TulsaPolice:We're going to be at Bishop Kelley High School today for an Autism Awareness event. Stop by between 10:00 and 1:00 to check out our MRAP and hang out with some of our officers.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
This militarization of police needs to stop, and the first step is to get rid of Federal funding for it.
Right now, if the local PD or SO wants an MRAP, all they have to do is go pick one up. They're literally free for the taking. They can do whatever they want with it on the condition that they return it to the DoD when they're done (and they can return it broken if they choose).
If they were forced to deal with the purchase cost of such a vehicle (which is OMFG expensive in good-working order) or the maintenance (which is ZOMG!!), and they still want to pay for it: Fine, I guess -- for now. Baby steps.
The taxpayers will be pissed, though, when they see six figures on the PD budget for MRAP maintenance.
But this current game is dumb and I don't like it one bit: We (the taxpayers) still pay for it, but the cost is buried in Federal "it doesn't really matter anyway" money.
(And if it's "it doesn't really matter anyway" Federal money, then: Maybe if those dollars are worth so little, we should be using them to help our people instead of buying tools to destroy them.)
If production of these military toys stops, many 10s, perhaps 100s of thousands of jobs are directly lost. By the multiplier effect (people who's job is indirectly supporting those workers), even more jobs would be lost.
That'd be a fine thing, as far as us commies are concerned, but it is not a thing capitalists can figure out how to deal with (since there is no capitalist solution).
Some people have the idea of converting all that labor expenditure to "green jobs", but the kind of production needed to mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change seems to me to be not nearly as labor intensive as building military toys, so unless we're talking about people getting full time pay for a day or two work per week (heaven forfend), what can we do?
I don't buy this argument. If there was no market for these awful things, the companies and their employees would pivot to making something that does have a market. Hopefully something more beneficial for society.
You can meet me on twitter if you want to explore the topic further. The tl/dr of the commie reply to that perfectly reasonable hypothesis is that, on the contrary, the total consumption of the global working class is produced and distributed by such a tiny fraction of the global working class that, really, most jobs are just superfluous bullshit. Wage labor just becomes less and less actually useful over time, which is a bit of problem in a capitalist society.
No. Amount of work needed to pretend to deal with climate change so you feel good about yourself and can pretend are dealing with problem and pretend most of your children and grandchildren will not die as a result of your idiot fucked-up pretending can be small.
Amount of work to solve problem is ... not small. Build enough nuclear, solar, wind power to replace all fossil fuel use. Develop really good batteries then build enough electric vehicles to replace all current electric vehicles. And many many more things. Do this in ten years.
Playing in the climate theatre does not employ many people, sure, of course.
This isn't an accident. The police recognize (even if they don't consciously know) that:
1. Autism is a personality type
2. It's a personality type they want to kill
And even if they deny this desire, it still subconsciously bleeds through by bringing a killdozer to an autism event even though for any other event it would be unthinkable :)
For any other event it would be unthinkable?
I'm pretty sure this kind of hardware rocks up to Black Lives Matter events on a regular basis.
You are correct. It was ignorant of me to add the adjective "only."
Calfire started using surplus Blackhawk choppers to transport crew to wildfire hot spots as well as drop water. Now that is how you beat swords into plowshares.
Oh, and they repainted them white.