An open post to my friend Andrew D

[Gob]

Mate, get help. Your behaviour since you've returned to the board (at my prompting I'll happily admit,) has been shocking. It's not the behaviour of the intelligent, characterful, and worldly man of taste I have known for some time now.

I can only presume that things in your life are not good, and that you are suffering. In your pain you are lashing out left right and centre, at the just and the unjust.

I know you are a man with a strong sense of justice, the way things here are going at the moment, should this issue resolve, I think you will find it hard to face up to your behaviour here.

Please, before this goes to the point where you actually damage your reputation, consider those around you, and take some time to reflect.

The Andrew D I know would have considered this;

How many innocent people are rotting in prison right now because they drew the short straw and ended up with bigskygal defending them?

posting Scoots, RL name, and some of the child like taunting of Jim, beneath contempt, I hope that guy will come back.

Offered as a friend,

Taff

[Joe Guy]

Andrew D has always had an edge to him.

That's what makes him an interesting character.

But he has always been prone to disparaging the character of people who disagree with him.

Although lately he seems to be more hateful of people who disagree with him.

I've seen that trait displayed quite a few times by various posters throughout the years.

It's a situation that often arises when people who are so locked into their own opinions seem to lose the ability to even attempt to understand another person's explanation of an opposing opinion

It's just another day in BBS-Land.

[Gob]

Fair enough Joe, and maybe my concerns, and my snappiness here of late have been exaggerated due to the fact I'm still in pain. My shoulder has not relocated, and my knee and hip make it impossible to walk very far at all, (200 meters max).

However, there are many here I care about as mates, and mateship in Aus and Brit terms is not something we take lightly.

We saw dramatically how a few fucked up shitheads at the CSB were able to drive wedges between good folk.

WE saw how some, fuck ups exploited this to get their own jollies.

I do not believe Andrew is of that ilk, I am genuinely concerned for him, in the same way I would be if you, Jim, Scoot, BSG, Sue, Guin, Sean, SMF, Aardy, Keld, Long Run, econoline, Crackpot, Dales, Miles, @-W, Timster, O-n-W, NGF, Beer Sponge, etc etc, or even some of the less regular members had an abrupt change of behaviour over a very short period of time. (Apologies to those whose name I may have missed.)

I may be overly concerned, or unnecessarily perturbed, as in my line of work, radical behaviour change is not something which is to be ignored.

I would not be concerned if rubato, Lo, Quaddy had an abrupt change of behaviour over a short period of time, as this could only mean they started acting like normal human beings and not total fuck ups. .

[Andrew D]

I appreciate your concern, Gob. That sounds off-handed; it may even sound sarcastic. I do not mean it in either of those ways. I just plain mean it.

I am getting help. I have been getting help for a long time. I have made no secret of the fact that I take enough medications to stock a small pharmacy. And they work. Believe it or not, they work.

Lately, I have been nasty. I have been vituperative and scornful.

I think that the people whom I have subjected to that treatment deserved it. Look at what they have said about me.

But I don't want to get into the personal clashes. I think what I think; they "think" what they "think," and that's that.

What you are reading now is me calm. What you have been reading lately is me not so calm. What you have never read here is me enraged. No matter what you have read, no matter how nasty I have ever been here -- and I emphasize here -- I have never been enraged here. Even when I have described myself as enraged, that has been a rhetorical device.

But how could anyone -- I mean anyone in the US, and I mean anyone who is paying attention -- not be enraged? (As a bumper sticker says, "If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.")

There are people on this board who will vote for the party that wants to bankrupt our national government. That is their policy: "Starve the beast." (Use the search function for that phrase, and you'll see a bit of what I mean.)

They say that our national government should not be doing a great deal of what it is doing. They say that those things are the responsibility of the States. Okay, they have a particular view of the respective functions of State and national governments.

But they are also busily trying to bankrupt the State governments. They say that various things are the responsibility of the States, but they don't want the States doing those things either. They don't want governments doing those things at all.

They just flat-out do not want us to have a public education system. The only thing they want the government to pay for is vouchers -- a way of effectively privatizing the public education system.

If that were happening in Australia, wouldn't you be angry? Wouldn't you be inclined to heap derision and scorn on the people advocating it?

We've had large sections of freeways fall down. Not fall down because of earthquakes or floods (although we've certainly had that too) but just flat-ass fall down, because the governments that built them were not maintaining them. Because those governments had no money to maintain them. Because many people -- including some people on this board -- do not want those governments to have the money to maintain them.

People died because of that.

Perfectly ordinary people. People like you and me and most of the others here. People who were just on their way to work, just trying to support their families.

They died.

Because the governments did not properly maintain the freeways. Because the governments did not have the money. Because somebody -- because a whole lot of people -- wanted to "starve the beast". And some of those people are right here on this board.

Why did a big chunk of New Orleans end up under water? Because the government that should have been taking care of the levees did not. Why not? Because it did not have the money. Why did it not have the money? Because a whole bunch of people have been bankrupting that government.

Did they want all those people in New Orleans to die? Even I don't go that far; that's Steve territory.

But was it obvious that if the levees failed, a whole bunch of people would die? And was it obvious that if the government did not maintain the government's own levees -- they are owned by the government -- that when there was a hurricane, those levees were likely to fail? And was it obvious that if we failed to provide the money necessary to maintain those levees, they would not be maintained?

Maybe they can explain it to us.

Look at our -- the US's -- criminal "justice" system. Can anyone take seriously the claim that prosecutorial misconduct -- whether it takes the form of subornation of perjury or suppression of exculpatory evidence or coercing witnesses or whatever -- is not rampant?

Really. Can anyone who looks at the system take that claim seriously?

Of course there are honest prosecutors. And I said so. And of course there are crimes that need prosecuting. Who has ever disputed that?

But the notion that innocent people are not wrongly convicted? Hundreds of them have been proved to have been wrongly convicted. And many of those convictions have been proved to have resulted from prosecutorial misconduct.

So does anyone seriously deny that there are many more such cases that simply have not (yet) been proved?

Would anyone take such a claim seriously in any other context? Would anyone take seriously the claim that because only X number of people have been proved to be murderers, there are only X number of murderers? Rapists? Arsonists? Robbers?

So why should our approach be any different in the context of corrupt prosecutors?

Maybe those claiming that the corrupt prosecutors are only a few bad apples can explain that to us.

Look at the fraction of the prison population that is black men. And then look at the fraction of the national population that is black men.

Can anyone take seriously the claim that the system is not stacked against black men?

Maybe those claiming that the system is fair can explain to us how that is not racist. I cannot.

And those are just a tiny few of the things that I see around me every day.

So, yeah, I am angry. Wouldn't you be?

And, yeah, sometimes that anger manifests itself in nastiness. Is anyone here above that?

ETA a couple of words that I accidentally left out.

[Gob]

Nobody is above it Andrew, least of all me. Thank you for your explanation.

My only caveat would be, as I tried to explain so many times with Steve, (not that there is any equivalence between you and him,) is that nothing we say here will actually change anything. We're too small a community to have any effect on the wider world.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Just a few thoughts AndrewD. First NY's infrastructure is falling apart and it's not for lack of funding, it's due to misuse of funding. Of every dollar collected by the MTA for tolls on our bridges, less than .010 goes towards the mainenance of the bringes. The rest go into the MTA money pit which is also subsidised by a payroll tax of 0.34 per $100 of payroll paid by every business on Long Island, Westchester and NY City.

Roads were supposed to be maintained by a special "road repair" tax (as it was told to us citizens) on gasoline but that gets sucked into the NY state general fund, never to be used on road repair.

The NY state lottery was supposed to be used 100% for education/schools to provide relief for our outragious property taxes. That too goes into the general fund and state school aid is constantly being cut while lottery intake keeps going up.

The NY state beast is FAT, and while it shouldn't starve, it could use a diet.

[BoSoxGal]

What did I say about you to justify your repeated attacks on my professional competence, ethics and personal character with regard to adherence to ideals?

Pray tell.

[@meric@nwom@n]

Yes yes, that medicine is really working well.

I guess 3000 square feet plus might make it bearable to live with.

[Andrew D]

Say whatever you want about me.

Do whatever you want to me.

Compile every posting I have ever made. Send them to the State Bar. If that's what you want to do, do it.

But my wife?

You'd be well-advised not to go there.

[@meric@nwom@n]

Or what?

You'll make threats?

I quiver and quake.

[BoSoxGal]

What did I say about you to justify your repeated attacks on my professional competence, ethics and personal character with regard to adherence to ideals?

Pray tell.

Would you care to respond? Or are you without one that fits into the elaborate excuse for your behavior that you posted above in response to Gob?

By the way, if you hadn't noticed, I have regularly posted stories of wrongful conviction both here & at CSB.

I disagreed with you with regard to the scope of the problem re: prosecutorial misconduct. You proceeded to attack me repeatedly in the lowest, most vile ways - that truth, which anyone on the board can read for themselves, contradicts entirely the statements you just made above.

[Andrew D]

Or what?

You'll make threats?

I quiver and quake.

You should.