U. S Politics: I know why the caged babe screams.

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I think there is a path for Democrats in terms of strategy to make significant gains with young women and Latinos for the upcoming elections. For young women, a new Supreme Court pick would mean an unprecedented attack on their rights (more so than what has happened till now), and for many Latinos, I presume the "abolish ICE" approach is gaining traction (although I cant be sure of this).

I am interested in the latter, and what middle road the Democrats will take to screw themselves out of the maximum number of voters. They haven't proved to be very good at threading the needle to keep the different wings of their party happy. I think some sort of approach to break ICE down into more an enforcement agency rather than a (extra)-judicial one as well may help.

Speaking of, apparently ICE (or one of those agencies) has jurisdiction about 100 miles from an international border. They have tried to claim the Great Lakes as a border, so nearly the entirety of Michigan is supposed to be in their purview. This is entirely a debatable point, so if it does happen to you, dont let them search your car (for instance).

"Abolish ICE" is gaining traction in the Bernie circles of far left progressives but it's being fought by the more center left Democrats because the slogan is inconsistent with the message. The issue is that no one truly wants to abolish ICE, they want to reform it. The criminal investigation element of ICE is actually necessary as they're the ones that investigates immigrant gangs, cross border drug rings, money laundering, human rights violations, cyberfraud, etc and they're the ones who are standing up and saying that what is happening now with ICE isn't sustainable and actually hurting the US. ICE has two elements, the ERO (removal and deportation) and HSI (investigations). The "abolish ICE" movement wants to reform the ERO while giving more money to the HSI while the administration today is taking money from HSI and giving it to ERO to remove as many illegal immigrants as they can. The issue with the slogan is the GOP and Trump has seized on it and is repeating over and over that Dems want open borders, loves crime and gangs. And not a single Democrat is bringing up that 19 of the 26 heads of HSI divisions wrote a letter to Trump saying they need to reform ERO so they can do their jobs.

So yea, framing will matter and the Democrats are terrible at framing a message and countering lies. Even if they do manage to do this, it's not an issue that will bring out voters, not really anyway. It'll get some people, especially with the separation of kids (as an aside, that story seemed to die down even though it's still happening, just in different ways), but the focus has to continue to be on healthcare, the economy, especially with Trump's trade wars affecting middle America and corruption. That's how you get people out to vote.

As for jurisdiction, CBP (US Customs and Border Protection) actually owns jurisdiction over the international border, ICE does not which is another reason the whole "Dems want open borders and crime because they want to abolish ICE" is stupid since ICE has no control over the border and was put in place in 2003 due to fear of more Saudi terrorists running around in the country.

[Ice Queen]

On 7/3/2018 at 6:20 PM, SweetPea said:

That's a pretty damn reasonable assumption. If they did not commit more crimes, they might be pulled over more frequently, but the conviction rate would remain lower. That is not the case.

Have you even read my comment? African Americans are nearly twice as likely to buy drugs outdoors, three times more likely to buy from a stranger, and significantly more likely to buy away from their homes, compared to whites. That is the biggest cause of the discrepancy between arrests of blacks and whites for drug use.

Yeah, how many of them carry around bomb-making devices and plans? As you said, most are legal gun owners, so they would seem like an ordinary person with a legally owned gun. Anyway, you missed my point. I don't have a problem with the idea, per se, I just don't think it would be effective at all.

Then you better elucidate yourself, because I didn't use circular reasoning at all. I acknowledged that there was a positive feedback loop with a heavy limiting factor. Very different.

You need a history lesson. The War on Drugs is no more than a War on Poor People, and African Americans in particular. This goes back to the 1920s, but Nixon accelerated it, and Reagan put the icing on the cake. We now have two generations of black males who have been incarcerated at rates far higher than their white counterparts. That's two generations of black males who aren't around to raise their children. Two generations of black males unable to find gainful employment, and also unable to qualify for federal student aid because anyone with a drug conviction of any kind is automatically ineligible. They can't better themselves, in other words. The system has it set up so that they can't. 

Quote

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs

Nixon made weed a Schedule 1 drug even while his own drug commission recommended decriminalization. 

They don't target hippies anymore, but blacks are still targeted disproportionally, and drug laws in this country have always targeted minorities, be they African American, Mexican or Mexican American, Chinese, etc. And all minorities are still subject to greater arrest rates and harsher sentences than whites. 

Again, just a fact.

 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Maithanet der Mannschaft said:

Like 80% of the US population lives within 100 miles of some border, including virtually all of the biggest cities in the country. 

Apparently it's closer to two-thirds, but yeah.  Ultimately, as a government agency ICE's jurisdiction is wherever the federal government says it is, but totally agree their expanded powers should be challenged in court if they're used in, like, Ithaca.  Would highlight the ridiculousness of it.

18 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

The citation wasn't irrelevant at all. You play this role of argument instructor, but you break the fundamental rule of "grading" with your values as opposed to the argument laid out before you. The reason "race" wouldn't be involved in a report like this is written in the report's methodology. This is a report that is trying to get a pulse on the general population of the United States. The issue may lie with the sample (did the sample effectively represent the U.S. population?), and I have my questions about that. The report did not list limitations, which could be the difficulty of acquiring a representative sample. But the views people have of police is an important aspect of this argument. The more important question is why do people have such high perceptions of law enforcement despite significant issues stemming from how LO's engagement with the public?

The citation was irrelevant because it was presented as evidence all races call the cops on all races when the analysis and data collection had nothing to do with the latter.  I wasn't criticizing the report - those BJS guys get an A+! - but rather its use by Altherion to support a point the report had nothing to do with.  The report, if you take five seconds to read the intro, is obviously about public reaction to having called the cops.  It's basically a customer satisfaction survey, and in that way it does its job fine.  I don't see any reason to "question" the report's sample or scrutinize its "limitations," sounds like you're the one who wants to play the role of argument instructor.

31 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Issues could also lie in the well-known problem of participant self-reporting in the social sciences any time a survey is used to collect data. 

Um, yeah, it's all self-reporting.  That's not a "well-known" problem in the social sciences, it's how we collect survey data.  The problem you're probably referring to is reporting error, like adjusting for the durable tendency for over-reporting when you ask people if they voted.

35 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

But the report itself is not problematic. It is a good baseline, and has the fundamental pieces of a well designed piece of research. Your job, instead of critiquing everyone, should be to find an equally or better designed piece of evidence and use that to look at intersections in the argument. As it stands, you've not discredited the original argument. I may do this for you later. But you've demonstrated ad hominen as a fallacy that you like to rely on even when you could probably find sources to support your arguments.

Man it really seems you got a stick up your ass because I made fun of your writing.  Again, of course the report itself is not problematic.  Don't tell me what my job is, it's a fucking message board.  And I did discredit the original argument by pointing out his purported evidence that was supposed to support his point in fact didn't support his point at all - that's not an ad hominen attack, it's the opposite.  Learn your Latin.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Thanks Mexal. I knew only the bare bones of the ICE/CBP story and the various arms of ICE and your post has fleshed it our for me.

My own interest stemmed from an ACLU Facebook post where they highlighted a woman who was on a Greyhound bus in Nevada that was boarded by CBP officers, and she stood them down by mentioning they were nowhere near 100 miles from a border. The same post also mentioned Michigan was entirely covered, which was interesting to me since I live here.

Nonetheless, Greyhound buses are privately owned and you need a ticket to get on it, so it isnt a 'public' space. Therefore, Greyhound does not need to consent to CBP to search their buses, and the fact that they did means I will not support them any longer.

[Ice Queen]

21 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Thanks Mexal. I knew only the bare bones of the ICE/CBP story and the various arms of ICE and your post has fleshed it our for me.

My own interest stemmed from an ACLU Facebook post where they highlighted a woman who was on a Greyhound bus in Nevada that was boarded by CBP officers, and she stood them down by mentioning they were nowhere near 100 miles from a border. The same post also mentioned Michigan was entirely covered, which was interesting to me since I live here.

Nonetheless, Greyhound buses are privately owned and you need a ticket to get on it, so it isnt a 'public' space. Therefore, Greyhound does not need to consent to CBP to search their buses, and the fact that they did means I will not support them any longer.

CBP (and not the Coast Guard) is now harassing Canadian fisherman between Maine and New Brunswick. 

[James Arryn]

1 hour ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

You need a history lesson. The War on Drugs is no more than a War on Poor People, and African Americans in particular. This goes back to the 1920s, but Nixon accelerated it, and Reagan put the icing on the cake. We now have two generations of black males who have been incarcerated at rates far higher than their white counterparts. That's two generations of black males who aren't around to raise their children. Two generations of black males unable to find gainful employment, and also unable to qualify for federal student aid because anyone with a drug conviction of any kind is automatically ineligible. They can't better themselves, in other words. The system has it set up so that they can't. 

John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs

Nixon made weed a Schedule 1 drug even while his own drug commission recommended decriminalization. 

They don't target hippies anymore, but blacks are still targeted disproportionally, and drug laws in this country have always targeted minorities, be they African American, Mexican or Mexican American, Chinese, etc. And all minorities are still subject to greater arrest rates and harsher sentences than whites. 

Again, just a fact.

 

That Ehrlicman quote is irrelevant.

Let me explain how this works. When there was slavery, of course there was racism in America. But once slavery ended, the assumption might in general be that racism possibly still existed, but in each and every specific instance, short of actual evidence, the assumption must be that racism played no role, because This Is America. 

And when, like above, you have specific evidence that in one specific instance there was racism, you tie that off like a limb to be amputated, acknowledge that in that case racism may have played a role...it’s helpful to ask leading questions like ‘but why was the government targeting blacks if they are so wonderful?’...but otherwise see it just an aberration in T.I.A. greatness and continue to treat every other specific instance under the assumption that racism plays no significant role. 

And considering that racists in government/law enforcement rarely go on the record admitting they and their policies are racist, of course the assumption must be, outside of a few ‘bad apples’, that T.I.A. still applies and all is proceeding as it should. So, blacks are arrested more? Well, obviously they are more criminal. Blacks are sentenced more, to longer sentences? Same. Look, sometimes races do commit crimes at much higher rates; take Jews in pre-WWII Germany...any objective examination of the legal proceedings from that time show quite clearly that Jews were just recividist, it’s the only rational explanation for why they were arrested, charged, and sentenced much more often.

It’s not racism, and it’s not racist to point out the objective truth.

It’s American. 

 

[James Arryn]

2 minutes ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

CBP (and not the Coast Guard) is now harassing Canadian fisherman between Maine and New Brunswick. 

Well, I mean the US Government has officially classified Canada as a security threat. So this is also perfectly reasonable. 

[Fragile Bird]

3 hours ago, LongRider said:

Sorry Birdie, can't blame Altherion.   SCOTUS ruling from 2014;

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rules-amazon-doesnt-have-to-pay-for-after-hours-time-in-security-lines/2014/12/09/05c67c0c-7fb9-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9905f0a86af1

Nope, wrong.

That case is about going through a security check, not performing work.

The discussion was about employees expected to arrive early and prepare a business for opening and then stay late after a business has closed to perform more work tasks. All unpaid labor in the business.

Being required to wear a uniform and wanting to be paid for coming in early 15 minutes to change or to have to wait 25 minutes while standing in line to go through a security check is not performing work.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

"Abolish ICE" is gaining traction in the Bernie circles of far left progressives but it's being fought by the more center left Democrats because the slogan is inconsistent with the message. The issue is that no one truly wants to abolish ICE, they want to reform it. The criminal investigation element of ICE is actually necessary as they're the ones that investigates immigrant gangs, cross border drug rings, money laundering, human rights violations, cyberfraud, etc and they're the ones who are standing up and saying that what is happening now with ICE isn't sustainable and actually hurting the US. ICE has two elements, the ERO (removal and deportation) and HSI (investigations).

True.

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

So yea, framing will matter and the Democrats are terrible at framing a message and countering lies. Even if they do manage to do this, it's not an issue that will bring out voters, not really anyway.

Disagree.  I think the framing is much more helpful than "let's reform the standards and conduct of border protection!"  "Abolish ICE" is a heuristic that everyone can understand as being against Trump and his administration's immigration policies.  Don't know if it's an effective heuristic yet, but it's certainly more motivational messaging than the Dems usually sputter and stutter.

[Ice Queen]

3 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

That Ehrlicman quote is irrelevant.

Let me explain how this works. When there was slavery, of course there was racism in America. But once slavery ended, the assumption might in general be that racism possibly still existed, but in each and every specific instance, short of actual evidence, the assumption must be that racism played no role, because This Is America. 

And when, like above, you have specific evidence that in one specific instance there was racism, you tie that off like a limb to be amputated, acknowledge that in that case racism may have played a role...it’s helpful to ask leading questions like ‘but why was the government targeting blacks if they are so wonderful?’...but otherwise see it just an aberration in T.I.A. greatness and continue to treat every other specific instance under the assumption that racism plays no significant role. 

And considering that racists in government/law enforcement rarely go on the record admitting they and their policies are racist, of course the assumption must be, outside of a few ‘bad apples’, that T.I.A. still applies and all is proceeding as it should. So, blacks are arrested more? Well, obviously they are more criminal. Blacks are sentenced more, to longer sentences? Same. Look, sometimes races do commit crimes at much higher rates; take Jews in pre-WWII Germany...any objective examination of the legal proceedings from that time show quite clearly that Jews were just recividist, it’s the only rational explanation for why they were arrested, charged, and sentenced much more often.

It’s not racism, and it’s not racist to point out the objective truth.

It’s American. 

 

How is that Ehrlichman quote irrelevant? He is on the record as stating that. If the rest of your post was satirical or rhetorical, then I agree. 

If we want the madness to stop, the solution is very simple: legalize drugs, especially weed and heroin. 

 

[Ice Queen]

11 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Well, I mean the US Government has officially classified Canada as a security threat. So this is also perfectly reasonable. 

Sadly, that is probably true. How much of an idiot do you have to be to piss off Canada of all places?

[James Arryn]

Just now, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

How is that Ehrlichman quote irrelevant? He is on the record as stating that. If the rest of your post was satirical or rhetorical, then I agree. 

If we want the madness to stop, the solution is very simple: legalize drugs, especially weed and heroin. 

 

Yes, it was satirical. And I don’t blame you. Far down the list of victims of the current administration is the irony meter. There was a time when I knew an Onion link by it’s heading...not anymore. 

[Mexal]

25 minutes ago, DMC said:

True.

Disagree.  I think the framing is much more helpful than "let's reform the standards and conduct of border protection!"  "Abolish ICE" is a heuristic that everyone can understand as being against Trump and his administration's immigration policies.  Don't know if it's an effective heuristic yet, but it's certainly more motivational messaging than the Dems usually sputter and stutter.

I'm not saying this is framing is bad. I'm just saying it'll matter and traditionally, Dems aren't very good at doing that. So we'll see. Though I still think the Dems are terrible at countering lies. If they want to use "Abolish ICE", they should be slamming the HSI's note to Trump in their faces at every single opportunity. "See, even their own organization wants to absolish ICE".

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I'm not saying this is framing is bad. I'm just saying it'll matter and traditionally, Dems aren't very good at doing that. So we'll see. Though I still think the Dems are terrible at countering lies. If they want to use "Abolish ICE", they should be slamming the HSI's note to Trump in their faces at every single opportunity. "See, even their own organization wants to absolish ICE".

Agreed.  Except - said this before, but I think the Dems' messaging woes are overblown.  Who are the most inspiring presidents of the past century?  Run a poll and you'll probably get FDR, JFK, and Obama at the top with Reagan mixed in somewhere.  That's because they framed issues and themselves in an accessible and motivating way.  The party organization routinely gets beat by the GOP on framing issues, yes.  That's a better way to describe it.  It's also a nature of how the message is propagated.  The GOP has a fine-tuned funnel in FNC.  They have a message, then boom, it's repeated verbatim on there and the radio 24/7.  Comparatively, the Dems' funnels are more apt to have a ten-person panel discussing the subject of "well let's think about the way this was stated." 

[Mexal]

12 minutes ago, DMC said:

Agreed.  Except - said this before, but I think the Dems' messaging woes are overblown.  Who are the most inspiring presidents of the past century?  Run a poll and you'll probably get FDR, JFK, and Obama at the top with Reagan mixed in somewhere.  That's because they framed issues and themselves in an accessible and motivating way.  The party organization routinely gets beat by the GOP on framing issues, yes.  That's a better way to describe it.  It's also a nature of how the message is propagated.  The GOP has a fine-tuned funnel in FNC.  They have a message, then boom, it's repeated verbatim on there and the radio 24/7.  Comparatively, the Dems' funnels are more apt to have a ten-person panel discussing the subject of "well let's think about the way this was stated." 

I agree with this.

In other news. Sounds like the trade war is going real well for Trump voters.

 

[Fragile Bird]

19 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I agree with this.

In other news. Sounds like the trade war is going real well for Trump voters.

 

I love the first comment, short term pain for long term gain. I wonder if the commentator is going to face any of the short term pain, or if it's just an academic exercise to him.

[lokisnow]

these are my people. MAGA still supportin' Trump even as he closes their factory with his tariffs (as they'll tell you, the mexican plant owners are to blame for importing mexican steel in the first place).

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-missouri-town-tariff-20180705-story.html

***

As for a 30 or 35 hour work week. it will be necessary once the big tech companies succeed in the next decade in murdering most of the jobs in the world (presuming of course the big tech doesn't decide to use robots to inhume-en-masse low margin consumers that have no relevance to their business model).

But me? I don't figure workers will get anything out of that extra ten or five hours.  This is America, we'll be expected to spend that time commuting.

I keep expecting to see a flattering newstory about a tech company that has combined delivery drones with the weapon from No Country for Old men as a solution to the "homeless problem" in the Bay Area.

[Fragile Bird]

I see on CNN that the Secretary responsible for that part of Immigration seizing children at the border had a conference call this morning with reporters, and it turns out no children, not even 6 of them as reported last week, have been reunited with their parents, and the number of children has gone up from 2,027 to about 3,000.

They won't, or can't, give exact numbers. I suspect they don't know what the exact numbers are. And now there are reports that blood and DNA sampling is being done. If you were being nice, you'd say it was to make sure children are reunited with the right parents, if you were cynical you might think it was so Trump can announce none of the children actually came with their real parents.

[Fragile Bird]

News on the Mueller front - he has been using the services of more and more lawyers in the Justice Department. He has a team of 17 but the optics of hiring more lawyers aren't good so he's dipping into Justice for more bodies. He has two trials coming up and, apparently, lots and lots of wrong-doing uncovered. Lots of work for lawyers!

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

News on the Mueller front - he has been using the services of more and more lawyers in the Justice Department. He has a team of 17 but the optics of hiring more lawyers aren't good so he's dipping into Justice for more bodies. He has two trials coming up and, apparently, lots and lots of wrong-doing uncovered. Lots of work for lawyers!

That and a ton of challenges to his authority which takes time.