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Symptom != Victim | 297 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Carmen Ortiz and all other federal prosecutors are collaborators in a diseased system
Authored by: scav on Monday, January 21 2013 @ 04:18 AM EST
FTFY.

Individuals are still responsible for their actions.

If the rules are unjust, you bend the rules. If the prosecutor was "only
following orders", then tough. That was never an excuse for cruelty and
injustice, and it never will be.

But in any case, the prosecutor was *not* legally obliged to bully any
defendant (still innocent in the law until tried) with threats of ridiculously
disproportionate charges to try to get a felony conviction nice and easy
without all that messy inconvenience of a fair trial before a jury of his
peers.


---
The emperor, undaunted by overwhelming evidence that he had no clothes,
redoubled his siege of Antarctica to extort tribute from the penguins.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Precisely - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, January 21 2013 @ 10:13 AM EST
apropos Upton Sinclair quote
Authored by: hardmath on Monday, January 21 2013 @ 12:16 PM EST

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

---
Recursion is the opprobrium of the mathists.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Symptom != Victim
Authored by: jbb on Monday, January 21 2013 @ 03:38 PM EST
Certainly the immoral behavior of Carmen Ortiz is a symptom of a corrupt system but this does not make her a victim by any stretch of the imagination. As the Car-Talk guys might say, if they're all broken then they all need to be fixed. Let's start with this one.

The obvious question is: how do we go about fixing the entire system? How to do start fixing a system the is creating a steady stream of actual victims? More to the point: what actions can be taken now that will best help us fix the entire system? Should we continue to ignore the rampant abuses, excesses, and moral failings or should we finally, at long last, start to take actions to prevent them?

AFAIK, there have been no serious repercussions for Ortiz (expect for possibly internal moral struggles) so it is ridiculous to peg her as a victim. Even if Oritz were to be fired as a result of Aaron's death (which is extremely unlikely), would that make her a victim? No! She abused the power we bestowed upon her. Taking away power that was abused does not turn someone into a victim. It does not matter if all the other persecutors were also abusing their power. The only other alternative is to let her continue to abuse her power which will result in the creation of more and more true, honest-to-goodness victims.

If Ortiz had shown even an ounce of repentance or compassion then she might have been able to become part of the solution instead of staying part of the problem but she seems to be convinced that she did nothing wrong. If she stays in power she will certainly continue to abuse her power and continue to destroy the lives of more innocent people.

---
Our job is to remind ourselves that there are more contexts
than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Here is the next Aaron Swartz
Authored by: symbolset on Tuesday, January 22 2013 @ 01:20 AM EST

A guy convicted and awaiting sentencing on two five-year federal felonies for editing an URL, a published API: A ndrew Auernheimer. When PJ said "would do it again" perhaps she should have said "they are doing it again and will not stop." They are certainly doing it again in many, many cases. They will not stop of their own volition.

This must end.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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