tvc184

  Participation and views are not the problem.    Look at the title of this forum now, The Silly One Up Thread.    When there are several threads a day which should be titled.... "Look At This Web Page Where I Found On A Slanted Political Site That Says Your Opinion Is Wrong".    Or perhaps..... "Hey (any name), How Would You Respond To THIS Political Website That Has An Opposing View From Yours"     That is not needed or wanted in this forum. There is no freedom of speech in a privately owned website. The public doesn't get to make the rules. There are hundreds of websites out there for such speech and people should feel free to use them.    There is nothing wrong with not talking football or baseball all the time and a diversion is okay but when it becomes (like the current forum title) nothing but a sniping match, it is time to move on. Whether I or anyone else agrees, the owner and administration sets the rules.    :)

  ESO already hit it.    A family that is making $25,000 a year for a family of four is living paycheck to paycheck. Heck, many families making $75,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck. The only difference is the size of the home, the number of vehicles and the quality of food. They are still spending almost every dollar on expenses whether it is bologna or steak.    So if we take a family making $25K and remove all taxes except what they spend, they will be taxed on 100% of their income as they are literally spending every dollar that they make. Even if you exempt some things as non taxable, they are still spending every dollar.   Now let's move up to that millionaire and every area has plenty of them. Let's say a family is making $1M a year. How much of that is being spend on goods (or services if that is taxed) and how much is being put in stocks, the bank and other such ventures where goods are not purchased? They might be spending $200K on actual goods so they are only taxed on 20% of their income. Instead of our current progressive tax where the more you make, the higher your tax rate, we would have a regressive tax where the more you make the less percentage you pay as it is not being spent on goods or services as the "fair tax" proponents want.    Of course in our fantasy world we could start taxing savings accounts, 401Ks, IRAs, etc. I am not talking about your interest income from those which is taxable but merely deposits. That is the only way you are going to get those millionaires to pay their "fair share". But who will it hurt? So when that family making $25K a year finally saves $500 and decides to start putting some away..... oops!, they are hit with a 10% tax at the time of deposit so that $500 is not only $450. See how long it will take at 1% interest from banks to make up that loss from merely making a deposit.    Simply put, there is no way that we can tax goods and/or services only and have it hurt the rich guy and not destroy the less fortunate. The very rich might make millions or even billions a year but you can bet they aren't spending that money. The poor family on the other hand is spending every cent. 

  There is no such thing as treason or desertion for police officers. They are not the military and have no sworn duty to serve for a specified term like the military. A cop can legally walk away while in the middle of a call. If I am working a traffic accident or a family disturbance and half way through I say, "I have had enough of this nonsense, I quit", there is nothing that can be done to me criminally. I can and will be fired like any other employee that walks off the job but there is no charge of treason, being AWOL, etc.    Just like my previous post, do people really know what they are talking about? 

  And what is that dangerous path?    I see so much about "where we are headed" in many forums and we are "continually losing our rights". Like many topics, many (or most) of the comments are out of ignorance.    Examples are like a SCOTUS ruling giving some restrictions on police searches of vehicles and we are "losing our rights". I take "losing" as a present day situation and not something that happened generations ago. Yet when we take a look at it, is it true?    I was reading another sports forum (hunting) about a SCOTUS ruling (Gant 2009) and the standard complaints came out. What they don't know if that the police have had almost unrestricted searches of vehicles under exigency that goes back to 1925 in Carroll v. US not long after cars first hit the streets. Move on to Belton v. NY in 1981 that gave officers unlimited wingspan searches of vehicles where the driver was arrested and the vehicle impounded. Almost two generations ago that case said that police could arrest you for not using your turn signal and could search your car. In Gant the SCOTUS stopped that practice and said that the police can only search if there is a reasonable belief that there is evidence in the crime committed so unless the cops can find evidence of not using your blinker under the seat or in the glove box, they cannot search. To make it brief, Gant in 2009 took away police authority that was previously allowed and yet people say that we are "losing our rights". It looks to me like many times the people are having their right reaffirmed, not taken away yet it is easy to say, "we are losing our rights" when the person saying it has no knowledge at all of what is being claimed.   That is but a single example but I can name more but that would be for a different thread.   So exactly what is this dangerous path? 

  Yep. It is great when a warning thread turns into a shining example. 

For the people that complained of the police response in the missing person case and the claim that this was all racial, the cops didn't care and it was the police that killed him and covered it up, they should read the federal indictment that gives details of the entire incident from beginning to end.   I have been involved in many missing person cases and many times it only involves the taking of a police report and putting the person in a national law enforcement database depending on the information gathered that gives leads.     The indictment was submitted by the US Attorney Office, not the local police, sheriff or even the Texas Rangers.    Wright had sent Hadnot many text messages buying drugs. When confronted by that fact that can be proven after a subpoena of the records, Hadnot admitted to selling Wright drugs daily. Wright's wife said that nothing appeared wrong with him but a short time later recanted that story and said that he was acting strange. She then stated that he was "on something". That was confirmed by a patient and his wife right before he went missing when they gave statements that he appeared disoriented.    After the wife said that he was okay but then changed her story to him being on something, the family denied the police several requests to search the truck or personal laptop. So this innocent man that has nothing to hide has his wife lie to the police about drug use and the family denies the police access to something early in the investigation that might lead to his location. The next morning the deputy at the scene left to get a court order to search for the cell phone location (pinging) and when he left, the family took the personal and business laptops. Of course it is their right to do so and it was upheld and the police did not force the issue but talk about things that make you go hmmmm......   By the next morning a family reported finding the pieces of clothing. This might have been 12 hours after Wright had been reported missing. The police (sheriff department) then began a search of that area as they now had a location to concentrate on. The police then called in state tracking dogs to the scene and tracked the scent to a bayou and found more clothes in the field. They made repeated requests for aircraft but none could be found. That flies in the face of some claims that the police didn't do anything. Of course they such people are speaking out of ignorance but many people see these claims and take them as fact. That search continued for three more days and was led by the US Forest Service which shows federal agencies were involved from the beginning. The Texas Rangers joined in the investigation during that time frame.    When Wright's body was found, the Rangers had that crime scene and stayed with the body until it was recovered by several agencies including the pathologist.    The people that say the autopsy was botched by our local pathologist, the Wright family hired their own to look it over. But that was not enough. The samples were sent to a lab in Pennsylvania and it was they that came back with drugs from tissue and hair samples. If I counted correctly, a total of five "additional" pathologists and experts were used in addition to the local pathologists. Those include the director of human identification from the University of North Texas, the Texas DPS crime lab, the director of forensics services in Montgomery County and a board certified pathologist from Sam Houston University (and the Wright's personally hired pathologist). Guess what they all concluded? There was no signs of trauma, his decomposed body was consistent for a person being dead for a good while (not for less than a day as I saw on a KBMT FB page) and his death was due to drug overdose.     I suppose the FBI, US Attorney, Texas Rangers, many pathologists and crime labs (including out of state) all got together to cover up a crooked local cop.    Anyway, for all the false claims that come up on places like FaceBook news station pages, read the link below of the entire indictment signed by the US Attorney Office for the Eastern District of Texas. Then determine if Hadnot was just a scapegoat....... after he admitted to selling drugs to Wright that appears to have killed him.      [Hidden Content]

  ;)

    That would be a very good question. It takes a large force and there aren't many police agencies that are large enough in that area. They would have to strip the state police to get enough officers in there.    Of course the protesters and rioters could simply go away but that is not as likely to happen. Maybe a majority of them will get the idea that they have had their 3-4 days of rioting, looting and protesting and will move on. 

  1. The police unfortunately are tied up with other things at this point in time.   2. Did this guy come forward and try to be interviewed by the police or did he seek out the media instead?   3. Do the police even know that he exists? I can tell from the many investigations that I have been involved with including murders, when you ask who has seen something, everyone was in the bathroom.    4. Who determined that this was a "key witness"..... the witness or Chris Hayes?

  A PM might be the quickest way. 

  AggiesAreWe

It's like the Hotel California..... You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. 

  That is why I said getting rid of most loopholes but it should have been exemptions. The problem with the "some exemptions" is that people will always want to be included in the exemption. 

  I am curious what the SOS has to do with any of this. I can see the AG, governor or the chief of the state police but the SOS?    Maybe it is election time.......... 

  So much for the fast response........... 

  They are demanding answers "now" that simply are not going to come that fast.    We can look locally at an early February crash in Lumberton that killed three innocent people. There was not all kinds of different police agencies from outside having to look at and go over the evidence again and again.    Yet it is just now going to the grand jury in Hardin County, almost 7 months after the crash. In Ferguson, MO, they are demanding answers today. It simply is not going to happen. I believe that it will not take anywhere near 7 months but major investigations don't happen in a one hour or a day or so as they do on television or movie police dramas.    Had it been any other killing in MO, there would be no instant answers yet in this case they are demanding one. If they give the officer's name tomorrow and have the FBI take over investigation (good luck on speed in that case), will the protesters face reality and simply say, "Oh, that is the cop's name and Eric Holder's FBI is on is so we will all go home now".    Because that is the only kind of answer they are going to get.    [Hidden Content]

  But the debacle ends as soon as the protesters go away.    They want the confrontation and I suspect that many are just looking for a "cause" to support. 

.............. and I think the fair or consumption tax that is advocated by many is stupid and unfair to the lower income people. 

I don't think there is anyone that likes our current system. In my opinion the best way would be some sort of progressive flat income tax.    The "flat" being to get rid of most loopholes. 

You can watch the last video posted by Garrity. I loved the launching of the rubber bullet grenades and tear gas. Great looking video. 

  ............ and those bumblebee rounds sting quite a bit. 

  I doubt those bandannas will slow that CS tear gas.

Okay, got it.

  But do you have to follow someone? I just signed onto my twitter account and don't see any Ferguson stuff.

  I have a twitter account but have never used it. How do you view the videos?