American Politics IV: 1400 Reasons Why(A Stimulus Serial)

[The Black Forrest]

Sooooo? Your alleged experience in Philadelphia speaks for all cities?

You know I’m not disavowing personal anecdotes but people really shouldn’t look at them as a tub-full of holy truth water. Like I said in another post at best they are a sippy cup at best.

Indeed. Having worked in one city hardly makes you an expert in said claims let alone said claims speak for all cities.

[The Black Forrest]

You know I’m not disavowing personal anecdotes but people really shouldn’t look at them as a tub-full of holy truth water. Like I said in another post at best they are a sippy cup at best.

At least I'm providing some water. These guys have absolutely no experience whatsoever living in the inner cities, and are mere observants at best. If they want to prove me wrong, they can come live in the most decadent neighborhoods in cities like Newark, Chicago, and South Los Angeles, and I'll give them a tour.

Soooo you are making claims as to where we lived in our lives?

On your original claim about potheads? Time to back that up with a source. Let’s see the linky!

[Ayytaly]

At least I'm providing some water. These guys have absolutely no experience whatsoever living in the inner cities, and are mere observants at best. If they want to prove me wrong, they can come live in the most decadent neighborhoods in cities like Newark, Chicago, and South Los Angeles, and I'll give them a tour.

See, normally the procedure when debating is to prove yourself right, not challenge other people to prove you wrong.

Are you saying you're not up to the challenge?

[Vassenor]

See, normally the procedure when debating is to prove yourself right, not challenge other people to prove you wrong.

Are you saying you're not up to the challenge?

I mean if you're not going to provide evidence for your claims then we can dismiss them just as easily.

[Neanderthaland]

Time to move back to the city!

Try not stepping on the Asian delivery boy laying dead/knocked out cold in your residential entrance.

You have very specific strange fantasies.

[Ayytaly]

Are you saying you're not up to the challenge?

I mean if you're not going to provide evidence for your claims then we can dismiss them just as easily.

The evidence is just a plane/train/bus ride away.

[Vassenor]

I mean if you're not going to provide evidence for your claims then we can dismiss them just as easily.

The evidence is just a plane/train/bus ride away.

So you have no evidence. Got it.

[Senkaku]

I mean if you're not going to provide evidence for your claims then we can dismiss them just as easily.

The evidence is just a plane/train/bus ride away.

“I lived somewhere and did not like it, therefore anyone who says they also lived there and did like it is lying”

compelling stuff

[Kazumazu]

You know I’m not disavowing personal anecdotes but people really shouldn’t look at them as a tub-full of holy truth water. Like I said in another post at best they are a sippy cup at best.

At least I'm providing some water. These guys have absolutely no experience whatsoever living in the inner cities, and are mere observants at best. If they want to prove me wrong, they can come live in the most decadent neighborhoods in cities like Newark, Chicago, and South Los Angeles, and I'll give them a tour.

Not being an alt-rightist who relies on generalizations and stereotyping doesn’t make one a pampered ivory tower elite.

[Kilobugya]

The evidence is just a plane/train/bus ride away.

Anecdote is not valid evidence. Whatever you have witnessed in your personal experience is just a tiny slice of reality. Seen and tainted through your own lenses, your own pre-existing expectations and world view. Wrapped by cognitive biases because you're just an human. You just can't generalize from that to making general rules about group of people or "inner cities" in general.

And it's not a fair point to bring in a discussion because we don't know precisely what you're referring too, what details would have favored a different interpretation than yours, how much the reality have been distorted by our imperfect memories. And of course there is of the possibility that you're making things up or at least inflating them, which I'm not saying it's the case, but that we can't rule out either.

So if you want to make a point about generalities, about "inner cities" or behavior of group of persons, you'll need hard data. Statistics. Scientific studies. Formal opinion poll done with a serious methodology. Else your anecdote might illustrate your way of thinking, but cannot be considered as "evidence" and can hardly be discussed seriously, so don't be surprised if it gets dismissed.

Else it's all "the Earth is flat, can't you just see it ?" or "the Sun and the Moon have the same size, isn't it obvious ?".

[Kannap]

I mean if you're not going to provide evidence for your claims then we can dismiss them just as easily.

The evidence is just a plane/train/bus ride away.

Dunno why you'd choose to store it in a place so far away from you when the internet is a thing. But we'll be here when you retrieve it.

[Umeria]

If you don't like crime, you should be in favor of legalizing drugs. Legalization takes the substance off the black market.

[Kannap]

After crime plummeted in 2020, Baltimore will stop drug, prostitution prosecutions

Something happened in Baltimore last year. The coronavirus pandemic hit, and State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that the city would no longer prosecute drug possession, prostitution, trespassing, and other minor charges, to keep people out of jail and limit the spread of the deadly virus.

And then crime went down in Baltimore. A lot.

While violent crime and homicides skyrocketed in most other big American cities last year, violent crime in Baltimore dropped 20 percent from last March to this month, property crime decreased 36 percent, and there were 13 fewer homicides compared with the previous year. This happened while 39 percent fewer people entered the city’s criminal justice system in the one-year period, and 20 percent fewer people landed in jail after Mosby’s office dismissed more than 1,400 pending cases and tossed out more than 1,400 warrants for nonviolent crimes.

So on Friday, Mosby made her temporary steps permanent. She announced that Baltimore City will continue to decline prosecution of all drug possession, prostitution, minor traffic and misdemeanor cases, and will partner with a local behavioral health service to aggressively reach out to drug users, sex workers, and people in psychiatric crisis to direct them into treatment rather than the back of a patrol car.

“A year ago, we underwent an experiment in Baltimore,” Mosby said in an interview, describing steps she took after consulting with public health and state officials to reduce the public’s exposure to the coronavirus, including not prosecuting nonviolent offenses. “What we learned in that year, and it’s so incredibly exciting, is there’s no public safety value in prosecuting these low-level offenses. These low-level offenses were being, and have been, discriminately enforced against Black and brown people. Prosecutors have to recognize their power to change the criminal justice system.

“The era of ‘tough on crime’ prosecutors is over in Baltimore,” Mosby said. “We have to rebuild the community’s trust in the criminal justice system and that’s what we will do, so we can focus on violent crime.” She said the policy shift will enable more prosecutors to be assigned to homicides and other major cases instead of working in misdemeanor court.

The decision not to prosecute drug and nonviolent misdemeanor crimes was a huge paradigm shift for Baltimore police, Commissioner Michael Harrison said in an interview. Officers who made drug arrests saw prosecutors dismissing the charges at the jail, and so the arrests mainly stopped. Mosby said there were 80 percent fewer arrests for drug possession in Baltimore in the past year.

“The officers told me they did not agree with that paradigm shift,” Harrison said. He said he had to “socialize” both officers and citizens to this new approach. Harrison expected crime to rise. “It did not,” the chief said. “It continued to go down through 2020. As a practitioner, as an academic, I can say there’s a correlation between the fact that we stopped making these arrests and crime did not go up,” though he cautioned that the coronavirus could have had some impact. Mosby noted that the virus did not keep crime from rising in nearly every other big US city last year.

Harrison enthusiastically supported Mosby’s move to sign an agreement with Baltimore Crisis Response Inc., a private nonprofit group that provides services to people with mental health and substance use disorders. With the police, BCRI will launch a 911 alternative dispatch where calls for behavioral health issues are routed to BCRI, which can send a two-person mobile crisis team to a scene or immediately refer people to services. The state’s attorney’s office is also collaborating with three Baltimore groups that offer a variety of services to sex workers.

Social workers are “better suited to deal with these issues,” Harrison said. “For generations, we’ve been asked to be all things to all people. That never should have happened.”

The head of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police union did not return messages seeking comment.

[Sengoku Americas]

Kids are still in cages.

[Postauthoritarian America]

Biden would get slapped silly by Kim and he knows it.

Bet his responses would be the same shit Obama did, words of threats, escalate tensions over said threats, do nothing with said threats, Kim launches another missile in response, rinse, repeat.

Well we have a pretty good idea of what doesn't work when it comes to the DPRK: foolish talk about "fire and fury" followed by handing over recognition, executive summit meetings, cancelled military exercizes and whatever else Pyongyang demands in exchange for sweet fuck all on their part.

Fortunately since last January 20 the US has an administration in place that means to work with its allies in the region and others and, sooner or later, come up with some kind of an approach that might have an actual chance of reining in the Kim regime or at least getting its periodic geopolitical tantrums down to a low roar. In the meantime the US can safely ignore the standard opaque rhetoric and occasional missile launches emanating from north of the 38th parallel.

Unfortunately, whatever the Biden administration's approach or its outcome, the world will have to reluctantly welcome North Korea as a nuclear state. The Agreed Framework was the last best chance of preventing that, but it was torpedoed through a combination of Republican intransigence and Democratic disinterest.

[Postauthoritarian America]

Kids are still in cages.

No. Minors are being housed, fed and cared for while the Biden adminstration works to get them released to relatives or guardians in the US. The shambles of an administrative structure to do this left by the previous administration is being reworked and revived to accomplish the work. No children have been torn from their parents' arms and sent God knows where without even trying to keep track of them. The flows will slow down and the backlogs will be reduced because the US now has an Executive Branch interested in following the law and respecting the rights and the humanity of migrants.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Bet his responses would be the same shit Obama did, words of threats, escalate tensions over said threats, do nothing with said threats, Kim launches another missile in response, rinse, repeat.

Well we have a pretty good idea of what doesn't work when it comes to the DPRK: foolish talk about "fire and fury" followed by handing over recognition, executive summit meetings, cancelled military exercizes and whatever else Pyongyang demands in exchange for sweet fuck all on their part.

Fortunately since last January 20 the US has an administration in place that means to work with its allies in the region and others and, sooner or later, come up with some kind of an approach that might have an actual chance of reining in the Kim regime or at least getting its periodic geopolitical tantrums down to a low roar. In the meantime the US can safely ignore the standard opaque rhetoric and occasional missile launches emanating from north of the 38th parallel.

Unfortunately, whatever the Biden administration's approach or its outcome, the world will have to reluctantly welcome North Korea as a nuclear state. The Agreed Framework was the last best chance of preventing that, but it was torpedoed through a combination of Republican intransigence and Democratic disinterest.

North Korea has been a nuclear state since 2006, you're 15 years late to the welcoming party. They were never going to abide by the Framework. They had nothing to gain from doing so and the US has shown even if a rogue state tries to reform we'll still go out of our way to destroy it when possible. The consistent incompetence of the State Department and our actions during the Korean War ensured there will always be animosity there.

[Major-Tom]

Kids are still in cages.

No. Minors are being housed, fed and cared for while the Biden adminstration works to get them released to relatives or guardians in the US. The shambles of an administrative structure to do this left by the previous administration is being reworked and revived to accomplish the work. No children have been torn from their parents' arms and sent God knows where without even trying to keep track of them. The flows will slow down and the backlogs will be reduced because the US now has an Executive Branch interested in following the law and respecting the rights and the humanity of migrants.

I'm a pretty staunch Democrat, as per my job and my beliefs, but holy crap I hate this argument being used because fellow Dems don't want to criticize their guy. The pictures alone are pretty damning, these are not humane accommodations, these are not humane situations for these migrants. People can go back and forth on whether or not migrants such as these should be granted entry, but at the end of the day, the situation at the border is not pretty. Biden's press conference further signified that neither he nor his administration is particularly worried about it, so long as they can blame it on 45.

[Postauthoritarian America]

Well we have a pretty good idea of what doesn't work when it comes to the DPRK: foolish talk about "fire and fury" followed by handing over recognition, executive summit meetings, cancelled military exercizes and whatever else Pyongyang demands in exchange for sweet fuck all on their part.

Fortunately since last January 20 the US has an administration in place that means to work with its allies in the region and others and, sooner or later, come up with some kind of an approach that might have an actual chance of reining in the Kim regime or at least getting its periodic geopolitical tantrums down to a low roar. In the meantime the US can safely ignore the standard opaque rhetoric and occasional missile launches emanating from north of the 38th parallel.

Unfortunately, whatever the Biden administration's approach or its outcome, the world will have to reluctantly welcome North Korea as a nuclear state. The Agreed Framework was the last best chance of preventing that, but it was torpedoed through a combination of Republican intransigence and Democratic disinterest.

North Korea has been a nuclear state since 2006, you're 15 years late to the welcoming party. They were never going to abide by the Framework. They had nothing to gain from doing so and the US has shown even if a rogue state tries to reform we'll still go out of our way to destroy it when possible. The consistent incompetence of the State Department and our actions during the Korean War ensured there will always be animosity there.

It was the US/Korean Peninnsula Energy Development Organization side that failed to implement the Framework; whether the DPRK would have complied with its side of the bargain had it received the support it was promised in the Framweork is something we'll never know. And if you're going to charge people like Robert Gallucci and Stephen Bosworth with incompetence or worse I'm going to have to ask you for specifics as I worked for them and with their teams in a previous life and found everyone involved to be honorable, patriotic and extremely competent diplomats.

[Kowani]

Biden to split infrastructure package into two pieces-this week, an effort to improve roads, bridges and water systems. Next month, a second package will include spending on social welfare programs, healthcare, and child care.

[Kowani]

-doublepost-

[Postauthoritarian America]

No. Minors are being housed, fed and cared for while the Biden adminstration works to get them released to relatives or guardians in the US. The shambles of an administrative structure to do this left by the previous administration is being reworked and revived to accomplish the work. No children have been torn from their parents' arms and sent God knows where without even trying to keep track of them. The flows will slow down and the backlogs will be reduced because the US now has an Executive Branch interested in following the law and respecting the rights and the humanity of migrants.

I'm a pretty staunch Democrat, as per my job and my beliefs, but holy crap I hate this argument being used because fellow Dems don't want to criticize their guy. The pictures alone are pretty damning, these are not humane accommodations, these are not humane situations for these migrants. People can go back and forth on whether or not migrants such as these should be granted entry, but at the end of the day, the situation at the border is not pretty. Biden's press conference further signified that neither he nor his administration is particularly worried about it, so long as they can blame it on 45.

The accomodations are as humane as can be managed given what the previous adminstration left behind. The Biden team is working every hour of every day to make them better. It's unfortunate that conditions, both at the US border and in the countries of origin of the migrants, are no better than they are. But I refuse to equate Biden's policies and effort with the criminally inhumane, murderous policies and efforts of a xenophobic, racist, self-centered resident of 1600 Penn. Ave. aimed only at spreading more hate, division, fear and ignorance in order to advance his personal political and financial interests.

[Kilobugya]

Biden to split infrastructure package into two pieces-this week, an effort to improve roads, bridges and water systems. Next month, a second package will include spending on social welfare programs, healthcare, and child care.

I don't get that. I though the plan was to use budget reconciliation, which is limited in number of uses, and was already used once for Covid pandemic relief. Or is the plan to force the GOP to filibuster something as popular as an infrastructure bill to justify changing/killing the filibuster rules ? On something that Manchin can agree with, since his state has a dire need of better infrastructure ?

[Washington Resistance Army]

Biden to split infrastructure package into two pieces-this week, an effort to improve roads, bridges and water systems. Next month, a second package will include spending on social welfare programs, healthcare, and child care.

I don't get that. I though the plan was to use budget reconciliation, which is limited in number of uses, and was already used once for Covid pandemic relief. Or is the plan to force the GOP to filibuster something as popular as an infrastructure bill to justify changing/killing the filibuster rules ? On something that Manchin can agree with, since his state has a dire need of better infrastructure ?

I don't really think the Republicans will fight infrastructure all that much. It's something the Trump base is supportive of as well and enjoys very wide popularity nationwide afaik.

"Social welfare programs, healthcare, and child care" is dead on arrival though, and based on Biden's record so far I don't expect him to fight very hard for it.

[Major-Tom]

I'm a pretty staunch Democrat, as per my job and my beliefs, but holy crap I hate this argument being used because fellow Dems don't want to criticize their guy. The pictures alone are pretty damning, these are not humane accommodations, these are not humane situations for these migrants. People can go back and forth on whether or not migrants such as these should be granted entry, but at the end of the day, the situation at the border is not pretty. Biden's press conference further signified that neither he nor his administration is particularly worried about it, so long as they can blame it on 45.

The accomodations are as humane as can be managed given what the previous adminstration left behind. The Biden team is working every hour of every day to make them better. It's unfortunate that conditions, both at the US border and in the countries of origin of the migrants, are no better than they are. But I refuse to equate Biden's policies and effort with the criminally inhumane, murderous policies and efforts of a xenophobic, racist, self-centered resident of 1600 Penn. Ave. aimed only at spreading more hate, division, fear and ignorance in order to advance his personal political and financial interests.

I mean, frankly, I'm not just going to take the administration's word for it that they're "working as diligently as possible" to do so when the results thus far have been negligible. Yes, the previous administration was callous in this regard, but I think it is totally fair game to express discontent with the current administration's handling of the crisis when we see that little has changed in two months. Aside from the press conference this last week, there has been little talk from the Biden administration about how they plan on reforming things other than saying that they will, with little substance or tangible evidence to back it up.

In other words, you don't have to equate Biden's handling of it to the previous guy, but you shouldn't have to deflect in that capacity either.