In many countries, if you're eg. an engineer, and you fuck things up, you can become personally responsible for whatever damages happened due to your negligence. The company has its own responsibilities, but you, as an engineer carry some personal responsibility too.
Same for eg. doctors... yes, hospital can get sued, but if you, a doctor, a person, fucked up, you personally can get sued, get into trouble, lose your licence etc.
Same for truck drivers... drive too fast, kill someone, drive drunk, play flappy bird while driving... you personally responsible. Pilots, ship captains too.
etc.
Why the hell are all the public workers exempt from that? Cops, government workers, inspectors, etc.... in the best case possible, taxpayers pay for the damages and that's it. Why?! Someone wanted this subpoeana, his job is to know if s/he can actually request it, s/he signed his/her name on the paper... and then.. nothing?
“Qualified immunity” is what you’re looking for. The original justification was to protect government officials (primarily law enforcement) from excessive, frivolous lawsuits.
Except the courts have since interpreted QI in such a way that there’s a Catch-22 scenario. Plaintiff needs to establish violation of a clearly established constitutional precedent to have standing, but since QI was only introduced in the 1960s, there’s very little case law proving that precedence.
While I understand the initial thought behind QI, it does seem the bar to holding law enforcement accountable is way too high. Time to adjust the laws (which requires a functional Congress, which we don’t have).
This is the thing that frustrates me the most about the current state of USA politics. The inability to functionally govern and reach bi-partisan support for a lot of meaningful issues renders us helpless to improve bad systems. Meanwhile, corporations continue to dilute the value of their products and services or jack up the price beyond the rate of inflation and no real regulation seems possible.
Remember, it is perfectly valid to be equally aware of how the parties are different, but being more frustrated by the ways they are the same
Don’t let partisans gaslight you over their desperate struggles for the ring of power
yes, the sides are different, there are ways they are the same
That's an easy genericism.
In fact this particular issue under discussion is quite asymmetric. It's routine for a republican congress to block legislation that would otherwise pass (c.f. current bills for border security and Ukraine aid, our now-quarterly government shutdown jamboree, etc...). The reverse really is not true. I can't think of a notable bipartisan bill in the last decade blocked by a democratically-controlled government organ. Can you?
It's perfectly valid to have complaints about both parties, but not to invent frustrations about how they are the same.
There seem to be some tautologies happening here. There are only 2 major parties in the US Congress. Bipartisan bills, somewhat by definition, are going to be passed by both parties. Similarly, since there are 2 major parties, if legislation is proposed by one party then it would pass unless the other blocks it.
I don't see how you're expecting things to work differently. Would we expect Democrat-sponsored legislation to fail for reasons apart from Republican opposition?
I doubt that is a true statement, but assuming it is then logically that would just mean that Republicans only propose legislation after they have talked to the Democrats and confirmed they are willing to vote it through. But that would suggest the Republicans are avoiding opportunities to kick up a fuss which doesn't sound like the US Congress we all know and love.
Unrelated note but it is amazing to me that the US has been an entity for a couple of centuries now and doesn't have legislation already in place to control the border.
Of course the US has legislation to control the border. There is an entire agency called the border patrol. The thing is right now , it seems, additional legislation is needed to actually compel the executive to have the border patrol do their job. Which this last bill didn't even do and would have simply dumped money into an auxiliary judicial system that serves virtually no purpose and would continue to do so even with more money. Shortening the time for an asylum hearing doesn't even matter because people don't show up for them.
Any bill that maintains the current administration's position of simply letting people go completely free during their asylum waiting period is useless. Sure, people with legit claims might show up, but crimminals, which are the problem, are not going to come back for the hearing.
Most Americans don't mind immigrants or immigration at all and not even the idea of illegal immigration is really a problem. It's just the people that commit crimes that are the problem, it's one of the reason we see recent immigrants be so strongly in favor of border security, because the people they specifically tried to get away from are showing up too.
Not only are people caught crossing the border illegally not detained, but apparently even when they commit additional crimes it's too much for some cities and states to even keep them in jail for those crimes.
This comment really highlights how you can have someone like GP thinking Republicans are inhibiting border control and Democrats are trying to do something about it. The discourse around the subject dictates what concepts are held in the mind while considering it. The implication by the left seems to be that the US should, obviously, allow anyone into the country and that the problem is the speed of the immigration process. The reality of the situation is that no country, the US included, can maintain the stable identity and order required to be considered “a country” while allowing unrestricted immigration. It’s simply not possible to accept immigrants without requiring that they know and follow the law, and that takes time to learn. Immediate access to the country does not facilitate that learning and obviously causes significant crime.
Indeed, there's a disconnect. I can't see anywhere in modern discourse that would have led you to believe that. Can you maybe cite the relevant policymakers or thought leaders or whoever that you are sure hold that opinion? Because I guarantee they don't actually exist.
What you just typed is an echo chamber point. It's not what your political enemies think, at all. It's what your political allies[1] want you to think your political enemies think. It's nonsense.
[1] Specifically the content-makers running the partisan media you consume.
There is a popular perception that:
- If Democrats are in the minority and want to block a Republican bill, they will attempt to drum up public pressure, advocate on the floor and with individual legislators, etc.
- If Republicans are in the minority and want to block a Democrat bill, they will by any means necessary. They'll use various edge cases of parliamentary procedure, attach/amend/manipulate bills to poison them, etc. 'Playing dirty'.
I have no idea if this is actually true, but it's a common idea I've heard from both sides. The Democrats see it as a sign of their moral superiority, and the Republicans see it as an demonstration of conviction.
It sounds kinda stupid as theories go and I'm not going to believe there is anything meaningful happening without specific examples. Although I'll say on the outset that it wouldn't surprise me if it is basically a misdirection that the congresspeople are promulgating on a bipartisan basis to help them brand themselves.
This in particular is the part that seems a bit ridiculous. I'm sure they technically do all that, but if they have the numbers to do these things they also have the numbers to just vote bills down. It isn't 'playing dirty'. And these bills are generally rider-filled messes regardless.
Maybe the argument is that the Republicans are secretly plotting against their own voters and trying to conceal it, which is the sort of theory that people on the right wing already believe. It is the right wing. One of the core political tenants is that politicians are corrupt, incompetent and untrustworthy. The right wing politicians don't really need to pretend, their voters already know - many of them go in with a mandate to try and shut the whole government down to try and limit the damage the Congress does. The bulk of voters on the right seem to be well aware by now that professional politicians, as a class, hate them. That is why there is this whole Trumpian revolt underway.
Republicans block bills because they're stuffed full of unrelated things (by design - that way they can easily be painted as the bad guys - which is working, see your own comment). I'm not saying that the reverse doesn't happen - perhaps Democrats are okay with bloated bills, I dunno.
Good rule of thumb is when a bill is blocked by one party, go find out everything that's in it and what parts the blocking party objected to. I guarantee it won't be the stuff the bill is named after.
What you’re describing is called compromise: you get what you want in exchange for something else.
In context, he's not describing a compromise, he's talking about a 'wrecking amendment'. Adding something absurd to a bill. The difference is that the person adding the amendment doesn't actually want or expect their amendment to be passed.
Wikipedia has a fun example:
No, he definitely is not. Painting every bill Republicans have blocked as having a wrecking amendment is beyond silly. He’s describing a refusal to compromise.
Nonsense. Republicans were given everything they asked for on the border as a stand alone offer and refused it. It has nothing to do with some sort of genuine political position over riders on bills, and a simple examination of literally anything republicans have sponsored in the last 30 years will demonstrate that starkly. The point is obstructionism instead of governance.
It's still quote humorous how Biden can create these messes and yet Republicans are still the bad guys here... This is how nothing changes.
that's interested because you created a point I didn't make, in order to discredit the point I did make
I won't call it a strawman argument since the grandparent post did say "inability to functionally govern and reach bi-partisan support for a lot of meaningful issues renders us helpless to improve bad systems", I was not making a point about bills passing
my only, isolated point, is that it is valid to be frustrated by the ways in which the parties are the same.
you decided to talk about one way you believe they are different. its fine if that was a misunderstanding of my point, but if you're not aware of any unproductive way the parties are the same, then this discussion isn't for you.
You made that "isolated" point in a subthread about gridlock and the inability to pass meaningful legislation. And in that particular argument to which you replied, you were wrong: the parties are not "the same".
actually, one can argue that bipartisan support is the last thing you want because that's how 90% violate the rights for the 10% (and eventually, to 100% since we all take turns at being part of the 10%).
Case in point: Patriot ACT. SOPA attempts. Asset Forfeiture.
In contrast, see the most unruly place in Europe: Switzerland. Politicians bicker about inane things like updating language spelling, which caused huge uproar in 2006 [0] . 10 years later, you had the Cow Horns debate [1] of 2018, and its own sort of epilogue with the firestorm around cowbells [2]
You also have a weak executive with rotating posts of only 1 year. [3] So, nothing gets done (by design). And when policians work out a small miracle via bipartisanship, they still must jump the hurdle of direct democracy and win over the population. Moreover, anything can be reversed with a very small minority [3,4] calling for a referendum, anytime.
Yet Switzerland its the longest living democracy in the world with insanely high levels of development and prosperity.
[0] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/chaos-fears-loom-over-s... [1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/life-aging/podcast_campaigning-... [2]https://www.iamexpat.ch/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/cowbell-noi... [3] https://www.thelocal.ch/20211129/a-foreigners-guide-to-under... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2014_Swiss_immigratio...
And, a bunch of Internet randos arguing about it here: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-80426,...
As an outsider, highly advanced democracies appear to argue about very small things because most of the big things are done right. See also: Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Canada, Finland, etc.
Their definition of democracy is quite arbitrary, I would argue that any country where women and minorities cannot vote isn’t a democracy, it is according to them.
Sure but in that case, Switzerland wasn't a democracy until 1990 when women in the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden finally got the right to vote in federal elections.
Wiki says: Women in Switzerland gained the right to vote in federal elections after a referendum in February 1971.
The United States is not and never has been a democracy. The Senate and the SCOTUS are not democratic institutions.
Can you explain why the US Senate is not democratic? And do you feel the same about the senior house for all other highly functioning democracies?
I'm assuming they are from a high populous area, and feel that overall popular vote should have the majority representation at the federal level.
I'm quite glad this is not the case, I don't want to be governed by the populist progressive votes in the coastal cities.
You mean highly biased? Switzerland's direct democracy is the antithesis of what the WEF stands for.
WEF is based in Switzerland and their annual meeting is in the Swiss Alps.
The financing of WEF is mostly big corps which are in large part headquartered in Switzerland, and is financed by the Swiss government directly.
Swiss direct democracy is irrelevant to WEF.
I would disagree about the democracy part in Switzerland. Women weren't allowed to vote in federal elections until 1970 and it took until 1990 before the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden allowed women to vote[1]. I don't think you can call yourself a democracy while banning women from voting.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...
This is a valid criticism, but does not detract from the fact that Switzerland is pretty much a model democracy.
Power is extremely decentralized, not just down to the Cantons, but the counties and then the cities/townships (translated to rough US equivalents) also have a huge degree of autonomy. For any law or political decision that affects a Swiss citizen, it is almost guaranteed that it can be overturned be plebiscite (or in local issues by just showing up at meetings).
The late adoption of Women's suffrage is just a consequence of this system, which is biased towards inaction by design. On the plus side they have not had ideological extremists run their country, or had political violence on the level of some of their neighbors (Italy, Germany, France).
The ancient Greek, who invented the word "democracy" (δημοκρατία / dēmokratía), would disagree with your understanding of it.
I'm not so sure about that. Swiss public like all westerners seem to turn off their brains and vote for any authoritarian bullshit as soon as someone utter the word "terrorism" in 100km radius around them [0][1]:
"Voters have endorsed a series of measures allowing police to crack down on militant extremists and apply preventive detention methods, giving Switzerland one of the strictest anti-terrorism legislations in Europe ."
"The Swiss government has proposed new legislation aimed at preventing extremist violence and forcing people deemed a threat, including children aged 12 upwards, to be registered with the authorities. House arrest could also be applied to suspects as a last resort in some cases. The idea is to target people who have not yet committed a crime but who are considered to be a risk."
"The experts are concerned that the draft law’s new definition of “terrorist activity” no longer requires the prospect of any crime at all. They fear it may target “legitimate activities of journalists, civil society and political activists”."
[0]: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/controversial-anti-ter...
[1]: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/un-experts-criticise-s...
edit: spelling
Democracies can't really be condensed into one political moment; that is why they are so effective against dictatorships. Dictatorships have to make sense to one person.
The usual pattern is authoritarians do something stupid, democracies do something stupid but also erratic, then time passes then the democracies reorganise to try something new and the dictatorship gets stuck in a rut. Eventually the democracy tries something that works to the amazement of all observers. The authoritarians are still pushing the same tired old plan of failure.
Democracy doesn't have any secret sauce for making good decisions. Large groups of people are actually notoriously stupid. But they are much more responsive to situations where the government's official plan is obviously not working and the evidence is rolling in.
I wasn't arguing that Switzerland is not a democracy, just noted the its political system is nowhere as immune to enacting things like "patriot act" as OP suggested.
The courts have not "interpreted" qualified immunity to mean something. The Supreme Court in 1967 created qualified immunity out of nowhere to defend obviously racist cops in Mississippi. Specifically, they created it to put an end to people using Third Ku Klux Klan Act (Rights Act of 1871) to sue racist cops. This is part of a long history of preventing people from using Reconstruction Era laws to gain any meaningful civil rights.
They did so by saying that 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (which was passed by Grant to fight the KKK) which was meant to allow people to sue for civil rights violations clearly intends to provide an exception for police officers if they acted in good faith (whatever that means; given that good faith here means enforcing a racist law often with extreme violence). But there's absolutely nothing in the actual law, the text passed by Congress or in the intent of Congress, that supports this reading. You can read the Section 1983 yourself:
A "judicial officer" by the way is a member of the court / judicial branch, not a police officer.
Because there's no law, qualified immunity is a total mess. Different courts and judges apply it very differently. For some it's simply a blanket defense for essentially any acts.
Ironically, Scalia and Thomas have both written dissents on the other side from the liberal judges at times, pointing out that there is literally no basis in law for qualified immunity and the Court should just drop it entirely.
This isn't just a matter of adjusting the law to clarify the interpretation of Section 1983, although that would help. It also requires a long-term realignment of the Supreme Court who shouldn't be able to wholesale write laws this way. That's not me saying this, that's Scalia in Crawford-El v. Britton "[the Supreme Court] find[s] [itself] engaged...in the essentially legislative activity of crafting a sensible scheme of qualified immunities for the statute we have invented—rather than applying the common law embodied in the statute that Congress wrote".
What's ironic about that?
It's ironic because conservatives tend to be much more pro-police than liberals. Liberal justices could have ended qualified immunity when they controlled the Court. But they didn't listen to the conservative justices at the time. The thin blue line was more important.
Now liberals want to water down or eliminate qualified immunity, but they've lost all power on the court. And the current conservative justices are far more extreme than Scalia or Thomas. They don't want to eliminate it. That's irony.
Isn't a partisan and political Supreme Court with no limits or oversight that just makes up anything that it wants according to the party wishes great? This is an early sign of a failing state.
We really need to urgently depoliticize the Supreme Court.
Canada has done a lot to make sure its Supreme Court, which is equally powerful, doesn't become political. The US should do the same.
Isn't QI fully something the supreme court made up and unlikely to go away whatever congress does?
See light-hue's sibling response. Yes, SCOTUS made it up, but there's no firm Constitutional basis for QI - their decision was based on other laws. IANAL, but my take is Congress could explicitly remove QI.
QI is atrocious. See some choice quotes from https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/19/qualified-... :
and I would argue that any body that clears officers for stealing coins, assuming its as clearcut as has been laid out here, is a failed treasonous(to the people) organisation that morally and ethically can should be destroyed by any means necessary
Everyone else just has to get insurance, why can't they? If you don't have a downside for something you do more of it. There's even a name for this, moral hazard. This isn't a new phenomenon, so why are these people treated as exceptions?
Nuisance lawsuits would cripple the ability of government to do anything but defend itself in court. That's the theory anyway.
And worse, any precedent created is interpreted so narrowly as to be ridiculous. If a cop violates your rights on Tuesday, well you are SOL if they do it on Wednesday because there is no precedent for that.
I know how old common law is, and how far back through time its predecessors go... but 50 years is long enough for loads of case law to appear.
Something else must be a blocker here.
if you're asking earnestly, one of the biggest reasons is that the would-be prosecutor relies on the cooperation of the police department to function. This article covers that and some more:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-its-still-so-rare-f...
In some countries it’s possible for civilian lawyers to press criminal charges specifically for situations like this. There’s some gatekeeping by the courts and whatnot to approve the case but it’s pretty reasonable. Also allows victims to “press charges” when the police mysteriously refuse to.
Burden of proof remains the same as for a state-appointed prosecutor. And judges still get similar leeway in sentencing.
Oh totally, theres lots of ways it could be improved. Unfortunately, our courts are also in their pocket for various reasons, and invented whole cloth the concept of qualified immunity. So getting the case to the courts is no guarantee either. Still would be better of course.
I find it so sad, how much of the country was united on this for months, and how little has actually happened in response.
So why not make a special prosecutor who only deals with police cases?
The solution seems too simple.
That makes me think that the underlying thing causing this issue to plague American society isn't what you suggest.
ok, maybe one of the biggest wasn't hedged enough. but it is still an important reason imo.
There are many more of course:
- Police can sabotage the re-elections of politicians that oppose them, by doing their job worse and increasing the rate of crime.
- Courts tend to favor the police, inventing such concepts as qualified immunity
- An unfortunately large percent of the country is happy for the police to trample people as long as it's the people they don't like
- And more, which the article gets into some of. I'm not a huge 538 fan but its pretty decent
Because in all those professions, there is enough time to follow a process, or (in the case of pilots) their survival is linked to the survival of everyone else.
In a typical police apprehension, there may be a second or less to draw your weapon and fire. Nobody would take the job if they had to be perfect or lose their freedom or life savings.
Speaking of life savings, most of the criminals they apprehend have nothing to lose. So maybe you're on to something. Let's hire police who are currently incarcerated and have no assets, family or wealth to lose. Then they can be subject to the draconian measures of your fantasy and worst case is they got a few months of freedom. Smart guy you are:)
it is possible to distinquish between situations in a court
Then why do cops and government officials get QI in non-emergency situations?
For the doctors, it is really hard to loose a license. Even then, a doctor can move to another state and continue to run practice.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver just covered this topic on Sunday.
Isn’t there something special about the arrangement of doctors not being employed by the hospital that might explain some of the individual suits?
Because the regime wants their agents to blindly obey orders they push down, or foster to happen at lower levels. If this could suddenly come back and cause actual consequences for some of the regime henchmen, it could be that they might consider not obeying.
by definition, the incentives that exists in a state is not to do what is best for the people its supposed to serve. The bigger and wider a state becomes, the more perverse incentives exists, and since a regime can create its own laws and regulations, it will do so to protect itself first and foremost
Not all public workers are exempt. We have public health workers here, and there has been cases of people going to jail for looking at medical records without medical justification. This is a nurse that is going 3 years to jail and a 4,000€ fine for checking the records of her ex: https://theobjective.com/espana/tribunales/2023-07-31/conden...
The immunity doesn't reach all public workers. Only politicians and law enforcers
Those countries include the US btw. The rules are basically the same for all of them, that they have to have not just made a mistake, but made an unreasonable mistake. It is often hard to lose a license this way as you need to balance just shit happening, things going wrong when you made the right (or a reasonable) choice vs when you made a gross mistake. And of course, the conditions are based on decisions made a priori, not post hoc. Because post hoc is a dangerous game to play given so much more clarity.
e.g. for Doctors: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2628513/
Of course, this doesn't say anything about cops or the state of affairs here in the US. What surprises me more is that despite what many think, there is quite a lot of distrust for the police.
What someone needs to tell me is how most Americans have "very little" to no confidence in Congress and they keep getting elected. Its pretty universally agreed that no one wants a geriatric in the White House yet here we are. How we distrust all our institutions and yet continue to prop them up.
At this point I'm no longer mad at them. I mad at us. We are being enablers. Even down to local elections I hear so much uproar and low polling rates and yet watch these officials get reelected. I don't think it is foul play because I hear people talk about how they hold their nose while voting. City, county, state, or federal, it is all the same.
Clearly we've made our own bed, but we just don't want to lie in it. If you're going to half ass your job you can't complain about how shitty everything is. Before you go blaming others, take a long look in the mirror. I'm sure __you__ are better than that, just the way __you__ can't be manipulated by propaganda and how __you__ can't be tricked by scams. Clearly, we've been played. Clearly we're still being played. So stop blaming your neighbor or pointing to others until you look in the mirror. We all need to do it if we're going to get our shit together. Because we're all in this together, for better or worse.
But what I fear most is that because we'd rather stroke our egos to claim our own team is best we won't ever realize that it is this action that creates the radicals. It is my fear that we won't solve problems before they are problems. That we believe so much in "don't fix what ain't broke" that we won't ever perform basic maintenance. It is far more expensive to fix what is broken than to fix what isn't. My fear is we won't fix things until the streets run red. And that's my biggest fear, that we, the people, won't realize that the blood isn't just on the hands of the elites, but that it is on ours too. We are happy to play the mafia boss who has fully convinced himself and matter-of-factly asks "do you see blood on my hands?"
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-institutions-...
I work in the public sector, local government. I'm personally liable for mistakes at my job. I carry insurance for it.