Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I'm downtown about once a week. LA Live accelerated the revival process, I think.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I really hate it when people go defecating on walls and scaring away the commerce.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Depends on the local law. Absent one that specifically says you do, no.

I will take this as an admission that you are aware of no specific public health threat posed by this particular protest, but you are confident that one is possible thus it's fine with you to remove them.

You mean time place and manner, but no, and that's why I said the court would likely agree with you.

Then again, anyone whose thought about for a few seconds can see how easily time place and manner (especially when grounded in bogus "public health" concerns) can be and are used to suppress legitimate speech.

Agreed. What I'm struggling with is what those other interest are here.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Yeah, I've never lived, worked or visited in a "real" big city like LA. :rolleyes:

Again, I will take this as you not knowing of any particular danger posed by these protests, but a capable of imaging many possible dangers (do we know if any of them of Muslins?).

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Just out of curiosity, where did you read this? Do you think the answer to that question matters?

ETA: From what I've seen in Minneapolis and New York with my own eyes, and seen and read elsewhere about those places and DC, people seem draw to see what the hype is all about.

Maybe Californians are different, or maybe the protests there are more seedy or something, but I really don't buy that many people who would otherwise go downtown are avoiding it because they are afraid of the protesters.

That is I don't buy it until the Oakland police demonstrated how it because physically dangerous if the police decide to make it that way.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Man, someone defecated on a wall?! Just round up everyone in the vicinity?

Make sure Flinty's rounded up too. He's always throwing poo.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I believe you need one here, but am not 100% sure.

I will take this as an admission that you beat your wife.
Do you not understand that human waste coupled with lack of sanitation breeds disease?

Wait, so now I'm correct on the law? So this is not a free speech issue?
Do you not see how irrational you are being.

Our Mayor is a former labor organizer. This is not exactly Nazi Germany.

Really, you have to struggle with this one?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Why don't we just permit everyone to camp wherever they want, shit wherever they want, etc. There is no reason for rules to maintain any sense of order or civility.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Of course. But what's missing is the assertion that there was significant unaccounted for human waste. Are you saying these people are animals or something?

They are in front of City Hall, no? City Hall has public restrooms, no?

Again, what I've been asking you is whether there were any public heath issues, no whether some might be conceivable.

I never said you were incorrect on the law, nor does being correct on the law make it not a free speech issue.

You really don't get that we might be concerned about the speech effects of conduct that's within the confines of law? Or that we might think the confines of the law are wrong or imperfect? Or that even legal conduct might still be a bad idea for non-speech reasons?

Yes. All I've heard for why it was necessary to use (mild) force to break up this assembly are pretty bogus-sounding public health and small business concerns.

"We would like them off our lawn" is not a very meaningful public interest.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I'm not sure what it says about you that you think the protesters are incapable of the basic human function of not shitting everywhere.

Serious question: are you trying to sound like a fascist?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Kinda radical. At the least, I'd suggest time, place and manner restrictions on shitting.

But, you know, before assembling a thousand cops at a stadium, I might suggest a few porta-potties if your health concern is focused on where people shit. I'll bet you can get six porta-potties with regular service for a month for about the cost of paying ten cops for a morning.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I'm saying that some of them are animals. I'm sure there are some public restrooms, and yet they insist on not using them.

It is more than just public health, it is also public safety. The groups around the country have assembled for 2 months. It does not seem unreasonable to me to move them along.

What free speech issue? If anything, it is a free assembly issue, which is quite different in my mind.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Some of them are not, apparently, which is why they are shitting/urinating in the street.

Yes.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

That would be great, if they would actually use them.

This has nothing to do with the content of the protests. Getting large groups of people of any type together for any reason poses safety concerns in my book. Have you ever been to a Raider game (says the Raider fan)? Or a concert. Why do they have cops at those events?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

They are down to just one porta-potty (handicapped accessible, naturally) here.

The protesters have urged their numbers to use the public facilities in nearby buildings instead to keep costs down.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Really? Why?

ETA: To clarify, why is it any different? They are assembling for the purpose of speech. I'm also no con law expert, but I don't think the legal standards would be any different in this case.

And it might not be "unreasonable" to have them move along. But it might also not accomplish anything.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I'm curious about what you witnessed. You observed that the preponderance of the protesters had no interest in opposing war or sending some other political message but instead gathered for the purposes of causing mayhem? Really?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

You think homeless kids have health issues only under those circumstances? That can't be it.

I think it's that the "public" you have in mind when you say "public health" excludes homeless kids, prostesters, and other hooligans, drug-dealers, derelicts, etc.

Or maybe when you say "public health," you mean that such riff-raff are dirty, and should be relocated somewhere that respectable people don't have to see them.

Otherwise I can't make sense of what you mean by the words "public health."

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

So you don't want these people to be in one place, because of the health risks. Got it.

I see -- it has nothing to do with public health. You want these people to be "aggregated" in one place, rather than "having them spread out around town," but you want it to be somewhere that other people don't want to go.

Yes, it's not about anyone's health -- it's the effects on "local industry."

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

He seems to mean that some one, once or maybe more than once it's not clear, took a poo where they weren't supposed to.

This, of course, is the sort of thing that dirty hippies do, even if you provide sanitary facilities, because, well, because, um, they are dirty hippies and they like to poo where they shouldn't poo?? They want to get themselves and others sick, you see, and they want to do stuff that Fox News and the right wing spin machine can use to undermine them and stuff that gives the city a credible pretext for cracking down on them.

They are animals, after all. Who else would protest?

ETA: My office in DC was across the street from one of the many little "parks" created by the L'Enfant-planned diagonal avenues cutting through the city's grid. This particular one, like many downtown, served as a sleeping and congregating place for various homeless people, especially at night. One evening, after a long day of reviewing documents or whatever else a presumably hardworking junior Big Law associate does, I was walking past this particular park on my way home fairly late at night.

I did not notice the man squatting in the shrubberies. Well, at least not until I heard him evacuating his bowels only a few feet away from where I was on the sidewalk. It left me concerned about his diet.

I'm fairly sure he was part of the 99%.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I am having enormous difficulty trying to figure out whether you want to let people shit anywhere without restriction or whether you want to arrest everyone at a Raider's game.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

There was a picture a few weeks ago of a homeless-looking guy taking a dump on the side of a NYPD car. Some media sources -- perhaps one that club saw -- tied this to OWS. Others pointed out that the car was from a precinct nowhere near OWS, but the idea that lefty protesters are dirty and unclean is far too compelling to some people to get slowed down by the facts.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

To be fair, some of them are dirty and unclean.

But I don't think that translates to them choosing to poop in the bushes if there is an alternative available.

Also, if This American Life is to be believed (dirty PRI hippies!), the desire to relieve themselves in the outdoors does not make them meaningfully different than your average State College partier on a Friday night.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

A lot of other people are dirty and unclean. Old people in nursing homes, for example, have their fair share, but you don't see that ever mentioned to delegitimize their political views. If you don't catch more than a strong whiff of the culture wars of the 60's in the media emphasis in all of this, then your nose isn't working.

Indeed.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Because there is more of a public safety interest in regulating the assembly of large groups of people that just pure speech/expression. Large groups of people aggregated together for whatever purpose are inherently more of a risk.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Of course it wasn't a preponderance. But it was a significant enough of a number to be concerning from a safety standpoint. They were generally running through the streets breaking shit.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

You are being ridiculous.

I can't say this any clearer than I have. When large groups of people get together for a period of time, there is an escalated risk of bad shit happening.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

The caricature you have of me in your mind is very amusing.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

You're back to the fascist thing again?

I really don't follow why a large group -- just because of its size -- is inherently dangerous.

That is, a group of 800 nuns is no more dangerous than a group of 8 nuns, in my view.

The public safety issues change depending on what that group of people wants to do, and getting 800 to march safely across a busy street is different from getting 8 across, but it's not size alone that creates additional public safety issues.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

The reports and interviews I saw were from local mom/pop merchants in SF (on Market).

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

So they weren't "essentially an excuse for anarchist to cause trouble" then? They were a legitimate protest speckled with trouble makers?

Don't you think those two things should be dealt with differently?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Now I know why Sebby gets so frustrated with you. This isn't a law school exam or the LSAT and we aren't talking about nuns. I would posit that it is very rare for large groups of people to get together and there NOT to be an issue of some sort. We are animals.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

The cops let them run through the street breaking stuff? I have nothing against arresting someone for breaking something.

If, on the other hand, you arrest everyone on the street because several of them were breaking things, well, I have an issue. Should we arrest everyone at any investment bank where a bunch of people broke the law and did some insider trading? If your law firm or mine has someone who gets nailed for abuse of client funds, should you or I go to jail?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

You act as if the presence of anarchist and related groups at these types of events (e.g., G8 meetings) is just a coincidence.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

The cops didn't really have much of a choice. They were trying to deal with the situation, but those guys are FAST.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I would posit the presence of insider traders at investment banks is not a coincidence. It's where the money is.

What's your point?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Hmmm. I see. Cops can't catch up, so they arrest someone else first.

One of the good things Bratton did in Boston was put cops on bikes. It's worth a try.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

You are being ridiculous. You throw around pretexts like public health for suppressing political speech, when there is not a single documented case of disease down there that I've seen. If the First Amendment means anything, it's that the government cannot suppress people who are assembling peacefully to engage in political speech on trumped, bogus pretexts like notional "public health" and "public safety" concerns. As you point out, tens of thousands of people regularly get together to watch football games (e.g.) without problem, and with a police presence designed to apprehend real troublemakers but not end the gathering.

If there are public health problems, authorities can solve them by addressing the public health problems. Bring in Porta Potties. If there are public safety issues, authorities can solve them by arresting the people who are acting out.

It is just astonishing to me that someone who calls himself a conservative would be so willing to piss away the First Amendment, but I guess the cultural resentments you have for the sorts of people who are protesting down there are pretty strong.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I have great sympathy for those merchants in SF, but of course they have those problems with homeless people in SF *all* the time. This is like saying that we should ban cars because some people are bad drivers.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I don't really want to join this debate, I just want to congratulate you for using "shit" three different ways in three near-consecutive posts.

One wonders, how long can this discussion of shit go on before Atticus is compelled to return to this board?