After graduation my high-school-best-friend and I took different paths. He got heavily into partying and drugs, and started doing crimes to pay for his addictions. First major conviction was for stolen credit cards. Second conviction was for check fraud. His third major conviction was for breaking into rich people's houses and stealing loose crap like golf clubs, power tools and bicycles. Missouri had just passed its version of the then-popular Three Strikes law, and this latest conviction was his third strike. He was fast-passed to a 20-year sentence, no opportunity for early release.
I'm not going to preach about my friend being a victim of a cruel system or whatever. He deserved to be punished, no doubt about it. He committed crimes; there were victims to those crimes. My feeling, however, is that the people of Missouri are the victims, the taxpayers. They had to pay to jail a dude for 20 years (they paid for his college education, too, through some sort of convict-college program). I'm confident there's a better way to punish/rehabilitate non-violent offenders that doesn't cost the tax payers 20 years of jailing.
Funny-not-funny tidbit: My friend was released in early-2021. He was released after serving 20 years, only to be "locked down" on the outside because of Covid.
I can't understand how anyone can do such a job for any length of time. I worked at a PC repair shop back in the 90s, fixed some dude's PC, and I saw a bunch of CSAM stuff (a lot, like thousands of pics, all children). I reported it to the local cops, then the FBI got involved, and that's the last I heard of it. My point is that the memory of those pics haunt me to this day. And I only saw a handful of pics, over, maybe, a period of about 2 minutes. To do that all day, everyday - how could one not become an alcoholic?
I thought Ring was already sending data to law enforcement agencies (that paid Amazon for it). Also, I thought the EULA included language that basically said, "All your data are belong to us", so they could already do whatever surveillance they want.
We, the America-hating liberals, have been warning about these "administrative subpoenas" for years, but we've always been blocked with "So, we're all gonna have wait for a judge to sign a warrant before we can stop the next 9/11?!"
I've said it before on HN, but it's worth repeating: When my parents started a family in the late-60's, my dad had only a high school diploma, yet he supported his wife, 2 kids, 2 cars, and a brand new house. Heck, one of their cars was a 1964 convertible Corvette (my mom still talks about how much she misses that car). That is basically unheard-of these days.
Not sure I understand this comment. Trump deserves points for being transparent about his disdain for liberal democratic values? Not sure that's a flex. Hmmm.
I'm not going to preach about my friend being a victim of a cruel system or whatever. He deserved to be punished, no doubt about it. He committed crimes; there were victims to those crimes. My feeling, however, is that the people of Missouri are the victims, the taxpayers. They had to pay to jail a dude for 20 years (they paid for his college education, too, through some sort of convict-college program). I'm confident there's a better way to punish/rehabilitate non-violent offenders that doesn't cost the tax payers 20 years of jailing.
Funny-not-funny tidbit: My friend was released in early-2021. He was released after serving 20 years, only to be "locked down" on the outside because of Covid.
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