You can be a conspiracy theorist about it or man up and apply the Occam’s Razor principle, maybe.

ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, fired the employees who inappropriately accessed user data including the data of journalists. Seems like those employees were doing on their own in violation of company rules and ByteDance was not okay with it!

Lawmakers’ stated concerns about TikTok are not related to that issue specifically, and are mostly speculation about what the Chinese government might do with that data if they compel ByteDance to hand it over.

Congress also did not need to pass a law banning TikTok from being installed on Federal government devices (AKA Government Furnished Equipment or GFE). The White House or certain offices within Executive Branch agencies can prohibit certain software from being installed on GFE, without a bill being passed. If you know that, you know passing a bill to make that happen is a bunch of jingoistic chest-thumping nonsense.

Two wrongs don’t make a right and the whole idea of talking about “dominating” each other’s media landscape is bizarre is what I think.

I am actually very uneasy about all these pushes to ban specific Chinese companies from doing business in the U.S. (ZTE, Huwaei, and now TikTok). Our supply chains, trade, and overall economy are so deeply enmeshed and interdependent by now. You can’t really put that toothpaste back in the tube.

On the one hand, if one country bans some of the other’s businesses, that’s just a drop in the bucket really. It also creates incentives for workarounds, smuggling, counterfeits, etc. which are already problems in the supply chain.

On the other hand, if one country decides to really screw and/or cut off the other…that would be devastating for both. And historically trade wars are often followed by wars of the more conventional kind. In a war between us and China, nobody would really win and the whole world would lose.

While China does do a lot of espionage and influence stuff we should be concerned about (stealing intellectual property, state-sponsored hacking, doing business with more openly hostile nation-states with Russia and North Korea), it would be really monumentally stupid to treat them like they’re, I don’t know, actually Russia or Iran or something. We already foreclosed on that option a long time ago. Again, we’re too enmeshed and we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

What are you kidding? All of these parties you mentioned are invested in having a cash bail system.

Well, if you can’t afford it in the first place and are stuck in jail for a crime you didn’t commit or are forced to plead to a more serious crime than what you actually did, simply because you can’t afford the bail, that is really not good.

Yes they are those actual steps.

(You may know, I don’t know if other people reading know.)

Ah okay.

In a state with progressive bail reform laws (ooh, scary, I know!) like Illinois he would not have been eligible for bail at all after something like that! Bail is stupid.

The 8th Amendment is a dead letter ever since SCOTUS decided that a punishment has to be both cruel and unusual for it to be prohibited under the 8th - although I guess a billion-dollar fine would qualify.

> Well this just isn’t true at all. Its not even close to true. Most people who get arrested have a long history of arrests.

I would like to know what your basis for this statement is. Where is the data to back this up?

> How many times have you been arrested? Never?

If that’s the case I am, by definition, not in the category of “most people who have been arrested.”

> The guy who killed the cop in this article:

Hold up there. What relevance does this have to “most people who have been arrested?” How do you know where he falls on the bell curve of people who have been arrested at least once?

> Have you ever walked a block in a dangerous neighborhood?

Have you? Most of those people have families, friends, places where they live, and jobs - even if they also have records.

> Ugg. When I said the gun thing is something else entirely, I really didn’t want to sucked down that argument. And I fell for it. I wish I had just ignored your gun link.

> Don’t talk down to people on the internet with a claim to authority. This is reddit. People have lived different experiences, and reach different views on topics. Try to be respectful.

This is all rather in poor taste after you bought up a genocide of Jews to a living Jew as a political football to make an argument for why domestic abusers, who are statistically more likely than the general population to murder both people they know an people they don’t know, ought to be allowed to keep their guns.

> The system doesn’t have to worry about people that have a home, job families or social circles.

I don’t know what you are thinking in your head but most of the people who get arrested and charged with crimes are in fact normal people with lives, families, friends, and even jobs. People who break the law are not some anomalous breed of human.

Later on in your post you talk about chronic unemployable types who couch-surf and you’re maybe thinking about folks who don’t have stable housing or employment. They really don’t have the resources to flee or hide from the law.

Money might be a determining factor in whether you are a flight risk. After all it is easier to skip town and go into hiding if you’re loaded. But then being put on monitored house arrest might be more appropriate than letting you buy your way out of pretrial detention.

> There are a lot of people in society that have nothing to lose, or just don’t care, and will not show up to court.

There aren’t, really. For the vast majority of people, picking up and leaving their homes, jobs, families, communities, and/or social circles is just not feasible.

> There’s also people who posting $100 bail is a massive incentive enough to show to court, so they get their $100’ back.

Those kind of people don’t have the resources to skip town over an offense so minor they could pay their way out of pre-trial detention for $100. And it’s usually more than that, like a few hundred at least. For me that’s not a whole lot of money and even I don’t have the wherewithal to skip town and go on the lam.

> Outright saying we should eliminate all cash bail fails to address the systemic issue of incentivizing people to show up to court when they outright refuse to.

Most people will do this. Some people have difficulty doing this for transportation/childcare/job reasons which is a whole other issue and those people would have trouble paying bail anyway. Some people who have a lot of money may skip out - those kind of people should be treated as a flight risk and it may be appropriate to put them on monitored house arrest. Then there are folks who don’t show up because they are in a whole other jurisdiction, perhaps detained/incarcerated there for some other reason, or the court just has the wrong address for them, and the system is not too forgiving about this kind of thing. Ask a defense attorney or public defender.

The number of people who just say “fuck it” and don’t show up is pretty small.

The people doing Kristallnacht and a lot of the genocidal violence under the Nazi regime, not to mention turning their neighbors over to the Nazis, were civilian “maniacal mob” people. All the industrialized death camp stuff we generally associate with the Holocaust came after years of homegrown racial terror.

Before you invoke the Holocaust and the Third Reich (especially at a Jew with an education) read at least one book.

One of the reasons it takes so long to get things to trial and resolve charges is that there is no incentive for a speedy trial. We can keep people who can’t afford bail locked up and pressure them to plead out. Upwards of 95% of cases are resolved with a plea, and it’s not because the state has evidence but because it’s someone’s only way out of jail.

Without bail, and the pressure tactic of using pre-trial detention on people who can’t afford it, the whole incentive system changes: suddenly there are reasons for the police, prosecutors, etc. to want speedy trials.

> I have known far to many people who’s people were victims of the holocaust. And political landscapes can change for the worse quickly.

The Third Reich had very robust gun rights.

I believe people with DV convictions should not be allowed to have guns and I already made clear that I think cash bail should be eliminated entirely and pretrial detention should be based solely on whether someone is judged to be dangerous/a flight risk.

“Bail decisions should not be racially biased” is meaningless to me. Bail should end.

> Also he domestic violence argument doesn’t apply here, because after he got out he didn’t murder his girlfriend/children. He murdered random strangers.

This is not the argument you think it is.

People who commit crimes of domestic violence have a much greater propensity to commit acts of violence on strangers, including mass violence. If a man beats his wife and kids, they are not the only people at risk from him. Everyone around him is at risk too.

(Also it’s not okay if the wifebeater only harms his wife while he’s out on pre trial release, which statistically he is quite likely to do.)

If we got rid of bail and judges were required to either release people pre-trial because they aren’t a threat/flight risk or keep them detained because they are, we might actually devote resources to ensuring a speedy trial instead of pressuring people to plea out to crimes they didn’t commit or let them buy their way out of detention, which is how it works now.

No, bail is not fine, bail just means there are crimes that people with money can afford, and maybe (as in Wisconsin) you can buy your way out of pre-trial detention for a violent crime where the rate of recidivism is high (domestic violence).

It has absolutely nothing to do with “progressivism” or “woke mobs” or whatever. Illinois has progressive bail reform and you know what? That guy who plowed into the parade in Waukesha would never have gotten out on bail for DV in IL like he did in Wisconsin and then plowed into a parade, because DV makes you ineligible for bail or pre trial release under IL’s bail reform law.

People need to stop running their mouths about “progressivism” and “wokeness” and whatnot causing these things when it’s just the whole absurdity of “a judge can let you buy your way out of pretrial detention regardless of other considerations, if you can afford it.”

We should not have bail at all, then we just have crimes that people with money can afford.

Same as that guy who ran over people in the Wisconsin parade, out on bail and probably shouldn’t have been. (If he had been in IL which had bail reform he would not have been let out.)

This is why bail is absurd. Either you are a threat/flight risk and should be held pre-trial or you aren’t. Money should have nothing to do with it.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a different Waffle House they are all like this