HOLY SHIT!?!?!?
- Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today that his office’s prosecution of Backpage.com has resulted in the company pleading guilty to human trafficking in Texas and its CEO Carl Ferrer pleading guilty to money laundering. This comes less than a week after the attorney general’s office assisted the Department of Justice with permanently shutting down the website.
Ferrer will be sentenced to up to five years in prison once he’s fulfilled the terms of his plea agreement with Attorney General Paxton’s office. His cooperation in the ongoing investigation into Backpage could lead to other criminal charges against individuals associated with the company.
As the largest online sex trafficking marketplace in the world, Backpage facilitated the sex trafficking of innocent women and children through sites it ran for 943 locations in 97 countries and 17 languages. It was involved in 73 percent of all child trafficking cases reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Yea, that is an eye-opener. Craigslist was working with law enforcement and helping them grab the kiddie stuff and traffickers. A guy I know that is still putting himself through the dating gauntlet has seen an uptick in outright prostitution-style profiles on sites like OKCupid. I'm not going to be shocked when the law goes after Tinder, Grindr, Bumble et. al. for being venues for prostitution here in the next few months.
You laugh, but I have seen people try to make a convincing argument for the return of arranged marriages. The whole concept of "mary the one you love" is only 200 or so years old, a product of the Industrial Revolution. Back in the bad-old-days, the kids were put in a room to get to know one another and the parents wheeled and dealed to mary off the kids. Then you get to live in marital suffering forever if you roll craps or live happily ever after if the parents raised both parties well and you did not end up with a drunk or sociopath. The main, rational, objection one should have over arranged marriages is that by the definition of what these arrangements are, there can be absolutely zero tolerance of divorce. Which depending on what side of the culture war you sit may be a good thing. So if you as a 16-18 year old get paired with someone who beats the crap out of you? too bad. Your wedding is an economic agreement where you pump out kids and raise them for the betterment of the village/community/state. When people can force you to have kids, and an outside group has control over your reproductive choices, you are not free; you are nothing more than a cog in a machine. This was a great system for societal cohesion back when you needed to have 10 kids for the free labour on the farm, where 40% of your kids were going to die of Smallpox and Measles before puberty, and when we were fighting grande wars that slaughtered whole generations of men. In a modern economy where you don't really become an "adult" until your mid 20's due to school and training and jobs, the housing market etc, forcing people to marry young is probably not the best suggestion. Imaging going to school, working to pay the bills and having 2 toddlers in the house. One of those things you can do and do well. All Three? That is such a rare success that they make movies about the brave single parent that raised well mannered, smart, engaged kids, got a PHD and cured Diphtheria all while owning a house and also running for Congress. But look through dating websites, and I can see the point they are trying to make.