Even if no threat is made someone could still be prosecuted. Will this survive a legal challenge? https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2023/06/24/michigan-is-criminalizing-opinions-n560291 Michigan is criminalizing opinions by Jazz Shaw To say that Michigan has lurched to the left under the leadership of Gretchen Whitmer and the state’s liberal majority would be a significant understatement. But with a new bill passed in the state House this week, they are taking things to a cartoonish level. If (more likely "when") House Bill 4474 is signed into law, you will literally be able to be thrown into prison for hurting someone’s feelings. This is being hidden under the guise of protecting people from "hate speech", and includes standard liberal online tropes about "feeling threatened." To be clear, you don’t have to actually threaten someone with violence. They simply need to "feel" threatened by something you say or post online. There is no word from Governor Whitmer yet as to whether the State Police will be directed to establish a new "thought police" unit. (Washington Examiner) This type of vague legal wording will give state law enforcement and prosecutors the green light to have people arrested based on innocuous internet comments, and then these state officials will never face consequences or reprimand, because they can claim they "were just following the law". It's the type of thing that's already appeared in other countries in Europe within the last 15 years. Keep in mind many progressives on the Left have a much more expansive definition of what "threatening" is than conservatives do. You don't even actually have to make a threat, you just have to type or say something that is likely to make someone else feel "threatened", in any way.
Guarantee you there are going to be double standards in how the law gets applied. They're only going to go after conservatives. Even if conservatives do ever come to power in the state government, I think most conservative officials would be too principled to try applying this to people on the other side. So they're never going to get "a dose of their own medicine". The thing is, it's totally obvious to conservatives that this is totally wrong, and silly. More information about Michigan There actually are nice quaint conservative areas in the suburbs around Grand Rapids and Battle Creek. Ann Arbor is Democrat-leaning but is not a bad city and has lots of employment opportunities, not too high of cost living. The state of Michigan would be about 50% Democrat and 50% Republican if the immediate area around Detroit were excluded. As you can see in this map, in terms of land area, the majority of the counties vote Republican, but it's just there's a huge number of people packed into those small blue areas. (only 8% of the state's population lives in northern Michigan and the upper peninsula) One pattern that exists, not just in the U.S. but all over the world, in areas farther north, a larger fraction of the overall population is concentrated into smaller city areas. This ends up having profound political effects.
I couldn't find the "feel threatened" in the bill that news article reference d. The bill still stays if they actually threatened them.
It's all about how the wording could (and likely will be) interpreted. (Obviously a law doesn't have to explicitly state a thing to do that thing) The full text of this bill is long, but part of it reads: "A person is guilty of a hate crime if that person maliciously, and with specific intent to intimidate or harass another person because of that person's race, color, religion, gender, or national origin, does any of the following: (a) Causes physical contact with another person. (b) Damages, destroys, or defaces any real or personal property of another person. (c) Threatens, by word or act, to do an act described in subdivision (a) or (b), if there is reasonable cause to believe that an act described in subdivision (a) or (b) will occur. intimidates or harasses another individual; causes bodily injury or severe mental anguish to another individual; uses force or violence on another individual; damages, destroys, or defaces any real, personal, digital, or online property of another individual; or threatens, by word or act, to do any of the above-described actions, if the person, regardless of the existence of any other motivating factors, intentionally targets the individual or engages in the action based in whole or in part on any of the following actual or perceived characteristics of another individual: (a) Race or color. (b) Religion. (c) Sex. (d) Sexual orientation. (e) Gender identity or expression. (f) Physical or mental disability. (g) Age. (h) Ethnicity. (i) National origin. (j) Association or affiliation with an individual or group of individuals with a characteristic described under subdivisions (a) to (i). (source here) Keep in mind that there are already laws in Michigan that make harassment and certain forms of intimidation of crime. But this bill would only further criminalize those things. Part (j) of this bill seems designed to go after "hate groups", so criminalization based on group association. So you wouldn't even have to prove that individual committed the crime of threatening, it would be enough if they were part of a group that was "seen" as "threatening". If you look at part (3), it says that the offense can constitute a "felony" if it results in "severe mental anguish", or if the person has a prior conviction for this, or if the "victim" is under 18 years of age, or if the crime is committed with someone else. (obviously there are several other laws that exist attached to any crime that is classified as a "felony")
Michigan isn't the only one. Now Maryland Editorial: State of Maryland vs. The Takoma Torch My name is Eric Saul, and I am the creator of the Takoma Torch. Unfortunately, this is not a satirical article. Instead, this a disturbing true story that I never would have believed was possible: the Montgomery County State’s Attorney has criminally charged me for a satirical tweet. Here’s how it happened... It should be deeply disturbing to anyone that Ryan Miner was able to weaponize the court system and effortlessly convince a district court commissioner to approve having the Montgomery County State’s Attorney violate the First Amendment by criminally charging me for a satirical mean tweet about a public figure – one who regularly attacks others who do not share his unpopular political views on social media. Think about that for a second – I called a public figure a name on Twitter, and now I am waiting to be prosecuted by the state for a crime. Imagine a world where anyone who says anything negative about Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity on social media would be prosecuted as a criminal.
Hate speech can be any criticism of the Negro race, however accurate it may be. I was banned from commenting on a website I paid for because I mentioned in a thread about affirmative action that the average IQ for a black person is 85 and the average IQ for a white person is 100.
Looks like we will see the ACLU attacking this along with conservative groups. It appears blatantly unconstitutional. as noted in the article If someone claims that they feel threatened by your speech, you can be fined ten thousand dollars and locked up for five years. As a reminder, that’s a prison sentence that is roughly three times longer than the ones that two attorneys in New York City received for literally firebombing a police cruiser and distributing explosive devices to rioters in 2020. If you’re lucky, you may receive a smaller fine and be sentenced to community service so you can ponder your evil ways.
I suspect many Negroes feel threatened by The Bell Curve, by Charles Murray and Richard Hrrrnstein. Does this law mean that I will be arrested in Michigan for owning that book? Come to think of it: does my use of the word "Negroes" violate the law?
Is the ACLU against the law? A quick look on the internet did not find for me confirmation of that. This sounds like the kind of law the ACLU would like.
Would be nice to see the actual text as opposed to a critics opinion about it. In most States you can kill a person who has you "feeling threatened".
I am scanning this bill ( I have not thoroughly studied), but with my cursory reading I am uncomfortable with here. I am fine with using 'hate speech' as evidence in asecondary sentencing hearing to prove a specific state of mind or intent as an aggravating or enhancing factor in sentencing because judges and juries do that stuff all the time all through history, and there is no real precedent broken, but this bill appears to do more and do it differently. Is it broadening the scope of the purposes for which that speech is used, beyond sentencing of already criminalized conduct and proven by its own quantum of proof which is my standard here? I need an actual criminal lawyer's opinion here or a lot more research to know what I am reading.
Not a useful thing to be saying in public. Probably does. But the powers that be probably don't care too much because you're a harmless old man.
If it does it should not. Why should there any taboos and sanctions against telling the truth, especially when the truth has legitimate policy implications?
I think it's good to tell the truth but not necessarily the truth that hurts people. There is context as well. Truth can be both enlightening and devastating. The implicit knowledge about the lesser capability of some blacks in the US is implicit and I'm sure it informs policy.
I had a poster here who constantly attacked me as being "old". I find that amusing because everyone has two paths-they die young-which sucks-or they make it to old age.
Which of those things are important in improving America and fulfilling our constitutional rights of equal treatment?
There are NO charges against Eric Saul on this issue. There certainly are cases of state's attorneys being partisan and/or too aggressive on ALL issues.
Bad laws certainly don't help, and some of them are predictably very likely to lead to blunders. Many on the Left seem to be under the delusion that laws can only be used against people who violate exactly what the law says is illegal. This completely ignores how the whole system of law enforcement works, and almost assumes the laws will be enforced by some sort of perfect flawless God-like entity.
