All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[aja_christopher]

"900 migrant children separated from parents despite court order, ACLU says"

"The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Tuesday said the federal government continues to "systematically" separate migrant children from their parents, accusing the Trump administration of violating a court order prohibiting officials from separating families unless in extraordinary circumstances where the children are in danger.

In a court filing in the U.S. District of Southern California, the ACLU said the administration has forcibly separated more than 900 migrant children in U.S. custody from their parents since one of the court's judges, Dana Sabraw, ordered the government to halt its controversial "zero tolerance" policy in June 2018. Along with instructing the administration to reunite all separated families, Sabraw decreed that families should not be separated "absent a determination that the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child."

The plaintiffs in the litigation, a group of migrant families represented by the ACLU, said the administration is violating Sabraw's ruling, and asked the court to hold an in-person hearing "as soon as possible" and to issue more detailed guidance about "permissible criteria" for the government to separate families.

"The government is systematically separating large numbers of families based on minor criminal history, highly dubious allegations of unfitness, and errors in identifying bona fide parent child relationships," the filing states.

The ACLU denounced a "concerning feature" about the recent and ongoing separations: About 20% of the cases involved children under the age of 5.
In its 218-page filing, the ACLU said the administration is separating families because of minor crimes like traffic violations and fraud offenses, unsubstantiated doubts about parentage, "questionable" allegations of gang affiliation against parents, safety and space concerns in family detention facilities and other "unjustified reasons."

Some of the separations, the ACLU alleged, occurred because of allegations and arrests in the parents' records, not criminal convictions. Others were because of offenses that transpired "years ago."

In one example cited by the plaintiffs, a father was separated from his sick 1-year-old daughter after a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer determined he was "neglectful" for waiting until she woke up to change her diapers. In another separation, officials faulted a parent for his daughter's malnutrition, but the ACLU said her "health issues were due to her community's deep poverty, not parental neglect."

One father who faced no allegations of criminality or unfitness was separated from his three daughters because of an HIV diagnosis. Other parents, the ACLU said, were separated from their children after officials initially did not confirm lineage, but later did.

Another father named Adolfo from El Salvador was separated from his two children after the U.S. government accused him of being a gang member and of committing crimes in Honduras. But the man's attorney filed a background check that showed another person with a similar name and date of birth had a criminal history.

During an emotional encounter captured by CBS News in May, Adolfo reunited with his son and daughter after 184 days of being separated...

The plaintiffs asked the court to bar the government from separating families "without objective and concrete evidence that the parent is unfit or a danger to the child."

The 900 families cited by the ACLU were separated by the government between Sabraw's order in June 2018 and last month. Before Sabraw handed down his ruling last summer, the administration separated 2,600 migrant children from their parents or legal guardians under its "zero tolerance" policy, which President Trump was forced to rescind amid a massive public uproar."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-...der-aclu-says/

[numberthirty]

Honestly, this debate is going to be a hard act to follow.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

If you go back to the Coates piece that really kicked off this modern round of reparations talk, he does actually frame it as creating a system for living people screwed by policies that are part of the legacy coming down from slavery. (There is a specific case brought up in the piece about a situation where black homeowners were being forced into a situation where they were technically renting their own property until inevitably falling behind on payments to leeches taking advantage of racist zoning and banking. It amounts to a specific act of theft from a specific individual. And there's tons of that crap out there.)

No one seems to be addressing it that way though. (Coates has said in an interview that Warren contacted him at the time to ask quite a bit about the piece well before it was something that could win you points in a Democratic primary, if that matters to anyone.)

I get that. I'm talking practice, not theory. We haven't in this country seen any form of reparations that didn't directly go to the people that were effected. When we did it with Japanese Americans in camps, we gave it to the people actually in camps. The other reality is half these proposals on this stage that Delaney and Hickenlooper are calling unpopular actually are very popular in the polls, reparations you would have to pass through with massive unpopularity from pretty much every group that isn't African American. So when we say "oh these things are kooky and unrealitic" we should also note that on this particular issue it has been unpopular virtually everywhere on the planet. Not that we shouldn't maybe do it, but that's something that will take a generation of Congress and a President who will say to their constituents "I know you all hate this, but it's the right thing to do".

I say try it, but have other bullets to go to like economic stimulus packages in minority communities targeting areas that face discrimination to get those money/reparations there in a way you can sell it.

[InformationGeek]

Despite my scorn and strong distaste for the awful, awful idiot that is Marianne Williamson, this has been a fairly normal debate. Still nice to see those exist.


Yes, I will treat her as an idiot and a horrible person because I'm not letting her become the next Jill Stein.

[numberthirty]

Despite my scorn and strong distaste for the awful, awful idiot that is Marianne Williamson, this has been a fairly normal debate. Still nice to see those exist.


Yes, I will treat her as an idiot and a horrible person because I'm not letting her become the next Jill Stein.

Yep. This was an instructional manual on how to politely step on each other's allowed time.

[Tuck]

I get that. I'm talking practice, not theory. We haven't in this country seen any form of reparations that didn't directly go to the people that were effected.

The form of reparations Coates described is directly to the people who were affected. Racist policies enacted and enforced by the government have living victims who can make specific cases. He took the sort of mushy idea of the echos of the effects of slavery down through the years and tied it to specific policies, specific acts and crimes, and specific living victims. It took the vagaries and turned it into specifics. Individuals with potential legal standing to present documents and testimony about specific acts to seek recompense specific to each case.

[Tendrin]

Reparations are a good, moral goal to have and I support them whole heartedly.

Unfortunately, the nuance in application Coates talks about gets lost in easy racist demagoguery over the notion of 'undeserving blacks' taking money from 'hard working whites'.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The form of reparations Coates described is directly to the people who were affected. Racist policies enacted and enforced by the government have living victims who can make specific cases. He took the sort of mushy idea of the echos of the effects of slavery down through the years and tied it to specific policies, specific acts and crimes, and specific living victims. It took the vagaries and turned it into specifics. Individuals with potential legal standing to present documents and testimony about specific acts to seek recompense specific to each case.

Totally get that. I don't think we are going to get there that way. I think maybe you could have a program to make the government liable for discriminatory properties and have lax civil suits or something to get that money to people who directly faced discriminatory policies. Or maybe on the federal level have commissions in each state that review cases and award money based on some type of proof of financial loss.

That said, reparations in the way Marianne Williamson described them, are going to require several generations of a shifts in the way the world has felt about them forever, or a Congress and President with the ability to do something their constituency in aggregate won't support. You aren't going to sell a $200billion-$500billion plan.

[numberthirty]

Someone should have walked right up and kicked Chris Matthews in the shins while he was interviewing Warren just now.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

National Cathedral On Trump’s Racist Comments: ‘Have We No Decency?’

Faith leaders said Tuesday that the president’s history of racism and his recent remarks about Baltimore are “a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists.” This is interesting. Trump has leaned on evangelicals for support, if he slams the National Cathedral (because he can't handle ANY level of criticism), does he risk alienating holy rollers? Meanwhile....

**********

Trump Again Insists He’s The World’s ‘Least Racist Person’

Shrugging off allegations of bigotry, the president said in a C-SPAN interview that “everybody’s called a racist now.” Once again, I wonder why Trump continues denying the obvious, especially when admitting he's a racist most likely WON'T hurt him? White supremacists and the brainless lemmings who make up his base would cheer him, the GOP would look the other way like they've done since Inaguration Day while blacks like me weren't going to vote for him anyway. To paraphrase something Trump himself said three years ago, what the hell does he have to lose?

**********

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs Trump Tax Return Bill

Under the law, presidential candidates will need to release their tax returns in order to appear on the California primary ballot. I'd love to see other states follow California's example, but I suspect that probably won't happen, definitely won't in states with Republican governors.

**********

Video Shows Mississippi Cop Grabbing Black Motorist By The Neck During Violent Arrest

“Get your f**king hands behind your back,” a Clay County highway patrolman shouted at Robert Morton before throwing him to the ground. Man, that was shocking!

**********

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Gives Mitch McConnell A Semantics Lesson After His McCarthyism Gripe

The freshman lawmaker has a few words about McConnell’s leadership skills. Sounds like Moscow Mitch doesn't like his new nickname. Boo freaking hoo! Meanwhile, good for AOC for schooling the old bastard.

[PwrdOn]

I get that. I'm talking practice, not theory. We haven't in this country seen any form of reparations that didn't directly go to the people that were effected. When we did it with Japanese Americans in camps, we gave it to the people actually in camps. The other reality is half these proposals on this stage that Delaney and Hickenlooper are calling unpopular actually are very popular in the polls, reparations you would have to pass through with massive unpopularity from pretty much every group that isn't African American. So when we say "oh these things are kooky and unrealitic" we should also note that on this particular issue it has been unpopular virtually everywhere on the planet. Not that we shouldn't maybe do it, but that's something that will take a generation of Congress and a President who will say to their constituents "I know you all hate this, but it's the right thing to do".

I say try it, but have other bullets to go to like economic stimulus packages in minority communities targeting areas that face discrimination to get those money/reparations there in a way you can sell it.

This idea that it'd somehow be unfair to pay out reparations to anyone who wasn't directly enslaved is just another lie that moderates want to tell themselves in order to keep on doing nothing. The generation that was positioned to directly compensate freed slaves never even entertained the idea of doing so, and in fact saw themselves as the wronged party for being deprived of valuable assets, finding all sorts of loopholes to continue exploiting black people in ways that continue to the present day. The fact that our society will apparently never be ready to have a mature conversation on this topic is far more an indictment on our own moral failings than the policy shortcomings of reparations.

[jetengine]

This idea that it'd somehow be unfair to pay out reparations to anyone who wasn't directly enslaved is just another lie that moderates want to tell themselves in order to keep on doing nothing. The generation that was positioned to directly compensate freed slaves never even entertained the idea of doing so, and in fact saw themselves as the wronged party for being deprived of valuable assets, finding all sorts of loopholes to continue exploiting black people in ways that continue to the present day. The fact that our society will apparently never be ready to have a mature conversation on this topic is far more an indictment on our own moral failings than the policy shortcomings of reparations.

And lets be honest. America wastes so much fucking money on its military it can afford to slash it by a fifth and deal with reparations.

[worstblogever]

Someone should have walked right up and kicked Chris Matthews in the shins

I don't need more of a qualifier. Matthews has run about a decade past his shelf date as a presence on cable news. He did a hell of a lot of good during the Bush administration, for sure, but he's not done anything to advance a dialogue since.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

This idea that it'd somehow be unfair to pay out reparations to anyone who wasn't directly enslaved is just another lie that moderates want to tell themselves in order to keep on doing nothing. The generation that was positioned to directly compensate freed slaves never even entertained the idea of doing so, and in fact saw themselves as the wronged party for being deprived of valuable assets, finding all sorts of loopholes to continue exploiting black people in ways that continue to the present day. The fact that our society will apparently never be ready to have a mature conversation on this topic is far more an indictment on our own moral failings than the policy shortcomings of reparations.

It’s not about unfairness, it’s just that it’s never happened here where a form of reparations didn’t go to the people directly effected who were still living. Now that several generations passed, it’s alot harder to parse who will and won’t get it. There’s going to be a lot of difficult conversations if you approach it from purely a reparations from slavery perspective. The first being how much compensates. The second being how directly descended do you have people? The third being do you do it for merely this generation and then say if you were born afterwards you are **** out of luck?

Fairness would have been exactly what you said going the other way. But that obviously didn’t happen. So now to get there you have to deal with other questions.

That’s not even the biggest hurdle with it. Quite frankly there’s a reason why Williamson is the only one going full tilt on reparations and nobody with chance is.

Ideally we would have just calculated how much each slave was owed due to their forced labor and given it to them. But ideally we wouldn’t have had segregation and continued discrimination. Tbh for me it just comes down to this, until you get politicians who are willing to go against the popular opinion, it just won’t happen. That’s just reality, it historically and globally is always deeply unpopular and opposed by virtually every group not getting compensated

[worstblogever]

My take on DNC Debates Act Two, Scene One last night...

It was Warren, Sanders, and a bunch of also-rans. And both of them were respectful to each other, and slapped down the rest easily like Tim Ryan or John Delaney when they flailed while trying to going on the attack. Their attempts to escape the 0-1% polling bracket with a biting line only made the front-runners look better.

And as far as Bernie goes... I'm relieved to see one thing in particular. This was the first time I saw him on a debate stage and he didn't speak dismissively towards a woman or person of color in... awhile. It's been awhile. He needed a night like tonight, and it was good to see him not go on the offensive against Warren, especially because they agree on so much.


I think the leaders are definitely going to thin out the herd here soon. You're likely looking at a Final Four of (in no particular order) Biden, Warren, Sanders, and Harris.