But murdering a criminal is, get this, just as illegal as murdering an upstanding law abiding citizen is.
Also, how exactly does one tell the difference unless you investigate the murder in question?
How do we determine that the United Healthcare CEO was assassinated and not just the victim of some random violence without an investigation?
The weasel word discussion is interesting and would make a good best practices thread in GD, but it’s probably a red herring here.
Most of Der Trihs’s proclamations are poorly substantiated or unsubstantiated. But given trends in this country, I no longer consider them ludicrous. And most people have a blind spot for outright malice, which Der Trihs IDs. So I’ve dialed back my criticisms of Der Trihs.
Der tends to miss a lot, and I’m not just referring to occasional islands of decency within human organizations. For example, there’s a blue code of silence which protects the worst cops from the best ones. If you consider policing as a monolith, you will miss that and your analysis will appear cartoonish because it is. (I opine that in this instance Der’s analysis isn’t maximally cartoonish, because he provides a list of bad qualities -all of which exist to varying degrees- rather than focusing on one.)
Working through an example:
The specifics of this allegation were falsified upthread. It appears cartoonish. But in fact, right wing circles routinely and explicitly distinguish between people who do and do not matter: they call the latter “NPCs”. And even a casual viewing of TV news demonstrates that some victims simply attract more public attention and resources, aside from public policy justifications which, yes, could justify that in many instances (eg an organized criminal act deserves more opposition than unorganized criminal acts, because the former threatens law, order, and the state to a greater degree).
Der operates on the level of rhetoric, not substantiated analysis. I’m not laughing at it anymore.
ETA below: Nah, I thought the proposal to, “Gift a box of qualifiers” was funny and on point. Also IMHO this thread has a broader width than most ones, at least in between big news developments.
Yeah, my fault for starting this, sorry. This is why I don’t usually nitpick those sweeping generalizations, because the conversation tends to go off on that tangent fairly rapidly.
FTR, I meant ATMB, and I was mostly limiting my own discussion.
well said. This cite (Research finds that one in five US police have anti-Black bias) talks about a study of police anti-black bias. To summarize, it is not flattering to police. But it also states that 1/5 of police have this bias. A significant minority, and something that absolutely needs addressing, but nowhere near “all” or nearly all of them.
Apparently what really kills your stock price is not the CEO of one of your sub-companies getting murdered, or lots of bad press about your normal business practices, but being accused of Medicare fraud. The stock is down nearly 19% in the first ninety minutes of trading this morning.
Almost like we live in a society.
or, that actions have consequences
I agree, this is a much better example of actions having consequences than Luigi’s little stunt.
As one of the consequences of Medicare fraud is losing out on that sweet sweet Medicare $$$$, this makes tons of sense.
Yeah, 20% is too much, but note that the article said it was more than the general public, but the actual study shows the difference is quite small-
and that the test they used is somewhat controversial-
But yeah, I can well believe that some modest % of police- are more biased than the general public- note that test showed that black police are also somewhat more biased,
However, this excellent cite should put silence to a couple of our members who claim that all or most cops are racists. 20% vs (if my figures are correct) 18% of the general public is believable,
No? Since when do CEOs suffer because their company collapses? It’s the people lower on the totem pole who pay the price while they get handed a new CEO position elsewhere.
Excuse me for being a little tired of this discussion but do you know anyone who thinks a child sexual assault and murder victim isn’t more worthy of protection than a violent gang member, subjective as that opinion may be?
Incarceration is punishment which is deterrence for all future criminals that wish to harm children. It is also deterrence for gangbangers who wish to harm other gangbangers, but no one really cares about that except here in this SDMB bubble. Certainly not enough to pour hours of police overtime to create a massive dragnet over a drug deal gone bad.
How did you determine that it was a drug deal gone bad without investigating the crime?
It’s a hypothetical and “drug deal gone bad” in this case is a premise from which an argument follows. Don’t attack the premise, attack the argument.
If you’re curious how it actually works outside of a hypothetical is that law enforcement makes an educated guess based on available circumstantial evidence. I’m not precluding basic preliminary investigation that must be done for every murder either like identifying the victim, looking at criminal records and talking to witnesses.
I started this detour to argue that priorities are necessary and useful (when applied wisely) given the constraints of scarce resources and that while crime is pretty much a fact of life, political assassinations cannot be tolerated in a civilized lawful society. Neither should random sadistic violence toward strangers and vulnerable people.
Is Sally still a sphere?
Aaaannd the CEO’s death has apparently exposed the fact that he was running the business into the ground.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/15/business/unitedhealth-stock-ceo-investigation
Oh, good, because nobody has EVER made a mistake based on circumstantial evidence.
The problematic actions aren’t just the CEO’s, they’re the company’s; and the company failing due to their bad policies actually forces them to change those policies or go out of business, unlike the murder of their CEO.