[worry]

What I find most fascinating about Pruitt is the sheer weirdness of his corruption. The security overkill. The in-office soundproof phone booth. The used mattress thing. The Chick-Fil-A franchise thing. The landlords changing the locks on him like he was a squatter. Like obviously these people are all grifters, but there's something pathological about Pruitt in particular.

[worry]

Good lord. I do a lot of not giving this admin the benefit of the doubt, because they don't deserve it, but this is among the most unforgivable things they've ever done:

They were never planning to reunite the separated families. At best, they were monstrously indifferent to it, but how could it be anything other than malice to destroy these records? Why am I even asking, Sessions himself said the whole thing was meant to be punitive.

[Aptorian]

That is monstrous but I think it's important to figure out whether the act of deleting that data is A. An artefact of some obtuse/mistaken form of datahandling. Implying incompetence. B. An actual order from a high up government official. Implying malevolent intent to destroy immigrants lives. Or C. Individual employees taking it upon themselves to just sabotage the paperwork because they hate immigrants/are sociopaths and/or out of some misplaced loyalty or perceived desire of the current administration.

It's important to discover the difference between an individual's action and a higher up order.

What ever the case, there has to be laws that punish a government employee for destroying public data, right? Start prosecuting employees and see if somebody begins naming higher up names when they feel the squeeze

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 06 July 2018 - 06:32 AM

[worry]

I don't disagree that it would usually be important, but there's not going to be any 'figuring out' of anything. Negligence, incompetence, and malice all suit the people at the top, because the admin's goal is to hurt these people irrevocably. Their goal is to break (darker hued) immigrant families, brutally, as a lesson to anyone else thinking of making the journey. There aren't going to be prosecutions. There aren't even going to be any firings, if I had to wager. The only reason this is even happening is because a judge ordered the families be reunited by a deadline. There were never plans to reunite them otherwise, which is why they have to do the DNA tests now. What were they going to do when the cases were over, if this judge had never ordered reunification? We already know the answer, because they've done it already: deport the parents without their kids.

In other news, DHS just released a memo tonight ordering all USCIS officers to initiate deportation proceedings for anyone without status who has any kind of application denied for any reason. Potentially speaking: Lawyer forgot to date a signature? Deportation proceedings. Affidavit with a notarization error? Deportation proceedings. USCIS officer thinks a tattoo looks iffy, or even simply has a bad day and wants to take it out on someone? Or maybe kinda sorta has an 'unofficial' quota of denials to meet now? Deportation proceedings. I truly hope that there will be some mitigating information to follow, but the memo is pretty sweeping. We have not yet reached bottom.

This post has been edited by Luv2B_Sassy: 06 July 2018 - 07:24 AM

[Nicodimas]

@ Worry. Of course there isn’t just because this made national news .. this isn’t anything different than before. This has been happening this whole time in one way or another.

Both parties want the cheap labor, slave labour, by letting the border exist— making and keeping them illegal. Got to keep $3 hour jobs alive so we can keep multiple industries priced low with labour costs as little as possible.

People would question the amount of debt they get serviced, if said industries were priced fairly. OR there would be a overall repricing of costs across the board— which would hurt profits. It’s all been priced in.

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 06 July 2018 - 08:39 PM

[worry]

 Nicodimas, on 06 July 2018 - 08:34 PM, said:

@ Worry. Of course there isn't just because this made national news .. this isn't anything different than before. This has been happening this whole time in one way or another.

This is a generality when I'm very much talking about specific and decidedly much worse policy changes that negatively affect a wide variety of people.

I don't disagree that in times past there has been "bipartisanship" on both sides of this issue (not that I concede it's as simple as two sides, but figure of speech), and an interest in maintaining a migrant underclass was one side of it. But times have changed, demographics are different, and we need to do away with this broad brush assumption about "illegal immigrants" being one thing, or living out one experience.

Besides, the Trump admin is sending ICE raids into these places to disrupt the communities and businesses, not encourage them to maintain the underclass. What you are ignoring, imo, is the overt white nationalist aims of DJT, Jeff Sessions, and (frankly) too much of the current GOP. They are making a concerted, overtly racist push against non-white immigrants that aims to punish and even destroy family units, uproot lives, dis-incentivize (and what a sterile word that is) future immigration, and demolish the legal remedies in place for people seeking a pathway to legal status.
The DACA kids aren't out in fields or in meat-packing plants. The immigrants who, as we speak, are being discharged from the military so they don't have that path to citizenship aren't in that group. The denaturalization task force Trump just set up to strip citizenship from immigrants isn't aimed at supporting a labor underclass. The goal is a white majority, white power nation.

I don't discount the economic interests involved in the underclass-ing of any vulnerable group. But there's some tension here with the white nationalists. DJT has a foot in both worlds, with all the contradictions and hypocrisy that entails. But what all factions of the GOP have in common is this, so the coalition remains united:

[Macros]

Why don't they just go back to their roots and hand out small pox riddled blankets for fucksake

[Aptorian]

It would back fire and cripple their own vaccine sceptic voter base

[Macros]

Look apt, if I'm going to take medical advice for my kids well being it's going to be from a playmate and a comedic actor.
What the fuck do doctors know??

[Silencer]

 Macros, on 07 July 2018 - 09:54 AM, said:

Look apt, if I'm going to take medical advice for my kids well being it's going to be from a playmate and a comedic actor.
What the fuck do doctors know??

See, this is meant to be satire, but it's the actual thoughts of a scary number of anti vax people. Along with "someone I know got wrong advice from a doctor once, so all advice from all doctors is wrong". It's really sickening.

[Slow Ben]

Mercury is poisonous!!!

[worry]

Speaking of going back to your roots :

And speaking of anti-vaxxers, that's actually one of the issues that dumbasses from across party lines can agree on! There's currently a measles outbreak in Portland, Oregon: http://www.kptv.com/...land-metro-area
As you can see in the comments, if you be so bold, there are multiple people already asking if it was "an illegal" who is spreading disease.
But speaking of who's causing outbreaks, and to come full circle, how are the kids in the custody of the government faring?
Well, in some cases they are being stuffed into empty office buildings by private defense contractors with no childcare licensing: https://www.revealne...ffice-building/
In other cases, this:

Note that says lawsuit, but it's not the woman suing, she's just one of hundreds of people whose stories are included in a lawsuit brought on by 17 states. But an interesting tidbit from that story: "The government has deported at least 19 parents of children that are under the age of 5 and in federal custody. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration last week to reunite children with their parents within 30 days, and within 14 days for children under the age of 5. HHS asked Friday for an extension and argued that it shouldn’t be required to reunite children with parents already deported." I would like to reiterate: they were never planning to reunite these families. They were either going to steal the children permanently or dump the children back across the border, separate from their parents in both time and space, with no particular identification and no communication, to be dealt with I guess by Mexican authorities.

[worry]

Sorry to be such a downer, folks. You know I try to include the good news when I see it though.

[EmperorMagus]

I now understand why the US has always avoided the international criminal court like a plague. They want to be able to do stuff like this with no real consequences.

[Garak]

Am I allowed to vomit? I kinda feel a need to.

[EmperorMagus]

 Garak, on 08 July 2018 - 11:31 PM, said:

Am I allowed to vomit? I kinda feel a need to.

I think that response is warranted in this case.

The more I think of this whole affair, the more worried I become.

Just to think, a century ago in the Canadian residential schools there priests were tasked with 'teaching' the children; they were supposedly men of God; they wear supposed to be 'civilize' these people. And look at the absolutely horrendous shit they did without any reservation. In comparison, ICE and their criminal accomplices are doing these separations with the intent to harm these people. Their goal is to cause as much damage as possible. I don't even want to imagine what is happening to some of those children.

[Nicodimas]

 EmperorMagus, on 09 July 2018 - 12:14 AM, said:

 Garak, on 08 July 2018 - 11:31 PM, said:

Am I allowed to vomit? I kinda feel a need to.

I think that response is warranted in this case.

The more I think of this whole affair, the more worried I become.

Just to think, a century ago in the Canadian residential schools there priests were tasked with 'teaching' the children; they were supposedly men of God; they wear supposed to be 'civilize' these people. And look at the absolutely horrendous shit they did without any reservation. In comparison, ICE and their criminal accomplices are doing these separations with the intent to harm these people. Their goal is to cause as much damage as possible. I don't even want to imagine what is happening to some of those children.

In June 2014, the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) issued a blistering press release denouncing the "needless family separations."

"This week alone, hundreds if not thousands of children will lose parents to our broken immigration system, which causes needless family separations every day. A recent report noted that more than 72,000 children lost parents to deportations in 2013 alone. Against that backdrop, President Obama and his Administration would do well in moving to provide relief to immigrant families who would otherwise live in fear of separation," FIRM wrote.

/Shrug going back to early 2k this has been happening...

https://www.denverpo...s-are-deported/

[Nicodimas]

Putin - Trump Summit moving forward

https://www.rt.com/o...mmit-hostility/

Another case of Trump trying to bring more Peace to the world.

[Tiste Simeon]

 Nicodimas, on 09 July 2018 - 01:32 AM, said:

Putin - Trump Summit moving forward

https://www.rt.com/o...mmit-hostility/

Another case of Trump trying to bring more Peace to the world.

You are utterly deluded. Or perhaps shamelessly evil? Hoping it's the first.

[worry]

That Denver Post story seems to be about parents without status being deported while their U.S. citizen children remain here. It's another sad facet of our labyrinthine, broken immigration system. It's partly why Obama was called the Deporter in Chief (some folks counter that by pointing out "the metrics changed" during his admin, skewing the relative numbers, which is true but doesn't account for everything). There are immigration horror stories as far back as there have been immigration laws here, because they were created in racism (meant literally, the first being the Chinese Exclusion Act).

All that said, it's not directly related to the current supercharged zero-tolerance policy of the Trump admin, except in the way bad is generally a precursor to worse. What I will say is that ICE was born a monster under GWB, it was a monster under Obama, and it's an unrestrained, unchecked monster under DJT.