I hope the billionaire is successful. For some reason every other courier that delivers to my address manages to bring my deliveries right to my doorstep - UPS, FedEx, DHL, Amazon, GrubHub, local pizza restaurants, etc. all manage to enter my apartment complex, locate my unit, and leave my items right at my door. The only exception is USPS, which consistently leaves a slip in my mailbox pretending that they "had no access" to my apartment, even though the gates are wide open during the daytime when they arrive. Instead of delivering my items, every time I have to drive several miles to the Post Office the next day, mask up for Covid, and wait in the long line to retrieve my packages.
Every aspect of my experience with USPS is dissatisfying - they can't be defunded soon enough.
How might a democracy suffer if those who control the common venues for voter's political dialogue are given a monopoly over setting the bounds of acceptable speech?
I think it's an extreme stretch to say that Reddit has a monopoly. Or even Reddit + Facebook + YouTube. My response would be to tell people to rediscover personal websites, mailing lists, and IRC. I'd be more concerned if ISPs, DNS providers, and payment processors start policing users' politics (which they have, recently, see the Carl Benjamin AKA "Sargon of Akkad" situation where payment processors threatened to cease business with Patreon unless they kicked him off the site). Being kicked off of Facebook or Reddit doesn't prevent someone from publishing their content. I've always told people if you want reliably get your message across, host your own website. It's not hard to pick up some basic HTML and CSS. It's only once the ability of people to publish their own messages that I get concerned.
As far as Reddit and Facebook go, understand that freedom of speech also means freedom from compelled speech. It's not just about being able to say what you want, it's about being able to not say the things you don't want to say. Making Section 230 contingent on hosting all legal content compels people so say a lot of things they don't want to say.
It's different if you live in the Beltway, attend the same cocktail parties as the federal judge you're lying to, and have children who attend the same private schools.
I presume FISA courts are in D.C., so I suppose this could be true. But judges, ADAs, Federal justice employees live in, and work closely together in, hundreds of localities across the USA. No ADA/Agent in any of them ever have stories that start with "A judge found out I (even sorta kinda) lied" that ended well for everyone involved.
In the public courts, DoJ lies with impunity. It's very difficult for defendants to escape with their freedom; holding federal prosecutors responsible for their misdeeds is the last thing on their minds.
In the FISA courts, DoJ lies with impunity. The judges occasionally throw a warrant back and tell them to try harder, but mostly DGAF, because no publicity. Now there is publicity, and suddenly a judge cares...
I am an anarchist, so I oppose all arbitrary authority. If burning will solve these problems, then let's burn. If not, let's do something else.
I dunno. We have so many things that are holding down wages right now, including globalization, automation, and changes to tax laws which make it easier for profits to go to capital instead of labor. Do we actually have good evidence that immigration has much of an effect?
The "students" were enrolling in a university that had "had no teachers, classes, or educational services" as a means to game the F-1 visa program. Their goal was to falsely claim they were enrolled in education in order to avoid deportation.
No, the students wanted to go to a US university - a reasonable thing to do, because US degrees are often more valuable than local ones.
So they went to the accreditation agency to get a list of universities to apply to.
They applied to those universities.
They got accepted by the fraudulent university.
The got their visas - after following all of the rules that they were meant to.
They arrived in the country.
They paid their fees to the university.
Once ICE got the money, they arrested all the victims of this fraud, and deported them so that it would become essentially impossible to get back the money ICE fraudulently stole from them.
What part of this is not
* fraud?
* entrapment
* theft
Especially now that the victims will have to check the “I have been deported from the US” box forever, and that alone is grounds to be rejected entry. So even if they do get the money ICE stole back, they are unlikely to ever be able to get a job for an American owned company, or that requires travel to America.
I want you to go through these steps and tell me which step taken by the victims was wrong, because you seem to be saying that the victims were committing fraud and it seems you must know something not in the article.
That doesn't seem correct. Moreover a student has no means to determine if a University has no teachers, other than verifying relevant Government databases.
According to the article:
Department of Homeland Security had said on its website that the university was legitimate. An accreditation agency that was working with the U.S. on its sting operation also listed the university as legitimate.
It's not particularly clear at least from the website (which initially looks fairly legitimate, and has a .edu domain name) that there were no classes, and it does state that they offer F-1 visas.
It's possible that some of the students had transferred from other educational institutions and did indeed want to remain in the U.S. - it's a huge matter of prestige and hope for some families to send their children to the U.S. for education.
I'm sure there's some aspect of gaming going on with educational visas; what I'm not convinced about is whether setting up elaborate (and likely expensive) schemes like this -- which end up seeming a lot like entrapment, and risk criminalizing and punishing vulnerable individuals -- is the best way to approach handling the problem.
The article should probably have lead with that. ;)
This bit though, seems kind of sick:
> ... in some cases, students who transferred out from the University of Farmington after realizing they didn't have classes on-site, were still arrested.
Sounds like they went after students who realised it was fake then transferred to a real Uni too. That's not good.
Not really. Your ancestors worked hard to improve the environment you were born in. It wasn't luck that created western civilization, it was the hard work and ingenuity of the generations that came before us.
> Sure, but none of that has anything to do with you or your accomplishments which is where luck enters the equation as to your starting place.
We didn't earn it, but we were given it by our ancestors. While it does behoove us to be generous, it is still ours by right. We also have an obligation to our descendants to preserve it for them.
What good is it working to improve the fate of our descendants, if it is only going to be taken away from them because they didn't "earn" it?
Yes you were given it, which means you were lucky in what you received. By all means try to do the same for your descendants I didn't say anything to the contrary, just that they would be lucky in the same way
It's a good system for those who believe the country is in better hands when we weigh the votes of those in rural areas and still connected to the land as more important than the votes of those who dwell in the nihilism-inducing urban centers.
Every aspect of my experience with USPS is dissatisfying - they can't be defunded soon enough.