Recent comments in /f/Pennsylvania

axeville t1_j92g0ps wrote

Reply to comment by axeville in Pennsylvania lawmaker to introduce legislation repealing death penalty by Waterwebgrasshopper

See how easy it is to respect someone else's beliefs.

Please advise the GOP there is no assault on christianity. It's folks pressing their right to choose not to be Christian, or religious at all, that are the troublemakers and their rights are as expressly protected as any in the "original" constitution the Supreme Court claims to interpret strictly.

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CltAltAcctDel t1_j92ey6w wrote

Reply to comment by randomnighmare in Shapiro: Pennsylvania DEP will test water in connection with Ohio train derailment by oldschoolskater

She's not talking about acid rain. She's talking about vinyl chloride getting into the ground water. The threat of acid rain is gone.

https://innotechtoday.com/chemicals-from-ohio-train-derailment-spark-concerns-of-acid-rain/

>Acid rain could have formed after the controlled release and burn of chemicals on Feb. 6,” Kevin Crist, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the director of the Air Quality Center at Ohio University, said. “If it did form and fall, it would have most likely occurred downwind of East Palestine.

>“There would maybe be localized problems, but once that plume is gone, it’s gone. Unless it’s sticking to a residue.”

And the expert you cite is saying the same thing. These chemicals are short lived in the atmosphere.

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insofarincogneato t1_j92d9l4 wrote

Reply to comment by Adorable-Spirit-1505 in Pennsylvania lawmaker to introduce legislation repealing death penalty by Waterwebgrasshopper

Your only written argument is legality as if that gives weight to morality and your faith based belief is irrelevant because it doesn't give you the right to infringe on others beliefs.

Also, fetuses aren't "children". They do not have personhood.

Your religious beliefs are political propaganda and there are no holy texts that says anything about the personhood of fetuses. Not that you've actually read it.

Fucking. Next.

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idioma t1_j92cn3u wrote

Reply to comment by affenage in Pennsylvania lawmaker to introduce legislation repealing death penalty by Waterwebgrasshopper

I only support the death penalty for large scale financial crimes. Unlike violent crimes, complex financial fraud schemes are never impulsive or committed in the heat of the moment. They are deliberate and premeditated. By their very nature, they require a knowledge of guilt and a willingness to carry out their actions over a long period of time.

Additionally, the motivation to commit financial crimes is entirely selfish and is done in the direct interest of the perpetrators. They assume the risks of being caught and charged because the benefits are high, while the chances of being convicted are dependent upon several factors. Even when convicted, the sentences are often much lower than those given to violent offenders. Ultimately, the penalties are perceived as merely the costs of doing business.

Now, imagine that instead we mandated the death penalty when financial crimes reached a threshold. For simplicity, sake, we can use the lifetime median earnings for the state or nation where the crime was committed.

If you make a median salary of roughly $50,000 per year and you work for at least 20 years, you will end up with a lifetime earning of about $1,650,000. Let’s assume you work from the age of 15, and retire on your 65th birthday; half a century of labor ought to be enough for anyone. We double the original figure and round up to an even $4 million. That’ll be our threshold.

The collapse of Enron, for example, involved more than $60 billion in assets. That’s well above the threshold; it is our threshold times 15,000. Now, imagine all of the co-conspirators who were directly involved and responsible for the decisions to commit massive amounts of fraud. Surely that number is fewer than 15,000.

Would everyone involved in this scheme be willing to go along with it if they knew that they would be executed if convicted? Would it still be worth the risk? Would all of those self-interested, greedy, and distrustful people be comfortable with that kind of risk, knowing that all it would take is one brave whistleblower to bring it all crashing down?

I doubt it.

Under this legal framework, the likely response when someone proposes doing something illegal with large amounts of money would be “No, Bob, I won’t cook the books for you. That’s a lot of money you’re dealing with, and I have a family. I’m not willing to die just so you can make a quick buck. Find someone else!”

The death penalty does not work as an effective deterrent against violent crimes, but when applied to financial crime? I’d like to give it the college try, and see what happens.

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randomnighmare t1_j92a243 wrote

Reply to comment by CltAltAcctDel in Shapiro: Pennsylvania DEP will test water in connection with Ohio train derailment by oldschoolskater

I am taking the word of this Pitt scientist:

>“The outdoor air is a little less problematic because vinyl chloride gets dispersed very quickly and broken down by the sunlight, within a few days, it’s a similar situation in the soil or open body of water. However, one of the things I always emphasize if it goes into the ground water and transported to homes and private wells, it is highly volatile, so it can suffuse into air within those closed spaces,” she said. “It comes out of the water, into the air and that’s really the major route of toxicity for the liver. It comes through the air.”

https://www.wpxi.com/news/local/pitt-scientist-with-experience-studying-vinyl-chloride-shares-concerns-following-train-derailment/QZ5YYEYQD5CYPIPZFT2DQV4V4Q/

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