and people get trapped in poverty and fall into bad circumstances which lead to them making poor choices.

I used to hear about police shootings at traffic stops and despite the horror I would always on the back of my white privileged mind say “yeah, but why did the black man not just listen to police commands and do as he was told. Should not have escalated to that level, BUT if the victim had just complied then we would not be here”. 
Then came cell video from bystanders. Seeing cops plant guns on the dead perp after police shootings to match their story that the suspect engaged in a high risk situation that forced them to shoot. Told myself “Ok, I have to concede that there are bad cops out there, but few and far between”. Then I saw cell phone video of black motorists being shot in front of their children for asking the question “what did I do?” and getting a bullet instead of an answer, seeing George Floyd begging for nine minutes for his life to no avail, to police showing their own body cam footage and describing a high level threat that even their own body cam doesn’t show, and I no longer ask “why did he just not comply and get out of the car?”

The latest example here (please click on the link and watch the video, it is eye-opening). If I had a gun drawn on me from the get go, had an officer screaming at me to “get out or you’ll feel the lightning”, and then when I said “I’m afraid to get out” and was told “you should be scared” no way in Hell would I get out of that car. But since I am white, I have never been pulled over for no reason in the first place.

Except once.

As a teenager a few decades ago, before I realized the cultural insensitivity of black face, my buddies and I once went to a Halloween party dressed as the Jackson 5. In hindsight, very inappropriate costume and one I regret despite no intention to offend (and the costume was a hit at the party at the time). Funny thing though, got pulled over by the Winnipeg police that night as the 5 of us drove to the party. Once the officer got to the car door and quickly realized who he was actually dealing with, he promptly let us on our way with no real explanation for the stop in the first place (he wanted to check for license and registration, but somehow never followed through with that desired reason for the stop).

Anyway, here is the latest disturbing video from the USA involving police and black motorists. I can’t help but wonder how many cops got away with this behaviour or worse before body cams and cell phone videos and it was just their honourable word against the thuggish black man who wouldn’t comply, knowing that was enough to absolve their authoritarian actions every time. A very long way to go to eradicate this kind of stuff .

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/12/us/caron-nazario-officer-fired/index.html

 

 

 

Edited April 12, 20214 yr by TrueBlue4ever

18 hours ago, 17to85 said:

Again, all this straw man arguing points no one is making. We are simplying using this as an opportunity to talk about some systemic issues in parts of society that contribute to people making poor choices. 

There are ways to combat these things, but it takes a will to do it, and people shrugging their shoulders saying "meh, nothing to be done" won't convince any government to actually do anything. So the cycle repeats and people get trapped in poverty and fall into bad circumstances which lead to them making poor choices.

Murder is not a 'poor choice'. It's not because of a poor upbringing and it's not because of slavery and it's not because of single parents and it's not because of poverty it's not because of racism and it's not about being trapped. All these things are brought up at trial to change the focus from the grisly act of one person killing another to societal issues. It's about shifting blame, pure and simple. It's a magic trick so to speak. Look over here, not over here. 

I'm not saying 'nothing can be done' and you should know that if you actually read my posts. In fact, I laid out a way to get more money into the system and a way to reduce poverty that governments could, but won't do and I agreed that education could be part of the solution. I'm saying blame the individual and stop trying to blame society. That's not a straw man argument at all. It's putting the blame where it should be.

2 minutes ago, TBURGESS said:

Murder is not a 'poor choice'. It's not because of a poor upbringing and it's not because of slavery and it's not because of single parents and it's not because of poverty it's not because of racism and it's not about being trapped. All these things are brought up at trial to change the focus from the grisly act of one person killing another to societal issues. It's about shifting blame, pure and simple. It's a magic trick so to speak. Look over here, not over here. 

I'm not saying 'nothing can be done' and you should know that if you actually read my posts. In fact, I laid out a way to get more money into the system and a way to reduce poverty that governments could, but won't do and I agreed that education could be part of the solution. I'm saying blame the individual and stop trying to blame society. That's not a straw man argument at all. It's putting the blame where it should be.

Source? 

49 minutes ago, TBURGESS said:

Murder is not a 'poor choice'. It's not because of a poor upbringing and it's not because of slavery and it's not because of single parents and it's not because of poverty it's not because of racism and it's not about being trapped. All these things are brought up at trial to change the focus from the grisly act of one person killing another to societal issues. It's about shifting blame, pure and simple. It's a magic trick so to speak. Look over here, not over here. 

I'm saying blame the individual and stop trying to blame society... It's putting the blame where it should be.

Oh boy. That is some rather stark black/white and clear-cut absolutes.

 If murder is not a poor choice? then what , a good choice?

First of all- no one here is saying that a murderer should be forgiven/found not guilty or any sort of pardon for the act because of, "poor upbringing and it's not because of slavery and it's not because of single parents and it's not because of poverty it's not because of racism and it's not about being trapped". you are just making a strawman argument here. 

How can you discount societal influences? The stats back it up. 

 

Ultimately, the murderer makes the choice and is 100% responsible for that choice, but that choice is heavily influenced by environment and societal issues. A very good way of mitigating future murders (and all crime generally) is to understand what led up to the murder, learn from it, find out what factors contributed heavily to the "poor decision" and figure out a way to mitigate these factors to lessen the likely hood of this happening again.

Edited April 13, 20214 yr by wanna-b-fanboy

17 minutes ago, wanna-b-fanboy said:

First of all- no one here is saying that a murderer should be forgiven/found not guilty or any sort of pardon for the act

It's been explained multiple times that no one is excusing the choice. He's just being Tburg at this point. There's no point in continuing the conversation.

It must suck to live in a world that is black and white with no nuance.

2 hours ago, JCon said:

Source? 

Back atcha?

16 minutes ago, TBURGESS said:

Back atcha?

That's not how it works... 

You are making a point. He is asking you to back up your statement. It makes ZERO sense for you to ask him to do your "homework" to prove your point.

Dafuq kind of job do you have where this is the SOP?

Edited April 13, 20214 yr by wanna-b-fanboy

Stumbling into this thread like...

3 minutes ago, blue_gold_84 said:

Stumbling into this thread like...

 Better than me stumbling into this thread like:

Hold my Scotch...

29 minutes ago, wanna-b-fanboy said:

That's not how it works... 

You are making a point. He is asking you to back up your statement. It makes ZERO sense for you to ask him to do your "homework" to prove your point.

Dafuq kind of job do you have where this is the SOP?

He can't point to something that doesn't exist. 

1 hour ago, wanna-b-fanboy said:

Oh boy. That is some rather stark black/white and clear-cut absolutes.

 If murder is not a poor choice? then what , a good choice?

First of all- no one here is saying that a murderer should be forgiven/found not guilty or any sort of pardon for the act because of, "poor upbringing and it's not because of slavery and it's not because of single parents and it's not because of poverty it's not because of racism and it's not about being trapped". you are just making a strawman argument here. 

How can you discount societal influences? The stats back it up. 

 

Ultimately, the murderer makes the choice and is 100% responsible for that choice, but that choice is heavily influenced by environment and societal issues. A very good way of mitigating future murders (and all crime generally) is to understand what led up to the murder, learn from it, find out what factors contributed heavily to the "poor decision" and figure out a way to mitigate these factors to lessen the likely hood of this happening again.

My bad choice of words. I should have said it's not just a poor choice. The murderer may be 100% responsible (premeditated) or they may be partly responsible (manslaughter) or defending themselves or it may be an accident. Each type has different levels of punishment or no punishment at all. I'm not for treating them all equally.

Most here are saying that background and societal influences should be taken into account.  How do you explain any middle class or rich murderers like the Menendez brothers (Rich, entitled, killed their 2 parents, no slavery, no racism)? Are societal influences only influences in some cases?

When looking at murders look at motivation (Love, Loathing, Loot) first. Look at drug use second.

A few stats:

Less than 1% of global deaths are homicide. In Canada it's 0.19%. In the USA it's .7%. Somewhere between 16,000-20,000 people commit murder in the USA, which is very close to the number who commit suicide. 20,000 / 332,000,000 is way less than 1% of the population. 99% of people never murder anyone. How can you blame societal influences be the cause for 1% when it isn't for 99%?

Can you provide stats to back up your opinion?

 

 

I think it's really tough for us to understand what it is like to a black person in the US. Do we have racism in Canada? Of course we do. But people of colour here don't live in terror of having their children pulled over. Milt Stegal's comments a while back made me really think . He said they weren't worried at all about their driving aged kid driving recklessly,  drinking and driving, speeding.........All they concentrated on was what to do when you are stopped by the police. They live in fear of it. I dont think we CAN understand it., I dont think we CAN understand what it is like to see what has been going on time after time to people with your skin colour.  When you look at their crime rates it's pretty obvious that throwing people in jail for extremely long periods doesn't work. 200, million adults in the USA and 2.3 million are in jail. And that rate is increasing. The majority are people of colour. So if jailing as many as you can ,for as long as you can doesn't solve anything doesn't it make sense to work on the social issues that lead to crime ? No one is saying people shouldn't be put in jail but we / they really need to look to other solutions. We are seeing other countries in the world that are trying to deal with drug issues in other ways from decrimilisation to making them legal. Poverty breeds crime in my opinion. It raises children who are angry, desperate, and hopeless to lead the lives that many of us have been privileged to have access to. I'm just an old farmer but my life has taught me that when something isn't working, find a different way to fix it or do it.

On 2021-04-08 at 10:34 AM, MOBomberFan said:

"I empathize with these people, but **** em" is what I read. I'm guessing you haven't ever attended or listened to any Truth and Reconciliation dialogues. You should. You live in a black and white world of right and wrong that has never existed.

If that's what you read then you need to keep your own biases away from what you read. As for your Truth and Reconciliation comment go #### yourself. I am a residential school survivor so don't ever assume to know me or call me ignorant on something I lived through. The nerve of you.

2 hours ago, TBURGESS said:

My bad choice of words. I should have said it's not just a poor choice. The murderer may be 100% responsible (premeditated) or they may be partly responsible (manslaughter) or defending themselves or it may be an accident. Each type has different levels of punishment or no punishment at all. I'm not for treating them all equally.

Most here are saying that background and societal influences should be taken into account.  How do you explain any middle class or rich murderers like the Menendez brothers (Rich, entitled, killed their 2 parents, no slavery, no racism)? Are societal influences only influences in some cases?

When looking at murders look at motivation (Love, Loathing, Loot) first. Look at drug use second.

A few stats:

Less than 1% of global deaths are homicide. In Canada it's 0.19%. In the USA it's .7%. Somewhere between 16,000-20,000 people commit murder in the USA, which is very close to the number who commit suicide. 20,000 / 332,000,000 is way less than 1% of the population. 99% of people never murder anyone. How can you blame societal influences be the cause for 1% when it isn't for 99%?

Can you provide stats to back up your opinion?

It's not about taking their background into account when considering punishment...ITS NOT ABOUT EXCUSES. ITS NOT ABOUT PUNISHMENT. ITS ABOUT PREVENTION.

No one thinks they shouldn't be punished, they should be.

It's understanding how they got to a point where they murder, and how we can put things in place/fix things/change things etc etc so the next person who is in a similar situation won't make that choice.

In terms of imprisonment, our society whether you like it or not very rarely sends someone to a true life in prison. Which means basically everyone who goes to prison, is getting out at some point. As of today, a good portion of those people will be sent back for committing a crime. But...we know from other examples, that it doesn't HAVE to be that way. Society can welcome people back into regular life with a better jail system, and better supports once they leave jail. It won't be 100% successful...but we can do better.

To recap:

It's not about creating excuses for those who murder people. It's about understanding what happened in their life so that maybe...just maybe...we (society/systems/family structure/whatever the ****) can pre-emptively help people who may be dealing with something similar, so they don't end up killing people.

Yes, not everyone who struggles or has a **** upbringing/life kills someone...that doesn't mean we should just stop trying to improve things.

I really don't know how else to explain this. 

1 hour ago, GCn20 said:

If that's what you read then you need to keep your own biases away from what you read. As for your Truth and Reconciliation comment go #### yourself. I am a residential school survivor so don't ever assume to know me or call me ignorant on something I lived through. The nerve of you.

I stand by what I said. "I empathize with these people, but..." then you call them "scum" and say "you don't give a crap" how does that not amount to '**** em'? Explain to me, I'm here to listen and talk. If you're not then you know where the ignore function is. And don't go editing the post again

F you's aside (and make no mistake, F you too) sorry for what you may have had to endure in your time at the residential school. I know some were worse than others but it's a black mark on Canadian history and it's so recent. It's a shame that there are so many of us who are only hearing about them now. I certainly never heard about it in school in the 90s.

 

I'm wondering if the hardliners feel this way about ALL crime, and not just murder. ie. a drug dealer is a drug dealer, no matter the circumstances surrounding their crimes, theft is theft no matter who is stealing from who and why, so on....