...decommission city police and county sheriff departments. Police alone average 35% of local city budgets in my area. SF and Seattle gave police departments extra money to “reduce understaffing” but depts in both cities then increased in overtime costs. “Liberal” cities throw money at police while demanding that other services “live within their means”. They claim it’s “the budget” but really it’s a political question of priorities.
You high?
You not?
High on life
People at credit karma are insane. So left they are left of Karl Marx and yet supporting the capitalist lending system
Gotta pay rent, it’s not a bad place to work. Nice people for the most part. Could always be paid better. Business model is relatively benign. But the app would become redundant if workers democratically ran society since eliminating debts would probably be point 2 or 3 on the popular agenda. I would not loose sleep over that hypothetical trade-off. Being a Marxist doesn’t mean you’re independently wealthy and can work some “ethically pure” job - we work too. Hell, 15 years working shit jobs made me a Marxist in the first place.
Please point me to your idealistic country that exemplifies the anarcho state you desire and I'll gladly chip in for your one way ticket there.
You don't want police?
I spent something like 18 years in public schools and universities, take public transit at least 10 times a week, but these get cut and the service gets crappier or fares more expensive. How often do most people call the cops? A couple of times in your life? Does it actually help... idk, they don’t do shit for a broken car window or stolen items. They harass homeless people in my neighborhood and move them down one block until the next week when they harass them on that block and so they move back to the first spot. They shot a homeless man in my neighborhood because he was ranting. I’ve only had interactions with them while being pulled over or when I was younger and they acted like bullies. Is this a good use of 40% of my city’s budget? Just the amount of police overtime pay alone would double the budget for housing low income people. But here in “crazy liberal” Bay Area, the logic of our political leaders is to give cops money for any request. It’s the ideological “common sense” of neoliberalism... economic security is wasteful but national or private property security are: “spare no expense”. The media here basically reports any claims by police as objective (both in terms of criminal cases and budget matters). I wrote this post after seeing local news describe the police as “woefully underfunded” in a completely non-editorial context. Just repeat the press releases until it becomes “common sense”.
Here’s one that everyone can participate in*: Who is more hypocritical, Republican politicians who rant about out of control spending while supporting huge police and military spending? Or Democratic politicians who claim to oppose racism while funding the racist police and prison systems? *hate me for saying
All of the above.
I'd love for you to work as a police officer for a week. you're using the same logic as an entry level employee about the senior VP. "I never see him work so he must not do anything important"
Wow, you missed the point. Anyway, regarding your comment: my view of policing is not that police don’t work, but that their work is a waste.
Yes and that's why I suggested you work a week in their shoes, because I utterly disagree with you and feel you have no idea what they actually do on a day to day basis.
Police work is waste 😂
Yes, less than half of violent crimes and only a fifth of property crimes lead to anything. Most policing is focused on pretext vehicle stops - and until recently, stop and frisk pretext stops. Usually it’s for a traffic violation, in some cases (3% for whites, 12% for blacks and I think a little higher for Latinos) the cop can then use the traffic stop as a pretext (“he looked high” “I thought I smelled something”) for searching the vehicle or individual. This makes up something like 45% of all interactions between the public and police. The other 55% is not making CSI holograms and takin down the bad guyz. Trolling the poor parts of town for small amounts of drugs, parole violations—Does this seem like a useful use of a third to half a town’s budget. Does anything get “solved” on a fundamental level? No. It’s useful for intimidating the public. It results in having armed cops in a situation neither they or the person pulled over thinks is very useful - cops start to resent the public and the public, the cops. But the cops are armed and do this all day: it’s a recipe for abusive behavior and corruption. It’s an absurd, violent waste.
Source?
40%+ of Oakland’s budget goes to police: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-oakland-sex-scandal-settlement-20170531-story.html
Yes. Stop wasteful spending. Cut taxes.
Or dump police departments and save a quarter billion instantly.
Yeah! And dump these crappy teachers too!