Here is another monstrous report related to the treatment of children in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection under the Obama Admin:

In 2014, the ACLU Border Litigation Project and partner organizations filed an administrative complaint with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on behalf of 116 children who had reported abuse while in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody. These complaints detailed, for example, denial of medical care; verbal threats; physical and sexual abuse; and inhumane detention conditions.

https://www.aclusandiego.org/cbp-child-abuse-foia/


I can't recall any public marches, or sensationalized moral outrage from US liberals.

ant wrote:
https://www.aclusandiego.org/cbp-child-abuse-foia/


I can't recall any public marches, or sensationalized moral outrage from US liberals.

Could have sworn the ACLU was a liberal organization funded liberals who are outraged at things like this.

But since you can't recall any marches or moral outrage there must not have been any.

Litwitlou wrote:

ant wrote:
https://www.aclusandiego.org/cbp-child-abuse-foia/


I can't recall any public marches, or sensationalized moral outrage from US liberals.

Could have sworn the ACLU was a liberal organization funded liberals who are outraged at things like this.

But since you can't recall any marches or moral outrage there must not have been any.

Don't make me go Vatican Archives on you!!
Cause.., you know,, I will !!

ant wrote:

Litwitlou wrote:

ant wrote:
https://www.aclusandiego.org/cbp-child-abuse-foia/



Cause.., you know,, I will !!

Okay, that was funny.

ant wrote:

I think most U.S. liberals mainly react with disgust to the exploitation of illegals by employers and human trafficking.

The Obama Administration was abhorrently negligent with the care of children and human trafficking.

Yes, I agree this was disturbing negligence. It also helped me to understand where the "child separation" business came from, which the Trump Administration said from the beginning was left over from Obama Administration decisions.

Evidently the number of unaccompanied minors, as well as the number of asylum-seekers without political basis, was growing enormously. Nobody was ready, and you can bet the Congress had not provided sufficient funds for dealing with them. Even so, better methods could have been found for dealing with the cases carefully.

I barely heard about it at the time, having been in Africa and a follower of the NY Times, not the Washington Post, but I suspect the difference in outrage was only partly the usual "gotcha" game against Dear Leader. In fact his m.o. is to claim to be proud of harshness, and to claim they deserve the harsh treatment they get.

I suspect you would agree that there is a significant difference between screwing up by trying to do too much with limited resources and claiming that mistreatment is just.

ant wrote:Also, I think there are many conservatives who "react with disgust" to the exploitation of illegals and the like.

Yes, for sure. I was not meaning to imply that they don't. The point I was trying to make is that in general progressives do not see immigration as good (or particularly a threat - the analysis does not back up the "competition" story, and one recent story went systematically through the claims of burden to show that in fact undocumented immigrants are net contributors to the government coffers, even before you take into account that they retire without the possibility of Social Security and Medicare). Their main point of contact with the issue is to worry about the abuse that enforcement opens them to. If the enforcement systematically cracked down much harder on employers than employees, with, say, triple damages for wage confiscation or other exploitation due to vulnerability, there would be much better treatment of undocumented workers.

But catch a Republican advocating such "regulation" of business? Not likely.

ant wrote:Here's a related snoops fact check:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-o ... affickers/

One learns interesting stuff going on Snopes. Looking at the same page, I learned that Trump had not, in fact, claimed he would run as a Republican because the voters were stupid. I had never bothered to check on that one. Oops. My bias is showing.

Harry wrote;

The point I was trying to make is that in general progressives do not see immigration as good

I'm not even sure we can define what the label "progressive" actually means and how its political values are distinguished from "the left"

Is progressive "John" more liberal with his views on immigration than a progressive like yourself, or my very blue Hilary Clinton fan and colleague at work?

"John" not only favors immigration, he wants ICE abolished. "Abolish ICE" has been a rally cry that is growing in popularity. This past July, progressive Democrats introduced a Bill in The House to abolish ICE.

My colleague supports left leaning policies, is a registered democrat, and views immigration as a good thing, as apparently do most democrats:

Among Democrats, 84% said they think immigration makes America better.

https://qz.com/1186976/in-24-years-amer ... migration/

to show that in fact undocumented immigrants are net contributors to the government coffers, even before you take into account that they retire without the possibility of Social Security and Medicare).

What generation of immigrants and at what level (fed/state/local) are they positive contributors to the economy?

So, an "undocumented" immigrant would mean a first generation migrant with no citizenship papers legalizing his/her residency.

First generation immigrants are "more costly" than second gen children, according to this report:

In terms of fiscal impacts, first-generation immigrants are more costly to governments, mainly at the state and local levels, than are the native-born, in large part due to the costs of educating their children. However, as adults, the children of immigrants (the second generation) are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population, contributing more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native-born population.

Over the long term, the impacts of immigrants on government budgets are generally positive at the federal level but remain negative at the state and local level — but these generalizations are subject to a number of important assumptions. Immigration’s fiscal effects vary tremendously across states

(emphasis mine)

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpin ... rdID=23550

Immigration is not a resounding positive economic impact for the entire nation. At local levels it can be burdensome.

But catch a Republican advocating such "regulation" of business? Not likely

I agree

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Immigration is not the problem. Welfare and food stamps are not the problem. Unemployment is at record lows — not the problem. There has been a bull market seemingly since the Bush years. The market is not the problem.

The problem is the distribution of wealth in the U.S.

The problem is the billions upon billions of dollars in accounts in the Cayman Islands and all over the Caribbean. And the billion and billions more in Swiss and Belgian and European banks. Not a penny in taxes is paid on that money. The problem is dummy corporations and holding companies. The IRS has neither the money nor the manpower to fight this in any effective way — whereas as billionaires can hire the best lawyers and pay them to stall and obfuscate until the government cries uncle.

The poor do not have your money. They have next to no money and people are working in record numbers. We can sit here and debate immigration, and welfare moms, and Medicaid and cutting off funds for NPR, and NEA, and NEH, and PBS. But it's chump change.

The country is headed for trillion dollar deficits. You think the poor have a trillion dollars? Oy.

Ask yourself, the President is handing out tax cuts, inflation is under control, people have jobs and the market is booming. So why is his approval rating rarely above the mid-40s? Follow the money. Illegal immigrants don't have your money. The 1% has your money. So while these discussions can be fun, they do not address the real problem. The points are moot.

This is not new. Who can tell me the name of Janis Joplin's back-up band? Free cookies to be had here.

ant wrote:I'm not even sure we can define what the label "progressive" actually means and how its political values are distinguished from "the left"

Oh, I didn't mean to distinguish. I mean if asked directly I would give some vague notion of the connotations I perceive, but I didn't mean to switch groups but to put together a general perspective. It certainly is true that progressives are not monolithic, any more than "evangelicals" or "conservatives" or "Trump voters."

ant wrote: "Abolish ICE" has been a rally cry that is growing in popularity. This past July, progressive Democrats introduced a Bill in The House to abolish ICE.

Well, it may score them a few points with their base, but even the much-maligned Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer are not going to back such a notion.

ant wrote:My colleague supports left leaning policies, is a registered democrat, and views immigration as a good thing, as apparently do most democrats:

Among Democrats, 84% said they think immigration makes America better.

Okay, there's a difference between saying the immigration we have is positive, (which I would agree with and I am not surprised most democrats do too,) and saying that more would be better, (which many democrats would not support, including me.) I was not clear with my statement, but that's what I had in mind: most progressives probably don't support significantly increased immigration or abolishing ICE. No doubt plenty of democrats would, but I don't think it is anywhere near a majority.

ant wrote:

to show that in fact undocumented immigrants are net contributors to the government coffers, even before you take into account that they retire without the possibility of Social Security and Medicare).

First generation immigrants are "more costly" than second gen children, according to this report:

In terms of fiscal impacts, first-generation immigrants are more costly to governments, mainly at the state and local levels, than are the native-born, in large part due to the costs of educating their children. However, as adults, the children of immigrants (the second generation) are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population, contributing more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native-born population.

So lets think about that a minute. As long as you think of the education of their children as a cost of first-generation immigrants (not necessarily illegal immigrants), they look like a drain on state and local governments. But over the lifetime of those children, who are second-generation, they are "among the strongest contributors". So we are really talking about investing in their children, not draining the coffers to support them. Which we already knew.
From the same report:

Over the period 1994-2013, the net fiscal contribution (federal, state, and local combined) of first-generation immigrants was, on average, consistently less favorable than that of native-born generations. Annual cross-sectional data reveal that, compared with the native-born, first-generation immigrants contributed less in taxes during working ages because they were, on average, less educated and earned less. However, this pattern reverses at around age 60, when the native-born (except for the children of immigrants) were consistently more expensive to government on a per-capita basis because of their greater use of social security benefits.

Immigrants have had lower education than native-born for some time now, with the gap increasing significantly as NAFTA pushed many Mexican farm workers off the land in the late 90s (due to imports from mostly-subsidized U.S. agriculture) and a large wave of immigration went on through around 2005 or 2006. But it turns out even though they contribute less in taxes, they are not a net cost. They are just less well off than the people they are coming to join. But I think we already knew that.

And then those kids we invest in grow up.

During the same 1994-2013 time period, second-generation adults — the children of immigrants — had, on average, a more favorable net fiscal impact for all government levels combined than either first-generation immigrants or the rest of the native-born population. Reflecting their slightly higher educational achievement, as well as their higher wages and salaries, the second generation contributed more in taxes on a per capita basis during working ages than did their parents or other native-born Americans.

Immigration’s fiscal effects vary tremendously across states

Well, that's certainly an important point. Of course all three of the most-affected states, California, Texas and Arizona, are doing pretty well economically. Nevada has had a little more trouble dealing with the education needs, but they have made use of Teach for America and other federal support and seem to have coped.

The N.A.S. study is helpful, though I gather it focused on documented immigrants because they are easier to learn about. Hopefully they got some information about the undocumented.

There is another interesting piece about how the Trump administration insisted on putting a negative spin on a study of the effects of refugees.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/p ... trump.html

And the article I was mainly going on was drawing from both these studies, plus something on crime rates:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... a7fb33f9b5

After re-reading carefully I'm not sure my original statement is quite supported by all this, but it still strikes me as a reasonably accurate picture of what these are saying. The main questions are about the interpretation of education costs and about how worried we should be about uneven effects on particular cities and states.

Beto O'Rourke's senate campaign in Texas has raised 100 million dollars. It turns out that much of the money has been going to fund the caravan of migrants. Project Veritas struck again, with a video showing O'Rourke's campaign workers willfully committing felonies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJCG_JckSF8

The pre-paid cards that O'Rourke's people talk about giving to the migrants are addressed in the piece below.

Soros Partners With Mastercard To Hand Out Money To Migrants

Billionaire investor George Soros has repeatedly denied rumors that he is helping to finance the migrant caravans making their way up from Honduras and Guatemala through Mexico with the ultimate aim of reaching the US.

But that's about to change, as the "Open Society" founder - who famously financed much of the opposition to Trump SCOTUS pick Brett Kavanaugh - is now partnering with Mastercard to hand out money (in the form of 'investment capital') to migrants, refugees and "others struggling within their communities worldwide," according to Reuters. Through their partnership, Soros is effectively providing open financial support for migrants and refugees seeking to enter the US and Europe.

The partnership between Soros and Mastercard, which they are calling Humanity Ventures, is the result of a pledge that Soros made in September to spend $500 million to address "the challenges facing migrants and refugees."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11- ... y-migrants

Soros finances the destruction of governments (Egypt, Libya), and now he's paying violent, military-aged men to illegally cross our border. His son Jonathan owns Friends of Democracy, basically a riot company. In 2015 Jonathan seized on the death of a black man to try to start a riot in Baltimore. The plan was to fan the riot into a larger event that would eventually lead to nationwide rioting. He was attempting to implement the Bill Ayers / Barack Obama dream of race war in America. Documents about the Baltimore incident are below:

news.unclesamsmisguidedchildren.com/fri ... ore-riots/

What else?

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton overthrew the elected president of Honduras in 2009, and now we have traumatized Hondurans wandering through the wastelands of Mexico, with the idiot followers of Clinton having NO IDEA WHY THE HONDURANS ARE HOMELESS.

salon.com/2016/04/15/hillary_clinton_is ... _as_libya/

Leftist followers of Clinton/Obama are dangerously uninformed. And they may be in for another wake-up call in the upcoming election. Obama looked like he was on the verge of a coked-up hysterical breakdown in his last speech. I like the video below. It analyzes his body language:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57CLKiBuf9s

Trump now has the conservative majority he needs on the Supreme Court. Hopefully after the election he will declassify the memos connected to Obama spying on the Trump campaign. That will become the biggest domestic crime ever committed by a US president, one for the history books. And Obama knows his ass is on the line. If the Dems don't win the House of Representatives and throw some roadblocks in Trump's way, then Obama may have to flee the country.

Tomorrow is the last full day before the election. I just hope we don't have any Soros false flag killings at the border.

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Keep Calm and Resist

Winter is Coming.
11/06

P.S. So is Mueller.