North Carolina Republicans create "secret police force"

HLMenckenFan@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 372 points –
North Carolina Republicans create "secret police force"
popular.info
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Golly, that doesn't sound very small government or individual freedom of them.

You misunderstand, the Federal government should be small so it doesn't get in the way of the state government doing whatever the hell it wants. Individual rights are a canard to get religious conservatives and 2A enthusiasts on board with dismantling federal protections so that state governments can oppress The Right People^TM^. Never mind that religious conservatives and 2A enthusiasts are not oppressed and their revenge fantasies are founded on an astro-turfed victim complex.

I did Nazi that coming

This pun is as tired as your humor.

Says a lot that you take offense to the joke, but not the actual literal nazism.

Obviously. The pun was his attempt at humor and if one is tired, the other follows.

You managed to not only say nothing useful in a derogatory manner, but to do it in a stupid way.

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Popular dot info?

It's a SubStack site which hosts a Judd Legum project called Popular Information.

He was formerly the editor-in-chief at ThinkProgress.

EDIT: Just to be clear, not being snarky, this is a super valid question to ask regarding the source.

I had the same thought, so I put the article’s URL into Ground News: 6 sources talking about this story, with popular.info being labeled as “high factuality”.

Pleasantly surprised, I guess.

this feels like something an election should decide

This feels like something nobody should be interested in suggesting in the first place.

How very ss of the repugnicunts

Gerrymandered state legislatures make a huge difference folks.

Checked the article, it's talking about an oversight committee, not a secret police force

You quote the first line in the article. Go read the rest.

It's fucking worse than a police force.

In the event that Gov Ops searches a person’s home, these rules mean that the person 1) must keep the entry a secret, 2) cannot seek outside help (unless necessary for fulfilling the request, the law says), and 3) could face criminal charges if Gov Ops deems them uncooperative.

Well that sure sounds like an unreasonable search

x1,000,000,000. WTF is happening to our country?

Ruling class tightening its grip.

They were successful in getting the working class to vote against their own interests since the late 60s.

MKUltra was a success. They found out they couldn't control people as easily with drugs, so they resorted to other means. i.e. pop culture and influencers.

There are 3 Americans.

  • One who is "patriot" republican

  • One who is stoned on weed.

  • One who doesn't give a shit about what the other two does.

Only one of them votes.

An important note from the article is that this committee has oversight over institutions who do business with the government, not just government employees. Received grant money, welp now Gov ops can take you down. Won't be surprised to see it expand beyond institutions and start encompassing individuals, allowing them to take out receivers of social benefits

What threshold has to be met before they can search a home?

I only know what's in the article. It's way too crazy to explain in a few sentences.

And how this only applies to people working for the state government.

So those people don't deserve full protections of the constitution, privacy laws, lawyers if their stuff gets searched, and should be arrested if they don't comply...?

For their place of business? No, that's pretty clearly something they can set up within the terms of working for the state government or contracting for them.

And how the "special oversight committee " only works for roughly half of the state government but can still cause people to be fired for not obliging to the Republican will?

I hate to say it, man, but yeah, if you piss off the state government, and you work for them, they're gonna fire you

From the article:

But unlike other types of government watchdog groups, GovOps is partisan. Republicans dominate the body, and the group’s politics greatly influence the types of investigations it carries out. For example, Gov Ops launched an inquiry into diversity training programs at the University of North Carolina earlier this year.

Do you not understand how dangerous it is to democracy to have a partisan police force? If not then I uge you to read about the start of WW2.

Every democracy has partisan oversight groups. I'll get mad at their abuse, not their existence.

If you think republicans aren't going to abuse a partisan police force then your concerns are void and you're sleepwalking through life.

I think it's likely they will, and that every police force is partisan, and that they've been abusing that for decades.

Do you just enjoy playing devil's advocate?

Nobody of sound mind could look at this and just think "Yep, this makes sense. One party should have a secret partisan police who can victimise other political parties and force them to stay silent about it, and comply without question, otherwise be criminally charged. This definitely won't have any wider negative implications for society."

Every democracy has oversight groups, or an ombudsman. It's not partisan

Imagine a similar situation in a European country having several parties and one party wanting the state budget to fund their investigation of the government. That shit would never see the light of day because there'd always be a majority against it. This only exists in USA because of the two party politics.

Yeah it's an oversight committee in the same way that the "Committee of Public Safety" was concerned with public well-being.

Calling a secret police force something other than a police force is literally the most basic aspect of a secret police force.

Typically a secret police force has jurisdiction over more people than government employees and contractors.