Current Affairs General US politics (ie, not POTUS related)
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TN Toffee
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Limiting the number of challenges allowed? Good grief. I see he’s now settled on a system similar to what the NFL uses for video review. Hopefully they’ll add the fun wrinkle where you can earn a third challenge if you are successful with your first two.
oh, wait, whats this, theres a flag on the classroom floor. Moms for jesus liberty freedom are challenging the teachers decision, we'll be right back after these brief messages.
Immigrants are not associated with violent crime in the USA:
But due to Fox News and other brainwashing outlets, the perception that they do still holds:
But due to Fox News and other brainwashing outlets, the perception that they do still holds:
carolinablue232
Player Valuation: £70m
A couple of comments because data is fun.
1. What is the correlation between crime and severity of consequence. I’m not surprised at all by the first graph as I suspect the consequences are considered more severe when considered for an illegal vs a citizen
2. Most of what I hear about the border interest is less so “violent crime,” and moreso taking care of American citizens first. Embracing or at least not deterring resources going to that population when things like homelessness and food scarcity among citizens get worse is where I see the conversation going most
TN Toffee
Player Valuation: £25m
Not sure I can agree with this point, at least from my personal experience. I don’t really think your average conservative Christian would be much happier having “their tax dollars” going towards helping disadvantaged white people than having them used to help refugees at the border. Obviously there isn’t a racial element, but people who have fully bought into Prosperity Gospel aren’t really interested in helping the less fortunate, because they believe those people are at fault for their own misfortune. I’m sure some say they want that money going to help US citizens, but I feel like most of them equally enraged by “Welfare Queens” and “nobody wants to work anymore”.
I agree, certainly point 1, in part, can also be explained by the fact that if you travel >1000 miles from El Salvador (or elsewhere) at great personal peril, and happen to be lucky to reach the USA and land a job as an illegal, you are likely not gonna risk your employment by engaging in petty or violent crime.
As to your point 2, I seem to recall Trump dogwhistling to racists about mexicans, with this: "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people" which has been a recurrent theme along with other nonsense about the great replacement, as well as the idea that illegals will then become legal and vote Democrat...none of these issues have any legitimacy. I would like to hear/see more in the media about what you mention, but I'm not sure spending billions of dollars on a border wall is the answer to homelessness and scarcity among US citizens (it would also imply that Republicans give a sh1t about homelessness and food scarcity--they don't). To me, I've mostly seen just fear-mongering, scapegoating and the usual racist nonsense. A discussion about how US tax dollars are spent on its most vulnerable citizens would be a great thing to have, even if it is tied to the question of illegal immigration.
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carolinablue232
Player Valuation: £70m
Yeah, I’m not talking about trump. I steer clear of his talks and the extreme media as much as I can. He is what he is and I don’t have an interest in listening to him.
In general though, when I do read stories about immigration and foreign aid, there’s a logical question about why those dollars aren’t going towards solving our existing domestic problems. I’m no expert and it’s a complex question, but I do think it’s a valid question to ask.
TN Toffee
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100% agree with this. With so many existing problems; from homelessness, to the opioid epidemic, to lack of mental health care, and just generally being the only developed nation on earth with no basic healthcare, we have a ton of things that need fixing. All of those things take money. Needed to prioritize those and get our own house in order is probably the best argument for curbing immigration, and IMO is a discussion well worth having.
However, that argument is very rarely actually being made in the Fox News Cinematic Universe, which is what always makes their motivations feel purely racist to me. It’s never a debate about priorities, it’s just, “Brown people? In the place I live? Ewww!”
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
For healthcare especially money is not the answer - you lot pay more out of your taxes for your barely existing healthcare system than we do over here for the entire NHS (which itself is at a particularly wasteful stage of its existence).
Sort the perversion that is your healthcare industry out and you'd put billions of dollars into the pockets of the vast majority of the citizens of the US and cut taxes into the bargain.
TN Toffee
Player Valuation: £25m
True. Perhaps our healthcare might be more affordable if in addition to paying for the actual healthcare we didn’t also have to prop up an entire parasite industry of insurance companies. But what do I know?
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
… and all those drug companies gouging prices. I note that Shkreli’s conviction had no impact on anyone’s behaviour in that regard.
In the US, drug companies have patient assistance programs. They give away their medications for free to folks below certain income limits. It is a cumbersome process most folks have difficulty navigating (including health professionals).
Sounds great - Free meds for the uninsured and needy. But it's really tax breaks for the drug companies.
Just lower your freaking prices instead of creating more hoops for underserved to jump through and more work for healthcare workers.
SCOTUS may need it's own thread.
TN Toffee
Player Valuation: £25m
The entire show was brilliant, as it so often is. Obviously Thomas isn’t going to take him up on this, but good on the show for highlighting how incredibly insane it is that it’s perfectly legal for a rich, famous person to openly bribe a Supreme Court Justice.
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