> nobody has been killed that wasn’t carrying a gun with extra ammo or striking cops with their vehicle.
The video evidence shows beyond peradventure that Renee Good didn't strike the ICE agent — who isn't a cop — with her vehicle.
EDIT: See the NY Times's frame-by-frame, time-synchronized compilation of the various videos [0], especially starting at about 3:42 in that video [1].
The agent wasn't hit by Good's vehicle - starting at 4:53 of the video [2], he was standing well away from her vehicle (see 5:42 [3]), leaning on it with his hand on the front fender, and his feet slipped as she was trying to pull away.
He wasn't hit or run over — at most he was slightly pushed by the vehicle. His reaction — "fucking bitch" [4].
As to Alex Pretti: You're focusing like a laser on a fact — if such it be — that's completely irrelevant.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9R9dAmws6M And yes, I firmly believe the NY Times tries to get it right, and corrects their errors on the rare occasions that they make them.
That's not how it looks to me. Her vehicle seems to come close and might even touch the agent's leg — maybe (the narration says no). But "hitting him" doesn't seem to be a reasonable way to describe it, even granting that the video clip is in slow motion.
The agent was leaning significantly forward, and suddenly acquired backwards momentum just when the car got close, despite his center of mass being in front of his feet. The only way he could move like that was by getting hit by the car.
> The video evidence shows beyond peradventure that Renee Good didn't strike an ICE agent
Let's not get caught up arguing about the play-by-play details. There will always be rabid disagreement regardless of merit, causing us to miss the crux of the matter. The important big-picture dynamic is that the agent set up the situation so he'd have an excuse to kill the next person who tried to drive away from him, directly contrary to ICE's own policies. That would be second degree murder, if the perp weren't a member of a protected class.
Was using an SUV to intentionally impede federal agents
Disregarded repeated warnings to get out of the SUV
Moved from reverse to drive when there was a person in front of her
Struck the ICE agent with her car
None of these can be disputed, they are facts. The points you list are also true. The agent seems to have placed himself intentionally in front of the car, in violation of ICE policies.
I think they both contributed to the tragedy.
Note that the only people that get harmed are those that act unlawfully and violently. Peaceful protesters don’t get hurt.
There is blood on the hands of the people encouraging unlawful behavior. Nobody protesting peacefully gets shot.
One of the above comments gives a pretty clear cut showcase of how this is not, in fact, a fact.
> I think they both contributed to the tragedy.
"Between me and Jeff Bezos we are worth several hundred billion dollars". The ICE agent contributed the bullets that made this a tragedy, the victim contributed not following the orders of people who are not police officers, I'd say it's not much of a "both" situation.
> Nobody protesting peacefully gets shot.
At least one person already has, but something tells me you'll just move the goalpost of what "peacefully" means.
Use your car to block armed federal agents from doing their job. When they give you instructions, ignore them and taunt them. When they come to take you out of your vehicle, drive your vehicle at them as you try to get away.
Sorry, that’s just not peaceful protesting. That’s putting lives in danger, obviously including your own.
There is blood on the hands of the people encouraging such behavior. MLK showed us that peaceful protest is effective protest. Vehicular assault protest is dangerous and illegal protest.
> Vehicular assault protest is dangerous and illegal protest.
You need to watch the video compilation linked to above. It wasn't anything resembling "vehicular assault protest" — it was a woman trying to verrrry slowwwwly drive away and an armed ICE agent shooting her when his feet slipped.
It's a peculiar type of insanity to insist that it is the responsibility of everyday citizens to react perfectly calmly and rationally while being assaulted by armed agents of the state (themselves often acting impulsively and aggressively), and to then justify people being summarily executed when they inevitably do not.
Furthermore, it's disingenuous to talk about "unlawful behavior" while skipping over the federal government violating the much deeper laws that were explicitly written into its charter. If you want to keep closing your eyes to what is plainly in front of you, that is on you.
What I find insane is that people are going completely bonkers over Trump using ICE, but they didn’t say a word about Obamas use of ICE. The ACLU wrote plenty about what Obama did, but the protesters don’t seem to know about it.
Maybe if they disavowed Obama, and treated him like a pariah, then you might think they only recently became aware of what was going on. They’d be acting with integrity. But I don’t see that.
When you put it that way, it makes it sound like you're okay with the federal government (no matter who's in charge) having gangs of masked men kidnapping people off the streets.
You keep focusing on these small slices of the issue where you can go A+B->C "yup looks good!". Meanwhile the larger context here is exactly what's important.
Personally I'm basically ambivalent about deporting illegal immigrants. I am NOT ambivalent about the first amendment, the second amendment, abducting citizens/legal immigrants, due process and coercion, inhumane conditions, an administration that doesn't respect the loss of American life, an administration that continues to announce that their goal is to deport many more people than merely illegal immigrants, etc.
I thought Obama was running/supporting an inhumane machine as well, although I was both-sidesing at the time so I didn't see a political lever that could be pulled to affect it. But has it occurred to you that even if you consider the net actions the same, fewer people protested Obama precisely because Obama could sell those policies by engendering trust and demonstrating respect for at least some traditional American values?
See my edited comment, with a link to the NY Times's frame-by-frame, time-synced compilation of various video angles. She didn't run over him or even hit him.
Here in (South-adjacent) Texas, if someone asks if I'm Christian, I'm likely to respond, "Well, I'm Episcopalian, if that counts" — because to some folks in this neck of the woods, Episcopalians aren't really Christians.
> Some kids really do just run into the road seemingly randomly. ... sometimes (perhaps very rarely, but it only takes once and bad luck) forget to look both ways.
Just this week I was telling my law school contract-drafting class that part of our job as lawyers and drafters is to try to to "child-proof" our contracts, because sometimes clients' staff understandably don't fully appreciate the possible consequences of 'running into the street,' no matter how good an idea it might seem at the time.
Term limits make the problem worse; the main fix is to abandon strict single-member-district first-past-the-post for a more proportional system for legislative elections (for Presidential elections the problem is harder, both because there is no good, easy fix for an inherently single-winner election and because almost any meaningful change will require a Constitutional amendment which is quite difficult even if you can nail down what to do.)
For the House, using a multimember ranked ballots system like Single Transferrable Vote in districts capped at a size of 5 members in states with more than one rep would work tolerably well (especially if combined with increasing the total number of seats beyond the currently-legislated fixed 435.) This does all of support more parties, reduce or eliminate [depending on the exact method chosen] spoiler effects for voting first choice for parties that don't win seats reducing the need for tactical voting, reduce incumbent protection without removing voter choice [because parties are encouraged to run more candidates than they are likely to win], and produce a body that better represents the preferences of the electorate.
The Senate is more complicated because of the 1/3 per class rule, but it can be made slightly better (in order from smallest to largest changes), by:
1. Adopting a single-winner ranked choice method instead of first-past-the-post for Senate elections.
2. Increasing the size of the Senate to three seats per state (electing one Senator from each stare in each of the three two-year classes), combined with #1.
3. Increase the size of the Senate to six (2/state/class) or nine (3/state/class), using a ranked ballots multiwinner proportional system like STV for elections. (3/state/class keeps the majority a significant threshold.
Because of the Constitutional manner of apportioning electors, increasing the size of the House makes Presidential election voting power more equal by population while increasing the size of the Senate makes it less; for this reason, if doing the fixes for Congress discussed above, I would favor not increasing the size of the Senate by a greater multiple than thet of the house, so three per state in the Senate would go with at least a 50% increase in the size of the House, 2/state/class would go with at least tripling the House, 3/class/state would go with at least a 4.5× on the size of the House.
All are very-sound ideas. Regrettably, they'd be tough to explain to the voters — and the vested interests would oppose fiercely.
A good start might be to just triple the size of the House to approximately match the Repr.-to-population ratio when the present 435 number was legislated.
> I'm constantly surprised at how many cultural conventions are mysteries to modern generations.
Some of my law students are only dimly aware of Jerry Seinfeld. And when I play a bit of the organ solo from Procul Harum's 1967 Whiter Shade of Pale (to illustrate a copyright-royalties point), I'm lucky if one person recognizes it.
> What a terrible reply to an interesting and genuine comment.
The "interesting and genuine [GP] comment" was hardly that: While it might not have been the GP commenter's intent, to me the comment came across as evidencing a faint sense of entitlement and tunnel vision — as in, "why hasn't the author of the book — which I haven't read — covered what I think should have been in this first volume of the series?"
I'm listening to the Audible version of the book. It's fascinating — especially the early chapter(s) about the approaches of Henry Royce of Rolls-Royce (costly, near-bespoke manufacturing, by highly-skilled engineers and mechanics, of splendid automobiles meant for the wealthy) versus that of Henry Ford (precision engineering of assembly-line machinery to enable mass production of workhorse cars that working people could afford).
(I hadn't known that in his youth, Stewart Brand was an Airborne-qualified U.S. Army infantry officer for two years after graduating from Stanford — this was back in the days of the draft. https://sb.longnow.org/SB_homepage/Bio.html)
> The United States is exactly meant to be that: states that are united, but independent. The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives.
That changed in the wake of the South's surrender at Appomattox: The Civil War Amendments explicitly gave the federal government expanded powers. Sure, the southern states were forced to ratify those amendments before Congress would recognize their representatives and senators. But they brought it on themselves; it was one of history's most-horrendous examples of FAFO. And the South was saved from far worse by Lincoln's and Grant's desire to be conciliatory and Andrew Johnson's malign views. (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.)
> (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.)
Nothing validates this view more than looking at the modern republican party. This is especially blasphemous to say after MLK day, who's life was dedicated to attempting the fix the injustices of the south, and who's death is entirely and inarguably a result of the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south). At minimum the traitors should have been hanged in public view. The desire to be conciliatory has never been less vindicated -- it's not like the south all the sudden decided to adhere to constitution, they had to be forced to anyhow. It's a nice sentiment, but it should have been left at that.
> the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south)
Well, the south was the only place where there were any appreciable amounts of nonwhite people. "White supremacy" was just "the way things are" in the north, because they pretty much only had white people.
In 1900, decades after the end of the Civil War, the south was about one-third black; every other region (midwest, northeast, west) were less than 2% black.
Robert A. Heinlein's "Future History" anticipated an amazing number of present-day phenomena, e.g., the rise of Christian theocrats. I sometimes idly wonder whether he was his time-traveling character Lazarus Long.
> It’s almost never the case that small farms is going to be more efficient—not only cost wise, but for the environment—than large scale farming.
I can relate: Our SIL gave my wife a countertop gadget that holds six little cups into which you drop pre-packaged paper cups of seeds and soil. (You order them online.) The gadget has a grow light. You have to water the cups periodically My ux uses the gadget to grow basil and parsley, and snips off bits of leaves as needed for cooking. All-in, the crops cost probably 5-10X what we'd pay for fresh herbs at a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, let alone at an Aldi's or H-E-B. Ah, well: Signaling love and appreciation is important ....
The video evidence shows beyond peradventure that Renee Good didn't strike the ICE agent — who isn't a cop — with her vehicle.
EDIT: See the NY Times's frame-by-frame, time-synchronized compilation of the various videos [0], especially starting at about 3:42 in that video [1].
The agent wasn't hit by Good's vehicle - starting at 4:53 of the video [2], he was standing well away from her vehicle (see 5:42 [3]), leaning on it with his hand on the front fender, and his feet slipped as she was trying to pull away.
He wasn't hit or run over — at most he was slightly pushed by the vehicle. His reaction — "fucking bitch" [4].
As to Alex Pretti: You're focusing like a laser on a fact — if such it be — that's completely irrelevant.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9R9dAmws6M And yes, I firmly believe the NY Times tries to get it right, and corrects their errors on the rare occasions that they make them.
[1] https://youtu.be/D9R9dAmws6M?si=hqGlX9J0Iwpveqwu&t=222
[2] https://youtu.be/D9R9dAmws6M?si=UKhDNxdXaCFhvdr0&t=293
[3] https://youtu.be/D9R9dAmws6M?si=7WNCsHcPm7b6ycJ-&t=334
[4] https://youtu.be/D9R9dAmws6M?si=RiHOgMrJGxgqmq_8&t=389
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