Brickbat: A Little Off the Top

Officials in Warren, Michigan, have agreed to pay $75,000 to settle a claim by Charda Gregory. Gregory was arrested after she allegedly trashed a hotel room. Those charges were latter dropped. But while she was being held at the local jail, officers restrained Gregory and forcibly cut her hair.

Comments

[Bee Tagger]

New on MSNBC Weekends: What Not To Wear: Lockup edition/i

[Andrew S.]

Pre-libertarian me used to love shows like COPS and Lockdown. I'm disgusted by pre-libertarian me.

[Doctor Whom]

Welcome to the dark side. There are cookies on the buffet.

[mr simple]

Are the cookies Paleo?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Najor has since been fired...

The infraction? Practicing cosmetology without a license. Next time, stick to swinging a baton at prisoners. You already have all the permits required: a badge.

[Drave Robber]

forcibly cut her hair

Doing that to detained persons was common in ungood ol' Soviet Union. Not only hippies/punks got haircuts in the name of battling "harmful Western influence", everyone could have their hair cut.

[Almanian!]

In old Soviet Russia, hair cut YOU!

[Matrix]

How much of that settlement is she going to pay to the hotel for trashing their property?

[Suthenboy]

I had a buddy who owned a hotel. That shit happens all the time. I have no idea how the guy was able to make money.

You get three guesses as to how much she is going to pay.

[Matrix]

Write-offs, mostly, I'm sure.

But yeah, she'll pay jack and squat.

[Ted S.]

I presume there's actually evidence of her trashing the hotel room?

[Suthenboy]

I also had a buddy who was a cop. After he was in the job about 2 years he told me " I finally figured out that this job has nothing to do with the law. It is about making people do as they are told.".

Humiliating someone in custody by showing them you have ultimate power over them goes a long way towards that end.

[Agile Cyborg]

Making people do what they are told has everything to do with law, actually.

[Ted S.]

The police are just the sharp end of that stick.

[Suthenboy]

I have attempted to respond to you Agile Cyborg three times and the squirrels keep eating my comment.

What my inarticulate and uneducated friend meant is that there is a hell of a difference between having people obey the law and operate by the principles it is based on, and making people obey the arbitrary commands of cops and top men.

Rule of law vs. rule of man. Being a cop means enforcing the rule of man.

[Ted S.]

I have attempted to respond to you Agile Cyborg three times and the squirrels keep eating my comment.

I thought I had that happen to me too this morning. (And the first time I tried to post this comment, I got an error message.)

[Cdr Lytton]

It's a glitch in the matrix as they delete mary.

[Radioactive]

rule of man ...or...RULE OF DA MAN?

[croaker]

Is there a difference?

[Dweebston]

It's the difference between enforcing rules to mitigate conflict vs. exercising authority to engender conflict.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

It's time for the latest predictions of the end of capitalism

THE unresolved question is, how will this economy of the future function when millions of people can make and share goods and services nearly free? The answer lies in the civil society, which consists of nonprofit organizations that attend to the things in life we make and share as a community. In dollar terms, the world of nonprofits is a powerful force. Nonprofit revenues grew at a robust rate of 41 percent ? after adjusting for inflation ? from 2000 to 2010, more than doubling the growth of gross domestic product, which increased by 16.4 percent during the same period. In 2012, the nonprofit sector in the United States accounted for 5.5 percent of G.D.P.

That's right people, the non-profits will guide us through this future of learning how to trade amongst ourselves. We need them.

[Dweebston]

When is profit not profit? When you call it "revenue," apparently.

So a non-profit has all the trappings of for-profit institutions only without answering to shareholders. Instead it's beholden to a board of directors and the IRS. PROGRESS!

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Being non-profit means you have all the right intentions.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Unless you're part of Kochtopussy

[Ted S.]

Aren't schools/higher education and hospitals increasingly sucking up the private property tax base?

[wareagle]

not sure there is anything more offensive than "non-profits" who love to pretend the term means no money, though reality paints a different picture. Lots of non-profits out there with staff earning six figures and high five figures.

[Suthenboy]

I have the impression that non-profits funnel the money that would have been considered profit into the salaries of the directors.

Didn't some 'Save the Children' type charity get caught paying it's top staff multi-millions per year to hold charity balls not very long ago?

[Lord Humungus]

And we've got the biggest balls of them all!

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

All that's required of them is that they have no profit to distribute to the owners. Salaries are an easy way to burn the excess money off.

The wonderful side-effect of doing this is that it makes you instantly non-evil.

[Marshall Gill]

I believe it was "Feed The Children" Suthenboy.

My wife works for a non profit. It seems to me their most important function is raising money to pay the staff, to raise more money.

[The Last American Hero]

Go read the 990 instructions some time. Doesn't really happen.

[The Last American Hero]

Not sure where you got this idea. Most NFP's pay way below market for staff with comparable skills.

[Doctor Whom]

Certain things have little to no marginal cost; therefore, everything soon will. Now let me lick this delicious-looking window.

[Dweebston]

Automate textiles and you may as well dissolve the English craftsmen altogether. How will the English race survive with machine looms on the horizon?

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Pretty soon we'll be making our own cellphones in our basement.

[Jerryskids]

Jeremy Rifkin. That's about all you need to know, but what I would like to know is: how much of that non-profit revenue is government grants? Do you think there might be a connection between non-profit growth outpacing for-profit growth and the fact that government grants consist of taking money from for-profit organizations and giving it to non-profit organizations?

[Almanian!]

I drive through Warren on the way to work every day.

And this is why I hate the East Side.

/west side tribe

[Heroic Mulatto]

Shorter Almanian!

[Ted S.]

Or this.

[Heroic Mulatto]

I am disgusted by your Polonophobia.

[Ted S.]

Poles who save the day

(Well, eventually; not in this clip.)

[invisible furry hand]

He fears their hotness

[Lord Humungus]

right on, brother.

[Harvard]

Stay in W. Dearborn dude. Long live Orville Hubbard!

[Swiss Servator, alles klar?]

TRANSPARENCY!!!!

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/s.....TE=DEFAULT

[db]

"The requests are more complex than they were before," director Melanie Pustay told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Aww, poor baby!

[Tim]

Welcome to our totalitarian future.

[Wind Rider]

This story features something that is not seen often enough - the identities of all the perpetrators of this kind of crap. Just as in the story of the Amish kid that some Mengele wanna-be at a PA hospital wanted to treat like his personal lab project. Most of the criticism in the comments on that one focused on trashing the 'government', when the locals rightly told the jerk doctor to eff off. It wasn't till a shopped do-gooder judge jumped into the mindset disturbingly apologizing for state interdiction of parents over a disagreement with a 'credentialed expert'. WTF? is this a libertarian forum, or some place for closet libs to bukkake anyone who doesn't share their 'wisdom'?

[Pathogen]

How does your garden grow?

[Fist of Etiquette]

GREAT NOW IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT ME.

[Pathogen]

Poof!... Down the memory hole...

[Ted S.]

At least when you talk to yourself, you're guaranteed an intelligent conversation.

Well, maybe not you, Fisty, but most people. :-p

[Certified Public Asskicker]

They took WTF out too?

*Nervously looks around for the H&R police*

[Ted S.]

At least somebody at H&R is working.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Actually, that's pretty awesome if they tossed the WTF comment because of my complaint. It's like reason said, "You want to whine? Fine, we'll make you look like a dick who talks to himself."

[WTF]

Hey, what the hell did I do to get tossed?

[WTF]

Okay, I get it, with Mary gone it looked like I was talking about Fist.

[Radioactive]

apparently your mere existence is sufficent excuse...just saying

[WTF]

Hey, it's not like I'm Warty or anything.