Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 711

chyron8472 said:

On the topic of illegal immigration, a couple of years ago someone came by my house and offered to repair warped slats in my fence. The price was super inexpensive compared to hiring Jenks Fence (who built it), so we agreed. Here’s the thing, though. I didn’t have cash on me, so I wrote a check to the company on his business card. The guy in charge then said he couldn’t take it but needed me to write the check out to “Cash” instead of to his company. I didn’t like doing that, but went ahead and did so.

…And later I went online to the BBB, FTC, and ICE websites and reported his company for employing undocumented workers (which it appeared that his employee probably was, especially given the behavior about the check). I don’t feel at all bad for doing so.

I have no soul and even I’d feel ashamed of myself for doing so.

I feel bad for the employee’s situation being undocumented, but I don’t feel bad for the company since they’re likely taking advantage of such people and also not reporting undocumented employees on their taxes. It’s not like some middle/high school kid who does yard work for some extra cash.

oojason said:

‘Former Trump aide approved ‘black ops’ to help Ukraine president’…

Paul Manafort authorised secret media operation that sought to discredit key opponent of then Ukrainian president

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/05/ex-trump-aide-paul-manafort-approved-black-ops-to-help-ukraine-president

I find it ridiculous to refer to a media campaign as “black ops.”

chyron, I thought you were on the liberal side? Was it the fact you made a check out to cash that inspired moral panic?

Do you support laws that make it difficult for illegal aliens to work in the US?

TV’s Frink said:

chyron, I thought you were liberal? Why do you believe in morals?

Not sure if serious.

SilverWook said:

Mrebo said:

oojason said:

‘Former Trump aide approved ‘black ops’ to help Ukraine president’…

Paul Manafort authorised secret media operation that sought to discredit key opponent of then Ukrainian president

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/05/ex-trump-aide-paul-manafort-approved-black-ops-to-help-ukraine-president

I find it ridiculous to refer to a media campaign as “black ops.”

Psy-op then?

To the extent any political campaign is, sure. Getting stories run doesnt strike me as terrible.

Mrebo said:

SilverWook said:

Mrebo said:

oojason said:

‘Former Trump aide approved ‘black ops’ to help Ukraine president’…

Paul Manafort authorised secret media operation that sought to discredit key opponent of then Ukrainian president

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/05/ex-trump-aide-paul-manafort-approved-black-ops-to-help-ukraine-president

I find it ridiculous to refer to a media campaign as “black ops.”

Psy-op then?

To the extent any political campaign is, sure. Getting stories run doesnt strike me as terrible.

Depending on how much is done to hide the sources and methods behind a psy-op, I’d say it could be classified as a black op. Black ops don’t all involve helicopters, IMO the term just marks an certain level of compartmentalized secrecy.

Mrebo said:

chyron, I thought you were on the liberal side?

I am a Democrat, but I am moderate. I liked Obama a lot and Obama is not a liberal. I liked Bernie as a person—I thought he was refreshingly honest and genuine, but his ideas were too pie-in-the-sky.

Was it the fact you made a check out to cash that inspired moral panic?

It was not moral panic. It just didn’t feel right, and yes. Had I not had to re-make the check out to cash (which was obviously inconvenient at the time), I wouldn’t have done anything. Requiring a customer to use cash—only cash, is an indication that you’re trying to avoid paying taxes. My parents told me that, after they had a maid service clean their house once upon a time and the person insisted on cash. They said they wouldn’t hire her after that.

Do you support laws that make it difficult for illegal aliens to work in the US?

I had to think about it after you asked this, but yes. The fact that they do work that other people don’t want to do, and for less money, is not an excuse. If we have a problem that they conveniently fill, the fact that they fill it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. Generally, I would prefer the problem (of jobs no one wants to do for the meager money offered) was more obvious so we would be more inclined to fix it.

I think we should make it easier to legally become a citizen, rather than overlook people’s legal citizenship (or lack thereof) because their circumstances are bad.

 
I know by heart The New Colossus poem written at the base of the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”), and I agree with the sentiment. But I think proper channels should be used. That is, open the flood gate wider to let more water out; don’t just ignore the cracks in the dam.

 
With all that said, sending the Guard to do the Border Patrol’s job is a foolish waste of resources. JEDIT: As is building Trump’s wall.

Continuing my thought re: immigration: In my opinion, we have laws for a reason, and we should make use of them and enforce them. We should not overlook people breaking immigration laws because they’re in a bad spot or because they do jobs we don’t want to do; and we should not have lax gun laws because “criminals don’t obey them anyway.”

SilverWook said:

Did you suspect the guy you paid to fix your fence because of how his employees looked, or because of the check thing?

The guy who actually fixed the fence was Hispanic, and that’s fine. It was the check.

I didn’t have my check book right there. My wife had it in her purse. She wrote a check; I gave it to the employer; and he said I needed to make it out to cash. I looked at my wife and asked her to write another check, and she glared at me like that was annoying. So I’m standing there between my wife who is not happy and the guy who isn’t accepting the check made out to his business. It was an awkward spot and he knew it. So I reported him because he’s making me go out of my way to make sure he, or his employee, doesn’t have to pay taxes.

chyron8472 said:

Continuing my thought re: immigration: In my opinion, we have laws for a reason, and we should make use of them and enforce them. We should not overlook people breaking immigration laws because they’re in a bad spot or because they do jobs we don’t want to do; and we should not have lax gun laws because “criminals don’t obey them anyway.”

Well, IMO there’s a problem with that. Not in the abstract, but in practice, because our laws in this area don’t align with what we actually want in a practical OR ethical sense.

We have what I’d call a “nod-and-wink” economy regarding undocumented workers, basically meaning we have two labor markets. We have one above-board market where workers have protections, safety regulations, legal recourse, and so on. And we have another market where workers have none of those things. The benefit of having that second market is we get cheap labor-intensive products, such as food, construction, etc. The point of the laws, in my opinion, is not to prevent certain people from entering the country. In my view, the point of the laws is to prevent those people from getting decent wages and working conditions once they’re here. So I agree we have laws for a reason, but sometimes that reason isn’t straightforward.

This is a trade-off: we give up a little ethical high ground and in return we get cheap stuff. Now, if we didn’t have this secondary labor market, either via booting people out (R) or path to citizenship (D), the result would be the same: higher prices. I’m not saying some people wouldn’t be willing to choose this path, but I don’t think most are. And sure, the two-tier labor market is deeply unethical. I’m not arguing against that point at all.

I felt that if I hadn’t reported him, I would be validating it. If he didn’t want to risk people reporting him, he shouldn’t insist on cash. Let him take up the ethical violations with the IRS.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/30/upshot/crime-immigration-myth.html

According to data from the study, a large majority of the areas have many more immigrants today than they did in 1980 and fewer violent crimes. The Marshall Project extended the study’s data up to 2016, showing that crime fell more often than it rose even as immigrant populations grew almost across the board.

In 136 metro areas, almost 70 percent of those studied, the immigrant population increased between 1980 and 2016 while crime stayed stable or fell. The number of areas where crime and immigration both increased was much lower — 54 areas, slightly more than a quarter of the total. The 10 places with the largest increases in immigrants all had lower levels of crime in 2016 than in 1980.

It’s hard to imagine in today’s world of completely imaginary immigration crises, but there was actually a time when there was a non-imaginary illegal immigration crisis of sorts in the US. Before Reagan tightened up immigration laws, we had something more akin to migrant labor. People would come across the border, work for a season, and go home. But then crossing the border became a non-trivial endeavor, and migrant workers who were in the country decided it was less risky to live in the US year-round than to cross the border every year. So, under Reagan, the ebb and flow of undocumented workers turned into a more static environment, where once you got across, you stayed.

And this, more than anything, led to your Trumpite boogeymen of “anchor babies” and “chain migration”. Reagan. And of course illegal immigration has declined quite a bit since, and pretty much effectively stopped ten years ago before Obama even took office, so those boogeymen are more of a racist dog whistle than fact these days anyway.

chyron8472 said:

I felt that if I hadn’t reported him, I would be validating it. If he didn’t want to risk people reporting him, he shouldn’t insist on cash. Let him take up the ethical violations with the IRS.

My point was not about whether you made the right call or not, but that the law itself is a problem if the point of it is to be loosely enforced. Individual enforcement actions aren’t really relevant in the big picture when the law itself is the primary problem.

TV’s Frink said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/05/trump-conjures-yet-another-immigrant-rape-epidemic/?utm_term=.51f6da9a480e

1. Idiot must have watched Birth of a Nation (1915) and thought it was a documentary.
2. Knows it’s not true and says it anyway to pander to racists.

I used to be a lot more certain it was #2.

TV’s Frink said:

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/05/atlantic-kevin-williamson-writer-abortion-504244

The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said Thursday the magazine was “parting ways” with newly hired conservative writer Kevin Williamson after fresh evidence emerged that he had endorsed hanging women who get abortions.

Goldberg had initially defended hiring Williamson from National Review despite complaints about his previous writing, some of which critics said was racially insensitive or offensive to transgender people. Much of the criticism involved a 2014 tweet that suggested women who had abortions “should face capital punishment, namely hanging.”

On Wednesday, the liberal research group Media Matters unearthed a podcast in which Williamson expressed the same position.

“The language he used in this podcast — and in my conversations with [Williamson] in recent days — made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered view,” Goldberg told staff in a Thursday memo.

“The tweet was not merely an impulsive, decontextualized, heat-of-the-moment post, as Kevin had explained it,” Goldberg continued. “Furthermore, the language used in the podcast was callous and violent. This runs contrary to The Atlantic’s tradition of respectful, well-reasoned debate, and to the values of our workplace.”

Goldberg described Williamson — who joined last month after a decade at National Review — as “a gifted writer.” But Goldberg said he came to the conclusion “that The Atlantic is not the best fit for his talents, and so we are parting ways.”

Hahahaha, “not the best fit.” What a joke.

Hey, who hasn’t wished death on people that they disagree with? I have, and I do it on a much grander scale:

moviefreakedmind said:

I hate everybody at the women’s march and I hate everybody at the march for life and I hope the ground splits open and all of them fall into the Earth. Sounds fair and unbiased to me.

In all seriousness, though, Kevin Williamson needs to stick to screenwriting. How he could he go from writing Scream to writing this nonsense?

CatBus said:

TV’s Frink said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/05/trump-conjures-yet-another-immigrant-rape-epidemic/?utm_term=.51f6da9a480e

1. Idiot must have watched Birth of a Nation (1915) and thought it was a documentary.
2. Knows it’s not true and says it anyway to pander to racists.

I used to be a lot more certain it was #2.

I did too, but I think he seems to believe his own lies at this point.