We need a new thread. So I thought I would post pictures of me participating in a dance test at De Sarge Dance World in Naperville where Jim and I have been taking lessons. We discovered this studio last July and they are great. Below are (a) Devin and me dancing Cha Cha Cha and (b) Jim and me dancing Rhumba.
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Jim was the only guy brave enough to dance with his wife!
Our history in dancing:
- Took two semesters dancing in the PE department at U of I back in 1984. Learned basic steps for a number of social dances.
- About a decade age, we took about 10 weeks of dance lessons at Celebrity Dance World in Downers Grove. Made zero progress (in our opinion.) We decided that was pointless.
- Discovered “May I have the Dance” in Chicago. Took lessons on and off for about a year. (Part of the off was when Jim tore the cartilage in his knee. They were good and we were making progress but the drive was too far and, owing to construction or weather, far from relaxing.
- Hunted for nearby studio. Found DeSarge. Wow! It is awesome. Not only am I improving, but I can see all the other students are too. I’m never going to be world class, but Jim and I are more than respectable on the dance floor.
Now: Back to the regularly scheduled conversation about whatever you like. I bet it won’t be ballroom dance! Open Thread.
TANGO MAN.
Dancing the tango, slow uncoiling,
moving to the pulsing, breathing music
in unison with his black eyed partner
all gravitas and grace. On the dance floor
he’s a god.
The last tango, it’s over, he hurries home,
needs a clean shirt, tango shoes
polished to the utmost gloss …
and he’s out of there
in a rush.
‘Dark Eyes!’ …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtbfFowu000
The first girl has the technique but the second
has the spirit. He’s got both, Wow! – Me too. 🙂
Bravo Lucia and Jim,
But are you sure respectability is an objective in Tango?
We’re on a trip, accompanied by Carlos Gardel – usb library on Ford’s sound system. Adios Muchachos…
You have said you like red….
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.” https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ginger_Rogers
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.”
Except that Astaire did much more than just couples dancing.
j ferguson,
The dancers in the video are great. My Argentine tango… not so good. I’m better at American tango– because of practice.
Respectability is NOT the objective in Tango!
SteveF,
The judge said I need a shorter dress for Latin. I’ve got my eye on two. I’m trying to decide between a red one and a black one. Which will I buy? Hmmmmm….. ( I do sometimes wear things that are not red. But I do love red.)
DB,
Ginger was the better actress and singer. But Fred was a superb dancer.
Fred said his best partner was Rita Hayworth. I’ve watched videos, and yep. True. Rita Hayworth was FABULOUS.
Her life was sort of sad though. Her father taught her to dance…. but also is thought to have abused her sexually. Her relationships with men really didn’t go well. ( I’d say her early life caused her to develop habits that were not helpful for forming stable romantic partnerships.)
SteveF,
I”m choosing between these:
The one on the far right only comes in black. But the other two have their pluses.
This is wonderful !!
j ferguson, Which do you like best?
These are on ebay. Theres a risk they won’t come in time for “The Crystal Ball” competition. I’m going to go look on Amazon now.
Lucia,
The style on the left is more like what I have seen in Buenos Aires; just sayin’.
My wife wanted me to take lessons with her, but I find public humiliation to be humiliating. I can say with certainty John Travolta and I do not share a common ancestor.
It’s harder for the guy at the beginning because you need to lead. Also, beginner women don’t understand how much harder needing to lead is at the beginning. (It’s not clear that following is harder *eventually*. But in the beginning, learning to lead while learning your own steps is harder.
Let me assure you: no one is laughing at the guys in a *real* dance studio!
I agree with SteveF. Style on left seems better “organized”
Humorous thought: After 18 months the only known country to have a government sanctioned spy in the Trump campaign would be…
j ferguson & steve F,
Interesting. I see more dresses with fringe. Being less usual is, in my opinion, a factor on favor of the one on the left.
I decided to bite the bullet and order the skirt with ruffles. I saw an option to pay extra for faster shipping, so I should have it in time for the next competition. (Fingers crossed!)
Tom Scharf,
“I can say with certainty John Travolta and I do not share a common ancestor.”
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Scharf sounds German, while Travolta… well, not German. Still, you can’t be more than a couple hundred generations apart, and probably much less. 😉
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I tired formal dance lessons a couple of times; I really didn’t have the interest level required. I prefer boating, or better yet, golf… more quantitative.
She could do it all. I am old enough to have watched her perform in real time but did not get to appreciate her talents until I watched her old movies.
Also from an old man’s perspective I liked the dress on the far right in black- not necessarily for dancing but for viewing.
Lucia, are you required to dress up as you and Jim appear in the pictures for your lessons?
I recall you noting that you once danced on a table. Is that any part of your current lessons?
I never had dance lessons but I loved to dance and improvise.
Kenneth,
We are not required to dress up for lessons. We aren’t technically required to dress up for judging. But there is an audience and it’s fun to dress up.
My dancing on tables days are over. . .
Love it! The wife and I have kicked around the idea of dancing lessons. If we had a little more free time I think it’d be fun. Maybe in a couple years the kids will be less time intensive; when the older one is driving.
Mark,
Yep. If you have interest, the issue is time. Obviously, you only make progress if you dance regularly which is at least once a week. I’d advise: Look for a studio that has open dance where students really get to dance outside of lessons at least once a week. DeSarge has open dance from 8-9 pm on Fridays. May I have this dace has open dance on weekends. Celebrity where we didn’t make progress did not have anything remotely like regular open dance and when they had things they called open dance, there really wasn’t much opportunity to dance. (They staged show cases and so on. Those are fun to watch, but most of the audience sits.)
You need the open dance for practice. But equally important: IMO a studio that doesn’t have open dance really isn’t serious about student learning. So even if you can’t make it to open dance, the fact they have it is a good sign. (Of course, it’s fine if they charge.)
When you start looking, there is nothing wrong with getting a package through Groupon first. Then resolve to not sign anything without first taking stuff home. (Some studios are really pushy and insist on long contract. Pushy is not a good sign! Long contract only: also not a good sign. Both the studios we had success with let you sign up for 1 lesson at a time and don’t talk about getting you to sign up non-stop.)
Also: Definitely, for them Man’s sake: Start with a dance that is not line of dance. So: rhumba, salsa, cha cha, swing, hustle…. Not foxtrot, waltz, tango. For both your sakes: google to find out if there are dance places outside the studio. You’ll probably find salsa. If yes: a place where you can salsa means you can go there after you learn salsa. That’s fun. In contrast: you probably won’t find many foxtrot joints. ( It’s useful for weddings, new years and so on. But you need a big floor!)
Thanks for the tips, Lucia. I didn’t know about the line of dance distinction; spot vs progressive dances. I see it’s more complicated than I realized. I’d like for things to go smoothly at first so my wife has fun and wants to come back. I’ll keep these things in mind.
mark,
The problem with “line of dance” is they poor guy’s brain has to do all these things:
1) Look down the floor and plan a step that will take him where he wants to go. Sometimes advancing directly is best, sometimes a turn will help you get around people. (Beginners find this difficult plus they have fewer options because they don’t know a lot of steps.)
2) Remember his own steps.
3) Lead it– that is communicate that step to the partner. This needs to be sufficiently clear she has a clue what’s happening.
4) Hope she actually does what you thought you lead. (Not always going to happen, especially if your partner is also a beginner!)
To do (3) well, you sort of need to understand her steps. Meanwhile, if you lead well, she doesn’t need to understand yours at all!
In contrast, if there is no line of dance, you don’t need to navigate while doing (2) and (3). Plus in some of the “not line of dance” dances, the woman can start to pick up on your moves visually. And if the two of you only know a few steps, she’s not likely to guess to far wrong what you are leading. So: not line of dance is easier at the beginning. She’ll have more fun too.
Oh… I should add: it’s actually harder for beginners to lead, period. Even my teacher notes that leading the “bronze” steps in waltz and foxtrot is harder than the “silver” because silver does body contact. The hips and thighs are in contact and some of the “lead” is just sensing where the guy has moved his legs. The guy doesn’t need to “think” so much. But you can’t do body contact at the beginning because you’d trip over each other! So…. it’s difficult.
Start with salsa, chacha, rumba, swing or something like that. Don’t start with Waltz.
I am sure I can Google this but I have always wondered why in the international dance contests I have viewed that the contestants make those very quick head and body movements – it seems unnatural to me. I have always thought it was connected with an exaggeration for ease of judging these movements.
Unlike a sporting event such as football, baseball and basket ball I have a difficult time evaluating who is a better, best and standout dancer.
I thought line dancing was country. I saw an international ballroom (or Latin?) dancing documentary a while back and it was strangely fascinating considering I didn’t have any interest in the subject. I can’t find it though. Watching all these couples dance on the same floor fluidly without interfering with each other seemed unreal. If there was one thing that was super critical, it was selecting the right partner. As I recall the top contenders had their rivalries and of course judging the judges with hostility was common.
Tom,
I don’t know anything about it. I started googling when Lucia answered me. I got Line of Dance here:
[Edit: I didn’t know about ‘Bronze’ vs ‘Silver/Gold’ steps either. Apparently bronze is the beginner stuff. It’s actually pretty interesting.]
Tom:
“Line dancing” is different from “Line of dance”. Some dances use a “Line of Dance”, some don’t. Many that don’t use a “slot”.
Imagine looking at a crowd of dancers from the vantage point of the ceiling. In Fox Trot, Waltz, Texas Two Step and American Tango, the (good) dancers will tend to form an sort of ring of people with the center of the floor empty. The dancers moves will make each couple progress counterclockwise around the floor. This requires a fairly large dance floor. (Texas two step is easier than the others though. It’s ok to learn first. Everyone seems to move at the same speed, and no one seems to ever turn and move diagonal to line of dance, so you don’t end up needing to either buzz around people or worry about then buzzing around you.)
In other dances, couples dance in “a slot”. You could imagine each has sort of claimed a 4 ft wide 10 ft long piece of the floor, and the two pretty much stay in that area. (Sort of. Due to crowding, the guy might decide to sort of move to a new slot. But at any time, they dance inside a “slot”. Swing, salsa, cha cha, bolero, and rhumba are all mostly in a slot. The guy needs to lead these, but he doesn’t need to navigate at the same time.
mark,
In the US, likely for marketing reasons, studios created a syllabus of steps and to some extent market around those. So “Bronze” is the introductory level. There are a few rival “syllabii” floating around. But the Bronze are designed to get beginners dancing and competitions let them be judged for how well they do that level.
I”m going to “compete” in mid-June. It’s a bit funny because the spread of abilities in Bronze is vast. There are people like me who are really just more “beginner” and teachers who want to show credentials that prove the have perfected each of the three syllabii in a huge range of dances. Carissa is newly qualified teacher at De Sarge and I think (but an not sure) she’s going to be doing Bronze in some dances to have her entire certificate show this perfect scores in things like foot placement, arm styling ind so on. But in the past, before she became a teacher, she had done competitions at higher levels.
I’m not going for perfect. Just mostly the fun of it.
How I’ll do in any heat depends on whether everyone who shows up is more like me, more like Carissa and so on. (Granted, I’m sure there are plenty of non-teachers who are better than me. But if you saw Carissa dance 3 boxes of any dance you could see she’s better than me in an instant!_
Lucia,
Exactly! That’s my viewpoint also.
[Edit: I’m going to a local karate tournament in a couple of weeks. I’m basically just an intermediate with virtually no chance of winning (at least in sparring). But what the heck! It’ll be fun. 🙂 A classmate of mine who wanted somebody to compete with at her level talked me into it.]
This video shows a nice organized line of dance. It’s choreographed, so actually much easier than what guys have to deal with in a social dance setting. (Scroll up a minute or two to get to the dancing and see the line.)
Good Ness. I’ve seen three (3) commercials for Republican primaries in Alabama today portraying the contenders as good, rural Southerners who like to fish, hunt, and shoot guns. These three commercials have specifically shown these people shooting firearms.
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I start to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier and more natural to have a big gun battle and the last person standing could get the nomination.
If Dick Cheney is anyone to go by, there doesn’t need to be a battle. They can just go hunting together.
Interesting piece by Mark Steyn on the cyclical nature of the so-called Russian Collusion, or better, the corruption of the innocents: https://www.steynonline.com/8667/tinker-tailor-clapper-carter-downer-halper-spy
You feed a story to someone and can reasonably expect them to blab it to someone else. Whereupon you seize on it as ‘evidence’.
Hillary getting dirt on Trump from Russians was a reason for a special counsel investigation of Trump.
Trump having a meeting to get dirt on Hillary was a reason for a special counsel investigation of trump.
MikeN,
Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.
MikeN. I never thought about it your way, but you are right. It is puzzling.
j ferguson,
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I don’t find it puzzling. The selfrighteous can justify any means if those means bring “righteous” ends… a la Che’.
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Which is why I have no respect for most “progressives”. Same thing with most climate activists. I think it comes down to nothing more than a combination of a very weak argument and an obnoxious arrogance; they so believe they are right that they will tolerate the voicing of no opposing POV, and instead shout the opposition down with cries of “racist”, “selfish”, “dishonest”, “denier”, and with explicit threats. Bad people doing bad things.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #168181) “Interesting piece by Mark Steyn on the cyclical nature of the so-called Russian Collusion”
Steyn is always interesting. The title of this piece is clever. The interesting thing to me is that Steyn doesn’t appear to be a big fan of John le Carré. If I got it right, apparently spying isn’t really like he describes it. I wouldn’t know. I’m pretty sure it isn’t like how Tom Cruise, 007, and Jason Bourne do it either. But what John le Carré does superbly well in the books in my opinion is Deep State (UK version). The spies are expendable, but the important people on top who expend the spies get away with their corruption.
I guess I was puzzled that the inequality of concern hadn’t occurred to me. Maybe it was because Hillary had no chance of other getting to any real power – (I hope) that I didn’t think much about her participation in the Steele Dossier thing.
I think there’s more to come from the dossier and Hillary’s participation.
NSA contractor access was shut down on April 18, and the next day Glenn Simpson’s wife makes her only trip to the White House.
Soon after Fusion GPS gets paid by Hillary and DNC, thru the same law firm that Obama used, and they hire Steele and Nellie Ohr, whose husband was #4 at DOJ. With the database spying disabled, suddenly lots of human spying appears.
There’s nothing more fascinating (and credibility killing) then all the “fact checkers” claiming there was no spying. It’s all over the map from isolated demands of rigor of what the word spying means to hair splitting on that it was actually spying against the Russians, not Trump. I submit if this was all just an innocent FBI action protecting Americans then why wasn’t Trump told there were Russians trying to infiltrate his campaign? Why was he not given a presumption of innocence? He was being targeted. If they don’t release good evidence of why they did this, then it will be a very dark day for the FBI.
Tom,
I’m not with you on this one.
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Me too. I need some evidence beyond the fact that they didn’t tell him before I conclude Obama was spying on Trump for political reasons.
I see Rosanne served herself up on a silver platter to the liberal career death penalty thought police. Do liberals read a different version of 1984 than I did? The kind of crap that gets said on late night TV is not only never punished, it is celebrated by the left wing media. Left and right excesses are also dealt with in disparate (ha, ha) ways. This environment where your career can end instantly on a current or past behavior as judged by the social Illuminati, even when you apologize, is soul crushing.
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Lots of things have gotten better over the past 50 years, but this is not one of them. Being a comedian must be pretty hard when you have to wear a social straight jacket. What a horrible occupation to be in right now.
But I am with you there. It’s pretty much the inverse of the secret of the Deplorable Word to make a public statement relating a human who is not strictly caucasian to an ape; instead of destroying the rest of the world, uttering this on social media instantly annihilates the speaker.
mark,
Whether Obama was spying on Trump is another of the “all over the map” debunkings of the spying claim. The media is headlining “spying claim false” while 5 paragraphs down saying spying happened, but the specific spying claimed by Trump is unproven (therefore false in their view, ha ha).
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I doubt even if this was directed by the WH there would be any evidence of such unless they were complete idiots. Obama and company have been silent on what they knew, and if they knew nothing one would have expected a legacy protecting denial to come out by now. If I was the FBI I would not have opened an investigation into a Presidential campaign without notifying the WH and giving them a chance to veto it. My guess is the WH was notified, the WH didn’t make the decision, and didn’t veto it either. Obama would have been crazy to initiate that investigation in his final days.
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We shall see. If at the end of the Mueller investigation the FBI doesn’t make it crystal clear why they did what they did, then something is rotten in Denmark. Given McCabe’s actions, Comey’s leaks and his recent anti-Trump PR campaign I’m not giving the FBI a presumption of innocence here. The burden is on the FBI at this point.
The double standard does get old.
Here’s Bill Ma[h]er joking that Trump is the spawn of an orangutan. I don’t think this is hysterically funny, but I don’t particularly have a problem with it.
Trying to rationalize why this is OK yet Rosanne’s stupid remark is intolerable does remind me of 1984. ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’
[Edit, sorry, forgot the link. Here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuP1e0RNF-0&feature=player_embedded ]
This is the one that set me off. NPR: FACT CHECK: No, Clapper Has Not ‘Admitted That There Was Spying’ On Trump Campaign
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Paragraph 12: “But, to be clear, there was spying going on here. Yes — the FBI was spying on Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, and as part of that, it was trying to find out whether any Americans were involved.”
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Paragraph 17: “They were spying on — a term I don’t particularly like … what the Russians were doing,” Clapper said on The View.”
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On top of this it is now known the name of the “spy” and that he specifically targeted Trump campaign people. Perhaps it was justified, but that is a totally different issue. The media’s Jedi mind trick of “These are not the spies you are looking for” while waving an arm just doesn’t work on me.
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https://www.npr.org/2018/05/24/614028376/fact-check-no-james-clapper-didnt-admit-there-was-spying-on-trump-campaign
We don’t need to see his identification. These aren’t the droids we’re looking for. You can go about your business. Move along, move along.
Wait, what. Were you saying something Tom? :p
Getting the warrant gave McCabe and Strzok and Page access to Trump campaign’s emails.
They were also spying on the transition team until Mike Rogers told Trump about it and he moved the team out of Trump Tower to New Jersey the next day.
Trey Gowdy was at the meeting with FBI, and he is reporting that they everything right.
MikeN,
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Yes, but Gowdy doesn’t think Trump is (or ever was) the target of the investigation either. He could be correct, he could be misinformed, … there are other possibilities I imagine.
mark bofill (Comment #168190): “I need some evidence beyond the fact that they didn’t tell him before I conclude Obama was spying on Trump for political reasons.”
I thought Tom was referring to the claim by some that the FBI was investigating a Russian attempt to infiltrate Trumps’s campaign and that the spying was for Trump’s benefit. That is disproved by the fact that they never notified the campaign.
I don’t know if the spying was purely the FBI, or if it was orchestrated by the White House, or whether it was done by the FBI and the White House knew but looked the other way. The first is the least bad, but it is plenty bad.
One question is if they went to all this trouble to “not spy” on the Trump campaign, why did they not leak it before the election? My guess is they didn’t find any smoking gun and more importantly they thought HRC had the election in the bag. Then again the “not spying” may have been privately “not leaked” and it wasn’t very useful given the mountain of character defects Trump already had.
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I’m sure the next Dem candidate won’t object if they don’t spy on them either with ‘Undercover’,’ ‘informant,’ and ‘confidential informant’ people who are employed by the executive branch of the opposing party. Nothing to see here, please move along. Asking for justification is just partisan bickering. They just better release the info or else I would be OK with firing the entire FBI. Trust us isn’t going to cut it given McCabe, Page, Strzok, and Comey
“there are only four methods of leaving: resignation, death, impeachment by a majority of the House and two-thirds majority of the Senate, or the Cabinet declaring they are unfit to fulfill the duties of the office.”
What is this cabinet??
Why does it have this power?
dumb question but not American.
Angech,
Not a stupid question.
At any particular time, Congress will have set up specific offices to advise the president. These can change, but generally include Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and so on. You can find a current list here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_the_United_States
The heads of these offices are appointed by the president– with senate confirmation. So they are actually all sort of “on his side”. The president would certainly have to be unfit for 2/3rds of them to declare he is unfit.
angech,
The Cabinet has this power because the Constitution was amended to give it to them when the Presidential succession order was formalized in 1967 after the assassination of President Kennedy. A major difference between the UK cabinet of ministers and the US is that the UK Ministers are members of Parliament also. A US Cabinet member cannot be a member of Congress. If, for example, a Congress person is appointed to a Cabinet position,
Secretary of State or whatever, they must resign their seat in Congress.
The President can be declared unfit by the Vice-President cabinet backed by a majority of the cabinet. But the President can challenge that, then he returns to office unless 2/3 of both the House and Senate declare him unfit. Won’t happen unless the President is incapacitated and can’t challenge the declaration.
Mike M,
As you point out, a removal of a president via the 25th amemdment requires a vote of the cabinet and 2/3’s of both houses IF the president resists. This is a lot more confirmation of support for a removal than impeachment, which ignores the cabinet, and requires only a majority in the house.
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My guess is that few who suppose the 25th to be a means for removing Trump have read the rest of the amendment.
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At the same time, a vote for removal by his own cabinet might be pretty compelling guidance to congress. One wonders if the cabinet would present its “findings” to both houses. The mechanism for how this would work doesn’t appear to be spelled out.
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In view of the above, a challenge via the 25th would really be a means to provoke a resignation since its likelihood of prevailing against a president who wants to keep office seems very remote.
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This makes me think that the 25th was intended to deal with a president in a coma and not really anything else short of the guy having gone barking mad – and thse days, how would you knoow?
NYT: How Trump’s Election Shook Obama: ‘What if We Were Wrong?’
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/us/politics/obama-reaction-trump-election-benjamin-rhodes.html
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“Mr. Rhodes writes that neither he nor Mr. Obama knew at that time that there was an F.B.I. investigation into contacts between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia, despite Mr. Trump’s recent unsubstantiated claims that the departing president placed a “spy†or multiple spies in his campaign.”
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The FBI doing this on their own is a pretty risky move. Comey may be viewed a lot of different ways, but one thing for sure is he left the FBI much worse off then when he got it.
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Ha, ha:
“Mr. Obama and his team were confident that Mrs. Clinton would win and, like much of the country, were shocked when she did not. “I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have seen it coming,†Mr. Rhodes writes. “Because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used: She’s part of a corrupt establishment that can’t be trusted to bring change.—
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Not sure what to make of this one:
“What if we were wrong?†he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine.
“He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many feel left behind. “Maybe we pushed too far,†Mr. Obama said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.â€
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Liberals forgot about identity? Ummmm…a ludicrous statement. However Obama never really trafficked much into identity politics, as opposed to his party (and the NYT), but you have to be willfully blind to write something like that.
What I took from this (briefly) is that President Obama viewed his work as ultimately uniting Americans; breaking down barriers of some sort. Perhaps between race and gender and so on. I get the impression at least some progressives feel this way; that President Trump is a step towards the past – tribalism and disunity and such.
I do not endorse this viewpoint, it’s not my viewpoint, but I speculate that this may be what he was trying to get at. But there’s a lot of shooting from the hip in my thoughts here. Don’t really know.
[Edit: If you buy into the idea of political correctness in the first place, this sort of makes sense. One might think that by suppressing ‘intolerant’ or otherwise incorrect viewpoints one is creating unity. I’m not a fan of political correctness in our culture and I don’t think it creates unity, on the contrary I think it increases polarization. Maybe it drives dissent underground, but I don’t believe it really causes anything like unity.]
I want to preface my remarks here by saying: The Eighth Circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno has 10 sub-categories of which one is reserved for some politicians. I would prefer that there would have been an entire circle for most politicians. I would also have preferred that the constitution held politicians to a much more rigid standard than non-political citizens.
Having said all that it should be apparent to many past unquestioning supporters of some less than forthcoming government agencies like the FBI and CIA and a special prosecutor that whatever these entities have done in the recent past – be it right or wrong – they have the power to do wrong and essentially hide it behind their veil of secrecy.
Unfortunately it would appear that many citizens do not see this as an issue of giving government too much power and secrecy but rather an ever changing for and against issue depending on whose partisan ox is being gored.
j ferguson (Comment #168206): “This makes me think that the 25th was intended to deal with a president in a coma and not really anything else short of the guy having gone barking mad”.
I am certain that such things are the reason for Section 4 of that Amendment. It was surely not intended as a way to overturn an election.
Prior to the 25th Amendment, what could have been done with a President who suffered a stroke that was sufficiently incapacitating that he would be unable/unwilling to sign a letter of resignation? The only option would be for someone to unconstitutionally usurp the President’s power. That might have happened with Wilson.
Tom Scharf (Comment #168207): “Liberals forgot about identity? Ummmm…a ludicrous statement.”
Not so ludicrous. The left only cares about certain limited types of identity, specifically those represented by certain interest groups. Identities such as “American” or “Christian” or “self-reliant” matter not at all to them.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #168209): “I would also have preferred that the constitution held politicians to a much more rigid standard than non-political citizens.”
The Constitution can not hold people to a standard. Only people can hold people can hold people to a standard. There are only two groups people who can potentially hold politicians to a standard. One of those is politicians. Right. That leaves it up to the voters. As it should be.
Mike M.,
I believe the consensus is that it did happen with Woodrow Wilson and that’s the reason for the incapacitation clause in the 25th Amendment.
Mike M,
Right, I think the intended reading was liberals forgot about (white/US) identity. Using those specific words just poisons the well for the intended message. The point that most citizens aren’t ready for and never wanted to be “global citizens” living in a cosmopolitan paradise is a valid point, and it is the cosmo-bubble that prevents many from seeing that global trade has uneven results. The Obama’s of the world are literally surrounded only by the winners in globalism and only value the opinions of their cosmopolitan peers. Guess what, your aren’t running for the leader of the world, you are running for the leader of the US. That’s what he forgot. Attributing frustration with those uneven outcomes to racism and xenophobia just makes people’s heads explode.
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Trump is now flaring up trade wars with everyone which is likely to not end well economically, but is almost certainly good politics. He will be challenging the left in November to run against protectionism and reverse these tariffs which will only reinforce the perception that the left cares more about the world than their own country. My guess is they will walk right into that trap. Good luck winning middle America on open borders and unrestricted trade in 2010.
And how well has that accountability worked? That game is fixed by the partisan divide where too many of the voters ignore issues when its party does bad and only “sees” them in the other party. The basic problem is never fixed.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #168215): “And how well has that accountability worked? That game is fixed by the partisan divide where too many of the voters ignore issues when its party does bad and only “sees†them in the other party. The basic problem is never fixed.”
Yep. Democracy is the worst form of government ever invented. Except for all the others.
Mark Bofill, Gowdy is being vary careful in his language. Target is only used for criminal investigations, not counterintelligence investigations.
Tom Scharf, they did leak it. It’s how David Corn and Michael Isikoff published it, and Harry Reid wrote about it. They didn’t think Trump would win, so they didn’t feel the need to go further.
Without Buzzfeed, after the election the story would just have been CNN’s publishing that there is a dossier about Trump’s collusion with Russia.
Democracy is a better form of government than a constitutional republic?
Gowdy and even a libertarian like judge Napolitano appear to be too close to these prosecutorial issues and their buddies in the field to be completely forthcoming in these matters. They leave a lot of questions unanswered. Or worse they insinuate that there is not a great need for timely answers.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #168218): “Democracy is a better form of government than a constitutional republic?”
A constitutional republic is a form of democracy. Probably the only practical form of democracy.
In the world’s worst timing to strikingly demonstrate liberal double standards, TBS airs Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c***” on late night TV on Wed. Yes, it’s the word you think it is.
DeWitt,
I think an argument can be made that Wilson’s stroke was a blessing to the country. But yes, the incapacitation clause was probably related to Wilson’s stroke
marc bofill,
“I’m not a fan of political correctness in our culture and I don’t think it creates unity, on the contrary I think it increases polarization.”
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Of course it increases polarization. That is, as they say, a feature, not a bug. Hillary’s revolting “deplorables” comment was an apt summary: ‘We hate you and what you believe, we will disenfranchise you, and we will ignore your interests.’ Obama’s “You didn’t build that!” Is more of the same revolting tripe: since nobody legitimately builds anything, there is no moral problem confiscating whatever is built for direct or indirect redistribution. It is Marx lite, nothing less, and that remains the fundamental political divide: individual liberty on most everything, versus collective control of most everything.
SteveF,
grin
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But do the practitioners of political correctness think it ultimately leads to unity? Seriously.
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I can argue it either way in my head. I can convince myself that some of the progressive types I’ve known really don’t give a crap about people who disagree so long as they [the disagreers] keep their mouths shut. But I can [also] imagine somebody arguing that eventually the oppressive yoke of PC could unify people. Maybe the ‘die out’ argument; eventually the unconvincible die out and young people born to a culture that shows complete intolerance for certain views just never adopt those views…
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I dunno. I think my [example] argument isn’t a good one, don’t find it particularly compelling. But just because I can’t come up with a good example doesn’t mean nobody out there has a better one.
SteveF (Comment #168222): “the incapacitation clause was probably related to Wilson’s stroke”.
After a delay of 46 years?
I think it had more to do with Eisenhower’s and LBJ’s health problems and the realization of what would have happened if JFK had been left in a coma. That and nuclear weapons.
The new age postmodernists see the world as a simple power struggle between groups with different identities who have unequal shares of power. Inequality is immoral and it is maliciously caused by people with power and they need to be taken down by any means necessary by those without power, thus allowing for a Marxist equality utopia to be created. Debating the power hierarchy is meaningless since their is no objective truth that can validate a power hierarchy. It is all about the destruction of power hierarchies to fix the evil of inequality. It by definition cannot be argued that unequal outcomes are valid. It’s the oppressors vs the oppressed and those categories need to be eliminated. Those on top of the hierarchy got there through tyranny and power and competence is just another invalid means to get there and isn’t much different than killing your way to the top. The rewards are morally unearned. It’s crazy and a bit scary to think what would happen if they gained control (see the fine examples from the 20th century). They are total whack jobs who believe communism/ socialism just hasn’t been done right yet, but they should not be underestimated.
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Once you begin to understand this world philosophy then a lot of their seemingly illogical behavior starts to make more sense. It conveniently structures itself to bypass political debate as unnecessary and just jumps straight to implementing utopia by tearing down the tyrannical power structures that exist today and are the sole source of the world’s ills. A political philosophy based on the competent getting larger shares of wealth is just another name for legal oppression. Competent people are not entitled to larger shares of wealth, period. This is all cloaked in the morality of helping the poor. Some people do really care about the poor and others are just cynically using this as cover for their political agenda and to bludgeon their opposition and virtue signal their peers.
Thanks Tom. That reminds me strongly of what I think Jordan Peterson would say. But he goes on to say that most people don’t fully understand the postmodernism they… What’s the word, that’s part of their world view. He says you have to get a mob of them together for the whole ‘demon’ that is postmodern philosophy to manifest fully. If this is correct, it’s hard to know what PC people think they are accomplishing.
Tom Scharf,
“They are total whack jobs who believe communism/ socialism just hasn’t been done right yet, but they should not be underestimated.”
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Clearly, they should not be underestimated. When someone believes that the entire social and political structure is immoral, then there is no limit to the harm they are willing to do; one need look no further than Venezuela to see the inevitable result. The left dominates education at all levels, and that is not by coincidence, it is by design: teach leftism from the first grade on. .
And here is the key thing: it does not matter to those on the left that the ‘egalitarian utopia’ inevitably impoverishes on average; they much prefer average poverty if everyone suffers equally… except for the leaders on the left, of course. You might imagine that the many examples of failed leftist governments, which have inevitably done terrible economic and social damage, would be enough to persuade, but the left is immune to persuasion. Theirs is a religious like belief system, divorced from experience and factual reality. It shares much common ground with environmentalism… also a belief system divorced from factual reality.
marc bofill,
“But do the practitioners of political correctness think it ultimately leads to unity? ”
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Maybe. The goal seems to me to be “name and shame” (and more importantly, get people fired from their jobs) so that people are afraid to voice any opinion that goes against leftist policies… PC is the current enforcement arm of the left. Programmers at Google are unlikely to say anything in the future that could be construed as not supporting the left… vocally support the left or keep quiet are the only allowed options under PC.
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If everyone is afraid to speak opposing views, then the left completely dominates. And that seems to me the real objective.
Tom Scharf (Comment #168226): “The new age postmodernists see the world as a simple power struggle …”
True. But after that Tom is way too kind.
The left sees the world as a simple power struggle, with no objective morality. Their objective is power, the more the better. They are fine with oppression, as long as they are the oppressors. Morality is just a cloak, to hide what they really are and to dupe the people that they need to use in their quest for power.
Mike M and others discussing “the left”. I think it’s both unfair and mistaken to make these broad characterizations of “the left”. For example, not all on “the left” (meaning liberal leaning) see the world as a “power struggle”. For example, “the left” does contain some people in religious orders– like Catholic nuns and priests– who merely think that distributing money evenly is somehow both good, generous fair and so on. They may be mistaken (and I think they largely are), but you don’t hear these sorts of people concerning themselves about “power struggle”. Certainly, they don’t use morality as a mere cloak and they don’t try to hide who they are.
Wild over-generalizations are what leads to people characterizing everyone on the “other” side as “deplorable” even if they aren’t stoooooopid enough to provide a really memorable sound bite as Hillary did when campaigning.
If we go places with a different population of commentors, you’ll read over generalizations of “the right”. Because most of you here are right leaning, you recognize these. You know dang well the right contains a variety of people who include people whose “thing” is mostly “free market” others whose “thing” is civil liberties, others whose “thing” is “christian right” and so on.
And yes, many white nationalists currently identify more as “right” than “left”. It’s a wretched branch, but it’s not all or even most of the “right”.
“The left” has a range of people just like the right. And really, you ought to recognize this and not pretend they are all or even most “antifa”.
SteveF
I do think some people believe and advocate this. Of course, it doesn’t work forever.
Have you read about plunging enrollment at Evergreen State?
https://www.academia.org/plunging-enrollment-forces-evergreen-state-college-to-cut-staff/
University of MO enrollment is also down substantially. This “fact check” is sort of funny:
http://www.politifact.com/missouri/statements/2017/oct/30/eric-greitens/greitens-mostly-false-about-mu-having-biggest-enro/
Yeah… if he widens the groups to include two year colleges, and uses full enrollment, the decline is 4th worst in the country. Otherwise, it’s 2nd worst. That would still not make it “worst”, but still pretty bad.
And honestly, I suspect it’s the decline in Freshman enrollment that’s disturbing to the admins. They know seniors are not going to leave because transferring is too costly because at least some credits will generally not port to the new school.
Yes. Perhaps we don’t know which school had the biggest decline in Freshman admissions. But things are quite bad at U Mo.
Lucia,
Yes. Speaking personally, it’s difficult to even produce a meaningful broad low resolution list of categories to avoid incorrectly and unjustly lumping people together. Left, libertarian left, radical left, classic liberal, others? Makes me think I need to talk less and information gather more. But I like to talk… :/
[Edit: Steve, thanks for your response.]
lucia (Comment #168231):
Lucia is correct. I was unclear. I should have said “those pushing the more extreme views from the left” or maybe “those weaponizing political correctness”. Most left leaning people do not see things as a raw power struggle or seek to oppress. They are legitimately concerned about the environment, issues of fairness, etc. Many of them are dupes and many more are just intimidated. As a result, they tacitly support a hidden agenda that they would oppose if they saw it clearly. Or to put it a different way, there is an element on the left that is exploiting well meaning people in a quest to gain power.
On an ‘intersectional’ note (jezus did I really just type that), Peterson was in a debate recently with soft lefty Steven Fry on his side vs Michael Dyson & Michelle Goldberg on the topic of political correctness.
Not a very interesting debate with respect to the topic (as Fry pointed out repeatedly) in my view; didn’t really get anywhere. I mention it because it was refreshing for me to hear from somebody on the left (Fry) I might actually have respect for; seemed like a reasonable guy. Nuanced.
MikeM,
My view on “very high tax” governments, or those where the state controls many industries is that it is inevitable that someone will want to control the government for personal gain. The reason is that many people do want to both be well off and to specifically be better off that “others”. It’s just a human thing. In a capitalist system, many know one path to that is starting a business, working hard and yada… yada…. There is a path for many private individuals to do things for personal gain, people do and some end up a “top dog” within their business community or social community.
But in a more socialist system, or one where the government owns the means of production, there is no private path to being a “top dog” as it were. Either they are taxed so much they remain on the same level or the only way to control stuff is to move up in government. Inevitably someone gets the idea to take over. You end up with people who overthrow elections, carry out coups or in some way or another become “the strong man”.
Now people can say that theoretically the strong man is not part of governments where the means of production are controlled by the government. Of course, governments that control the means of production are one of the common definitions of “communist” since in those cases, “the people” are seen as synonymous with “the government”. And “communism” is supposed to be “the people” control the means of production. So, if my view of what motivates some people is true, communism will tend to result in a strongman. So: a communist system that is not yet totalitarian will tend to become so.
So: I’m pretty well against big government even though some people think they can somehow be kind wonderful and provide everyone what they individual need. These things just never work out.
lucia (Comment #168236): “I’m pretty well against big government even though some people think they can somehow be kind wonderful and provide everyone what they individual need. These things just never work out.”
I don’t know why you addressed that to me, but I agree completely. Centralized power is an invitation to tyranny.
Mike M.
I should have quoted:
I was sort of riffing off the above.
Lucia,
Do I paint “the left” with too broad a brush? Perhaps so. Are there lots of people who just think income disparity is too large and that taxes need to be raised to “redistribute” wealth? Sure there are. What I have no doubt about is the desire on “the left” for broad control of personal economic behavior, and broad control of individual economic outcomes. That way lies tyranny and economic ruin.
SteveF,
I agree those on the “economic Left” (which is most of the left) prefer broad control of personal economic behavior. I think it’s an unwise idea for reasons I mentioned above.
But I also think the don’t want a strongman or totalitarian government. Some above seem to think that’s what they want. The problem I see is that governments empowered with “broad control” almost inevitably end up strongman/totalitarian. I think those on the left naively believe it can be avoided. They persist in believing it can be avoided despite examples showing it always happens.
Basically: their notion it can be avoided is entirely theoretical resting on some “theory” about what would be “best”. As they way: theory always works…. in theory. The pesky problems arise when put in practice.
lucia (Comment #168240): “But I also think the don’t want a strongman or totalitarian government. Some above seem to think that’s what they want. The problem I see is that governments empowered with “broad control†almost inevitably end up strongman/totalitarian. I think those on the left naively believe it can be avoided.”
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I think that is exactly right for the vast majority of people on the left. But I also think that many of the thought leaders who are driving the agenda are fully aware of the tendency to totalitarianism and regard it as a feature, not a bug.
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I suppose I may have painted with too broad a brush. But when I see people allowing themselves to be herded, I figure they are at least partly to blame for where the herd is headed. Even if it is the slaughterhouse.
No-one ever mentions “distributing wealth” It’s always “redistribution”
It might be better to hope that wealth might be more broadly available. And I think it is – given the numbers of people worldwide who are reported to have risen out of poverty, a lot of them without the ministrations of socialism, more because of the spreading of technology in modes which are useful to folks who have next to nothing.
Lucia,
“Perhaps we don’t know which school had the biggest decline in Freshman admissions. But things are quite bad at U Mo.”
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That politifact article is silly; it was clearly the 34% decline in freshman enrollment the governor was talking about. The decline suggests many parents and students who would otherwise choose MU are not interested in attending a university with many “student protests” and professors and administrators who support those protests. Missouri has voted Republican in every presidential election since their former neighboring governor Bill Clinton was in office… and even buffoon Trump got 57% of the vote…. it is a conservative state with a liberal state university. So declining enrollment doesn’t seem so much a surprise. The Missouri legislature seems willing to punish that liberalism; if the 34% drop in admissions continues (and it think it will if “student protests” continue), a 34% drop in number of professors and administrators seems likely.
j ferguson,
The distinction is between creating wealth and redistributing existing wealth. My observation is that those most interested in having smaller differences in wealth (between individuals and between nations) usually want to redistribute existing wealth, not create new wealth to help poor people. Creating wealth is what most conservatives and libertarians want to do…. progressives? Not so much. Greens are mainly opposed to economic growth, and so strongly support redistribution of wealth, nationally and internationally, to make the world more “fair”.
SteveF
Many attribute the sharp decline to a specific protest involving a Melissa Click.
You may or may not have seen this photo of Melissa Click
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_University_of_Missouri_protests
SteveF,
Yep.
The thing is, on-going out-of-hand protests detract from actual education. Like it or not, many employers will elect to send recruiters elsewhere. Many parents who pay bills and students who take out loans (and even some who have scholarships) do want to get well paying jobs after college.
It would hardly be surprising that the sorts of protests at UMo in Nov. 2015 would make a sizeable number of high school juniors decide to drop UMo from the list of schools to visit, and research as possible places to send applications. Those juniors would have been entering in 2017. (In contrast, by Nov 2016 lots of students would have already sent in applications and so on. The hit to admissions won’t be as large because, inevitably, the choices for those students have essentially whittled down to schools who accepted applications sent in before the riot. Some may apply to dozens of schools. But applying take time and money, so many will have applied to only a handful– or even only two.)
The faculty and admin may think this behavior is just fine. We could debate that. But it looks like it almost certainly affected enrollment.
I have found that it would be a difficult task to determine the politics of friends and relatives if all I knew about them was observations of their personal lives – and without revelations of their politics or how they voted.
What gives me some hope about the future is that in discussing political issues with these people and leaving out partisan politics many of them have rather libertarian views.
Most of the partisanship comes from a great dislike of the “other side” and not from so much being enamored with their side. In many instances that dislike has been transferred to individual politicians. Politicians understand these feelings and that is why I believe they employ negative persoanlized campaigns against their opposition instead of concentrating on their own philosophies in a positive manner.
Lucia,
“Many attribute the sharp decline to a specific protest involving a Melissa Click. ”
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Sure. The video clip of her physically threatening a student journalist was terribly damaging to the school’s reputation; the fact that she was not instantly fired hurt the school administration’s reputation even more. Really, it is difficult to see how someone like that was ever hired, unless the administration has the judgment of a blind drunken monkey. After she plead guilty to assault, the school STILL didn’t fire her.. until the legislature directly threatened the school administration.
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An even more depressing fact: when she was finally discharged, the American Association of University Professors put MU on it’s official Censure List…. the association apparently thinks criminal assault on a student by a professor is OK, so long as the professor is a “progressive”. I see dark days ahead for universities in the USA.
SteveF,
Yep.
I think the silly polifact article that
(a) extended to include 2 year colleges and
(b) looked at 4 year enrollment instead of freshman
to diagnose the “truth” of the claim may well have written by someone who really, really, really doesn’t like the idea that these progressive protest do harm the reputation of a school and do result in lowered enrollment.
The claim that it had the largest drop –which almost certainly referred to Freshman enrollment at 4 year colleges– is at least “might be true, but I don’t have data to be sure”. It may well turn out to be true. A drop of 36% is quite large especially at the Land Grant institution in a state.
BTW, my first grandchild was born this AM… 9 lbs 8 oz. Mother and son doing well.
I had to go look at the quote
“The University of Missouri saw “the biggest drop in enrollment of any major university in the country” since the 2015 protests. ”
Note, the quote refers to (a) university and (b) major.
This is the definition of “university”.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/university
Two year colleges do not confer bachelor’s degree — which are 4 year degrees and also don’t have graduate divisions. So they are not “major universities”. In fact, they are not “universities”. (Sometimes, if they act as an extension to a university they may have some graduate courses which are accepted at the actual university.)
If something is primarily a two year college, but with some portion that has graduate degrees of some sort, some might count it as a university, but it is certainly not a “major university”. (Whether I would count it as a university depends on the what the degrees are. Sorry… but Devry has some MS degress and I’m not convinced it’s a “university”.)
As for “major”, everyone can argue what constitutes “major”. But there are lists put together. U Missouri is on this list:
https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/world-university-rankings/top-universities-us-201617
US News ans world report ranks UMo Columbia 120 in national universities. Akron is between #231-#300. I don’t know where the cut-off to “major” university is. Perhaps the person quoted thinks it’s 200. Or he has some other ranking group in mind. But I think a case could be made that the claim is “mostly right”.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities?school-name=missouri
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-akron-3123
University of Akron is not.
Congratulations Grandpa steve!!
Missouri football players said they wouldn’t practice or play unless the President resigned. This is a major football program playing in the SEC. I don’t see how they get any good recruits doing this, and if the football team is not good, that also hurts the overall enrollment. Missouri was first in the SEC East in 2014 and #14 nationally, then finished next to last and last place the next two years before recovering to 4-4 this year.
MikeN,
“Missouri football players said they wouldn’t practice or play unless the President resigned.”.
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Sounds like the correct time to expel those “student athletes” who refused to play, as required by their scholarships. Some things actually are more important than college football. Some people might even argue that the school would be better off without those “student athletes” on campus.
I thought that college enrollment increases with a bad economy and particularly at 2 year schools. I assume that with a good economy the enrollment might decrease.
Also there have been declines in enrollment at large state universities in IL over past years – except not for the U of I. I do not know what affect the financial crises in IL has on this change.
Busted, my Jordan Peterson was definitely showing there, ha ha. I’m not quite a groupie yet, but find myself absolutely fascinated by the stark difference between what he says, and what his critics think he says. It’s right up there with climate science as far as very odd willful misrepresentations go. The left is really threatened by him, and his success drives them batty. He must be destroyed of course. He stated that he’s fine with them screaming and misrepresenting him, it puts on display their ideological foolishness, and this strategy works just great for him.
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For the record, I am talking about the group of Marxist leaning left. I imagine the postmodernists would give themselves a kinder, gentler interpretation than I do. Some of the stuff in the humanities of academia has gone off the rails, and it is partially sourced by this self reinforcing mentality that has gone down a rabbit hole. When it gets exposed to non-academia it looks insane. There is no reason to be upset about any of this, it really doesn’t work well to be associated with this group politcally. The left would win more elections if they started treating this group like the right has to treat the real white supremacists.
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One off the wall explanation for the strange anger of this movement is that the humanities has just watched the tech sector change the world in quite significant and meaningful ways for the better in the last few decades. An inferiority complex has set in and the humanities are in the midst of an angry jealous blowout against the nerds who completely ignore them and those nerds need to be put back in their place. Then again, maybe not.
At the very basic level capitalism works better because it leverages human nature more optimally than collectivist political systems. If we were all soulless computer coded automatons with no individual drive for wealth and power than alternate political systems would likely be more optimal. Perhaps this is part of the reason the nuttier side of the left is on a campaign to erase any biological differences and wants people to believe humans are blank slates with no programming built in.
Congratulations old man SteveF.
HI SteveF, i thought the kid in your photo was a grandchild. ??
Congratulations SteveF!
My friends who are grandparents unanimously tell me it is a wonderful thing. I have to take their word for it (for now, anyway).
j ferguson,
No, that is my youngest daughter taken some years back; she’s now 10 1/2 YO. I have led a somewhat complicated life.
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Tom Scharf,
Age speaks to all of us, and warns of the Reaper who awaits.
I agree about the relative efficiency of capitalism versus collectivist political systems. The “blank slate” belief started with early collectivist thinkers, and led to the lunacy of Lysenko. It is still probably the most important fundamental belief on the left. If individuals have different natural tendencies and different natural abilities, then insisting on equality of outcome, as progressives usually do, is clearly nuts. So “progressives” reject the obvious, and insist that all differences in outcome are due to environment, not native abilities.
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HaroldW,
Most grandparents seem to enjoy their grand kids, although I have seen instances of friction between parents and grandparents over grand kids… usually having to do with grand kids behavior and discipline.
Congratulations Steve. That is big baby boy.
Sometimes grandparents complain about the behavior of their grandkids and discipline, or lack thereof, of their kids with their grandkids, but usually those same grandparents are much more lenient with their grandkids than they were with their kids.
Steve, that’s great! Couldn’t be happier for you!
Geoffrey Chaucer: “The Pardoner’s Tale”
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In the introduction to his tale, the Pardoner states, “Radix malorum est cupiditas,†Latin for “The love of money is the root of all evilâ€
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I wonder how long it will take someone in the media to make this connection.
Theater, journalism, and environmentalism meet for a humorous case of noble cause corruption multiplied.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/play-review-for-18-billion-prize-spiked-deemed-too-dangerous/
“How fragile must we be to fear art such as this?”
The most wonderful thing just happened to me. In a store someone cast me in a gender stereotype! It was so refreshing. I love this magical city I live in!
Mark,
Which gender? And Cis or Trans?
Walked into that one… :p
So, Lucia rightfully questions my rampant masculinity (cough), perhaps I should at least leave less room to question the meaning of my remark.
I’m not a huge fan of stereotypes. What drew me to this blog in the first place is that Lucia has the math chops to confidently sort out how climate models are comparing with reality. Women don’t do math? Puhleeze! Nope, it’s not the allure of stereotypes that made me happy.
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Just this really and nothing else: the girl who stereotyped me was not afraid.
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No big deal in the scheme of things, one way or the other. Yet it shocked me to realize she wasn’t on guard. She wasn’t worried about how anybody would construe or misconstrue her words. She wasn’t closed and guarded. She was just a person exchanging a few words with somebody else without fear of being called out.
Maybe it’s sad and sorry and small, but that was magical in a quiet sort of way.
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Anyways. On to volcanoes!
mark,
I’ve never met you in real life. It’s hard to detect rampant masculinity or anything else from writing!
😉 Just self deprecating humor. Truthfully I don’t really know (or much care) how I rate on the masculinity scale. I suspect not all that ‘rampant’.
Mark,
For me, one funny thing about doing ballroom dance competitions is the ‘standard’ for super-female stuff is very girly-girl. So I find myself needing to shop for:
(a) fake eyelashes.
(b) lots of bright makeup.
(c) blingie (but inexpensive) bracelents, necklaces, earings
(d) and so on.
I have nothing against any of these things, but most my life I’ve been pretty oblivious to them.
My “cha cha cha” dress arrived. So I’ll be able to wear that for competition. (The judge in our mini in studio competition said I needed a shorter dress for Latin. I’ve also learned I need open toe shoes for Latin. So, I’ll need to paint a few toenails.)
Much watched case:
By the way, SCOTUS just ruled 7/2 (or 6/2) for the bakers in the cake baker case. (7 ruled for the baker, but 6 signed on to the majority opinion. The other one wrote his own.)
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/masterpiece-colorado-gay-marriage-cake-supreme-court/index.html
Lucia,
Wow! Brave man in today’s world to utter such a thing.
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Yep. I enjoy cleaning up and dressing out when occasion demands, but my life has been such that how I look has almost never been central to what was going on / what was important. I’m not sure it’s exactly the same thing for guys. Maybe it is. shrug
Mark,
The judge was a brave woman named Yulia. 😉
I didn’t catch her last name, but she evidently was/is a big champ. I’m pretty sure it’s this woman:
https://www.facebook.com/YuliaDance
She wasn’t looking quite that glam when judging. But still fairly glam. Her hair is so platinum, you almost think it’s grey.
I should actually add: To some extent, “brave” has nothing to do with the fashion advice. Evidently, some aspects of costumes are required or you will be dinged when competing.
Latin shoes must be open toe. (They also should be because to get a good Cuban motion, you need to point your feet and drag your toes. You can’t do this properly with a closed toe, which inevitably will have some space between your toe and the edge of the shoe. But evidently, it’s not treated as “should”, but “must”. The other more experienced women at the studio told me judges will specifically deduct points if you wear closed toes.)
Meanwhile, smooth dance shoes (i.e. waltz, foxtrot) must be closed toe. Although, I think it’s possible to dance both dances in open toes. The requirement is just… well required for some reason I don’t yet know.
Latin evidently has to have somewhat shorter– not mini, but not floor length. Waltz is more like “as long as possible without being something you trip on”. That tends to end up just above the ankle bone.
Oh… another things: I was actually flattered the judge bothered to comment on the dress. That might seem strange because to others it might sound like “fashion” advice. I took it to mean she thought it was worth bothering to give me advice about competing!! I figured if she thought I was hopeless, she wouldn’t bother saying anything about getting another dress!
So there I have it. :> I’ll catch my death of bad assumptions one of these days.
Thanks Lucia!
That’s ok mark. I’m just happy my dress came. It fits beautifully… but now I need the right undergarments…. I’m never quite sure what length slip to buy until after the outfit arrives. This one came with matching shorts, so that’s nice.
The cake baker was a very close call, it could have easily gone either way IMO. It was one set of rights vs another. It depended on how far they wanted to balance discrimination of gays rights vs business rights to choose it customers.
Tom,
I hadn’t followed details closely. But it seems, in the end, the stupendous inconsistency of application by the colorado comission was highlighted in the final ruling.
Eugene Volokh discuss the ruling, quoting parts of it:
http://reason.com/volokh/2018/06/04/the-courts-religious-discrimination-reas
So basically: The commissions view was that some bakers got to refuse to make cakes because cases can contain expressive content, and those bakers couldn’t be forced to make that sort of speech but other bakers could be forced to make certain types of speech. In particular, bakers were allowed to refuse to bake cakes that contained anti-LGTB speech but they were not allowed to refuse to bake cakes that contained pro-LGTB. Reasons for difference in treatment… blah… blah… blah…
Well, I think it was obvious. The commission wanted to pick and chose which type of speech was offensive. That’s precisely what it cannot do. If it’s going to enforce something like this, it needs to be content neutral, and it obviously wasn’t.
I wasn’t aware the commission had been this uneven handed. (Didn’t follow the case.)
Yet another demonstration that Sotomayor and Ginsburg are well outside the mainstream. On the narrow basis for the decision, this should have been 9-0.
The supreme court kicked the can down the road in this case. They didn’t decide the gay rights vs religious rights issue everyone was expecting them too. The kangaroo court made it easy for them.
Legally given that religious freedom is enumerated in the constitution and sexual orientation is not it seems that it will be a tough road for gay rights in this case eventually based on what is on the books. But it is very complicated and both sides have legitimate arguments (state law says no discrimination by sexual orientation etc.) . Government as thought police as performed by the lower courts makes my skin crawl.
This is why hate speech laws are a very bad idea. I find it a near certainty that the vague wording in these type of laws will be gradually expanded over time and eventually similar types of courts to above will consider themselves overseers of correct culture and decency. We will all be subject to “I know it when I see it” interpretations by the court.
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My view is that everyone has the God given right to be a**holes and wrong about things, and we also have the God given right to not associate with those people.
The indictment of The Greek is closing in on sentencing. People are thinking he may have been another FBI spy in the Trump campaign. Mr Mifsud who is alleged to be a Russian agent who tried to recruit Papadopoulos, is likely a British agent.
Either way, Papa’s LinkedIn shows him working for Mifsud for a few months in early 2016, before the meeting where he was recruited and told about Hillary’s e-mails, and before he was tapped as a Trump foreign policy guru. None of this appears in the Mueller indictment, which is entirely about Papa’s lying to the FBI of when he met Mifsud relative to being hired by Trump.
Tom Scharf,
They did kick the can to an extent. But a ruling that says the commission can’t basically act as if religion is either
(a) not protected at all or
(b) an actively bad thing that should be punished if the commission doesn’t approve of their beliefs. They also can’t decide some speech is “good” and other speech is “bad” and find (inconsistent) reasons to decide diagnose whether practically identical behaviors (like creating and baking custom cakes) are or are not speech and then decide that people should be forced to say the “good” speech but allow them to not speak the “bad” speech.
This is not as much of a “nothing” as some might think. It’s actually rather important even though they did not diagnose whether free speech fully wins in this public accommodation case.
Tom Scharf,
Yup. The worst can kicking I’ve ever seen. I was shocked by the court’s opinion. The same question will return to the court shortly. They avoided the substantive questions… at considerable cost to the court’s integrity.
There appear to be only three justices who actually would support free speech in this kind of case. The over-riding concern appears to be making sure no gay person is ever made to feel uncomfortable. I found most of the opinions mildly disturbing. Perhaps artists can be be forced to paint wedding portraits of gay couples now.
Lucia,
The problem I see is that a majority of the court basically said: “If the Colorado commission had been nice about it instead of hostile, they would have prevailed.” To me that is a pretty low legal hurdle.
SteveF,
I think 2 justices said that. If they’d swung it would have gone 5-4.
Another case will arrive soon. No doubt about it.
I haven’t read much about the SCOTUS decision. So I’ll ask you who are more knowledgeable: how important was it that there was unequal treatment of the complaints against the other bakers. [The ones who refused to make cakes with anti-gay-marriage messages.] My question comes down to — without those examples, would the SC have ruled the same way?
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Personally, I find it bizarre that such cases exist at all. I’m with Tom Scharf: persons should have the legal right to refuse customers, just as customers have the right to choose where they make their purchases. (I can — maybe — see an exception for emergency medical attention. But definitely not for unessential services such as a cake.)
Lucia,
We’ll see what happens in the next case. But I rather fear it will soon be unlawful in many places to publicly say “I think gay marriage is an abomination.” And some time after that, unlawful to say “I think greens and socialists are evil and destructive.” The slope is slick indeed.
HaroldW,
“My question comes down to — without those examples, would the SC have ruled the same way?”
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Good question. My reading of Kennedy’s opinion (for the court) is that both the explicit hostility and the Commission’s concurrent acceptance of “good” refusals by other bakers to make cakes with anti-gay marriage messages entered into the decision, but it is not clear to me they could have gotten to 5 votes without the apparent inconsistency in application of the law; maybe not.
HaroldW,
The fact of other cases was mentioned in the ruling. So it mattered. I can’t say “how” important it was.
Hard to know. I suspect it would have been 5-4 instead of 7-2.
Not always. I don’t think bus services should be able to refuse to give lifts to blacks, for instance. That used to happen. I don’t thing restaurants should be able to refuse to serve hamburgers to blacks. Also used to happen.
I’d equally object to them not giving rides or serving hamburgers to gays.
The difficulty with the cake case is:
1) These are custom cakes and so do have some expressive content. At a minimum, wedding cakes express “this is a wedding”. Like it or not, there is a difference of opinion about whether the same sex wedding is a wedding. Whether the symbolic statement “this is a wedding” is ‘enough’ expressive content to balance the states need for public accommodation I don’t know. But the first amendement has long recognized “symbolic” speed, so cake baking isn’t literally zero speech.
2) Custom wedding cakes have a lot of lead time and typically customers consider a lot of bakeries in a region all of which are physically accessible. So the customers are not going to actually be deprived of a cake– even a very nice one. They are just not going to get a cake from this person. (And to some extent, they want this person because he is an “artist” with cakes.)
This is actually rather different from a bus service refusing to let blacks board. They often couldn’t reasonably get there from here easily in much of any other way. (Walking vs. riding a bus is a much different compromise vs. getting a cake from the baker down the street.) Not getting a cake is also different from not being allowed to attend high school, university, not get jobs, be unable to get hotel rooms and so on.
So the level of deprivation of the gay couple is not zero. But it’s no where near what happened to blacks during Jim Crowe. Lack of public accomodation for blacks pre-60s went well beyond “hurting their feelings” as a result of “being treated differently”.
3) Unlike historic public accommodation cases involving blacks, this is claimed to be based on religion. Moreover: it probably is sincerely held. As an atheist, I think “give me a break” to lots of religious beliefs. But the first amendment guarantees their right to have beliefs just as it guarantees my right to not have any.
We are going to hear more and I suspect quite soon. There’s a case in California where a judge allowed a baker to refuse to bake a cake. I bet that will be appealed…. SCOTUS here it comes!
The can kicking may have been necessary. In order for them to make a proper balancing of rights decision they need a case that wasn’t created by a bunch of clowns with huge fundamental flaws. This decision is basically an invitation for that to happen, while also saying lack of viewpoint neutrality, judgments of a plaintiff’s commitment to beliefs, and inconsistent standards should not be tolerated by any court. It is a bit unnerving to see that lower courts upheld this madness. When it comes back, it’s going to be close.
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The future decision appears to be whether it is OK for states to ban this, it looks likely that this discrimination will still be allowed if a state wishes it. Sexual orientation discrimination is OK according to our founding laws. Too many people think that all discrimination is banned. My preference is to prioritize to allow a business to pick its customers as they see fit. Gay couples can get cakes, but they might get a dose of indignity when getting turned down. This could hopefully be avoided.
Lucia,
“And to some extent, they want this person because he is an “artist†with cakes.”
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My understanding is the gay couple went to this baker specifically because they knew he would refuse to make a gay wedding cake (although that information was not in the Court’s opinions). The SC syllabus said the baker had several times before refused to bake cakes for gay weddings, so this was probably known by members of the local gay community. IOW, the couple was setting up the baker so they could file a complaint.
It is likely OK for a religious bookshop to refuse a customer who wants to burn their sacred texts. There are certainly ideological people out there who would want that behavior to be different based on what religion it is. It is up to the SC to make it clear that there aren’t going to be cultural value judgments if they indeed allow for certain types of public compelled behavior.
Tom Scharf,
“It is likely OK for a religious bookshop to refuse a customer who wants to burn their sacred texts.”
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How would they know the buyer’s intentions? (Real question.) Once you buy something, it seems to me unlikely any court would hold that the former owner can control what you do with it. (There are exceptions of course, but only if agreed to via contract.)
Following all the details of RussiaGate is now as exhausting as reading a post at Judy Curry’s.
Here’s a partial breakdown.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002981958509584385.html
They don’t necessarily know, this is just a hypothetical in the event they did know. The crazy Koran burning preacher Terry Jones could be recognized. If they are going to start making judgments about compelled business behavior beyond constitutional guarantees then it’s important they tell us where the lines are. That may ultimately be the reason they refuse to draw any lines at all.
SteveF (Comment #168304): “The problem I see is that a majority of the court basically said: “If the Colorado commission had been nice about it instead of hostile, they would have prevailed.†To me that is a pretty low legal hurdle.’
I think they said that the blatant bias made the decision easy and allowed the court to dodge the more fundamental issue. Without the blatant bias, the decision would have been 5-4. Not sure who would have won.
SteveF (Comment #168311): “My understanding is the gay couple went to this baker specifically because they knew he would refuse to make a gay wedding cake”
Such things have happened. But I had the impression that in this case the gay couple went to Masterpiece Cakeshop because they had been regular customers there, the owner knew they were a gay couple, and the couple knew that Masterpiece was the best in the business.
Presumably, the LGBT community could openly organize a boycott of Masterpiece Cakeshop because of the owner’s opposition to gay marriage. That is as it should be. So why can’t the business owner turn away customers on the same basis?
Real question. I do not mean to imply that there is no good answer. But offhand, I can not frame a good answer.
SteveF,
Of course, if true, that would only make it more ridiculous to force him to make a cake.
I’ll have to hunt around to see if the gay couple ever admitted to this. Obviously, it’s something that would be possible if people are required to provide services.
MikeM,
The answer for “why don’t we let businesses turn away customers” on the same basis customers get to avoid businesses becomes more clear if we think of something other than a danm cake!
Consider groceries. Suppose you lived in a fairly isolated town of 10,000 with 1 grocery store/ pharmacy. (Like Jewel Osco in Chicago area.) The owner won’t sell groceries to black people. There are 2 black families in town. They now need to drive 15 miles to another town to get groceries. That’s already not great.
Now suppose their kid (or pet or whatever) gets sick and needs something specific – like cough medicine or whatever. You now need to drive 15 miles to another town to get cough medicine while your kid is sick. This is now a pretty big burden. You couln’t really plan ahead. If you’d been white, you can easily get stuff.
Sure, you and the other black family can organize to boycott. Unless the rest of the town sympathizes with you, it doesn’t do you any good. The owner already didn’t sell you stuff.
And back in the day, the other neighbors did not sympathize– or mostly did not. They approved of the store owner not selling you stuff. Many wanted to run you out of town.
Things like this are why we passed these laws. The laws don’t have nuances for boundary cases. They just say you can’t discriminate in public accommodations. Selling something is a public accommodation.
And now: We have the issue of the damn cake, in a large town in an area where the customers could have just gone down the street. . . Plus, lots of Colorado locals would join the boycott against the cake store. Others would have defended the cake seller. Just as we see with the suit. So it’s not clear we have quite the same public policy need to make sure people can buy wedding cakes.
What that means about free-speech vs. the law, I have no idea. But to understand why we have these laws about public accommodations you need to think about things that really used to happen and how they caused very real harm. Those harmed weren’t merely deprived of ‘fripperies’.
lucia (Comment #168320): The answer for “why don’t we let businesses turn away customers†… The owner won’t sell groceries to black people.”
I don’t think that is the same thing. Let’s say you had a black (or gay) store owner and people organized a boycott because he was black (or gay). Woudn’t the boycott organizers face legal consequences?
Discrimination based on who you are is different from discrimination based on what you say and do.
MikeM
I’m pretty sure they people setting up the boycott would face zero legal consequences for the boycott itself. If you think they can, you are going to need to find a statute that claims to require boycotts not discriminate against a sub-group.
They might get harassed by bystanders. There might be laws governing something like blocking entrances, and they police could get them for that. But if so, the law needs to be neutral. The police need to enforce it against everyone.
The law doesn’t say no one can discriminate about anything and everything. Just that you can’t do so in public accommodation. Neither public criticism nor boycotts are “public accommodations”.
BTW: Back in the 70s a Illinois Nazis public protests went to court. They were allowed to protest Jews in public. Jews are definitely a religious sub group. The Nazi’s had an event in Marquette Park in Chicago. Most the people who showed up showed up to shout at the Nazis and tell them they were all douches. But public protests do not need to be non-discriminatory.
The case that really means something is the SC case on mandatory public sector union dues. Should be out in the next couple weeks. It’s expected to go 5-4 to disallowing mandatory fees.
Tom Scharf,
That and the gerrymandering case are the two big remaining cases. Both have very big public policy consequences. I don’t see how Kennedy kicks those cans down the road. The public union case probably strikes down the dues mandate 5:4. The gerrymander case looks like a close (5:4) decision, but which way is hard to tell.
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The other consequential case is Trump’s travel ban executive order. There I fear the court may issue a horrible and blatantly unconstitutional affirmation of the lower court block. If it happens, it will be right along side Kelo as one of the few recent utter garbage rulings.
Tom Scharf,
Yep. Public sector union dues is Yuge. Not sure what the right result is. (I know what result I want, which is a different thing.(
Steve.
Yep. Gerrymandering. Also Yuge. More confusing.
I would be shocked if they don’t allow a travel ban. Obviously somebody must have the authority to control immigration, and that is currently the executive branch. They might rule Trump did it in a specific way that isn’t allowed, but to say you cannot create a travel ban that (insert common thread in countries banned) is ridiculous. The remedy for this is called a Presidential election.
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My guess is that the SC will not want to impose its will on how states run their elections unless a very high threshold is crossed. You would just exchange one political system for another in drawing the lines. I have never bought into that this has some huge effect on government outcomes. It nibbles at the edges.
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There is a legitimate “free rider” problem with union dues. I don’t think this is big enough to force mandatory speech for arguable compelled speech. I can pretty much be counted on to fall on the side of free speech in almost all these cases, ha ha.
ucia (Comment #168322): “I’m pretty sure they people setting up the boycott would face zero legal consequences for the boycott itself. If you think they can, you are going to need to find a statute that claims to require boycotts not discriminate against a sub-group.”
I am not sure that is so, but I can’t find anything definite saying it is not so.
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lucia: “The law doesn’t say no one can discriminate about anything and everything. Just that you can’t do so in public accommodation.”
That was so with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I think that modern anti-discrimination law goes way beyond that.
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lucia “Back in the 70s a Illinois Nazis public protests went to court. They were allowed to protest Jews in public.”
They were not protesting Jews. They were having a march. So far as I know, there was no message other than “we are here”.
MikeM,
The Nazi’s did not march silently with no placards saying nothing.
They did protest Jews. My boyfriends uncle lived near Marquette park. We drove by to look. The Nazis did protest Jews. It’s allowed.
If you can find something that says people can’t protest in this way, let me know.
Masterpiece Cakeshop, the couple didn’t file a complaint. The Commission prosecuted on its own.
Lawrence v Texas was a setup though. Random police complaint about something else brought lots of cops.
MikeN,
How did the commission find out about the Masterpiece Cakeshop refusal? Was there a newspaper article or something?
Mike N
Wikipedia says they filed a complaint.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission
SteveF, lucia – thanks for the replies.
I don’t know if the gay couple chose the baker with the intention of creating a complain-able situation, but I seem to recall reading that William Jack did so. [He’s the guy who asked to create anti-gay-marriage cakes.]
HaroldW,
I’d be very surprised if William Jack claimed to have NOT done it on purpose. His situation definitely seemed designed to prove a point. He succeeded in proving it.
Just like people’s religious intent shouldn’t be questioned, the motivation of the gay couple shouldn’t be questioned as per the legal matter at hand. It wouldn’t take long for a “real” incident to eventually occur. I don’t particularly like activists pushing an agenda like this, but it can also backfire spectacularly.
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Before the SC ruling the militant gay activist wing was trying to force the issue and the backlash ended up with 30 states passing gay marriage prohibitions (it was added to the constitution in FL). If the SC had allowed states to set their own rules it would be decades before they could have reversed that. If the SC puts a religious rights have more weight than gay rights precedent on the books then this was a very unwise move considering society’s views on gay marriage are transitioning.
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It also fueled part of the mega-backlash of Trump. My feeling is most people are somewhat ambivalent about gay marriage and gay rights but feel strongly about having cultural values forced upon them.
In a WSJ article recently, ha ha: “Climate alarm is like a car alarm—a blaring noise people are tuning out.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-has-run-its-course-1528152876
Tom,
I think religious intent can be questioned. We get to try to figure out whether something really violates someone’s sincerely held religious belief. For example: If I claimed designing and creating a custom wedding cake violated my religious beliefs, that would just be a flippin’ lie. What the board should not do is insist such a believe cannot be a sincerely held belief or that it somehow doesn’t qualify for protection because the board member doesn’t approve of that belief.
The first amendment exists precisely to allow people to follow the dictates of their sincerely held religious believes even when others think those belief are whack.
Technically, that society’s views are transitioning is not supposed to be a factor. Of course, it always has some influence. At a minimum, with 9 judges, each are individuals that make up society, and different arguments ring true to them.
Actually, given we have an amendment guaranteeing religious rights, in a sense, religious rights do have more weight than “gay rights”. It depends a bit on what’s going on though. If the “gay right” is just “equal protection”, “equal protection” is itself guaranteed. Gays will win that sort of case. They already have: Obfergel.
But if the issue comes down to a constitutionally protected right vs. a legislated rule about what private businesses or individual must do then the court starts using various balancing tests. They are going to have to look at “public policy” arguments when doing the balancing.
The recent case was a wedding cake which
(a) does contain at least some expression and
(b) is the food equivalent of “frippery”. It wasn’t access to education, employment, medical care, basic nourishment, basic employment and so on.
(c) the couple could get cakes for any number of other bakers.
(d) the bakery seems to have been a one-man operation, and that man appears to have had a sincerely held religious belief.
At some point, the court is going to be presented a case that doesn’t involve a religiously hostile commission and that balances a “public accommodation” that amount to supplying an easily obtainable “frippery” against a sincerely held religious belief. The level of harm involved in a private individual denying the customer a “frippery” they can easily buy from someone else will need to be weighed.
The court didn’t need to do that here.
Everyone has negative feelings about having cultural values forced on them. Many nevertheless do want to force cultural values on others. This happens both on the left and on the right. They will make very extreme arguments in favor of their position. (For example: the two guys on the CO board that found against Masterpiece Cakeshop actually alluded to the freakin’ holocaust. I need to get the text.)
The ruling is here:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
Religion has been used to justify a lot of things. Still, it’s pretty obvious that not selling a cake to someone is nothing like carrying out the holocaust nor like justifying slavery. Also, I don;t think freedom of religion was used to justify the holocaust or slavery. Religion may have been. But, at least in the US, freedom of religion as it has been interpreted by our courts, would have prohibited our government from rounding up all the Jews, putting them in camps and killing many.
I don’t think intent matters much in the matter of religious rights vs. gay rights. There are people with sincere beliefs on both sides, whether the people involved in the specific case are the best people is not likely to bear on the decision on rights. In this recent case the issue wasn’t really decided at all, so it may matter if you are trying to get the right case to the SC so the substantive matter is ruled on. The point I’m making is that ultimately when the SC talks about that decision of the weighing of rights the intent of Joe Six pack isn’t on the table. It’s worth talking about the impacts on these beliefs from the issue at hand so the interpretation here is pretty blurry.
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Activists lie about people’s intent and impacts all the time, it is almost the very definition of activists that they exaggerate and misrepresent things to further an agenda. It doesn’t mean the issue shouldn’t be decided just because some bad actors are involved. My view is that non-problems don’t need laws to prevent them. Wedding cakes are a non-problem in society.
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The right’s moral majority days aren’t exactly a shining moment of free and open cultural expression, but the religion / slavery statement is a non-sequitur, a shameless appeal to emotion. The religious bias of progressives seems to be curiously against Christianity only. If you wanted to give that commission a brain aneurysm then have them decide a case where an Islamic baker denied a gay couple.
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I grew up Catholic but no longer practice because I can’t be part of a group activity based on fairy tales. I have no patience with Bible thumpers, but my experience is that religion is an overall force for good and that the morals taught (shoved down people’s throats) here do more to temper anti-social behavior than to create problems. Some people need and want spiritual guidance, and if it works for them, fine. It’s easy to walk away from if you don’t like it (except Scientology, ha ha). Extreme religion is like extreme everything, a problem.
Tom,
A case has to happen and travel through other courts before it gets to SCOTUS. There’ a limit to how successful people can be in getting the “right” case to SCOTUS. For example: there is a cake case in California. But there are cases out there in the wild right now, and I predict an existing or new one will get to SCOTUS within..oh… ten years. (It seems to take 5-6 years from the event to get to SCOTUS. The triggering event in Masterpiece happened in 2012.)
I have no doubt some lie. Others say things they believe are true. In most cases people telling you want another persons intent was is speculating.
The problem is that we have a situation involving laws as written. And I think it’s not fair to assume the motive of those writing them is entirely the same as some who are now resorting to them.
When written the non-discrimination in public accommodations weren’t written specifically for “wedding cakes”. I suspect at the time people leaned toward language that covered broadly because because they’d witnessed the non-accommodation in much more meaningful services. They didn’t really even think about whether there even might be service or product that is too trivial require one to supply nor did they really think much about those that might involve freedom of religion or expression.
Some narrowing in application happened through the courts. Many more obvious cases involving freedom of expression and religion have already come. So issues like whether a private christian owned newspaper can be forced to sell advertizing space announcing the meeting for the satanists guild has come. It’s pretty much “Nope”. ( Public airwaves that involve use of a public resource may be required to do so. Those airwaves are licensed and regulated because they are a limited resource. But private printing presses are different.)
We are now at the point where laws that were written quite broadly are being applied to services that are …. well… wedding cakes and photos rather than basic transportation, medical care. We are having arguments. That’s our system.
I think you and I have more or less the same view of religion. Of course it can be a force for ill. We can all name all sorts of cases where it’s done ill. (Oddly, given the holocaust being mentioned in the Masterpiece cake ruling, I don’t think Nazi’s annihilation of Jews was mostly driven by Nazi’s religious belief. That is: I don’t think Nazi’s believed God told them to kill Jews. I think the Nazi’s has a political view about a religious minority. So I don’t think you can attributed that to the Nazi’s religious belief.)
But it is also a force for good. We can all name religiously motivated people who did good: Mother Theresa for one. There are others who do good and are not famous.
lucia (Comment #168336): “I think religious intent can be questioned. We get to try to figure out whether something really violates someone’s sincerely held religious belief.”
That would lead to the eventual end of freedom of religion. It would enable the government to put people’s religious beliefs on trial. That can not end well, at least not for religious people.
It seems to me that freedom of religion is inseparable from freedom of conscience. I should not need a “sincerely held religious belief” to act in accord with my conscience.
Remember that the First Amendment does not “grant” freedom of religion. It prevents Congress from making laws that prefer one religion or prohibit others. But the freedom that underlies that is freedom of conscience.
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Dressmakers have refused to make dresses for Melania Trump. Allowing that is as it should be. Musicians turned down invitations to play at Trump’s inaugural balls. Perfectly OK. Race, religion, etc. should have nothing to do with it. That just creates a society in which some are more equal than others with a hierarchy of privilege. Not a society I would want to live in.
The examples above are customized services, like baking a custom wedding cake or designing a custom flower arrangement. People should have the right to say “no” when asked to provide a customized service. Generic services, such as selling a customer a product off the shelf, are a different matter.
Ironically it’s more factual to think the commission are the Nazi’s persecuting a religion in this case.
Possible upcoming case: Richland WA florist refused to sell flowers to gay couple. WA state found florist in violation of their civil rights law. SCOTUS hasn’t decided whether to hear case:
https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/scotus-yet-to-hear-case-of-washington-florist-who-refused-same-sex-wedding/281-561353680
MikeM
There’s no law against their refusing to do so. They did not refuse her based on her (a) race, (b) religion, (c) sex (d) sexual orientation or any other “protected” feature that these laws cover.
People are allowed to refuse services. My hair dressers told me about “firing” a client because she’s a demanding bitch. (He didn’t use that word, but he described her demands and behavior. I dub her a demanding bitch.) That’s allowed.
Depends on how you look at it. A dressmaker can’t refuse me (or Melania) service if their reason is that we are white (or anything the dressmaker perceives as our “race”). As written the law is neutral.
There haven’t been a lot of dressmakers who refuse customers on the basis they are white. So often people forget that the law also forbids this.
There is also a bit of grumbling that enforcement isn’t even handed and so effectively the law itself discriminates on the basis of some feature. I think the Masterpiece Cake case sort of hinges on that issue– in this case, the law discriminated against fundamentalists, not as written but as implemented. That’s not right. For that reason, this ruling is actually more important than some people perceive.
Oddly, I suspect they could refuse to sell to Melania if the reason was “I don’t like your husband”. Or if their husband’s mistress came in and wanted to buy a cupcake they could refused based on her being a skanky husband stealing tramp. You can refuse service. Just not for certain specific reasons.
MikeM
Determinations to figure out if a claimed religious view is or is not sincerely held have been routine pretty much forever. It always comes up with conscientious objectors who want to avoid the draft.
https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/know_your_rights_–__religion_november_2012_0.pdf
I’m pretty sure the guys who organized themselves as “Apostles” in this story did not actually sincerely adhere to any common religion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/22/AR2006112201924.html
lucia (Comment #168345): “Determinations to figure out if a claimed religious view is or is not sincerely held have been routine pretty much forever. It always comes up with conscientious objectors who want to avoid the draft.”
True and reasonable, when exemptions to the law are sought. But in a free society, cases where one’s conscience creates a conflict with the law should be as rare as possible. Otherwise, freedom will be squeezed out.
In 1979, I worked for a guy who developed land in Boca Raton. They did the earthwork, streets, sewers, sidewalks, electical and the houses. This produced some really wonderful stories over the years, but one in particular is apropos this discussion.
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Developer would not sell a house to a known lawyer – for any amount of money. For a while the issue didn’t surface, but eventually it did.
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The lawyer was greatly offended. He initiated some sort of proceeding against the company, but it was snuffed out pretty quickly when he learned that lawyers were not on the list of as Lucia says “protected” persons. That wasn’t the term used at the time, but I can’t remember what was used.
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An issue which we discovered later on when we had our own business was that the law required that we offer the same pricing on our products and services to everyone assuming equality as far as the business was concerned. We did not advertise our service rates and did adjust them upward if the client had someone involved in our work who was a problem.
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Once, the potential problem was so apparent (IT manager sought a kick-back) that our proposal included a CI surcharge. We were asked about it, and answered that it was the Cortes Involvement surcharge – If Mr. Cortes was not involved in our work, the owner could save 20% on our day rate.
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We didn’t get the job, but the guys who did later called me and asked how I knew he was going to be a problem. I didn’t tell them exactly what had happened, but I think they figured it out. And they HAD given him a kick-back.
MikeM,
Of course cases where one’s conscious creates a conflict with the law should be as rare as possible. But one can debate what is “possible” especially since there are other things that should also be as rare as possible. Also, sometimes something that should happen as rarely as possible butts up against something that should never happen at all. Suppose for example that a Jew was rush to the hospital needing a blood transfusion and someone adhering to some whacked out religion sincerely believed they couldn’t give them block. And further, there was no one else to give the blood. Now say the law says the relgious person can’t deny them the transfusion and must provide it.
It’s a ridiculous hypothetical, but it would show a thing that should happen as rarely as possible vs. something that should never happen.
lucia (Comment #168344): “There’s no law against their refusing to do so.”
Yes, and that is as it should be.
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lucia: “They did not refuse her based on her (a) race, (b) religion, (c) sex (d) sexual orientation or any other “protected†feature that these laws cover. … A dressmaker can’t refuse me (or Melania) service if their reason is that we are white (or anything the dressmaker perceives as our “raceâ€). As written the law is neutral.”
Yes, but what if someone refused services to the Obama’s on the basis of their politics? The government would come down on them.
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lucia: “There is also a bit of grumbling that enforcement isn’t even handed and so effectively the law itself discriminates on the basis of some feature. I think the Masterpiece Cake case sort of hinges on that issue– in this case, the law discriminated against fundamentalists, not as written but as implemented. That’s not right. For that reason, this ruling is actually more important than some people perceive.”
I think that gets to the heart of the matter. It is a certainty that laws that set up “protected groups” will not be applied evenhandedly. The more power given to the government, the more power will be abused. It will not end well.
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lucia: “Oddly, I suspect they could refuse to sell to Melania if the reason was “I don’t like your husbandâ€. Or if their husband’s mistress came in and wanted to buy a cupcake they could refused based on her being a skanky husband stealing tramp.”
You are almost certainly right about that. But should that be so? Go back to your Comment #168320, and replace “black” with “catholic” or “Republican”. It seems to me that the arguments you made for anti-discrimination still apply. You could get around it by saying, “well, the Trump supporters have the option of keeping that to themselves”. But modern anti-discrimination law is not based just on immutable physical characteristics.
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lucia: “You can refuse service. Just not for certain specific reasons.”
Then just lie about your reasons. Of course, that will lead to the authorities inferring your reasons. Then some people are more equal than others. There is no way it ends well.
j ferguson,
Funny.
I do think that if, ultimately, bakers are required to sell custom cakes to those celebrating same sex marriages, we’ll see a fair number of bakers enter sub-contracting arrangements. That will take care of a fair number of religious bakers who feel they cannot themselves bake the cake, but don’t have a problem with being a ‘pass through’ as it were.
(Note: I’m suggesing something different from merely telling them the guy down the street will bake your cake. I’m suggeting the baker officially takes the business, but has an “assistant” or “subcontractor” be involved with everything about fulfillment.)
So, someone like Phillips, the Masterpiece baker might have an arrangement with the baker across the town. Then when it comes up, he will tell potential clients that he can supply then the cake, but the work will be subcontracted. The same may go for photographers and so on.
The baker, photographer and so on might even already have some arrangements with other providers to deal with uncertainties. ( Suppose you get sick for an event you are contractually obligated to help with? I imagine a number of wedding professionals plan ahead to deal with this sort of thing.)
It will be difficult for the potential customers to sue for discrimination since the business is willing to provide “a wedding cake”. It would be quite difficult to word a complaint that the cake wasn’t made by a specific baker without explaining what that person brings to the table. If it’s got even an iota to do with “creativity” or “expression”, then it will be the customers making the case that the cake somehow involves “speech”.
MikeM
Nope. They could refuse him for his politics. If the government tried to come down on them, and he took the case to court, the government would have to prove the refusal was for some other reason– like because of Obama’s race. Whether it was or not would depend on the evidence available.
I agree with you. For this reason, I think we should be happy the Masterpiece case was focused on what amounts to be governmental abuse and uneven handed application of the law.
Yes. It should be.
Still should be. I think the list of protected groups should be kept as small as possible and include only categories that have been shown historically to disfavor a particular group. Race is such a category. So is religion. Political affiliation, not so much. But if you want to advocate the list be expanded and party affiliation be added to protected categories, contact your local state reps and get that into your laws.
People try this all the time. That’s why real cases often involve first examining evidence about the real motivation. Now adays, many cases involve video evidence of what the person refusing service said at the time. (There was a coffee house — Bedlam Coffee– in Seattle that will likely be discussed if or when the Richaland Florist cases goes to SCOTUS.)
lucia (Comment #168350): “I do think that if, ultimately, bakers are required to sell custom cakes to those celebrating same sex marriages, we’ll see a fair number of bakers enter sub-contracting arrangements. That will take care of a fair number of religious bakers who feel they cannot themselves bake the cake, but don’t have a problem with being a ‘pass through’ as it were.”
They might well try that. If they do, they will find themselves in court or before some commission or other. That is a certainty. They will likely lose.
MikeM
I don’t doubt someone would file a suit. People will sue a ham sandwich. But on what basis would they lose and under whose current law? Real question.
They’d be providing the accommodation: A custom wedding cake. Or photographs of an event.
lucia (Comment #168353): “They’d be providing the accommodation: A custom wedding cake. Or photographs of an event.”
This has nothing to do with accommodation. No one suing bakers or photographers or flower arrangers is being denied accommodation. There are plenty of business willing to serve them.
The issue is people being allowed to be not personally involved with something of which they disapprove. That must be stamped out. And it will be stamped out if the supreme court does not prevent it. The law will be twisted to whatever extent it must be to achieve that goal.
I’m pretty sure they are. “Public accommodation” is a term of art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations
The baker was denying them the services of his establishment. That service was a cake.
Yes. I think that matters as a moral matter, but it evidently does not matter under the statute in Colorado and many statues. What SCOTUS will later hold… dunno.
Under my suggestion his business would provide the accommodation– a custom cake– but through a subcontractor. That’s still providing the accommodation. My prediction is that’s the what many bakers who object to same sex weddings would do. I suspect under current laws it would prevent customers who want to force them to bake cakes from being able to do so.
It would still leave open a problem for people whose religion wouldn’t let them use the sub-contractor ploy. (Given religion, this is probably not the null set of objectors.)
Well…. I realize you are predicting this. But it at least appears that SCOTUS didn’t let the current Colorado law be twisted to “whatever” extent. The ruled for the baker, not the customers. I think they sent a pretty firm message that the law as written cannot be twisted to that extent, without throwing out the law in practice.
If you main point is that people will try to get laws passed that impose their will on others: Yes. They will. This has always happened by various subgroups, some seen as “liberal”, some as “conservative”. And yes, if the Supreme Court does not apply things the first amendment, or due process or equal protection or anything even handedly, things will go wrong.
lucia: “on what basis would they lose and under whose current law?”
I suspect that subcontracting a service, only for customers who are part of a protected class, would be found to violate CADA:
For example, suppose a hotel denied an available room to a gay couple, suggesting instead to put them up in some other hotel across town. Do you think that would pass muster? I don’t — that’s not serving them equally.
In a similar vein, if Chef Emil typically bakes wedding cakes, but subcontracts out cakes for gay weddings to an associated but less talented baker, that wouldn’t be equal accommodation.
HaroldW,
I get things might not be perfect. This is sort of a line drawing exercise.
In the case of the room, the thing denied is specific room in a specific building so it’s easy to show it’s not the “same” service or product”.
But with a cake… it’s a bit dicier.
There are features that are the same. So lets’s look at differences.
But it seems to me the defendants claim that there is no “expression” is stronger if it’s “just a cake”, without expressive content.
Well…. it’s the same batter, same frosting, cooked, supplied on the same day. You could show two similar cakes, even have a taste test. Obviously, no two cakes are literally the same. Heck, even two twinkies if inspected carefully are not the same.
Both cakes could still be customized– the bakers would meet with the customers. Put the customers wishes into the cake. Heck, perhaps they can even meet in the same venue.
So at this point, the defendants need to explain what the “extra talent” the preferred baker has. It’s pretty clear that’s either going to be (a) we want to force someone to bake a cake for us or (b) it’s his wonderful artistry and sensibility and blah blah. (A) is going to sound really bad; (B) is going to high light the first amendment problem.
But it seems to me if they don’t bring (A) or (B) up, then …. they got the “same” accommodation. And they lose!
Thanks to HaroldW for providing the actual text of the statute.
lucia: “Under my suggestion his business would provide the accommodation– a custom cake– but through a subcontractor. That’s still providing the accommodation.”
But not a “full and equal” accommodation. That is all the social justice warriors will need. Unless SCOTUS stops them.
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Addition: Lucia seems to think this has something to do with fairness. Although that may have been the original intent of the law, the court cases are not about fairness. They are about power. They will be decided on the basis of power, not on whether or not the cakes taste the same.
Lucia, I don’t think your subcontractor idea gets rid of the discrimination complaint.
Not sure where I saw the report that the couple didn’t file a complaint. The Supreme Court case has it in the opinion they did.
I move for a Constitutional convention to make Trump and his supporters a protected class. That should be popular. It does get a bit strange that it is likely OK to refuse to put MAGA on a cake, as if there isn’t any malicious identity based bigotry involved with this discrimination. We definitely don’t need an ever expanding list of protected classes.
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Before a Google search, please put you voter identification card in front of your webcam for a purity check.
Mike M.
Mike M. seems to think court cases can either be about fairness or about power but not both. They can be about both.
The Masterpiece Cakeshop case didn’t seem to be decided based on power. Lots of cases don’t appear to be. I have no idea why you think future cases must or will be decided on that basis.
MikeN,
I didn’t say it gets rid of complaints. Nothing can get rid of complaints. As I said: people can sue ham sandwiches. They can and will file frivolous unwinnable cases.
I think it can affect who can win in court because it will make it pretty hard for the complaining customers to advance the argument that they were not accommodated fully without saying that the accommodation they actually seek is for a specific person to communicate the messages “this is a wedding”. That’s speech. If the customers say their gripe is they fell the right to force speech, the are going to lose. That doesn’t mean they won’t sue.
Right now, their position is always that the cake is not speech.
You need to get away from complaining that nothing can prevent people from suing. It’s true: nothing can prevent people from suing. When we are worrying about the law, the issue is whether the law permits people to win certain types of suits.
I don’t mean it would prevent people from suing, but that it would not prevent the commission from saying you are discriminating against gay people by saying that such cakes will be handed off to a subcontractor. I’m not even sure if Anthony Kennedy would be OK with this, reading his opinion about how you can’t hurt the dignity of gay people.
The commission that got overruled? Nothing could have prevented that commission from finding against the bakery. That’s because the members had animus toward the bakery.
Kennedy didn’t put the dignity of gay people ahead of animus to religious liberty nor did he put it ahead of free speech.
lucia (Comment #168361): “The Masterpiece Cakeshop case didn’t seem to be decided based on power. Lots of cases don’t appear to be. I have no idea why you think future cases must or will be decided on that basis.”
I did not say that they would be decided on the basis of power; I said they were about power. The people pushing these cases, and many of the officials deciding them, are seeking to exert power to drive religious people to the margins of society (not that they will stop there) and to impose their world view on all of society. In this case, and hopefully in future cases, SCOTUS frustrated the would-be tyrants.
It really is unfortunate that the court refused to address the “art as expressive speech” question. That is the far more important question.
SteveF,
I think they are both important.
I think they also have addressed art as expressive speech in the past. The issue is whether cakes can be and in particular whether the cakes Masterpiece Cakemaster makes are.
I lean toward it expresses “this is a wedding” at a minimum. It can do more.
MikeM,
Lots of, likely most, politics are about power. Laws are arrived at through politics.
You write that as if there is something unique in these officials trying to exert power. Religious people have been known to try to exert power on others who are not of their religion, and yes, drive those others to the margins of society. And no, those religious people who sought to do that did not stop there. Sometimes they committed genocide.
The religious seeking to push those of other religions to the margins (or further) is big reason why we have the 1st amendment.
Yes. They have similarly frustrated people who want to force others to pray in school. I’m all for frustrating those who want to force others to the margins of society for their beliefs, or want to compell speech and so on.
Your premise was a finding against the bakers that they would have to bake a cake with a message they don’t like. With that assumption, I don’t think subcontracting would work.
MikeN,
I’m not sure what you mean by my premise “was a finding against the bakers that they would have to bake a cake with a message they don’t like”.
But I did say if such a finding came about, I think subcontracting would work. Remember: the finding would be that the business must not discrimimate. There is no need for specific people to be forced to assign a task. The business’s product is not “a cake baked by Joe, the owner”. It’s “a custom wedding cake”.
My premise is that if the business provides the customer with a custom wedding cake then the business has provided the requisite accommodation.
If the customer is demanding speech in addition to the custom wedding cake, and claiming that speech should be provided, the customer will lose.
The subcontracting ensures the business has provided the customer the custom wedding cake while at the same time, the owner is not involved in “the speech” aspect of the cake.
The only way for the customer to claim there is any difference between the subcontracted cake and the other cake is to point to something intangible– and that intangible thing will be artistic expression. Artistic expression is already recognized as speech.
Other than saying you think it wouldn’t work, or saying it’s really all about power and so on, why do you think it wouldn’t work? That is: Do you think the subcontracted cake is somehow not a custom wedding cake? If so, in what way? Or what? Please elaborate. Because I have no idea why you think it won’t work.
Lucia: “The subcontracting ensures the business has provided the customer the custom wedding cake while at the same time, the owner is not involved in “the speech†aspect of the cake.
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Other than saying you think it wouldn’t work, or saying it’s really all about power and so on, why do you think it wouldn’t work? That is: Do you think the subcontracted cake is somehow not a custom wedding cake? If so, in what way? Or what? Please elaborate.”
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The reason I would say it wouldn’t work would be cost and impracticality due to wasted time. The business is supposed to make a profit on the cake, which would not be all that large. The extra time subcontracting (and potentially extra money paid to the subcontractor) would take a substantial chunk or maybe all of the profit out of the cake. Also, if something went wrong with the cake, who is responsible?
I would add that if you are going to all of the trouble to sub-contract a cake, it would probably be easier just to have someone else do it. Of course, those seeking to have the cake baked in this case would object because they believe their case/rights are superior to those of the bakers/business.
JD
JD-
I agree it would cost a lot, so that would be a reason against it.
JD
The business owner who agreed to supply the cake. That’s a downside of subcontracting. But they have the same problem if they do the cake themselves and something goes wrong (like their delivery truck gets in an accident on the way to the venue and the fail to deliver the cake and so on.)
That said: Masterpiece Cake lost even more business getting sued.
They stopped baking wedding cakes at all after the first ruling by the Colorado commission. As a business matter, losing money on one cake could have been worth it compared to the money they actually ended up losing by selling no wedding cakes for 6 years. ( I think I read they lost 40% of their business.)
JD Ohio (Comment #168370): “The reason I would say it wouldn’t work would be cost and impracticality due to wasted time. The business is supposed to make a profit on the cake, which would not be all that large. The extra time subcontracting (and potentially extra money paid to the subcontractor) would take a substantial chunk or maybe all of the profit out of the cake.”
Let’s say the baker ends up losing $200 on a $500 cake. That is nothing compared to the cost of not making the cake, which could be 1000 times as much.
The reason it would not work is that the people on these commissions would rule against the baker. The cost of that would be devastating, although some group might be willing to fund a test case. But success would be unlikely. Once it is established that a baker has to make the cake, SCOTUS would be unlikely to rule on something like the subcontracting ploy.
Lucia: ” Also, if something went wrong with the cake, who is responsible?
The business owner who agreed to supply the cake. That’s a downside of subcontracting. But they have the same problem if they do the cake themselves and something goes wrong ”
I disagree. They have more of a problem because if they are directly involved in baking the cake, they almost certainly will have greater quality control and the ability to respond more quickly and economically if something goes wrong. Adding an additional level of complexity is adding more cost and inefficiency.
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Lucia: “That said: Masterpiece Cake lost even more business getting sued.”
You can make the same argument with respect to a lot of defendants who are sued but who ultimately prevail. These owners had principles they wished to uphold (almost certainly they felt morally compelled to uphold) and they decided in their evaluation of the merits of the situation that they would rather defend a suit than do something they considered to be immoral. If you have strong, sincere religious beliefs paying a 40% penalty for (in their view) obeying God’s mandate is the preferable path to take.
Would add that many people make moral/nonbusiness decisions that cost them money in business. For instance, I have several businesses and I structure all of them to make sure that I have zero employees. The idea of being a clerk for the government and the government becoming an even bigger presence in my work (taxes are obviously a government intrusion) is highly objectionable to me. So, if I can enjoy my work and family life more and that costs me money so be it. The same general principle is applicable to the bakers in their calculation of how they want to do business.
JD
So there is no misunderstanding. My view is that the costs of a subcontractor are not inconsequential or trivial. Thus, they should be factored into the basket of reasons why the bakers, may, or may not, use a subcontractor to deal with the issues raised by the conflict of their religious beliefs with the position of the customers.
JD
delurking . . .
The baker should be able to say the wording is offensive to them and provide a bag of frosting so the customer can add their personal touch.
Bob Koss,
The cake would probably look like hell if someone ‘not skilled in the art’ attempted to finish the cake. Besides, the whole point was to punish the baker for refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding, not to get a custom wedding cake. They got a cake immediately from some other baker.
JD–
Ahh. Ok. I thought you were just saying it didn’t make business sense.
Bob Koss,
The offering a tube of frosting has been tried. I’ll google on that.
Bob,
The offering bag of frosting was in the William Jack case.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/opinion/gay-wedding-cake.html
William Jack is the guy who asked for ANTI-gay messages. The offering frosting didn’t seem to matter to the colorado board who merely thought people (a) bakers CAN’T be forced to write anti gay messages but (b) they CAN be forced to make cakes to celebrate ssm weddings.
Lucia,
My mom worked for years as a wedding photographer… long before there were any gay weddings, of course. A photographer is very involved in every aspect of a wedding, and my mom certainly thought she made a “creative statement” with her photos. Photographers’ work can be (and usually is) copyrighted, just like authors and artists. I wonder how the Colorado Commission would react if they received a complaint about a photographer who declined to photograph a gay wedding? My guess is they would find against the photographer; and they would then lose in court.
An addendum to the disparate impacts discussion.
The Airport Control Tower Is No Place for Racial Redress
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-airport-control-tower-is-no-place-for-racial-redress-1528240025
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It takes about $400K to train an air traffic controller. They screen applicants with cognitive testing. The FAA didn’t like the diversity of its controllers so it added a “Biological Questionaire” screening test before its standard AT-SAT test which 30% of whites pass but only 20% of blacks. One of the leaders of the FAA said it was an effort to improve diversity, but an official statement from the FAA said that statement was “mistaken”. They later reported they were happy with improved diversity in the new applicants, ha ha. Standard BS doublespeak.
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The BQ is allegedly a personality test for fitness to be an ATC. Fair enough … but … they refuse to release how this test is graded. It’s a pass fail test and some applicants who previously scored perfectly on the AT-SAT were failing. There is apparently very little evidence the BQ is a useful screening tool for ATC’s (though it might be).
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The sh** hit the fan and the FAA is predictably being sued for reverse discrimination. They have redone the rules to allow some people to get by screening without taking the BQ test or some such loophole.
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This is arguably an insane bureaucratic way to implement racial quotas. The only thing worse than racial quotas is secretly implementing them and pretending you are not.
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I would of course never argue this, but some people might potentially conceivably hypothesize that our academic social science experts would evaluate the “correct” grading of a subjective BQ test by ensuring it has no racial disparities in its results. If it does, then grading would of course need to be changed accordingly. If they felt uneasy about how they had to change grading to ensure no “cultural bias” exists then they might not want people to know how they grade the test. But I say they are experts in social science, so we can trust them. Others aren’t so sure.
SteveF (Comment #168379): “I wonder how the Colorado Commission would react if they received a complaint about a photographer who declined to photograph a gay wedding? My guess is they would find against the photographer; and they would then lose in court.”
The first case of this sort I heard of involved a wedding photographer in New Mexico. She lost in court. The gay couple openly admitted that they sought out that specific photographer because they thought she would refuse.
NASA has an announcement of a finding by Curiosity this afternoon that they’ve been hush about. I read that there is speculation growing online that they have found evidence of microbial life. Odds are the excitement generated by the secrecy is misplaced; probably something unexpected about the geological history or the liquid water history or something like that. Still, just a heads up for any (other) geeks like me who might be interested.
Almost all these NASA discoveries are false alarms. Generally they are officially confirming something they were already saying for years. Water formed the landscapes, etc. If they found a fossil that would be exciting.
Tom, yep, sure seems that way. Still, I’m curious to know what they’ve got.
Huntsville’s Space Center is pretty awesome. My daughter said the standing Saturn V in Huntsville was “ugly”. I considered disowning her.
Tom –
There’s a Saturn V at Kennedy Space Center which is suspended horizontally. You can walk under its entire length, look up at the exhaust nozzles, etc. One can’t help but be awed.
They have one horizontally in Huntsville as well. KSC is very, very nice as well. Huntsville has more displays and history of the engines and a fairly large outdoor rocket park. Mostly Army stuff since Redstone is very close by. If you like KSC and are a space fan then you definitely want to also visit Huntsville at some point.
https://www.rocketcenter.com/museum
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Here’s a picture of the “computer” used on the Saturn V they have at Huntsville. They have the entire electronics ring broken out and it is pretty fascinating.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Xi1loqglxKWHCtSn1
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And yes, I built my very own
https://photos.app.goo.gl/GeT3DpqOpGNvMkVN2
Yeah the space and rocket center is interesting. Of all the government funded stuff we do I used to almost feel good about NSA.
Tom Scharf (Comment #168385): “Huntsville’s Space Center is pretty awesome.”
I stopped there once on a cross country trip, expecting to spend an hour or so. Was there all afternoon.
Spoiler alert.
1) Organic molecules. Whether or not of biological origin unknown.
2) Methane underground. Whether or not of biological origin unknown.
Interesting though.
[Edit: so, the methane was known. The findings have to do with seasonal variations in the methane emissions I gather.]
We saw a Saturn 5 in a metal barn (term of art) at Johnson Space Center in Houston a month ago. Also a slide rule (Post not K&E)
Lucia, Anthony Kennedy’s opinion objects to the idea that businesses will put up signs saying ‘we won’t serve gay weddings’. I think you have the same problem if businesses are putting up signs saying ‘gay wedding cakes will be subcontracted’.
However, your logic appears sound.
MikeN,
I didn’t suggest anyone should put up either type of sign.
It is the equivalent of doing so. If the subcontracting were happening without revealing it, that is another matter.
The new challenge to ObamaCare that we discussed awhile back has a new development, the Justice Department is not going to defend the case, saying they agree the law is unconstitutional, and is suggesting that the community rating provision and guaranteed issue(preexisting condition) be removed from the law as of Jan 1, 2019, when the individual mandate penalty is set to $0.
Fascinating article about funding climate change communication rather than innovation here.
MikeN,
Not putting up a sign is not the equivalent of putting up a sign.
Real house of cards now, young female reporter with head of Senate Intelligence Committee getting hand fed information. Is this the smoking gun?
Probably not.
HaroldW,
Pielke Jr is a voice of reason. That is why he has been excommunicated by activists. He can make thoughtful and insightful comments and presentations for the rest of his life; they won’t influence the “climate science community” so long as that community is dominated by green activists. It is much like academia being dominated by leftists…. they are in charge, and will do all they can to be sure academia remains dominated by leftists. In both cases, only public defunding will make a difference.
Lucia, perhaps I’m wrong, but I interpreted Kennedy’s language as metaphorical.
The world seems to be losing touch with the “content of your character” analysis of people. It’s not going to stop me from doing so, even if I am a CIS gendered norm-something stale evolutionary biology thinking old white man. My model is apparently obsolete and needs a new OS.
SUMMARY of MS=DOS 1.0 attitude:
1. Don’t ask someone you know disapproves of your lifestyle to design you a wedding cake.
2. If they do ask you to design a cake and they seem like perfectly nice people, design them a cake anyway without applying purity tests. Being nice to customers is a good practice.
3. If they are total a-holes and gay, don’t design them a cake because they are a-holes. If they are total a-holes and straight, don’t design them a cake because they are a-holes.
Ctrl-Alt-Delete
MikeN,
I interpret it as literal.
Tom,
Sadly, the baker might not figure out someone is a a-hole until after the contract to baker the cake has been created and a deposit given.
In the case of wedding cakes, you’d probably find out if the coulple was same sex before you found out if they were a-holes.
My hair dresser did “fire” a client pretty much for being a demanding a-hole. The only physical info I have on the client was short hair. Worked as a person who runs group exercise thingies at the gym associated with a local hospital.
An editorial by the baker in question appeared in the wall street journal. He also does not bake halloween cakes or divorce cakes. Admire or revile his beliefs, they clearly are sincerely held. He stopped baking cakes for 6 years and lost 40% of his business rather than being willing to bake cakes for same sex weddings.
The WP gives us another hilarious example of love, tolerance, and anti-bigotry. Making the world a better place. This is how we prevent Democracy from dying in darkness. Speaking from the moral high-ground and earning back that lost respect for journalism.
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Why can’t we hate men?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men/2018/06/08/f1a3a8e0-6451-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html
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“Seen in this indisputably true context, it seems logical to hate men. I can’t lie, I’ve always had a soft spot for the radical feminist smackdown, for naming the problem in no uncertain terms. I’ve rankled at the “but we don’t hate men†protestations of generations of would-be feminists and found the “men are not the problem, this system is†obfuscation too precious by half.”
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“So men, if you really are #WithUs and would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced and benefited from, start with this: Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only.”
Why did she submit this article to a paper owned by Jeff Bezos?
They’re running with FBI didn’t spy on Trump, they investigated Russians for his own good.
For the IG report coming on Thursday, they are trying Comey didn’t investigate the Weiner laptop because Republicans would have illegally leaked about it.
“…would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced and benefited from…… Pledge to vote for feminist women only.”
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Jesus… The test of being a man who should not be hated is to be irrational? I would vomit before subjecting myself to such rubbish. I love women… always have… but that doesn’t make me insane.
Vote the way I want and ‘we’ won’t hate you. What sort of imbecile comes up with this crap.
SteveF and all on that “feminist” article. I don’t know who the author considers to be “we” and “us”, but her “us” is certainly #notAllWomen.
MikeN
By way of Zoe Barnes? 😉
I just wonder when someone is going to have the gall to run the 647 part series of what good things have happened when “men” have been in charge over the past few hundred years (if we have to take all the blame for everything…). I’m not the least bit ashamed about progress lately. I was in the middle of doing the laundry when I read that one, ha ha. I praise the men who invented and manufactured washing and drying machines.
Damage control or heartfelt, decide for yourself:
What the professor who hates men missed, article in the Atlantic.
Either way, makes some reasonable points in my estimation.
mark bofill,
As damage control, it is not very effective. An publication that chooses to give a public forum to someone who advocates blanket hatred of a group, independent of individual culpability, is a publication which has lost its moral compass. The only thing the article gets right is that most people will indeed ignore a crazy professor who advocates blanket hatred. That doesn’t mean people will, or should, forgive a publication which gives such a despicable person a public voice to spread their hatred. The question I would ask the publisher of The Atlantic is “Would you support a publication running a rant by someone who advocates blanket hatred of Muslims?” I suspect they would be apoplectic, rather than the apologists for ‘good hatred’ that they plainly are. The Atlantic is even more despicable than the professor.
Apparently the professor identities as a socialist (big surprise). They justify this one way hatred as being biased against an oppressive majority that just happens to be white and just happens to be men, therefore white men are oppressors, and white men need to stop it. They theoretically would rail against the green squids if they had the power, but I have my doubts on this. The more moderate of this group also tend to leave out the “even though this oppression is not malicious in nature by an individual” part. This is also the basis of railing against “white supremacy” even though it is not white supremacists in the way most normal people interpret the phrase doing the alleged oppressing. This slight of hand (aka the motte and bailey) is how they thread the needle for “Trump supporters are white supremacists”, his supporters support and vote for a system run almost exclusively by white men.
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This conflation of Marxist theory with blatant bigoted and racist statements is likely intentional in most cases and the speakers must know this will be interpreted in an inflammatory way. Marxist theory is oppression of the working class, so this twist of Marxism replaces a faceless elite with race and gender.
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If they said they are upset with the ruling class who coincidentally are white and men in the US and hold no grudges against powerless poor white men then they wouldn’t look like raving lunatics. They keep their overt socialism in check usually because they know this is not a war they can win at the moment given the recent history of this doctrine.
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Long story short is what they really hate is not having power and how power is allocated, and their attempts to convince everyone of their political doctrine is being laughed out of the election booth. Their disagreement is at a very fundamental political level and they dress it up with dictionary definitions of racism and sexism which I find absolutely confounding. They are not looking to fix the current system. I think a race and gender war would be just fine with them if it brings down the existing system, a means to an end.
Tom Scharf (Comment #168415):
Yes, at least the brighter leftists recognize that they are being extremely divisive. Why would they be intentionally divisive? The best answer I can think of is “divide and conquer”.
But of course, most people who repeat such nonsense are not actually thinking through the consequences.
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Tom Scharf:
Setting poor whites against poor blacks and men against women is one way for the ruling class to maintain power. But in the long run, it is a very dumb way of doing that. So I don’t think that is what this is about.
I think that what the left is really trying to do is to destroy our existing society so that they can pick up the pieces and impose the society they want. Virtually everything the left advocates makes sense when you look at it that way.
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Tom Scharf:
Yep. It is always about power with the left. Strip away faith and morality and community, then what is left? Power.
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Tom Scharf:
That is OK with the left since they know they will never succeed in the voting booth.
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Tom Scharf:
Exactly.
If this keeps up, next thing you know girls are even going to be playing Led Zeppelin on the drums…
https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2018/06/11/618963329/watch-this-8-year-old-girl-crush-led-zeppelins-good-times-bad-times
Steve, Tom, thanks for you responses.
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I don’t remember how I ended up here, but this sort of tickled me. Humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.
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This third law (also called the Golden Law of Stupidity) is what comes to mind when I think about people actually doing this Tom:
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A means to an end; everybody losing. I used to wonder if such people were guided principally by malice or stupidity. I come to suspect as the years roll on that it’s chiefly envy, resentment, and stupidity that drives this, all scrambled together on many layers.
“Setting poor whites against poor blacks and men against women is one way for the ruling class to maintain power.”
I also doubt it’s a grand conspiracy to maintain power even if it accidentally works. What would have the elite class building ideological bomb shelters in their backyards is if a figurative “black Trump” was elected uniting left and right lower classes. That would probably be pretty scary, but fun to watch as an outside observer.
mark bofill (Comment #168418): “Humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.”
I think Cipolla misses the most basic law of stupidity.
Law 0: Some people are stupid all of the time, but all people are stupid some of the time.
I suspect he is wrong about “Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.”
I think it should be
Law 5: The most dangerous type of person is one who never asks himself “Am I being stupid?”
Mike M.
Interesting idea. I’m not sure I agree though. Take alcohol for instance. I’ve been intoxicated, perfectly aware that I was intoxicated, and perfectly aware that I was operating at the sub-moron level of intelligence at the time. I don’t know that being aware that one is being stupid necessarily helps all that much. Can’t say it helped me! :>
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I like law 0 though!
A stupid person is definitely not the most dangerous kind of person.
Lucia,
So, of course I’d rather have a stupid adversary than a smart one. If somebody’s objective is detrimental to me, sure – I hope I’m facing somebody dumb.
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What would you say to the author’s argument as to why stupid people are dangerous?
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I think there’s plenty wrong with this – not clear that stupid people are in fact unpredictable, but I’m curious to hear what you think.
They might be unpredictable in a general sense, from a practical standpoint. I can possibly predict the responses of stupid people I specifically know…
I don’t know. Thinking about it.
Lucia, Tom Scharf,
“They are not looking to fix the current system.”
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“I think that what the left is really trying to do is to destroy our existing society so that they can pick up the pieces and impose the society they want. Virtually everything the left advocates makes sense when you look at it that way.”
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Exactly right. The extreme left insists on “fundamental change”, because they disagree with how humanity lives, and how it is governed. No matter how destructive of people or of societies, forcing “fundamental change” always justifies the means. That is why the social damage is almost without limit when leftists gain power; any country can be the next Venezuela if you put leftists in charge.
Alright. The chief problem is stupid and irrational aren’t really the same thing. My dogs are stupid by human standards but they’re rational within their limits, so they are predictable. Psychotic people can be intelligent and irrational and can be unpredictable and dangerous. At least that’s my take.
People have varying degrees of stupidity based on the subject matter. You don’t want high school dropouts designing your nuclear plant, but you are probably plenty stupid about welding compared to one who has done it for a living. Stupidity and experience in a subject matter are inversely correlated. A high SAT score doesn’t give you experience, it may make you better prepared to learn faster and more efficiently.
Mark Bofill (Comment #168426): “The chief problem is stupid and irrational aren’t really the same thing. My dogs are stupid by human standards but they’re rational within their limits, so they are predictable. Psychotic people can be intelligent and irrational and can be unpredictable and dangerous. At least that’s my take.”
Yes. Cipolla is confusing (and confused) because he conflates stupid behavior with stupid people. People who are stupid in the usual sense don’t always behave stupidly in Cipolla’s sense of acting in a way that hurts both themselves and others. And whether one qualifies as stupid or a bandit in Cipolla’s terminology depends on whether the person doing to classifying understand’s one motives. So it is not helpful.
Mark bofill
Stupid and unreasonable are not the same thing. I’ve known smart people who are very unreasonable.
That they are rational doesn’t necessarily help if you (a) don’t know their goals and (b) don’t know what methods and tools are available to them. Intelligent rational people can have lots of different goals.
“A plus”??!! That doesn’t tell you much. Does he want to steal your guns? Your money? Your art? Your farm? You need to know to predict what he will do.
A smart one might too– as part of a plan of distraction. It’s not even unusual.
My take is the author of that article is being pretty stupid.
Lucia, Mike, thanks. I agree. I remembered and linked the article more because I found it amusing than enlightening.
I knew it was bad, but not this bad.
“… we plunged into the depths of critical race theory and critical gender theory”
Undergraduate social sciences education in the 21st Century? Ed school? Nope.
“In torts, civil procedure, property, and criminal law …”
“I learned in great detail how common-law conceptions of contract rights harmed women and minorities and perpetuated the patriarchy. I learned very little about competing legal doctrines and traditions — when such ideas were brought up at all, they were presented as caricatures so they could be debunked.”
At Harvard Law School, early 1990’s.
From an article by David French, discussing why the elites have been doing such a spectacularly bad job.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/american-educated-elite-not-educated-not-elite/
MikeM,
It started with Woodrow Wilson, and has only become worse since. Of course, conventional understandings of law are presented as caricatures…. how else to discredit historical juris prudence? Heck, historical rulings are the basis of most SC decisions.
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Those who reject history are doomed to (usually) do very bad things.
Tom Scharf,
You seem to be conflating stupid and ignorant. They aren’t the same. You may be ignorant about welding, but you could almost certainly learn how to do it and, with practice, become competent. But the thing is, you know you’re ignorant about welding. The real problem may well be with people who think they are competent, but aren’t. The classic paper on this was Kruger and Dunning’s Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self Assessments.
Or there’s the classic line: Ignorance can be fixed, stupid is forever.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #168433): “The real problem may well be with people who think they are competent, but aren’t.”
That is a key aspect of the French article I cited above (comment #168431) on why the elites have become so inept. It is also closely related to me restatement of the fifth law of stupidity(comment #168420).
DeWitt Payne (Comment #168433): “”The classic paper on this was Kruger and Dunning’s”
Wow. I took a look at the paper and came to the conclusion that the authors are incompetent. They found what they expected to find, even though the evidence clearly seems to indicate something very different.
They gave subjects various tests, asked the subjects to estimate how they did, and asked them to estimate where they ranked compared to others. In all cases, the subjects tended to estimate that they got about 2/3 of questions correct and that they ranked at about the 66th percentile independent of how they actually did. The authors concluded that the more capable subjects were better at estimating their performance than the least capable. But in fact, the second from top quartile did better than the top quartile at estimating their performance, contrary to the authors’ preformed conclusion.
Maybe it was a bad example. People can be stupid in different ways. Your stereotypical nerd is stupid in interpersonal relations. They may be able to learn how to fake it, or get a bit better at it, but they will never be great at it. You just don’t want that nerd heading up the most important sales relationship for your company. All I’m saying is stupidity is not one dimensional, but it really depends on how wide you want to cast the net of stupidity measurement. “G” is a very important dimension. Nerds solved their sales problem by creating online shopping and businesses which have devalued the importance of person to person sales where relationships matter.
In related news, there is some evidence the Flynn effect is ending.
IQ Scores Are Falling in “Worrying” Reversal of 20th Century Intelligence Boom
https://www.sciencealert.com/iq-scores-falling-in-worrying-reversal-20th-century-intelligence-boom-flynn-effect-intelligence
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I blame Bush, errr I mean Trump. Perhaps the Internet is making us dumber. You are better off having good search skills in applied sciences today, than having a good memory. Almost any minor programming problem can be solved in under a minute with the right keywords. The ability to know how to obtain the information is equivalent to already having the information in most cases. There probably ought to be a new measurement for how effectively people can find answers on the Internet.
Mike M.: “he conflates stupid behavior with stupid people.”
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Running a red light is stupid; it’s easy to find stupid behaviors. Finding stupid people, not so much. All the people around you are mostly the same — nobody stands out as smart or stupid just looking at them — and for regular life it doesn’t matter much. Smart people do things, invent things, make things, and everybody else takes advantage of that. You don’t have to be too smart to use a smartphone. Where smart/stupid stands out is in the ability to learn.
Tom Scharf,
It isn’t Trump, it’s obviously climate change. In fact, Trump’s election was probably also caused by climate change. /sarc
“Perhaps the most damaging new revelation in the report, according to multiple people familiar with it, is a previously unreported text message in which Peter Strzok, a key investigator on both the Clinton email case and the investigation of Russia and the Trump campaign, assured an FBI lawyer in August 2016 that “we’ll stop†Trump from making it to the White House.”
“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!†the lawyer, Lisa Page, wrote to Strzok.
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,†Strzok responded.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-receiving-briefing-ahead-of-public-release-of-report-expected-to-criticize-fbi/2018/06/14/c08c6a5a-6fdf-11e8-bf86-a2351b5ece99_story.html.
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Sad effing days for the FBI. Sad. And I’m predisposed to support law enforcement. This guy was on Mueller’s team and the Clinton investigation. How stupid do you have to be to write that text? They MUST fire him if he is still employed, they have no choice. None.
Wow.
George Monbiot, extreme leftist, has managed to get something right: That Trump is right to insist on a sunset clause in NAFTA.
Monbiot: “Those who defend the immortality of trade agreements argue that it provides certainty for business. It’s true that there is a conflict between business confidence and democratic freedom. This conflict is repeatedly resolved in favour of business. That the only defender of popular sovereignty in this case is an odious demagogue illustrates the corruption of 21st-century liberal democracy.”
What Monbiot misses is that this is just one of a vast number of ways in which the administrative state acts against the will and interests of the people. And that is the essence of what got Trump elected.
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Oops. The missing link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/13/trump-nafta-g7-sunset-clause-trade-agreement
What is really a bit odd about this new text release is that they released the first part that Page wrote in February, but did not release Strzok’s response which is by far the more damaging. I have no idea what to make of this.
Sounds like the Inspector General Horowitz found political bias in Comey’s inner circle and found that Comey violated a variety of FBI procedures, thus calling the agency into discredit. But he did not find specific evidence that Comey’s investigation was guided by political motives.
When it comes to attributing motives, I am inclined toward the theory that if it walks like a duck, flies like a duck, and quacks like a duck; it is a duck.
No political bias works in both directions. There was no bias when he re-opened the Clinton investigation as well. However that is going to be the result 99% of the time when the police investigate themselves.
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When one of the leading investigators is caught with a smoking gun of political bias, one might ask what else would they need? I suppose evidence that Strzok affected the decision making process. Strzok was instrumental in changing the words for Clinton to “extremely careless”.
FBI agent dismissed from Mueller probe changed Comey’s description of Clinton to ‘extremely careless’
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/peter-strzok-james-comey/index.html
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“Strzok was the FBI official who signed the document officially opening an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election”
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Strzok is toast. Sessions already said this week that there may be more dismissals. I’d expect this to happen within days. It’s entirely possible he was biased and didn’t let that affect his decisions.
exerpts from the report for general consideration:
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and
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I find the second explanation about the insurance policy reasonably plausible. I don’t understand how anybody can reasonably construe the first, that saying ‘We’ll stop it’ means “that Trump would not be elected, not to suggest that he would do something to impact the investigation.”
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We — indicating a group consisting at least of speaker and listener,
will — expressing the future tense
stop — cause (an action, process, or event) to come to an end,
it — used to refer to a thing previously mentioned or easily identified. (Trump becoming President).
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Those four words unambiguously do not mean what Strzok proposes. They are highly consistent with the interpretation Strzok denies.
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Bloody liar, you ask me.
Those explanations aren’t going to cut it, especially given the wealth of other texts displaying animus. They’ll fire him, he will sue for wrongful termination, he’ll lose. This guy was the FBI’s representative to Mueller, until he got canned from that investigation. FBI people are allowed to have political opinions, but not that extreme on someone they are investigating. It’s a lot easier justifying firing him than it is to justifying to keep him around.
Tom, sure. But I don’t find much comfort in that. A cockroach got squashed, hurrah. There’s usually a hundred more hiding someplace [nearby] when the evidence is blatant enough that one gets squashed, IMO.
[Edit: I think Gowdy said it well, what’s bothering me, and I don’t see this getting solved:
Yup.]
Five agents have been “referred” for investigation by the IG:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/14/ig-refers-five-fbi-employees-for-investigation-as-more-anti-trump-messages-revealed.html
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The lesson to learn here is to stay far, far, away from Trump’s orbit. He’s the death star.
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Page 420:
“. . . when one senior FBI official, Strzok, who was helping to lead the Russia investigation at the time, conveys in a text message to another senior FBI official, Page, that “we’ll stop†candidate Trump from being elected — after other extensive text messages between the two disparaging candidate Trump — it is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects. This is antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice.”
Mark Bofill (Comment #168447) : “Those four words unambiguously do not mean what Strzok proposes. They are highly consistent with the interpretation Strzok denies.”
Well, by “we” he could have meant “us Clinton supporters” rather than the FBI. Then it would be plausible that he really did not remember sending it, in which case he might be truthfully saying that he had no intent of steering the investigation to achieve that result.
That is bending over backwards to be fair to Strzok, not that the cockroach deserves it.
Mike M,
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Yes. The FBI isn’t the only possibility which is why I only said it’s highly consistent with the explanation Strzok denies.
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But what gives? If the FBI were investigating me because they thought I might have shot someone or something, and they found a text from me declaring ‘We’ll stop him.’, and I fed them that load of hooey…. I don’t think that’d work out well for me.
Sorry, that was my outrage talking.
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Perhaps the report doesn’t go into enough detail. If Strzok had said, ‘yeah I said that but I didn’t mean it, I was trying to get laid.’ Alright, that could be plausible. If he had said ‘yeah I meant it, but I meant “we” the democratic voters”, that could be plausible too.
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But again, Strzok is nothing in and of himself. I think the report substantiates the idea that they handled Clinton with kid gloves. I believe the gloves came off for Trump and his administration.
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Is it the end of the world, no. There is always some degree of bias, some degree of injustice in our system. Life goes on. It just irritates me is all.
mark bofill (Comment #168453): “I think the report substantiates the idea that they handled Clinton with kid gloves. I believe the gloves came off for Trump and his administration.”
Yes, that is the essence of it. The establishment protecting its own and going after its enemies. Luckily, it seems Trump has the fortitude to stand up to it.
Sigh. This is a bit disturbing, and I don’t even think you need to believe in fake moon landings to connect the dots here.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/doj-ig-claims-fbi-software-failed-to-recover-explosive-strzok-text/
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Strzok’s response wasn’t released back in Feb because the FBI didn’t turn it over. The IG office found it themselves when they themselves went looking for texts:
“The message was later recovered by the IG in May as part of a broader effort to recover texts that the FBI lost due to a technical glitch.”
“The OIG’s Cyber Investigations Office recovered this text message, along with others, in May 2018 through forensic analysis of a folder found on Page’s and Strzok’s Samsung S5 devices.â€
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On this visit to the Museum of the Hard to Believe, we are expected to swallow that the FBI looked on the phone and found the first part of the conversation, but didn’t find the response. How unlucky for the FBI that this text was lost in the “glitch”! Somehow the IG found it later. Good for the IG. Apparently the IG has better software tools than the F.B.I. Perhaps the FBI should start looking into computer forensics as part of their job.
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Somebody covered this up (Am I sounding like a Hitler is still alive guy?). The most charitable explanation I can give is that Strzok deleted this text and the IG looked harder than the FBI. However it’s a bit of a concern that the FBI found the text 5 seconds before it. This looks bad.
I think it is fair to say that Strzok’s master diabolical plan is a smoldering mass of ruins at this point. No more affair. Trump won. Comey’s fired. McCabe fired. Kicked off the Mueller investigation. He’s working in HR now. Page resigned. FBI disgraced. His dirty underwear hanging out for all to see. That’s a pretty bad year in anyone’s book.
Tom,
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Regarding the text recovery, there are always those who will refuse to accept the obvious and who will call you a conspiracy theorist to distract themselves from the nagging voice deep down that tells them they are ignoring the obvious. In fact probably most of us do this about different things to some extent.
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You’re not a ‘Hitler is still alive’ guy. Yup. Somebody covered that up.
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The road to conspiracy theory madness [starts] several steps on forward, when you (I should say ‘I’) start wondering what the heck else they covered up.
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[Edit: If something really really blatantly damning was uncovered, is it insane to speculate that government people – good, responsible people – might reason that the damage to faith in our institutions and/or the destruction of the FBI could result from total disclosure? That was rhetorical, my answer: I don’t think that’s insane. There may be other problems with it, but. How much better would it be to handle the problem privately, WITHOUT destroying the FBI or damaging public faith any more than necessary! OK, I’m taking off my tin foil hat and going to bed, night all]
Tom Scharf (Comment #168455): “Somebody covered this up”.
You are sounding like the sort of kook who thinks that Hillary did something wrong with the way she handled her emails and something shady with the Uranium One deal. I say this with some confidence on the grounds that it takes one to know one.
I find it curious that the name Eric Garner appears nowhere in this IG report after appearing in the previous report. After the first report which led to McCabe’s firing, I got the impression that the investigatory timeline was:
Weiner laptop found by NYPD
FBI Mid Year Exam team(McCabe) does nothing
NYPD/SDNY starts grumbling that the Fix Be In
Lynch replaces attorneys at EDNY, and threatens to prosecute the Eric Garner case unless they play ball.
Tom Scharf,
“Strzok is toast. ”
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About time. He should have been fired the day the department got his text messages. The fact that he remained employed reflects badly on the “culture” of both the FBI and the DOJ. Really, he should have been immediately escorted to the door and told not to return.
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“That’s a pretty bad year in anyone’s book.”
It will get worse when he is fired.
Wow. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/14/obama-had-direct-contact-with-clinton-on-private-email-server-ig-report.html
Why would he do that? The only reason I can think of is that he knew it was an unsecured account.
Obama’s use of a pseudonym implies that is a lie. And, of course, Clinton was circumventing, not following, federal law.
It really get worse if you examine more details. “Attorney 2” made a bunch of disparaging remarks about Trump and was (is?) the lead attorney for the FBI on the Mueller investigation. They have reams of evidence of people talking to the media, taking gifts from the media (sporting tickets, etc.), and some of them even contacted the media directly using open phone lines from the FBI’s HQ in DC. Comey used a private gmail account for FBI business (ohhh the irony of this one…). And these are our elite best and brightest.
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If bumblehead Trump set out to discredit the FBI, mission accomplished, and I support the FBI. Do not underestimate Trump, and taking a morally righteous ends justify the means attitude walks right into the Trump trap. He seems to be executing the “I’ll be an overt lowlife and expose everyone else who thinks they are not” plan to perfection. Trump thinks the elite world is just a cheap veneer of respectability, and he is making a decent case for it. His 2020 campaign slogan might as well be “You think your sh** don’t stink?”, ha ha. I think Trump will eventually go down in flames but it has been quite entertaining.
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I’d like to see some politicians with less self righteous rage and more humility at this point. The outlook for this is dim.
>fact that he remained employed reflects badly on the “culture†of both the FBI and the DOJ.
It is much easier for the IG to compel testimony from employees. Strzok was demoted, and likely doing no work while these IG reports are being produced. Page was fired before the report was released last month, meaning she was not entitled to an advance copy to respond(It appears McCabe was given a copy though). Strzok has probably flipped on the team. Bill Priestap is generally treated as an outsider even though he was Strzok’s boss. He is probably cooperating, and has not been demoted like Strzok.
Many of the names in the report have been fired or ‘fired’ like Mike Kortan, James Rybicki, Laufman, Mary McCord, Sally Yates, Andy McCabe, James Baker(also looking good in the report).
The IG’s work is ongoing, and there is a team of prosecutors working the cases.
Disparate impact infinite loop, core abort.
Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits, Lawsuit Says
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html
Frankly, the idea that you have to have a certain kind of personality to get an education is utter nonsense. Maybe it’s necessary because academic achievement is meaningless because anyone who puts in a modicum of effort can get great scores?
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I found it bemusing to say the least to find out students applying for university had to essentially submit a creative writing essay explaining what amazing people they were. I’d have probably failed. I detest blowing my own trumpet, never mind lying to do it, and I can see how certain cultural groups might have issues achieving this.
Tom Scharf,
“Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits, Lawsuit Says”
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But the people at Harvard are racists for “good” reasons (we don’t like having too many Asians enrolled, we prefer Blacks, Latinos, and the offspring of alumni and the rich and famous), not for “bad” reasons (we don’t like having weaker students enrolled), so their racism is OK.
If Harvard specifically defined what personality they were looking for then the Asians (and all highly motivated students) would … acquire it pronto. Essays have always been mysterious as this is the easiest thing to fake and give people who really know what schools are looking for an advantage (upper class), and those that have poor school systems and less educated parents a disadvantage. It wouldn’t seem like it would help level the playing field.
SteveF,
They truly believe in structural disadvantages imposed by the majority power holders on out of power identity groups. Clearly there was evidence for this in the past, and human nature is to make your tribe dominant over other tribes and to do everything you can to sustain this power.
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One answer is to remove those obstacles that have been artificially and improperly imposed by the power brokers everywhere you find them. A constant ongoing and imperfect battle. Another answer is to assume it cannot be solved this way because tribes are hopelessly tyrannical and impose the correct answer by fiat, social justice. It is noted that the people making these social justice arguments are generally the same ones responsible for, and benefiting from, the alleged oppressive system they rail against. There is some degree of self-hate and guilt involved I guess.
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The biggest problem with answer two is that they assume this a priori by definition. Today most of team “impose the answer” don’t even specifically address what they think is unfair because it is the system itself in their view. One could argue that this mentality conveniently avoids a very uncomfortable and ugly honest debate. We are definitely getting one half of this ugly debate lately.
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One could also argue that a tribal supremacist who believes some cultures are better than other cultures and wants to keep it that way would be perfectly OK with lesser cultures convincing themselves it was hopeless and making no attempt to improve themselves. Answer two is forbidden by the Constitution, an impossible hill to climb. All the better for the king tribe.
Mike M. (#168461): “Obama’s use of a pseudonym implies that [his being unaware of Clinton’s private email server] is a lie.”
I disagree. It doesn’t surprise me that Obama would want an additional account beyond “barack.obama@whitehouse.gov” or the like. That’s a fine address for citizens to write to, but that should be directed to a staffer. The president would want to have a separate account for cabinet officials and other high-ranking staff to talk to him directly. So I don’t think that having a pseudonymous account implies anything. Now, if he had a *separate* pseudonymous account just for Clinton, that would be a little more interesting.
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An IT person might be bothered that Clinton was using an email address at clintonemail.com rather than one — pseudonymous or not — at state.gov. But I wouldn’t expect Obama, or any other politician for that matter, to give it much thought.
Oh. Gosh. How horrible that someone might want to challenge race-conscious admissions that limit the number of asian american’s admitted. And how horrible that they are suing Harvard which to all appearances dings asian american’s who apply.
That looks bad for Harvard. Actual interviewers think these kids’ personalities are fine. But admissions then dings them. That’s going to require some explanation.
HaroldW (Comment #168469): “Now, if he had a *separate* pseudonymous account just for Clinton, that would be a little more interesting.”
That is what I understood the report to be saying. Of course he has something other than his public account.
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HaroldW: “An IT person might be bothered that Clinton was using an email address at clintonemail.com rather than one — pseudonymous or not — at state.gov. But I wouldn’t expect Obama, or any other politician for that matter, to give it much thought.”
I agree. So Earnest’s claim is plausible, unless Obama used a pseudonym specifically for that account.
It seems that this Obama pseudonym business was reported before the election. For example: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-emails-fbi-228607
That is obviously not just a matter of using a different email account for account management purposes.
Asians can be like Mindy Kaling’s brother who shaved his head and used the nickname Jojo, and the schools that were rejecting him were now eager to accept him as a black guy.
Lucia,
From the NYT article: “Harvard’s class of 2021 is 14.6 percent African-American, 22.2 percent Asian-American, 11.6 percent Hispanic and 2.5 percent Native-American or Pacific Islander, according to Harvard’s website.”
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The most recent census says African Americans (“black” and “mixed”) represent 13.6% of the US population; considering the well documented average academic weakness of African Americans, seems odd that they are actually over-represented in Harvard’s 2021 class. Hispanics are 17% of the total population but get 11.6% of the admissions, which still seems a little surprising in light of their average academic performance. People of Pacific Island and Native American descent represent about 1.3% of the population, yet almost twice that in Harvard’s admissions. People of Asian descent represent about 6%-7% of the population, but get 22% of the admissions. Whites are 62% of the population, but get only 49% of the admission spots. So what it looks like is actually happening: certain favored races receive more admissions than their academic performance would suggest, while Asian students and white students (and a lesser extent Hispanics) compete academically… with a thumb on the scale to limit the number of Asians and increase the number of Hispanics. Harvard is clearly a racist institution, which is not at all surprising considering the politics of Harvard professors.
White students wanting to get into Harvard could follow the example of John Howard Griffin…. “Black Like Me”. Of course, they would probably get thrown out if they stopped taking methoxsalen and spending a lot of time under a sun lamp.
Mike M,
“So Earnest’s claim is plausible, unless Obama used a pseudonym specifically for that account.”
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I’ll be surprised if he didn’t use one or more pseudonyms for communications with officials who were using non .gov addresses (like Hillary), and a different single name for “official” communications to .gov addresses. I’ll also be surprised if his knowledge of Hillary’s private server is ever formally confirmed.
I think the entire point of this lawsuit was discovery. Harvard was finally ordered to open their books by the court and exactly what was expected was found. The doublespeak is now a lot harder to justify. Harvard was redacting everything they could from public view.
https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2018/defending-diversity
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If you want a real laugher, ask them how their commitment to diversity applies to conservative opinion.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/series/learning-from-difference/
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If Harvard says we don’t want more Asians and we don’t value conservative opinion then I am perfectly fine with that. The doublespeak is insulting to everyone and is part of why academia is losing respect. The most elegant prose from the greatest minds won’t make indefensible arguments defensible. They are discriminating by race, and there isn’t a right way to do that.
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Why is discriminating by economic class instead such a hard pill for Harvard to swallow?
The strangest thing … I’ve been married to my wife for 24 years and today is the first time ever I realized I was married to an official bonafide legal real “first generation immigrant”.
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Where do I sign up for my victim payments? Do I get elite status now when talking about immigration? Can I smack down others who couldn’t possibly understand what they are talking about? I’ve had to live with this!
I’m so sorry Tom.
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You’re white and male. As a member of the master oppressor race and the tyrannical gender of the most dread Patriarchy, you get nothing.
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Your wife is an entirely different matter. Provided her views are… suitable. The odds are against it. Is she prepared to denounce you for your countless crimes and stand in solidarity with Professor Walters? I don’t mean to pry into your sex life, but I suspect your wife is cis-gender heteronormative? Unfortunate, comrade.
Tom Scharf,
Thanks for the link to the Letter from Harvard’s president. It was quite entertaining…. I giggled through most of it. Defending the indefensible sure does make you look silly. Of course, Harvard is very rich, and so doesn’t really care about the cost of the suit, and very arrogant, so they will continue to flip the bird at anyone who disagrees with their politics. No more Federally funded research for people working at discriminatory universities would be a good outcome…. but I’m not counting on it.
Harvard has a stronger argument than most places because the SC says you can use race as a tie breaker for diversity sake. It can be argued all of Harvard’s applicants are effectively a tie of super stars. They have oceans of super high SAT scores. What was found during discovery will make or break the case.
I guess we’ll read whether Harvard advances the “tie-breaker” argument as we go forward. So far, they don’t seem to have. Also: admissions personel deducting “personality” points without meeting the students is going to need to be explained.
If, instead, they’d masked it by dinging extra-curriculars and so on that “correlate”, that might work better. As in: Asians are more likely to play tennis that football. Let’s give football +++ points and tennis —- point. You could probably figure out a system of points that did skew– the only problem is that, quite likely, if you are not Asian and play tennis, they may actually want you. ( They’d might likely want a black or hispanic kid who played tennis instead of basketball, football or track. If so, they’d recognize the problem inherent in figuring out which extracurriculars tend to be correlated with “asian”.)
I haven’t read all the Harvard documents and likely won’t. I figure the courts can thrash this one out!
Tom Scharf: ” It can be argued all of Harvard’s applicants are effectively a tie of super stars. They have oceans of super high SAT scores.”
That is a very interesting question for me. Michelle Obama failed the bar exam, and Christopher Hitchens stated in discussing M Obama’s writing that “”To describe [the thesis] as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be ‘read’ at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn’t written in any known language.”
See this link for descriptions of both Obamas’ comparatively weak academic qualifications notwithstanding their admission to Harvard Law School. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/08/early_obama_letter_confirms_inability_to_write.html
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a substantial gap between the non-Asian minority scores and the other students admitted at Harvard.
I never reference my son’s half-Chinese ethnicity when I fill out anything academic.
JD
I read the court depositions covering analysis of the admissions data. Harvard is going to admit ~14% African Americans, quite independent of their academic record. Yes, they take the better African American applicants, but the average rejected white or Asian applicant is substantially better academically than the average admitted African American; same with the other “desired” races.
Lucia,
RE: “tiebreakers” There is no tiebreaker mechanism apparent in the data. Harvard wants a certain racial makeup in their entering class, and that is that. Arm waves about “pluses” and “tiebreakers” are just that: arm waves. They appear to have pretty strict quotas based on racial preference, and the data fairly well scream that is true. IMO, all of Harvard’s arguments are disingenuous or worse. They should be honest about what they are doing WRT racial quotas. But they won’t be, whether they win or lose the case brought by Asian Americans.
JD Ohio,
You need only read the (very few) available examples of Obama’s formal writing to understand that he is probably not very smart. Not passing the bar exam (Michelle) gives you some idea of her intellect. Of course, you could draw much the same conclusion by listening to her speak for a few minutes…. sounds really dumb. Lemme guess: their daughters will be welcomed at multiple Ivy League schools, smart or not.
JD Ohio,
If he really wants to disguise asian-ness to avoid getting dinged during admissions, he should take make up tips from this woman before any interviews:
Tom Scharf,
“Why is discriminating by economic class instead such a hard pill for Harvard to swallow?”
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I missed that question earlier… but it is a very good question. I think the reason is that discriminating by economic class would lead to a student body with a racial makeup not close to the racial makeup they desire. Any race-neutral selection scheme will be rejected because it would reduce Harvard’s ability to conduct the kind of racially based social engineering which is consistent with their leftist politics (equality of outcome, not opportunity). Harvard has discriminated against racial groups since the 1920’s, and it appears they will continue to for a long time to come.
SteveF,
The other difficulty with discriminating by economic class is they want to admit children or relative of (a) “legacy” applicants, (b) large donors, (c) people own large companies because they are potential future donors (d) successful politicians (e.g. Obama girls) and (e) kids who already made their own money (actors like Jody Foster.)
This means they want to preferentially admit kids from wealthy backgrounds.
The fact is there is nothing they’d like more than to admit a hispanic or african american whose parents went to Harvard or have a lot of money. Some exist, and I’m sure they are the dream candidate for Harvard. (If they exist, it’s not unlikely they could be a decent candidate too. I’m just saying, that would be Harvard’s “dream”.)
What they certainly don’t want to do is give brownie points for low income and then get a bunch of middle class kids whose families have no money to the exclusion of rich kids.
Here is Harvard’s first paragraph on statistics:
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education
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—————
Key statistics
Applicant academic qualifications A large percentage of applicants are academically qualified to be admitted to Harvard. For example, each year, far more applicants have perfect SAT verbal scores or perfect SAT math scores than are admitted. While academic ability is important and necessary, and transcends test scores and GPAs, for applicants who are academically qualified, other factors bear significantly on admissions decisions.
In a recent admissions cycle (in which fewer than 2,000 applicants out of approximately 40,000 were admitted):
Over 8,000 domestic applicants had perfect GPAs
Over 3,400 applicants had perfect SAT math scores
Over 2,700 applicants had perfect SAT verbal scores
—————
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The “stop the Asian invasion” is also happening in NYC. De Blasio wants the entrance exam stopped for their high end high schools. The best high school in NYC that seeds a lot of elite universities is now 69% Asian. De Blasio wants to reserve 20% of slots for minorities … that aren’t Asian. He says he wants to possibly change to a top 7% from all high schools.
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A couple problems here, of all the groups gaining entrance into these high schools, the Asians have the lowest average family incomes. Think about that for a minute. I guess NYC won’t be using economic class anytime soon. At 40 different NYC middle schools people in the top 7% * don’t even pass * the city’s standardized math test. NYC is truly a wasteland for education.
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It should be noted that If Harvard went to using only academic qualifications it would be whites that would lose the most slots numerically. Somehow whites aren’t complaining anyway. Race pandering is endemic in our politics, this battle will never truly be won or lost. The people who believe in affirmative action will continue to implement it in any way possible. Trump’s win makes getting the more overt shenanigans by the SC very difficult.
Tom,
“De Blasio wants to reserve 20% of slots for minorities … that aren’t Asian.”
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Equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity…. as is usually the case with the left…. Marx Lite.
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If Trump gets even 1 more SC nomination, then I think there is a good chance raced based discrimination will (finally) be struck down. But I doubt he will get one unless he wins a second term; the SC justices are not dummies.
Bad Blood. This is a fascinating book about the downfall of Silicon Valley’s darling startup Theranos by the two time Pulitzer prize winning investigative reporter from the WSJ who broke the story. If you want a break from politics and the site of trendy fashionable millennials prancing around a stage executing performative art spouting how they will change the world makes you nauseous, then read this book.
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I’ve worked with a lot of startups and done a fair amount of work in the medical device industry and this book hit home as very authentic. This is like a mashup of all the bad things I’ve seen over decades happening inside one company. It reads likes bad fiction. The number of high profile people peripherally involved boggles the mind.
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Spoiler Alert: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-files-criminal-charges-against-theranoss-elizabeth-holmes-ramesh-balwani-1529096005
Tom Scharf (Comment #168491): “A couple problems here, of all the groups gaining entrance into these high schools, the Asians have the lowest average family incomes.”
I guess that means that the Black and Latino students who make it into those schools are from relatively well off Black and Latino families.
SteveF (Comment #168492): “If Trump gets even 1 more SC nomination, then I think there is a good chance raced based discrimination will (finally) be struck down. But I doubt he will get one unless he wins a second term; the SC justices are not dummies.”
I am not so sure of that. There are persistent rumors that Kennedy might be retiring soon. He is 82 and, for all his faults, does not strike me as the sort of ideologue who would sacrifice himself for the cause. Ginsberg is 85 and Breyer is 80. Any of those three might have the “decision” made for them.
It is very unlikely anyone who went to a bottom 10% NYC high school is going to make the cut for the best high schools. You would need to be extraordinarily resilient and basically teach yourself. Empathy for kids who want an education stuck in that swamp is warranted. Another “feature” of NYC schools is that they eliminated dual track classes where the smart kids are put in other classes which were called college prep in my day. I would call this a drag the smart kids down to make things more equal strategy. Naturally charter schools in NYC are the devil’s spawn from the teacher’s union point of view.
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In some sense De Blasio’s actions are almost a signal of surrender to intractable forces in NYC. Nothing else is working. It’s an embarrassment for the blue model of governance that replicates itself in many larger cities. One would think it would be obvious to ask what do poor Asian families do that other are not? That question is never really asked.
Mike M,
“Ginsberg is 85 and Breyer is 80.”
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Sure, but their clerks can write the opinions and they don’t really have to say anything during oral arguments or case conferences… a skillfully embalmed justice might be able to get by for a year or two, especially if fitted with some kind of sound system to simulate speech and a few mechanical actuators controlled remotely to keep the body moving a bit. Surely comrade Ginsberg would agree to continue her ‘contribution’ to the court after death.
Tom Scharf,
“….. what do poor Asian families do that other are not? That question is never really asked.”
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I think that the answer is so obvious, even to progressives, there is no need for anyone to actually ask. But clear reality makes no difference to the left: individual outcomes outcomes must be similar, independent of personal effort, intellect, or actions; they will accept nothing else.
Tom Scharf,
Harvard’s claims about having sooooo very many super qualified applicants are deceptive non-sense. If you look at the actual data, you find that nearly all those kids with perfect SAT scores are not African American, Latino, or native American…. they are Asian or White. As I said earlier: the average rejected Asian American is academically stronger than the average admitted African American or Latino. Harvard issues acceptances to produce a ‘desired’ racial mixture, and they are not going to change unless forced to.
Sotomayor is also likely to not be on the court for much longer due to health issues.
Assuming Harvard will continue to admit a high percentage of (white) Jews, which they actively restricted with quotas 100 years ago, then the white Christian number could drop to zero if Asians are not discriminated against while Harvard continues to take blacks and Hispanics.
Lucia: “JD Ohio,
If he really wants to disguise asian-ness to avoid getting dinged during admissions, he should take make up tips from this woman before any interviews:”
Funny video. My son looks about 65% Asian. I don’t think it helps to mention that he is part Asian on academic applications, so I don’t. He is proud of his Asian ethnicity (I know you weren’t implying that he shouldn’t be) and calls himself a Whasian. On the other hand, he realizes the gaming aspect of academic applications and knows that it doesn’t help to mention the Chinese part his ethnicity.
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My 12-year-old daughter looks about 30% Asian and many people who meet her for the first time assume she is Mexican or Hawaiian. She just spent 10 days in Florida with a Ukrainian/Russian/Jewish family and the 9th grade boy in the family had fun with her calling her the dumbest Asian he had ever met because she once got a C on a math test. (All in good fun. Both my daughter and I got a kick out of it.)
JD
SteveF: Would appreciate it if you could provide me a link to the Harvard depositions. If I get a chance, I will scan them.
JD
JD Ohio,
Here is the Harvard material: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education
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Here is the SFFA material: https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/sffa-files-motion-for-summary-judgment-against-harvard/
MikeN,
Harvard has ~25% jewish students (https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/The-most-heavily-Jewish-US-college-and-other-facts-about-Jews-at-American-colleges-437701), which are all (I believe) considered “white”. Since Havard has ~49% white students, that means about 24% are white and not jewish. Subtract from that a large number of legacy students, students of (white) Havard staff, and students from very wealthy (white) families, and probably somewhere in the range of 15% of incoming students are white, not-jewish, and admitted on merit. Not at all surprising based on Harvard’s attitude toward people who are not political “progressives”, as those evil white christian people tend towards. Social engineering is a wonderful thing.
JD,
I’m definitely not implying he shouldn’t be proud of his ethnicity. But I could understand why some kids might want to use that woman’s make up tips for a 1 day college interview. Of course it won’t work if your last name is very obviously Asian, but your son’s is not.
My new understanding is race and gender are a social construct, so you should be able to declare your child anything you want under the rules as expressed by Team Science. An Asian man applying to Harvard as a black woman might cause Team Science to issue some clarifications on how this science really works, ha ha.
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The University of Missouri freshman class in now down 35% since two years ago. Evergreen State expects a 20% drop next year after a 12% drop the previous 4 years. The next college President might have a bit stiffer spine when the Twitter mob comes calling. According to FIRE the number of speaker dis-invitations is down considerably since a few years ago. I’m sensing this wave of insanity might be cresting.
Another non-decision decision from the SC on gerrymandering.
As it appears the method of “dinging” the applicant is the subjective judgment of admissions personnel who may never have met the student, your tactic might not work.
Students may already not be putting a “check” next to race and the admissions department may by diagnosing personality based on last name. “Hsu” and “Rajagopalan” tend to be east and south asian respectively. Jones is ambiguous. O’Toole, McGinnity… tend to be white. Sanchez tends to be hispanic. Unless children of Asian father’s do a legal name change, they may not be able to escape the “ding”.
JD_Ohio’s kids have a white father, and so almost certainly have a “white” last name. So they might be able to hide under the radar if they don’t check a box indicating race and no interviewer detects “asian” features to apply a “ding”.
If Asians all start anglicizing their last names in reaction to the “Harvard” proprietary method of “dinging” them for “bad” personality, they will not be the first immigrant group to anglicize their name. That said: I think most Poles who anglicized did so because the names were long and hard to spell. But some did it to disguise being a “dumb polack” which they perceived as affecting job prospects and so on. I knew an Italian family that went from Firenze to Frances to hide ethnicity for business reasons.
As they are European, they could fairly easily “pass” as “not the discriminated against group” by changing names and little else. I think if you put 100 poles in a room and 100 british in a room, I could guess which was the polish room and which the british nearly all the time. But if I meet 1 pole and one brit, I’ll make mistakes fairly often. With photos (especially if the person wears makeup) I’d make mistakes even more often.
The name-change strategy to describe heritage isn’t quite as simple for non-Europeans. But it might work for anything that merely involves admissions directors “diagnosing” based on paperwork only.
You know… it funny reading Harvard’s filings which are worded to make it sound like somehow it’s potentially difficult for someone to figure out if an applicant’s heritage is Asian especially if the applicant did not check some Asian category as race.
Ok… the cynical in me can’t help but imagine the admissions officers being trained in recognizing which first and last names scream “asian of some sort” just in case they weren’t already able to do so.
Presumably they also develop a “deep understanding” of the ethnic composition of that school. I don’t work admissions, but it doesn’t take me long to figure out which schools have which demographics.
Lucia,
“Ok… the cynical in me can’t help but imagine the admissions officers being trained in recognizing which first and last names scream “asian of some sort†just in case they weren’t already able to do so.”
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My understanding is that all applicants are interviewed, at least by an alumnus, and many (most?) are interviewed on campus. They can’t easily hide being of Asian descent during an interview, no matter their name. But the truth is, even if they were considered for admission purposes “white” they would still have a much tougher time of actually gaining entrance than if they were from one of the “preferred” races.
Tom Scharf,
They let the existing districts remain in place on technicalities. In the case of Wisconsin, the claim was that the legislative districts were drawn to protect Republicans in the state legislature, who got only 49% of the vote in the last election. Well, maybe, but the plan could have been blocked if the governor (Scott Walker) was a Democrat… and there are no districts for electing the governor. If Democrats are unhappy with legislative districts, they can elect a Democrat as governor by simple majority. Case resolved.
IMO, the SC has painted itself into a corner on gerrymandering. As I remember, the voting rights act pretty much requires it. Separating race and politics is not trivial. Even if you could somehow require compact districts, somebody’s ox would get gored because there will still be discretion on where to put boundaries and existing political districts like cities and counties can’t be used because of one man, one vote. They will continue to kick the can down the road.
DeWitt,
Yup, they probably will continue kicking the can, unless the progressives can get to 5 votes. If Kennedy were to retire and be replaced by someone like Gorsuch, getting that 5th vote could take a very long while. The entire equal rights/affirmative action/gerrymandering nightmare of SC decisions contradicts itself. If the SC wants to stop racial bias, then by all means STOP it; don’t insist on it in some circumstances, block in in other circumstances, and tacitly accept it the rest of the time. Stick to “the content of their character, not the color of their skin”.
Lucia: “JD_Ohio’s kids have a white father, and so almost certainly have a “white†last name. So they might be able to hide under the radar if they don’t check a box indicating race and no interviewer detects “asian†features to apply a “dingâ€.”
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Yes, I and my son have a “white” name. Have only filled out a few applications. When asked about son’s ethnicity, I say white. Can justify it because race is not a scientific concept, and in light of the screwed up nature of much of “higher” education, I feel no need to comply with the letter and spirit of the questions on the admissions applications. Am assuming that many places will admit son without an interview as was the case in my day. Also, since I fill it out rather than son, it would be somewhat hard for college to blame son.
JD
No race designated = Asian. If you are a “disadvantaged minority” you will make sure to stress this fact in your application essay. The Harvard’s admissions obviously knows race as that is how they do racial balancing, which they freely admit. There is an endlessly quoted social science experiment where resumes are sent out identical except with black and white names, and whites got more interviews. They could run the same experiment at Harvard with Asians, but they wouldn’t dare go down that road.
Different gerrymander maps based on different goals:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps
>won’t work if your last name is very obviously Asian, but your son’s is not.
Ohio is widely recognized as Japanese.
SteveF,
Harvard has interviews. But I don’t know that the alumni interviewers are required to report what race they thought the student was nor whether they do if not required. Asking them would certainly be a way to find out.
Yes. Being seen as “white” wouldn’t help them as much as being seen as “black” or “hispanic”. But it does appear to be better than being seen as “asian”.
JD Ohio,
I see no problem listing your son as white.
Seriously, I wouldn’t see much wrong with someone of Indian heritage changing a last name like “Raj” to “Rogers”. That said, they or their families might find it annoying to have to do this to escape the “asian deduction”, but… well… if the asian deduction exists, it might be the only way to get around it.
Indians can list as Caucasian right?
> probably somewhere in the range of 15% of incoming students are white, not-jewish, and admitted on merit.
SteveF, Harvard says that if they used academics alone, the Asian share would go from 19% to 43%.
Asian- 43, Black-15, Hispanic -10, Native American-2 Jewish 25, Legacies/athletes(I thought Harvard doesn’t give out scholarships?)-10 total 105%.
Twofers are very valuable now. George Zimmerman would be a lock.
To stereotype … hard charging Asians will adopt their kids hobbies based on what they think colleges want to see. This used to be high SAT scores, classical piano, and science competitions. It’s gotten so bad that colleges won’t even say what they want. If it was clown competitions then we would have some awesome Asian clowns. An often overlooked problem is that Asians now compete against only other Asians for “Asian spots” so this has created an Asian arms race which makes them work even harder. We need a thresholded lottery system to bring some sanity back to the system and allow kids to have a childhood.
MikeN,
I think “Caucasian” has been eliminated as a “group” and it’s just “white” now. But… dunno.
Technically, anyone can check anything.
I suspect there is a strong correlation that way, especially if you are applying to Harvard. Obviously, if your last name is “Hsu”, and no race is designated, everyone is going to assume you are east Asian.
Tom Scharf
To some extent, part of the “reasons” Harvard gives for wanting to keep things sealed is to avoid the possibility that “some” kids will learn the
secretproprietary methods Harvard uses decide who has the ‘right stuff’ to be a Harvard admit.I have little doubt that if Harvard’s methods become known lots of kids will learn what the “right stuff” is. The kids who will benefit most are the ones whose parents, school counselors and so on are paying attention. It won’t help for next years admissions because this years seniors are in the extra-curriculars they are in.
Whatever it is Harvard uses to “detect wonderfulness” will influence what extra-curriculars and classes freshman and sophomores pick. If it’s cheerleading, it will be cheerleading. If it’s getting a job flipping burgers or waiting tables it will be getting said job. If it’s “sport other than tennis” or “musical instrument but not string quartet or piano”, tennis teams, cello and piano are going to see attrition. We’ll see.
MikeN,
“Harvard says that if they used academics alone, the Asian share would go from 19% to 43%.”
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Maybe, but if they used academics alone, the share of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans would drop…. a lot.
Lucia,
“Whatever it is Harvard uses to “detect wonderfulness†will influence what extra-curriculars and classes freshman and sophomores pick.”
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I think it is pretty clear that a very big piece of “wonderfulness” is being of the desired race… and not being of an undesired race. I find it revolting.
SteveF,
I wouldn’t be surprised if the
secretproprietary method of achieving the “Asian deduction” dings for behaviors that correlate with being Asian while not “dinging” people who are correlated with the ability to donate heavily. Suppose they observed (by running numbers) that applicants who claimed to have studied violin since they were 4 years old through high school were disproportionately Asian. Claiming something like “we have enough violinists, dammit!” would reduce the number of Asians admits — which is what they want. Meanwhile they’d have plausible deniability.Harvard has data– they could mine it and find pattern to use if they want to do so. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out they have. If I had a secret plan to ding a class of people and hide the fact, that’s what I’d dream up. . . I think the only real question is: could they dream up a method that would get what they “want” (fewer asians) without getting something they don’t “want” (fewer admits who can pay full tuition and who are from families that are sufficiently well off to be likely to generate donations over time.)
They may very well specifically add points for favored minorities. I don’t think they even mind admitting they do this for blacks and hispanics. You think that’s bad. Some other people share your view. But there are plenty of people “out there” who think it’s fine, are willing to say so, and I think Harvard pretty much does this– and is unapologetic about it.
But I think they don’t want to admit they subtract for a disfavored minority because no one thinks that’s fair. Then they’d have to admit they are doing to Asians exactly what they did to Jews (and to a lesser extent to Catholics) back when they wanted WASPs.
>Harvard has data– they could mine it and find pattern to use if they want to do so.
Lawrence Summers was fired over comments about men and women have different interests, and do not have the same abilities at extreme ends where Harvard resides. However, at the time some people were saying that the real reason he was fired was because economist Summers was suggesting evaluating affirmative action admissions, including control group that is race neutral.
Lucia,
” But there are plenty of people “out there†who think it’s fine, are willing to say so, and I think Harvard pretty much does this– and is unapologetic about it. But I think they don’t want to admit they do.”
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For sure. And that pretty much sums up a big part of the ideological divide in this country. The ‘don’t want to admit it’ part is because a large majority of voters (and certainly not just ‘privileged whites’) disagree with what Harvard is doing, and would be willing to make life politically difficult for schools like Harvard if they simply stated the obvious: we admit based on race. Harvard is very rich (about $44 billion in assets, and always growing), but most of their year to year budget comes from Federal funding of research, not their assets. If Federal rules for funding research limited funding to schools that are racially biased, then that would be very bad for Harvard, and for plenty of other schools who clearly profile and admit candidates based on race. No business could get away with this. I see no reason why universities should be treated differently.
To get some idea of the expected outcome absent racially motivated admissions, look at a comparably competitive school with little or no racially motivated admissions: http://www.registrar.caltech.edu/academics/enrollment
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At Cal Tech the total of identified ‘disadvantaged’ students is about 16%, including “mixed race” students, about in line with what you would expect. Asian americans are ~40%, again about what you would expect. There is no doubt Harvard’s entering class would be similar, absent racially biased admissions.
SteveF,
Yep. Politically, saying they play the race card and ding a minority group many of whom cannot be seen as having benefited by any sort of “preference” ever, who are not rich (and often are fairly poor) and so on, would be a huge problem. Let’s face it: it’s really, really, really hard to blame Asian’s for any of slavery, Jim Crowe, past historical bias against blacks or hispanics in the US. The vast majority of the Asians are first or second generation, and those who were not were targets of discrimination. As in: concentration camps for Japanese during WWII. (And things weren’t great for Chinese during the past either.)
Harvard might be able to get away with it as long as the make it sound like it’s white people not being admitted. But Asians? Oy.
Lucia,
“Let’s face it: it’s really, really, really hard to blame Asian’s for any of slavery.”
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It is similarly difficult to blame me (3rd generation Irish, mixed with Welsh, Canadian, and English) for any of slavery! Heck, it is difficult to blame anyone alive today for slavery, save for those Muslims actively practicing it in north Africa today. For most voters, a desire for equality of outcome will never justify blatant discrimination against innocents, and that is what Harvard is afraid of.
SteveF,
Obviously, no individual alive today is responsible for slavery. But those who want to blame someone want some sort of collective generational guilt inherited in some way. But quite a few whites in the US are descended from people who didn’t get here until after the civil war so even the “inherited” guilt wouldn’t cut it.
Oddly, to the extent that my ancestors may have owned slaves (and some probably did), it was the Cuban, and so, Hispanic ones!
> it’s really, really, really hard to blame Asian’s for any of slavery.â€
Slavery in America. If you go far back enough, the Asians are probably descended from slaveholders and slaves as well. Not Asian, but Egypt was receiving slaves from Europe in the last hundred years. The word slave comes from Slav.
MIkeN,
Yes. I meant American slavery.
MikeN (Comment #168535): “Egypt was receiving slaves from Europe in the last hundred years.”
Nonsense.
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MikeN: “The word slave comes from Slav.”
No, the word Slav comes from slave.
Although slavery is ancient, I think that in most societies status as a slave was not inherited.
You’re all behind the times. The modern definition of white supremacy has little to do with slavery and nothing to do with skinheads. If one is white, one is required to feel guilty about it. That’s what being “woke” and intersectionality is all about.
An interesting article on the trend — or lack of it — in fossil fuel’s share of power generation. “[D]espite huge policy efforts, like the Paris accord, the power sector looks almost identical to its 1990s counterpart.” Key graph. Coal has been around 40%, oil&gas around 25%, for the last 20 years. Solar/wind has risen (as a percentage) only about as much as nuclear has declined.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #168538): “You’re all behind the times. The modern definition of white supremacy has little to do with slavery and nothing to do with skinheads. If one is white, one is required to feel guilty about it.”
Yep. The left insists that we judge people by the color of their skin, not the content of their character. The result of a half century of “progress”.
Cynicism trigger warning.
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If Harvard knows what makes a person full of wonderfulness, why would they possibly want to keep that a secret? Their incredible insight into the human condition should be spread long and far to maximize the wonderfulness of the world. Even if that wonderfulness was heavily weighted to Asians, so be it. They have armies of people wanting guidance to become wonderful, and yet they are selfishly keeping it a secret to themselves, how evil is that?
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One could accuse Harvard of keeping the real entrance requirements secret so that they can control who gets in with their wink and nod system that only certain people know. It might as well be “make sure the fourth letter of the sixth word in your essay is a ‘q’.
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Harvard can execute whatever system they want, but they shouldn’t be put on pedestal for their wonderfulness when they are just another elitist organization that openly racially discriminates and looks down on the lower classes and pretends they don’t. I imagine most of these people are pretty decent, but they have put themselves on pedestals and subsequently demanded to be worshiped. Our racial discrimination is righteous! Everyone who discriminates thinks it is righteous.
There were not concentration camps for Asians, it was internment camps! We should just use some historic revisionism and call them SAT prep camps and everyone would be upset that Asians were the only ones allowed in, ha ha.
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What Harvard wants to do is admit to favoring disadvantaged minorities (… golf applause …) and pretend this isn’t the same as discriminating against everyone else (… everyone look away …). In their social construct it is racist to be against affirmative action. It is incredible that the social scientists at Harvard can lecture endlessly on implicit bias and never look at what is going on under their own roof. I’m not aware that a single person at Harvard has stated out loud Asian discrimination is a bad thing.
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My guess is the moment Harvard believes they are really going to be formally ruled as having performed racial discrimination by the courts, they will fold. “Harvard is Racist” is a scarlet letter they won’t be able to live down. This isn’t a suit they want to go to the mat on in my opinion. I’d like to see it though.
Mike M.
“The left insists that we judge people by the color of their skin, not the content of their character. The result of a half century of “progressâ€.”
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I think maybe you just don’t appreciate what the left thinks is “progress”. They see progress as more equality of outcome, and little else matters.
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If that can be achieved via blatant biases for and against identifiable groups of people in education, employment, and promotion, then bias is desirable. If that can be achieved via restricting personal and economic liberties, then reduced liberty is desirable. If that can be achieved by increased taxation and wealth redistribution, then increased taxes and wealth redistribution are desirable.
Tom Scharf,
““Harvard is Racist†is a scarlet letter they won’t be able to live down. This isn’t a suit they want to go to the mat on in my opinion.”
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Based on the Harvard President’s letter to “the Harvard Community”, it looks to me like they are willing to fight this suit to the Supreme Court if needed. I doubt they give a hoot if people think Harvard is racially biased…. they obviously know they are, and think that is the “right” way to be. What they really want to avoid is being forced to not be racially biased, and this suit makes that possible.
HaroldW,
It’s not obvious this isn’t good news. I guess what’s interesting is to assess what RCP we are currently trending toward. I’m sure it’s too early to tell but eventually somebody is going to have to admit that RCP8.5 isn’t going to happen given current trends, specifically coal use in China. I don’t trust numbers from China though. I believe their new found wealth and distaste for horrible air pollution will ultimately limit their coal use.
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I do hear that Trump is executing a war on global warming by trying to limit China’s energy use by reducing their exports.
I think the open letter from Harvard was effectively done involuntarily because the court ruled that data from Harvard admissions could be made public (especially the 43% number and the fact they stopped the study once initial findings were known). They knew it was going to look bad, and needed to get ahead of the issue. As expected the media reported on it, but passed no judgment on it.
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Compare this to immigration issues which are reported with contempt and light up the opinion pages. It’s further confirmation the media signals they care more about illegal immigrants than citizens if we judge them on their words.
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It should be noted that the US’s immigration issues pale in comparison to the EU. Italy has 30% unemployment for young people and has been forced to absorb 500,000 people over the past 3 years showing up on boats. Thus the collapse of the centrist government there recently and now the new govt plans to lock down the coasts. Merkel is increasingly in trouble for the same reasons.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron should be required reading. It’s the reductio ad absurdum argument against equality of result. One could also go back to Procrustes in Greek mythology. Vonnegut was a man of the left back when it was possible for one to be a skeptic without being run out of town on a rail.
A pretty damning analysis from the horse’s mouth. I give the student journalists credit. Way better than the NYT’s.
Internal Harvard Review Showed Disadvantage for Asian Applicants
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/6/15/admissions-internal-report/
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Smoking gun:
“The report found that Asian American applicants performed significantly better in rankings of test scores, academics, and overall scores from alumni interviews. Of 10 characteristics, white students performed significantly better in only one—rankings of personal qualities, which are assigned by the Admissions Office.”
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“Fitzsimmons (Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid) recalled “how incomplete the analysis was†because it lacked certain data from the admissions office, according to his testimony. He asserted that Harvard “would always be vigilant about any suggestion of discrimination against any person†and confirmed that he believed his decision to neither discuss the conclusions of these reports with others in his office nor follow up with the OIR was consistent with this stance.”
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Ummmmm … What?
Tom Scharf,
“Merkel is increasingly in trouble for the same reasons.”
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I may have a small celebration when she is finally thrown out of office. I think her policies have been very bad for the German people for a very long time; seems Germans are finally coming to this conclusion.
Tome Scharf,
“would always be vigilant about any suggestion of discrimination against any personâ€
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Sure, and they are equally vigilant about making sure entire races of people are discriminated for and against, depending on who Harvard chooses to favor… and to disfavor. Their argument is a joke, because it is founded on lies.
We are about halfway thru the Supreme Court’s magical 25 year deadline of when affirmative action in college admissions should end, as given in a 2006 case that upheld diversity plus factor based affirmative action.
A CNN reporter claims Strzok has been escorted out of FBI building, although he is still apparently employed.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/19/peter-strzok-escorted-out-fbi-building-reports/
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Why escort the guy out the building if he is still employed, I wonder. I have so far come up with zip.
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Meanwhile the righteous hysterics regarding the separation of children from detained criminals drowns out all other news. Trump is Hitler, because think of the children.
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The Mexican drug cartels must be loving this.
Mark,
I’m not thrilled about separating kids from their parents either.
The left is going to win the “ripping helpless kids while they are breastfeeding from the arms of loving parents who are only at the border because of persecution in their native country” argument. Someone pointed out this is also exactly what happens when a citizen goes to state prison in the US, they don’t get to bring their kids. This is not the mountain to die on for immigration. The right only needs to make the left commit to whatever their policy is, I can’t figure it out.
Lucia,
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Tempting as it may be to claim otherwise, I will admit that I am not delighted that children are being separated from parents.
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From the Washington Post:
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I am pleased however that this administration is attempting to enforce the law. I understand of course that the Trump administration is every bit as selective in doing their jobs as the Obama administration was. Still, I am pleased that this administration is attempting to enforce the law. If people wish to add ‘Nazi’ to my other pejorative labels that’s fine; if anything that motivates me to speak up a little louder. Glad this law is being enforced.
Here’s a story from HuffPost of all places stating more or less the obvious – that Mexican drug cartels take advantage of U.S. immigration policy. We have been fueling gangs, child prostitution, and child slavery with our humane policies. The drug cartels do not operate under such moral constraints. This needs to stop.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ana-davila/drug-cartels-where-human-trafficking-and-human-smuggling-meet-today_b_7588408.html
Mark/Tom,
Yes. I’ve kept up with the story. It looks like both sides want to use kids as pawns. This is not unusual.
So, my position in 168556 might be defensible. It’s not what drives my outrage though. Honestly, it’s just this. And as always I may have this wrong, and as most of you well know it’s not uncommon for me to get stuff wrong. Regardless, it’s just this:
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If we have come to the point as a people that we are so soft and so civilized that we can not bear to enforce our laws because *SOB* Oh the Children will suffer in being separated from their criminal parents! We. Have. Fallen. Our spirit is dead. As a civilization, historians might put the date decades earlier or decades later when the time comes, but the truth of the matter is we are done right now, in my view.
mark bofill (Comment #168558): “If we have come to the point as a people that we are so soft and so civilized that we can not bear to enforce our laws because *SOB* Oh the Children will suffer in being separated from their criminal parents! We. Have. Fallen. Our spirit is dead. As a civilization, historians might put the date decades earlier or decades later when the time comes, but the truth of the matter is we are done right now, in my view.”
I agree.
There are several types of separations. One is very short term, often just hours, while the parents are processed and then sent back across the border, with the kids. Another is separating children from the traffickers posing as their parents; that is probably a good thing. The long term separations of children from their actual parents occurs when they get caught crossing the border and go to Plan B, which is claiming asylum. Then the government has a choice: let them go and never see them again or separate the children from the parents while the parents are detained pending a hearing, which can take months.
When actual refugees arrive at the border and claim asylum, they are detained but, since no criminal proceedings are involved, families get to stay together. It seems to me that even with those who sneak across the border, the procedure should be the same, as long as the only crime is illegal entry. But the current laws don’t permit that.
Thanks Mike.
I don’t disagree with that. Maybe our laws are stupid and ought to be changed. Probably they are. Let’s all band together, Left and Right and demand Congress fix this and other details, if we can agree about the how and what and so on of the bad laws. Let’s do that instead of whining about the children and pretending the situation is somehow comparable to the Holocaust and demanding that the solution is that the Executive should or should not exercise as a policy choice [the legal obligation to enforce] the border.
Grrf.
As to Strzok being escorted out the door, it strikes me that might be appropriate when someone is under adminsitrative leave. This URL below isn’t specific to Federal employment but seems like a good explanation. Plus it’s the first link in my Google search…
https://hr.uiowa.edu/tools-departments/investigatory-suspension
Thanks Earle. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
I don’t necessarily part too much from the thrust of mark’s arguments, but I don’t think this is where you choose to wage the political battle over immigration, and you should be able to simultaneously figure a way out to enforce the laws and try not to give the impression you are making kids miserable intentionally. The Trump logic is easy to understand, punish the parents who bring their children to the border and send a signal that this is a bad plan. This particular battle is lost, the war is not. I’d prefer to see a compromise here, neither side wants that.
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I was thinking what would the Harvard case look like if the media gave it the “immigration treatment”. They would go find a photogenic Asian girl and profile her and her poor hard working immigrant parents (… who immigrated legally …). All the sacrifices her parents made, waking up at 5 am to drive her to school across town in their 20 year old car, working two jobs to support her musical interests, pictures of her taking a Greyhound bus to go visit her dream school Harvard, and having to stay at the Motel 6. Interview her teachers. Stellar record. Camera zoom as she tearfully recalls being rejected. You get the picture. Then oppose that against a profile of a disadvantaged minority who’s parents are in the 1%, lives in a million dollar home, drives an expensive car, mediocre academic record, a few not flattering Facebook photos and politically incorrect posts, etc. This would take one reporter a week to find clear cut injustices. Totally unfair of course, but exactly the way the media treats it’s pet subjects.
Strzok says he wants to testify. This could go anywhere. He may just think he has nothing to lose (he doesn’t), or he may feel a bit of resentment that his bosses and colleagues never tried to help him. He seems to be forcing the FBI to fire him for whatever reason.
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It’s unlikely, but I bet he could do some real damage to the FBI if he chose to do so. Comey and McCabe are probably a bit nervous about what he might say.
Media is deliberately lying in their coordinated messaging on kids at border.
Obama had a policy of detaining parents and children together. Then the 9th circuit stepped in and ruled children cannot be held in this manner, and Obama started releasing parents and children.
Trump is now prosecuting everyone, and thus children are not allowed to be held with the parents, so they are separated per the court order.
What is the definition of ‘primarily’ in that Washington Post article above? Is it primarily a Trump, or primarily a court action that is causing family separation?
Cruz has proposed to allow family detention and some other items in a narrowly focused bill.
Feinstein has proposed banning family separation, thus requiring that everyone who shows up with children are released into the country(without saying so).
Cruz’s bill is not yet filed, but Feinstein was so hasty that her bill, signed by nearly every Democratic Senator, would forbid the arrest within 100 miles of the border of anyone with children, by any federal agent for just about any crime.
For now Schumer is sensing a political win and refusing to agree to any bill, insisting that Trump undo his executive order.
Tom,
You’re probably right about that too. The issue I care about isn’t even really immigration. But I’ve got mixed feelings about not addressing it. A Jordan Peterson stood up and said ‘No, not cooperating with that, here’s why’ and made an impression. I think its come to the point where some people are starving for an answer to the madness in our society.
Not to imply it’s me who needs to ‘address’ it. What I’m really saying is maybe it’s time to rethink the strategy of avoiding certain arguments because of optics.
Heck I don’t know.
[Edit: MikeN,
What I took from the article is that it was primarily Trump causing family separations, because of his zero tolerance policy. In other words, primarily Trump because he is enforcing the law as a matter of policy where Obama did not, or did so less vigorously.]
NYT: “As word of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance†policy, which calls for prosecuting everyone who crosses the border illegally, has traveled along the migrant trail that winds through Mexico and Central America, some are forging ahead, while others, like Ms. Flores, are reconsidering their plans to enter the United States.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/world/americas/mexico-family-separation-immigration.html
MikeN,
Yes. Lots of politicians using “the children” to play politics:
1) The Dems mostly want no one to be arrested and so would prefer the situation where everyone is motivated to have a kid with them when sneaking across the border. This is not good for kids.
2) The Trump wants no one to get across the border. So he’s going to arrest them all even if that means parents are separated from their kids (making those with kids even less likely to sneak across the border.)
3) Trump and some other people want a wall. He will certainly be willing to separate kids from their real parents until he gets money for that. Some people are going to support the harsh policy for that reason.
4) Dem leadership (aka shumer) does not want to fund a wall and prefers a porous border, and is willing to refuse to negotiate on a bill to fix things even if that means kids will be separated until a bill that permits arrests without separation gets passed.
The Dreamers issue is also has the Dreamers being used as pawns for both sides.
This is politics. Real people are getting trapped in the meantime.
Tom,
Thanks for the link. It’s not surprizing the harsh policy at the border is making parents rethink their choices. What with twitter, cell phones, 24/7 news and so on, it’s not surprising the response is quick.
A lax one policy would make people rethink.
As I said above: The Dems want a policy whose “unintended consequence” of giving adults with children a pass would be that virtually all adults would want to have a kid with them at or near the border. That kids might not even be theirs– but the adult claiming to be the parent would get a pass (unless perhaps, we started DNA testing adult/child at the border). It would actually be a great benefit to child traffickers since they want to bring in kidnapped kids to traffic (though most with kids with them would not be traffickers. Parents with 4 kids might just spread them out with other trusted adults who also wanted to travel across the border.)
That unintended consequence would almost certainly occur and would not be good for kids, but it wouldn’t look like something the “USA” did. In truth, it would be a consequence of our policies. That said: because of the way it would occur, it would probably not get much press coverage because it has no immediate drama. The bad consequences would be spread out and would only be detectable over time.
The situation is a mess. I don’t like it. But make no mistake: Lots of people are playing politics. Part of playing politics is pretending what your side wants is not “politics” while what the other side wants is “politics”.
lucia (Comment #168568):
That is true. But it does not mean that both sides are equivalent. Trump is acting in accord with the law, unlike Obama. Trump is trying to enact policies that are supported by the vast majority of the people; but the Democrats (and no small number of congressional Republicans) want policies that only serve the elites. And Trump is perfectly happy to do right by the Dreamers and families at the border, whereas it seems that they are nothing but pawns for the Democrats.
I don’t have an issue with the idea that the policy is deliberate ‘cruelty’ intended to discourage illegal immigrants. If we judge this to be intolerable cruelty, I think it behooves us to investigate what happens to some of these people as they make their way to our border. Perhaps such examination might put the severity of this alleged ‘cruelty’ into perspective.
The sensible policy (in the interest of the children involved), would be to change the law to allow prosecution of people crossing the border illegally with children, but at the same time allowing children to remain with their parents during the time the parents are being prosecuted. Congress could pass such a law tomorrow.
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Of course, Democrats in the Senate will never (ever) agree to this… they now have an issue which makes Trump look bad to many people outside the Democrat base, and they are not going to let the legitimate interests of kids get in the way of having that issue to keep beating up on Trump.
Trump folds. But in a not so stupid way. Ordering them detained together, so now someone has to make a legal challenge to force them back apart which was the status quo. That will expose actual agendas…
This was the least surprising result in the history of mankind for me, but for those who haven’t quite reached my level of cynicism: Here is a study where rich people were exposed to Spanish speaking people for an extended period and their attitudes were taken before and after.
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“Treated subjects were far more likely to advocate a reduction in immigration from Mexico and were far less likely to indicate that illegal immigrants should be allowed to remain in this country.”
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“The good liberal people catching trains in the Boston suburbs became exclusionary … exposure to two young Spanish speakers for just a few minutes, or less, for just three days had driven them toward anti-immigration policies associated with their political opponents.”
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How Much Can Democrats Count on Suburban Liberals?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/opinion/trump-racism-liberals-suburbs.html
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I invite people to take a round of the media outlets to see the biggest case of Outrage Olympics I have seen in a long time. Rachel Maddow is crying on air! The Atlantic: To preserve the political and cultural preeminence of white Americans against a tide of demographic change, the administration has settled on a policy of systemic child abuse. Etc.
Mark Bofill,
“I don’t have an issue with the idea that the policy is deliberate ‘cruelty’ intended to discourage illegal immigrants. ”
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There is no deliberate cruelty. They are following the law. It was one of our idiotic Federal Judges that blocked CBP/INS from keeping children with their detained illegal alien parents. Mr. Obama then saw a simple way to allow illegal aliens into the country: just automatically let go in the USA anyone who crosses illegally with a minor, and give them a date to voluntarily return to court for criminal prosecution. And surprisingly enough, they don’t actually return for prosecution. A perfect result for ‘progressives’: an unlimited flow of illegal aliens which border agents can’t stop. Obama was the most unlawful president in my lifetime.
Tom Scharf (Comment #168573):
It is always interesting when members of the self-proclaimed “reality based community” encounter actual reality.
Tom Scharf,
Trump will keep the kids with their parents, for a short time. But Federal Courts have prohibited that for more than 20 days detention. So what happens at the end of 20 days? Trump can either:
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1) Not prosecute the parents, and send the family back over the border… after which they will soon try again to enter illegally, or
2) Defy the Federal Courts.
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#2 is not going to happen, so the administration will stop prosecuting parents who cross illegally with kids, ans send them back over the border. Only Congress can fix this, and despite Paul Ryan’s assurances, Democrats will not allow this problem to be resolved without Trump paying a high price politically. Do I sound cynical? That is because I am cynical.
SteveF,
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Ok. That’s fine. My point is just that the whole claim seems so idiotic when you realize the cruelty that a lot of these people are actually subjected to. Google ‘rape trees’. I didn’t know about rape trees before this. Separate parents from children — please. It doesn’t rate on the scale of horrors some of these people face.
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And just wait. Cartels and coyotes will realize the increased value of children in the wake of this. It won’t just be women paying with their bodies via rape next – it’ll be an increase in poor illegals paying traffickers with their children’s slavery.
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Separating children from parents is a G rated story with first world appeal. The real horror story is unrated and is possibly worth a little more serious consideration by would be policymakers.
SteveF (Comment #168576): “Trump can either: 1) Not prosecute the parents, and send the family back over the border… after which they will soon try again to enter illegally, or …”
Actually 1) is what happens with first time offenders. A first offense for illegal entry is a misdemeanor. Offenders typically plead guilty, are sentenced to time served, reunited with their families, and sent back over the border; the whole process usually take less than a day. The difficulties occur when there is illegal re-entry (a felony) or when the illegal entrants decide to then claim asylum. Or when the “families” appear to be fake.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/#slide-1
Tom Scharf (#168573),
Not surprising, but sad. When a public policy impacts them personally, priorities change.
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It is a little like how the support for carbon taxes disappears when people find out what they would actually have to pay. Support is overwhelming at no personal cost, but drops rapidly as costs rise; at tax rates which would actually reduce CO2 emissions (eg a few thousand dollars per year per person), support is near zero.
Mike M,
Sure. But deporting first timers just turns them into second timers if they are determined to enter the States (and most are!). The problem remains: Unless Congress acts, Trump’s options to avoid separating kids form parents is limited to 20 days. I am betting Congress will not act.
MikeM
Does the law not permit agents to release people on their own recognizance? Real question, but I’d be surprised if this was true and someone is going to have to show me that. It seems to me both Trump and Obama act in accordance with the law. It’s just that the law does not permit the kids to be put in jail if the parents are.
I wouldn’t be so sure Trump is trying to enact policies supported by the “vast majority”. I’m not even sure I’m convinced it’s the “majority” — or at least not unless you mention a specific policy rather than “policies” as some sort of general claim. If the vast majority wanted these policies, they would already be in place. That the “elites” might also want them doesn’t mean the elites swing enough votes to dominate congress.
I really think you let your love of Trump get in the way of seeing objective reality. I would hardly paint Trump innocent of using Dreamers as pawns. Both sides Trump included are willing to use the Dreamers as pawns and are doing so. To some extent, the personality of politician almost requires someone to be willing to use some group of people as pawns.
SteveF
It’s been proposed by Cruz. It’s been rejected by Shumer.
Of course the law that is proposed includes lots of stuff including issues related to Dreamers status and funding and building the wall. That’s the way politics works.
I may be wrong about who proposed the bill:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2018/06/20/memo-to-republicans-call-schumers-bluff-and-bring-a-sensible-immigration-bill-to-the-floor-n2492602
So basically: He’s against changing the law to allow kids to stay together because the President could allow it by …. well… not arresting the parents. He might think this is “right”, but it is politics. He could support the bill and prevent kids from being separated from parents, but won’t. Politics.
I think Trump will defy the Federal courts and instruct border cops to not enforce the 20 day rule. Someone will need to then challenge this in court to get it overturned.
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I don’t doubt someone will do this but the end result is the court ordering Trump to separate families by law in order to exploit a not so clever loophole and prevent border enforcement. This works better politically and the spectacle of someone on the left (or right?) making the court do this should displace the anger. The left overplaying their cards here is very likely. This is not support for open borders.
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I guess the plan for hunter/killer drones searching for babies on the border isn’t going to work either.
Ok… so we’re here:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-immigration-20180620-story.html
Or has he signed something? Google had that as posted an hour ago.
Lucia,
“It’s been proposed by Cruz. It’s been rejected by Shumer.”
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Of course. I read the Cruz and Feinstein bills. Cruz’s bill provides for dedicated housing for detained families, expedited processing for illegal aliens with children, and increases the number of immigration judges to minimize delays in processing illegal aliens.
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Feinstein’s bill prohibits the administration from separating children from illegal alien parents (except in cases of physical abuse), but provides no means for illegal aliens with children to be housed together nor processed expeditiously… meaning that Trump would be forced to continue Obama’s policy of not enforcing immigration law and releasing illegal aliens who claim asylum within the USA if they have a child or children. Which is the objective of the bill I guess.
SteveF
Precisely. The bill would enforce Obama’s policy because no other policy would be legal.
Both sides are playing politics. The Feinstein side wants to use the fate of the children to force lax immigration policy without actually changing immigration law. (They can’t change the actual law because they certainly don’t have the votes to get a law that just says anyone can everyone can cross the border freely no matter what.)
>refuse to negotiate on a bill to fix things even if that means kids will be separated until a bill that permits arrests without separation gets passed.
He appears to be objecting even to the Feinstein bill of which he is a co-sponsor. This bill does not provide for arrests without separation, but would outlaw separation.
Trump’s willingness to use Dreamers as pawns will be revealed shortly. There are two immigration bills to be voted on soon in the House, within days. Trump told the House Republicans in person he supports either one, but the Republicans did not feel reassured that the President would support them on a vote for amnesty. Surprisingly, their whip count is coming up short even though there were 216 signatures on the discharge petition. In addition, with the courts blocking Trump’s cancellation of DACA executive order, Texas and other states have filed suit against the law. If this wins, then Trump will be in position to deport kids unless he gets what he wants on immigration(if the House bills haven’t passed).
The current Trump executive order looks like it would be in violation of the 9th circuit ruling from last year. I think the plan is
Trump issues executive order for family detention. Declares he will hold firm on illegal immigration, while ending current firestorm by ending family separation(though >80% of kids will still be separated as they arrived without parents).
Lawsuits filed against family detention centers, as violation of Flores settlement agreement of 2009 that unattended minors cannot be jailed, extended by 9th circuit to all minors.
Trump loses in court, returning to current situation, only now the liberals have sued to make it happen.
Meanwhile, the news of both separation and more importantly the zero tolerance policy serves as a deterrent. Combined with Jeff Sessions’s direct takeover of immigration courts, the backlog drops and new asylum cases dry up.
SteveF, is there an actual Cruz bill or just some general details? Feinstein is S3036. If you read it carefully you will see the bill bans a lot more than family separation for illegal immigrants. Any government agent. I live within a hundred miles of the border, so I guess I will go on a crime spree and threaten the police you can’t arrest me. It will have to be a federal crime though. Not sure if I have to get my wife involved(which would cancel the plan). Is stealing the Hope Diamond subject to federal police only?
lucia (Comment #168581): “Does the law not permit agents to release people on their own recognizance?”
So far as I know the law allows for either choice in this case. I am pretty sure I said that above. You are setting up a straw man since you surely know that Obama chose to ignore the law in at least one significant way with regard to immigration (not to mention any number of other issues).
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lucia: “I wouldn’t be so sure Trump is trying to enact policies supported by the “vast majorityâ€. I’m not even sure I’m convinced it’s the “majority†— or at least not unless you mention a specific policy rather than “policies†as some sort of general claim.”
Trump’s plan proposed in the State of the Union address has four key parts:
(1) Regularization of the status of Dreamers, including a path to citizenship.
(2) Reducing unskilled immigration.
(3) Reducing chain migration.
(4) Improving border security, including starting work on the wall, increasing border patrol numbers, and more immigration judges.
I am pretty sure all four have around 70% to 80% support.
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lucia: “If the vast majority wanted these policies, they would already be in place.”
Surely you are not that naive.
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lucia: “I really think you let your love of Trump get in the way of seeing objective reality.”
Definitely not true, since I don’t love Trump. I support Trump because he advocates policies based on reality.
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lucia: “I would hardly paint Trump innocent of using Dreamers as pawns.”
Perhaps. I can not read Trump’s mind. The Dreamers are a result of a dysfunctional immigration policy. It is perfectly reasonable to insist that the parts of the policy that led to the problem be at least partially fixed as part of a deal to address the problem. That is not using the Dreamers as pawns. For Trump to insist on getting everything he wants would be using the Dreamers as pawns.
Well, I’ll wear that hat. I’m certainly biased in Trump’s favor. shrug
Do let me know (everyone) if you think my bias is getting out of hand. I try to keep it manageable, but it sneaks up on me.
SteveF (Comment #168586): “I read the Cruz and Feinstein bills. Cruz’s bill provides for dedicated housing for detained families, expedited processing for illegal aliens with children, and increases the number of immigration judges to minimize delays in processing illegal aliens.”
All perfectly reasonable and appropriate.
Is the Cruz bill a “clean” proposal that only deals with those issues? Or is it encumbered with other changes to immigration policy, border wall, etc.? If it is the former, than Cruz is behaving as a responsible member of Congress (dare I call him a statesman?) and not just playing politics or using the children as pawns.
I second MikeN in asking if the Cruz bill has been formally submitted.
Lucia,
Trump has signed something.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/20/white-house-considering-executive-action-to-prevent-family-separations-at-border.html
MikeM, Cruz’s proposal is pretty clean, though I would prefer it be stripped down more and only authorize family detention. I would also like to see a provision that eliminates the ban on family separation if a judge throws out the family detention.
MikeN,
Go to Cruz’s Senate website; there is a link to actual bill.
MikeM,
The bill looks pretty clean. The Democrats object because it allows children to stay with their detained illegal alien parents in dedicated facilities for families with children. The Democrats want to force Trump to release such families, either deporting to their home countries or releasing them into the USA if they ask for asylum (guess what they will all ask for). They also object because the bill increases the number of immigration judges (and support staff) to make sure immigration cases and asylum claims are heard expeditiously, while giving higher priority to families with children. The last thing Democrats want is more expenditures to enforce existing immigration law, and I guess they count more immigration judges as more enforcement.
Mark
Everyone has biases. But if you starting thinking the vast majority agree with you on something but somehow that is not getting implemented by legislatures, you need to start asking yourself whether you aren’t just living in a bubble and unable to see that there are plenty of people who disagree with your policy preferences.
Trump was elected. He certainly has supporters and quite a few people agree with him on many things. But I wouldn’t say the vast majority agree with him on much of anything of political consequence. I suspect no politician has the support of the vast majority of people on anything of political consequence because people tend to disagree about policies.
MikeM
I’m pretty sure you are wrong. I’m pretty sure more than 30% of people don’t even know what “chain migration” means and so “no opinion” cuts into number.
I you just say “Improve border security”, I might believe 78%-80% want that. But if all of “Improving border security, including starting work on the wall, increasing border patrol numbers, and more immigration judges.” , no way in hell do I believe 70%-80% want that. Among other things, I suspect most have “no opinion” on the number if immigration judges. That by itself would knock down the number of what all of that down to “not even a majority”.
I’m pretty sure your perception of what the “vast majority” of people want is seriously biased by your own views. Your example above re-enforced my perception that you are biased.
Mark,
Thanks for the link
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/20/white-house-considering-executive-action-to-prevent-family-separations-at-border.html
Hhhmmm looks like Tom’s prediction might end up happening
Trump’s order is for indefinite detention with parents, no 20 day limit.
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Immigration polls depend heavily on how you ask the question.
80% oppose open borders
68% oppose random lottery (from sh**hole countries)
79% support merit based immigration
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56% support greater emphasis on immigrant skills over family
57% believe education should be factor
66% support DACA
87% support “a program that allows undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States if they arrived here as a child, completed high school or military service and have not been convicted of a serious crime.”
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https://www.npr.org/2018/01/23/580037717/what-the-latest-immigration-polls-do-and-dont-say
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I would say the media coverage of this topic VERY heavily distorts what people support and oppose. In Trump’s first 100 days 96% of immigration stories were negative. Compare that to the numbers above.
https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days/
Lucia,
“Of course the law that is proposed includes lots of stuff including issues related to Dreamers status and funding and building the wall. That’s the way politics works.”
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Feinstein’s bill does not address Dreamers or Trump’s wall. The Cruz bill doesn’t either; it does increase the number of immigration judges and support staff to handle the large number of illegal immigration cases (including cases of those who enter illegally, then claim asylum when they are apprehended). What Shumer objects to is not Curz’s bill, but any change in Obama’s very lax immigration policies (IOW, any effort to enforce existing immigration laws).
Lucia,
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I get what you’re saying. I think that’s a reasonable generalization. There might be exception cases, but usually, OK.
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I hedge because I occasionally see stuff like this:
(Poll: Nearly 9 in 10 want DACA recipients to stay in US)
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/369487-poll-nearly-nine-in-10-favor-allowing-daca-recipients-to-stay
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Now, assuming the poll isn’t totally bogus – it does look like sometimes there is overwhelming support for stuff. I think in this particular example there are political realities (playing politics like you were saying earlier) that cause problems not to get resolved. The sausage making gets bogged down or whatever.
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I grant that I think this is an edge case that doesn’t happen all that much.
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[Edit: I’m sorry in hindsight. There are more interesting things to talk about than this..]
Mark,
Yeah. Letting Dreamers stay– provided they are in school or have jobs– is one of the exceptions. I think they will ultimately be allowed to stay. I also think the main reason they aren’t already allowed is Obama shunted the normal process and allowed them to stay without legislation authorizing it. If he had not done what he did, support for them staying is sufficiently strong that they would have been allowed to stay with some bill coming out during the next Congressional session.
That didn’t happen because Obama got in the way. I’m sure he won’t see it this way but he actually got in the way of the will of the people who– largely– agreed with him. Congress no longer had anything “urgent” to do, and didn’t do anything.
But it’s actually very unusual for a President to basically get in the way of legislation after a quick “failure”. So, it’s pretty rare to end up with a situation where the “vast” majority of people want “X” but we end up with “not X”.
I should add, if Mike M was right that the vast majority of people wanted a border wall, Trump would not need to use the Dreamers as pawns to get funds for a border wall. He can use them as pawns precisely because the vast majority do want them to stay and his method of using them as pawns is to have their legal state be– effectively– limbo.
Luicia,
” I suspect no politician has the support of the vast majority of people on anything of political consequence because people tend to disagree about policies.”
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Since I happen to be in the People’s Republic (of Massachusetts), I can’t resist:
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Baker is a Republican in one of the most Democrat dominated states. 😉 He is known for being practical, honest, and pragmatic. So it is possible…. just not if you adopt extreme ideological positions.
MikeM, I doubt there is 70-80% support for ending chain migration. I think most polls would show support if it is worded as letting siblings be sponsored for visas. The specific ‘chain migration’ would generate some no votes based on the name. If there were a standalone push for ending chain migration, the current family separation frenzy would be turned on Republicans as being in favor of family separation again.
Lucia, I don’t know if it’ a vast majority, but I think a standalone vote for a wall would hurt Democrats politically.
I think this is bad news for the left given the numbers above. This Pew poll was taken before the latest kerfuffle:
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“Out of 2,002 Republican and Democratic adults (including 1,608 registered voters) surveyed by the Pew Research Center from June 5 to 12, immigration emerged as the top issue they most wanted to hear 2018 candidates talk about.”
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CNN says 67% oppose family separation.
Tom Scharf
And Congress has never passed nor contemplated such a thing.
It’s true that funds to enforce borders are sometimes tight, but in fact no one has ever passed a law for officially open borders and none is proposed. The best those who want it can do is try to get it through subterfuge.
Lucia,
“That didn’t happen because Obama got in the way. I’m sure he won’t see it this way but he actually got in the way of the will of the people who– largely– agreed with him. Congress no longer had anything “urgent†to do, and didn’t do anything.”
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I agree with most of that, but my take is less generous: Obama “got in the way” of legislation because he did not want to have to compromise at all with Republicans, which any bill that could pass both houses would have required.
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He could also have passed exactly what he wanted on DACA, or any other part of immigration law in his first 2 years (when he had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate), but spent all his political capital on Obamacare. I suspect that was his greatest strategic mistake, since the loss of control in Congress happened in large part because of Obamacare. Heck, he could have gotten both changes to immigration law and significant expansion of medicare, save for that he was never willing to compromise with Republicans. I think history will not be kind.
MikeN
Yep. I think lots of people are for chain migration if you describe it as reuniting families. That’s why we have it. Others are against it if it is described as an ongoing chain where each new relative brings in more and more. If presented both ways… lots of people will probably just throw up their hands and say… “I don’t know. Go away and let me enjoy my beer!”.
Maybe. Or not. I’d vote against it. I know lots of people who would vote against it.
Tom Scharf,
“80% oppose open borders
68% oppose random lottery (from sh**hole countries)
79% support merit based immigration”
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Well, the amazing thing is that 20% support open borders. I have to conclude there is a significant fraction of voters who do not believe in the legitimacy of the nation-state, and I find that shocking.
It might be better to think of it as 20% support open borders. I think they all work in the national media, ha ha. I don’t know what the politicians think any more. Mostly I think they don’t want to appear inhumane to their peers, so they refuse to commit to any position because “correct think” is opposing or not enforcing every specific immigration law but not being for open borders. I stand confused. I equate sanctuary cities with open borders.
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The de facto libertarian position is open borders.
lucia (Comment #168598):
I was basing my claim of 70% to 80% support on what I remember seeing in polls. One can certainly quibble about exact wording of questions. But this supports the broad strokes of my claim:
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/23/580037717/what-the-latest-immigration-polls-do-and-dont-say
That one was contaminated by the wording of the question.
But that is brought down to a smaller majority with different wording.
But then, when asked about how many immigrants we should admit:
Compared to 1.2 million now.
NPR spun themselves silly on that one.
lucia (Comment #168603): “That didn’t happen because Obama got in the way. I’m sure he won’t see it this way but he actually got in the way of the will of the people who– largely– agreed with him. Congress no longer had anything “urgent†to do, and didn’t do anything.”
I don’t think that was the case at all. Obama did DACA in 2012. He described it as a temporary measure until Congress acted and, except for some Republican posturing, it encountered little opposition. In early 2013, the Senate easily passed the Gang of Eight proposal, which died in the House once people learned what was in it. The problem with that proposal was that they started by giving the elites and special interests what they wanted, then tacked on some other stuff to try to please most citizens.
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It was DAPA in late 2014 that triggered strong opposition and was rescinded by Trump with little notice.
I read Trump’s Executive order. There is not a lot there, except trying to find more suitable places to detain illegal immigrant families and prioritizing the processing of those cases.
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Trump most certainly is NOT planning to defy the 20 day limit; he directs the attorney general to ask the 9th Circuit Court (most liberal appellate court in the country) to revise their decision in Flores v Sessions, and so allow detaining of minors with their parents for more than 20 days. Zero chance they will reverse themselves, of course. Sessions will then likely ask for (and not get) a review by the full 9th circuit. Sessions will then likely ask for (and maybe get) a review by the SC, though that is not certain.
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In the mean time, Trump will point at the inevitable 9th circuit court decision (You MUST release all minors from detention after 20 days, even if it means they are separated from their families.) and say: “I’m just trying to keep families together, and that damned court is making me take the kids away.” To which Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Senate democrats will say “Trump should just release all illegal immigrants with children, that solves the problem without any need for legislation.” Which is just what they are saying today.
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There is no possibility of resolution in the foreseeable future unless Congress acts…. and they won’t.
Tom Scharf,
“The de facto libertarian position is open borders.”
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Which is why Libertarians get ~2% of the vote…. when they run a candidate at all. Their policies are more disconnected from reality than those of the Castro brothers… who I suspect would have gotten a share of Bernie’s voters.
Mike M.
Obama’s unlawful 2012 order was a “fact on the ground”, with the exact terms/conditions Obama wanted. The compromises that would be needed to get a bill through both houses were too distasteful for Obama and Senate Democrats to swallow, and so they walked away from negotiations. They figured they had already won, so they had zero motivation to compromise. When the SC gets the case, they may regret that decision.
We have ‘democratic socialist’ activists in the DOJ. Isn’t that peachy. I wasn’t aware.
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http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/20/socialist-activist-kirstjen-nielsen-doj/
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It’s too much to ask that our law enforcement bureaucrats be apolitical I guess.
MikeM
You’ve just described the steps he took to “get in the way”. The result if Obama doing DACA is that no law was passed and to a large extent was because people saw the Dreamers as — at least temporarily– having the right to stay.
So, despite the fact that many people were for allowing dreamers to stay, our there was no legislation allowing that. Moreover, a thing lots of people wanted in varying degrees– let the dreamers in– couldn’t be used as a bargaining chip for things that some people wanted and others did not. Obama’s action caused action to grind to a halt. (And this is true no matter what spin you put on what “elites wanted”. )
We now have a situation where the law about dreamers does not comform to what most– possibly overwhelmingly most– people want. And this is because of the highly unusual situation of the President stepping in and making it “unnecessary” to write bills that would allow them to stay. So those were not written.
SteveF (Comment #168617): “The compromises that would be needed to get a bill through both houses were too distasteful for Obama and Senate Democrats to swallow, and so they walked away from negotiations. They figured they had already won, so they had zero motivation to compromise.”
I think that interpretation might have a lot of truth to it. It is definitely the case that now the Dems think they have no need to compromise.
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SteveF (Comment #168615): “I read Trump’s Executive order …”
Thanks, that is a helpful summary. So now Trump buys 20 days before separations start again. I don’t know if that is enough time to get an initial decision from the 9th circuit, but if it is, that will give him a lot of cover. If they can sufficiently prioritize those cases, they might be able to keep the subsequent separations fairly short.
As you predicted, the “resistance” seems to be already crowing “we told you there was no need for legislation”. What scum.
SteveF, I think it is possible to do family detention within those court rulings, but that the existing facilities were ruled unacceptable. This might be why Secretary of Defense is included in the order.
Also, ‘by law’ may be considered different by the administration from ‘ruling of the courts’.
Mike
The article you link states this before discussing any polls:
So, yeah. You can pick some out that seem to support whatever you like!
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/23/580037717/what-the-latest-immigration-polls-do-and-dont-say
Before discussing some of your specific quotes: It’s worth nothing that these questions are genereally “either or”. Often, people actually support something in between. What that means, people who prefer A to B don’t necessarly really like either. That means 79% prefer A over B doesn’t mean 79% support A.
It’s worth nothing, the definition of “secure” is not defined. People need to chose between “secure” (which could mean able to prevent tanks from rolling in) to “open” (which could mean no check points at all.) Those are extreme, but it’s entirely possible for someone to want something they don’t call either “secure” or “open”.
I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion someone preferring “secure” to “open” means they favor a wall, more check points, better patrolling and so on. They want check points, not borders like in old wild west movies with nothing there. Other than that: no one knows.
Beyond that 4/5 is not a “vast” majority.
This doesn’t mean they think we shouldn’t give points for family. Only that they think skill and education should get more brownie points than family.
Our system isn’t either/or now, and there is nothing in this question to suggest people who want greater preference for skill would want it to become either/or. (Note also: The strength of the merit/ family preference changed when the wording of the question was changed. Moreover 60% think family should be a factor. So, really we aren’t getting anything that suggests people are all in a lather about “chain migration”.)
Whatever they think this means <70% is not a "vast" majority. Sorry, but 3 out of 4 is not a "vast" majority.
OK, lucia. You win the quibble cup.
But my original point stands: Trump is trying to enact policies that are in general supported 2:1 or larger majorities of the people.
Mike M.
You wrote ” Trump is trying to enact policies that are supported by the vast majority of the people; ”
You originally used “vast”. 2:1 isn’t vast.
You left policies vague.
You haven’t even shown 2:1 for most of his policies — and certainly haven’t shown it for any specific policy. For example: Wall? Nope. Arresting immigrants? Nope. His rules blocking people from certain countries? Nope.
To get your numbers “up” to even 2:1, you need to interpret the “policies” he’s trying to enact in the blandest possible way. For example: promoting a policy like “Build a Wall” has to be seen as little more than “maintain border patrols”.
So no, I don’t think I’m just quibbling when I tell you that I don’t buy your claim the policies he promotes have “vast” majorities.
Many– even most– the actual policies Trump promotes– which are things like “Build the wall” or “stop chain migration” do not have 2:1 support and you can’t ratchet that up by finding that people think “skills” should be a “priority” over “family” (with other questions showing 60% — as in over half– thinking family should count for something.)
MikeN,
Sure, but the problem is that the 9th circuit is not going to lift the 20 day limit, no matter the quality of the detainment facilities. It could look like a Hilton, and staffed 24/7 by medical doctors, dentists, and “childhood development experts”, and not be nearly good enough. The 9th circuit will make sure Trump gets no relief, and continues to be vilified for “taking toddlers from their mother’s arms”.
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What the administration realized was that the catch-and-release policies for people entering with children made immigration enforcement impossible. They recognized this a long time ago. When the 9th circuit refused to lift the original 20 day rule, the administration had two choices: allow an unlimited number of illegal immigrants with children to enter (and disappear!) or start removing kids after 20 days detention. The fundamental disagreement has nothing to do with separating kids from parents, and everything to do with whether or not to keep illegal immigrants from entering the country. The fundamental disagreement remains, and will remain until Congress is willing to compromise…. no time soon.
Wow. Just wow:
http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/20/leftist-agitators-run-dhs-secretary-out-of-restaurant-call-for-children-to-be-raped-and-border-agents-murdered/
That sort of over-the-top misbehavior is not representative of most people on the left. But the good people on the left rarely, if ever, call out such unacceptable behavior for what it is. And we know what happens when good people do nothing. Maybe this time will be different.
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I’d love to be presented with a deluge of links showing that I have underestimated the mainstream left. But I am not holding my breath.
This is a situation where the script can be flipped pretty easily.
The court forcing the release of illegals for the sole reason they brought their kids with them is no border security. I find it hard to believe that is going to be popular. While the left does their sanctimonious victory lap the right will fume, and from what I can tell the right does its protesting in the election booth. The right can also schedule votes on immigration to force the left to take an actual position. Want to vote against allowing parents to be detained with their kids to keep this loophole open? Be.my.guest. It’s going to be interesting how this turns out.
SteveF wrote.
Legal eagles…
Can the feds detain them in Texas force any suit to be in whatever circuit Texas is in?
It appears the current plan is to try and get all the airlines to refuse to transport the kids for the government, in hopes of furthering the Nazi analogy by having the government transporting them on a train.
They’ll just drive then.
The numbers are too high. Hundreds per day. Driving buses could work.
Load up charter or military 737s if needed. Buses won’t work because Mexico (with their new socialist/communist president) is unlikely to cooperate. The Mexican government will probably also make sure there is an endless torrent of people crossing into the States…. the bussing may be from Mexico’s southern border to the US border.
Tom, you were interested in why the ‘We’ll stop him’ text took so long to surface. Here is Jim Jordan questioning Horowitz on that. I’m not seeing any revelations or even much in the way of clarity. Apparently the ‘We’ll stop him’ came out of the fourth round of IG forensic investigation, if I’m understanding correctly. Still, it appears that the ‘We’ll stop him’ text was sat on for at least a month. Who’s fault was it, Mr. Horowitz? Beats me bud, this is a bureaucracy…
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06/19/rep_jim_jordan_questions_ig_horowitz_did_rosenstein_try_to_hide_damning_strzok_text.html
mark bofill,
The IG / Horowitz seems to be straight up, not only did the FBI somehow have the texts before and after the “stop him” text, but they should have had it from * both phones *. The IG released the text within two weeks of finding it. The real question is to the FBI people who found the original texts and how the explosive one was disappeared.
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I don’t know why people/media aren’t all over this and demanding answers. It goes directly to the integrity of the investigation(s). It’s raising red flags big time. I want to know the technical details on this one.
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Strzok on returning from Walmart: “I can smell the Trump supporters” … I agree with Jordan that this one bothers me as much as anything he wrote.
Oh, I do. They’re all busy at the border, weeping over the plight of the children.
The media is all over it! The USA Today allows his lawyer to print a puff piece on Strzok, ha ha.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/06/19/donald-trump-wrong-fbi-agent-peter-strzok-patriot-not-sick-loser-column/712673002/
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“So what monstrous act did this man commit? He spoke his mind.” … Yes, that is exactly the problem here.
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“The texts reveal that Pete is one of a rare, vanishing, breed: a centrist.” … sorry but I couldn’t stop laughing at this one.
Sure.
It’s a very centrist thing to text.
Lucia: “Legal eagles…
Can the feds detain them in Texas force any suit to be in whatever circuit Texas is in?”
On a basic level, the 9th Circuit has no power over any other Circuit. Historically, the various other Circuits have extended informal comity to each other. Lately trial courts have been issuing nationwide injunctions, which goes against the grain of the past jurisprudence. Haven’t researched these cases.
Bottom line is there is a respectable chance that if matters originate in Texas, the 5th Circuit would entertain the cases notwithstanding what the 9th Circuit has done in the past.
JD
M Bofill: ”
Sure.
God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0.
It’s a very centrist thing to text.”
What is really bad is that Strzok was one of the agents taking notes on Hillary’s testimony. Bad enough that her testimony was not transcribed, (This FBI policy is an invitation to suborn perjury), but then to have a totally biased person taking notes is disgraceful. If an issue came up in the future, he would undoubtedly skew the testimony to favor Hillary.
JD
It might just be coincidence, but with the Allison Hrabar thing going on as well, I’m wondering if the whole government bureaucracy isn’t saturated with highly partisan leftists. I think the idea is disturbing.
Tom Scharf,
“I don’t know why people/media aren’t all over this and demanding answers.”
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Like everyone else who is actually awake, the MSM know the answer already: someone at the FBI or DOJ made a decision to “protect the integrity of the FBI” by not giving this text message to Congress. My guess is Christopher Wray or Rod Rosenstein (or both) made that decision, though it could have been a lower level person who hid the most damaging text. Wray came on board at the FBI well before the Strzok texts were discovered (and so well before Muller sent Strzok to human resources). The first batch of text messages were sent to Congress only much later, and did not include the most damaging text (“We’ll stop it.”), even though the messages immediately before and immediately after that one were sent to Congress. Nobody claims there was a problem with the FBI’s archiving system for that period. So, obviously, someone decided to not give the damaging message to Congress. That someone should be fired, if not prosecuted.
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The MSM are not interested in knowing who withheld the damaging text message. They are interested in attacking the administration 24/7… nothing else.
Humorous comment / rant on the Harvard situation (long)
https://quillette.com/2018/06/20/harvard-thinks-rich-people-are-better-than-you/#comment-24162
I doubt any high level decision was made to cover-up the text. It’s too much of an obvious career ender with jail time and too likely to be exposed by the time it got to that level. There’s an unlikely case that it is innocent and just wasn’t uncovered because X/Y/Z. More likely is the people who did the actual uncovering * and redacting * to filter out unrelated personal information “had a keyboard slip” because:
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1. They knew it would reflect badly on the FBI they had pride in.
2. They feared it would unjustly derail a good investigation (rationalization)
3. They didn’t think they would get caught because they didn’t anticipate the IG would do their own investigation (whose team is the IG on, anyway?).
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It’s one low lever person and maybe their immediate superior. If it’s intentional, then it’s clearly criminal. Why would the FBI not be investigating this themselves? Maybe they are. The IG says there will be additional report on this text recovery process, and my feeling is they want to get to the bottom of it as well.
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Whoever deleted the text is probably having a heart attack every time the phone rings or someone knocks on the door.
Tom Scharf,
“The IG says there will be additional report on this text recovery process, and my feeling is they want to get to the bottom of it as well.”
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I sure hope so, because as it stands, he has not even addressed this obvious case of willful obstruction of a Congressional subpoena. I won’t hold my breath waiting. I am betting nobody ever is held to account, except Strzok, who will be fired soon, and most deservedly so.
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Even assuming the deletion of this message was “innocent” (and if you accept that, I have a bridge in New York I would like to offer for sale), the next obvious question is if there were other “innocent” deletions of damaging messages, sent by any of the five people identified by the IG report as having sent “inappropriate” messages. As Nat King Cole used to sing: “Chances are…”
Tom Scharf,
On the Quillette piece: As usual, the comments are, presumably unintentionally, hilarious. A paraphrased example: Federal student loans belong to the student and don’t count as receiving government money. It is to laugh.
DeWitt,
Even if federal student loans belong to the student (and I don’t know the rule on that)….. Government grants do come with rules that bind institutions that accept them. This is true if you get paid to build a bridge, run a lab, or sell the government paper. Anything. There is no “But it’s university research” dispensation clause. Contractors building bridges or doing laundry under government contract usually have to obey rules for fair employment and so on. (It might be possible to get around this if a contractor hires a sub contractor, but I’m not sure. Even that does always work. )
If Harvard wants to be entirely private and be entirely unbound from government rules they are going to have to give up government research grants. They don’t fund all their prestigious research out of their private funds. So they aren’t going to want to do that.
Lucia,
“They don’t fund all their prestigious research out of their private funds. So they aren’t going to want to do that.”
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Yup. I believe something like $615 million is direct Federal funding of research. Undergraduate funding (personal and student loans together) is about $330 million. The “full cost” for undergraduates is about $70,000 per year. There are about 7,200 undergrads, so the average actually paid per undergrad is ~$46,000. Hard to say how much of that could be student loans… probably not too big a fraction… maybe $30 -$50 million per year.
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Total Federal funding: ~$645 – $665 million per year. Total operating budget: $1.4 billion. Losing all federal funding would hurt…. a lot.
SteveF,
There are a few journalists that are interested in that sort of thing, but the costs are high. See, for example, the case of Sharyl Atkinson at CBS.
While probing the Obama administration, her computers were hacked, apparently by the government. She’s still fighting the case.
https://sharylattkisson.com/2018/06/15/attkisson-v-fbi-and-doj-for-computer-intrusions-update-in-15-easy-to-understand-parts/
When you see something like this, it’s a lot easier to understand Trump’s accusations of spying on his campaign. Note that much like the Lois Lerner case, no one pays a price except the victim.
Here’s a link to her book:
https://www.amazon.com/Stonewalled-Obstruction-Intimidation-Harassment-Washington/dp/0062322850/
Oh, and by the way, it seems like the ACLU has succumbed to the PC virus.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/06/21/aclu-leaked-memo-free-speech
The IG’s fourth round of forensics found the text message, on the phone, in a folder that was collecting these routinely. I’d like to know how the DOD with its advanced tools missed it.
> invitation to suborn perjury
I thought that phrase had a more specific meaning. Is it more an invitation to frame witnessed for false statements?
The only way to stop this is for the federal government to mandate race blind admissions, as in race not allowed into the admissions office. No doubt the number crunchers will do their best to infer race anyway, but most admissions office employees probably dislike this shell game and would be relieved to be instructed to not use it. 8 states ban it already (CA, FL, MI among those). State initiatives have won 7 / 8 times on a ballot, CO had a narrow loss. Polls show people oppose affirmative action in admissions by about a 2:1 margin.
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FL interestingly implemented it in an executive order by “Low Energy” Jeb Bush in 1999. Now this is interesting because the story is that Jeb did it by executive order because he knew it was very likely going to be placed on the ballot in 2000. Perhaps this is historic revisionism but he stands accused of doing this because he didn’t want a large minority turnout in the 2000 election. His brother won that election by approx. 0.5 chads.
Tom Scharf (Comment #168652): “The only way to stop this is for the federal government to mandate race blind admissions, as in race not allowed into the admissions office.”
Yep, just what we need: More of the government telling private institutions and individuals what they must and must not do. The other approach is to get the government out of funding private universities and let them do as they please.
So sometimes I hesitate to ask questions. I usually have some guess about the answer to questions I want to ask, which makes me suspect I’m indulging in rhetorical questions.
I’m going to proceed, but carefully.
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Is there any sort of metric OTHER THAN the fact that we know our world is full of unequal outcomes that suggests that discrimination is a real problem in our society?
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I don’t think there are such metrics, but I’d be pleased if somebody knows of some and enlightens the poverty of my comprehension in this regard.
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[Edit: I’m not asking about the discrimination that results from laws intended to compensate for historical discrimination. I’m asking about measures of discrimination that still occur in the absence of government intervention.]
MikeM,
Sure, if a private university wants to discriminate based on race, that is OK, but not if they are receiving Federal funds. Since few could survive without Federal funds, making it a Federal rule that race can’t be considered, or you lose your funding, solves the problem. If Harvard loses this lawsuit, they will make some mealy-mouth promises about revising admissions, but they won’t stop racially motivated discrimination until they face loss of Federal funds.
Mark,
“Is there any sort of metric OTHER THAN the fact that we know our world is full of unequal outcomes that suggests that discrimination is a real problem in our society?”
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Yes, many Arabs want to completely destroy Israel, and kill as many jews as possible. That is clear discrimination…. though not exactly ‘within our society’. There are plenty of individuals of many different races who are prejudiced against “other races’ (and other religeons, and other political philosophies, etc.)
Thanks Steve.
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What I’m trying to get at is this. How would we know how we are doing in the U.S. with respect to discrimination. Are we doing better than we were three years ago, worse, etc.
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I’ll poke around. There must be something out there on the net regarding this.
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[Edit: See, I worry that it’s taken as a given, as a starting assumption, that it’s a problem that needs to be addressed. This could be because the evidence is so obvious and incontrovertible that nobody bothers to cite it / assumes everybody knows. Or on the other hand, it might just basically be an unsupported assumption.]
DeWitt,
“Oh, and by the way, it seems like the ACLU has succumbed to the PC virus.”
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As have nearly all ‘progressives’. I chalk it up to frustration: Trump is president, Congress is Republican, etc. They were expecting the “arc of history” to always bend in their desired direction… elimination of the nation state and (progressive!) world government. This won’t happen.
I found this
https://hbr.org/2017/10/hiring-discrimination-against-black-americans-hasnt-declined-in-25-years
Basically appears to be a study that ran audits of resume based call backs – resumes were supposed to be identical, only name was made obviously ethnic.
~shrug~ I’ll read through and ponder. Just thought I’d share what I found, since I mentioned it in the first place.
Harvard’s endowment is large enough they could probably survive a loss of federal funds.
>if a private university wants to discriminate based on race, that is OK, but not if they are receiving Federal funds.
The civil rights laws would say it’s not OK. Much of the argument over constitutionality of affirmative action could be eliminated by just saying it’s illegal.
I’ve read Ghettoside and Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City which tell a nuanced story. I would say the summary is if we all grew up in Mogadishu our lives would be much more different than we’d like to think.
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There is no easy way to separate out culture, environment, and racism. The worst thing you can do is apply reductionism and think one thing is causing it and one thing will fix it.
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You can certainly measure different outcomes in lots of places. There are some areas that have been likely biased, for example death sentences by race have looked very suspect in the past. The gap has closed on income by job, but is very far apart in wealth. The average minority school performs poorly, has less experienced teachers, and gets less parental support such as volunteers. The cost per child may still be about the same. Blacks are disciplined more often than whites. Access to housing. Excessively high fines for things like driving without a license, which can’t be easily paid due to poverty, which turn into arrest warrants. Whites demanding political action for the opiate problem but solving the crack epidemic by putting everyone in jail. Drug sentencing was pretty ridiculous for a while.
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Everyone of these can be argued as individual bad behavior or society putting people in a situation that breeds bad behavior and doing nothing about it. Much of the venom from activists is simply to attract attention.
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The problem is better expressed as not caring than malicious racism. We don’t care what happens in Mogadishu, and we certainly don’t plan on fixing it anytime soon. Parents separated at the Mexican border gets more attention than “Chiraq”.
Thanks Tom.
MikeN
Doesn’t mean they want to….
The only thing larger than Harvard’s endowment fund is it’s lofty opinion of itself. They don’t follow the rules, they set the rules. Racial justice is paramount. If it’s necessary to slap down some boring Asian grinders to achieve this goal, then so be it. The thing is, their arrogance is such that they believe in their soul that they can simply wordsmith their way out of any hypocrisy with an indecipherable word salad that can win any game of social justice buzzword bingo. Unfortunately they are correct on this point.
Harvard’s endowment is about $44 billion. Drawn at 3.5% per year (tax free!), which would ensure capital gains keep up with withdrawal, that is $1.5 billion per year, while Harvard’s total operating budget is about… $1.5 billion per year. Since their many very wealthy alumni, and the very wealthy parents of not-so-bright students, continue to contribute a great deal of money (hundreds of millions per year?), Harvard could easily survive without Federal money. But their endowment would grow slowly if at all in real terms….. they really would not like that.
SteveF,
Yep. Harvard could use their endowment to cover their costs. They would prefer not to.
I don’t know enough about the law on this matter to know whether they will win or lose. But the “personality” points thing at the admissions office smells strongly of discrimination against Asians.
Lucia,
I think the legal outcome of the case is very uncertain.
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There is clear discrimination for African Americans, Latinos, and other “historically disadvantaged groups” (AKA affirmative action) and against Asian Americans in the admissions process. No Court is likely to accept the existence of “personality deficiencies” that are invisible to the Harvard alumni who conduct face to face interviews but clear to admissions officers who usually have never met the applicant.
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They have half a leg to stand on with affirmative action, since the Federal Courts have continued to allow this type of discrimination. But rejecting Asian Americans to achieve a “diverse community”, is where they are in trouble, since AFAIK, no Federal Court has ever allowed this type of clear discrimination against a minority by an organization that receives Federal funds. We have to put aside the obvious logical inconsistency here by the Federal Courts: Discriminating for “historically disadvantaged groups” obviously means discriminating against everyone else. Which confirms my long term observation that logic has little to do with Federal Court rulings, and especially little to do with Supreme Court rulings.
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If Harvard’s staff has half an gram of sense, they will settle this case before it does any more damage to Harvard’s reputation, and potentially to its finances. Harvard can simply agree to pay off the plaintiffs, and to admit somewhat more Asian Americans, at the expense of legacies, “whites”, and very-rich-but-not-very-smart students, and then continue to do their leftist best to come up with schemes to engineer desired social outcomes…. at least within the “Harvard community”.
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Clearly, the horse$hit will never stop at Harvard, but there may be a little less of it after this case is over.
If only there was an Asian on the SC. I guess they do a personality test there too.
The NYT provides the answer, Asians have an advantage because they abuse their children.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/opinion/sunday/asian-american-tiger-parents.html
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“Many (though certainly not all, and probably less than half) also came armed with the belief that the best way to instill these values is through harsh methods that other Americans can regard as cruel.”
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“And I know that the decision to abandon immigrant parenting principles could backfire. The striving immigrant mind-set, however severe, can produce results. Every time I snuggle my daughters as they back away from a challenge — when my own father would have screamed and spit and spanked until I prevailed — I wonder if I’m failing them in a very different way than he did me.”
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This is just obscene stereotyping. These are the kind of days I am very tempted to never go back to this site.
So those Asian immigrants are gaining an advantage by working harder than us native born folks. How dare they!
Tom Scharf,
Yep. When Moynihan published his report in 1965 concluding that Civil Rights legislation alone wouldn’t be enough, he was practically tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. But it’s perfectly PC to denigrate a stereotype of asian culture that emphasizes self discipline.
The answer to that is yes. He’s raising snowflakes. Except his father didn’t fail him.
Tom Scharf,
I stopped reading the Times many years ago; everything they write is progressive propaganda. The newspaper is suitable for two things: starting a fire and wrapping up fish guts. I use it for both. Their on-line rubbish can’t be used for anything.
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DeWitt,
I think the issue is progressives do not want an identifiable racial or ethnic group to excel compared to other identifiable racial or ethnic groups. It calls their “blank slate” dogma into question, so not allowed. They are OK with people who gain success through progressive ideology.
A big heaping helping spoonful for my confirmation bias on the media. So the seminal Time crying girl photo turns out to be … well … Fake News.
Time: “The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she taken from the scene. The girl was not carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together.”
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The mother was asked to put the child down to be searched. The photographer was on a ride along with border patrol agents. Time stands by its cover. You cannot make this stuff up.
Tom, it’s worse than that. The mother left behind three kids to try and sneak into the country a second time, and only took the daughter along in hopes of using her as a get out of jail free card.
Not much of a stereotype since a lot of black families engage in this ‘child abuse’ too as we found out during the Adrian Peterson case. Lots of white families too.
On Election Day, there were radio ads running in Detroit that if you beat your kids Hillary will send you to jail.
Having been found out, here is what Time had to say:
‘EIC’ is editor-in-chief.
Source: http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/22/time-stands-by-erroneous-misleading-crying-girl-cover-photo-and-story/
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I think this is a fascinating statement. The stakes of this moment. What the heck does that even mean.
Stakes:
So the cover ‘captures’ what is at risk for gain or loss…
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Sort of an audacious statement. It might be true. It seems to me that it depends on whether or not all of the consternation about Trump’s alleged … evil motives; his alleged racism and so on, is based on something real.
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[Edit: does the use of the term ‘stakes’ indicate that the editor is aware that it’s not certain one way or another what motives Trump embodies I wonder. … I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. Probably more along the lines of ‘what is at risk if Trump is not stopped’. Pity. I’d have admired the notion more if the former was likely.]
mark bofill,
The cover came back and bit Time magazine (and others). The father came forward, supplied the real story. The real story is an example of a mother deciding to up and leave, and hauling her toddler out of Honduras, through Guatemala, Mexico and arriving at the border after a month long trip. Her motive for taking the kid is precisely to avoid being jailed at the border, because it was her second time caught trying to sneak in. Then, like it or not this mother and daughter were not separated.
This daughter was crying because she was tired and hungry. No surprise– it was 11 pm. I would bet dollars to donuts she cried a lot over the previous month while being hauled through Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras. She probably also missed her Dad and brothers and sisters, and quite likely had separation anxiety at the thought of being separated from her mom. (In fact, she probably had that anxiety for a month, since it would be likely her mom had to put her down and possibly let someone else care for her on periodic episodes during the month.)
This is exactly a consequence of having the “main” way for people who want to work here be sneaking across the border and letting those with kids be given a pass.
We do need a good immigration policy that:
1) Allows guest workers entry in an orderly fashion.
2) Does arrest illegal entrants.
3) Has a provision for illegal entrants to remain with their kids.
4) Ideally, there should be some expeditious way for the kids to be sent home in cases where that is the obvious best choice. (For example, I’m sure this dad in Honduras would love his little girl to be sent home quickly rather than be detained with her mother. He’s likely the more responsible parent and he ought to have rights as a parent too.)
lucia: “We do need a good immigration policy that:
1) Allows guest workers entry in an orderly fashion.
2) Does arrest illegal entrants.
3) Has a provision for illegal entrants to remain with their kids.
4) Ideally, there should be some expeditious way for the kids to be sent home in cases where that is the obvious best choice.”
Eminently sensible.
With respect to 4), as it is when kids are separated the government tries to place them with family in the U.S.
Lucia,
That seems like a good summary to me.
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I think #2 is the sticking point between the aisles. Not so much that they are arrested, but what to do with them once they have been arrested. Dems want ‘catch and release’ I think, which more or less amounts to uncontrolled immigration in my view.
If we don’t go with the idea of releasing illegals into the US while they await processing, there are only a few alternatives. Perhaps they can be refused entry period; escort them immediately back across the border and leave them there. This seems awfully inhumane. Perhaps they can be held securely in some facility in the US until they are processed. This appears to be unacceptable to at least the more vocal among the Dems.
The kids just make the situation more volatile and the rhetoric more emotional and inflammatory, but at the end of the day I don’t think they’re really central to the issue.
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Regarding the cover photo – I also think it’s interesting that Time essentially said ‘so what if the specific child and instance in this photo don’t match our narrative – the picture is still representative of the overall [situation].’ Perhaps it is more representative and appropriate than they realize. It can be argued that this is iconic of the current relationship between the Trump Administration, the press, and the public. The press misleads, but in oh-so noble a fashion, since after all – ‘everybody knows’ (well, except the unwashed, racist, misogynistic Deplorables) deep in their hearts that the Progressive movement embodies all that is good and right and just and holy in our world, and that Trump does not embrace Progressive viewpoints. Ultimately he must be evil, one way or another. What difference do the exact details make.
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Yup – that picture is more fitting than that Time magazine editor realizes, at least in my opinion.
Normally I’d dismiss my own statements in my second paragraph above as being too colored by my own partisan biases to be of any value. But
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06/22/msnbcs_donny_deutsch_if_you_vote_for_trump_you_are_ripping_children_from_parents_arms.html
and
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/06/18/michael-hayden-compares-trump-family-separation-practice-to-nazi-germany-new-day.cnn
and so on.
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The vitriol of these attacks are way over the top. The people indulging in these must have a rationale. The one I offered is actually the most charitable rational I’ve been able to come up with.
mark bofill,
To an extent, yes. At a minimum, if an adult is caught, the default rule should be for legal immigration for that person to become either vastly more difficult to impossible for at least some amount of time. (For example: blocked from guest worker program for at least 5 years or something.) . If caught twice, they should likely serve some time before being deported.
We need due process in place for all of this. That’s true of all laws.
Obviously, for a system that bars and punishes offeders to be meaningful, we do need some patrolling at borders. We also need to watch for employers who hire those without permission to work here and we need to fine them.
If we had a decent fairly accessible guest worker program in place, this would not be a big problem. It’s true that even with a decent guest worker program, if too many apply, some people will not get in, but that’s just the fact of what happens with borders.
We do need to have provisions to allow people who merit sanctuary to get sanctuary, but it should be carefully designed to not be used as little more than a way around applying to be a guest worker and jumping in front of the line.
Depends where you leave them. If you work out something with Mexico and bus them back to the nearest city on the other side of the border, that’s not necessarily inhumane. Heck, if they are mexican, you could give first time offenders a choice of trial followed by jail and a getting on a bus to a border town in Mexico. A bunch might take that choice. (They might try to get back in, but 2nd time, the penalty could be jail, period.)
That said: I doubt Mexico would agree to let us drop non-Mexicans off in Mexico even those people happened to pass through. Often, those people weren’t legally in Mexico either. So Mexico doesn’t want them, shouldn’t and can’t be forced to take them.
Also, there are practical difficulties of trying to return non-Mexicans to their nation countries. I strongly suspect the Honduran mother of “crying girl” would have tried diligently to get off any US bus driving her through Mexico and Guatemala to reach Honduras. The one thing we know is that she left Honduras; presumably she doesn’t want to be there.
Also, even just returning the little girl might be difficult. She would likely be upset if sent without her mother on a similar trip. But it would probably be fairly easy to prevent her from jumping the bus. OTOH: maybe it would be possible to arrange for father to come get her and drive her home. (Could be expensive though. . .)
So returning people would not be easy or cheap even if other governments were willing to co-operate in letting us return them. Jailing people isn’t cheap either. By the same token: Articles that ran last week do make it clear that news of strong border enforcement does affect people willingness to risk illegal entry.
mark,
I’m still not planning to vote for Trump. I didn’t vote for him in the first place, and the current events don’t incline me that way. OTOH: I also didn’t vote for Hillary. So… there you go.
mark bofill (Comment #168686): “Perhaps they can be refused entry period; escort them immediately back across the border and leave them there. This seems awfully inhumane.”
I don’t see why that is inhumane, as long they aren’t just being dumped in the desert.
Actually, I think that is just what is done in many cases. At least with first time offenders who are not suspected of something worse than illegal entry and are either from Mexico or don’t claim refugee status. They are processed and, at least if they plead guilty, can be deported on the same day. Even if they insist on a trial, it only takes a day or two. But people who are not from Mexico (or Canada) can claim refugee status and are entitled to a hearing with legal representation, etc. That takes time.
My understanding is that illegal immigrants caught at the border are sent back over right away, not sure to where. This was changed by Trump who started first arresting people then sending them away immediately. The consequence of the arrest is that if caught a second time, this is a felony not a misdemeanor, and you are not eligible for any legal immigration category.
The family separation and detention or catch and release is happening with people who upon being caught say ‘credible fear’. These people are not immediately deported but are given a credible fear interview, and if this is passed(~90% pass rate), then are given a later court date for deportation at which they can make a case for asylum(~80% fail rate). Jeff Sessions said half don’t even bother to fill out an asylum application, but it’s not clear what group he is talking about, catch and release or people at port of entry.
Thanks Lucia.
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Having a good system for employers to verify legal status; I have mixed feelings about that, strange as that may seem. People need to eat. If they can’t work because they are legally forbidden to, well.. They aren’t going to just not eat. They will work illegally, or work at crime, or seek welfare from the state by whatever device. Or they will leave; that’s always a possibility too I guess. Most of those don’t sound like things I’d like our policies to encourage.
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I haven’t thought this through very carefully though. As always, (everyone else too) feel encouraged to point out things I seem to be missing.
Maybe. I see what you’re saying. But – when they come in through Mexico in the first place… Hang on, let me start over. Is there a difference between the US preventing illegals from ever physically entering in the first place and sending them back to where they entered?
I guess so, I guess there is a difference. Hang on, gotta walk the dogs..
Mark Bofill,
Yes, people need to eat. But we aren’t actually seeing starvation in Latin America. (Except Venezuela).
People come for better economic opportunities. I actually admire that. But what I’d like is a good guest worker program.
To the extent they can block entry, that is different from sending them back. But if they’ve passed the border, they are here. So… dunno.
Oh. You’re looking at people who aren’t here yet. Good point! Work restrictions definitely discourage people who haven’t made up their minds to come yet.
I was thinking about the people who we catch and release, assuming we caught and released people. I should have explained. What started me thinking about this was the idea that maybe the work restrictions were part of the leash that helped keep people who were caught and released behaving – I thought no, not letting illegals work wouldn’t help with that.
Sorry. I get wordy and try to moderate that but leaving out half of what I’m thinking probably isn’t the answer there..
[Edit2: Rereading this it probably still isn’t terribly clear. IT’s not important. I thought maybe a good verification program for employers to prevent illegals from working would help make ‘catch and release’ work, and concluded it doesn’t. So I was thinking about the illegals who were already here… nevermind.]
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So – what’s the real problem. Why can’t we pass immigration reform?
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[Edit: Yes. The people who come here to work, who want to work hard and make a decent living for themselves and raise kids – those are the people I want here as legal immigrants. I prefer not to discourage them. Maybe immigration reform is the real answer. Is it really difficult to immigrate legally? If so, why? Time consuming, expensive? I wonder. I’d better look into it.]
mark bofill (Comment #168694) : “The people who come here to work, who want to work hard and make a decent living for themselves and raise kids – those are the people I want here as legal immigrants.”
I strongly agree. I think that a substantial majority of Americans would agree.
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mark bofill: “I prefer not to discourage them.”
Well, we need to control the numbers.
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mark bofill: “Maybe immigration reform is the real answer. Is it really difficult to immigrate legally? If so, why?”
I think that “really difficult” is an understatement. If you have a sibling here, you can apply for a family reunification visa. There is a big backlog; years, I think. Or you could throw your name in for the visa lottery with about a 0.5% chance of success. Or you can come here as a tech industry indentured servant on a H1-B visa. Or you can come here as a temporary agricultural worker on a H2-B visa. I know that H1-B holders can turn that into a Green Card. You can also get a Green Card if you are a professional and already have a job here or have a bunch of money to invest.
Mike M, thanks, particularly for the succinct summary. I was beginning to reach those conclusions.
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So – country based quotas may be a contributing factor to long wait times for green cards, do I have that right? If so, is this a good idea (that we enforce percentage quotas from countries)?
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In general, should we let more people in I guess is a question. What’s the downside to letting more people in. I guess it’s also a question of what sort of people. Unskilled workers with no particular qualifications? I imagine that could become a problem; huge glut in the unskilled labor market, unemployment, increased welfare / safety net strain, so on. I don’t know.
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I seem to be reading http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/why-the-wait-green-card-so-long.html here that only 140K people worldwide can get in on employment categories. [per year]
People on catch and release get EAD work permit. About 400,000 this year.
If someone applies for asylum to the US from Canada, they can be made to wait there while the application is processing, but there is no such agreement with Mexico for non-Mexicans.
Coming at this thing from a totally different angle – I read that Filipinos are one of the groups that have long wait times to become immigrants here. I also read that there is (or was) a movement there for the Philippines to join the US as a state.
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Would that be different? Better? Not the same at all? To rephrase – is growing the U.S. by adding new states superior to or inferior to growing the U.S. citizen population by immigration, and why?
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I sort of think off the cuff that having other countries join the U.S. would be the preferable option. Although maybe I ought to review the situation with Puerto Rico; I’m under the impression that there are problems there and they may be relevant to this.
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I think from time to time that — if conditions are truly horrific in countries where people are fleeing to the U.S. (if that is the case anywhere, perhaps it isn’t), I sometimes wonder if military conquest and annexation of the country in question might not be the better option. I doubt it; conquered people aren’t the same as people who freely decide to join. Anyway.
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[Edit – thanks Mike N]
If the Philipines became a state, of course the Filipinos would be in the US. It wouldn’t even be immigration. For that to happen, first (a) they have to ask and then (b) we need to accept. I don’t know what’s superior or inferior. But we have a process for that.
If the Philippines were to become a state, the per capita GDP of the U.S. would drop by 30%.
Random fun but pointless factoid – if Pew Research Center’s estimate is correct, 5.8 million Mexican illegals were in the US in 2014. Not clear if population count of 124.2 million living in Mexico in 2014 counted these or not, supposing not, then 5.8/130= 4.5% of the population of Mexico was working / residing illegally in the US that year.
4.5%; almost 1 in 20 of the population in Mexico. It sort of boggles my mind.
mark bofill,
Have you ever spent some time in Mexico (not at a resort hotel)? I have. I am not shocked by the estimate of Mexicans living in the USA.
Philippines has 103 million population. Per capita income: ~US$3,200; it is not ever going to become a State in the USA, no matter what support there may be for statehood in the Philippines.
Mark,
To become a state, a territory, state or what have you has to ask. We may be able to conquer something, but that doesn’t make it a state. The first step to being a state is to ask Puerto Rico has been tap dancing in various ways for a long time. But they never vote to ask to join. Unless they do, how Congress, you, I or any one in the 50 states feels about it doesn’t matter.
Steve,
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No, I’ve never been to Mexico. Several decades back my father worked there though and shared appalling reports of the poverty. The house he was renting was broken into while he was away. I forget the exact details, but he figured it was pretty obviously the people living in caves within sight of his backyard.
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Regarding the Philippines, yeah there’d be issues. The effect of minimum wage on Puerto Rico was highly disruptive according to this. It’d probably be as bad or worse in the Philippines.
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Lucia,
.
Certainly. Speculating about annexing other countries [by force] may be as realistic as speculating what the world would be like if undead Anne Rice style vampires were real. There’s lots of problems with the idea. Definitely one problem is that it’s not legal. Other problems include (IMO) that the public would never support it; it’d never get off the ground. Political suicide. There are (again IMO) numerous other problems.
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The reason my mind goes there – people want to emigrate here because of our freedom and prosperity I think in large part. It’s relatively better here than where they’re coming from. How could that be fixed? Well, kicking it around one thing that comes to mind is to wonder, what if the place they came from became part of the U.S.. Then I start thinking about possible mechanisms.
Military conquest isn’t really one of the realistic ones, certainly. I mention it and pretty much dispose of it.
It’s hard for per capita GDP to drop by 30% when the additional population isn’t even 43% of the US population. 1000/100=10, 1000/143=7.
Mark
That’s specific people. It doesn’t mean everyone in a particular country wants to be a US citizen. Others might very much object. It was long ago, but when I was in El Salvador, I can assure you there were plenty of people who would not want to be absorbed by the US.
IS it illegal? I’m starting to question that. Is the procedure laid out in the constitution, or some other law, or is it just a matter of how its always been done in the past?
[Edit: Ah:
yeah. Consent is required.]
Lucia,
Yep. No argument about that.
You know, I’m still not sure that the consent of those in the State-To-Be is actually required. The consent referenced before appeared to be if the new State impacts already existing States. It seems to be typical to get consent, but I’m not sure what makes it mandatory.
mark bofill (Comment #168706): “The reason my mind goes there – people want to emigrate here because of our freedom and prosperity I think in large part. It’s relatively better here than where they’re coming from. How could that be fixed? Well, kicking it around one thing that comes to mind is to wonder, what if the place they came from became part of the U.S.”
Letting a messed up country join the U.S. would do nothing to fix their problems, it would just export their problems to the U.S. Just like with open borders. At least with controlled borders limiting immigrants to what we can productively absorb, we can lift up some without killing the golden goose.
Some prerequisites for joining the U.S. should be (an effectively have been): well established democratic institutions, the rule of law, an economy not so far behind ours, speaking English.
MikeN (Comment #168707): “It’s hard for per capita GDP to drop by 30% when the additional population isn’t even 43% of the US population. 1000/100=10, 1000/143=7.”
True.
If the Philippines joined the U.S., the per capita GDP of the U.S. would drop by about 30%.
mark bofill (Comment #168711): “You know, I’m still not sure that the consent of those in the State-To-Be is actually required. The consent referenced before appeared to be if the new State impacts already existing States. It seems to be typical to get consent, but I’m not sure what makes it mandatory.”
Yes, the clause you cite refers to existing states. The federal government frequently redrew territorial boundaries.
Please don’t be offended by this, but what makes consent mandatory is simple common sense.
When the U.S. has conquered territory, the new lands were initially organized as territories under direct control of the federal government. They did not become states until sufficiently Americanized. In some cases (New Mexico, Hawaii), that took a long time, if ever (existing territories, Puerto Rico). I think Texas was the only state to be admitted directly from being a foreign country, and it was already quite Americanized.
(hmmm….delete button doesn’t seem to be working)
2016 figures from the World Bank (https://data.worldbank.org/):
Pop(mill) GDP ($bill) GDP per capita
Phil…..103.3…………304.9…………$2,951
US……323.1………18624………….$57,638
Total…426.4………18929………….$44,388
So, 23% less
Grin. It is a boneheaded thing to contemplate Mike. I’m not offended. Thanks though.
Mark Bofill
I think you are right
It sounds like the consent of the state is only required if someone is partitioning a state (W.VA?) or merging them.
Still…. I don’t think Congress would ever vote to make something a State unless the region voted to request it. It would be really, really stupid to do so. (Not that Congress isn’t sometimes stupid. But I don’t think they’d do it. No one wants a revolution immediately on annexation of an unwilling region.)
Mike,
I think you’re onto something there. To some extent I think it depends on what the problems are in the messed up country. To get to the heart of the matter, why are we so prosperous as Americans?
I’d think — 1) good legal / political foundation. Property laws, contract laws. Freedom, moderately unfettered capitalism.
2) good customs / traditions. We are used to working our butts off as a people, to the extent that the rest of the world (anecdotal link) shakes their heads watching us. We’re more industrious than most.
3) I’m under the impression that we are technological leaders in the world, although this is somewhat strange when one reads that we are apparently only mediocre with respect to education.
4) Stability – generally speaking we’re a safe bet. Nobody invades us. Sure we had a civil war back a ways, but other than that we do war on other places, nobody does war on our place.
5) development over time – We may have an aging infrastructure, but we have an infrastructure. Roads, power plants, railroads, airports, phone lines, cell towers, etc.
6) natural resources. We got’em to work with.
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If this is even approximately so (if this is even approximately why we are prosperous), then … yes. Having other messed up countries join us doesn’t fix customs/ traditions / culture, doesn’t magically generate infrastructure, and doesn’t transfer technological expertise to them. So – maybe the whole idea was misguided to begin with.
MAybe the education thing is irrelevant. Maybe the issue with education is a poor average/mean, where our technological advantage is more a function of the extremes / edges.
this article says yup we are still technological leaders and that’s not likely to change soon. We rank fairly highly in R&D, scientific and research talent, and innovation.
mark bofill (Comment #168723): “Having other messed up countries join us doesn’t fix customs/ traditions / culture, doesn’t magically generate infrastructure, and doesn’t transfer technological expertise to them.”
Right. It would not even fix their legal and political systems since those institutions don’t work without a tradition of respecting them.
🙂 I think of the complete and utter lack of observance of any rule or law with respect just to traffic in Cairo. It was a pretty terrifying place to be in a car last time I was there. I don’t think even a relatively trivial thing like that would be easy to change; once people get it in their heads that things are a certain way, that’s it.
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[Edit: Lucia, thanks. I think it’s interesting to know what’s legal even in cases where it’d never matter, like this one. I agree with you and Mike about it never happening.]
Here’s a different perspective on why Americans work more – might be tax and nanny state related. The argument as I understand it basically is that there’s less point to working harder / longer hours in nanny state countries because you keep less anyway and it makes less difference. [Edit: Actually, it makes consumption relatively more expensive than leisure.]
This one I thinks wins the prize for most over the top media hysterical reaction that backfires in a spectacular way. New Yorker staff writer / fact checker thinks picture of an ICE employee shows a Nazi Iron Cross tattoo on his elbow, she tweets this on her personal account. They are employing Nazis! It turns out this was the insignia of his Army unit in Afghanistan, the place where he served and had both his legs blown off by an IED.
Nice.
Naturally, being a progressive journalist, she manages to turn it around and declare that she’s the victim here, partially because she says she is a “fat Jewish feminist with a Harvard education”.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/veterans/Writer-resigns-from-New-Yorker-after-twitter-flap-over-Pasco-Marine-s-tattoo_169384738
This is a story that kind of exemplifies all areas of the immigration debate.
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My bi-weekly house cleaner is Mexican. Yes, the old white supremacist of course employs a Mexican housekeeper, we have to keep up appearances. Anyway I have no idea if she is legal or not, nor do I think it is polite to inquire. What is clear is she cleans the house way better than anyone else we have tried over the past 20 years. She can barely read English. She speaks English fine. She loves my dog. She has a teenage daughter who occasionally shows up with her. She is a perfectly fine hard working human being. I did learn she has lead a tragic life recently. She was married and has another daughter. Her husband was living with her other daughter out of state until he was murdered, likely connected to his drug dealing. Her other daughter picked up a drug habit and my housekeeper paid for her to go to rehab. She was clean for 7 months but relapsed. My housekeeper traveled to Mexico to find her and put her back in treatment. The daughter refused to see her and left to another city that has a very bad reputation for drugs and crime. She tried to find her but couldn’t, she returned after two weeks. You could tell this was a difficult story for her to tell. Then she tells me: “I used to disagree with Trump, but those are some very bad people (in the Mexican city) and you do not want those people in your country”. It’s very possible she was telling the guy who likes to wear American flag t-shirts what he wanted to hear, but it seemed authentic.
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So there it is, a microcosm of immigration issues, right in my living room.
mark bofill,
” I’m under the impression that we are technological leaders in the world, although this is somewhat strange when one reads that we are apparently only mediocre with respect to education.”
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There are a few reasonable explanations. USA education is compared to other countries based on average performance of students. But the USA has a substantial block of students who are not well educated (the classic ‘disadvantaged students’: African American, Latino, Native American, etc.) Pooling these weaker students with the remainder of students drags down USA averages, and accounts for a significant part of the difference. Another explanation is that relatively few students actually end up working in a technology job, so technological progress ends up depending not on the average student, but on the high performing tail of the distribution (especially in math, science, engineering). Finally, there are many high achieving immigrants (Asian and others) who add to the technological capacity of the USA…. for example, visit the labs of any USA pharma house and you will see a a large fraction of research is being done by people born outside the USA. As a technological and economic leader, the USA can and does attract talent from all over the world.
There was a report a few years ago that looked at test results by ethnicity.
Japanese students in America performed better than Japan.
Similarly with China and many other countries.
The only exceptions were Finland and Shanghai.
MikeN,
I’d bet that’s at least partially a screening effect. People who move for better opportunities tend to have gumption than those who don’t. They probably also tend to be harder working. They likely tend to be smarter (and hence more confident.)
So their kids tend to do better in school than the kids who were left behind.
Of course, the school systems could still matter. But just being the sorts who would move makes them a different batch of people who would not.
and
Thanks Steve. That second one did not occur to me, but I’m sure you’re right. I can’t find the link right now, but I’m pretty sure I saw something recently that indicated that this was a subcategory under employment immigration where there are usually open slots – no wait. Maybe this is something our immigration system gets right.
I think Israel is an interesting case to look at. I haven’t started drawing conclusions yet, but apparently Israel is doing something right in this regard (tech innovation). The wiki article seems to suggest military necessity has something to do with it. Maybe that’s one of the potential ingredients. I don’t think military necessity is sufficient all by itself, but I wonder if it doesn’t help drive tech innovation.
Anyway.
This is bizarre. Apparently a Mexican Presidential candidate is a vocal proponent of Mexican immigration to the U.S., if the Daily Caller is to be believed. Maybe it’s not to be believed. Maybe the guy was ad-libbing and got carried away or confused or something.
Because if not – wow. The guy who wants to lead the country suggesting that leaving the country he wants to rule and becoming a citizen someplace else … what does that suggest. It’s a strange thing for the leader of a country to say! Maybe it amounts to saying, yes; our country sucks. We’re not going to fix it. I’m not going to fix it if you elect me. I advise you to leave!
This can’t possibly be right. Does anyone know the real deal off the top of their heads?
[Edit: In other news, Trump does not appear to understand that non citizens enjoy the same protections afforded by the Bill of Rights as citizens do. You can’t deport people without a trial, not even if you catch them near the border and they are obviously not citizens. Or maybe he well understands this and it’s part of his media game, for those who subscribe to that theory. or not?]
lucia (Comment #168732): “But just being the sorts who would move makes them a different batch of people who would not.”
There seems to be at least some evidence that those migrating from Mexico are not those with the most gumption or ambition, but are those with the worst prospects and greatest desperation. I don’t know how much truth is in that.
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mark bofill (Comment #168734): “Apparently a Mexican Presidential candidate is a vocal proponent of Mexican immigration to the U.S.”
I have read that is a common attitude among the elites in Mexico: “Let our problems go to the U.S.” Again, I don’t know if this is really true. And even if the Mexican elites believe it, it may not represent the reality of emigration.
Plus, the Mexican economy benefits from remittances, which amount to 2% of their GDP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittances_from_the_United_States#Mexico
I think that the multiplier effect would make the economic impact even larger than 2%.
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mark bofill” “Trump does not appear to understand that non citizens enjoy the same protections afforded by the Bill of Rights as citizens do.”
Trump does not speak to show off. He speaks to advance his agenda. So you can not deduce what he does or does not understand from a simplistic look at what he says.
I could be mistaken, but I am pretty sure that illegal entrants do not have all the same rights as those here legally. The “trials” that they get before being deported would not pass muster for someone here legally.
Addition: mark’s link supports what I said here.
MikeM
Do you have a source for this evidence? (Real question.)
I’m happy to admit mine is speculation.
The thing is: “worst prospects and greatest desparation” and “most gumption” isn’t either/or. Of course those who have bad prospects and desperation will be the ones inclined to move. But only if they also have some gumption. Others without gumption just stay in place.
The ones with good prospects and living in comfort don’t move whether or not they have gumption.
By the same token, Americans with gumption don’t pull up stakes and move to Mexico or other countries with lesser opportunities. Norwegians with gumption aren’t pulling up stakes to move here. Those with gumption will move from some place where opportunities are worse for them to some place they hope will be better. The willingness to move to improve oneself is a characteristic of gumption.
So this is simply not “either/or”.
mark,
AMLO, the Mexican Presidential candidate you cite may be Mexico’s version of Hugo Chavez, according to an opinion piece in today’s WSJ. If he wins, watch to see if he immediately forms closer ties with Cuba and Venezuela.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mexicos-election-is-in-play-1529862690 (paywalled)
Thanks Mike.
Thanks DeWitt, that would explain a lot.
lucia (Comment #168736): “Do you have a source for this evidence?”
Not that I kept a link to.
It does seem that the Mexican government encourages illegal immigration to the U.S. For example, the Daily Caller article linked by mark,
this https://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-immigration/mexicos-defense-illegal-immigrants
and this http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/04/30/mexico-sending-us-colonists-not-immigrants/
As I said, I don’t know how true this is. And even if true, we maybe should not trust what Mexican elites think of their “deplorables” any more than we trust what American elites think of our deplorables.
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lucia: “The thing is: “worst prospects and greatest desparation†and “most gumption†isn’t either/or. ”
Definitely true. But the more desperate people are, and the easier it is to move here, the less ambition is needed to move. So those who come here may not be all that ambitious.
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lucia: “The ones with good prospects and living in comfort don’t move whether or not they have gumption.”
That is not true at all. There are a lot of talented Canadians living here and talented Americans living in Canada. I used to be one of them.
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The bottom 20% here live very well compared to the average, or even well above average, person in many countries. We should not want those who will be satisfied to be in the bottom 20% here.
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Addition: If the Mexican government really does encourage emigration, it implies that the emigres are people that Mexico thinks they are better off without.
Mike M.,
Indeed. In fact, when all government benefits and taxes are taken into account, there’s a surprisingly small difference in actual spendable income between the bottom three quintiles of household earners in the US according to an article in today’s WSJ by Phil Gramm and Robert B. Ekelund Jr. (paywalled).
The share of spendable income of the lowest quintile went from 2.2% to 12.9% after adjusting for taxes and transfer payments. The second quintile went from 7% to 13.9% and the third quintile went from 12.6% to 15.4%. The fourth and fifth quintiles dropped from 20.5% to 18.6% and from 57.7% to 39.3% respectively.
What? Are you kidding me? The US is a cesspool of worsening poverty according to reliable sources.
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U.N. Expert: America’s Poor Becoming More Destitute Under Trump
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/america-poverty-worse-under-trump_us_5b131f08e4b010565aac77bc
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Trump’s ‘tragic’ policies likely to make child poverty much worse, says UN
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/02/trumps-tragic-policies-likely-to-make-child-poverty-much-worse-says-un
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The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/poverty-united-states.html
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Why is liberal California the poverty capital of America?
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jackson-california-poverty-20180114-story.html
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Ummm … wait …
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Alabama has worst poverty in the developed world, UN says.
http://www.newsweek.com/alabama-un-poverty-environmental-racism-743601
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It’s bad out there. I suggest everyone pack their bags and move to the Congo immediately. You will find a paradise of $400 per capita GDP. Imagine the self satisfaction of carrying sewage polluted water to your family tent to drink, and becoming more fit because everyone is on a low calorie diet. Since guns are so expensive you have to handle disputes the old fashioned way, with machetes. What we need is to instead follow the Venezuela model where bountiful national resources are converted into a socialist utopia. Last time I looked inflation was only 13,000% (real fact), a month’s salary could buy an an entire chicken, and the oil installations were being looted.
A more charitable interpretation of cultural Marxism.
https://quillette.com/2018/06/23/cultural-marxism-explained-and-re-evaluated/
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“Basically, Bourdieu claims that the children of elites do better academically, not because they are smarter, but because they have been socialized to say and do what an elite consensus decides is correct.”
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The system is rigged, Trump is a cultural Marxist! This philosophy is pretty common so it’s a good idea to try to understand where it is valid and where it isn’t. One can only imagine what a multiple choice test in sociology from a critical race professor looks like today. To say this viewpoint conflicts with the libertarian view of the world is an understatement. Interpretation of individual agency seems to be the big difference. The interpretation of responsible parenting as class “privilege” is something I still cannot swallow, and it is very unclear what they think the solution to this would be.
Tom Scharf,
Socialization might explain better performance in, say, Woman’s Studies or Underwater Basket Weaving majors, but I don’t see how it would affect STEM majors or the SAT math test, for that matter.
DeWitt,
I guess you will need to ask James Damore about that, ha ha. A good exercise is to link to a practice SAT math test and ask “Show me where this is a test of a parent’s income or class” or “Show me and explain which questions have a cultural bias” when the usual suspects say the usual things.
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We are in a fantasy land of contradictions now when education is deemed an invaluable asset and cultures that value it highly are criticized for doing so, while cultures that do not are given a free pass.
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I would be remiss for not mentioning this gem, which I swear is not from The Onion but instead from a highly reputable source that fashions themselves as champions of the lower classes.
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The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/free-speech-just-access.html
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I would suggest you take the author’s advice and not read it.
Tom,
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Whatever. If liberal arts universities want to make themselves irrelevant (maybe I should say more irrelevant, with some caveats) they can knock themselves out as far as I’m concerned. The internet in this context is an infinite resource, in the context of providing access to the public. At least in nations that don’t censor the internet too much. If Jordan Peterson demonstrates anything, he demonstrates that.
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[Edit: I said universities, but the same goes for TV networks, newspapers, and magazines. They’re finite resources but they aren’t the exclusive gateways anymore.]
MikeM,
I’m only claiming they are more ambitious than similarly situated people who stay put. There are plenty of those.
Tom,
Yes. They’ve been socialized to say 2+3 = 5.
Tom Scharf,
Visited your link. I learned this new word: “himpathy”. Evidently it has a role in supporting misogyny.
This person has a screw loose. They seem to think that “institutional access” to newspapers and magazines can somehow be “limited”. Sure, each currently existing newspapers is a finite resource; even all currently existing news papers are then finite. But guess what: if a currently newspaper “limits” certain information that author doesn’t like, an entirely new newspaper will pop up to fill the void. Even television is no longer all that finite a resource.
Of course not providing a platform is not the same as censoring. No one is required to provide resources for others to disseminate their ideas. Currently existing newspapers already don’t just provide free resources to anyone. Just go try to run your editorial about how magnets are the cause of schizophrenia. Good luck getting the NYT to run it.
I’m not even going to get into the issue of universities. This guy is supposedly a professor. Does he not know what student groups invited the people he doesn’t like? Based on the text of his writing it seems not. Oy.
Lucia,
Professor Van Norden is both unbelievably stupid and remarkably un-self aware. That said, the essay is only another in the long line of ‘progtessive’ arguments to justify restricting free speech…. for anyone except ‘progressives’, of course. Totalitarians have always said much the same. The fact that the professor can’t appreciate simple yet important concepts like free speech just tells us he should be ignored…. but still allowed to spout his rubbish in the interest of protecting free speech
lucia (Comment #168746): “I’m only claiming they are more ambitious than similarly situated people who stay put.”
Fair enough.
Someone (Will Rogers?) once commented that when the Okies migrated to California, they raised the average IQ of both states. The opposite effect is also possible.
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lucia: “There are plenty of those.”
Probably, but we don’t really have the numbers.
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lucia: “Yes. They’ve been socialized to say 2+3 = 5.”
They have also been socialized to treat all sorts of questionable opinions as if they are as obvious and immutable as 2+3=5.
MikeM,
Latin America has not come close to depopulating as a result of out-migration. Plenty of people stay in all these various countries.
The professor uses the worst examples of people who should be banned, Peterson and Murray (which of course triggered me). In his view these heretics should be banned from having an audience even though they both taught at Harvard and have impeccable credentials (as compared to Milo). Their sin is that they have challenged the orthodoxy in some pretty narrow areas, but their scholarship is much wider than violating these particular shibboleths and are the farthest thing from trolls. Disagreeing with Murray’s speculation in a small part of the The Bell Curve doesn’t make Coming Apart an invalid social commentary that must be deemed forbidden knowledge, especially given Nov 2016. For an obscure professor to suggest the state and public institutions pass career death penalties upon best selling authors is beyond the pale. 12 Rules For Life has sold about 800K units. I imagine there are plenty of people convinced the Bible or the Koran should be banned since they know the truth. He would have been better off talking about Milo and Alex Jones, which is still invalid, before he destroys his own argument. This type of commentary would have never disgraced the NYT decades ago, even 10 years ago.
Mark Bofill, Trump is wrong in his tweet, but not in the way you say. America already deports people without due process. Anywhere within 100 miles of the border is fair game and for a long period of time after entry. I’ve read as much as two years.
Illegal immigrants cannot be executed or put in prison without due process, but they can be deported.
It’s possible the president is planning to extend immediate deportation to asylum cases as well.
Thanks Mike. I didn’t know that. I’d be grateful if you would set me up with a link to something that verifies this, that’d be most handy.
lucia (Comment #168750): “Latin America has not come close to depopulating as a result of out-migration. Plenty of people stay in all these various countries.”
120M Mexicans in Mexico, 36M in the U.S. (per Wikipedia). Of course, some of them have been here a long time. This says close to 12M are immigrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trends_of_Mexican_Migration_to_United_States_1900-2016.png About half of those are illegal, according to official figures. The official numbers on illegals are effectively lower bounds, so the actual number of immigrants is probably higher than 12M.
Then there is the fact that Mexico considers you a Mexican citizen if you parents were Mexican citizens. So the number of Mexican citizens here could well be 20M or more.
Not everyone in Mexico is in desperate straights, far from it. It is a middle income country. So we would appear to have a pretty big fraction of their most desperate.
MikeM
If they were born here, they clearly did not migrate from Mexico. Otherwise, you’d need to count my husband Jim here as Swedish because his father moved here from Sweden. Yet, clearly, Jim did not migrate here. It would be a bit odd to estimate how many moved here from Sweden based on his presence here.
So, according to Wikepedia, many more stayed in Mexico which has not been depopulated.
I’ve never suggested everyone in Mexico is in desperate straights.
That 36M is not remotely the number of immigrants
People whose grandparents from Mexico came here are of “partial Mexican ancestry”. Mitt Romeny is of partial Mexican ancestry. This 36.3 Million tally is hardly reflects Mexico being depopulated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Americans
For what it’s worth, here’s the number of Irish ancestry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Americans
Those 33 million didn’t all leave Ireland to come here. Our ancestors came here. Those ancestors had kids, and grandkids who have at least partial Irish heritage. Some also have Mexican Heritage– for example, my Dad’s cousin’s daughter married a Mexican-American and had kids. Their Dad was born here. These kids count in that 36 million “mexicans”. They did not migrate here from Mexico!
MikeN,
Deportation of foreign nationals present in the USA illegally is itself due process under the law…. that is exactly what the law prescribes… after conviction. First offense is a misdemeanor, and they are immediately deported. Asylum seekers are subject to completely different laws, and can’t be immediately deported without going through the process the law prescribes. Which is why so many people who are captured after entering illegally (that is, not arriving at a port of entry and officially requesting asylum) suddenly decide it is a good time to request asylum. The law should be changed: anyone entering illegally should be charged with illegal entry, convicted, and then as part of their sentence, prohibited from ever claiming asylum.
I’m wondering now that I’ve been learning a bit about it – what is commonly believed to be ‘broken’ about our immigration system? Serious question.
It doesn’t look like we have insane numbers of illegals coming in right now, from what I can gather. Looking back, immigration increased ’90-00 here, probably due in large part to the Immigration Act of 1990 raising the numbers allowed in. It does look like a substantial number of illegals came in at that time, maybe to the tune of up to 400K a year on average that decade.
So – is this what we mean by ‘our broken immigration system’, that there are periods of time where substantial numbers of illegals come in? Or is it something else.
Another thing. I will dig back up the evidence and links on request. I’ve gathered that the majority of illegals are Mexican. I am naively inclined to suspect that border security has something to do with this, mostly because that’s the first explanation that comes to mind (geographic / border proximity), although of course this may be wrong.
So – what’s broken about our immigration system?
mark bofill,
There are two parts: legal and illegal immigration.
A high level of illegal immigration is due to a combination of factors: continuing reluctance to capture and deport illegals, especially if they have avoided capture for some time, refusal to institute air tight employment rules (“e-verify”), refusal to punish those who knowingly employ illegal aliens, refusal to require documentation to get driver’s licenses, rent apartments, etc. and many more. NOBODY (except maybe, and only maybe, Trump) is serious about keeping illegal aliens out of the USA.
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Legal immigration is a weird combination of lottery, family sponsored immigrants, business sponsored immigrants with specific skills, and a smattering of immigration for wealthy people willing to invest to start a business that will employ people (usually 10 or more). Most legal immigration does not consider the potential economic contribution (or cost!) of an immigrant, which is arguably its biggest flaw. So among legal immigrants, many, if not most, enter with low skills and so drag down working class wages. This is even more the case with illegal immigrants.
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Finally, there seems to me too much opportunity to “game the system”….. I have encountered three different women who visited the USA while in late pregnancy, specifically to have a child with US citizenship. People arrive at the border with children in tow specifically because of they know of Obama’s catch-and-release policy for people with children. Being reasonable and generous ought not lead to being taken advantage of. But that is what happens.
I think it can be deduced that most illegals are mexican from the pew research link I came up with earlier with my random factoid thing. If this is correct and there was a peak of almost 7 million illegal mexican immigrants in 2007, then maybe it stands to reason that most illegals are mexican. I mean, the overall immigration numbers, legal and illegal combined are 11 million for that decade, and our legal allowance was around 7 million in that decade total – if this is right and pew is right it seems to me that the bulk of illegals have got to be Mexican. There’s not much room in the figures for anybody else.
[Sorry Steve, cross post]
Thanks Steve. I’ll chew on that for awhile.
mark bofill (Comment #168758): “I’m wondering now that I’ve been learning a bit about it – what is commonly believed to be ‘broken’ about our immigration system?”
Off the top of my head (hopefully others will add to this):
At least 11 million (probably more like 20 million) illegal immigrants living here. Many were brought here as children, many more have children born here.
Hundreds of thousands of illegals entering the country every year. There are claims that the flow of new entrants and those leaving (mostly voluntary) are now in rough balance, but I don’t know how that is determined or if it should be believed.
It is not just that illegals are undocumented, but that we have no control over who comes in. From what I have read, the recent surge in MS-13 is largely imported.
Dealing with illegal entry is expensive, ties up Border Patrol resources, and serves as a cover for drug smuggling.
Excessive number of low skill workers suppressing wages for other low skill workers, both native born and immigrant.
A growing sub-population who seem more loyal to Mexico than the U.S. I suspect that most Mexican immigrants are willing to integrate into our society, but it appears that a large fraction have no interest in integrating. This is entirely anecdotal, I have never seen numbers.
Little high skill immigration, other than the H1-B program.
The H-1B program is used to export jobs, displace American workers, and create what amount to indentured servants.
It is widely believed that a properly functioning legal immigration system would reduce the flow of illegal immigrants. Sounds plausible, but I don’t know if there is any evidence. Countries with a more sensible system (Canada, Australia) don’t have such a big illegal immigration problem, but they don’t have our neighbor.
Mike, thanks.
Yeah. I’m taking figures at face value without a lot of investigation and I know perfectly well that’s a dangerous thing to do. Maybe the numbers are wrong, but for the moment at least I’m taking them at face value to see where they get me.
I’ll read more about H-1B. My admittedly cursory review didn’t cause that to jump out at me.
[Edit: Alrighty then. cheap software and computer engineers. Sucks for people like me I guess, but cheap foreign computer professionals aren’t the worst class of people we could have immigrate. I don’t know.]
I’m pretty sure Australia is very harsh about illegal immigration. Plus it’s surrounded by water.
Mark Bofill (Comment #168763): “Alrighty then. cheap software and computer engineers. Sucks for people like me I guess, but cheap foreign computer professionals aren’t the worst class of people we could have immigrate. I don’t know.”
I don’t think the immigration of computer professionals is the main issue. It is that the restricted nature of H1-B visas makes them very cheap and easily controlled. And is subject to abuse. A U.S. company gets a bunch of H1-B visas and hires a bunch of IT people from India. They make their American workers train the new IT people, then lay of the Americans. When the visas expire, they subcontract the work to a company in India and that company hires the H1-B people. Emigration of jobs, not immigration of skilled workers.
It is even worse since many (most?) of the H1-B visas are actually acquired by foreign companies.
Ahh. Thanks Mike. I understand now.
Having people want to enter your country instead of leave it is a feature, not a bug. We need immigrants to shore up social security.
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What’s broken about immigration is that we have a set of actual laws and a very vague set of virtual laws that are enforced and nobody really knows what is happening. It’s chaos. To unbreak immigration we need to at a minimum align laws and enforcement. I’m not suggesting some harsh Trumpian implementation, but more of modernization of the laws to reflect reality and allow people who break the laws to know there will be consequences.
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As we all know Congress is hopeless at the moment, it is noted that the people screaming obstructionism for 6 years are unsurprisingly united in obstruction even on issues they allegedly care about. Go Team America.
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Young immigrants are better, they will pay more into the system over their lifetime. Educated or immigrants with a long employment record are preferred. As far as I am concerned I’m less interest in seeing a green card than I am their IRS returns, ha ha. If you are paying into the system (aka a responsible citizen) then that should carry weight. Unfortunately our current laws such as E-Verify actively work against this.
Mark Bofill,
I thought offshoring was going to be the end of software engineering, but it wasn’t. It’s unclear how much wage pressure the H1B’s have ever really exerted. Competent engineers have had unemployment of basically zero percent for decades as far as I can tell. It’s hard to imagine a better situation for software engineers than the past 30 years.
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Like they say, if it was easy then girls could do it. Personally I think “they” are sexist and misogynists who should not disrespect a woman’s ability to code and they should never work again.
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Trump should start a program that allows any immigrants with a journalism degree to be granted immediate free entry, and the government will match their salary for the next ten years. That should produce some interesting articles.
Tom,
Well, speaking anecdotally from personal experience before the dot com bust it was crazy sweet for software engineers. During the great recession it was less sweet, sure. But from personal experience I agree – it’s never been all that hard to find a job. Local geography plays the biggest role I think. If one lives in Podunk and there are only N companies that need software developers there, well… That’s what it is. But if a software engineer lives in a place where there’s a reasonable amount of development going on it’ll [be] pretty easy in my view to find work. [Software engineers who do reasonable things / make reasonable efforts to keep current skills and so on.]
SC upholds Trump travel ban 5-4. Color me unsurprised. Queue up predictable fake outrage.
Now you’re talking. 🙂
I seem to generally read that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are good for the economy. Of course, I read many economic opinions that contradict each other. Sometimes the ‘conventional wisdom’ is flat out false: just google ‘Trump Election Will Tank Stock Market’ if you doubt me. So I don’t really know.
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I will say the obvious – if immigrants both (1) help grow the economy and (2) help shore up our entitlement problems, then that’s a strong argument in my book in favor of them.
Also obvious – if they don’t at least help grow the economy, then that’s a point against. If they make our entitlement national budget problem worse, that’s a point against.
mark bofill (Comment #168771): “I seem to generally read that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are good for the economy. Of course, I read many economic opinions that contradict each other. Sometimes the ‘conventional wisdom’ is flat out false:”
This is one of those cases. Skilled immigrants help the economy, at least if their credentials are accepted here. Unskilled immigrants might help if there are not so many that they can not be easily absorbed. Excessive unskilled immigration hurts the economy and is a burden on social programs. That is the situation we have been in.
Here is a good web site on immigration economics (new material is infrequent, but good archives): https://gborjas.org/
Thanks Mike!
What needs to be factored in is the performance of second generation immigrants. First generation immigrants from places like Mexico are at a disadvantage due to inadequate education in their country of origin. Actual economic data is so partisan that it is hard to trust, but my understanding was that 1st generation immigrants are a net negative by a smallish margin, but second generation was a net positive and on par with natives. As much as it seems unfair, this is why it makes sense to open up education and scholarships to illegal immigrants. The worst case is actually paying to educate them and having them return to their native country.
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In the abstract it’s actually advantageous to optionally be able to deport people if they are violent or unproductive. They are more ideal citizens, ha ha. There are lots of citizens who we would like to be able to deport if we had the opportunity, but we own them.
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Some people view this on moral grounds, I don’t share that view, but I understand it.
Tom Scharf (Comment #168774): “my understanding was that 1st generation immigrants are a net negative by a smallish margin, but second generation was a net positive and on par with natives.”
I am suspicious of the claim re 2nd generation. The overwhelming majority of foreign born individuals in the U.S. have arrived since 1970, with most having arrived since 1990 [see note]. I don’t doubt that the children of earlier arrivals have done fine. But it does not seem to me that there has been enough time for good data on the children of more recent arrivals. Given the difficulty of the more recent arrivals in assimilating, both socially and economically (in part because so many are illegal), I would think their children are not doing as well as the children of prior immigrants.
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Tom Scharf: “As much as it seems unfair, this is why it makes sense to open up education and scholarships to illegal immigrants.”
An excellent point.
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Note:
In 1970, the immigrant population was 9.6 million and had been dropping steadily for 40 years. Since a declining population skews old, I would think that most of those 9.6 million are dead. So at least 90% of the current 43.3 million immigrants have arrived since 1970. A substantial majority have arrived since 1990, when there were 19.8 million immigrants. Numbers from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Demography
Tom Scharf,
And those who view it on moral grounds come to a huge range of contradictory conclusions.
This American Life on NPR did a two part series on the effect of immigrants on Albertville, Alabama. It seemed fairly balanced when I listened to it.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/632/our-town-part-one
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/633/our-town-part-two
The conclusion on costs was this (based on a National Academy of Sciences study)
Wow! Thanks so much DeWitt!
“If you didn’t graduate high school, generally, you’re just not earning enough to pay that much into the system.”
I don’t doubt that. But part of the reason is that there is an oversupply of low skill workers due to poorly controlled immigration.
There is also a social cost to immigration, as the resident’s of Hazelton, PA have learned: https://www.city-journal.org/html/chain-migration-comes-hazleton-15832.html
But then here is a rosier view: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160403_10_years_after_immigration_disputes__Hazleton_is_a_different_place.html
DeWitt’s post seems reasonable to me. From an immigration sociopath perspective you would give IQ tests at the border.
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You don’t need complex economics to understand that an influx of low skilled workers puts wage pressure on low skilled natives. Even the most partisan economists agree on that. There is also a correlation between anti-immigrant attitudes and citizens with low skills. I have never bought the “jobs Americans don’t want” argument. If those businesses can’t hire enough employees then they are forced to raise wages until they get to “jobs Americans want”. Yes, we will have to pay more for (fill in the product).
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Who’s ox is getting gored is a predictor of immigration attitudes. Low skilled American workers have seen automation, globalization, and low skilled illegal immigration decimate their livelihoods in many cases. You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to see why they select an odious candidate who at the very least promises to stop actively making it worse.
It will be interesting to see how the Indian population performs over the next century.
In the last century, the Chinese immigrants were laborers and perhaps of lower quality than the average Chinese. Indian immigrants are of much higher IQ than average Indians. Indians also place a priority on education. So I am curious whether the children and grandchildren will revert to the mean of Indians in IQ, and how much impact this will have on performance given the focus on education. Will the group that is dominating so many suburban wealthy communities end up being an underclass?
MikeN,
Despite religious differences, I’d guess the Indian immigrants will be marrying non-Indians the same way Irish, Italian, Polish and everyone else married non-Irish, Italian, Polish and… horror or horrors married Protestants within two generations.
It’s already started. Jim coworker is an Italian immigrant, she’s married to a Hindu. His cousin’s son married a Sikh. This may happen more slowly due to the tradition of arranged marriages in India, but Indians also adore the idea of love marriages. (Just watch Bollywood!) Also, if you know married Indian couples, “arranged” isn’t exactly, “parents get together to pick your spouse”.
Unlike Black-White marriages pre-Civil rights, there aren’t laws against these marriages and they are just going to happen. Whether the differences is IQ or culture, it’s probably going to diffuse and blend.
Oh– to add, at ballroom dance, there are 4 obviously east asian married women who come regularly. Their husbands also come. Every husband is white. (There are other east asians, but single. There are some south asians women and south asian men– also single as far as I can tell.)
Tom Scharf (Comment #168780): “If those businesses can’t hire enough employees then they are forced to raise wages until they get to “jobs Americans wantâ€. Yes, we will have to pay more for (fill in the product).”
Yes, and we will pay less in welfare and for picking up the pieces of shattered lives. A very good trade, in my opinion.
Victor Davis Hanson on how the dysfunctional Mexican government both encourages and drives illegal immigration: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/mexico-what-went-wrong-economy-based-on-exporting-poor-people/
“Mexico seems to love its people more, the farther they are from Mexico and the longer they stay away. And that convenient love is requited: The longer illegal aliens are in the U.S., the more they can afford to become staunch pro-Mexican adherents — again, as long as they do not have to return to Mexico.”
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He also adds a point on our broken immigration policy: “Why the U.S. government does not tax remittances and why it does not prohibit foreign nationals on public assistance from sending cash out of the country are some of the stranger phenomena of the entire strange illegal-immigration matrix.”
Lucia,
Say, how did the competition go? Was it fun?
[Edit: Oh gosh – let me quickly rescan the thread and make sure I didn’t just miss a post about it!]
[Edit2: Good. Scanned back through, I don’t think I missed it.]
The competition was fun. I won 3rd place in East Coast Swing (in my category….) There actually was competition in my heat.
Oddly, I considered that my worst dance because we’d had bad habits and I only started private lessons on that when I decided to compete. Meanwhile, Cha Cha and Rhumba I felt better about. That said: our lessons mostly focused on East Coast Swing, so I guess that showed! 🙂
I’m pretty happy since I entered rather impulsively. Most people who entered had their entry fees in…. oh….. in February. I just thought I should enter after the judged event at my studio, and it was fun.
Jim went to watch. Now he wants to compete in the Harvest Moon competition in October. So this time we’ll prepare rather longer!
I’ve started learning Bolero.
That’s great! Glad to hear you enjoyed it. And hey; added bonus that Jim wants in on it.
I’ve never even heard of Bolero that I can recall. Looks neat.
Lucia: “4 obviously east asian married women who come regularly. Their husbands also come. Every husband is white.”
I never run into white men married to East Asians. Amazing that you run into so many. (:
JD
JD Ohio,
I have to admit I find it remarkable that none out of 4 asian woman are married to asian men. After all, I’m pretty sure many of the asian women living around here are married to asian men! My theory is asian men must refuse to do ballroom dance, but white guys married to asian woman are more willing (for whatever reason).
How delightful. This is my next door neighbor:
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HOA orders homeowner to take down American flags from yard
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-north-pinellas/palm-harbor/hoa-orders-homeowner-to-take-down-american-flags-from-yard
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Unbelievable.
Lucia: “My theory is asian men must refuse to do ballroom dance, but white guys married to asian woman are more willing (for whatever reason)”
Your post got me thinking. In all of my visits to China, I never saw anyone dancing in the sense of male/female ballroom dancing. (Some same sex exercise/dancing in the mornings though) I expect that Asian men, like many American men but even more strongly so, are averse to dancing and that the Asian women are more culturally adventurous.
JD
“In a CBS News poll, only 21 percent say they want to temporarily release families into the country. An Economist/YouGov poll found that 19 percent favor release … Of the various options that the CBS News poll gave people for dealing with the migrants, the one that had the most support by far — 48 percent — was returning families home together.”
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If I was advising the left, it would be stop while you are ahead. A NY socialist Democrat upset an incumbent tonight in a primary and part of her platform was abolishing the ICE, not likely to poll well. Never underestimate a political party’s ability to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.
Tom Scharf (Comment #168793): “If I was advising the left, it would be stop while you are ahead.”
Yes, but that ship has sailed. When Trump issued his executive order on keeping families together, the Resistance crowed that they has forced Trump to rescind his policy. That claim was false, but it was easy to make people believe it was true. But instead of claiming victory, they upped the stakes and revealing that their concern is not for the children.
Tom Scharf : “Never underestimate a political party’s ability to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Indeed.
mark
If you are ever hankering to learn to dance, here’s another one you’ve probably never heard of: Night Club 2.
It is often danced to slow country music, but it can be danced to many popular songs. It’s pretty versatile. A guy can lead it after 1 or 2 lessons where he learns the basic and about 3 patterns, and you look better on the floor than 99% of the people there. (It evidently has a lot of patterns, but I don’t know them yet!)
Tom,
Sounds like she needs to connect all the flags to a long horizontal string. Or glue them to lawn edging:
Then they will be one lawn ornament.
Tom Scharf,<blockquoteI have never bought the “jobs Americans don’t want†argument. If those businesses can’t hire enough employees then they are forced to raise wages until they get to “jobs Americans wantâ€. Yes, we will have to pay more for (fill in the product).
It doesn’t work that way in agriculture. There are indeed jobs like picking crops that no rational pay rate will attract sufficient American workers. There’s a limit to how much a farmer can charge for his produce and still sell it. At that point, it’s cheaper to plow it under. Production moves to Mexico.
SC rules against mandatory fees in public sector unions.
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Voting for Trump has a lot of obvious downsides, but the SC appointment is paying dividends. They consistently side with free speech.
DeWitt,
It does get complicated. The usual way to deal with this is automation. If Mexico’s only advantage is low wage workers then it is arguable this is an unfair trade advantage, especially if the reason US wages are higher is that they must adhere to stronger employee regulations and a minimum wage. Part of trade pacts are supposed to be leveling the playing field in these things. Low wage labor is a comparative advantage and on paper the system is working as designed.
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If the economic system working as designed disadvantages the US’s low skill workers than they have the right to force the political system to change the economic system (if they have enough votes). This is a much harder argument to make today with very low unemployment and record high job openings.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #168797) “There are indeed jobs like picking crops that no rational pay rate will attract sufficient American workers.”
To the extent that is true, it is an argument for a sensible policy of controlled immigration, perhaps including a guest worker program. I thought that Tom Scharf (Comment #168780) was criticizing the use of uncontrolled immigration to depress the pay of unskilled workers across the board.
Tom Scharf-
I put up a post when I saw the ruling. I figure people will want to discuss Janus.
Re #168795 – Thanks Lucia!