I think America should stop buying drugs from Mexico, shipping them guns and promoting the violence.
Garry Webb and Michael Rupert were two amazing reporters that brought to light the reality of the CIA funded cocaine trade from South and Central America, and most people today have either never heard of them or dismiss them as crazy. The reality is the CIA still funds itself with cocaine and still causes violence south of our border for the industries that would benefit. United Fruit, Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe of Chile, School of the Americas... the list is as long as you want to make it.
This is occasionally obfuscated, but it is utterly true. There are basically two kinds of guns (of the kind you can use to enforce this "war") in the world stage: AK-like (Russian, eastern European, and Chinese included) and AR-like (MXX(X) and modified civilian, from dealers and left over from military/agency operations). The AR-like guns are extremely common in Mexico, and they obviously are all American made. There are also a lot of AK-like weapons, which are... also all American. Bare minimum, they are legally bought in the US and smuggled into Mexico.
These facts are often overlooked by claims that you can't be sure where the guns come from- 87% of the 4000 guns we can track come from the US, but that only represents 12% of the 30,000 guns seized. The real fact is the Mexican military has seized over 300,000 guns[1], and very few of those AK-like guns come from Russia or China. The overwhelming majority of those weapons had to have been built or sold in America.
In the US there's a huge amount of disbelief that we can actually be the source of these guns. I honestly think that comes from a mistaken belief that guns actually exist everywhere... America is a giant gun store, the biggest on the block, saying they need to keep selling guns because of all these guns everybody keeps buying.
There are good arguments for border patrol but this is not one of them. These guns are legal in the US and all you have to do to get them into Mexico is load them on a catapult and drive out to the middle of nowhere, or load them in one of the hundreds of small boats that make the trip. It's trivial to find guns illegally coming into mexico from a boat that can cross oceans and nearly impossible for a boat you can make in your garage. Border patrol will not solve gun violence in Mexico any more than it will solve cocaine in America.
As an unrelated thing, I find it mind boggling that immigration is still an explicitly national issue in America. Refugees and immigrants would be much better handled if they were done on a per-state basis. If California wants to let in a ton of Mexicans and issue them state-only green cards, why should Texas be able to vote to stop them? Likewise if Texas wants to exclude immigrants, why should California force Texas to give them jobs?
State-only green card programs would allow immigrants to be carefully tracked (national green card holders face deportation if their residence is not on file), gives them incentive to go from states where they aren't wanted to those where they are, and allows national money and patrol efforts to be focused where they are wanted. Immigrants can't steal Texan jobs if they live in California.
You could make a single-state work permit without internal borders. If workers from California want to spend their vacation money in Nevada, let them. You can still reject them if they apply for work in another state.
To make that effective you would have to eliminate federal birthright citizenship, or anyone could easily make their children US citizens (and then too many would).
The "state immigrants" would also have to be disqualified from all federal programs or unwilling states would still be paying for them.
And if that isn't enough to make it intractable, what do you expect to happen when an immigrant crosses into another state to commit a serious crime?
>To make that effective you would have to eliminate federal birthright citizenship, or anyone could easily make their children US citizens (and then too many would).
This is irrelevant; you can do this on a visa just as easily. Additionally, this exists for a reason even if you don't like it. If anything it reduces the incentive to do this, because you can get 99% of the benefits without doing it. Regardless all you have to do to make this birth-neutral is make it as hard to get a state green card as it is to get a visa.
>The "state immigrants" would also have to be disqualified from all federal programs or unwilling states would still be paying for them.
You are ignorant of the laws regarding legal and illegal immigration. Education, for instance, is explicitly provided to illegal immigrants. Social services almost all have a multi-year "pay-in" period. Additionally, immigrants pay more into taxes than they take out. I believe you are unintentionally arguing a strawman.
Also, those states don't get a say in what they do or do not pay for. Massachusetts pays for Alabama. In fact, Massachusetts pays for immigration control that they don't want. In reality this would be a doubly more fair distribution of federal taxes. Even hypothetically it's an insignificant change.
>And if that isn't enough to make it intractable, what do you expect to happen when an immigrant crosses into another state to commit a serious crime?
I don't understand what you're trying to say at all- this would no different from anyone else, citizen or not, committing a crime.
> This is irrelevant; you can do this on a visa just as easily. Additionally, this exists for a reason even if you don't like it. If anything it reduces the incentive to do this, because you can get 99% of the benefits without doing it. Regardless all you have to do to make this birth-neutral is make it as hard to get a state green card as it is to get a visa.
The whole premise is that some states want to make it easier than that. What is a state green card even for if it's just redundant with an existing H1B visa and doesn't increase the total number of immigrants whatsoever?
> Education, for instance, is explicitly provided to illegal immigrants.
And if the number of immigrants increases, so does the cost to the school system.
> Social services almost all have a multi-year "pay-in" period. Additionally, immigrants pay more into taxes than they take out.
Welfare is redistributive. (The programs that aren't are net harmful and do nothing but sell you your own money with bureaucratic waste and corruption-induced strings attached). Its purpose is to transfer resources from those who have more to those who need more.
The only way anyone should give more than they get is if they have above average earnings, which is true of current legal immigrants (because that's basically the criteria that gets them accepted), but not true of the typical unskilled workers who would be the apparent target of this program.
> Also, those states don't get a say in what they do or do not pay for.
Sure they do, in the US Senate. No federal money gets spent without majority approval from both houses of Congress.
To make this happen you need their approval.
> I don't understand what you're trying to say at all- this would no different from anyone else, citizen or not, committing a crime.
>The whole premise is that some states want to make it easier than that. What is a state green card even for if it's just redundant with an existing H1B visa and doesn't increase the total number of immigrants whatsoever?
Look, here's some perspective. The US annually admits:
65,000 H1B visas
70,000 Refugee visas
~200,000 nonfamily immigration visas
~675,000 undetected illegal immigrants
675,000 immigration visas total
9-11 million nonimmigrant visas
If you want to just drop a kid down so they become a citizen, it is a hundred times easier to do it on a travel visa and it always will be. Regardless of how many state green cards there are, it will always be orders of magnitude easier to get a travel visa, hop on a plane, and stay under the radar for a couple months.
The H1B visa is incomparable to a state green card on numbers alone, but it also puts this decision into the hands of a small subsection of employers, which is completely divorced from the desires of the states. It's basically different in every way.
When I said immigrants pay more into taxes than they take out that was was a statement of fact[1], not opinion. They pay the same taxes as us and see severely reduced benefits, even at very low incomes. Cut federal benefits entirely for them and require the states to pay if you like. It's a tiny problem.
As for political unpalatability over finances and scaremongering, there are still plenty of solutions. Forcing states to pay for their green cards is constitutionally tricky, but theres no reason those people need to get federal benefits. If cross-border crime and employment is a problem it would be pretty trivial to have an exclusion zone on the border of states that don't want immigrants. Immigrants wouldn't be able to have residences in that area.
> If you want to just drop a kid down so they become a citizen, it is a hundred times easier to do it on a travel visa and it always will be. Regardless of how many state green cards there are, it will always be orders of magnitude easier to get a travel visa, hop on a plane, and stay under the radar for a couple months.
That requires that you can afford to buy a plane ticket and then spend nine months not working while paying US cost of living and pregnancy-related medical expenses out of pocket, which puts it out of reach for most people in the world. An easy-to-get work visa turns the economics around.
And it's not just people who come here exclusively for that reason. More people means more children. If the additional people are unskilled laborers who make low wages and pay little in taxes, someone else has to make up the difference.
> When I said immigrants pay more into taxes than they take out that was was a statement of fact[1], not opinion. They pay the same taxes as us and see severely reduced benefits, even at very low incomes.
The article is only considering social security against itself. Someone making $20K/year is paying <$2500/year in social security tax. One child in public school is four times that in itself.
> Cut federal benefits entirely for them and require the states to pay if you like. It's a tiny problem.
Take away the federal money and the states won't be able to afford it. Or won't want to pay it. The problem isn't social security, it's schools and healthcare.
And it's not like you can just leave children to grow up without schools or let infections go untreated.
> If cross-border crime and employment is a problem it would be pretty trivial to have an exclusion zone on the border of states that don't want immigrants. Immigrants wouldn't be able to have residences in that area.
For many states (e.g. Pennsylvania, New Hampshire) a 100 mile exclusion zone would have multiple other states fully inside it.
>That requires that you can afford to buy a plane ticket and then spend nine months not working while paying US cost of living and pregnancy-related medical expenses out of pocket, which puts it out of reach for most people in the world.
Uh... It requires literally none of those things. You can get into the US on a car, train, boat, bicycle or a good pair of chanclas. You certainly don't need to be here nine months to have a kid. You can certainly find work in that time, and emergency medical care is "free". And while yes, it means more people, those people are a far cry from new immigrants and their numbers can still be limited federally. And regardless, with 12 million immigrants here already, the number of births won't be changing much any time soon.
I think you're rather missing the forest for the trees with the rest.
> You can get into the US on a car, train, boat, bicycle or a good pair of chanclas.
What does it buy you to trade one expensive ticket for another? I don't think you're seriously suggesting that walking here from even Central America is not a large impediment, to say nothing of the unconnected continents where the large majority of people actually live.
> You certainly don't need to be here nine months to have a kid.
The alternative is to get a travel visa when you're already pregnant, in which case the government can observe what you're attempting to do and deny the visa.
> You can certainly find work in that time
Working on a travel visa is illegal, therefore harder to do and lower paying.
> and emergency medical care is "free"
That implies going through a pregnancy with no access to non-emergency medical care (e.g. ultrasound), risking the life of the child.
> And while yes, it means more people, those people are a far cry from new immigrants and their numbers can still be limited federally.
Either you're increasing the number of unskilled immigrants or you aren't.
>Take away the federal money and the states won't be able to afford it. Or won't want to pay it. The problem isn't social security, it's schools and healthcare.
>And it's not like you can just leave children to grow up without schools or let infections go untreated.
Having actually looked it up, federal funding is only 13% of public education ie it would be absolutely trivial to require states to fund state green card immigrants. Likewise emergency healthcare isn't federally subsidized. Plus, it's highly unlikely that allowing this program would actually even increase the number of immigrants we have, just make the illegal ones legal.
> Having actually looked it up, federal funding is only 13% of public education ie it would be absolutely trivial to require states to fund state green card immigrants.
You're forgetting that the federal money goes disproportionately to schools in poorer areas, i.e. exactly the schools in question and the ones who can't afford to lose the money.
Well that's the other problem, isn't it? It is subsidized but the subsidies are indirect. Every time someone goes to the emergency room without paying, the price goes up for ACA-subsidized private insurance and Medicare.
And the same for the lack of non-emergency coverage resulting in people running around without vaccinations and carrying untreated contagious infections.
The only real fix would be for the state to pay for all the immigrants' healthcare.
> Plus, it's highly unlikely that allowing this program would actually even increase the number of immigrants we have, just make the illegal ones legal.
It can't not. The program makes it easier to be an unskilled immigrant. Supply and demand says if you lower the cost the quantity will increase.
If you set a quota at the current number then you aren't actually solving the problem, because more will come hoping to get one of the slots and then you have more people than slots. If you set no quota then the number goes up even more.
Title 1 federal funding is $1000 per disadvantaged student. It's an insignificant amount of money compared to state funded education. Any state funding is totally irrelevant because the states will decide that problems. Likewise healthcare is funded inside states. You're confusing the issues.
ACA premiums are a good point, as they do apply to permanent residents. Empirically this would result in decreases in costs due to preventative treatment, but politically it is a sticking point. Medicaid (not medicare, which is for retirees) is not affected.
Regardless, the point is not to engineer a perfect solution, its to make an improvement by moving the burden of illegal immigrants in red states to blue states. The burden is lowered more than would be otherwise be allowed. This would remove 90% of the burden.
>If you set a quota at the current number then you aren't actually solving the problem, because more will come hoping to get one of the slots and then you have more people than slots. If you set no quota then the number goes up even more.
The inflow of illegal immigrants is 25x smaller than the number of current illegal immigrants. The people who want to be here are already here. In economic terms the elasticity of human survival is very low. The supply is nearly constant regardless of how easy it is to get in and stay. 96% of illegal immigrants are here already. Even if it becomes twice as attractive to come into the US under this system, 92% of the people moving to blue states will already live in the US.
It is far more likely that this would be a minor attraction- the ability to get a social security card is a tiny improvement to your quality of life compared to escaping violence and poverty. It is far more likely that immigration, legal or not, will not be affected significantly. Even if this makes moving to the US 25% more attractive, 95% of immigrants will already live in the US.
> Title 1 federal funding is $1000 per disadvantaged student. It's an insignificant amount of money compared to state funded education. Any state funding is totally irrelevant because the states will decide that problems.
Total education funding per student is north of $10,000/year. Regardless of what percentage was state vs. federal, without the federal funding the state is paying the whole $10,000. That's the state's problem, but that doesn't give the state a solution. If you add a new child whose parents don't own any property to pay local property tax on, where does the extra $10,000/year come from?
> ACA premiums are a good point, as they do apply to permanent residents. Empirically this would result in decreases in costs due to preventative treatment, but politically it is a sticking point. Medicaid (not medicare, which is for retirees) is not affected.
They're all affected. If someone goes to the emergency room without paying, the cost gets distributed across everyone who does pay, including Medicare and private insurance. It doesn't matter that the person who didn't pay wasn't a retiree; the retirees and Medicare pay the resulting higher costs the same as everybody else.
> Regardless, the point is not to engineer a perfect solution, its to make an improvement by moving the burden of illegal immigrants in red states to blue states. The burden is lowered more than would be otherwise be allowed. This would remove 90% of the burden.
Figuring out how to move the burden isn't the hard part, it's how to shoulder it. California would lose the federal money, but at the same time become more attractive for the immigrants who are currently in Arizona or Nevada, which will increase the amount of services they have to provide (the whole amount, not just the federal share) even before there is any new immigration into the country as a whole. Where do they get the money?
> The inflow of illegal immigrants is 25x smaller than the number of current illegal immigrants.
The total number is derived from the inflow. If you double the inflow the result over time is to double the total number.
> It is far more likely that this would be a minor attraction- the ability to get a social security card is a tiny improvement to your quality of life compared to escaping violence and poverty.
There are many places you can go to escape violence. People come here for higher pay, which is exactly what being able to legally work most affects.
>Regardless of what percentage was state vs. federal, without the federal funding the state is paying the whole $10,000. [...] If you add a new child whose parents don't own any property to pay local property tax on, where does the extra $10,000/year come from?
That's a cost that people are very willing to pay. This system would allow states to choose exactly how many kids they want to pay for. You seem like you're trying to argue against immigration in general, which is beside the point. I just want states to be able to make that choice for themselves.
Even in the worst case, if states took in all new immigrants and paid for 100% of their public education, that would still be a better solution because it gives them the option of choice. Like I've been pointing out, it's very likely that we already pay for the education of 90%+ of the newly-legal immigrants we would experience, and the states already pay for 90% of that education. The current system forces states that don't want immigrants to pay for them- this system would reduce that 100 times. It's effectively deportation of 99% of the illegal immigrants in red states to blue states.
>Figuring out how to move the burden isn't the hard part, it's how to shoulder it. California would lose the federal money, but at the same time become more attractive for the immigrants who are currently in Arizona or Nevada, which will increase the amount of services they have to provide (the whole amount, not just the federal share) even before there is any new immigration into the country as a whole. Where do they get the money?
That's fully just an argument against immigration. You're saying that California shouldn't or wouldn't choose to accept more immigrants. I'm just saying they should be able to make that choice. Even if California suddenly decides that despite having the strongest economy in the US they are going to give up their beliefs in immigration, there is no downside to this system.
>They're all affected. If someone goes to the emergency room without paying, the cost gets distributed across everyone who does pay, including Medicare and private insurance. It doesn't matter that the person who didn't pay wasn't a retiree; the retirees and Medicare pay the resulting higher costs the same as everybody else.
So... nationalize them and make them join ACA, so that it's paid for. The current system is the one where their emergency medical care isn't paid for.
>The total number is derived from the inflow. If you double the inflow the result over time is to double the total number.
The short term -the period in which illegal immigrants are nationalized in blue states- is the only one that matters. Here's why: In economic terms we currently have deadweight loss. The political "price" of importing immigrants is too high- leading to undersupply in blue states and oversupply in red states. Once illegal immigrants are dealt with this system means that every state will be importing exactly as many immigrants as they want.
>There are many places you can go to escape violence. People come here for higher pay, which is exactly what being able to legally work most affects.
That's inaccurate. People come to America because there is nowhere else to go. We accept more people than any other area in the world- over twice as many as the EU until recently. Refugees from Syria and elsewhere come here because every other country has turned them away. Good or bad, that is a deeply historical characteristic of the US and its what most people want.
Central American immigrants fit the profile of economic migration better- the median income in America is 6x higher than in Mexico. On the other hand, America is the closest and safest country for those people, and just moving here definitely qualifies as "escaping violence". The top two countries by murder rate are Honduras and El Salvador, and of the top 20 spots 14 are in Central America/Caribbean and 3 are in South America. Even in Mexico the murder rate is 4x higher. Poor in the US can be dozens or hundreds of times safer than poor in central America.
I don't think so. What I'm thinking is that "state green cards" would let you live in one state, and your residence will be checked up on periodically. If you don't live there, or if you're found in another state without a visa, you become an illegal immigrant, and fall under the purview of the federal immigration services.
This has very little negative changes- since many/most illegal immigrants are here on overstayed visas (anecdotally, every one of the illegal immigrants I know), and because travelling from a state into inner states is so easy, it doesn't make enforcement particularly harder. Since immigrants have a readily available alternative in the states that want them, stricter enforcement of illegal immigration is much more justifiable.
All this system requires is that the federal government maintains and checks on a list of expanded green card holders (ie non-citizens) that are restricted to certain states. This system is already in place for normal green card holders. If you aren't where you're supposed to be, the feds start looking with you, with the added advantage of having a last known location, picture, description, identifiers, and information about your family and friends. It would be much easier to track people who entered legally, and justifies much stronger controls over illegal entry.
Hypothetical situation: California says "okay we'll take 30,000 Syrian refugees annually". The Feds screen, admit, and register 30,000 Syrians and tell them "Okay, you are not citizens- you can't leave California without a visa, you can't vote, and you might never become citizens. You may live and work in California as long as you pay state and federal taxes, and you can use public education and medicaid (after ten years). You will be tried for a felony if you leave California. We will check with your landlord, check on where you pay taxes, and stop by every 3-6 months to verify where you are". In return the refugees provide everything a normal green card holder does- name, identification, family, location, occupation etc.
Edit: the best argument I've heard against this is the deontological one. Essentially that the feds should be the only ones who control who enters the union, and that since they are the feds they can't contain people in one state. This argument completely disregards the possibility of the feds making deals with states.
You're right that overstays are a big problem. Now imagine how much worse it would be if every state got to choose who comes in. The federal government tries real hard to issue visas only to people who won't break the law. They're not entirely successful, but the bar is decently high.
The Syrian refugee hypothetical would have a different problem altogether. The opposition to admitting refugees isn't economic, it's about terrorism. If you can't stop a terrorist posing as a refugee from traveling from California to Texas then the only way to keep Texas safe from that person is to keep him out of the country altogether.
(To be clear, I think the worry over terrorists posing as refugees is just paranoia. But the fear is real.)
Like I said, the federal government would handle screening. States just admit a number of people, they don't vet them- the fed has primacy there because of national security and immigration control. Regardless you can replace Syrian with Mexican and probably should. I only said Syrian refugees for the sake of variety.
But again, as a national security concern it isn't a problem. As long as the number of state green cards is less than the number of visas granted, a terrorist will be much more likely to get a visa and overstay it if necessary.
How exactly are overstays a problem? It's just a person existing in a geographical area longer than the Mafia controlling it would prefer.
All this "theorycrafting" about how best to coerce people for the greater good is silly.
Blah-de-blah-de-blah the government this and the states that and then "we" make everyone do X and Y because Z and then there will be much rejoicing because people have been successfully coerced for the greater good!
Like if I show up at your door each day and force you to skip on one foot for 5 minutes, at gunpoint, that's good because you might not get enough exercise otherwise!
Anyone can see that would be crazy, but when you talk about some huge, gray abstract masses of people, then it's just fine to intervene in their lives in countless different ways.
How about "we" protect people from becoming drug addicts through a certain harmless "gateway drug" by threatening them with life-ruining prison sentences for using/possessing said gateway drug?
Oh wait, "we" tried that already. It didn't "work"[1], and actually WE had no say in any of it!
[1] Unless, of course, the real goal was to hand everyone else's money to the prison industrial complex, in which case it worked splendidly!
True, but there are some partial exceptions (Britain and France) and reality hasn't stopped people from pointing to the EU as an example of the system gone horribly awry.
Despite the lack of conditionals placed on EU immigrants, the lack of tracking and free movement, there has been very little migration from border countries that accept migrants willingly.
Actually there are Schengen border controls which are not the same thing. You cross outside of Schengen and you do border controls. Go from France to the U.K. for example -- even pre-Brexit.
It's very easy to make AK-like and AR-like guns. Even if it's correct that the majority come from the US, they certainly wouldn't have to. Many hobbyists even do this kind of thing, and it doesn't require any particularly special manufacturing equipment. My guess would be that the reason they seize more ARs than AKs is not related to the source, but because they find ARs preferable.
If somehow guns stopped flowing across the border, and cartels still wanted them, they'd be up and running in no time. I'd be surprised if they aren't already doing it, because they have other operations that require much more sophistication.
Preface: I know guns, I like guns, I am a competent machinist and I know all about lowers, gun laws, and the shovel AK. It is not easy to make guns. You need huge factories and while the cartels are theoretically capable of such things, its incomparable to US-based gun manufacture. Mexican factories can be shut down. Mexico can do nothing about guns that come from the US. They can do far less to stop it than we can do to stop drugs from coming into America, and we have been able to do practically nothing.
Manufacturing AKs requires can be done by a blacksmith, but you can't hire ten thousand blacksmiths to produce a gun each every day. You need stamping presses, metal casting, etc. and you will never make a gun as good as a factory. That's just ignorant thinking- the steel, the manufacture, the precision all matter.
>If somehow guns stopped flowing across the border, and cartels still wanted them, they'd be up and running in no time.
That's nonsense. People can make cars from scratch in their garages, but if you stop selling cars to a country they will very quickly not have any more cars. Guns are not that complicated but they aren't that simple. Zip guns have never and will never be a problem in countries with even a partially functional government.
This whole "we can't stop them from getting guns" is emblematic of the magical thinking I was referring to. The scale of the number of guns coming from the US is just way, way beyond what is practical or even possible in other countries. There are plenty of reasons we shouldn't stop guns from flowing into Mexico, but it is a real problem that would no longer exist if we didn't let US guns go to Mexico. There's just no way they would be able to get even a fraction as many guns, anywhere close to the same quality. The US is unique in the entire world for how many (and how many kinds of) guns it has[1]. It's not possible to just go to Russia or China- of the countries that have the most guns the only ones who don't buy them all from the US are Switzerland (where my family immigrated from, incidentally) and France, and they certainly aren't selling to Mexicans.
A small shop in Guadalajara was making AR-15 lower receivers, using a Hardinge VMC 600 ii CNC mill.[1] This wasn't the usual operation starting from "80% lower receivers"; they were machining the whole part from plain aluminum billets. The machining job lacks a finish pass, but probably works.
There are some surprisingly primitive yet successful gun factories in the third world.
Yes, and they only exist because the government turns a completely blind eye. If you had a choice between all guns coming from America and all guns being made in Mexico, the government can do something about the latter but absolutely nothing about the former.
I was there a while ago - it's a fun place and for a few dollars you can take an AK out behind the shack and let rip. Usually the tourists use Russian ones and they are less likely to explode on you than the local copies.
I saw him thread a muzzle and priming rounds. It looks very much like they are getting 99% done guns and just assembling them, or making stocks or converting them to select fire, which happens in Mexico already. That's just a technical redefinition of what a "gun" is. However even if Mexico was forced to make do entirely with 90% lowers, it would still be a massive restriction in volume. The number of lowers is way, way smaller than the number of guns that are made every day.
> “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
That was straight out of Nixon's aide's mouth. Openly admitting that the white conservative establishment sought ways to oppress and commit genocide on "racially inferior" demographic.
It's now Mexicans and Muslims turn. They are the new "Japs". It seems like hatred and segregation is constant driving force at unifying this country.
I've heard that quote before, but I don't really know its pedigree. Do you have a reference? (I also imagine the lack of sourcing is why you got downvoted).
The Nixon aide who allegedly said that quote died before it was published, so there is some reason to be uncertain about its veracity. It wasn't published until long, long after it was apparently said.
I find it completely plausible and it's very much in line with my political leanings to believe it, but still.
Thanks, I have certainly seen that quote before and thought it actually had been thoroughly vetted. I was not aware that the man quoted was dead.
I've been making a point in recent months to make particular note of things that confirm my own biases, as the last six months have suggested that everything I know is wrong, at least as far as people are concerned...
If anyone doubts the contents of the quoted text, they can copy paste it into Google and discover numerous websites pointing at it. That will guide you to the right source.
Possibly someone downvoted it because they fall under the same establishment or an offspring of that 'Murica generation.
edit: I don't understand the downvotes. This comment contains instructions on how to find the desired source of my original comment which was actually published and publicized in printed media. If you have trouble with Googling, I suggest restarting your computer. Otherwise, trying to deny the track record of systematic racial oppression evident long after the end of racial segregation through downvoting, you are going against history of USA.
> This comment contains instructions on how to find the desired source of my original comment which was actually published and publicized in printed media.
Then why is it so hard to include it yourself? It's poor form to make statements from sources and omit those sources. Unless you typed that from memory, you had one of those sources handy when you made the comment, so you could have included it easily, rather than make every person that read it have to determine whether they believed it as even worth researching to see if it is real or something you made up.
> I don't understand the downvotes.
> Possibly someone downvoted it because they fall under the same establishment or an offspring of that 'Murica generation.
> If you have trouble with Googling, I suggest restarting your computer.
People aren't denying anything. Perhaps your attitude is the cause of the downvotes. Regardless of why you were originally downvoted, imagining it might be because they aren't acting in good faith or are incapable of assessing your comment on its merit isn't exactly a useful way to move forward.
I've always been kind of curious how the people who fill threads with quotes work. Do they have macro hot keys? A spreadsheet of quotes? (In some cases, the first google result for a quote is a page explaining that the quote is fake, so either they have some system that avoids google or they just ignore results they don't like.)
I've always wondered that as well, not being one that remembers quotable material in enough detail to be able to put it into use easily in most cases.
For myself, usually I remember someone said something in a vague way that I think it relevant (often a prior HN submission of some sort), and I start using google and hn.algolia.com to start looking stuff up until I find the article. comment or submission I thought I remembered or I give up. My quotes are generally less quotes and more notes about what I think are interesting references to the discussion at hand. I imagine if even only one out of fifty people reading do that for the whole submission, it still might add up rather quickly.
Of the things I do reference, I generally find I'm likely to use them multiple times over a few months. As things are in recent memory, I see more connections. Sort of like after you learn a new concept you see places to use it all over. It feels like it's just topical all of a sudden, but I suspect it's mostly just that prior to learning it those times weren't strong enough to leave an impression in memory, making it feel like you didn't hear about it before when actually you did.
It then fetches the Hacker News URL, analyzes the text and finds a relevant quote that contrasts the average sentiment of the comments and then posts it.
I think it's more of a birthday paradox type of deal...you get enough people in a thread, it becomes increasingly likely that at least one knows of a long-ass quote that is relevant to the situation.
The birthday paradox might not be a good technical analogy: the number of ways to collide grows quadratically, while the number of people who can individually think of quotes grows linearly.
If someone is so concerned about sources, they can include it in the reply after the parent.
Nobody likes people who complain but won't do anything about it.
If the lack of citation bothers you so much, maybe you should include it yourself. Nobody else gives a shit in case you haven't noticed.
The original comment had no citation yet it received upvotes, contrary to your view of HN. Everyone is intimate with Google and they can follow the instructions in this thread to find the appropriate sources. If you want citation in the format you find in academic papers, that is on you, not the original commentator.
I can't help you any further but there are plenty of comments being posted as we speak that lack citations, you better get on that quick!
No, it's a forum where the norm is that if you are going to make factual assertions where you aren't the source, you should include the source.
> If someone is so concerned about sources, they can include it in the reply after the parent.
Which is just making everyone else do your work for you. It's fine, if you want to make assertions and not include sources, you'll either be ignored by some number of people, or depending on how different the assertion is to their worldview, possibly downvoted.
If you're interested in having a discussion, sources help. If you're just interested in putting your mark down and saying something because you have the urge, then they don't really matter.
There is no norm or enforcement for citations. That is your personal preference. I don't want to spend time chasing down and writing citations. Fact checking is really up to the reader. There is no rule written that says all comments must have proper citations following APA formatting.
Obviously there is a community norm. We both just experienced it. You were downvoted (although that could have been for presentation), and I was upvoted for noting that the reason you were downvoted could have been for not supplying sources. For better or worse, that's how it is here at this point in time.
> That is your personal preference.
It is my preference. I'll note that it's not my preference to the point that I'll generally downvote for it though, and I didn't in this case. Other people do though, and there seems to be a general support for requesting that people supply evidence for claims. That's what makes it a community norm.
> I don't want to spend time chasing down and writing citations.
And I don't want to either. And other readers don't want to either. As a trade-off between one person, who presumably already knows that the reference exists and has some idea where to find it and every other person who reads it, it's obvious that the efficient answer is for the person who is using it as evidence to also include a link to the source when they use it.
> There is no rule written that says all comments must have proper citations following APA formatting.
The norm that the person making claim bears the burden of persuasion in supporting that claim with appropriate evidence and/or reasoning (citations being a means of referencing pre-existing examples of the former) existed for centuries before Wikipedia.
Garry Webb and Michael Rupert were two amazing reporters that brought to light the reality of the CIA funded cocaine trade from South and Central America, and most people today have either never heard of them or dismiss them as crazy. The reality is the CIA still funds itself with cocaine and still causes violence south of our border for the industries that would benefit. United Fruit, Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe of Chile, School of the Americas... the list is as long as you want to make it.
This comic sums it up: http://imgur.com/a/Wtt6H