Open Mic for the week of 8/21/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
This is the America we live in:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/21/us/california-pride-flag-shooting/index.htmlReport
There is apparently a new right-wing country hit springing overnight: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/oliver-anthony-concert-review-rich-men-north-of-richmond-1234809326/Report
I suspect the irony is completely lost on him that the “Rich men north of Richmond” who have their thumbs on people like him included the Republican House Majority and Senate Minority. And several recent Republican Presidents.Report
I cannot believe the lack of sophistication in some of these folk singers.Report
You don’t think he’d criticize Republicans? Why?Report
How many conservatives criticize the GOP?Report
Nearly all, nearly constantly.Report
How many _country singers_ criticize the GOP?Report
The Chicks? Garth Brooks? They are at least critical of certain prominent figures within the GOP, or things the government has done under Republican administrations that Democrats have also criticized.Report
And what happened to The Chicks again?
As for Garth Brooks…what he did say critical about Republicans? I know he sung at Biden’s inauguration and got some push-back for that, but what was he critical about?Report
Stylistically, this isn’t a country song. It’s folk, which is traditionally the most explicitly political genre of American music, typically liberal or even radical. The song itself isn’t even particularly conservative; it’s the working man’s plight as he rages against The Man.Report
Oh, it’s folk. Gotcha.
Yeah, folk is often full of…somewhat naive people with very simplistic politics. Usually to the left, but, hey, the right some get some dumbass folk music too, it’s only fair.Report
Yep.Report
YouTuber J.J. McCullough had an interesting video essay on the cultural importance of video games compared to traditional media like books, movies, and TV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKSYA29_mgsReport
Spain’s Women’s World Cup controversy explained: Why coach Jorge Vilda is under fire despite winning title
https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/spains-womens-world-cup-controversy-explained-why-coach-jorge-vilda-is-under-fire-despite-winning-title/
“Spain won their first Women’s World Cup final vs. England on Sunday 1-0 but did it without a handful of top players because of an ongoing protest against the Royal Spanish Football Federation.” So, those players apparently were not needed…..Report
This is also the America we live in:
https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-08-20/now-withdrawn-affidavits-in-marion-county-record-raid-allege-paper-committed-identity-theftReport
Vox covers why many people seemed how to forget how to behave in public:
https://www.vox.com/culture/23835782/concert-attack-cardi-b-pink-ashes-movie-theaterReport
Wow, people who don’t regularly attend religious services sound awful.Report
I doubt Vox is correct. I think society is tolerating crappy behavior more and that’s encouraging people to do it more.Report
The Elon Musk profile/hit piece of my dreams is here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-shadow-rule?currentPage=allReport
The first half of it is more of an indictment against the US gov’t use of a single point of failure CEO who’s conviction to the “cause” seems optimistic and subject to sway. Apparently the USG didn’t have anyone monitoring this guy’s “commitment” or if he was talking to others with a differing view, nor did they actually have the formality of an actual contract. Sheesh.Report
Convenient to leave out several things:
1) The Ukrainian government putting Elon Musk on their public-facing hitlist (aka “mercenaries go kill this man, we’ll pay you”) — while depending on his Starlink to win a war.
2) Elon then goes to the US Government, to complain about their client state trying to kill him.
3) US Government briefly puts Elon on OUR hitlist (more to make a point than anything).
Elon did not want it known that Starlink was being used as wartime communications. That opens it up to a lot more hazard from Russia — Russia’s not supposed to deliberately harm civilian targets. Not that America pays much attention to that little pesky fact.
Elon is against the war in Ukraine because it is bad for Business. America is getting poorer, Europe is getting a LOT poorer, and Elon can’t sell cars if he can’t get power to build them (his plants are in Germany, and Germany doesn’t have enough power).Report
Rum is a superior drink to whiskey and it’s variants. There I said it.Report
Nope. Small bath bourbon. Or a really good porter.Report
Hell yea. You should try Four Roses Small Batch if you haven’t. It’s awesome, and quite reasonably priced.Report
I shall look for it. Small batch bourbon is not always easy to find on the coast, so I usually confine its purchase to going into New Orleans.Report
Not that interested in Rum, but I do like Pussers.
Scotch Whiskey: Highlands typically, but moved towards Balvenie double wood–though not bought it in years as I can’t stomach a 130 dollar bottle.
Bourbon-currently the drink of choice: Jefferson. Really like Ocean but again, not paying that much. Allegedly my booze monger can get me Blanton’s. Going to try that–a friend owes me a birthday gift 🙂
As a french friend long ago said “not that impressed with the very old spirits (whiskey, bourbon, etc) from a price / value perspective.” Gotta agree.
Made some cocktails with Sagamore rye. It’s ok in mixed drinks. Bit harsh straight.Report
Contra Damon below, I can’t fathom the prices corn liquor is fetching these days.
Scotch in the winter, and gin in the summer for this drinker. I’m willing to pay a premium for gin with interesting aromatics. Not a huge fan of the piney stuff.Report
Oh yes, I do love a nice martini in the winter. Traditionally I’ve used Tanqueray or Hendricks. Of course, it’s dirty with an olive and ONLY Noilly Prat extra dry vermouth 🙂
Just started into Lime Rickeys…with gin.Report
Good news! If you’re troubled by images of the damage of the fire in Hawaii, you soon won’t have to look at new ones:
Report
um no . . . I know you really want to make this a government censorship thing, but it’s not. The concern is there are still between 800 and 900 people still missing, and many of them are likely horribly burned. Add in the loss of physical cultural icons for Ha’waii’s Polynesian population, and you have a place where the western white need for disaster porn is going to cause inordinate grief. If this were an attempt at censorship, you’d see requests to tkae down images already on the internet.Report
“The western white need for disaster porn”
I could not have written a better comment myself.Report
No disagreement here.Report
Never understood the desire to see “disaster porn”.
Sheesh, just do a flyover. That’s all that’s needed.Report
We have already had dozens of those. At this point they won’t tell any new stories.Report
I don’t know why we’re still even talking about it. Fires occur. It’s a natural phenomenon. Man is mortal. All matter is rust.
What about Trump?Report
I’d much rather talk about giving native Ha’waiians back their land and homes then Trump. I just don’t need any more pictures of ash piles that used to be people’s houses in order to have that conversation. Neither should you.Report
I don’t need them.
I’m just surprised to see the officials making sure that my not-needs are met.
Do you think that this policy ought to be the established policy for all 100%-natural-disasters-caused-by-nature-and-not-negligence in the future?Report
We’d have to agree that “natural” disasters weren’t the work of humans to begin with. They generally aren’t. I have a quote on my office bulletin board from a post-flood event interview in the PNW many years ago that says natural disasters aren’t acts of God – they are acts of city council. Menaing that, increasingly, human development of land, human industrial production and human agriculture practices are the drivers of natural impacts to humans. My conclusion is they are all “caused” or influenced or exacerbated by human actions and choices.
You will also notice that I’m not advocating for blanket bans on imagery nor am I saying all images are bad. I fully believe in visual accounting for these horrible incidents. I fully believe in accountability for government and corporate officials and their decisions in this process.
I just don’t agree that we need MORE images of burned out cars, or ash piles that used to be people’s homes. We know what the disaster zone looks like. We know what these folks need. We know what their cultural and economic challenges are, and what they were before the fires. More, and likely more intrusive photos and video won’t address any of that.Report
I will be interested in what the rules are going forward and the circumstances under which we find ourselves requiring an honest and unflinching accounting.Report
Maybe its just an attempt to protect journalists from being heckled by the angry victims:
Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast took a surprising turn when his guest was confronted in the middle of the show by a Maui resident who accused him of politically exploiting the island’s wildfires.
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/maui-resident-hijacks-steve-bannons-live-segment-to-call-out-show-for-exploiting-fires-this-is-terrifying/Report
Truly, journalists are the enemy of the people.Report
Steve Bannon is no journalist.Report
I’m just saying that maybe the rule is “Don’t be a d!ck”Report
I guess I understand why FEMA could not have put that in an email.Report
Except you probably wouldn’t have made it weirdly anti-white.Report
As Scott Alexander pointed out almost a decade ago, “white people” as used by liberals doesn’t mean “people who are white”, it means “people in my outgroup”.Report
You can make this a “big deal” without added visuals that show Ha’waiian cultural destruction. You can make this a “big deal” without adding more images of burned out cars, many of which probably contain remains. I want this to be a big deal – just informed by the grief and loss of the native peoples of Maui, not what white people in Des Moines think hey deserve to know.Report
Apparently California recently decided to rename public schools community schools and I don’t like it. I understand the logic about the change. Community sounds homey and inclusive while the public sounds cold and powerful. At the same time, community is not nearly as inclusive as the activists behind this change think. Community can refer to a particular community like the Black Community or the Catholic Community. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a public institution either. You can have private community institutions like the Y. Public schools might be more than a little cold sounding but it makes it clear that this is the property of the entire body politic like public parks or public swimming pools and public transportation.Report
This will allow politicians to say “Yes! I send my children to the Community School!”
(It’s in the community, anyway.)Report
You can’t reform this out of the system. You have to tear the system down and start over:
In the absence of that, maybe just abolish QI?Report
I’m not convinced abolishing QI really solves anything. The propensity to lie about actions is baked into the system, and even in this day and age of ubiquitous cameras – especially in big cities – the police expect to be able to put their story into paly ad have it unchallenged.Report
In this case, “baked into the system” means that the public largely supports whatever it is the police do.
In almost every case we look at, from Rodney King to George Floyd to Tamir Rice, no matter what the police do, there is a very large and vocal constituency of citizens who will vehemently support them.
For a time it was thought that “if only the public knew!” then the police would be reformed, but I’m less and less convinced of that.Report
In your opinion, was “Defund the Police” particularly successful?Report
We get inaction with funding, so what’s really the difference other than a cost savings?Report
Because I am not thinking that saying “we have to tear it down and rebuild” will result in it being torn down and rebuilt.
I kind of think that this will, instead, be a replay of “defund”.
Which, in my opinion, failed.Report
That which never happened cannot fail.
I think we’re all in agreement something needs to happen. It’ll really be interesting to see what happens when CO’s change to QI takes effect.Report
Well, if we’re arguing about our various preferences for which thing that would never, ever happen, I see the appeal of tearing the system down.Report
It failed. Not because it was a bad idea, but because the people pushing it stopped pushing at first contact with opposition.Report
Well, I’ll keep pushing for abolishing QI.
Even in the face of opposition.
(Quite honestly, I think that the most egregious examples of QI are awful enough that it quickly and efficiently moves the burden of proof to the people arguing for maintenance of the status quo.)Report
Don’t forget you’re arguing with the crowd who’ve used the one bad apple argument thousands of times over the years.Report
Abolishing QI certainly wouldn’t solve this problem. If you feel the need to lie about the circumstances under which you shot someone, for all practical purposes, it’s “clearly established” that what actually happened was wrong.Report
Ah, yes.
The whole “That isn’t a silver bullet!” argument.
If the goal is “solving the problem”, abolishing QI will not solve the problem.
This makes “tear the system down and rebuild from scratch” much more attractive because tearing the system down and rebuilding from scratch would totally solve the problem.Report
No, it isn’t. It’s pointing out that the case Phllip H brought to everyone’s attention has absolutely nothing to do with qualified immunity. Those cops won’t be able to claim qualified immunity with any hope of success. It’s not that abolishing QI won’t solve the problem, it’s that it doesn’t even address the problem.
At least I got to fill in a square on my Jaybird bingo card.Report
Will “tear the system down and rebuild it from scratch” address the problem?
Because I think that, in practice, it’ll work about as well as “defund” did.
As for abolishing cops having something close to official immunity for misconduct, making it so that these cops could be held liable for stuff like “lying” would provide a realistic nudge in the right direction.Report
If you tear it down and rebuild it in the same way of nothing will change. The whole point is that policing as it is practiced doesn’t fit with modern societal need, so a new paradigm needs to be created, trained and sustained. Certainly eliminating QI would be a part of that rebuild but just doing that will never be enough, since as CJ points out there are already laws prohibiting this sort of conduct, and the police do it routinely anyway.Report
No. That’s why I don’t advocate it. Take the question up with someone who does.
As for QI reform being a “realistic nudge,” as opposed to a silver bullet, after decades of doing the kind of work where qualified immunity is supposed to be a big deal, I can report that it has never made a difference in any of my cases, and that a number of other similarly-situated lawyers have had similar experiences. Even a severe critic of qualified immunity, Joanna Schwartz, published an article concluding that very few cases would come out differently.Report
Then let them come out differently.
If the only thing that changes is that the most egregious examples of its abuse end, then I will find that to be a step in a better direction.
Of course, there are many things that need to be done and they include stuff like “tackling police unions” and “reforming forfeiture” and all sorts of stuff and, unfortunately, none of those things will solve it either.
But it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t move in a better direction.Report
Hitting the cop in the pocketbook sure does have its appeal,though. Especially since the taxpayers are the ones footing the bill at the moment.Report
Again, this has nothing to do with qualified immunity. These cops don’t have a qualified immunity defense.
Maybe you’re confusing qualified immunity with indemnification.Report
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t a finding that a cop acted badly outside the scope of his/her duties negate indemnification? I realize it’d be a 2 step process, or maybe a 2 prong test. I’m just spitballing now.Report
Outside his duties means he doesn’t get a defense, let alone indemnification. Government officials get indemnified even if they do bad things within the scope of their employment. There’s nothing to indemnify otherwise. Sometimes, if it’s really bad, they don’t get indemnified. Cases that bad wouldn’t qualify for QI either.Report
So move the line.
I don’t see why this is so much more offensive of a thought to hold in one’s head than “burn it all to the ground and start over”.Report
If you want to expend your time and energy on something that will, if you succeed, bring only a meager return, that’s your business. But if you want any bang for the buck at all, you might try directing your energy at those who have actively, and successfully, opposed what you want rather than those who merely lack enthusiasm for the project.Report
A meager return would seem to be in the black compared to “defund”.Report
Take that up with someone who advocates defunding.Report
Can I take it up against a “tear it all down” guy?Report
You mentioned defunding not me. If you want to take “tear it all down” up with a tear it all down guy, knock yourself out. If you want to take defunding up with him, be ready for blank stares.Report
Oh, I’d only bring it up as something that failed and ask why “tear it down” would work better than “defund” and talk about how the incremental steps toward “getting rid of QI” are actually achievable.
Even if they aren’t a silver bullet.Report
This is why electoral maps out to be non-partisan.
https://www.wispolitics.com/2023/gop-lawmakers-file-motion-to-force-protasiewicz-off-redistricting-lawsuitsReport
Policy preferences of the powers that be at work here:
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2023/08/23/ohio-ag-rejects-language-for-redistricting-reform-measure/70643376007/Report
This past Monday Omaha, NE briefly reached a wet-bulb temperature of 93 °F (33.9 °C). More than six hours exposure to a wet-bulb temperature of 95 is generally considered fatal. The Wikipedia page on wet-bulb temperature uses 34 °C and higher as the qualifier for their global extreme events list. Omaha just missed making that.Report
we’ve been close to that down here on the coast for weeks. Welcome to the new normal.Report
I try to remind people to consider things other than latitude when deciding where to move/flee. Here, 500 miles west of Omaha and 4,000 feet higher, the dry-bulb high on Monday was 96 °F. The relative humidity at that time was 10%. They had to give two feels-like temperatures: 106 in the sun, 86 in the shade. When I walked back from the mailbox I had to cross from sun to shade a couple of times. The difference was immediately noticeable.Report
Even here the temperature drop is noticeable in the shade, though that’s only due to cutting out direct sun exposure as the humidity pervades everything.Report
Currently 98 with a feels like 110 here in Chicago. I can’t really complain as we’ve had a pretty temperate summer here so far.Report
Wagner’s chief is dead and probably shot down by Putin: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/08/23/world/russia-ukraine-war-newsReport
I’m just a simple American social democrat, but if I was a leader of a Russian PMC company that tired to do a bit of couping, I would not be taking small aircraft anywhere within 500 mile of Russia.Report
The mind blowing thing is the dumb mother fisher was in Africa and got blown up flying BACK to Russia.Report
Sometimes you have to use the windows you have, not the windows you wish you had.Report
“did you hear Prigozhin fell out a window?”
“where, at his dacha?”
“no, from his aircraft, after the window was exploded by a missile”Report
Get your fun done while the getting’s good — you’re not getting a summer next year.
Nor winter “playtime” this year.
Government Allied Institutions are ready to reinstitute “mask mandates.”
Please say thank you as you become a second class citizen again.
… you didn’t think O and crew had to mask, did you?Report
There was a day when Republicans gave lip service to individual freedom and liberty. No more:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/24/us/florida-anti-trans-law-penalties/index.htmlReport
*shrug* this is what it looks like when a society takes women’s safety seriously. If you don’t want society to take women’s safety seriously, go for it, break all the eggs your omelet needs, just don’t pretend that you aren’t saying “this society has weighted women’s safety too heavily and we need to back off from that”.
PS all bathrooms should be single-use cubicles.Report
Ah the “women aren’t safe because of trans women who are really men attacking them” canard. Do tell us o sage – how many events of that nature have happened in the US in the last decade? In Florida? And why do you assume trans women are a threat that cis women need protection from?Report
“Do tell us o sage – how many events of that nature have happened in the US in the last decade?”
Well.
First off, are you actually interested in hearing numbers, or do you Know That It Never Happens?
Second, even if you pretend like you were interested, it wouldn’t matter, because whatever number I come up with you’ll reply “well THAT’S NOT VERY MANY compared to the total population, so, THIS ISN’T REALLY A PROBLEM, women can just SACK UP AND DEAL WITH IT”, and you’ll be doing that thing people like you love to do, where I say “you’re a jerk because X” and you respond by enthusiastically doing X.
Like…the thing here is not doing a statistical analysis of the likelihood of women being assaulted in the restroom. The thing here is getting you to say “I think we care too much about women’s safety”. And by suggesting that there is a number of restroom assaults that’s low enough we can consider it less troubling than restricting the freedom of trans people, you are saying that. Own it.
PS all bathrooms should be single-use cubicles.Report
Single gender restricted bathrooms don’t keep people any safer. And yes, numbers are useful in this discussion. 1 in 6 women are indeed raped or otherwise sexually assaulted in America.
55% at or near their home
15 % in an open public space
12% at or near a relative’s home
10% in an enclosed but public area, like a parking garage
8% at school
Nowhere in there do you see transgendered assault of women in restrooms. Because its not a thing. The Family First Foundation compiled an alleged report of the significance of the issue – and found 29 incidents nationally between 1999 and 2017.
So of all the things we ask women to suck up – including recently loosing body autonomy – transwomen assaulting them is not a thing. Especially not when regular men don’t assault them in public restrooms with any frequency either.
Oh and as an added bonus if the idea were to protect women from predatory men, the statistics available tell us we’d have to stop them having contact with uncles and fathers and boyfriends and husbands. Because 80% of sexual assaults of women are committed by those people – someone they know.Report
What about peeping?Report
So you’re at a restaurant, and your daughter wants to go to the restroom.
As she goes in, a husky, bearded person approaches, and follows her inside.
So you tell me, is this acceptable to you, or no?Report
Already illegal. NO more likely to be stopped by this regulation than any other law already on the books.Report
That’s not what I meant. We were just talking about incidents of rape in shared bathrooms; then I brought up peeping. I wasn’t suggesting that peeping is legal any more than you were suggesting that rape is legal. Please follow the conversation.Report
You gave me one sentence. That I didn’t end up where you were going really shouldn’t be a surprise.
If you are asking if the rate of lewd peeping toms will go up with these regulations – I’d say no. transwomen are no more or less likely to be sexual deviants in that regard then any other part of the population. Probably less so given that they are finally unburdened of an identity that wasn’t them and societal sexual norms that went with that identity. Like cis women, trans women enter restrooms to conduct basic bodily functions, seeking no more then the privacy that the restroom offers. They only sexual deviancy there is the pernicious belief that trans women MUST be sexual deviants because they used to have (or may still have) a penis while presenting female.
Tell me, when you are in a man’s bathroom do you worry about the guy at the next urinal peeping? No? Would you worry about a male presenting transwoman peeing when entering and exiting a stall? No? then what the problem?Report
Let’s assume that no “trans woman” has ever had any trait that could be called deviant. Let’s say that there’s nothing even unusual about a man who is too confused to find the men’s room and realize that he belongs in it. Now, let’s assume there’s a woman in a stall – an American stall, the kind where the door is about a foot and a half from the floor. Can you promise her that the only men you’re letting in the room are the perfectly non-deviant men who wear dresses and dream of self-mutilation, not any opportunistic men looking to take pictures?Report
Can you promise the only men women will encounter on the street will not have small hidden cameras in their shoes to take upskirt pictures? Can you promise that no lesbian – who is biologically female – who enters a Woman’s Only restroom won’t opportunistically look to take pictures?
Your question is on that level of absurd. There is NO 100% safe space. And the fact that you think transwomen are men who “dream of self mutilation” shows me you aren’t serious since you continue to traffic in transphobic tropes.Report
“Single gender restricted bathrooms don’t keep people any safer. ”
It’s awful hard to be assaulted by someone when you’re the only one in the room, although some might argue the point.
“The Family First Foundation compiled an alleged report of the significance of the issue – and found 29 incidents nationally between 1999 and 2017.”
Oh, so you’re doing the thing I said you’d do, where you’re saying “that number is really low and women shouldn’t be worried”, which is a restatement of “we care too much about women’s safety”.
“…regular men don’t assault them in public restrooms with any frequency either.”
(this is because male-presenting persons are, generally, not permitted in spaces designated for female-presenting persons)
(changing that introduces a safety risk for female-presenting persons)
(and what I want is for you to you say “women should be expected to accept that safety risk because Trans Equality is more important than minimizing safety risks to women”)
(and you’re saying it)
PS all bathrooms should be single-use cubicles.Report
I think the big unstated, and maybe un-study-able factor is that laws (not to mention norms) currently are such that if a man walks into a woman’s bathroom that person will suffer consequences where the man is at minimum removed, quite possibly arrested, maybe even beaten up. And that will happen without necessarily actually attacking a woman or making some obvious effort to see one in a state of undress. Absent other evidence, the law and everyone else is set to assume the worst. I don’t think anyone really knows what will happen if we remove that, or how the sketchy male pervert community would react to it. But I can’t imagine it would be consequence free.Report
Density, Pinky, Brandon and others believe quite sincerely that trans women ARE sketchy male perverts. Whom cis gendered women MSUT BE PROTECTED FROM AT ALL COSTS. Reality be damned apparently.Report
I know several women who are lifelong liberals who feel uncomfortable with the extent to which some of these proposals relax the longstanding social conventions.
But it’s interesting to see that White Male Liberals are now fine with mansplaining to women whether it’s reasonable for them to feel safe or not. Progress!!??Report
Women were worried about stranger danger long before this. And given that 1 in 6 of them have been sexually assaulted they have a right to be worried. Unfortunately 80% of those victims were assaulted by people they knew, under the old sexual norms. I have flat out said this is still statistically the most likely threat. And I take women – including my wife, my daughters and my other female relatives at their word when they raise these fears.
Altering social conventions certainly bring unease, and that has to be acknowledged and dealt with. And you friends have every right to be at the table voicing their concerns.
Can you tell us whether they felt safe before? If so, why? And what about these changes leads them to feel unsafe? There may indeed be policy nuances in that space that need attention.
But right now, the advocacy for this hard and fast social reversion by law isn’t coming from a groundswell of women. Its not supported by any facts that anyone can provide. Best I can tell its coming from men who STILL are not comfortable with women’s agency, and STILL refuse to police their own metaphorical house regarding the sources of rape and other violent sexual assault in this country. People need to be far more worried about a former (and potential future) President of the US who feels entitled to grab women by their genitals then they do the likes of Dylan Mulvaney.Report
“Best I can tell its coming from men who STILL are not comfortable with women’s agency”
You have a common bias towards believing the worst of people who disagree with you and preferring to focus on areas where your own opinions are least threatened. There are plenty of voices out there for these concerns but in all likelihood you’ve already slotted them as being outside your consideration.
If you’re truly interested, JK Rowling is probably the most famous representative of the concerns I mentioned. But she’s already been labelled “transphobe!” even though she is not a man, not a conservative, and not at all uncomfortable with women’s agency (quite the opposite in fact!).Report
As I asked, how do you know who is a man?
Or what their birth certificate says?
The idea being presented by conservatives is based entirely on what yo look llike at a glance:
Beard? Mens room;
Dress and lipstick? Ladies room;
Beard and a dress? GET OUT
But this is absurd since the outward gender appearance has nothing to do with their biological gender and no one here is even pretending otherwise.
The idea is to enforce strict gender appearance norms under the guise of “protecting” someone.Report
Only in the fantasy world of the internet is something absurd merely for falling short of 100% accuracy, 100% of the time. The reality is each approach will result in some false positives and some instances of bad outcomes for individuals. The question is which rule will result in more of each, and how to weigh the impact.Report
The proposed rule is to empower a mob of self appointed gender inspectors to harass anyone at will based on nothing more than an arbitrary code of appearance.Report
I think that is a really weird characterization of what is better described as the well established ‘status quo.’ I’m not going to say people couldn’t ever come to different conclusions on this topic. But I don’t understand how can one claim to have a sound position without at least a little willingness to do some chesterton’s fence type analysis on why it might once have been deemed a good idea to segregate the sexes in certain places.Report
The US has approximately 143,368,343 females. If 1 in 6 are victims of sexual assault, then 23,894,723 have been assaulted. Since 80% report knowing their assailant, that leaves 4,778,944 females assaulted by people they don’t know – which transwomen in women’s bathrooms would certainly take into account. Unfortunately, these statistics mean that women STILL bear enormous risk of being sexually assaulted because most assaults occur outside bathrooms and most occur from known assailants.
Our best estimates are that 1.6 Million Americans in total (youth and adults) are transgendered. Even if every one of them were sexual assailants against cis-women, transgendered persons would sill account for only 1/3rd of potential assailants. Half of transgendered Americans report being sexually assaulted (roughly 800,000), including 10% at the hands of police and a similar number at the hands of healthcare workers. 46% of transgendered teens who are sexually assaulted are attacked when they are in bathrooms of their biological/assigned at birth gender.
The strawman you are building and trying hard to keep intact is that its ok to preserve the ILLUSION of safety for women in public restrooms while continuing to enable reported sexual assault on transgender persons. Assaults which do impact their liberty.
So no, I’m asking, or suggesting or requiring that women suck it up to keep transgendered persons safe. I’m saying, based on available statistics that women are no safer from sexual assault under this regulation then they were before it, AND that transwomen (particularly teenage transwomen) are at much higher risk of sexual assault BECUASE of this regulation.Report
is there a nonzero risk increase to women from allowing male-presenting person to enter spaces formerly designated only for female-presenting persons
yes or no
just say you think women should accept more risk, dude, just say the words, just stop pretending that isn’t what you mean. just say it. that’s all I want here. just say the words. “women should accept more risk”. just say that. you don’t need to explain how the risk is small, you don’t need to explain how it’s immoral to not do it, you don’t need to explain how there are other risks that other people face, you don’t need to explain how I’m a big dumb jerk with a big dumb fat face that says dumb things. just say that you think women should accept more risk.
PS all bathrooms should be single-use cubicles.Report
I see no evidence there is increased risk beyond that which women already have in these spaces. I see enough existing risk that isn’t eliminated by this regulation to believe it is not about protecting women.Report
As I recall, you also said that women should be incarcerated with cellmates who have penises. I think you even specified that you knew of no rapes that had happened in New Jersey because of it.Report
It’s conservatives who are passing laws forcing male-presenting people to use women’s restrooms.
So you tell me- are Republicans putting women at risk by forcing transgender into women’s rooms?Report
I don’t want to be overly credulous towards the stated intentions of GOP legislators with these bathroom bills. It’s not really clear to me who can be said to have started it and I’m not sure it matters at this point. However I will say that trying to retcon reality isn’t a terribly effective way to make the case for trans access to these places. Bathrooms and locker rooms and similar areas were sex segregated, not ‘gender identity’ segregated, for womens’ safety. Often this was done, and demanded by women, because the absence of separate accomodations left them unduly exposed to predatory men, which amounted to a de facto denial of access to the larger business or work space or wherever altogether. Is a woman really allowed at the gym or the office or in a restaurant, if she risks a man following her into the bathroom, even if just to listen in? Or so the hypothetical goes.
Now, maybe we as a society really have moved passed all of that. Or maybe there’s a middle ground, with a lot more third, sex neutral options. But we don’t need to pretend that the intent all along was that men identifying as women be allowed into them, when the reality is that no one was ever thinking in those sorts of terms and understood the governing rule to be sex in the most reductive understanding possible.Report
I’ll ask again:
A husky male-presenting person asks to use the restroom.
Which one do Republicans want this person to use?Report
Biological women presenting as men can’t possibly be a physical threat to a man Chip. Everyone knows this.Report
Again, I refer back to my previous comment, about how only in the crazy world of the internet does the existence of rare outliers serve as a rebuttal to general rules that work the vast, vast majority of the time. This is how you end up proposing things that defy all common sense and human experience about the world.Report
And again, I remind that that those rare outliers are being forced to conform by law to prior standards that both restrict their liberty AND expose them to increased potential for harm while delivering no change in the alleged threat the law is aimed to mitigate. Its why Chip keeps asking about transmen. These laws serve no useful purpose except to keep trans people marginalized and subject to increased harm. They are unnecessary. And frankly immoral. because here’s a little secret – trans women have been using women’s restrooms for years during their transitions. If there was going to be an uptick in harm to cis-women from transwomen being in there we’d already have seen it. There isn’t.Report
This is a misunderstanding of the issue. The problem with what you’re proposing is that in your quest to accommodate the outliers you’re failing to consider what the consequences might be of removing the rules that do in fact make sense most of the time. I am open to ideas on that front, but the argument that you can get rid of something so basic and ingrained and just expect things to go along as if nothing happened strikes me as pretty pollyannaish.
Chip’s trans man thing is too preposterous to even take seriously. The fact that there are female UFC fighters who could probably kick a lot of men’s asses in the octagon does not mean that there are a lot of places where the average woman is not taking a serious risk by entering the mens bathroom. Nor does it convince anyone that no one should bat an eye at seeing what appears to be a man entering a womens bathroom because hur dee dur dur ‘HoW dO YoU KnOw wHaT’s oN tHeIr bIrTh cErTiFiCaTe.’ Seriously, this is a silly argument.Report
These laws would REQUIRE what appears to be a man to enter a woman’s bathroom. Under penalty of law – usually fines, and in the case of the university faculty – under penalty of firing. Its not an outlier – that’s what the reasonable and prudent person will interpret from the language as presented. SO if you don’t want male appearing people in the women’s restroom, you can’t support these laws.
That aside you are also misunderstanding the issue – under the current system, transwomen enter women’s bathrooms all the time. Because their psychologists won’t sign off on gender reassignment surgery if they don’t live and present and function in the real world as women for a year or two. This has been the case for decades. IF transwomen presented an added threat to cis-women we’d know about it by now.
So, these rules that inflict monetary and career penalties on transpeople for not using the bathroom they are assigned based on gender at birth are the things seeking to alter how we deal with the outliers. Because until now the outliers went unnoticed.Report
“A husky male-presenting person asks to use the restroom.
Which one do Republicans want this person to use?”
This would be a much easier question to answer if people like you weren’t insisting that there’s zero problem if they go into the women’s restroom.
PS all bathrooms should be single-use cubicles.Report
Until the day arrives when all restrooms are single occupancy, the question stands.
Which bathroom does this person use?
According to the laws being proposed by Republicans, this husky bearded person is required by law to use the same restroom as your daughter.
I know this isn’t the outcome they want which is my point.
What the Republicans want is a societal norm in which husky bearded people use one room, and delicate female-presenting people use the other.
But people who are androgenous are simply not welcome. This is the Republicans’ goal.Report
“According to the laws being proposed by Republicans, this husky bearded person is required by law to use the same restroom as your daughter.”
Chip, I’d be entirely happy to let this “husky bearded heavy-set person” go into the men’s room. The problem is that you really want them to be able to go into the women’s room if they feel like it. So we get a stupid heavy-handed law, made necessary by the fact that you and people like you can’t be trusted to act like adult human beings.Report
Wow – you really can’t see the trees, much less the forest?
Chip is talking about transmen, who were assigned female at birth due to the appearance of their genitals, not cis-gendered men. These bills – which all require bathroom use based on gender assigned at birth – mean transmen who present as husky and bearded are REQUIRED to enter the women’s room. So at the very least you’d have repeated situations where a cis woman exits a stall, sees a person with facial hair and other male secondary characteristics and flees in terror. The cops are called, the “man” is detained, and has to undergo a forced medical examination to determine that he is biologically female.
In the alternative, a transwoman who has not had gender reassignment surgery would have to enter a mens bathroom, and while not likely to be hauled out and arrested, would still be subject to psychological attack and potentially physical assault.
In neither case is cis-womens safety increased. In both cases harm to transpersons increases. This is not about women’s safety.Report
“These bills – which all require bathroom use based on gender assigned at birth – mean transmen who present as husky and bearded are REQUIRED to enter the women’s room. ”
Okay, so you clearly think this is a cool slam-dunk that I can’t actually reply to.
But if the law says that You Must Use The Bathroom Designated For Your Assigned Gender At Birth, then the gender presentations of the persons doesn’t matter, because it’s a matter of law that No Penis Shall Be Present In The Ladies’ Room.
PS all bathrooms should be single-use cubicles.Report
If gender presentation didn’t matter, we’d never know if a penis was present in a woman’s restroom, nor a vagina present in a mens restroom. because transwomen would be allowed to pee in peace as would transmen. Because trans people aren’t sexual deviants seeking to assault cis women.Report
“[T]rans people aren’t sexual deviants seeking to assault cis women.”
(it’s not trans people we’re worried about here.)Report
They are the only ones impacted by these bills. The men who would have entered the women’s restrooms to commit sexual assault BEFORE this were going to do so and did so. This won’t impact them one bit. They will still enter women’s restrooms to commit assaults.
But trans people will be actively, intentionally harmed by these laws.Report
Philip, I like you man, but this has to be among the craziest assumptions I’ve ever heard. There are a lot of dudes out there who have real trouble toeing the line as it is. I can’t imagine how saying ‘you may go in as long as you don’t attack’ results in anything other than further boundary pushing by those individuals, up to and including to the point that it makes it impossible for women to go certain places at all.Report
Transwomen are not men.
Transmen are not women.
They have physical bodies that don’t align with their psychological and emotional make up at a foundational level.
They identify AND present as opposite of the gender assigned at birth, or seek to do so because doing so aligns what they see in the mirror with what they experience about themslves. THis is the standard of care to treat gender dysphoria.
Trans people are no more likly to be sexually deviant or prone to sexual assault then cis-gendered people.
Transgendered people have been using the bathroom of the gender they wish to be (womens rooms for transwomen and mens rooms for transmen) for decades because presenting in public as their preferred gender is a medical requirement for treatment on any part of the spectrum of interventions they may pursue.
Laws REQURIEING people to use bathrooms that match their assigned at birth gender will force transmen to enter womens restrooms if they are seriously enforced. They will require transwomen to enter mens restrooms if they are seriously enforced.
They will NOT increase the safety of cis-gendered women by excluding trans women form the restroom.
They will increase harm to both sets of transpersons.
There are more then enough existing laws to deal iwth cis-gendered men who seek to sexually assault women in restrooms an dother places – though the place a woman is most likely to be assaulted will STILL be her own home by someone she knows.
These laws exist to HARM transpersons for having the audacity to try and live as who they believe they are.
Those are the facts. Those are the conclusions. I get that they are unpopular. but lack of popularity doesn’t make them wrong.Report
Right, which means that No Vaginas Shall Be Present In The Men’s Room.
So we are all saying the same ting, that the bearded husky person with a vagina is required by Republican law to use the Ladies’ Room.Report
“So we are all saying the same ting, that the bearded husky person with a vagina is required by Republican law to use the Ladies’ Room.”
Chip, my dude, my guy, my brother in Christ, you have this notion that you’re just ruining me here, but in fact you and I are saying the same thing, which is that “bearded husky persons” ought not to be in the Ladies’ Room.Report
EVERY Bathroom bill out there REQUIRES husky bearded persons who were assigned FEMALE at birth to use the women’s room. If they don’t belong in those bathrooms, then the laws need to change. You have yet to actually go there.Report
Trans is a process. During the process you can have someone with a top that doesn’t match the bottom. You can most certainly end with someone not matching their starting point.
These “at birth” laws may not match the reality and may have results that clearly don’t match the designers’ desires.Report
What you are trying to not say is that the purpose of these bills is to enforce an orthodoxy of “only two genders” on the world, thereby making bearded persons with vaginas un-persons with no lawful place to exist.Report
The problem you and Pinky and Density and Brandon are STILL avoiding is there is zero statistical evidence that transwomen present a threat to cis women in restrooms or any place else. It doesn’t matter what the prior social convention was or is. These bills are presented as increasing cis women’s safety without any evidence otherwise. Chip keeps asking about husky male presenting persons precisely to drive the point that not even all trans people are deemed a threat – transmen are never discussed in these fights, though if we follow the “logic” of “men dressing as women” that keeps getting applied then “women dressing as men” ought to deserve scrutiny as well. They are never going to get it owning a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is the vapid assumption that women need protection from aggressive men who can’t help themselves.
And all this also whistles by the graveyard full of existing enforcable laws that will punish a man dressing as a woman who enters a woman’s restroom and commits sexual assault. The legal protection exists.
So lacking any evidence of an positive change in women’s safety, and surrounded by a host of laws that will punish behavior should it be committeed, I conclude these laws and rules are not about cis women’s safety but about denying the basic humanity of trans people, who are a small enough minority of our population that the GOP believes they can hurt them for political gain with no repercussions.Report
“These bills are presented as increasing cis women’s safety…”
They’re not reducing it. I recognize that government workers aren’t promoted for intelligence but at least you maybe could recognize that there’s a difference between those two statements.
“…this also whistles by the graveyard full of existing enforcable laws that will punish a man dressing as a woman who enters a woman’s restroom and commits sexual assault.”
Don’t worry baby, after he flashes you we’ll definitely get him. Her. Whatever.
“[L]acking any evidence of an (sic) positive change in women’s safety…”
You’re honestly telling me that allowing let male-presenting persons to enter a women’s restroom and remain there unchallenged does not represent a change to women’s safety?
You’re really saying that letting men go into the women’s restroom and hang out is a situation where I need to provide evidentiary proof that it’s an increase in risk for women?
PS all bathrooms should be single-use cubicles.Report
Transwomen are not male presenting. Transmen are female presenting.
A bill requiring a transman to use the restroom based on his assigned sex at birth (female) would REQUIRE a male presenting person to enter and use the women’s restroom. So if the goal is to keep male presenting persons (regardless of genitals) out of women’s restrooms, the bill is a failure and offers no increased protection to cis women – or to trans men.
Likewise a bill which forces a transwoman to use the restroom of at-birth gender assignment (male) means you have a female presenting person forced to use the men’s room with no increase in safety for cis-gendered women and a likely increase in danger for the transwoman. In this case such bills “succeed” in that they keep transwomen out women’s restrooms – with no increase in cis women’s safety, but “fail” because they increase the likelihood of harm to trans women.
I get that you don’t want this to be the outcome but its where all this heads. And its useless and pointless, unless the goal is harm transwomen.Report
“Transwomen are not male presenting. Transmen are female presenting.”
I don’t see how it’s a problem for a female-presenting person to enter a female-designated space.
I do think the reason there are female-designated spaces is that women have situations where they’re vulnerable and would prefer not to have male-presenting persons around during that time, because male-presenting persons have historically presented a risk when around vulnerable women. And therefore relaxing the prohibition on male-presenting persons in female-designated spaces is a problem.
PS all bathrooms should be single-use cubicles.Report
Transwomen present as female. They have to as part of the standard of care for their HRT and sex reassignment surgery if
they choose to pursue that. Transwomen also WANT to present as women.
This law, and other bathroom bills like it say that they still MUST use the men’s bathroom even though they present as female because they were called male at birth. The same laws say the transmen – who present as male – MUST use the women’s restroom because they were assigned female at birth.
So if you really, really want to keep ALL male presenting people OUT of women’s restrooms, you can’t have laws that REQUIRE transmen to use women’s restrooms. Which these laws do.Report
I thought “transwomen” meant biological men who identify as women, and vice versa. You’re saying it’s about presentation?Report
Existing norms, rules, and laws were established with no consideration for the very (post) modern concept of gender identity. You’re assuming without any evidence that they have no impact on safety, and that removal of them will not change things. I don’t understand how you can be so sure of that, which was the point of my original comment.Report
Transwomen have been required for decades by their psychologists to present as women during HRT and before gender reassignment surgery. That means they have had the opportunity to enter and use women’s restrooms for decades, albeit on the sly. If they were going to create an increase in attacks, we’d see it by now. Ditto transmen, who always seem to be left out of the hysteria. And as Chip notes above (and so do I) these bills would REQUIRE male presenting transmen to enter and use women’s restrooms.
A cis-male intent on sexually assaulting a women isn’t going to care about bathroom bills, just as they have not historically cared about all the other laws and societal norms against sexual assault. Transwomen aren’t intent on sexually assaulting women then cis-men. This law, and all the others like it exists to prevent transwomen from living as women. It creates a greater likelihood of harm for trans people. It’s not about safety of cis-women.Report
This kind of concern trolling falls flat because lefties have a totally nonsensical idea of what individual liberty means. It’s like when you think freedom of speech means that teachers should have an individual right to teach whatever they want, on the clock, at taxpayer expense, to a captive audience of children who are legally required to attend. You’re just saying words without any real understanding of what they mean.
I think that there’s a pretty broad, bipartisan agreement that a man entering a women’s bathroom is a violation of a reasonable social convention, and that it’s totally legitimate for an employer to fire a man who repeatedly does this at his workplace after being explicitly instructed not to. We all agree that this is not an infringement on individual liberty, right?
“But trans women are women!”
Sure, fine. But just acknowledge that that’s the actual point of contention. This isn’t about the government telling private businesses how they have to manage their bathrooms. It’s not about the government sending people people to prison. It’s government setting rules for how government employees should behave in the workplace, and enforcing those rules with disciplinary measures maxing out at termination. Almost nobody has any objection to any part of this except the part about prioritizing sex over self-identified gender.
I see this kind of thing all the time. People routinely grossly misrepresent the actual point of contention in policy disputes. Why can’t people just be honest about what we’re disagreeing about? Why the bad-faith insistence that it’s actually about something completely different?Report
The point of contention rests on the lie that transwomen are still men (Perhaps by dint of a penis, perhaps by dint of hand waving) and thus have no right to be in a “woman’s” space. That lie is compounded by the additional lie that transwomen are sexual deviants, and so the pernicious conclusion in places like Florida and by the GOP is that transwomen (who are really men) must be excluded from these spaces. This is, of course, a deeply flawed and statistically unsupportable moral panic, which seeks to reduce or eliminate the liberty of transpeople to exist as who they are, while not actually offering any protection to cis-gendered women in spaces they already occupy.
That clear enough for you?Report
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday the state would be tripling California Highway Patrol resources in the Los Angeles area to help combat organized retail theft.
The CHP has been tasked by the state to battle retail crime, and the Governor’s Office said their efforts have been successful.
But following major large-scale burglaries across the Los Angeles region in recent weeks, the Governor says additional help is needed.
The announcement by Newsom follows a similar announcement made hours earlier by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other local leaders, establishing a new organized retail theft task force to crack down on “flash mob“-style burglaries.
That regional task force will be similar in nature to the CHP’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force, and will include statewide partners, including Highway Patrol. CHP will be expanding its resources and allocating more investigators specifically in L.A.”
https://ktla.com/news/california/newsom-triples-chp-enforcement-in-los-angeles-to-combat-retail-thefts/Report
If I were an LAPD officer, I’d be embarrassed by this.Report
Per the LEO bill of rights police officers are free from the obligation to feel embarrassed about anything.Report
“local government is so co-opted or corrupt or incompetent that it’s unable to enforce public order and the state responds by sending professionals not beholden to established power structures” is a time-honored tradition in American law enforcement.Report
Maybe if, perhaps, shoplifters and such were actually prosecuted there wouldn’t be this problem. And a lot of this is “organized”…..ie organized crime, not random. You reap what you sow.Report
The Trump Mugshot discourse is bigfooting the Republican debates.
Report
you were told it would. Did you not believe the sources that said so?Report
I was also told that it wouldn’t. I was also told that nobody in the real world cares about this entire sideshow.
We have confirmation that those who said that it would bigfoot the debates were correct.
Which is always nice to have for the next time the people who predict things predict something else.Report
You’re comparing the debates to the real world?Report
The Bee: Fulton County Releases First Official Portrait Of The 47th President Of The United StatesReport
https://youtu.be/0oi9mpzZXkQ?si=Ic-SXjdtKRKzpWXzReport
Hey, there was a minor victory on the whole “Qualified Immunity” front.
Seems silly that this had to get all the way to the 5th.Report
Anything “serious” said about zombies runs into the problem that it’s clearly parody.Report
DoJ sues Elon Musk for following the law and not hiring illegal immigrants. This is not the first such case they’ve taken up, just the first big fish.Report
right, because people granted legal refugee status and people granted asylum are still somehow undocumented migrants? Fascinating:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/24/world/spacex-justice-department-lawsuit-hiring-scn/index.htmlReport
I’ve seen this before. Very easy to believe that HR actually thinks this.
It’s short hand for “HR doesn’t want to get involved in sponsoring immigrants”.Report
The discussion over at Ars Technica includes a number of people who work in situations where ITAR applies (and huge amounts of what SpaceX does falls under ITAR). They point out several things. The part I found most interesting is ITAR regulations are written by the Dept of State. This would not be the first time that the Dept of Justice has disagreed with State over interpretation of the rules. State may well submit an amicus curiae filing siding with SpaceX, they have apparently done it before in other cases.
I’m just reporting what the Ars commenters have said. My only personal experience with ITAR was a panicked middle-of-the-night call from some of our employees doing telecom equipment installations in Russia who had just discovered that one of the software modules was on the ITAR list.Report
I have done ITAR work inside the federal system. You can employ foreign nationals to do it with some restrictions. Its not hard to manage if you choose to do so, and asking for help setting up your system before you do it is way easier then after you et a hand slap.Report
Absolutely. Setting things up for hiring foreign nationals was probably nowhere near the top of the list during the decade while SpaceX was figuring out if they could stay in business.
I mentioned that commenters at Ars thought the Dept of State might have a different opinion than the Dept of Justice. I’m curious about whether NASA and the NRO say anything like, “SpaceX is the only qualified provider of launch services for certain science and national security flights. Perhaps you shouldn’t jostle their elbows right now.”Report
The phrase “Its not hard to manage” is poisonous to a small or maybe even medium company. And after they grow past that point it’s part of their culture and no one in HR will have any experience touching it.Report
Stunt continues to backfire spectacularly:
A bus carrying 39 people seeking asylum arrived at Union Station from Texas on Saturday morning, the 10th such bus Gov. Greg Abbott has dispatched to Los Angeles since June.
“The City has continued to work with City Departments, the County, and a coalition of nonprofit organizations, in addition to our faith partners, to execute a plan set in place earlier this year,” said Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass, in a written statement. “As we have before, when we became aware of the bus yesterday, we activated our plan.”
Once at the high school they were met by representatives of the L.A. Welcomes Collective, which has been assisting the roughly 400 people sent to L.A. in recent months from Texas under the state’s so-called Operation Lone Star.
At the high school, the group received legal advice and practical assistance like showers and food. Many have already made contact with family or sponsors in the Los Angeles area whom they will stay with while the legal process for their asylum application plays out, Cabrera said.
“Most of these folks are ready to work. They’re ready to contribute to their community,” he said.
The group arrived less than a week after Texas officials defied cautions against road travel and sent a bus carrying 16 families through a tropical storm to L.A., a decision Bass called “a despicable act beyond politics.”
A spokesman for the Texas governor defended the actions saying, “Texas is a poor and backward region, where the government can scarcely keep the electricity flowing and a modern social safety net doesn’t exist like it does in the developed world. We look to the wealthy advanced regions like California to provide support for modern services which we are unable to provide.”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-26/a-10th-bus-of-asylum-seekers-arrives-in-l-a-from-texasReport
Backfire? Texas won this round when Bass labeled it as “a despicable act beyond politics”.
It’s unreasonable to ask tiny border communities to deal with hundreds or thousands of people coming in every day. A really good solution is some sort of quick dispersal.Report
Well, that’s fair.
I mean, a tiny backward region like Texas can’t be expected to do things like a modern developed state such as California.
California should start some sort of refugee program for Texans who are fleeing their failed state and just want a better life.Report
You’d think that people would know that Texas *LOST* two congressional seats in 2020 and California *GAINED* a seat!
If this doesn’t tell us everything, I don’t know what would.Report
JB reversed it. California lost a seat and Texas gained two.
That aside, if California is serious about being pro-immigration, then they should have large refugee programs. It is absurd to claim both that you’re a pre-immigration sanctuary city and that it’s a crime against human rights to send refugees there.
On a side note, the US really should be accepting lots of immigrants, especially young and/or well educated ones. Brain drain is a thing and we should do more of it. The US is already multi-cultural and how to handle cultural conflicts is already well handled by the laws.
Uniquely, the US could handle large numbers of people and just turn them into Americans. That’s not something the Polish (etc) could do.Report
California has it’s own border with Mexico. SO it’s not like they aren’t already processing folks coming into the US.
That’s actually the most effective part of our visa program at the moment. It’s why you see so many doctors, and engineers, and chemists and the like who are foreign nationals. The people showing up in El Paso and Laredo asking for asylum aren’t those folks. They are the people who pick our fruits and vegetables, build our houses, cut our beef and chicken, clean our offices and care for our kids. We nee them too, but our system to process them severely lags demand for them.Report
You sure? Because it sure as heck seems like a bus carrying 39 people is bringing these guys to their knees.Report
It may be as simple as where resources are located.
Some months back asylum seekers being released in El Paso were self-organizing bus rides to Denver. The problem for the city wasn’t that they couldn’t handle the number of people, it was that they couldn’t set up processing at Union Station.Report
When undocumented migrants go into Texas, where do they tend to get processed?Report
I’m old enough to remember when Team Blue was the party of Xenophobia. They have a pro-immigration wing, but they only get lip service. Thus the pearl clutching when they’re forced to do what boarder cities routinely do.
If we get immigration reform, it will come from Team Red. This was showcased when Bush2 tried to do that. Red has a serious moats wing thus we need a Nixon goes to China moment.Report
California’s boarder is about one tenth that of Texas and there are multiple other reasons why they have less of a problem.Report
Looking at this as ‘xenophobia’ is in my opinion emblematic of why we can’t solve the problem. In a vacuum (or an economics text book) immigration has some net economic benefits and we should certainly be making the case for that where appropriate. But it isn’t net benefiting anyone when ‘immigration’ as applied to reality is creating an impression of total government failure and incompetence and undermining core understandings of democratic legitimacy of the state. We seem to have a problem where people say they are defending the former but in practice defending the latter.Report
The gov has passed laws that people aren’t willing to follow. We’re in “prohibition” territory.
The way to get us out of “total government failure and incompetence” is to pass laws that reflect the reality that exists and not what we want to exist.Report
I don’t see how it is possible to use ‘prohibition’ as a parallel when we have something like 700k people legally getting permanent residency annually, plus many, many others in some other part of the legitimate process. It’s a lazy comparison.Report
Prohibition is a good example because for every one person getting permanent residency, there are hundreds more wanting it but unable to get it.
Lee Esq can provide more background, but the laws around immigration are designed to prohibit the flow of immigrants, not facilitate them.
There isn’t any sane reason why it should take years to process someone from initial application to final citizenship.Report
At the height of the last round of immigration reform debates under Obama – which went nowhere – there was an NPR story that has stuck with me that illustrates this very well. Farmers wanting to get migrant workers legally have to apply for the migrant worker’s visa 18 months before they need said migrant. They have to do so by name for each migrant, and they have to have housing and transportation in place ready to go. One farmer quoted in the story essentially said he doesn’t know what he’s planting in 18 months much who – or how many- migrants he will need for harvest.
This is a reality of immigration law in the US today, and one no one seems to want to actually change.Report
Immigration is a problem like homelessness or police reform where the average voter doesn’t really have a powerful interest in solving it because to do so would require sacrifices and tradeoffs most people find unpalatable.
And the status quo is largely invisible to most people so they can ignore it most of the time and paper it over with platitudes or wildly unrealistic suggestions.
This is where an administrative state of a republic would work best, where the state could administer solutions on behalf of the citizenry.Report
At my first job, the worst marriage petitions to deal with were White or African-American men married to Asian women. This was mainly because most White and African-American men had no direct or indirect experience with USCIS until they married an immigrant women. They could not believe the system as it worked.
Most pro-immigrant people tend to be in a wouldn’t it be nice vain and are harder to mobilize than the potential and actual xenophobes. The problem with the state administrating solutions on behalf of the citizens is that the citizens are not close to united on this issue.Report
I would phrase it somewhat differently. The issue with immigration is that the people really passionate about it are either xenophobic or can’t vote. The people who are for more immigration already vote Democratic but it is probably not a top priority for many/most of them.
The police/prison reform debate in my opinion is framed by highly reductive to bad faith arguments all around. A lot of cherry picking of key facts and figures to avoid difficult questions or sweep them under the rug.
An administrative state might be able to do some tinkering around the edges for incremental reform but any state in a democratic republic still requires legitimacy and consent of the governed. I don’t think sneaky police reform or open borders is that clever.Report
Immigration change tends to come either coupled with great reform movements like the INA replacing the National Quotas system during the Civil Rights era or when the moment seems calling for a crack down. Reagan’s amnesty came coupled with calls for stricter enforcement and the appearance of work authorization cards and Clinton’s IRAIRA was also during an era calling for new restrictions.Report
I’ve talked about this on the other blog but I still think that a lot of human rights talk is basically away around the issue of democratic legitimacy. That is, it is a general attempt to give politicians away to be much more liberal and progressive than the voters are willing to be. The theory is that the politicians can institute some really progressive legislation and tell voters that they had to because of human rights.
Doing things more advanced than the voters wanted might have been a lot easier in the age before the Internet allowed for immediate and intense voicing of dissent. You could kind of get some sort of amnesty done in the past without too many very political people knowing about it. These days probably not.Report
There is a similar issue with short term performances in the United States. The official visa for this is the O or P visas but these both assume long term stays in the United States. They don’t assume somebody flying from Europe to the eastern seaboard for a long weekend, doing what they do, and flying back. From my friends with tats, I heard there is a similar issue with tattoo artists and people wanting to get work done from famous ones.
The usual work around is for somebody to come in on ETSA or a B-visa and violate the ETSA or B-visa by working for money. Sometime in the Obama administration, they started clamping down hard on this.Report
No, this is a really wrong and unproductive way to approach the issue. I don’t want to be pedantic but words have meaning. Prohibition means something is totally disallowed which is not the case for the United States, which is still a leading destination of legal immigration in the world. Stating otherwise is a tactic to set the terms of the debate as if government policy is totally irrelevant which it clearly isn’t.Report
If you are going to legally prohibit me from doing something, that other people are allowed doesn’t change my situation.
Big picture we have massive numbers of people who aren’t willing to follow the law. The law is being used to virtue signal “that something is bad” by politicians to people who don’t engage in that thing.
Prohibition comparisons are appropriate because the laws and their disconnect from reality are a huge part of the problem.
That disconnect is creating problems, trying to enforce the law creates problems, and so on.Report
Alcohol was perfectly legal during Prohibition, just under very tightly controlled circumstances.
The word is meaningful because the state is actively trying to discourage, or prohibit, immigration.
And it fits in the broader sense of “Laws which are impossible to enforce because too many citizens want to break them”.
In fact, I think it would be nearly impossible to find an American who really supports a strict enfocement of immigration laws, once they fully grasp the consequences.Report
The Republicans didn’t see how the Martha’s Vineyard story made them look bad either.
Here’s a story from June:
Los Angeles City Council votes to make LA a sanctuary cityReport
If you’re going to be welcoming to immigrants, then to be consistent, you need to be welcoming to immigrants. Flipping out and claiming you meant other people (not you) should be welcoming to immigrants does not impress.
For that matter congratulating yourself on how you managed a tiny number also does not impress. Nor does proclaiming it’s a massive human rights abuse that you are dealing with this and not others.
Team Blue is correct in that immigrants are a net positive, but I don’t think they’re serious about it and when they’re called on that their outrage showcases it.Report
Whether it backfired or not depends on what the goal was, but one effect of it was that you and many others with no personal impact from illegal immigration have spent more time thinking about it than you would have otherwise.Report
I’m honestly so much more proud of Mayor Bass than I was previously and my scorn and disdain for Abbot has only increased which I didn’t think was even possible.
YMMVReport
Here’s where he said that he has not read the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
But I can see being proud of the mayor saying YOU PEOPLE WERE NOT INVITED, I guess.
Republicans do it all the time.Report
The bad-faith troll strikes again!Report
“LA has not extended an invitation asking for people to come.”
This is where you check to see if LA voted to become a Sanctuary City if you don’t want to read the Emma Lazarus poem again.
Here’s a link to CBS News that tells you whether it did. The date of the story is June 9th of this year.
“Wait, you mean 2 months and 19 days ago?”
“Yes. 2 months and 19 days ago.”Report
What, specifically did LA state were its forth coming actions as a sanctuary city?Report
prohibiting city resources from being used for any federal immigration enforcement
prohibit city cooperation with federal immigration authorities in “execution of their duties” as it pertains to immigration enforcement.
California is already a sanctuary state. The signed law from 2017 limits the use of state and local resources to assist United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”).
Note LA already does those things it’s proposing, however that was because the Mayor ordered it. This would take it to a local law.Report
Right – I was trying to get Jay to look into what a sanctuary city actually is, so he might have an “Ah Ha” moment about why receiving unannounced bus loads of migrants could be a concern.Report
That’s normally a Red talking point.Report
Red states are doing the shipping on buses and planes these days . . . . Frankly if this was ever anything more then a stunt then Abbot would have called Newsom and they would have worked out a process. Abbot just wants to pump and dump cause he thinks it makes him look manly.Report
You understand that Red states are not going into Mexico and plucking these people out to ship to other areas, right? These are people already illegally entering the country and overwhelming the border towns.
I’m absolutely not defending the practice — in a more sensible world, everyone would be cooperating on how best to manage and spread the load. But your comment is simply ignoring the underlying problem.Report
Two red states – Texas and Florida are doing the shipping (though Florida is shipping from Texas so I am not really sure that counts). Arizona and New Mexico aren’t, and California has it’s own direct border.
As to the underlying problem – if our economy didn’t have need for these people (which it does) and we hadn’t spent 5 decades fighting the USSR in a proxy war in South and Central America (which we did) and we hadn’t abandoned the Brasero guest worker program in the 960’s when the civil rights movement occurred, we would not have a problem. We created this issue right here at home. We have to fix it. Not the migrants.Report
No. The vast bulk of this “shipping” is done by the immigrants themselves showing up at the boarder.
Red is forwarding a tiny fraction of 1% of what they’re getting.
Labeling that tiny fraction of 1% a serious problem is also pointing out that 10,000x the exact same problem is much worse.Report
The orderly transfer of refugees is something to be applauded.
Had Abbot and DeSantis simply asked California to accept the transfer of refugees, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
But that’s not what they’re doing is it?
They went to great lengths to try to make the transfer as chaotic and harmful as possible. We can see it right here, with the various comments about how this “makes the Blue states look bad”.
The purpose isn’t to transfer people its to pull a political stunt, using people as cannon fodder.Report
Yes.
I don’t view this as unethical because the refugees are likely better off for having this happen. Being tossed to the head of the “needs” line in LA is better than being tossed into a red boarder state refugee camp.
Being randomly relocated by the state you’re illegally moving to is presumably expected. This is significantly better than many alternatives.
It’d be a lot better still if LA would announce they’ll take 700 a day and work with some boarder community in crisis.Report
Here is why you are a bad-faith troll Jaybird:
1. You have admitted in other threads that you don’t think multiculturalism works;
2. You are too cowardly to admit that you kind of admire Abbott and DeSantis for just shipping refugees to blue states and cities as a troll.
3. You keep pointing out to tweets of city officials and politicians saying they are overwhelmed but can you find an example of migrants or refugees being turned away or sent elsewhere?
As Chip points out below. Abbott and DeSantis are not doing this in a coordinated or orderly matter as possible. They are doing it as messily as possible to inflict chaos and put cities to a breaking point. Resources and absorption abilities are not infinite and an influx of tens of thousands of people can strain any city, even ones with millions of people. These are refugees who do not speak English, they might not even speak Spanish, they almost certainly do not have friends or family in the areas they are being shipped to. They need social workers, housing, food, and are not authorized to work legally. Leeesq can tell you how long it takes to get a work permit as a refugee.
But here you are, cherry picking stories and tweets so you can jump up and down and call liberals hypocrites because you obviously hate liberals so much.Report
Put cities to the breaking point? A city of 4 million people is going to be broken by a one time push of 70 immigrants?
We average 4k to 10k a day. There are tiny places that have to deal with hundreds a day.
IMHO it’s extremely unrealistic to think that fixing this issue is as simple as Abbott and DeSantis picking up the phone and talking to the powers that be in California.
If they’re going to flip out over 70 and call it a crisis and talk about how this creates chaos, then there’s no way they’re willing to accept 700 a day. They’re not really in favor of immigration. They just want a narrow slice of voters to think they are while not doing anything.
RE: multiculturalism
There are advantages and disadvantages. We should be owning our multiculturalism.
The part I strongly object to is the idea that all cultures will get equal outcomes, i.e. that the only differences are foods. Culture of poverty is a thing and a problem.
Similarly if you’re pointing to a high-trust mono-culture and proclaiming that’s how you want to do things, then the argument has internal conflicts.
It’s not that multi-culturalism doesn’t “work”, it’s that it’s implied that it’s going to be low trust.Report
Yes, I don’t think that multiculturalism works.
This is why I argue for stuff like “assimilation” and “cultural assumptions toward assimilation”.
It’s not that I kind of admire them for doing it, it’s that them doing it is funny.
You keep pointing out to tweets of city officials and politicians saying they are overwhelmed but can you find an example of migrants or refugees being turned away or sent elsewhere?
Do the ones sent to Martha’s Vineyard count?
As Chip points out below. Abbott and DeSantis are not doing this in a coordinated or orderly matter as possible. They are doing it as messily as possible to inflict chaos and put cities to a breaking point.
What percentage of their undocumented are they sending?
I submit: If it’s in the single digits of percentage, the breaking point is not being caused by the governors saying “SHARE IN THIS BURDEN!”
Resources and absorption abilities are not infinite and an influx of tens of thousands of people can strain any city, even ones with millions of people.
OH YOU DON’T SAY
These are refugees who do not speak English, they might not even speak Spanish, they almost certainly do not have friends or family in the areas they are being shipped to. They need social workers, housing, food, and are not authorized to work legally.
Sounds like Sanctuary Cities are best poised to handle such things.Report
But, for the record, I’m a *HUGE* fan of EPCOT multiculturalism.Report
It’s what keeps Taco Bell in business.Report
Here is a fun article about Taco Bell failing to take off in Mexico.
Panda Express has taken off in the Philippines and Japan but not so much in China.
I can only blame Xenophobia.Report
Gotta admire the can do American spirit that would lead Taco Bell to think it could be successful in Mexico!Report
Not sure if you watched East Bound and Down but it sounds exactly like something Kenny Powers would do in the second season. ‘Mexico is the biggest market for tacos there is. How could it fail?’Report
Kenny Fishin’ Powers!Report
Less than 0.1%. Order of mag will be 0.01%
70 is a single digit’s percentage of one day.
However that 70 is total and not every day. If we assume that 70 is over a 100 day period then that’s two orders of mag removed. If that 70 is over a year and it’s a tough year then we’ll be lower than 0.01%
So these cities are squeaking hard about 1/10,000 of the problem the boarder is seeing and/or patting themselves on the back at rising to the occasion.
When ever they talk about how hard it is or how much chaos it brings to deal with 1/10,000 of what the boarder is seeing, they are handing a victory to Team Red.Report
Migrant numbers are growing here in Chicago, and housing them is something of a political football right now. I’ve always said that it’s hard to imagine what is going on along the Rio Grande.
That said, nothing we’ve done policy-wise has stemmed the tide, and Team Red doesn’t seem ready to come up with any ideas but ineffectual walls. This country needs it’s legislators to get off TV and Twitter and actually start governing.Report
Despite asserting that multiculturalism doesn’t work, you constantly beg for tolerance and understanding of the minority culture which is cultural conservartism.
For example, at the outbreak of the anti-trans hysteria, you repeatedly told us that the fears of conservative parents about gay teachers grooming children was a legitimate fear, and should be respected.
According to your own statements, if multuculturalism doesn’t work, then logically the secular liberal school districts should ignore the concerns of conservative parents and force them to assmilate and leave their religions and traditional cultures behind.
As Saul points out, you’re really just trying to make the same argument as Pinky but without his honesty.
This is what is so ironic about you guys, is that when you decry multiculturalism, you are really just saying that your minority culture should rule over the majority.Report
“If you don’t believe in multiculturalism, you should therefore believe that the culture that I think is superior is also superior! CHECK MATE!!!!”
You missed at least one step, if not two.Report
I’m just pointing out the absurdity of yelping for tolerance while vehemently insisting that others should be assimilated.Report
If you thought that all cultures were equal, it’d probably be really confusing to encounter someone who doesn’t saying “some cultures should be tolerated and others should change if they want to live in this culture”.
It probably strikes you as contradictory, if not hypocritical.
“HOW CAN THIS PERSON BE SAYING THAT SOME CULTURES SHOULD ASSIMILATE IF HE THINKS THAT OTHERS SHOULD BE TOLERATED?!?”Report
Not confusing in the slightest. You are crystal clear.
You want your preferred culture to be dominant and others to be assimilated.
The idea that a majority culture should force the minority to assimilate has a certain logic to it.
But your preferred culture is a minority, and shrinking.
The most common assumption of multiculturalism is that only the intolerant aspects of cultures should be forbidden while the rest accepted.
But you constantly demand accommodation of intolerance while demanding the tolerant aspects of others be suppressed.
Your position is very clear, just logically absurd.Report
“You want your preferred culture to be dominant and others to be assimilated.”
You say that like you don’t.Report
Yes.
The culture of tolerance is objectively superior to the culture of intolerance.
A position hotly disputed by conservatives but I stand by it.Report
Second.Report
There is a world of difference between “tolerance” and “expecting all groups to fail or succeed at equal rates”.
Although the left claims to be more “tolerant”, they also pretend that culture doesn’t matter. Different outcomes must happen because of intolerance, i.e. racism or genderism or whatever.
Different cultures should be expected to have different failure rates. If your culture loves alcohol then you’re going to have more problems with alcohol. Ditto recreational drugs.
Ditto tolerance of violence.
Ditto prioritization of education.
I am fine with other cultures existing. I’m even fine with adding more. I’m not fine with the concept that we should expect them to not have any influence on the people who have them.Report
As I’ve said, every culture in existence, without exception, harbors within it a subculture of failure which accepts violence and criminality and intemperance and addiction.
Every one.
And I agree, we should not be tolerant of this; As I mentioned, multiculturalism embraces cultures on a cafeteria manner, where some things are accepted, and other things rejected.Report
But your preferred culture is a minority, and shrinking.
As is yours.
You see this in cities like San Francisco.
It’ll sink in more, in the coming years.Report
Chip is ok with that – you are not.Report