Summations Only

Being "tough on crime" sounds great to people.Putting murderers and rapists behind bars and punishing them has a certain appeal.Few people think of what is or is not appropriate for crime and punishment from the perspective of how they believe they should be treated if they were ever accused of a crime. "Criminals" are typically thought of as subhuman (and that term applies regardless of the crime committed, from stealing a pack of gum to raping a child), and they "deserve whatever they get."Nobody cares about police brutality, or prison rape, or the realities of solitary confinement, or anything wrong with out justice system because nobody ever thinks they'll have to see that side of the system themselves.So brutal cops are okay. Who cares if a cop beats the crap out of some child-raping murderer, am I right?And if police violence is okay in principle, then when someone gets beaten, they must be a criminal, they must deserve it.The Stanford Prison Experiment should be a mandatory topic of extreme focus in schools.

Wow.That's not at all what I'm about. Escalation just results in more death.I'm outraged over a guy who got shot in the face with a tear gas canister. How outraged do you think I'll be if someone gets shot in the face with a bullet?I don't want cops getting shot. I don't want protestors getting shot. I don't even want the rich getting shot. My goal is the improvement of human life, not the loss of human life. My goal is positive change, not retribution.Civil disobedience is fine, and I have absolutely no problem with it. But bringing an AK-47 to a rally? I was disgusted when Teabaggers brought guns and talked about "second amendment solutions," and I'm no less disgusted when anyone else suggests the same thing, regardless of the perceived political "side." Nobody who advocates for violence or guns or killing is on my side.

You will of course show evidence of the Oakland Occupy protestors throwing objects at police before the police opened fire.By the definition you're using, everyone is always armed.

About the Marine veteran:

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OAKLAND, Calif. The Iraq War veteran injured during a clash between police and anti-Wall Street protesters wasn't taking part in the demonstrations out of economic want.

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Scott Olsen, 24, makes a good living at a software company and rents a hillside apartment with views of San Francisco Bay. And yet, his friends say, he felt so strongly about economic inequality in the country that he fought for that he slept at a San Francisco protest camp after work.

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"He felt you shouldn't wait until something is affecting you to get out and do something about it," said friend and roommate Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq.

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It was that feeling that drew him to Oakland on Tuesday night, when the clashes broke out and Olsen was struck by a projectile that fractured his skull. Police say they responded only when protesters began throwing bottles and other items at them.

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Now, even as officials investigate exactly where the projectile came from, and from whom, Olsen has become a rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators across the nation, with Twitter users and protest websites declaring: "We are all Scott Olsen."

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In Las Vegas, a few dozen protesters held a vigil Wednesday night, carrying glow sticks and projecting a photo of the Marine in uniform onto the corrugated-metal side of building at their camp.

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More vigils were being planned Thursday night in other cities.

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Elsewhere, officials took steps to close some camps that sprang up since the movement began last month against what protesters see as corporate greed and a government that caters to the wealthiest and big business.

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In Nashville, Tenn., officials imposed a curfew for a camp at the Capitol complex. In Providence, R.I., officials notified protesters that they were violating laws prohibiting camping overnight at a park.

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Some tea party groups complained of a double standard, saying they were charged fees to hold their rallies while Occupy groups have not. One group in Richmond, Va., is asking the city to repay $8,000 spent for permits and other needs.

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On Thursday, however, most of the talk was of Olsen and who was responsible for his injury.

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The group Iraq Veterans Against the War blamed police. Police say they used tear gas and bean bag rounds, not flash grenades and rubber bullets as some demonstrators have charged.

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Interim Oakland police Chief Howard Jordan said Wednesday that the charges of excessive use of force are being investigated. He did not return repeated calls seeking comment on Thursday.

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Olsen's condition improved on Thursday, with doctors transferring him from the emergency room to an intensive care unit. His parents were flying to Oakland from Wisconsin, his uncle said.

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"His mother, this is obviously a heartbreaker to her," said George Nygaard, also a Marine veteran, said. "I don't think she understands why he was doing this."

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Olsen, who is from Onalaska, Wis., served two tours in Iraq, felt the anti-Wall Street movement had a chance to create real change, Shannon said. So each night, he would go out to the tent camps and usually called Shannon with his whereabouts.

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On Tuesday night, Olsen had planned to be in San Francisco, but changed course after his veteran's group decided to go to Oakland to support the protesters there. Earlier, police in riot gear cleared an encampment outside city hall that officials said had health and safety problems.

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"I think it was a last minute thing," he said about Olsen's decision. "He didn't think about it."

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Joshua Shepherd, 27, a Navy veteran who was standing nearby when Olsen got struck, said he didn't know what hit him. "It was like a war zone," he said.

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Then there was a scramble and he couldn't clearly see the rush of folks who went to Olsen's aid.

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A video posted on YouTube showed Olsen being carried by other protesters through the tear gas, his face bloodied. People shout at him: "What's your name? What's your name?" Olsen, however, just stares back.

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Shepherd said it's a cruel irony that Olsen is fighting for his life in the country that he fought to protect. "He was over there protecting the rights and freedoms of America and he comes home, exercises his "freedoms" and, it's here, where he's nearly fatally wounded," Shepherd said.

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People at OPSWAT, the San Francisco security software company where Olsen works, were devastated after learning of his injuries. They described him as a humble, quiet guy who worked hard over long hours.

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"He's been a big piece of what we do here and our growth strategy, so obviously it's pretty devastating for us that he's in the shape he's in," said Jeff Garon, the company's director of marketing.

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Olsen had been helping to develop security applications for U.S. defense agencies, building on expertise gained while on active duty in Iraq, Garon said.

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Olsen was awarded seven medals while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, which he left as a lance corporal in November 2009 after serving for four years. One of them was the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal.

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Olsen moved to the Bay Area in July, and quickly found friends in the veterans against the war group. The lanky man with a dry sense of humor did not show a lot of interest in politics as a teen he has two tattoos for the group "Insane Clown Posse" on his upper arms, Shannon said.

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His tours of duty in Iraq made him more serious, Shannon said.

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"He wasn't active in politics before he went in the military, but he became active once he was out ... the experience in the military definitely shaped him," Shannon said.

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Seems our veteran is a decorated Marine who served multiple tours in Iraq, and is currently employed, spending only his nights, his personal free time, at Occupy protests.Is this Marine part of the "rent-a-mob," Buz?

Wait.Your response to questions of whether you support shooting people in the face with gas canisters and using flashbangs on crowds of people......is that the protests are a Muslim conspiracy?Is anybody else here thinking Buz is dropping even farther off the deep end than normal?

I just noticed that Buz "jeered" this post. Out of all of the posts Buz and I have exchanged, this is the only one he's bothered to "jeer."Does this mean that Buz supports police brutality? Perhaps he thinks prison rape is a good thing?

Im going to make a new thread regarding criminal correctional systems.There's too much to reply to here, and it wouldn't have much to do with OWS.

That rather depends on your meaning, jar.It "works well" at attaining its stated goal.Whether that goal works well for society as a whole in the first place, however, is perhaps less certain.I honestly have difficulty fathoming why Delaware should have the same representation as California in the Senate. I understand why the compromise was made in the beginning, and agree that it was likely the best solution available at the time, but if I could make the system anew however I chose, I don't think I'd take that specific tactic for ensuring representation and protection of the minority.

Trick question.What are the choices we are offered for our vote?If every current representative were voted out of office over the next election cycle, I'm not particularly convinced that their newly elected competitors would significantly change the parts of the system we object to.

Jar has correctly pointed out that true democracy just results in tyranny of the majority. I recall a quote from Benjamin Franklin involving two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.The problem with the actual system implemented in the US is that "minorities" today are not determined by the borders of a state. We don't have the same issues they had in the 18th century - we don't have low-population rural states with slavery-driven agrarian economies, for instance (note the Constitutional compromises on how slaves count toward population for the purpose of representation in the House, as well as the Senate topic already under discussion). Today, "minorities" are location-nonspecific. Racial, religious, and sexual orientation minorities exist in every state - they don't gain the same protection from the majority through equal-representation-by-state that the Founders intended for the interests of smaller states.In fact, the system of all-or-nothing representation (ie, simple majority representation, meaning 49% of a district need receive no representation at all) means that actual minority interests in teh US receive typically no representation at all.

Certainly not, and that's not what I advocate. "Tyranny of the majority" refers to the very real political problem whereby unpopular minorities will be persecuted purely for being unpopular, not because of any compelling state interest, such as the banning of gay marriage purely based on "tradition."That doesn't mean that the concept of creating laws and governance based on the preferences of the majority is somehow invalidated; only that the rule of the majority should be confined to specific interests of society as a whole (meaning things that actually affect the state and society) as opposed to just basic popularity contests. Incomplete. In a true democracy, courts would be guided by the laws...enacted by the majority. The courts are the means by which one can seek redress through the law, but the courts themselves are not the protection we offer to minorities.The Constitution and the fair application of laws is what protects against the Tyranny of the Majority. One cannot persecute unpopular minority religious sects, because of the First Amendment. You cannot persecute unpopular minority opinions, because of the First Amendment.The Courts are the tool, but it's the Constitution that actually sets the framework under which the courts protect minorities. Without those Constitutional protections, a populist Congress could simply enact whatever oppressive law sounds best to the majority at a given moment, and the Court would be forced to use that framework. And therein lies where we do agree, crash. The Senate was implemented as a protection for minority populations as defined by state boarders. It worked very well in preventing the larger-population (since slaves only counted as 3/5 of a person) Northern states from outlawing slavery in the Southern states, for example."Very well," of course, for those to whom preserving the institution of slavery was actually a goal.The concept of states as representative of majority or minority views is outdated. "States rights" is a concept that doesn't particularly work with regard to protecting minority views. Yes, "states rights" can hypothetically "protect" minority views like criminalizing abortion or legalizing the possession of concealed weapons or banning the recognition of gay marriage...but as it turns out, these sorts of issues are typically Constitutionally governed anyway. The Constitutional right to privacy mandates the legality of abortion. The Constitutional right to keep and bear arms governs the ability to own weapons. The Constitutional guarantee of equal treatment before the law governs gay marriage.The political theory is that there will be greater and more relevant consent to be governed under laws determined by yourself and your neighbors rather than a more populous region across the country. The idea has merit, and had more when "across the country" meant more than a few hours on a plane or no time at all on the internet or by phone. But I'd argue that the relevance has decreased as the relevance of geographical location has decreased.So long as individual states have their own legal frameworks (as opposed to a purely Federal system), I can see a reason for something like the Senate to exist. I'm just not so convinced that the Senate is the best solution to the problem.One alternative solution, of course, would be to abolish the concept of state-specific laws entirely, and make all laws Federal. Another would be to change what specifically the Senate does - perhaps make the Senate only able to block laws rather than being required to pass them, which would allow a majorty0in-the-Senate (which could still represent a minority of the population) to block a law, but would allow most laws to pass so long as they were enacted in the House. I'm not a political scientist, real solutions would require more than five minutes of me thinking at work, my point is just that I'd like to see alternative considerations to the current mechanism. Again, yes. Equal representation by state has resulted in many laws that would otherwise be passed to be blocked because of the concern of just a few states - if all votes were dependent only on raw population like under a purely democratic system, those laws would have passed.But remember, the Senate was never intended to protect against "minorities" as we define them today. It was intended to prevent higher-population states from interfering with the internal processes and laws of smaller states - a very different (and I would suggest less important) definition of "Tyranny of the Majority" than, say, outlawing homosexuality would fall under.

The system is self-sustaining, now. Public opinion maintains that thre are only two "viable" parties, and that a vote for a third party is wasted, and gerrymandering of districts assures that change is incredibly difficult.But even if that were not the case, I'd shudder at the thought of voting for a person solely on the basis of their campaign funding. The Green party, for example, does not represent me - I don't want them in power.My problem is that we have few or even no "good" choices, no candidates that would actually represent us particularly well. The two-party system, because of the all-or-nothing single-representative system, has effectively stamped out the possibility of minority parties.I'd rather see more representatives than one per district, with the number of seats assigned to parties proportionally to the votes. If there are 10 seats in a given district and Party A wins 30%, Party B wins 20%, and Party C wins 50%, I;d like A to get 3 representatives, B to get 2, and C to get 5. This would assure that minority views will be represented but may not actually get enough of a vote to win, and also would destroy the concept of a "wasted" vote when considering alternative parties.I think it's odd when a district can be represented by an individual whose views are vehemently opposed by 30% or more of his constituents, who themselves receive no voice at all in government.It's "Tyranny of the Majority" all over again.

Look at any example where a law that was passed in the House failed in the Senate, where the Senate representatives in the "majority" represented a power percentage of the population. I'm sure we could find many instances.In each of those cases, we're looking at an instance where the interests of a minority as defined according to state lines were defended against the interests of the majority of US citizens as a whole.Whether that protection was a good thing or morally right or even Constitutional in the end is irrelevant. The mechanism is such that a few states, independent of the number of citizens they represent, can block laws passed by the populist House.

"Politics" in the US is something like a sport. I have my "team" and you have yours.It's gotten to the point that few actually think about why they support this issue or that - if the issue is supported by their "team," then they support it. You choose your "team" based on a couple hot-button issues like abortion, or undefined loose "ideals" like "fiscal conservatism" that may or may not actually be shared by the "team" you pick, because their marketing is that good. After that, the "team" decides what you support for you.American voters are soccer hooligans.The remaining, non-voting public just doesn't like soccer. Mostly because of the hooligans, but also because neither "team" particularly appeals to them, and the alternative "teams" always lose anyway.I hate American politics. Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

Gee, somebody read "Atlas Shrugged" and thought it had something to do with reality...