Open Mic for the week of 10/2/2023
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.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves (currently running for a second term) opposes expanding Medicaid for people who can and are working:
Of course, he refuses to say how the employers of those people – who are not paying for insurance now – should be induced to do so. Which is a huge part of the problem. Addressed by accepting Medicaid expansion in 40 other states.
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/10/01/tate-reeves-medicaid-expansion-costs/Report
Unable to persuade their fellow citizens, conservatives decide to use force instead:
‘Red Caesarism’ is rightwing code – and some Republicans are listening
Their calls for a “red Caesar” are now only growing louder as Donald Trump, whose supporters attempted to violently halt the election of Joe Biden in 2020, has assumed dominant frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican nomination race. Trump, who also faces multiple criminal indictments, has spoken openly of attacking the free press in the US and having little regard for American constitutional norms should he win the White House again.
The idea that the US might be redeemed by a Caesar – an authoritarian, rightwing leader – was first broached explicitly by Michael Anton, a Claremont senior fellow and Trump presidential adviser.
Anton has been an influential rightwing intellectual since in 2016 penning The Flight 93 Election, a rightwing essay in which he told conservatives who were squeamish about Trump “charge the cockpit or you die”, referencing one of the hijacked flights of 9/11.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/01/red-caesar-authoritarianism-republicans-extreme-rightReport
So here’s an interesting one from WaPo’s really excellent visual data crew: States that produce the most musicians
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/29/states-that-produce-most-musicians-more/
The gist: “States that produce the most musicians include South Carolina, Tennessee and New York. But when you take all of them together, an interesting trend arises. The places in America that produce the most working musicians tend to be the states with the largest Black populations. It’s not always true, but it’s one of the few clues we have.
However, it doesn’t seem to be simply that Black Americans are more likely to become musicians — they’re about as well-represented in U.S. music as Whites. Men are almost always more likely than women to work as musicians, though among Black Americans that gender gap opens even wider. And while more educated folks are more likely to work as musicians, Black Americans defy that trend and show little relationship between education and musical success.
So what’s going on? Perhaps there’s another factor we’re not measuring. Our first guess was that attendance at church, the real musical birthplace of many of the country’s most famous artists, might be related both to musical futures and to Black populations.
After all, we know from previous research that Lutheran churches deserve credit for the Midwest’s robust orchestra tradition. But when we compared musician birthplaces to 2014 church attendance data from the aptly named Pew Research Center, we saw no relationship.
Is it possible we’re seeing what some folks would call the Elvis Effect? Could growing up in proximity to America’s legendary Black musical traditions increase the odds you’ll succeed in music, regardless of race?”Report
Paywall article is paywalledReport
UGG. I’ll update with a excerptReport
The data probably needs to be broken out by classical versus non-classical. This probably explains the stronger relationship between education and musical employment among whites.
The birthplace map closely follows the employment map, with only a few exceptions. If you grow up around music or knowing that it’s possible to be employed as a musician, you’re going to be more likely to consider it. I don’t like the uneven distributions of the state graphics. I wish they provided the data.Report
Apparently Trump’s lawyers forgot to submit a routine form to demand a jury trial in his New York civil fraud case. OopsieReport
All the best people . . .Report
Bhahahahahaha.
So rather than try to find 12 people who have never heard of Trump, Judge gets to do his thing. Same judge who ruled he was guilty as a matter of law and who gave his lawyers a $7.5k fine each for making stupid arguments.Report
Nitpick. It is a civil trial so the judge found him liable on one of the causes of action. There are six or so more causes of action that the judge has not ruled on. Plus damages, if any.Report
It looks like the Senate is listening to Jaybird – sort of. While cannibis is not yet down scheduled under the DEA, at leas the banking is getting easier:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.htmlReport
If only Congress had the power to reschedule!Report
having the banking lobby as an ally in that fight can’t hurt.Report
Wouldn’t rescheduling automatically make it so that banks could work with these businesses?Report
Drugs on schedules II-V all require a prescription. Medical dispensaries might be okay, so long as they met all the other necessary conditions. If I were a bank, I’d still think twice about doing business with a firm that dispenses exactly one drug and it’s on the CSA lists. Recreational dispensaries would still be violating federal law regarding CSA drugs.
Marijuana needs a specific exemption like alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine get.Report
I thought V was merely “behind the counter” but your point stands.Report
Today in obviously horrible people: “Ilya Shapiro
@ishapiro
Are there really no black lesbian activists in California whom Newsom could’ve picked? Wow, everybody really is leaving that state!”Report
A jibe which succeeds in being both toothless and self-owning.
Well done, Ilya, well done.Report
I didn’t get this earlier today, but had a bit of a chuckle hours later when I learned the context. Originally I assumed that the joke was that if a black woman was good, a black lesbian would have been even better, which is kind of meh. The actual joke is that Laphonza Butler, whose identity-based qualifications are beyond reproach, lives in Maryland.
In practical terms, it doesn’t really matter. I can’t imagine that she’s significantly better or worse than any alternative that Newsom could realistically have been expected to select, with or without identity-based constraints. But surely there was a resident of California he could have picked? It’s a small thing, but emblematic of Democrats’ contempt for the Constitution.
That aside, Democrats’ identity fetishism and tokenism are also fair game for mockery, and your ostentatious display of disgust for some fairly mild ribbing betrays, I suspect, a certain lack of confidence in your ability to defend these quotas on their own merits. No matter how hard you clutch those pearls, they’re not going to turn into diamonds.Report
North Carolina Republicans seek to invalidate the 1st and 4th Amendments with their own secret police force: https://popular.info/p/north-carolina-republicans-create?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1664&post_id=137578127&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=1aumh&utm_medium=emailReport
Something that cannot go on forever will stop.
Report
Mary Gay Scanlon’s carjacker was sentenced last month.Report
It’s now being reported that it was Henry Cuellar that got carjacked.Report
Thinking about the difference between academic and non-academic thinking with a somewhat light-hearted example. Earlier this year Dr. Sandra Fox published a book about the Jewish summer camp experience in the United States called the Jews of Summer through Stanford University Press.
One of the chapters dealt with camp romance. The basic thesis of the chapter, and Dr. Fox isn’t the first to notice it but she is the first to write about it in length, was that dealing with increasing fears of intermarriage and Jews having children that won’t be raised Jewish, many Jewish camps took a more permissive approach to this in a sort of wink-wink, nudge-nudge manner than their non-Jewish counterparts up to including opportunities for the young couples to have time alone. The idea was basically imprinting the desirability of a Jewish mate on campers.
If you read the comments section on any review or discussion of the book, many people do not seem to get this argument and just “oh horny teenagers are going to be horny teenagers” but that wasn’t the point Dr. Fox was making. She was arguing that while non-Jewish camps strictly forbid this type of behavior and it could result in expulsion from camp, the people who ran Jewish summer camps decided to wield teenage interest in romance and dating to their advantage of their ideological mission. It isn’t a really hard argument to miss but a lot of people did.Report
They probably focused on the whole “date your own race” thing as well. It’s difficult to sell that.
Probably easier in the Northeast, though.Report
That was the point. By encouraging romance between campers, the leaders hoped to build a positive experience of dating and hopefully eventually marrying and having children with other Jews. A lot of readers didn’t get this point and couldn’t understand the argument about how rather than calling camp romance forbidden, the organizers and runners of Jewish summer camps gave much more liberty than non-Jewish camps would. Yes, intercourse was officially not allowed but nearly everything else, and this is assuming heterosexual dating obviously because of the time period, was seen as a positive and indirectly encouraged.
Here is a Slate article about what Dr. Fox goes into detail in her books:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/03/jewish-summer-camp-hookups-history.html
Here is a 2012 article about the same phenomenon by somebody else:
https://forward.com/news/161165/hooking-up-at-summer-camp/
There are naturally also articles looking at this less favorably and calling it toxic.Report
I understand that that’s the point but, seriously, there has been a handful of discussions of whether it’s toxic to refuse to date black guys over the last couple of decades and I’m not sure “That’s the point!” will go as far as you’d like it to.
Outside of the Northeast, anyway.Report
I’m a northeasterner and I don’t date black guys. Of course I don’t date white guys either. Toxic?Report
Are you one of those “you should only date Italians” folks?Report
Ask my black wife.
Of course, she wouldn’t want me dating Italians now either.Report
I imagine that someone who would argue that you ought to only vote people from your own ethnic group would come across as pretty crass, huh?Report
Take that up with people who argue that.Report
I thought I was!Report
If you only think you know what you’re doing, how are the rest of us supposed to figure it out?Report
By jumping in and engaging in conversation and when I make the same point to you that I was making earlier, argue that I should make that point to someone else!Report
That was at least as hard to understand as the thread itself.Report
And yet it happened anyway.Report
I’d be very reluctant to date outside my religion.Report
Why?Report
Why should we care about Pinky’s dating life?Report
Because as someone who has dated across religions in the past I always find people’s reasoning for not doing so fascinating.
Plus I want to see if he’s consistent in this view with his other religion alluding views.Report
What if there were a summer camp devoted to making sure that people are inclined to date within their own religion?Report
Nice 4D chess move try.
See here’s the thing – I don’t think its anyone’s business why someone dates or doesn’t date some one else. Meaning I don’t get to tell Pinky, or American Jews, or even my kids whom they can and can’t date.
Lee has offered a glimpse into a camp founded on the belief that the Jewish cultural and religious survival is vested in marrying other Jews, not non-Jews. As a historical artifact I get why they are doing that. I wish them luck.
I still don’t get to judge them for it. I don’t get to judge Pinky for it. I do see a lot of prejudiced reasoning when I see Christians make such statements, so I ask why.
Kind of like you . . . .Report
I don’t think its anyone’s business why someone dates or doesn’t date some one else
Obviously!
I still don’t get to judge them for it. I don’t get to judge Pinky for it. I do see a lot of prejudiced reasoning when I see Christians make such statements, so I ask why.
As a historical artifact, I get why Christians might do that, though.
Don’t you?Report
Christians are not actively oppressed in modern times, especially in the US. Jews are.Report
So is that a “yes I get it, but they’re wrong to do what they’re doing”, then?Report
Its “I get it. I don’t agree with it. I wish them luck because I understand it. I won’t be doing it myself.”Report
Oh, we’re not even in “wrong” territory? It’s just a thing that we agree or disagree with (like mustard or mayo)?Report
Jews wanting their kids to date Jews as a means of survival against active oppression is not something I can find morally incorrect – thus “wrong.” I think its misguided and likely not to reach the intended goal, but I can’t get to it’s morally wrong.
Conservative Christians like Pinky (who is of the Catholic tradition but none the less conservative and Christian) dating only other conservative Christians because they don’t want to deal with a lack of knowledge is not the same thing. I don’t find it morally worng either, though I do find it somewhat closed minded since Christians don’t actually have a lock on the basic values they espouse. To say nothing of how much better Muslim poetry is.
Its like my gay daughter marrying. A lot of people – including conservative Christians and Ultra Orthodox Jews – would condemn her for both her homosexuality and her marriage reflecting her homosexuality. Neither of which is actually condemned in the Gospels of Jesus, nor by Jesus; nor for that matter actually condemned in the Torrah (where the story of Sodom and Gommorah is all about war deprivations not gay marriage). What my daughter is doing as a gay married woman is not morally wrong either. But boy do some people disagree.Report
Oh, cool. Then we’re in 100% agreement.
People will do things sub-optimally, that’s for dang sure.
At least they can get head at summer camp.Report
Some people have a hard time with such a notion. Not sure why.Report
For me, it’s because I am usually in a situation where I see a thing as a matter of taste and someone else sees it as a matter of morality (or vice-versa) and they, like, cannot *COMPREHEND* how someone else might have a different set of priors.
To the point where it offends them.
They assume that the other person must be lying, sometimes.
When I find myself having a hard time, that’s why (not always, but fairly often).Report
And yet when in those situations you often default to moral wording in your responses. Which makes determining that you are discussing taste just a tad difficult.Report
Who is using moral wording above?
“As a historical artifact, I get why Christians might do that, though. Don’t you?”
“Christians are not actively oppressed in modern times, especially in the US. Jews are.”
“So is that a “yes I get it, but they’re wrong to do what they’re doing”, then?”
Who, in that exchange, is dancing closely to moral wording?
(For the record, I feel the complaint that you should be making about me is that I obviously see a lot of matters of obvious morality as matters of taste and find humor in puncturing balloons.)Report
Because if its true, they can’t be in charge. They have to accept people who aren’t like them. And they loose what they see as a moral high ground. Plus they don’t like nuance and ambiguity.Report
My beliefs are too much a part of my life. I couldn’t really share my life without sharing that part of me. There really isn’t much else to me.Report
Why do you see that as precluding dating outside your religion though? Others in other religious traditions hold beliefs whose depth surly matches yours, and they likely hold many similar beliefs – albeit using different words to describe them.Report
It looks like you’re trying to prove or provoke something.
Yesterday was the Feast of the Guardian Angels. I’m not condemning people who don’t know that, but someone who didn’t wake up yesterday thinking about that isn’t the person for me.Report
And yet you refuse to consider opening your life to someone from another background who might consider coming to know that, even if it doesn’t hold a religious importance to them. And that closed off-ness is what fascinates me.Report
You seem to say that something fascinates you when you were hoping for a kill shot but can’t find one.
I don’t know how old you are, but I’m not looking for someone in her 20’s who’s exploring her beliefs. I welcome people who are my age looking into these things, but I wouldn’t be expecting a lifetime connection with them, and I’m too old to be dating with any goal other than a lifetime connection in mind.Report
Not that it matters but I’m 52. I have found that inquiry and acceptance can come at any age. I also find fervent belief in other traditions doesn’t always kill inquiry or acceptance. Usually the opposite.
As to the fascinates as a kill shot – As long as you ar ehonest in your response I”m not trying to “kill” anything. And I am fascinated by many of your and others statements because I can’t get there intellectually, morally or through dint of lived experience. Yet we claim many underpinnings to our statements that often appear the same.Report
Some people have a hard time with such a notion. Not sure why.Report
I think sometimes that you don’t really read my responses. You said,
“I also find fervent belief in other traditions doesn’t always kill inquiry or acceptance.”
but that doesn’t really address what I said. Maybe it was a shot at where you thought I’d be, but you have to look in order to aim.Report
Reads as you don’t want to date or marry someone who is on a journey. You want them at the same destination you are at within the same tradition. Believing as fervently as you do is what you believe in. IN the sense of romantic connection, you reject them when they aren’t.
And my point is someone can believe as fervently as you do in something else, still share many of your core values, and be open to your traditions and teachings while retaining their own identity. You clearly reject that.Report
I see four phrases there: “believe as fervently as you do in something else”, “still share many of your core values”, “be open to your traditions and teachings”, and “retaining their own identity”. I’m not sure what you mean precisely by any but the first one.Report
And back to the “kill shot” notion, are we supposed to believe that you started this discussion innocently, queried curiously, clarified neutrally, and in the end reluctantly concluded that I was being a bigot? Or, I’m not sure, have you reached that conclusion yet? I mean, there’s no way of telling that that’s where you’re going to end up, right?Report
This guy needs to resign. New Jersey Democrats need to make that happen.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/politics/senator-menendez-trial-date-may-6/index.htmlReport
I just found out that Roger Whittaker died on September 13th. I’ve always thought he was underrated, at least in the US and during my lifetime. He made uncool cool. Posting “The Last Farewell” would be too cliché, so here’s “The First Hello, the Last Goodbye”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RPj8N0TKw0Report
Washington DC’s Mayor Bowser gives a press conference in which she explains that Washington DC doesn’t have enough police officers.
Report
rather a change from January 5th 2021 where there were plenty of police officers and they didn’t need Federal help to secure the capitolReport
And yet even today, the DC Metropolitan Police remain NOT in charge of securing the Capitol. Because they can’t legally operate there without a request from the US Capitol Police, which is indeed a federal police force.Report
*shrug* if you’re really so committed to the bit that you’re going to say “we don’t need more security” was not a take that Aged Like Milk then I guess nothing I say is going to matter to you.Report
What I’m saying is you are conflating overall police numbers and jurisdiction. Its easy to do in DC since different corners in a particular intersection have differing jurisdictions.
US Capitol Police CAN’T enforce DC laws; likewise Metropolitan Police CAN’T work the Capitol complex. So when Mayor Bowser describes a situation where she needs more officers, making oblique and ill informed references to Jan. 6th makes you look foolish.Report
…you’re aware that on January 5th 2021 Mayor Bowser specifically requested that Federal agencies not add additional security without her approval, right?Report
Yes I am – and its part of the normal dance the Metropolitan Police does with the multiple federal jurisdictions within its borders. Also if you read the story – she was reacting to previous deployments of federal personnel without required notice in places that were in fact in her jurisdiction. Which is normal in DC as a courtesy.
And in no way the same as saying the Metropolitan Police Department doesn’t have enough resources to meet demands in its jurisdiction – which is what this story is about.Report
Just four days ago, we mentioned the grisly murder of Pava LaPere.
Three days ago, Josh Kruger was murdered.
Yesterday, Ryan Carson was murdered.
All three were somewhat prominent activists for “justice”.
The backlash is going to be bad.Report
“It’s not as bad as it was in 1974!”
(Erm, content warning. This is a red band trailer.)
Report
As far as we can tell now, the Carson and LaPere murders were done by random thugs and had nothing to do with their role as advocates. That may change, but that’s how it looks so far. There is at least some reason to suspect, though it is far too early to tell, that Kruger’s murder might have been related to his activism, because there was a recent history of threats.
So who is backlashing against whom?Report
The backlash hasn’t really kicked in, yet.
When it does, though, it’s going to be bad.
(And I’m not, and wouldn’t, argue that their murders were related to their activism. If pressed, I suppose that I would argue that their murders happened despite their activism.)
(Additionally, I’ve seen theorizing that Kruger’s murder was personal given that Kruger was shot 7 times. Makes sense to me. Maybe his murder shouldn’t count, then.)Report
The question was “who”? You mentioned three murders of people who were “somewhat prominent activist for ‘justice.'” If their activism had nothing to do with their murders, what is the nature of the backlash you predict, why is it a “backlash,” and who is going to do what to whom?Report
If their activism had nothing to do with their murders, what is the nature of the backlash you predict, why is it a “backlash,” and who is going to do what to whom?
I imagine that the nature of the backlash I predict will be something like the pendulum swinging back on the whole “Defund” thing.
The gains made on the whole police reform will evaporate and we’ll have another crime bill passed.Report
Glad to have that cleared up.Report
You can take the boy out of the End Times Creationist cult, but…Report
“He thinks that the pendulum… swings? Is the pendulum in Revelation or something? Is the pendulum in the room with us right now? Progress goes *FORWARD*!!!”Report
You should understand that your perennial predictions of doom and catastrophe grow less persuasive with each iteration.
.Report
“We’re going to pass a law” is a prediction of doom and catastrophe?
Damn.
That’s magnificently incorrect.Report
“I imagine that the nature of the backlash I predict will be something like the pendulum swinging back on the whole “Defund” thing.
The gains made on the whole police reform will evaporate and we’ll have another crime bill passed.”
This is magnificently unpersuasive, given that it is a variation of the same “Woe unto ye, Liberals!” that you’ve been making since 2016.Report
Eh, I think that X happening is far more interesting than whether I can get you to agree that X will happen before it does.
Mostly because that usually turns into some variant of “Nobody argued that X wasn’t going to happen!”Report
OK, so there’s going to be some kind of crime bill that, presumably, you won’t like, because of three apparently random murders? One can agree with this or not, but it is at least clear enough to engage with.
Unless you mean something else. But that leaves us where we were.Report
I think that the particular kind of crime bill will be one that would have made sense in the 90’s.Report
So if that’s what you meant, you could have said so at the beginning and saved a lot of back-and-forth about what, exactly, you were talking about.Report
I tried to say:
This was, apparently, Biblical.Report
No, just obscure.Report
No, I assure you. Someone responded to this as if it were a prediction of doom.Report
Given that there is zero evidence being presented of any sort of unusual trend in crime, much less any “backlash” to it, and that the prediction fits your ideological priors as a opponent of the various criminal justice reform proposals (such as carceral and sentencing reform) it just becomes another wishcasting jeremiad.
Nothing wrong with ideological wishcasting- Its just that we shouldn’t feel obliged to treat it as a sober objective analysis.Report
The unusual trend in crime, seems to me, is the whole “happening to privileged people” thing.
Did you see the whole “congressman got carjacked” story?
I think that that’s an interesting story when it comes to trends in crime.
Like, I’d even be willing to call it “unusual”.
The three murders that I talked about in the root comment? I think that those are pebbles.
“So you admit that they are not boulders?”
“I admit that they are not boulders.”Report
One incident is what you consider an “unusual trend”?
It must be painful I think, to strain so very hard.
What’s wrong with just saying, “I am hoping to see a reversal of criminal justice reforms and a new round of crime initiatives”?
Spares us all the bullsh!t Magic 8 Ball gazing and cuts to the chase.Report
It’s a second incident, Chip. You’re forgetting Mary Gay Scanlon. Or, I suppose, never heard about her.
(Granted, it’ll take three congresscritters getting carjacked for it to become a “trend”.)Report
Precisely because it was obscure. If you had put it plainly there probably wouldn’t have been a response at all. And we can’t have thatReport
“The pendulum will swing back on ‘Defund’ and the gains made on police reform will evaporate and we’ll pass another crime bill” is obscure?
I’ll try to type slower.Report
It took six comments to get there, and the earlier stuff hung over it, so you have no one to blame but yourself for other people’s difficulties understanding you.Report
I’ve been told before that stuff that I see as obvious and ham-handed is subtle.
I find it difficult to believe, even yet.Report
Body cameras are here to stay. Ditto civilian cell phones.
Those will be the gift which keeps giving.
Also long term we keep getting richer. That trend will eventually change a lot of things.Report
“so there’s going to be some kind of crime bill that, presumably, you won’t like, because of three apparently random murders?”
That, or we’ll see situations where someone shoots a robber in the back as he leaves a store and shoots him a few more times as he writhes on the ground, and the grand jury will decide no crime was committed because the dead guy was just robbing the place and got what he deserved.Report
I was trying to find out what Jaybird was saying, which is never easy. I didn’t ask about you. But thanks for playing.Report
We will? Here’s an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxKYHntHjAg
DA and/or the cops didn’t bother investigating it much less taking it to the grand jury. They asked him to step forward but also said it was clear there would be no charges.
Robber’s gun was a toy btw.Report
Nobody wants to work anymore.Report
I had to chuckle just a bit. It’s kinda true.
https://www.tiktok.com/@johnstone.gregory/video/7284783112075218206?_r=1&_t=8gCi59uUAUEReport
The fact that a person routinely exaggerates the value of his collateral in statements in which an honest valuation is expected, and has made such exaggerations for decades, should have no bearing on whether that person is allowed to continue to transact business.
(I don’t believe that myself. I am just wondering how it looks when typed out like that.)Report
It looks like a liar trying to get away with continuing to lie.Report
Holy crap. McCarthy has been ousted.
Report
Those who enjoy drama will enjoy this:
Report
Accountable for not shutting down the gov? And we’re going to replace him with… whom?Report
In Amish’s case I’m guessing accountable for staking his speakership on the whims of the Nutjub Faction.Report
GOP has a 4 vote majority and 8 members of that faction.Report
This guy ran the numbers on shoplifting. I’m not a numbers guy.
Do we have a numbers guy?
Full text, if he deletes it:
Report
I checked a few of his numbers and they pass a smell test. Google agrees with him on Lowe’s sales for 2022. Not going to deep dive this at this time of night (or maybe ever).Report
That’s nice. Now he should do it for 50 small retail stores and see how it compares.Report
Why does he start talking about shoplifting, but then switch to talking about shrinkage?Report
Cut the numbers to a third, then.Report
1. If we are playing “Make Up Your Own Numbers” then I’m cutting it by 90% because well, why not.
2. For scale and context, what is the loss of shoplifting versus other theft crimes such as fraud, wage theft, burglary and armed robbery? That is, as citizens, where do we want to direct our law enforcement resources?Report
1. Because, from what I understand, shoplifting is about a third of “shrink”.
2. I don’t know. Do you have those numbers? I’d like to see them.Report
Wage theft – $50 Billion per year
Burglary – $3 Billion per year
Armed Robbery – $482 Million
The problem with doing an apples to apples comparison is there is really no one publishing a breakdown of the $100 Billion shrinkage claim into employee theft vs. shoplifting. It’s also amusing to me that its such a crisis when shrinkage as a part of revenue is going DOWN.Report
Wow! 50 Billion!
Those numbers are probably well-documented!
Let’s see what the Wikipediasays…
Oh. It specifically mentions that the highest at risk are the undocumented.
Hey. Maybe we should do something about that?
UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR FOOD TO COST MOREReport
Lets say that Wikipedia is correct.
So logically it would make sense to direct the DA to focus more on wage theft for undocumented workers than petty theft.Report
Presumably store owners are more willing to cooperate with the law than are the undocumented.Report
Presumably they are – which is another data point in the drive for immigration reform. These folks are vulnerable to wage theft in large measure BECAUSE they are undocumented, and its in the interest of vast swaths of business to keep it that way.Report
Oh, like you want to pay more for strawberries.Report
I’m not sure we would though. Making it seamless for agricultural workers to move back and forth across the boarder in response to season and thus workforce demand might not in fact cost more. Its a trope that became a myth that became “accepted wisdom.” Doesn’t make it factually true.Report
“Oh, like you want to pay more for strawberries”
“I’m not sure we would though”
Synthesis: yes we would, and we *should* pay more for strawberries and all our food.
It’s a very strange conceit that both sides want food prices lowered via illegal immigration, but take diametrically opposed positions on why it’s good.Report
I don’t want food prices lowered via illegal immigration, just like I don’t want to be undertaxed for the services I expect from government. I do want us to deal with from my usual factual basis and I have not seen any facutaly basis to the claim that food costs would necessarily rise if we made it easy for non-citizens to cross borders to pick our strawberries.Report
It’s easy enough for non-citizens to cross borders to pick our strawberries… we’ve an entire economy built on it. We could make it even easier, if we want, but that’s not the costly part.
It’s the ‘prevent wage theft’ part that will make it so the non-citizens aren’t exploited for our low-food prices… plus the whole ‘underground’ payment without benefits and protections that we insist our friends and family get.Report
Its actually not. If a farmer wants an immigrant to work his fields, he has to request a vise 18-24 months out, and there are not enough visas to fill demand.Report
So let’s just keep bringing up wage theft as being worse than shoplifting and we’ll just ignore that the wage theft is happening to undocumented dreamers who just want a better life for themselves and their families and upon whom our lifestyles depend.
What about wage theft?
NO NO THAT WAGE THEFT IS GOOD THOUGHReport
One of the many reasons no one thinks you are serious Jay is you keep willingly ignore our corrections of your incorrect facts. Dreamers are in fact here in a now legal status, and unless the courts toss the whole program they will remain in a legal status. They can’t become citizens, but they are no longer undocumented. TO continue saying otherwise is to lie about their status.
I will state again that I oppose wage theft regardless of the people being stolen from. And that’s on businesses to correct, not the employees.Report
All of the Undocumented are Dreamers, Phil.
They dream of a better life.
And they keep food prices low.
And we can use their plight to argue against changing anything with regards to shoplifting!
Win-win-win!Report
You’re the one who introduced immigration into a discussion about theft. No one else was even talking about it.Report
I went to the Wage Theft Wikipedia page. I linked to it.
It talks about how Wage Theft hits the undocumented dreamers who just want a better life for themselves and their families hardest.
And I couldn’t help but remember the times we’ve discussed cracking down on the employers who do this sort of thing to undocumented dreamers who just want a better life for themselves and their families and you wouldn’t believe who argues against cracking down on those who are engaging in the wage theft.
It’s *NUTS*.Report
Crack away. You’ll get no argument against that from me. Just as you haven’t gotten any argument against it from me before now.Report
Yeah.
Personally, I think that we ought to do more to crack down on wage theft.
Even if it does mean that the prices for fresh fruits and veggies goes up.Report
I wasn’t arguing against cracking down then either:
Report
Passing a law that resulted in fewer immigrants being exploited is one of those things is pretty extraordinary especially when you take into account that one of the goals was cracking down on people who were exploiting immigrants.
Though I can totally understand opposing such a thing due to the immorality of the people who did it.
You can’t make an omelet.Report
I have no idea what this word salad means.Report
No doubt.
It means that the Florida law appears to have resulted in fewer immigrants being exploited in Florida.
Which, you’d think, would be a good thing.
Instead, the people who passed the law had bad intentions: They did it “to score cheap immoral political points”.
Which means that you still get to oppose it.Report
Right, because it drive those immigrants out of the state – probably illegally since immigration enforcement is a federal duty. The Florida law doesn’t make things easier or offer more protection for those who stay and if Florida remains serious about enforcing it they will hurt their own economy. It was and remains bad law that hurts immigrants.Report
And food prices!
On top of that, I’m not sure that the whole “we need to make things easier for the undocumented” argument’s premises have been made explicit.Report
Wage theft is a issue mostly for illegal immigrants. So if we reduce the number of illegals then we reduce the issue.Report
Sure – best way to do that is sanction employers and offer those here, who already work hard and contribute to their economies, a way to remain. Then revamp our visa programs so farmers and builders and others can get the workers they need when they need them.
This isn’t difficult to do but too many people have what they see as vested interests in keeping it this way.Report
Who here is arguing against cracking down on wage theft?
P.S. I checked the link.
No one there was arguing against cracking down on wage theft.
Did you post the wrong link?Report
Those who argue against stuff like cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants by pointing out that food prices will go up.
Have you never witnessed the phenomenon?Report
I’ve never witnessed anyone here at OT arguing against cracking down on wage theft.
if you can’t produce a quote, best drop it and move on.Report
“I am going to require a quotation that includes the words ‘wage’ and ‘theft’ before I believe that someone argued against wage theft.”
“What about arguing against laws that resulted in less wage theft?”
“Nope. Has to include those words.”Report
I will let the dear reader work out the absurdity of this on their own.Report
“What are second order effects?”
“I don’t know. What *ARE* second order effects?”Report
Business likes being legal. They have too much to lose if they’re not and they typically have fixed assets which prevent them from relocating.
They are your natural allies if you’re trying to make the undocumented legal.
They are also the source of the “demand” problem because they need labor and can’t find it.Report
Except they aren’t. The Chamber of commerce and the home builders associations – to say nothing of agribusiness – never seem to advocate for immigration reform. I suspect its because we still do all our enforcement against immigrants and not businesses.Report
Nor for stronger walls to keep their workforce captive. They’re not opposed, they just don’t think they have a dog in the race.
Immigration is divisive, business doesn’t like to touch divisive issues. Witness what happened to that trans beer.Report
Ahem.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/retail/2023/09/27/retail-theft-lost-inventory-statistics-2022/70975031007/#:~:text=Both%20external%20and%20internal%20theft,up%20from%2028.5%25%20in%202021)
External is 36%.
Internal is 29%
Not sure what “process/control failures” are but it’s 27%Report
if that’s the case, then actual shoplifting becomes a $36 Billion problem – and goes below wage theft in economic impact. Frankly the retailers would do a lot better focusing on the other two things then people running out of stores with hand bags.Report
Depends on the store.
Friend of mine worked retail in a mall. They were the store which had to deal with this sort of thing regularly. Her strong impression from talking with the mall cops was other stores had to worry about this far less than they did.
“1.5%” might be average across the nation but if that means 35% from a specific store than that store still has a problem.
So we can say with one breath that “store X is closing because of shoplifting” and “shoplifting isn’t a serious problem nationally” without those statements conflicting.
For example if you’re a gas station who insists on getting paid before turning on the pumps, then your amount of gas shrinkage from drive offs is close to zero. That reduces the overall average but doesn’t help other stores.Report
“Wage Theft” is $50B out of $10.5 Trillion in wages.
That’s about 0.5%
Shrinkage is about 1.5% for retail.
However those are national averages, if you zoom in on a specific industry then you can be looking at zero or vastly higher.
So when my wages were stolen, it was a significant percentage of my income (something like 10% of several pay checks) and the corporate officers eventually served time.
All and all it was a really good experience for me (yes, really). I lost a grand or two and got to renegotiate my contract with my employer’s employer.Report
I’m a numbers guy. My advice:
1. Resist the temptation to draw conclusions from numbers whose origins and meanings you don’t understand.
2. Before accepting someone else’s conclusions, ask whether that person has demonstrated having credibility. As Chip Daniels pointed out, Robert Sterling switched between “shrinkage” and “shoplifting” without justifying it. That’s a fundamental error in his analysis.Report
In today’s interesting history lesson, meth and crystal meth were discovered and synthesized by Japanese scientists in the late 19th and early 20th century:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWvKF_Y7u3IReport
The new version of road rage:
“Furious EV owners resort to getting up in the middle of the night to charge their cars as fights break out over charging points because there aren’t ENOUGH of them – with marshals brought in to police service stations”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12585467/Furious-EV-owners-resort-getting-middle-night-charge-cars-fights-break-charging-points-arent-marshals-brought-police-service-stations.htmlReport
And trends in the UK have what to do with the US exactly?Report
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the US’s situation Phillip.Report
Haha… Amazingly, I saw this happen: we were staying at a hotel outside of Glasgow, and someone took the last charging station in front of a person who had been waiting for it to open up. Yelling turned to mild shoving, and the police were called. A cop, who looked exactly like what I’d expected Scottish cops to look like based on BBC shows, showed up a bit later, but by that time another charging station had opened, so hostilities had already ceased. She told (in a very heavy Scottish accent) the offending parties (neither of whom was Scottish) to grow the hell up, effectively, and moved on.Report
And it keeps getting better…
I was kidnapped by my runaway electric car: Terrified motorist, 53, reveals his new £30,000 MG ZS EV ‘began driving itself’ after suffering ‘catastrophic malfunction’ – forcing him to dial 999 and crash it into a police van to get it to stop
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12592047/Driver-kidnapped-electric-car-Glasgow.htmlReport
We had Toyotas doing the same thing what, ten years ago? That got fixed. This will too.Report
I’m sure they will. In fact, Tesla’s had similar problems. And this was a Chinese car, so their quality might be less than western cars too. Of course, during the whole Takata airbag recall, our gov’t basically created a situations where you have to drive a vehicle that could kill you for “safety reasons”, so you’re basically on your own….Report
Vox decides that the best thing to do with the annoying people on the Internet is to just ignore them even though they acknowledge that is impossible:
https://www.vox.com/culture/23899842/annoying-tweets-ignore-discourse-bait-social-media-angerReport
Here’s a though….delete your social media accounts or don’t log into them…Report
New Yorker Rudy Giuliani has brought a defamation lawsuit in New Hampshire against Joe Biden for saying three years ago in Nashville that Rudy was a “Russian pawn.”
https://www.aol.com/news/rudy-giuliani-sues-joe-biden-185558462.html
The statute of limitations in NY, where Rudy lives, is one year. The SOL in Tennessee, where Biden made the statement, is also one year. The SOL in New Hampshire is three years, one of the few states where it is that long. I wonder why he waited to sue until it was publicly known that he couldn’t pay lawyers?Report
Throwing more bullsh!t at the fan to see where it flings would be my guess.Report
In transit news, Britain’s high speed rail project is partially cancelled because of costs. A six mile BART extension to downtown San Jose is going to cost 12.2 billion dollars to build and will take ten more years of construction than anticipated, so that it will be open for operation in 2036 rather than 2026.
I have no idea why it is but for some reason English speaking countries seems to have lost their ability to build infrastructure fast and cheap. Some people are going to argue unions as the reason but that can’t be it because there are countries with more pro-labor and anti-labor policies capable of building infrastructure faster and cheaper than English speaking ones. Others are going to make arguments about regulations but France and Germany, too countries that nobody would say are anti-regulation with a straight face can build transit faster and cheaper than English speaking ones. My only theory is that nearly everybody sees building projects as an excuse to line their pockets rather than build.Report
Way too much power given to NIMBYs.
They have multiple ways to stop it and they’re always there and always organized.Report
There’s been a surprising lack of discussion of labor issues around her of late, even though the nation’s largest medical labor strike is now in its second day:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/business/union-workers-strike-kaiser-permanente/index.htmlReport
Who could have seen this coming?
Oh, that’s right. Everyone. Everyone saw this coming.
Not satisfied with schools, book banners are now targeting adults’ right to read
“Now we’re seeing groups go to school or library board meetings and demanding the removal of multiple titles all at once — 25, 50, 100 titles or more, often based on lists they get from advocacy groups on social media,” she says.
“It’s not really an authentic parental concern about a book,” she adds, “but an advocacy group going after a set of books that they don’t believe should be available to the public because they disagree with their viewpoint or that highlight the lives or voices of groups that have been systematically marginalized in our society.” Often, the objectors haven’t read the books.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-10-04/book-banning-is-on-the-rise-in-america-but-so-is-a-backlashReport
If a gambler embezzles money from their employer, wins the bet, then returns the borrowed money along with half the winnings to the employer, then the gambler has done nothing wrong and should not face prosecution. After all, no one was harmed and the gamble was profitable for the company.
(I don’t believe that myself. I am just wondering how it looks when typed out like that.)Report
See, stuff like this just ticks me off. What is their security team doing over there?
Report
The Weinstein thing still has ripples. Now Julia Ormond is suing the CAA.
Report
Joe Brandon’s economy adds another 336K Jobs in September. Thanks JoeReport
BSDI! Er, Mendez loses support among Democratic voters in NJ after indictments, Andy Kim is the clear lead currently: https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/breaking-democratic-voters-dont-rallyReport
Thank God(ess?)!Report
The article is behind a firewall. Which scandal is it about? The child prostitution thing? His last federal charges? His current federal charges? Are there a lot of Democrats who only just heard about the Ethics Committee admonition in 2018?
No state party has stood by an official regularly accused of corruption like the NJ Democrats. This is the third (?) time this week you’ve argued a position where you had the facts completely backwards.Report
Here’s the reality in 2023 –
When one member of a one party gets indicted, his support goes up, and even people who claim to not support him try to lessen the situation by going both sides.
When one member of another party gets indicted, he gets abandoned, and somebody not all that well known immediately has 50 point lead in a primary.
The reality is, the primary voters and supproters of one party in 2023 are getting it right, and one are getting it wrong. Now, you can continue to ally with the people getting it wrong if you think wokeness, taxes, or whatever evil us dirty libs are going to bring upon the world is worse, but these are the facts.Report
Don’t confuse Pinky with the factsReport
Saul, you can’t talk about the facts in general if you consistently post things that are false. Jesse, there’s basically one member of one party who can do what you’re talking about.Report
“Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums. We know they’re terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.”Report
Oh, here’s the original version:
“Niemand hat eine Ahnung, woher diese Menschen kommen, und wir wissen, dass sie aus Gefängnissen kommen. Wir wissen, dass sie aus psychiatrischen Anstalten und Irrenanstalten kommen. Wir wissen, dass es sich um Terroristen handelt. So etwas wie wir jetzt erleben, hat noch nie jemand gesehen. Es ist eine sehr traurige Sache für unser Land. Es vergiftet das Blut unseres Landes. Es ist so schlimm und es kommen immer mehr Menschen mit Krankheiten herein. Die Leute kommen mit allem Möglichen, was man haben kann.”Report
Kinda scary hearing people say “When do *CITIZENS* of the United States come first?”
Report
When don’t they?Report
When they are open-minded.Report
I think the “they”s are confused here.Report
I’m just amazed that no one here is objecting to the idea that his words fairly and accurately represent the views of most Republicans.
So noted.Report
There are a lot of subsets of people that his words fairly and accurately represent.
All over the world, even.
You’re using a microscope and finding flaw on a particular tree when, holy cow, there’s an entire forest out there with similar traits.
It might illuminate more to find the trees *NOT* afflicted with this particular blight. “This good, wholesome, *WHITE* tree that has PROGRESSIVE leaves doesn’t have it!”, you can brag. “Pity it’s the only tree in the forest that doesn’t.”Report
That clip is from a meeting at The Richard J. Daley College of Chicago Illinois.
The objections are coming from Chicago’s Poor.
Team Red has no seats here, this is entirely a Team Blue vs Team Blue thing.Report
The original quote above is from the leader of the Republican Party.
And that thunderous silence you hear is all the rank and file Republicans nodding in agreement.
“B-but whattabout these people in Chicago who are just as racist as us!” isn’t the defense some people think it is.Report
Nobody is arguing for Open Borders, Chip.Report
I would use the term “xenophobic”. Calling black people “racist” for not wanting more black people in their neighborhood doesn’t fit well.
More importantly, this sort of thing is why I think Team Blue isn’t serious about immigration reform. They have a pro-immigration wing, but the rest of the Team is opposed to immigration, not indifferent.
Team Red (i.e. God+Guns+Moats+Money) is able to push on all four of those issues because each wing is in favor of their own thing and is indifferent to the other three.Report
And just to drive home that the Chicago group is pretty representative for Team Blue, let’s check on what the Leader of Team Blue is doing:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/06/biden-border-wall-indigenous-climate-rio-grande
So Biden thinks opposing immigration is worth giving a middle finger to the environmentalists, who are also members of Team Blue.Report
I have been assuming the wall construction is another of those things where the President must spend money appropriated by Congress for the purpose specified by Congress. I know that’s in statute, but don’t know if it’s ever been challenged in court.Report
He’s creating jobs!Report
If those people were saying that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country then yes, they are straight up racist no matter what color their skin is.
And AGAIN- no Republican, here or anywhere else is expressing any objection to Trump saying this.Report
What does “objection to Trump saying this” look like?
I’m in favor of immigration, immigration reform, putting Trump in prison, and not getting spun up every time he opens his mouth.Report
I don’t think your analysis is correct. The Democratic Party has a huge range of opinions on immigration but most of the constituencies opinions average out to “spending political capital to try changing the status quos on immigration is more trouble than it’s worth”.
Of course they aren’t serious about immigration reform- it’s only on their radar at all because the right constantly inveigles about it. It’s not been a priority for ages. The difference is that it’s not a huge priority and they don’t claim it’s a huge priority. Whereas the right claims it’s a huge priority while actively wanting to do nothing about it. That’s one of the reasons (along with the money-libertarian wing) why the rights voters despise their elites.Report
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/us/politics/biden-trump-immigration.html
The NYT says Biden is using Trump’s tactics to reduce immigration. So Biden==Trump(without the inflammatory rhetoric).
For about 50 years, Biden has consistently been the median Democrat. That’s his thing. If the party shifts then he’ll shift to whatever their average is.
So this is where Biden thinks the median is for Team Blue for this issue.Report
Trump’s quote isn’t about “immigration reform”.
Read the G-D words and understand what he is saying.Report
I’ve said I think he should be be in prison and getting spun up on everything he says is a mistake.
If you need to spin that into something like “you’re racist unless you pay attention to Trump and condemn this statement”, then you are feeding the Troll.Report
The article says the wall you’re talking about was appropriated for and commissioned under Trump and Biden doesn’t have the authority to refuse to build it since congress refused to reverse that policy. That seems literally the opposite of Trumps policy of “I’ll do what I want regardless of the law”.
I’ve not claimed Biden is open borders. Heck, -I’m- not open borders. But the idea that the Dems, outside of the open borders crowd, is actively anti-immigrant is nonsensical.
Every example in this article just underlies my core point. The Dems, generally, don’t have a unified policy on immigration and generally think that trying to change the status quos is not worth the effort. Instead they just deal with it on a political level as it waxes and wanes in political salience.
Where you and I agree: The Democratic Party is not for open borders and they’re far more restrictionist on immigration than the GOP and the right says they are.
Where we disagree: You think the left, outside the open borders crowd, is hostile to immigration in principle. That’s definitely not the case. Various constituencies have different attitudes primarily driven by if undocumented immigrant issues are causing them practical headaches in their spheres.
Likely the median democratic position on immigration is something like this: “If we could wave a wand and have a well funded border control system with a more Canadian like admittance criteria, a lot more legal immigration and clear definitions for asylum claims with immigrants being briskly processed and either admitted or sent home that’d be great and we’d kind of like that. But since our open borders allies would raise heck on one side and since the right is insane and would raise heck from the other side there’s little point in trying to actually move towards that outcome and we have no significant powerful internal constituency that wants to move towards that policy as a primary interest. So we’ll just deal with it as it comes and wait for circumstances to change.”Report
The Dems are not for Open Borders but they are also not particularly crazy about enforcing the border law. Like, to the point where there are arguments against Texas or Florida doing so.
And, oh my goodness, you should see what the Statue Poetry people and the “In This House We Believe No Human Is Illegal” crowd does when 50 undocumented people show up on a bus.
But, for the most part, there’s a bunch of hemming and hawing and anti-anti-Open Borders sentiment.
But we are seeing shifts back to something like people calling for enforcing the laws on the books. Not, like, being cruel like Trump was. Just, you know… not letting them in.Report
Here’s an example:
Report
Mhm, that’s the view from the open borders and leftier than thou crowd*.
*note that AoC may be the more left edge of her party but she is a very good congresswoman and also a very good member of the party. She’s a strong advocate for her groups point of view but when the chips have been down she’s been there for the overall party. I may not agree with her but I respect her enormously.Report
Hey, I think she’s great. She’s the Democrats’ version of Trump. Charismatic as hell, maybe not particularly policy based… but makes the right noises.Report
Frankly I see no commonality with Trump at all. She’s a team player- he’s entirely self interested. She’s quite clever with her language- he’s basically a walking incoherent word salad. She assuredly has certain principles she cares about outside of self interest and he’s entirely unmoored except for self interest.
They do both have charisma, I will readily grant, and both get winger and media adulation that strikes me as entirely disproportionate but overall they seem profoundly different.Report
I kinda see them as both empty.
But with a lot of charisma and winger and media adulation that is, seriously, entirely disproportionate.
Profoundly different? Eh.
At the end of the day, maybe AOC will do a better job of doing what she is told.Report
If AoC even did that it’d make her enormously different than Trump who lacks both the wit, the capability and the inclination to follow instruction even for his own good.Report
*shrugs* That is literally what I said except cast as some kind of hypocrisy which it, generally, is not.Report
You sound surprised. Or disappointed. No reason for either.Report
Hmm? Surprised or disappointed in what, the Dems practical position vis a vis immigration? I would probably describe my own attitude as more resigned.
I can’t even say the party’s position is wrong. Immigration strikes me as something that’d need a bipartisan deal to resolve and the right desperately doesn’t want to solve it (the elites because they like the status quos and the populists because without it they have virtually nothing).
The worst I can say about the current, literal, Dem position is that it’s so passive that it allows the open borders position to be easily painted onto them.Report
No, it’s not the hypocrisy that I’m focused on, it’s the “we’re not for Open Borders, we just don’t want to do anything” part.
It’s not the hypocrisy.
It’s the whole outcome of not enforcing the law that will come back and bite the various butts involved.
You know how “Defund!” ended up working?
Well, we’re going to see blowback from everybody from the Martha’s Vineyard people to the Chicago people and some (not all, not most, but a non-zero amount) will defect because the AOC corner of the caucus will still be using the “Defund” language, the squishier middle will be doing the whole anti-anti thing, leaving there to be a *LOT* of room for the Populists.
We’d best hope that Trump gets found Guilty.Report
What you are complaining about is that the Democratic Party can’t conjure the political equivalent of anti-gravity. and that, accordingly, strikes me as unfair.
To enforce current immigration law to the letter would require resources that current law does not allocate to enforcement. It is paradoxical.
To expend political capital on trying to address the law without cooperation with the GOP would, quite literally, be lose/lose in that it’d send the open borders crowd to their fainting couches while being mischaracterized and lied about by the right all while not accomplishing anything and thus not helping on any level.
And the Martha’s Vineyard example remains entirely a canard. The immigrants that were shipped there were treated humanely and helped to go where they actually were trying to go. I guarantee you not a single one of them set out to get to Martha’s fishin Vineyard when they left their homes, let alone when they were lured onto those busses.Report
I don’t know that I would ask that they enforce it to the letter.
But there was recently a thing where Texas put up razor wire at the border and Biden (or, technically, his administration) removed it.
Why expend political capital on enforcing the law, anyway?
It’s not like deterrence is possible, given the whole “streets paved with gold” thing.
(And, as canards go, if I wanted an example of the evolution of untried virtue to tried virtue, I couldn’t ask for better. Which *STILL* doesn’t address how a good chunk (not all, not most) of those from Martha’s Vineyard to Chicago will defect to the Populists from the Elitists and they won’t see it as defecting from Left to Right.)Report
Sure and, as Dark noted in his useful NYT link, Bidens administration is also obeying the law and building barriers that he’s required, lawfully, to build and has gamely tried to humanely discourage illegal immigration. There’s plenty of examples for anyone to pick from.
That said, I’m quite content being on the side that’s trying to remove barriers intended to shred living people alive when they try and cross the border. Especially when said barriers are performative and inhumane rather than effective or even remotely ethical.
The Vineyard stuff is just incoherent. Were they supposed to set up a camp on a lawn there and force the folks to stay and work as, what, barristas or something? During the off season when everyone has left? It’s a little tony summer enclave- that’s why they got shipped there in the first place. If DeSantis had bussed them to Aspen in the Summer should they have been forced to stay on the grassy skii slopes with barbed wire?Report
Sure. It’s not like the Vineyard is set up for tourists to visit. It’d cost a lot of money to make it so the whatever season could handle the capacity of the summer season. Shipping those people off after 46 hours was the humane response!
Off to somewhere more capable of being a sanctuary city.
I’m not holding their inability to handle immigrants against them, North.
My goodness. It’d be immoral to hold the inability to handle immigrants against anywhere, right?Report
But these aren’t tourists, they’re immigrants who want to, ya know, go places and live. Sure the Vineyards could have them sitting around there doing nothing, but the immigrants didn’t want to do that so they were briefly housed there and then moved on to the places they actually wanted to go with the assistance of the authorities. I guarantee you not a single Vineyard resident went populist over that.Report
Nope, they’re not. Which makes the shuttling them out of there in fewer than 48 hours completely understandable.
There are plenty of places that don’t have the capacity to handle 50 people, though.
Them not being able to handle an influx of 50 people shouldn’t be held against them.Report
And yet the result is the same.
Further it’s weird that we’re going to fast track the wall and skip the steps the greens want when we don’t do that for things like pipelines.Report
Heh, I guarantee you that doing it for pipelines would make the greens a heck of a lot angrier and would be a heck of a lot more illegal.Report
Unions are the natural enemies of immigration.
Team Red is trying to steal the unions and Team Blue is trying hard to prevent that.
Immigration is also the natural enemy of the poor because it depresses the min effective wage and also drains social services used by the poor. Thus we would expect, and see, the mayors of large cities talk about how they’re having issues.
All of these interests being threatened is over and above xenophobia.Report
I’ve never claimed xenophobia regarding this- that’s more the open borders crowds language though, I’ll grant, Trump and the Magats make it -really- easy for xenophobia charges to stick to immigration restrictionists.
I think you have half a point with Unions but the economics allegations on immigration depressing wages or draining social services used by the poor both strike me as ranging from economically dubious to flat out false.Report
RE: Social Services
Refugees do. Thus the high school, the mayor of NY, and so on. This is a temporary effect that goes away after (I don’t recall) years. They often show up with nothing and are homeless so it makes sense.
It’s a good investment but it’s also longer than the next election.
RE: Depression of Wages
If memory serves, wages-in-general aren’t depressed but the min wage is a bit.
Immigrants create jobs+growth and the min wage is the land of teenagers with joke jobs so I don’t care.
RE: xenophobia
The US is already multi-ethnic and multi-cultural. We’re also the owners of the most aggressively assimilulistic culture on the planet.
We are able to absorb large numbers of people and we should be doing so. Eat them all. It’s what they want and it’s what we should want.Report
I agree with your analysis, welcome to the Democratic Party, Dark. Your voiced opinions won’t qualify you for the open borders crowd because “assimilation is oppression” but there’s an open chair next to AoC.Report
I’m seriously to the left of the bulk of Team Blue for immigration and abortion, it’s their economic policies that drive me away. AoC taking a victory lap after destroying 10k jobs in her own district is a good example.Report
The CBO periodically comes out with a Report on the Effects of Migration on Wages.
As it turns out, the only people hurt are the people at the bottom. (We’ve argued about it several times now.)Report
The solution for that “problem” is don’t be at the bottom. Or to just not care about it. My teenage children don’t deserve a living wage and if their wages were/are depressed then it’s just motivation.
Another counter argument is immigrants also create jobs, so they’re still a net positive although your experience can vary.Report
Aside from restricting immigration, can you name any other policy which you suipport that increases the wages of low wage workers?
I can’t think of any policy which you haven’t opposed.Report
Improved education. It strikes me as very important to make sure that people are proficient in math or reading.Report
OK, anything else or is that the extent of it?Report
Eh, you went with ~∃ so I’m good with ∃.Report
Your claimed rationale doesn’t make any sense even by its own terms and is entirely destroyed by your other stances.
First of all, excellent education is entirely detached from the effect you cited.
If there were no immigration, low wage jobs would still exist for people without education.
Its just that those jobs would be filled by native born people.
A meatpacking plant worker would have the same job tasks requiring the same skills as they do today. The fact that he would be able to derive a square root wouldn’t change his station in life because hey, everyone could do that.
Education wouldn’t raise his wage, scarcity would.
Your ACTUAL argument is that the government should artificially restrict the supply of labor thereby making wages rise.
But, as you yourself have pointed out so many times in our discussions about mandatory minimum wages, low wage jobs are most easily automated away or offshored.
But even the actual argument is undercut by your evident hostility to immigrants themselves as exhibited on this very thread.Report
Chip, I’m not even arguing for “excellent education”.
I’m arguing that a lack of proficiency in math/reading will pretty much ensure that a person never leaves minimum wage kinda jobs.
“If there were no immigration”, see… this is wacky. My argument isn’t “we shouldn’t have immigration”. It never has been.
The argument is against undocumented immigration that results in employers engaging in wage theft against the undocumented.Report
1. You are deeply, deeply concerned about immigration- you introduce it into unrelated conversations and talk about it endlessly.
2. Yet, you’ve never been able to proffer a coherent rationale for why we should make immigration more restrictive than it is now, or why we shouldn’t just legalize all 12 million who are already here.
Given that disconnect and your comments on this thread, I can only conclude it is because your negative feelings towards immigration are driven by an emotional dislike of immigrants themselves.Report
1. This is a thread about immigration. Seriously. Scroll up.
2. I’ve actually made arguments for making immigration less restrictive than it is now. I link to those essays all the time. Here’s the last time I linked to them. Golly, that was September 24th!
I *DO* make distinctions between legal and undocumented immigration, though. You know, the way *EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY ON THE PLANET* does?
“Why we shouldn’t just legalize all 12 million who are already here”.
It has to do with stuff like law theory.
I can only conclude it is because your negative feelings towards immigration are driven by an emotional dislike of immigrants themselves.
Dig this: I married an immigrant. One of the essays I always link to is an essay about my experiences working with what was then the INS.
Now, I do think that we need to do a much better job of assimilation and, failing to do that much better job of assimilation, we’re going to find ourselves in situations where we’re going to have, charitably, “diversity problems” that come with a truly multicultural country (and by “multicultural”, I don’t mean EPCOT) but at this point I’d be writing yet another dozen paragraphs that I’ve already written and you didn’t read them that time either.Report
Yeah I read all those, and they all amount to “I want a policy that works for me and my personal situation.”
You have no coherent theory of how immigration should be handled because all your claims conflict with each other.
You’ve claimed:
1. Immigration is a problem because it depresses wages;
2. We should make the paperwork for my fiance easier;
3.Diversity is a problem;
4. But I don’t want to restrict immigration!
5. When presented with racist screeds you shrug in indifference.
6. And oh yeah, “We can’t legalize the immigrants who are here because “law theory”, but instead we should mumble mumble something or other.”
These things all point to my conclusion.Report
*ILLEGAL* immigration is a problem because it depresses wages.
We should make it easier to immigrate *LEGALLY*
Multiculturalism (not the EPCOT sort, the other kind) will create problems and we should work better on assimilation… because, if we don’t, there’s going to be a backlash to immigration at all.
Which will result in stuff like “racist screeds”
And we can’t legalize the immigrants who got here illegally because THEY GOT HERE ILLEGALLY.
This is something that every other country in the world seems to understand.Report
More incoherence.
7. We should make it easier to immigrate *LEGALLY*
We make it easier to immigrate, allowing many more people to do so, and this…won’t depress wages?
8. We should work better on assimilation.
How? Especially since, ah *checks notes* #7 allows millions more people to enter the country.
You haven’t given us even the sketchiest outline of what this means. And you seem ignorant of the fact that assimilation works in both directions.
9. And we can’t legalize the immigrants who got here illegally
Again, so then what happens? Deporting 12 million people? Lock them all up in Manzanar?
Or will the people from #9 take advantage of the easy process in #7, and just fill out a QwikNEasy Visa form and get legal in 10 minutes flat?
These aren’t ideas, they’re desperate madlibs of deflection and evasion.Report
“This won’t depress wages”?
It’s the Lump of Labor thing. On top of that, being here legally makes it easier to not have your boss hold you over a barrel and engage in Wage Theft.
How? As part of the Naturalization Process. Europe has many countries that include this as part of Naturalization. We have several templates already.
As has been demonstrated in the past, a move toward enforcement of the laws on the books results in self-deportation and, at the same time, deters new undocumented immigration.
Seriously, other countries have done this stuff. This is something that happens everywhere on the planet.Report
Bad faith trolling in aisle 4. Bad faith trolling in aisle 4.
Trump, a man who was President of the United States, and is currently the Republican front runner for the nomination in 2024. He issues a speech which could be from Fascist Europe or Enoch Powell’s I see the River Tiber foaming with much blood. And you try and equate with venting at a public meeting presumably done by liberals because the people in the video are black.
And yet you complain when people state you are right-wing sympathizing at the least.Report
“Presumably done by liberals because the people in the video are” IN CHICAGO.
The migrants are being housed at the Richard J. Daley College.
But sure. Maybe these particular Chicagoans happen to be fans of Enoch Powell.Report
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” – Jean Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and JewReport
Make enough Type I errors, you can look forward to Type II errors.Report
Do you deny that Trump made the statement? Do you think it is acceptable for a former President and likely future candidate to issue a statement like the above? Implicitly your video posting indicates you are cool with it.Report
I refuse to deny that Trump made the statement!
Acceptable? Eh. I think it’s more acceptable today than it was yesterday and I think it’s going to be more acceptable tomorrow than it is today. I mean, look at the polling!
“Implicitly your video posting indicates you are cool with it.”
I’m more trying to imply that it’s becoming much, much more acceptable.Report
Jaybird in 1931 about Hitler: “If the SPD won’t do anything about the Jews, then Hilter will rise in support, and it’s the Left’s fault.”Report
Well, I certainly hope that whomever our Hindenburg is doesn’t make whomever our Hitler is into whatever the equivalent of a chancellor is!Report
I see Trump has reached the Enoch Powell stage too.Report
‘What Is Broken in American Politics Is the Republican Party’
More noteworthy is the willingness — even eagerness — of some Republicans to abandon democratic standards, norms and practices. This isn’t an ethereal matter of a broken spirit or wrong-headed ideals. It’s a brass-tacks reality, a strategy in motion throughout the nation: election denial, contested voting rights, denouncing any and all opposition as illicit and un-American. For the most part, fellow Republicans have allowed this extremism to flourish unopposed
But it’s not an extreme faction of the Republican Party at fault, at least, not alone. The party’s unity is the problem, its shared focus on ends (uncontested rule) over means (democratic practices). Norms and rules be damned, they feel entitled to maintaining power. This isn’t democracy. It’s the heartbeat of authoritarianism.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/06/republican-leaders-mccarthy-expert-roundup-00120170Report
A reminder- The Four Arguments Of Racists:
1. “We’re racist- those people are inferior.”
2. “Oh, wait, we’re not racist, but the science you see, says that those people are inferior.”
3. “OK, fine the science doesn’t say that, but…look how badly those people are behaving!”
4. “Alright the science doesn’t say that and they aren’t behaving badly but…um…Look how popular racism is!”
We’ve heard at least three of those on this blog.Report
Hilary spells it out:
“So many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump,”
@HillaryClinton tells me. “There needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members” in the GOP.
https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1710247776477409730?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1710247776477409730%7Ctwgr%5Ec1da77f7b0f3ed0f61eaa0a01b5baa1c12899c2b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fballoon-juice.com%2FReport