I’m sure that we can all come up with a list of people it would be stupid to hire as cops which is probably why police departments try to avoid hiring them.
I am no expert but my cousin is a police officer in Southern California. He had to have a four-year degree (criminology in his case) and a demonstrated long-term interest in law enforcement to even be considered for the police academy. The physical standards to qualify were quite rigorous (he was a high school football player and when he moved out here he spent a lot of time running and working out to pass those tests). Background checks were very tight (I was one of the people who got to have lengthy conversations with a detective who was doing the work on my cousin) and they went over my knowledge of him going back to when we first met, when he was 12. He also had to pass a polygraph test and they even checked on his friends going back to high school.
All that was just leading up to getting into the academy. The academy training was quite tough too - a leisurely half mile walk on a track was not on the syllabus.
Do you have something to back up your assertion that what you mentioned is representative of the screening and/or training process for cops?
I have to respond to this. Just because there are senators and representatives within the borders, doesn’t mean that DC has a voice in Congress. In fact, many of the members of committees relevant to DC come from suburban Virginia and Maryland, the very communities that are DC might be in competition with or have disputes with. As an example, in the past DC police have enforced traffic laws that negatively affect commuters and Congress intervened and obstructed the work of the police. I think many communities would be upset if Congress told local cops what traffic laws it can and cannot enforce.
DC really has no representation. Remember that Congress can meddle with local laws and that all laws passed by the City Council are subject to approval by the Congress.
Lets say that DC wants to impose a commuter tax on out of state people who come in from out of the city like many other jurisdictions have done. Tough luck says Congress because they aren’t going to piss off the congressional reps from Northern VA and Southern MD.
Additionally, this assumes that all of those Senators and Representatives even live in DC. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a chunk of them don’t live in the suburbs which are not in the District.
Additionally, so what. I didn’t get to vote for any of them, they don’t represent my positions, and if I don’t like what they vote for, can I vote them out?
In the quoted portion of my post (that you replied to), I suggested that there be a Federal Bank that I can can interact with directly. You know get loans, have a checking account, deposit money, apply for a credit card; nothing on the Federal Reserve website says anything about this. There are no forms to fill out to open an account; in fact, from the website its main purpose seems to regulate and support other banks. Again, let me make this clear as possible and imagine the words after the colon are shimmering with all of the colors of the rainbow: I’d like to clear the middle-man (banks) and open an account directly with the Fed.
If my views come from a position of ignorance, then please fight it, and post where I can transfer my funds from my current bank, JPMorgan Chase, to a permanent Federal Bank. Otherwise, shut the fuck up with the insults.
Just out of curiosity, why do you think that this federal bank would be better for you? Secondly, if this bank is cool with people missing a payment here and there, do you think that it will be a. profitable or b. not cause your taxes to go up?
This thread reminds me of something I need to get off my chest: kittens less than a month old are homely. Not as homely as many infant birds, but they’re not at all cute when their ears are still little lumps on their heads and their eyes are sealed shut.
That’s about rude as hell. The guy put some measure of thought into this thread, no matter how beneath you you judge it. If you think it’s stupid you could intelligently say why, or just move along. I don’t understand the need to ridicule people so much on this board. Take it to /b/. Jerk.
While Israel’s human rights record is not perfect, it is certainly much better than that of China and Saudi Arabia … and the United States. It’s impossible to take seriously a claim to be outraged at Israel, if one isn’t also outraged at those countries. The main difference, needless to say, is that Saudi Arabia exports oil to us and China exports all kinds of cheap crap to us, while Israel exports nothing. We should simply cut off all trade with China and Saudi Arabia until they stop all torture, execution, and censorship and install a democratic government.
Major rail systems are a waste of time and money, for the simple reason that train tracks don’t move while people do. We have no idea how the population of the U. S. will grow and shift during the next thirty years, so we have no idea where to build train tracks. If we built them around major cities and then people left those major cities over the next thirty years, we’d be left with a lot of useless tracks.
First of all watch your fucking tone.
You can’t open an account with the Fed for the simple reason that the Federal government is not and should not be in the commercial banking business. Do you really want your bank to have all the customer service of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the flexibility and understanding of the Internal Revenue Service?
With the current banking system, you have the flexibility to choose from hundreds of competing banks until you find one that meets your needs, knowing the whole time they are backed by the Federal Reserve and the FDIC.
All those scenarios you think your Federal Bank will help you with? You made them up. You have no idea what services such a bank would provide because it doesn’t exist. For all we know, they might consider missing a loan payment as agregious as failing to file your taxes.
It boils down to stability I don’t think a Federal bank would be for-profit but there should certainly be a clause that stipulates that a putative Federal bank can take measures so that it breaks even each quarter. In that sense, what I find attractive about a Federal Bank is that the government can enact policy to make banking easier in times of economic crisis; for example, President Obama signed legislation which allowed Fannie Mac and Freddie Mae to offer mortgage refinancing at fire-sale interest rates. This leads to an exciting possibility that a Federal Bank could offer higher saving rates, treasury-backed securities such as saving bonds and notes, or a hybrid thereof, whose payout can be delicately fine-tuned to the state of the economy. A Federal Bank could more reactionary to the economy, than for-profit private banks, and could up interest rates on checking and savings accounts while temporarily relaxing or abolishing interest rates on credit cards and loans.
I’m not a history buff so feel free to correct me, but hasn’t the U.S government remained solvent since the Civil War? How many other private institutions have matched or exceeded the permanancy of the federal government? I concur with George W. Bush’s public remarks regarding housing crisis and proposed TARP legislation, “The government is the one institution with the patience and resources to buy these assets at their current low prices and hold them until markets return to normal.” He is correct. The government will outlast all of us and it does has the patience to wait for the market to get better just like it has the patience to wait for a struggling college student to pay her loans in ten years, while lenders like Chase offer less flexibility than the government and balk at comparable loan deferments.
You’re right. However, if a Federal Bank did not offer savings account, checking account, credit cards, and loans, I would not classify it as a “bank” in the first place.
China or Saudi Arabia doesn’t bother me, they’re just tin-pot oligarchies and dictatorships. Israel espouses the belief that its a democracy whose beliefs are on par with Western democracies; therefore it should be compared alongside those governments. Comparing Israel’s human rights record to Syria or the Lebanon is like Helen Thomas putting a monkey on her shoulder. God bless her soul.
Israel’s human rights record may be “better” than the U.S. if we include 19th and 20th century, but I’d be curious to see how it exceeds the U.S in human rights in the last thirty or sixty years. Really.
I think you cousin may have been an overachiever. The requirements require the applicant to be 20 years old and have passed the GED. I will admit that the list of credit hours using firearms is exhaustive but I don’t see any substantive coursework. When I see published, peer-reviewed articles like this, this, and especially this, I think we need to think hard on how we train law enforcement.
I really don’t think he is an over-achiever; with his qualifications there were still a number of PDs that wouldn’t accept him because they had more applicants with more impressive credentials. Keep in mind that minimums don’t mean you’re getting admitted - the president has to be at least 35 and a natural-born citizen of the US but if I think that means I can be president I’m in for a big disappointment.
Regarding the articles you linked to - the third one wouldn’t open for me but the first two are:
(Reading the full article requires a subscription but I don’t see what it has to do with the qualifications to be admitted to a police academy)
Which again, I fail to see what it has to do with qualifications for entering the police academy. AFAICT these are more about how people react to other people who they perceive as being racially different from themselves.
Well, for one, we don’t have a Guantanamo Bay - we give terrorists a fair trial, provide legal counsel, issue defined sentances and allow their families to visit them in prison.
And we allow gays to serve openly in the military.
And our prime ministers don’t have to declare that they believe in God.
I had rather address West Point as an example of educational excellence – and that it is. But even though the academy is federally funded and has a long tradition of standards that meet up to a national military code, the decisions about what actually transpires on a day to day basis takes place locally – at West Point itself. What happens to students who are dishonest? What happens to students who lack self-discipline or self-motivation?
The public schools don’t have that kind of discrimination. West Point if for adults. Public schools are for non-adults. We can’t bust them and sent them home for breaking an honor code. We send them to in-school suspension. We can’t at all let older students haze the freshmen as part of their introduction to discipline.
In general, the farther that classroom control is taken away from the classroom teacher, the less control there actually is. Yet, I’ve seen what it’s like to have a really bad teacher in control.
I’m a Southerner myself and find your views worth thinking about. I agree with many of them.
But as **Honesty *said, we’re held to much higher standards than that. Saying that we allow all our citizens to vote and be elected is damning us with faint praise.
okay well its approaching blasphemous, but am not really sure how deeply I believe in it as it tends only to sail across across my mind when its a sea of scandalous news reports and good grape Valpolicella
All catholic priests upon ordination should be relieved of their testicles. Chemically castrating them could also be an option.
They have this vow of celibacy so this measure should help them in their endeavours and add to the security of the parishoners with whom they come into contact.
