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Sorry but “Joe Biden Is Bad” vs “arguing against mischaracterization, talking positively about what the administration is trying to do” is a really loaded way to present the conversation. I admit it is hard for me to feel generous, given how much scrutiny is already paid to criticism of the administration in this forum vs blandly positive statements of support I was intending more to be mildly provocative than put words in his mouth though. Maybe I should have finished my coffee first
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# ? May 15, 2021 15:38 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 07:29 |
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misadventurous posted:Sorry but “Joe Biden Is Bad” vs “arguing against mischaracterization, talking positively about what the administration is trying to do” is a really loaded way to present the conversation. I admit it is hard for me to feel generous, given how much scrutiny is already paid to criticism of the administration in this forum vs blandly positive statements of support I don't think anybody wants or expects you guys to shower Biden with praise. Hell, none of us are doing that. The particular mischaracterization we are — or at least I am — pushing back against is "Joe Biden has done nothing about immigration" or its functional equivalent "Joe Biden's accomplishments have been merely symbolic." And the particularly inflammatory behavior of barging into this thread with any negative press coverage one can get their hands across, with the byline or subtext of "wow, how come nobody is talking about this?!?" It has been two pages and four days since I spent more than an hour researching and compiling expert resources on this, and to date, everyone who is "left of liberal", to use your own label from your previous post, has ignored it. Willa, sexpig (RIP), pentacoastal elites, ytlaya... there hasn't even been an attempted takedown of even one of the sources I posted. Pentacoastal elites has kinda sorta acknowledged said post in passing, and claimed that no one is ignoring it, but that is of course false. Look, in my opinion, if the goal is to have productive conversations in this thread, rather than arguing in circles and exchanging accusations of bad intent, the guideline should be this: you're one hundred percent free to criticize the Biden administration about a failing, but you need to research and explain the reasons and contributing factors behind that failing, rather than automatically and immediately attributing it to malice or incompetence or both. Specialized D&D threads exist to help readers and participants understand those subjects better and gain different perspectives and insights. This is what has always set this forum apart from other forums that also talk politics. This is why "Biden is not withdrawing Trump's job offers to immigration judges!!!" fails to meet this threshold. It is why the mods objected to it: not because it is false but because it is an almost zero effort means of furthering one's preconceived notions about Joe Biden. So yes, there should be some threshold of effort in these D&D threads. If one feels disinclined to meet that, well... there are other forums for low-brow bashing of liberals and the current liberal administration.
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# ? May 15, 2021 17:05 |
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1. Do your standards for productive conversations apply to all presidencies, or just this particular presidency? Do they extend beyond presidencies to other elected offices? And for both major political parties? 2. If you have a direct question to me or other posters, maybe frame it with our quotes & ask it, instead of posting walls-of-text that are hard to wade through. Are there particular questions within your posts that have asked questions to the people you're calling out, or are we expected to sift through every source & point out their fallacies about HHS's control of concentration camps being different from CBP's concentration camps? Once again: It's hard to challenge or support sources on this topic bc of the lack of transparency for media and lawyers. You can post all the hagiographic coverage you want, but if it boils down to "you have to take our word for it that things are better" I'm not going to. 3. This is why I would like a mod to elaborate on his statement, rather than participants. eta: I'm happy to take this to QCS if mods would prefer. Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 18:56 on May 15, 2021 |
# ? May 15, 2021 18:53 |
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Come on, willa. Complaining about "walls of text that are hard to wade through" — you can't be serious. You realize you're in D&D, surely? Or maybe you took a wrong turn somewhere? Yes, you are indeed expected to read the sources that people painstakingly research and summarize for you. That is what "meet effort with effort" means, and it is an integral part of good faith debate. You shouldn't need a mod to tell you this.
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# ? May 15, 2021 20:36 |
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Willa Rogers posted:1. Do your standards for productive conversations apply to all presidencies, or just this particular presidency? Do they extend beyond presidencies to other elected offices? And for both major political parties? Why do you keep ignoring what Thorn wrote?
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# ? May 15, 2021 20:50 |
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I mean, props to Biden for not arresting as many people under ICE as Trump & Obama did, and for increasing visas after being pressured to do so, but that has nothing to do with kids being held in concentration camps while barring media & legal access, which was the thrust of my objections to Biden's immigration policies and one I didn't see countered in any of the sources provided. eta the graf for which I asked for clarification: GreyjoyBastard posted:or to not argue against mischaracterizations and not talk about what positive things the Biden admin is trying to do, which sorry, that's not an acceptable norm to establish in this thread I've pretty much focused entirely on the kiddy kamps itt rather than other aspects of immigration policy. I wanted to know whether I am supposed to counter that with the positives Biden's done on immigration in order to follow a mod's directive that it's "not an acceptable norm" to not do so, although I haven't seen that directive used for any other topic or politician in dnd, and I find it to be a baffling request. Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 21:06 on May 15, 2021 |
# ? May 15, 2021 20:55 |
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Willa Rogers posted:
on a reread, i see how it may have been unclear the argument in that post (or at least the conclusion as I read it) was basically: other people shouldn't be allowed, or at least should be discouraged, from posting positive things about Biden you are not required to post positive things about Biden, but other posters are allowed to Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 21:45 on May 15, 2021 |
# ? May 15, 2021 21:39 |
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Thanks for the clarification! I got confused between your seeming to say "balance things out or else" and TWT's demand that I react to posts of his that weren't responsive to the particular matters I was discussing (ie: kiddy concentration camps).
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# ? May 15, 2021 21:44 |
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Willa Rogers posted:The disagreement is because "out of sight, out of mind" is not an acceptable excuse for handwaving unvetted third parties from running the top-secret HHS concentration camps, and due to the banning of media/lawyers from seeing the kids we have no idea whether HHS concentration camps are an upgrade from the CPB concentration camps. Can you explain why you're calling HHS facilities "concentration camps"? One of the defining features of concentration camps is that they lock people up for an indefinite period (or, in some specific and notorious cases, until they're murdered on an industrial scale). HHS facilities are specifically geared towards getting people out and into some kind of community support, which would seem to go against that definition. They seem more like refugee camps - sometimes lovely ones, to be sure, that absolutely need to be improved - rather than concentration camps.
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# ? May 15, 2021 22:09 |
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The reason is because "concentration camps" sounds more alarming and morally concerning than temporary housing and processing facilities.
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# ? May 15, 2021 22:11 |
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Indeed; "pop-up sites" has a much warmer feel to it, like a sudden music venue or an aromatic food truck. But given reports that children are being denied food & told to poo poo in plastic bags, I'm gonna stick with the nomenclature that most suits it.
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# ? May 15, 2021 22:19 |
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Willa Rogers posted:Indeed; "pop-up sites" has a much warmer feel to it, like a sudden music venue or an aromatic food truck. Can you explain why you think that? What you're saying here boils down to "I'm calling these places concentration camps because I want to" with an extra layer of snark about pop-ups on top. The US needs to do better, and build better facilities with better services. But, "concentration camp" does not mean "place with inadequate services," and honestly, this sounds a lot like the experiences that people I know who have spent significant chunks of their childhood in refugee camps have described. It's not acceptable and we need to do better. But, despite that, it's still far from indefinite imprisonment, and it's a step in the right direction from older policies that deliberately broke apart families and worked to keep kids from accessing family in the US.
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# ? May 15, 2021 22:42 |
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Willa Rogers posted:Indeed; "pop-up sites" has a much warmer feel to it, like a sudden music venue or an aromatic food truck. The purpose of the HHS facilities is to disperse the children to sponsors/guardians as fast as they can. Their purpose is, quite literally, the opposite of a concentration camp. The fact you've jumped to calling the HHS facilities concentration camps, when a month ago only the CPB camps where getting referred to as such, on the basis of nothing but a scattered handful of reports about bad conditions at a few of them (bad being no where near the "concentration camp" bad scale either), seemingly only because the administration managed to clear them out of the CPB camps seems to betray it's purpose as nothing else but to rile people up. This is really loving obvious from the fact you attempt to jam the term as many times as you can into every post you make such that you sound like Giuliani's presidential campaign talking about 9/11. Jarmak fucked around with this message at 23:34 on May 15, 2021 |
# ? May 15, 2021 23:31 |
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Space Gopher posted:DHS might help him out, but there simply aren't a ton of DHS agents who are trained to hurt people directly (instead of just shredding complaint forms), and a lot of them have day jobs doing things like running immigration concentration camps. Space Gopher posted:Of course, they're doing very little of that right now, because the agency is diverting so much budget and effort to Kiddie Concentration Camps. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? May 16, 2021 00:45 |
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Jarmak posted:The purpose of the HHS facilities is to disperse the children to sponsors/guardians as fast as they can. Their purpose is, quite literally, the opposite of a concentration camp. The fact you've jumped to calling the HHS facilities concentration camps, when a month ago only the CPB camps where getting referred to as such, on the basis of nothing but a scattered handful of reports about bad conditions at a few of them (bad being no where near the "concentration camp" bad scale either), seemingly only because the administration managed to clear them out of the CPB camps seems to betray it's purpose as nothing else but to rile people up. This is really loving obvious from the fact you attempt to jam the term as many times as you can into every post you make such that you sound like Giuliani's presidential campaign talking about 9/11. Regardless of their purpose kids are in their way too long and past the statutory limits set on that behavior. The federal govt warehousing children is not a state we want to be in, abuse and neglect is a certainty.
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# ? May 16, 2021 00:53 |
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How are u posted:The reason is because "concentration camps" sounds more alarming and morally concerning than temporary housing and processing facilities. Technically, all concentration camps are temporary housing and processing facilities.
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# ? May 16, 2021 01:01 |
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Seems like Biden is working hard on the issues. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/15/hhs-covid-stockpile-money-border-migrants-488427 Biden admin reroutes billions in emergency stockpile, Covid funds to border crunch quote:The Department of Health and Human Services has diverted more than $2 billion meant for other health initiatives toward covering the cost of caring for unaccompanied immigrant children, as the Biden administration grapples with a record influx of migrants on the southern border. Seems to me like a good faith effort to make life better for those kids.
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# ? May 16, 2021 01:47 |
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Judakel posted:Technically, all concentration camps are temporary housing and processing facilities. I think "dispersing people is the opposite purpose of a concentration camp" is a reasonable basis to not call them concentration camps. I also think that "we're housing a racial underclass in inhumane conditions, but for less time than the overt fascists were, and trust us, it's for good reasons. requests to verify our claims will be denied" is also cold comfort and a reasonable basis to explicitly draw a link between ICE camps and HHS ones by use of the term.
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# ? May 16, 2021 02:08 |
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-migrant-children-government-facilities-sponsors/quote:Overcrowding at these facilities has since eased and the number of unaccompanied children in Border Patrol custody has plummeted by over 90%, falling below 600 this week. However, there are still more than 20,000 unaccompanied children in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which houses them until it can release them to sponsors, who tend to be family members in the U.S. I'd been having a little trouble finding data, especially on how long kids were staying in ORR facilities. Iirc 29 days is within the statutory maximum, and cutting it by a third is a good start. also decidedly not concentration-campy Apparently Mayorkas testified before congress on border stuff this week, too. Not seeing anything terribly interesting, or at least not anything terribly interesting that isn't reported in the above article etc. otoh, there's a time article on him that is at least informative about how he wants himself and his DHS to be perceived: https://time.com/6048061/alejandro-mayorkas-dhs-profile/ quote:t was around 4 a.m. on April 28 when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas jolted himself awake. As he lay in the dark, his mind locked onto the decision he had made the day before to limit the Trump-era practice of arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants who show up at local courthouses for legal proceedings. quote:One of Mayorkas’ first law-and-order steps has been getting his own house in order. In March, he dismissed the department’s entire advisory council, concluding that some of its members were there to advance political agendas rather than offer policy expertise. He followed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s lead in launching an internal investigation into domestic extremism within his own department. Other than reading about reports of social media profiles, he says, he has “no greater information” than what’s in the public domain about this threat, but he says he has an obligation to “ensure that we do not have violent extremists within our ranks.” On May 11, the department announced it was forming a Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships to further target domestic extremism. some reason for optimism here imo Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 04:21 on May 16, 2021 |
# ? May 16, 2021 04:17 |
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Not to Kramer in or backseat mod, but I've been lurking this thread and would like to make a suggestion based on experience with education reform initiatives... I think when posters are pointing out that kids pooping in bags, not having access to education, or other lovely circumstances are correct that it is bad and it shouldn't happen. And I think most people want some version of reform to immigration. So, like how about discussion go in those terms. Because from my experience when you want to have actual productive conversations about reform, there are three elements: -- Recognizing our current reality -- Constructing a vision of what should happen -- Considering what would actually have to happen to get from the current reality to a world that matches the intended vision I think what kinda happened in this thread is that people pointed at some definitely lovely things that we should all agree should not be happening, but framed the conversation in terms of how this is evidence that Joe Biden is bad or make insinuations that people don't care about the immigration issue anymore because they're hypocrites blinded by partisanship. And then other people sort of push back with evidence that Biden is doing a better job with immigration. And nobody actually talks about the kid pooping in the bag. And you end up with these sort of meaningless diction based debates around what constitutes a concentration camp. I think when you have a reform based conversation and really try to anchor things in those three lenses I discussed before then you can have these discussions: Biden does something well meaning or positive towards immigration: (Vision) Is this actually servicing the longterm goals we should be working towards? Is this effective? Has this been done before? There is some sort of border crisis that leads to the Biden admin taking on a bunch of short term but questionable measures: (Current Reality) What is going to be the impact of these decisions? What are the underlying issues leading to this crisis? Do we have any control over preventing events like this in the future? An article comes out about an awful thing in our immigration system: How does this need to change? How can that change happen? Because right now, it just seems likes people are trying to leverage this topic into arguments they're more comfortable having. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 21:20 on May 22, 2021 |
# ? May 16, 2021 04:28 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-migrant-children-government-facilities-sponsors/ Thank goodness for the Biden administration🙏🏾. It almost feels weird having a government that's staffed by people who actually care about their jobs, want to do good and are doing everything they can to move the country forward 😔. That's how bad our state of affairs was. The number of migrants looking to cross the border has increased to a two-decade high, and there are huge numbers of unaccompanied children in that figure as well. To say it is an incredibly difficult and complex situation would be an understatement. I also believe Kamala is on the right track wrt illegal immigration. The US has to work with Mexico/South/Central America to help those countries stabilize their situation so that people don't feel the need to leave their homelands to try and make the dangerous journey here.
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# ? May 16, 2021 04:55 |
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Timeless Appeal posted:Not to Kramer in or backseat mod, but I've been lurking this thread and would like to make a suggestion based on experience with education reform initiatives... I absolutely, one hundred percent want to know about awful instances like kids having to poop in plastic bags. Such conditions are atrocious and unacceptable. But I also want to understand why that is happening. Are these refugee centers/concentration camps/whatever bursting at the seams to such an extent that there are no restrooms available in a timely manner? Is it because the guards are being abusive/neglectful towards these kids, even when restroom facilities are available? Is there some other problem, like broken plumbing that cannot be serviced due to covid or whatever? How widespread is the issue? Did a volunteer see a one-time occurrence of a kid pooping in a bag and blow the whistle, or are we talking about cells full of plastic bags with poop in them? I think one thing everyone can agree on is that the Biden administration needs to start allowing qualified access to the facilities for attorneys as well as well-known, vetted media organizations. I have no idea what is stopping them from doing that — whose job would it be to give such an order? Someone at DHS? HHS? Would it be determined at the facility level? Can Biden just issue an executive order along those lines and have it go into effect immediately?
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# ? May 16, 2021 04:56 |
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How are u posted:Seems like Biden is working hard on the issues. Yeah I read that article. It doesnt solve the main issue. An imprisonment strategy built on a conservative and timid approach towards immigration. Let families thru. Dont let the fed govt corral them. Return back to a pre Clinton approach to immigration.
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# ? May 16, 2021 06:46 |
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Shageletic posted:Yeah I read that article. Biden is already letting families come pick up their children. What are you talking about?
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# ? May 16, 2021 06:55 |
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Vorik posted:Biden is already letting families come pick up their children. What are you talking about? Title 42 bars parents from entering the US due to the "covid pandemic". There is a temporary exception for their children, who are now left to fend for themselves in a notoriously unkind and abusive massive bureacracy. Biden refuses to rescind the Trump era rule, like many other rules made during that time. e: one interesting development, Biden waived background checks for people that work in the expanded camps quote:The Biden administration announced that in March it would open eight new emergency sites across the Southwest, adding 15,000 new beds, more than doubling the size of its existing system. https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-waives-fbi-checks-caregivers-new-migrant-facilities In the meantime extensive background checks and ID'ing must occur for any relatives coming to claim unattended children in the camps. Shageletic fucked around with this message at 16:44 on May 16, 2021 |
# ? May 16, 2021 16:39 |
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With facility staff you can make sure never is actually alone with kids via good policies (which is a baseline good policy for group homes, speaking from direct experience) and the other you are placing a ton of trust into because they will be the full time guardian of a kid with near-zero supervision and the potential for abuse is infinitely higher. That part at least is things functioning more or less as they should given the challenges, since zero supervision is emphatically far worse than some slapped together supervisory stuff. Still better to background check the gently caress out of everyone obviously. My impression currently is that they're now mostly experiencing the wild inhumanity that is the baseline with the American foster system
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# ? May 16, 2021 18:28 |
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These are undocumented children, trying to meet up with their relatives who are more likely than not illegal as well. There are literally thousands of catalogued abuses by HHS staff against children https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/immigrant-children-sexual-abuse.amp.html Let the parents come in with their kids and it would obviate so much suffering. And Biden doesnt do that......why?
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# ? May 16, 2021 20:09 |
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One of my major hopes with all this is that maybe the absolutely pathetic state of the entire umbrella of hhs (both state and federal) will be more broadly recognized and it can get even 1/10th of the resources and attention it needs to not be the absolute shame on our entire country that it currently is.
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# ? May 16, 2021 20:13 |
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An interesting CNN story about Harris trying to clarify her role with immigration. Definitely not a flattering story for myself as I did fall into misunderstanding Harris's job, but more so the administration as it implicitly states Harris's team viewing the border situation as an overall bad look. On the plus side, I am glad that the administration is focusing on root causes. It gets buried at the end, but quote:Harris has stressed that her role is to address the "root causes" of migration beginning in the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico, rather than the "symptoms" of it manifesting at the border, which are being addressed by the Homeland Security secretary. Without a diplomatic push in those countries, "we are just in a perpetual system of only dealing with the symptoms," she said in April. So, potentially some interesting stuff coming up? I don't know. I have mixed feelings about the state of our relationship with our neighbors that so much inquiry has to be done before any coherent policy can be formed. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Jun 1, 2021 |
# ? Jun 1, 2021 13:09 |
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It feels like we like we already know this. There was a huge mass of people fleeing Central America due to catastrophic flooding and earthquakes due to climate change, and rampant lawlessness due to corrupt political agents the US has fostered and encouraged for decades, and it all builds a foundation for cheap labor that we've relied on for ever.
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# ? Jun 1, 2021 13:15 |
I'm having trouble believing the anti-busing figure of the obama-biden admin, which wanted to keep Haitian wages below 40 cents an hour, really is going to improve the material conditions of these countries but let's hope
Ruzihm fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jun 2, 2021 |
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# ? Jun 2, 2021 17:37 |
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Y'all ready to hear about some extraordinary cruelty? https://www.dallasnews.com/news/pol...immigrant-kids/ quote:Gov. Greg Abbott orders Texas child-care regulators to yank licenses of facilities housing immigrant kids
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# ? Jun 3, 2021 01:28 |
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Been awhile since this thread was updated. Let's see how things are going. From an article from the BBC ydayquote:At a US border detention centre in the Texan desert, migrant children have been living in alarming conditions - where disease is rampant, food can be dangerous and there are reports of sexual abuse, an investigation by the BBC has found through interviews with staff and children. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...5-VnUGH&cf=1 Months into the much vaunted shift to HHS control has only resulted in a shift of responsibility to contractors, with a very much non surprising maintaining of suffering for children who are just coming here to have a better life. Its also important to note that the BBC had to smuggle footage and testimony out of the camp as the HHS and the Biden administration is stopping journalists from investigating the camps properly.
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# ? Jun 24, 2021 14:40 |
I couldn't find the source but I recall reading somewhere here on the forums that oversight by lawyers and not media would be sufficient. That seems to be not the case
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# ? Jun 24, 2021 22:35 |
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There were alot of claims bandied around. That HHS would protect these kids better than the CPB, that Biden has this, that the material conditions would improve on their own, that this was all temporary, etc etc
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# ? Jun 25, 2021 01:12 |
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we had a thing from attorneys posted that included some fort bliss stuff, but it was in usnews not here this is a more thorough look at fort bliss and it seems rather worse than that reporting. where the really unpleasant poo poo was at a contractor and the fort bliss reporting was "kids are not provided with the resources they need and are bored and it's terrible for their formative years", which is Bad but not this "average of 31 days" is also, while technically an improvement, still unacceptable since pretty early on i've been beating the drum of reducing the length of stay - moderately trash conditions in, say, CBP/ICE camps can be remedied by getting people out within 24 hours conversely, even mediocre conditions kinda suck if they're in them for 90+ days edit: articlepost and discussion starts here in usnews https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3965530&pagenumber=410&perpage=40#post515680624 Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Jun 25, 2021 |
# ? Jun 25, 2021 02:00 |
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Shageletic posted:There were alot of claims bandied around. That HHS would protect these kids better than the CPB, that Biden has this, that the material conditions would improve on their own, that this was all temporary, etc etc The other thing we said was that the administration can only do so much without additional funding from Congress.
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# ? Jun 25, 2021 02:13 |
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Slow News Day posted:The other thing we said was that the administration can only do so much without additional funding from Congress. Another thing that came up in USNews is that one of the counterproposals was "well house them with a decent charity", and then that interdenominational church group hosed up catastrophically and it wasn't noticed until, charitably, shortly before the attorneys were due to visit. uncharitably, they were reviewed because of the pending visit and HHS went "oh poo poo"
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# ? Jun 25, 2021 02:15 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Another thing that came up in USNews is that one of the counterproposals was "well house them with a decent charity", and then that interdenominational church group hosed up catastrophically and it wasn't noticed until, charitably, shortly before the attorneys were due to visit. Is that this facility? https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/immigration/article/Questions-continue-about-the-group-housing-16101097.php Do you have a story with more details?
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# ? Jun 25, 2021 07:00 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 07:29 |
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Slow News Day posted:The other thing we said was that the administration can only do so much without additional funding from Congress. The govt doesnt have to hold these kids in lice infested covid factories. They could just do what what the Obama admin was starting to, release them to their families without putting them in a tent city. E: Imprisonment is actually much costlier than having a social worker oriented guardianship. A cost argument is new to me. It doesnt make sense to me at all
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# ? Jun 25, 2021 15:20 |