

If Everyone Knew - rooshdi
http://www.ifeveryoneknew.com/

======
patio11
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

_Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon._

This is the paradigmatic example of Not HN Material, guys. Please don't submit
stuff like it or upvote stuff like it, or else we're going to have to wade
through pages and pages of all-heat-no-light politics to get to the things
which (on a good day) make for valuable discussion here.

~~~
rooshdi
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

_On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

 _Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to
its page and clicking on the "flag" link._

~~~
vampirechicken
and yet, we have no way to positively identify anybody here as an Hacker, we
must put up with secret infiltrations by non-hackers who upvote non-hackish
stories.

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prostoalex
The prison industry is profit-aspiring, but not profit-making thanks to the
powerful prison employee unions.

In California [http://www.allamericanblogger.com/15848/how-prison-unions-
he...](http://www.allamericanblogger.com/15848/how-prison-unions-helped-
create-overcrowding-problem-in-california/) "the California Correctional Peace
Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in
California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support “three
strikes” and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions.
It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law. And the
result for the union has been dramatic. Since the laws went into effect and
the inmate population boomed, the union grew from 2,600 officers to 45,000
officers. Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year;
today, one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year."

The state also seems to get all of the problems of growing prison population
(high incarceration rates) but none of the supposed benefits (economies of
scale): [http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/06/the-role-of-
the-p...](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/06/the-role-of-the-prison-
guards-union-in-californias-troubled-prison-system/) "California spends
approximately $9 billion a year on its correctional system, and hosts one in
seven of the nation’s prisoners. It has the largest prison population of any
state. The number of correctional facilities, the amount of compensation for
their unionized staffs, and the total cost of incarcerating a prisoner in the
state—$44,563 a year—have exploded over the past 30 years."

~~~
sspiff
"Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year; today,
one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year."

This means effectively nothing. First of all, 1980 dollars are not 2013
dollars. Second, you're comparing different measures: average wage versus top
10% wage. These are just vote-grabbing but otherwise meaningless statements.

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JohnsonB
#8 is an opinion/partisan analysis and has no place with the rest of the list.
This list is valuable because it otherwise lists encyclopedic facts which are
eye-opening in nature; putting in op/eds tarnishes the credibility of the
rest, and should go.

~~~
dan-k
It's not an opinion, and it's only a partisan analysis in the US, and that's
the point. The question isn't whether Israel is in the right, as that's a
ridiculous question to begin with in a 50-year conflict - both sides have done
many reprehensible things to each other, and are going to have to deal with
that before there will be peace. But it's completely objective that the
standards by which the UN judges other nations would put Israel firmly in the
category of rogue state. It's objective that there are over 200 UN resolutions
regarding Israel, and that over 80% of the UN recognizes the West Bank as
occupied territory, and that Israel's settlements are illegal under that
definition, etc. What should be done about Israel in light of that is a
separate question that the US has played a huge role in shaping the discussion
about, but from a factual standpoint it's not really possible to dispute that
Israel does not cooperate with the rest of the world the way non-rogue states
are generally expected to.

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pacifika
The problem I have with this site is that nowhere I can find who is behind it.
There is no about link, and the contact information is not pointing to any
person.

As a possible politically motivated site, it is essential to know the
perspective that it is written with.

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dougk16
Just missing the various insurance rackets that basically force you to gamble
with a house that always wins, or else you're breaking the law...other than
that, nice list!

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Tichy
"The FBI admits to infiltrating & disrupting peaceful political groups in the
United States. The Womens’ and Civil Rights movements were among those
targeted, with their members being beaten, imprisoned, and assassinated."

Really? Examples?

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justjimmy
Damn, only 10? Must…read…more…

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tnuc
#11 Santa Claus isn't real. Your parents leave the presents under the tree.

~~~
nekojima
Is that why when I got my own place, I never had any xmas presents under the
tree? :-(

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apgwoz
I wonder how long before the domain gets seized by ICE, or the owner is
arrested and extradited to the US (assuming a non-US owner). I mean, the
thought of exposing the truth! The _horror_!

~~~
redegg
Not likely.

------
cmccabe
First of all, I agree with patio11 here... this doesn't belong on HN because
it's just a bunch of political stuff. Secondly, there's a lot of misleading
stuff here-- either half-truths or things taken completely out of context.

Start with "the prison system in the United States is a profit-making
industry." Well, yeah-- parts of it are. Except the parts that aren't. There
are both public and private prisons in the U.S. So already we start with a
half-truth.

Six corporations control virtual all American media"... except the parts they
don't control, like the web site you're reading right now, or local cable
access programs, and so on and so forth. Yeah, it sucks that there has been so
much consolidation in TV and print. But I think the News Corporation scandal
shows that the media are far from invincible.

Yeah, the FBI and CIA did a lot of questionable stuff, especially in the
1950s. But guess what? There really were a lot of Soviet spies in the country
at that time. Communism had a great appeal, especially since very little of
the truth about what was really happening in those countries was known in the
west. Even the Great Famine in China was pretty much unknown in the United
States. In an age before the internet, when all the Chinese newspapers were
censored, how would they know? How would they know about the bloody purges in
Russia either?

He mentions MKUltra. I'm surprised he didn't mention Tuskagee syphillis
experiment. Yep, these things happened. But they're hardly unknown, at least
to people who went to high school. A blog post titled "if everyone knew..."
discusses things that... everyone knows. Ooh, ooh. How about Watergate?
That'll embrass the Americans. Shouldn't we bring that one up too? After all,
_nobody_ knows about that one.

I'll skip the anti-Israeli stuff, since it's basically just yet another fact-
free polemic. What have we turned up that would be shocking "if everyone
knew..."? The fact that some guy on the Internet doesn't like Israeli. Wow,
man. That's like... shocking. Mind: blown.

The rest of it is the same kind of tripe. Mean-spirited anti-Americanism
masquerading as scholarly discourse. I love the "footnotes." Putting your "a
href=" in a giant block makes you more than just a blogger-- you're a Scholar,
Imparting Deep Knowledge. Even if most of it is wikipedia links and links to
newspaper editorials.

It's interesting that he takes aim at the Fed too. Usually that's the province
of far-right nutters. But what we have ourselves here is an equal-opportunity
kook. Joy.

