Banned And Banished
Journalist and writer Celeste Fremon — known as commenter "Rosedog" on this blog"”has turned in yet one more of her moving, insightful feature stories on those who have fallen between the cracks of the modern American foundation.
Writing in Sunday's Los Angeles Times Magazine , she artfully tells the story of "Javier" — a thirty year old Mexican born father and husband whose entire family has suffered the ingrained irrationalities of the U.S. immigration apparatus.
Thanks to a law passed in the mid-90's, and signed into law by Bill Clinton, legal residents of the United States are now routinely deported after having served time for felonies. No matter they have done their time and that they are legal and their spouse and children may even be U.S. citizens —as is the case with Javier.
I also applaud Fremon for taking on a hard case. Javier is no angel. He's clearly made some Herculean screw-ups and bad choices in his life. That's why he did a three year prison stint. But isn't that enough? What sense does it make to add onto that sentence forced separation from one's own family? The nut graphs:
It used to be that if a green-card-carrying U.S. resident committed all but the most serious crimes"”murder, rape, large-scale trafficking in drugs or firearms"”he or she paid their debt to society and went on with life.
In 1994, Congress added to the list a few more crimes that triggered deportation. Still, in many cases immigrants could apply for a 212(c) waiver, which allowed a judge to decide their fate. People who hadn't done something hideous and showed evidence of having turned their lives around usually got to stay.
Then in 1996, conservative lawmakers grafted a last-minute rider onto a must-pass bundle of legislation called the Omnibus Appropriations Act that would fund the entire federal government for 1997. The rider was known as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. "When it was being proposed, I and others said it was terrible," recalls Democratic Congressman Barney Frank. "But often members of Congress don't listen in advance." Moreover, voting against an appropriations bill would mean temporarily shutting down the government, thus the legislation sailed through both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton"¦.
Criminal deportation numbers shot up after the law passed"”a total of 591,301 between 1996 and 2004, with 85,583 in 2004 alone (up from 32,526 in 1995)"”the overwhelming majority for nonviolent offenses.
Before any conservative starts mouthing off about how wonderful this horrid, little law is"¦you might want to go back and read all of Fremon's article. When evidence started mounting about how heartlessly stupid this law was, liberal Congressman Barney Frank introduced a measure to remedy it. The Republican Senate killed it a first time. And then when it was making headway a second time, the nationalist backlash to September 11th blocked it again. Then conservative California Congressman Darrell Issa of all people, himself from an immigrant family, indicated he might come on board and give the fix a bi-partisan boost. He was last seen wavering. But there's still some hope that this national embarrassment can be taken off the books. We can do better than this.
September 18th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
In France they call this phenomenon — sending immigrants to the slammer and then deporting them — the “double peine”, or double punishment, and regard it, outside leather-bootstrap conservative circles anyway, as a violation of fundamental human rights. Either deport or punish, goes the logic, but not both.
It says something about the United States in the post-9/11 world that this question now seems almost trifling next to torture, extralegal detentions, restrictions on access to lawyers etc etc. But it is no less significant for that, especially since it is likely to affect many orders of magnitude more people over time than the depredations of Guantanamo et al. Does anybody even care? I’m glad Rosedog does.
September 19th, 2005 at 6:53 am
Marc, I wonder why you would automatically assume that a conservative would like this “horrid little law.” Perhaps most do, perhaps some liberals/progressives do.
Celeste’s article is touching and as you implied, points out the absurdity of absolutes. In this case the absolutes supported the law, not necessarily justice.
Perhaps we need to re-write many of our laws to support more justice and fewer absolutes.
September 19th, 2005 at 8:14 am
As a social worker for a Latino social service organization in the mid-90′s, I remember very clearly the almost immediate fallout from Clinton’s signing the 1996 IIRIRA act–lots of worried people, worried employers, and isolated cases of unreasonable deportation. I have to wonder, though, how the irrational strictness of this law differs any from the 3-strikes law my Californian legislators embraced–several times, in fact. Moreover, wouldn’t moderating IIRIRA’s deportation standards simply mean more criminals in our already-overcrowded penal institutions here? “Double peine” aside, without amendment of 3-strikes, I don’t see how a relaxing of deportation laws assists in tackling the bigger problem of increasingly expensive overcrowded prisons, which waste taxpayer money on excessive jailtime for minor drug offenders.
September 19th, 2005 at 8:16 am
Fremon’s excellent piece reminds us yet again (how many times will it take before it sinks in?) that, to our detriment, we’ve put immigration law into the “fantasy” box instead of the reality-based, cost-benefit box.
Think for a minute about tobacco and alcohol. They kill hundreds of thousands each year and extract a phenomenal financial cost from society. But we don’t ban them, we just tax and regulate and live with the damage. That’s reality-base, cost-benefit legislating. We apply it when the human behavior involved is so widespread and powerfully driven that we know, deep down, we can’t “control” it, we can just channel it a bit. (We tried banning alcohol during Prohibition, and we would do well to remember what a bust that was.)
In the fantasy box you’ll find most of our (other) drug laws, resembling, in cost and effectiveness, Prohibition. The “War on Drugs” is endless, because the human desire to get high is pretty strong, but what a boon to law enforcement, prison builders, weapons manufacturers, etc.
Human migration is an equally powerful drive, and the “costs,” unlike the social and financial costs of tobacco and alcohol, are difficult to measure. Yet, by and large, we treat immigration like a hard drug, banning it to all but the fortunate few who manage to wangle a “prescription” (a visa,) leaving 10-11 million others out in the cold to fend for themselves.
There are bills pending in Congress that would move immigration law out of the fantasy box into the reality box, but sometimes I fear our desire to scapegoat and punish is stronger than our desire for justice.
September 19th, 2005 at 9:33 am
Great article. Thanks.
GM, I’m glad to hear you call for more judicial discretion. One of the major tactics of the law and order crowd (generally conservative in disposition if not always Republican) has been to strip judges of sentancing power. It’s led to a lot of trouble in our justice system as severe punishments are meted out unfairly and irrationally. The lesson of this piece, and much of Rosedog’s work, is that there are very few “Bad Guys” and many more people who make bad decisions. Let’s trust our system to deal with them individually.
September 19th, 2005 at 10:09 am
Yeah, I heard about a similar case a few years ago. An elderly Jewish man, with a criminal past, but who had also been a civic leader in his town and helped create a booming industry, was deported from the US and because of his record, even had problems settling in Israel. It broke my heart to see pictures of this poor older man being treated this way, and I swore that no one again should ever suffer like Meyer Lansky had suffered.
Okay, I realize conservatives were told in advance that their views were beyond the pale (what is this, the Robert confirmation?) so I’ll just throw it back to you good people: what exactly is the positive case for allowing known felons to remain in the US? Seems to me that this is a classic goo-goo point of view, that even those who come to America and abuse their presence here by committing crimes shouldn’t suffer the obvious consequences of doing so and lose their spot to someone who hasn’t broken our laws. Why shouldn’t we choose who gets to stay and who doesn’t, based on their conduct?
September 19th, 2005 at 10:46 am
A Korean friend of mine had the same experience. After he served time, as an 18 year old, after 9/11, INS revisited his case, and attempted to deport him. His mother and sister live here, and both are legal citizens. His father died here, and he has no living relatives in Korea, and he doesn’t speak Korean. Yet, the government wanted to deport him for a felony (breaking and entering, done before 18, but pled out after 18), after he served his time. It took three years, and a damn good attorney, and lots of money, but INS finally granted him his waiver.
September 19th, 2005 at 11:23 am
The short answer, mgmax, is that people like you believe that punishment and vindictiveness are the proper responses to most problems. Others don’t.
Frankly, there’s very little that can be said in response to your opinion.
September 19th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
Marc Davidson: mgmax, is that people like you believe that punishment and vindictiveness are the proper responses to most problems.”
I guess you are not aware of a very real principle called reinforcement. One of the reasons so many of us speed for example, is that we are seldom caught and when we are, the fines aren’t a big deal most of the time. Hence, what punishment there is isn’t enough to deter the behavior.
Properly applied, punishment, and I’m not necessarily talking drastic stuff like life for stealing a car or 20 years for a little dope, deters inappropriate behavior. Your comment was overly harsh in my opinion and indicative of a mindset not willing to discuss issues or arrive at agreements.
September 19th, 2005 at 12:22 pm
Good backgrounder here: Beyond the Border Buildup: Towards a New Approach to Mexico-U.S. Migration By Douglas S. Massey
http://www.ailf.org/ipc/policy_reports_2005_beyondborder.htm
or here for graphics:
http://www.ailf.org/ipc/infocus/2005_beyondborder.pdf
September 19th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
GM,
Maybe I was somewhat harsh. But clearly the law in question is not meant to modify behavior but rather to punish people whom we don’t like and permanently remove them from our society. This is not like a speeding ticket or, for that matter, most other types of discipline that we’re familiar with. This one has no redemptive or rehabilitative function. It’s more akin to capital punishment, and its only purpose is to indulge the self-righteous. I’m sure you see the difference.
September 19th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
clearly the law in question is not meant to modify behavior but rather to punish people whom we don’t like and permanently remove them from our society
Well, yeah. Why is this anything but a good thing? You seem incapable of mounting any counterargument (but are copiously blessed with disgust at my very existence, apparently). Do people born in other countries have an inalienable right to come to America and stay as long as they please? Unless you believe that (with the Wall Street Journal and other extreme free traders and anti-union folks), then already we’re making distinctions as to who gets to benefit and who doesn’t. Why should criminals benefit? Can you answer that?
Mind you, I am perfectly happy to accept that this law and its application may be less than perfect, even very much less. And that now and then bureaucracy nails somebody who’s reformed. But that’s not the argument you’re mounting– your argument is simply that I’m abhorrent for not agreeing that felons should be allowed to remain in America, to continue to live in the immigrant neighborhoods, preying on their fellow, more honest and hardworking immigrants who do play by the rules and contribute to American society. That is classic goo-goo liberal, pre-Broken Windows, “Soft America” (let’s see how many other bestsellers I can name) thinking. And your inability to defend it with anything other than your disgust is telling.
September 19th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Thanks so much, Marc, for posting this. And thanks to all for the comments. (Hey there, Cenizo!!)
Mgmax….Did you actually read the full piece before pronouncing it “classic goo-goo?” Just curious.
If you did read it, you’d see that the article deals with people who were brought to the US as young children, become long-term legal residents, run afoul of the law once (more often than not, as young adults), pay for their crimes by going to prison, and don’t commit further crimes—yet are deported, frequently leaving behind American citizen spouses and children. The articles questions if this is a fair or a wise policy. Or to put it anther way, does the policy as it presently exists result in a net gain or a net loss for the American public as a whole? After months and months of looking at the issue, I came to the conclusion that there is clearly a net loss. If you can demonstrate otherwise, I’d be interested in hearing the specifics of your argument. Frankly, I don’t think you can do it.
By the way, although I focused on one case, I ran across scores of others that were, if anything, far more sympathetic and egregious. Yet I specifically selected this particular case because of its sheer ordinariness. I didn’t want to stack the deck with some exotically tragic story—and, trust me, there are plenty of ‘em out there.
GM. Certainly, we can all agree that criminal justice needs to contain a deterrence factor. (Hell, PARENTING needs to contain a deterrence factor!) Yet, in so much of our American justice system, we’ve gone well past a “what works†model, and simply become punitive—and the cost to all of us is enormous.
I think you said it well above: “…we need to re-write many of our laws to support more justice and fewer absolutes.†Yep. Exactly.
September 19th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Ooops. That was me.
September 19th, 2005 at 2:31 pm
Okay Mgmx, I’m not sure whether you’re actually advocating a particular position, but let’s for the moment assume you’re suggesting that policies that remove criminals from American society are a good thing and your support for this law (though you’ve so far remained evasive) is based on this principle. I ask you this question: Do you have a sense of justice? Do you belive that we should run our society with an eye toward fairness or merely a utilitarian approach?
If the former, then I think you’ll quickly fall into the camp that sees very little distinction between a man born in the U.S. who commits and crime and one who comes to the U.S. as a five year old. There is no real difference between these two men as the second man had no more choice coming to the U.S. than the first man chose to be born here. Ethically, then, we should not treat them differently.
If the latter view, then this law is merely an excuse to deport those that law enforcement identifies as criminal elements. That’s very hard line stance against the idea of rehabilitation. Too bad Australia’s not still open for business.
September 19th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
Rosedog, I have not read the article yet, but you’ll notice that in my post above this I stipulated that the law may be poorly applied, excessively draconian, etc. None of that would surprise me but I am quite deliberately NOT engaging with the single case reported by you.
Rather, what caught my eye are statements like this:
“the ingrained irrationalities of the U.S. immigration apparatus… legal residents of the United States are now routinely deported after having served time for felonies… When evidence started mounting about how heartlessly stupid this law was… What sense does it make to add onto that sentence forced separation from one’s own family?”
Now THAT’S a goo-goo talking. So is this:
“The short answer, mgmax, is that people like you believe that punishment and vindictiveness are the proper responses to most problems. Others don’t.”
So is this:
“Do you have a sense of justice? Do you belive that we should run our society with an eye toward fairness or merely a utilitarian approach?”
God, this IS the Roberts confirmation hearing. I repeat my questions in searh of non-goo-goo, non-anecdotal answers. Accepting that the law may be poorly applied now, accepting that INS is generally a slow, heartless bureaucracy, what are the positive arguments by which felons should, routinely and presumptively, be allowed to remain in the US rather than returned to their home countries? Why shouldn’t we choose non-felons over felons for the benefits of living and working here?
September 19th, 2005 at 3:14 pm
What an asshole! Read the article! And stop complaining about “goo-goo.” I don’t even know what “goo-goo” is, other than that you don’t like it.
So, Mgmax, if you think the law is poorly applied and not that it is bad law, if you are prepared to make that distinction, I’m sure you can tell us what the law is. No? You don’t know?!!?! I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. Stop complaining and READ THE ARTICLE!!!
September 19th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
Mgmax…. I’m NOT reporting on a single case. The point of the piece was to examine the law itself, not one person’s sad story—which you’d know if you #$%^&@ read it. (Again, although it uses the tool of a single person’s tale, that’s purely a journalistic device to get to the underlying issue in a way that’s hopefully illuminating and not deadly boring.) That’s why Marc specifically urged people to read the article before advancing opinions that are…. uninformed.
If you’re going to take the time to comment, why not read the damned thing you’re commenting on? Seriously. You might still feel as you do, but at least you’d be somewhat more knowledgeable regarding the law you’re so actively defending.
September 19th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
mgmax is absolutely correct. And though I do believe we need to look at laws written with a thought to justice, we also need to make decisions as to how we will apply our laws. Just as we need to be compassionate at times, we also need to recognize that some folk need to be delt with harshly, and yet those same folk may have stories just as sad as Rosedog’s protagonist.
I work with addicted kids. some as young as 12 or 13 and I am not afraid to ask for draconian laws that deal with the scum that dealt it knowing it would be impressionable kids buying it. Yet, let us imagine that Rosedog’s protagonist was that dealer. What would you suggest then?
September 19th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
“What an asshole!”
Ah, at last a thoughtful, reasoned response to the questions I’ve raised.
Rosedog, sorry if it’s NOT your article which especially interested me, but rather the attitudes on display here which made no distinctions in condemning the very idea of deporting felons (see language examples quoted above). That’s what I chose to engage with and I see nothing wrong with that. It has been VERY revealing.
September 19th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Oh, by the way, a goo-goo is short for “goody-goody liberal,” which I believe was Mike Royko’s term (but used now by lots of folks like the centrist Mickey Kaus) for the kind of uncritical, empathetic 60s liberalism that poured tax dollars on the Black Panthers and then made excuses when they used it to fund crime. You really should read Michael Barone’s Hard America, Soft America, to name just one, for why goo-goo policies, from welfare to community policing, have been so destructive to poor and immigrant communities, and why “asshole” policies are so much more beneficial to them.
September 19th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
Rose — congratulations on getting your article in the Times. Nice to see you got published.
However … I could not disagree more with your articles’s assumptions, which boil down to Javier is a good guy who can be “saved.” To me he IS the problem of poverty-stricken areas and the principal reason they remain poor. Crime. I sincerely hope for his future victims’s sake he is caught and sent to Mexico. Or imprisoned then sent there.
People like Javier are the problem. As a gang member, he preyed on the community and drove down economic activity hurting everyone. His crimes were serious and deserved serious time. As a non-citizen he is NOT due the same rights as a citizen to stay in this country. Either rule of law means something or we make exceptions to the point where the rule of law means nothing and thus run to whatever is in favor or whoever pays people off.
As a non-citizen of Mexico, Mexico and her people reasonably expect me to follow their laws. If I fail to do so while in their country, they can reasonably imprison me and deport me. I have no constitutional right to stay in Mexico if I am not a Mexican citizen. And I am not. Mexico can and does discriminate against non-Mexican citizens in property rights, criminal justice and a thousand other areas. US Retirees with long term (99 years) leases were forced off their houses because … they were not Mexican Citizens. That was the law. They have reasons for their laws (which given Mexico’s history and economic position have validity). I can see their point of view. We should not apologize for putting our laws and citizens first either. Liberal white guilt is dead IMHO.
Moreover, with a limited amount of jobs, the work that Javier does takes money out of the pockets from Katrina refugees who are citizens. Who also may have criminal records and spotty backgrounds. Rational analysis says that the policy of the United States should be like EVERY OTHER COUNTRY and put our own citizens FIRST. Javier should not be in this country (because it’s the law). Javier should not be working in this country (because it’s the law and it’s harmful to out-of-work New Orleans refugees searching for jobs). This is not about vindictiveness. It is about putting our own people first as Mexico and other countries rightly do theirs.
That a witness would name a gang member as Javier clearly was as the shooter is significant; shame on you Rose for NOT contacting the DA’s office for their side of the story (this is the common failing among those on the left, boundless and unwarranted sympathy for criminals and none for their victims). Javier’s obviously self-serving story (someone else shot; I wanted to take it to trial but my lawyer wouldn’t let me) is repeated without challenge. Patterico is right; the bias towards criminal defendants in the LA Times is massive and you IMHO should have given a balanced view instead of a sob story.
That “warning shot” could have killed someone. Firearms misuse is no laughing matter and you’d be calling for a serious prison term of fifteen years if Javier had been WHITE. Subsitute Javier with some Redneck white guy in Alabama and EVERYONE here would want the guy still in jail. From my perspective Javier should STILL be in jail. You can’t call the bullet back and someone easily could have been dead. That deserves serious jail time and is indicative of the revolving door for criminals (and why the barrio is so poor, criminals terrorize it).
Javier SHOULD have been prosecuted under federal statutes for gun crime, and drawn a fifteen year or more penalty under federal law (Project Exile, co-sponsored by the NRA) in a remote Federal prison away from his gang. To me it suggests he got preferential treatment by a DA who could not be bothered to send a dangerous gun criminal away. [Admit it if Javier was say, a Mikhail Markasev who hadn't killed anyone you'd want him still in prison]
It’s also notable that even after this event Javier continued to be a known gang member. Knowing it was a parole violation that would send him back to Folsom. Somehow I don’t think it’s a winner to argue we should be taking Folsom ex-cons back into the US. Particularly at a time btw when Mexico shelters citizens of it’s country who are accused of cop killing and other murders. It’s just BAD policy and harmful to American interests. If you were to propose we negotiate with Mexico over this matter I might be inclined to say yes to that, provided we had strict limits on the ex-cons we take back; and Mexico stops sheltering fleeing murderers who in many cases pretty much mirror Javier’s background (Mexican citizens who don’t speak a word of Spanish and have not set foot in Mexico for decades).
All this article does Rose is confirm to me that we need a massive border fence (we can build 45,000 plus miles of soundwalls in CA alone, we can build a border fence) plus massive employer sanctions and an end to the remittance safety valve that keeps Mexico from dealing with endemic violence and corruption. It’s sad that Javier’s citizen kids suffer, but so too did all his victims he created as a gang member. Rose you are simply fooling yourself if you assume Javier did not victimize plenty of people. His own kids and Wife among them sadly now. We can’t afford to take in the 40 million Mexican citizens who want to move here (for better economic opportunity) who are the vast majority hardworking people who simply want a better life. We certainly don’t need a guy like Javier who is a gang member and ex con and poses continued risks to American citizens and legal residents.
On balance the US would be a much better place without Javier because Gangs and Gang violence are extremely destructive. Working with at-risk kids in Baldwin Park and Santa Ana I can speak first-hand how gangs have worked to destroy as much as possible the hopes and dreams of kids who want a better life. He is a lost cause and romanticizing him or thinking he’s changed is not realistic and will end up I’m sure getting someone killed in the end. Gang members don’t change and need to prosecuted to the full extent of the law to protect the innocent and helpless who lack the money to move away from the predators.
Rose I know you also work with kids in probably worse places (Jefferson High and the like); but I think you are simply acting as Javier’s Defense Attorney here and not being realistic. Don’t waste your time on him and don’t become Norman Mailer with your own Jack Henry Abbott. If Javier ends up killing someone and fleeing to Mexico like the worker at the Denver Mayor’s restaurant, well I just hope for everyone’s sake he doesn’t. Bottom line people don’t change much. And this kind of thinking just gets ordinary working men like a bartender/student killed.
September 19th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
I have now read the article but came back to find Jim Rockford saying everything I was going to say, so I’ll let him take the heat from here.
Nothing says goo-goo like taking the word of a felon that he was really innocent without even checking up on the story.
September 19th, 2005 at 4:44 pm
Good piece rosedog. Although I’m a bit of a hardass on the issue of immigration, I tend to agree with you on this type of case because of the family connections. For an individual with no family connections, I don’t really see why a felony conviction wouldn’t be sufficient grounds to lose right to residence. I’m assuming that’s what would happen to me if I were resident in most other countries, although I think that each case – for reasons that are evident from your article – should be adjudicated individually, there should be some distinctions made, provision for hardship appeals and a measure of mercy, etc.
I also feel strongly that for myriad reasons having little or nothing to do with the case of Javier, you should take Rockford’s advice and not become another Norman Mailer.
September 19th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
Mgmax: I will answer your direct question. We should choose to let them live here because we have a criminal justice system that metes out proportionate punishment. Get convicted of ADW in this case and do three years hard time. Not do three years hard time, surrender your legal residence, and be spearated from your family who are American citizens. Pure and simple.
Under the previous law, egregious, habitual and dangerous criminals were and should be exported. As you will notice in Fremon’s story, 2/3 of the current deported are for NON volent crimes.
So we are for adequate punishment. Or we are for piling on.
September 19th, 2005 at 5:09 pm
“As you will notice in Fremon’s story, 2/3 of the current deported are for NON volent crimes.”
But that’s changing the subject. Javier was a convicted violent criminal. I will give you non-violent criminals, for the sake of argument. We are left with, as Rockford says, the gangbangers who prey on their own community. Like Javier was.
You insist on viewing this purely in terms of punishment– “he did a three year prison stint. But isn’t that enough?” Understandably you frame it this way, because then deportation can be regarded as a kind of double jeopardy. But I regard the issue of immigration status as entirely separate from the criminal justice system.
“What sense does it make to add onto that sentence forced separation from one’s own family?” It makes the sense that a known criminal has been removed from the United States, as having proven himself unworthy of the benefits of living here; and so someone else gets the chance and will, likely, make more of it. That’s what sense it makes to me, and, I suspect, to most of the people in that community.
Rosedog, what do law-abiding people in the community, shopkeepers, teachers, nurses think of these policies? That’s the sort of thing you never learn in the LA Times, alas.
September 19th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
Mgmax. I was going to shriek at you again, but you read the friggin’ piece, so I deleted my proposed shriek. Thank you. As for the new argument, I address that below:
ROCKFORD…. We are never going to see eye to eye on this, but I at least appreciate that you made your points based on having read thoroughly. I take it you feel that anyone not a citizen should be tossed out if they commit a felony— period. I don’t agree with you. But I can at least understand the logic. Honorable people can disagree.
There is, however, an area where you’re dead wrong: I DO know the facts of Javier’s case. I know everyone involved. I know from multiple sources what happened that night, and how and why it happened, etc. etc. In fact I’ve known Javier since he was sixteen—namely because he’s part of the group of gang members from a particular area of East LA whom I’ve tracked at very close range over a 15 year period. I didn’t stack the deck, for chrissake. I don’t DO that.
But it’s instructive to find that this is a sticking point for several people.
In part, the omission goes to the unfortunate reality of magazine and newspaper writing. I was assigned a 4000 word piece that eventually ran at 4800 words—and it had to be cut to get it to that length. Still, perhaps I made a mistake not quoting someone from the prosecutorial side of Javier’s crime. I could have easily done so, in a sentence or two. I didn’t bother because I figured the reader would simply assume Javier was guilty—so it didn’t matter. He served the time, thus spending much space on that part of the story wasn’t necessary, as his guilt or innocence in the underlying charge wasn’t the issue. The 1996 law was the issue. In any case, if it stopped you and others, I’m glad you brought it up. Having read your objections, I’d likely do it differently next time.
But when all is said and done, I think the fundamental nature of our REAL disagreement is that you see people like Javier as “other.” In other words, once they’ve joined a gang, or committed a crime, they become almost another species in your eyes—incapable of true reform or redemption. I see the world and human nature very differently in that regard. It helps that I know quite literally HUNDREDS of former gang members, and—as I said— I’ve known them over time. Most are people who have now, as adults, transcended their pasts. Yet, some are not—and they’re locked up or dead as a result. (I’ve also met a few true sociopaths in my time. Not many. But a few truly scary people.)
But Norman Mailer and Jack Henry Abbott….A-a-a-a-rr-rr-r-ggghhhh!!!! Jim, I realize what you’re writing is heartfelt. And if you’re working in any way with at risk kids, you have my admiration and gratitude. I mean it.
Okay, look: I have a whacked out offer for you (and I may regret this later, but what the hell). If you’re willing, I’ll take you to meet some former gang members so you can talk to them, and then form your own conclusions as to what kind of people they are, and what they’re capable of in terms of change, rehabilitation whatever. I’m serious about this.
Let me know if and when you ever want to take me up on it.
September 19th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
To mgmax, who admitted he didn’t read rosedog’s piece before commenting on it:
You’ll probably notice that this place is full of people who are digusted by people who only owns knee-jerk reflexes that blanket some central — but leaky — ideaology. Consider that a warning.
September 19th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
“But it’s instructive to find that this is a sticking point for several people.”
Yes, there are a few of us for whom a felony conviction (plus parole violation) IS a sticking point, as difficult as that may be to believe.
“I think the fundamental nature of our REAL disagreement is that you see people like Javier as “other.”"
Well, actually, people with a felony conviction who have done prison time ARE different from me. (Though not, as it happens, from my late father, who could have spun you a beautifully convincing tale of his innocence and persecution, too.)
I’ll tell you who else is “other”– condescending goo-goos who can’t believe that anyone like me or Rockford or whoever could hold our dreadful evil opinions informedly, and simply must not have seen as much of the world as you have. (Perhaps our heads aren’t screwed on quite right, or it could be, perhaps, that our shoes are too tight. But I think the most likely reason of all is that our hearts are two sizes too small.)
In all this, no one has dealt with the fundamental questions I’ve raised– does the United States have an obligation to harbor non-citizen criminals for their entire lives? I see absolutely no reason in logic to believe that it does. On the contrary, as a nation inviting immigrants to live and prosper here, I think it has a moral obligation to police immigrant neighborhoods vigorously so that they can avoid sinking into ghettos and those living in them who choose not to break the law can take full advantage of the opportunities this country offers. For every Javier whose youthful crimes screw up a more lawabiding present, there will be ten or twenty unsung heroes running their shops or working two jobs, putting their kids through school so that the second generation in America is doctors or lawyers instead of tailors or janitors. They’re the ones who never get to transcend Javier’s gang past when some gangbanger busts a cap in their ass.
Okay, look, I have a whacked out offer for you: I’ll take you to meet some small businessmen and women so you can form your own conclusions about the effect juvenile crime and gun violence has on immigrant communities. All right, I won’t really. But is it clear now that the people who feel differently from you have thought about it all, just like you, and simply came to radically different conclusions about what the problems and who the victims are?
September 19th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
To Bob P., who clearly didn’t read my comment on how I was, clearly and explicitly, commenting NOT on the piece but on the attitudes on this site:
Oooh, you’re so tough. Also, you have an unwieldy grasp of metaphor.
September 19th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
rosedog – after noting the long “aaaaarrrrrgggghhhh” thing above, I hope you realized that MY Mailer comment was a stab at humor. (Maybe “stab” is a poor choice of words – given Mailer’s…um…unfortunate marital history.)
September 19th, 2005 at 7:30 pm
Reg… Not to worry, I figured you were kidding.
Mgmax… The offer was made respectfully to Rockford, not to you, babe.
I did, however, make the mistake of addressing you as if you were an adult who wanted to have a discussion, instead of a jerk looking for a fight. My bad.
Another thing, until you’ve watched as many kids as I have put in the ground, dead from gun shot wounds, and stood with their mothers as they screamed that scream that’s like nothing else in the world, then and only then do you get to lecture me on the damaging effect of gangs on poor and/or immigrant communities.
And if that’s condescending…tough shit.
September 19th, 2005 at 7:43 pm
Rosedog, who says you own this issue?
What do you know about me and what I grew up with, saw, overcame or anything else?
What I know is that you’re claiming badass street cred based on other peoples’ tragedies and yet you still want to see the US bend over backwards for convicted felons because you looked into their baby blues when they said they were innocent. Abbott and Mailer indeed.
So far, I’ve been preemptively told not to bother commenting by the proprietor of this site (not that I am, by my lights, “conservative,” but I am realistic), called an asshole, a jerk, etc. told what people like me are (vindictive, etc.), “warned” by some loser playing thug, and in all that, has anyone other than Marc even half made an attempt to deal with the serious questions raised by me, or if you don’t like me, Jim Rockford, GM Roper, whoever?
But I forgot. It was an LA Times article we were talking about. I should have known better than to expect anything but lockstep limousine liberalism from it and the ever-shrinking readership base who get their groupthink reinforced by it.
September 19th, 2005 at 8:22 pm
Great piece, rosedog.
September 19th, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Mgmax: Please calm down. This site loves controversy but abhors knife fights.
I will answer your question straight on and then after that maybe you can ask a different question. The United States indeed has an obligation to “habor” legal resident criminals because it has made a contract with those residents. Those residents have real life families and real life children who are ALWAYS citizens because they were born here. In the same way the govt must “habor” all sorts of native criminals. Unless you would like to deport them as well. Indeed, using your charged language why not deprt these corporate criminal douchebags who have shaken
down pensioners for hundreds of millions? Why not send them to a prison in one of those nice hellholes like the Cayman Islands?
This is an easy issue to demagogue. But the facts are the same: in a democracy you punish people through a transparent due process. You dont wreck the lives of entire families by administrative non-discretionary fiat.
MGmax.. u are free to keep beating your point into the ground. But try to be civil.
September 19th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
I’ve commented far too much today. This, I promise, is the last.
To clarify: I never said Javier was innocent. HE said he was innocent. (Although at the end of the piece, he pretty much implies his guilt.) I took no stand about his innocence or guilt, as retrying his criminal case was not the point of the article.
When I said the fact that people found this a sticking point was instructive to me, I meant exactly that (although Mgmax persists in trying to put a quarrelsome spin on any and all comments, which is extremely tiresome).
In other words, if a number of people have trouble with the same point in the narrative, it makes me examine how I might have handled that point with more clarity.
Sheesh.
Good night all.
September 20th, 2005 at 12:28 am
Damn, i left my blade in my other boots. just be careful, max. you unwind enough rope, and you might accidently hang yourself without even knowing it.
is that a metaphor you understand?
September 20th, 2005 at 7:48 am
Mgmax, who hates being called a jerk, but who apparently doesn’t notice that calling people “goo-goos” is a provocation, writes: “In all this, no one has dealt with the fundamental questions I’ve raised– does the United States have an obligation to harbor non-citizen criminals for their entire lives?”
Incorrect formulation. Not “non-citizen criminals”, but “non-citizen ex-cons who were imprisoned on felony charges.”
An EX-con is someone presumed to have paid their debt to society, and whether or not it’s the society of a nation of which they are a citizen makes NO difference whatsoever, as far as the debt itself goes. That debt is presumed to have been paid. Having served their time, they emerge not as criminals in the eyes of the law, but as innocent of any new crime until proven guilty of it. No, the slate’s not clean (especially in states with three-strikes laws.) But just because someone is an ex-con doesn’t make them a criminal. All it means is that (within limits of “burden of proof” on the state) they WERE criminals.
“I see absolutely no reason in logic to believe that it does.”
Logic: imprisonment is a punitive action. Deportation is also a punitive action. Therefore, someone who is deported after having paid their debt to society in prison is being punished twice for the same crime.
“On the contrary, as a nation inviting immigrants to live and prosper here, I think it has a moral obligation to police immigrant neighborhoods vigorously so that they can avoid sinking into ghettos and those living in them who choose not to break the law can take full advantage of the opportunities this country offers.”
It’s become a lot less inviting in recent years, but aside from that — why are immigrants more subject to a “moral obligation” to have better policing than any other group? That sounds like UNequal protection under the law — with many of the benefits going to NON-citizens (in immigrant communities). Where’s the *legal* logic in that?
Mgmax, what you’re talking about here is policy at the expense of principle. You might actually be proven right from a policy point of view — people in immigrant communities might have a better chance in life overall in America under the policy you propose. Your policy logic may prove correct. But, not to get legally logical on you again, what about communities with roughly the same poverty and crime profiles, consisting almost entirely of citizens? Would you support deportation of *citizen* gangbanger ex-cons from black ghettoes? From barrios where most residents happen to be citizens? “No,” you might protest, “the right to be free of deportation is a *citizen* right.” Ah, then suddenly you’re getting legalistic again — it’s not about policy anymore. But why couldn’t it be? After all, we already know that citizen rights are not inalienable — if you commit certain crimes, you can get incarcerated, even executed. So why not deportation of ALL ex-cons guilty of a felony? What is it about citizenship that makes that right to be free of deportation inalienable for citizens? Or is it really just policy? And what is it about uplift for immigrants *specifically* (many of them non-citizens)? You seem to be running a funny double standard here.
Some “goo-goo” once wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ….”
Didn’t say, “all Americans,” did he? But I guess he didn’t understand the holy concept of citizenship.
September 20th, 2005 at 8:26 am
“It makes the sense that a known criminal has been removed from the United States, as having proven himself unworthy of the benefits of living here; and so someone else gets the chance and will, likely, make more of it.”
Sounds like a great basis for deporting everybody who has committed felony — for every felon we deport, citizen or not, we can bring in some immigrant of sterling credentials.
I think we have the makings of a great policy here, actually, one that could improve life in the United States for everyone — or at least, everyone who doesn’t get deported. Sure, there’s that annoying problem of the separation between immigration policy and the criminal justice system, but we can make some adjustments. After all, here in Japan, if an immigrant woman bears a child by a Japanese father, but then gets divorced, she can be deported and her child, too — that’s immigration policy here, and that’s also a consequence of their definition of citizenship. Legal and bureaucratic definitions are malleable — they differ in different places, and even at different times in our own history.
Like I say, it’s just a matter of making a few changes in both immigration policy and criminal justice. And why not? It would “provide for the general welfare”, which might override that goo-goo bit about how “all men are created equal,” at least when the goo-goo bit is viewed in a more pragmatic light.
I’ll allow that there are some practical difficulties with my modest proposal, such as the destination of the deportees. However, just because no ordinary nation would accept them doesn’t leave us at a loss. There’s always Somalia, which can’t even figure out who the government is between Tuesday and Thursday. And that lo-o-ong coastline –how could they even stop us if they happened to be unusally well-organized on a Monday or a Friday? Better yet, there are countries like Malawi where “slave” still has a legally recognized definition; this policy could even help correct our trade imbalance if we can get the volume up. Sure, the whole concept might run afoul of IntCom’s norms about trafficking in human beings. How irritating. But we’ll have a great loophole: we can say it’s not really a violation of their human rights because, as convicted felons, they no longer have any human rights to violate.
It’s all a matter of definition, really.
September 20th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Marc: “Mgmax: Please calm down. This site loves controversy but abhors knife fights.”
I take note of the fact that the first time the referee felt compelled to step in was NOT when I was called an asshole (to which I responded with cutting wit), nor when I was “warned” by some little twerp trying to intimidate and silence me (to which I responded with the disdain such childishness deserves), nor any of half a dozen examples I could pluck from the above. Those would seem to be far greater breaches of civility than calling something “groupthink” or “limousine liberal.”
I came here following a link about Galloway (and by now I know a little about how Hitchens felt) and looked around because I had heard good things about you, Marc, from the likes of Roger L. Simon. I cannot say that this thread supports his viewpoint.
“The United States indeed has an obligation to “habor” legal resident criminals because it has made a contract with those residents.”
And then it changed the contract, through the legislative process in a democracy. Possibly unfairly, or a tad hamfistedly, but nevertheless, in a way fully within the powers of Congress. In many countries, lovely Western socialist democracies with 47 weeks of vacation a year, the rules are different and no matter how many little Turkish-German kids you pop out, they remain Turks, not Germans. (I believe that’s the case; if it isn’t, something similar is somewhere.) If Congress wished to change our rules to be more like those countries’, it could (unless that’s in the Constitution, in which case Congress and the state legislatures could; I don’t really feel like hunting it down right now), though I very much doubt that citizenship could be denied retroactively, either legally or politically. Anyway, what you imagine to be an ironclad “contract” is better described as “the way things are at the moment, subject to the will of Congress.”
I also don’t get what the point of bringing up white collar crime is, other than to expose the poverty of understanding which supposes I am somehow in favor of it and only anti the kind of crime committed by the po’ folks. (A very goo-goo assumption.) First of all, as I mentioned before, my father was a white collar criminal, whose time in prison (almost identical to Javier’s) was, if I may say without filial disloyalty, entirely deserved and, probably like Javier’s, a mere fraction of what he deserved for all the things he did that he never got caught at. I have no more sympathy for that sort of crime than Javier’s sort, and in those cases where a white collar criminal is a non-citizen, such as Conrad Black, I am equally happy to bar them from our shores and native delights. I really do not understand why this was even brought up except as a sort of smear which, I trust, is seen to have missed its mark completely.
M. Turner: “Logic: imprisonment is a punitive action. Deportation is also a punitive action. Therefore, someone who is deported after having paid their debt to society in prison is being punished twice for the same crime.”
What a brilliant insight! In fact, it’s so brilliant that… I had it about 20 posts ago, and already argued against it. To misquote rosedog, “Read the frickin’ post.”
You know, there’s a rhetorical thing I noticed here, not of course that this is the first place it ever appeared, that works like this. I say something like “Releasing criminals back into the communities they came from isn’t necessarily good for the community,” and someone responds with “Well, then maybe there’s something else we could do with them– like round them up in camps and make soylent green out of them!” And they think they’ve delivered a devastating response that shows me up for the Nazi cannibal I am. Except it doesn’t, when you’re the only one who ever said anything either Nazi or cannibal.
For instance, you, M. Turner, regard the distinction between citizens and non-citizens as a mere legalism, which inevitably leads to dehumanizing and apparently, in your fantasies, to enslavement and murder. On the other hand, I regard it as the fundamental principle without which we might as well have completely open borders. Now, there is an argument for that– but it is hardly one that the pro-union liberal side has been known to make in recent years. Not when they’re already apoplectic over an attempt to roll back Davis-Bacon this week. If you don’t like non-union labor making less than $10/hr., you really won’t like non-citizen labor completely decimating the unionized trades and working off the books for $1/hr.
But if I can’t deport them, I really don’t see why you should be allowed to keep them out of the construction business. Fair is fair; rights are rights, and distinctions are mere legalisms, Jefferson said so, as you kindly pointed out. So open the borders, full rights for everyone, and let the labor market go as low as it can go. What, you don’t like that? What do you want to do, make soylent green out of them?
“Not “non-citizen criminals”, but “non-citizen ex-cons who were imprisoned on felony charges.”"
Now THAT’s the difference between goo-goos and regular folks, in a nutshell. It depends on what the meaning of perp is. The refusal to call criminals criminals is the sort of thing that got the goo-goo wing of the Democratic party labeled as soft on crime for the last 40 years and put all those nasty Republicans in office.
September 20th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Marc: “Mgmax: Please calm down. This site loves controversy but abhors knife fights.”
Mgmax: “I take note of the fact that the first time the referee felt compelled to step in was NOT when I was called an asshole (to which I responded with cutting wit) …”
“Goo-goo”. Such cutting wit.
Calling someone an asshole is a “greater breach of civility” than attributing “groupthink” to them? Or calling them “limousine liberals”? A matter of perspective! Groupthink and limousine liberalism can potentially do a great deal of damage. An asshole can simply be ignored. So I’d say “asshole” is the milder epithet, actually. Especially when there’s so much evidence to substantiate “asshole” (like descending into ad hominems in discussion of an article you hadn’t even read). Not to mention precious little evidence for “groupthink” (which has a technical meaning in sociology that makes your application overbroad) and “limousine liberal” (none of us here have limousines AFAIK.)
Who started with “goo-goo”? You. The first response did not descend into name-calling tit-for-tat. GM Roper thought it “overly harsh” and in fact I agree with that assessment. Davidson should not have characterized you as any certain kind of person, nor should he have written you off as someone who couldn’t be reasoned with. (Not at that precise point, at any rate.) But the namecalling started with you.
M. Turner: “Logic: imprisonment is a punitive action. Deportation is also a punitive action. Therefore, someone who is deported after having paid their debt to society in prison is being punished twice for the same crime.”
Mgmax: “What a brilliant insight! In fact, it’s so brilliant that… I had it about 20 posts ago, and already argued against it. To misquote rosedog, “Read the frickin’ post.”"
I did. And you know what? The logic stands. You don’t punish people twice for one crime. If convicted non-citizen felons were offered the option of deportation (with appropriate notification of their convict status to the police authorities of their country of citizenship), I might be OK with that. But if someone who might have been able to jump bail and cross the border decides instead to do the time, then that decision to do the time shouldn’t be taken with any prejudice about their motives. Yes, I’m aware of the “gladiator academy” argument. Yes, I’m aware that doing a stretch can be an opportunity for career criminals to chill out and network with other career criminals. Yes, I’m aware that having done time can be a status upgrade for career criminals when they get out. But if we have a penal system based on the *presumption* of such careerist disposition on the part of all convicts, then I suppose we might just as well have life imprisonment for a very broad class of crimes, for both citizens and non-citizens. It’s no longer “corrections”, but mere “sequestration.” And if sequestration is the point, why not put all felons, regardless of citizenship, offshore? Mgmax, I haven’t evaded your serious question (which was down there in all the invective, and did merit an answer.) You still haven’t answered mine. It actually is a serious question. We could change the laws so that felony conviction leads automatically to deportation. Your American national social hygiene argument applies equally. So why don’t we do it? What would be wrong with that, in your view?
“You know, there’s a rhetorical thing I noticed here, not of course that this is the first place it ever appeared, that works like this. I say something like “Releasing criminals back into the communities they came from isn’t necessarily good for the community,” and someone responds with “Well, then maybe there’s something else we could do with them– like round them up in camps and make soylent green out of them!” And they think they’ve delivered a devastating response that shows me up for the Nazi cannibal I am. Except it doesn’t, when you’re the only one who ever said anything either Nazi or cannibal.”
You know, there’s a rhetorical thing I’ve noticed here with you, Mgmax, which is that you always up the *personal* invective ante. I never called you a Nazi or a cannibal. (If you think I’ve called you an “asshole”, look *very* carefully at how I use that word here.) A satirical reductio ad absurdum isn’t a judgment on you as a person, it’s a way to look at your position on a particular issue. You elect to take it personally — and go on to exaggerate something I DIDN’T say about you AS A PERSON. Pretty classic asshole behavior, in my view. But hey, at least I’m not saying you’re engaging in “groupthink.” That would be far worse, I think.
“For instance, you, M. Turner, regard the distinction between citizens and non-citizens as a mere legalism,”
Actually, it is a legalism (though not a “mere” legalism, and I didn’t say so, unless self-evidently tongue-in-cheek.) As you yourself point out with your choice bit about “Turkish-German babies popping out.” (By the way, Germany has recently changed that “legalism” to be more like ours, IIRC.)
“…. which inevitably leads to dehumanizing and apparently, in your fantasies, to enslavement and murder.”
No, but a particular reading of the notions of rights of non-citizens versus those of citizens *could* have that effect (I didn’t say inevitably, and stop putting words in my mouth, it’s assholic behavior). It actually can lead to murder — here in Japan, the legal basis of political asylum is so evanescent that I’m quite sure that some non-citizens have been sent back to almost-certain death.
“On the other hand, I regard [citizenship] as the fundamental principle without which we might as well have completely open borders.”
Citizenship is not a “fundamental principle.” It’s a legal status, gained in different ways in different places, as your own examples make clear. You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth, making it a “legalism” when that’s convenient for your argument, and “fundamental” when you belatedly realize that you’re simply taking some legal aspect or other of citizenship as if it were axiomatic. The question is how principles *apply* to citizenship, and how principles *apply* to human beings in general, regardless of citizenship, and what policies about citizenship best reflect those principles within the limits of practicality in the present nation-state system. I’m fine with denying non-citizens the right to vote, the right to run for public office, the right to practice the law of the land. Beyond that, I’m less sure. If you’re more sure, then to what extent is that only because you take as axiomatic some aspects of citizenship that are actually the result of “social engineering” policy rather than conclusions based on principle, even when the application of that principle might be inconvenient?
Me: “Not “non-citizen criminals”, but “non-citizen ex-cons who were imprisoned on felony charges.”"
Mgmax: “Now THAT’s the difference between goo-goos and regular folks, in a nutshell. It depends on what the meaning of perp is. The refusal to call criminals criminals is the sort of thing that got the goo-goo wing of the Democratic party labeled as soft on crime for the last 40 years and put all those nasty Republicans in office.”
Two goo-goos in one paragraph. Gotta doing something about the verbal tic, Mgmax.
If someone hasn’t committed a crime in five years, is he or she still a criminal? If someone hasn’t committed a crime in 20 years, is he or she still a criminal?
I once found myself in a campus-police jail cell for an idiotic trumped-up charge of “trespassing”. Let’s say for the sake of argument that I was actually guilty of that crime. In any case, I definitely WAS guilty of the rap they decided to go with instead — evading a court appearance for jaywalking (for which an arrest warrant had finally been issued.) Am *I*, after 27 years, still a criminal, by virtue of this conviction and this brief incarceration?
In his years in the Senate, Jack Kemp helped sponsor a bill that expanded the candidates for AFDC to include grandparents. A great many children in poverty are being raised by grandparents, the actual parents of the child having succumbed, temporarily or permanently, to a life of crime. Well, I suppose somebody could have stalled this bill by pointing out that a great many of the grandparents in question had criminal records themselves. Why, it would entail handing out money to *criminals*! We can’t have that!
Such a claim would have at least a tenuous hold on virtuous motivation by way of simply being true, in your apparent definition of “criminal”. A great many poor people in mid-life have criminal records dating back to their youth, and, having survived, the have settled down and become relatively law-abiding, even electing for parental responsibilities beyond the ordinary call of duty. Crime as a livelihood among the poor overwhelming attracts the young, the energetic, the poorly-socialized. Career criminals are the minority, even if they perhaps perpetrate the majority of crime. The usual 80-20 rule, as in almost everything. But is anyone with a criminal record still a criminal after years of going straight?
As far as I know, no such objection was raised to Kemp’s bill. I guess none of them wanted to face down Kemp’s wounded stare in the cloakroom afterward. (I never agreed with all of Kemp’s positions, but by the standards of politicians, he was a saint — would that there were more like him on both sides of the aisle.)
At some point, if you start living under the law, and accepting adult responsibilities voluntarily, you’re not a criminal anymore. And more precisely, the day you walk free from prison (or the day your probation ends, at least), you are, in *legal* terms, no longer a criminal. That’s called “innocent until proven guilty,” and I’m fine with it. It is, of course, a mere legalism itself, I suppose. Some countries have “guilty until proven innocent”. France, for example. Still, I imagine it as a fundamental human right, or at least as a policy that helps secure fundamental human rights, and one that should be universally adopted.
America as a beacon of liberty isn’t well-served by policies of simply exporting presumptively-undesirable past abusers of its liberties, whether they are citizens or not. Any more than a nation could consider itself a global environmental “good citizen” only because it dumps its toxic waste in other countries, and especially when the waste was derived from toxic imports, under some logic like “we didn’t create this problem.” Some people do become irrevocably toxic, but that should never be a presumption based on a lack of citizenship.
Should we throw open our borders? Not as things stand. It’s impractical right now. Should we work toward the day when we can do that without fear? Yes. Being a good example is the best way to work toward that day.
[Autobiographical aside: I had deportation papers cut against me once. My heinous crime? I let my visa expire here in Japan. I got five weeks into overstay, because I didn't buy a calendar for three years in advance of the issuance of the visa and mark the expiration date on it.
My right to work was suspended, and leaving the country would have meant default deportation, with no re-entry granted for five years. I was fingerprinted. My life was thoroughly investigated. I was convicted, and sentenced to deportation. But then offered the opportunity to appeal.
My appeal of the deportation order was granted. I was given something called "special permission for residence." I have to say that immigration officers now treat me with more respect when I flash that piece of paper -- they see I was convicted of a minor, fairly common and quite understandable screwup, but that am otherwise an exemplary non-citizen resident as far as anyone could tell. I'm not one of those ambiguous "spouse visa" gaijin -- they actually checked me out and I'm Mr. Clean. How nice for me, I guess.
But still, it rankles. I was able to demonstrate that removing me from the country would pose hardships on my *Japanese* family, that I posed no evident threat to any other *Japanese*, that the sources of income with which I supported my family were legitimate. Those were the important things. The appeal was not granted in what I would consider due process of law, but rather by a bureaucracy -- a benevolent bureaucracy in my case, but others aren't so lucky, and families have been broken up. In the six weeks during which I wasn't legally allowed to work, I happened to earn about a quarter of the year's income, mostly from freelance contracts to which I'd already committed myself before my "crime". They could use this against me someday, I suppose. If some bureaucrat discovered this fact, and decided to make an issue of it.
This is life for the "good immigrant," the clean-jeans gaijin, the guy who doesn't make a fuss when he's being run through the Japanese gauntlet. I don't have rights. Rather, I have privileges dangling from the puppet-strings of bureaucrats, who can make me dance at their whim. Believe me, it's not the way to do it.
More immigration would actually help solve a great many of Japan's more pressing long-term problems. I've been saying for years that Japan need an Ellis Island. But phobias about the inevitable downsides make that politically impossible here. It's no model for the U.S., that's for sure. If I cut Japan any slack on this, it's that a certain cynicism or cluelessness about human rights as a universal value to be enshrined in the rule of law is understandable for a country whose cities were mercilessly incinerated in a war, only to be handed a constitution with a bill of rights written in English by the victor in the aftermath, and "asked" to sign it. Yes, I can see how they'd remain studiously unclear on the concept, after all that ....]
September 21st, 2005 at 6:52 am
Briefly, in the interests of letting this die a natural death and then you won’t have Mgmax to kick around any more:
1) Asshole, goo-goo, whatevah. What I know is, I got pulled over by The Man for Posting While Conservative while liberals went racing by. It’s a conspiracy! Marc Cooper hates Right people!
2) We obviously will just have to disagree on the one punishment/two punishments thing. There is a sense in which, effectively, deportation is a second punishment; there’s also a sense in which it’s no more an official second punishment than the very real inability to get a job because you have a criminal record is an official punishment. Criminal behavior has consequences. Sometimes those consequences are especially harsh on one person because of their specific circumstances. As a great philosopher said, don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
What’s interesting here is that the Left, Cooper-approved side of the house always frames this solely in terms of rights issues. You all have resisted, time and again, engaging with the points made by us insurgents that asked about the effects of these policies, or their lack, on the community. Telling, that.
3) Okay, you didn’t call me a Nazi cannibal, mere suggested so far as I could make out that I was in favor of banishment to Somalia and the reinstution of slavery. My apologies for not being strictly, tediously literal in cataloguing your hysterical overstatement of your case.
4) Poor Japan, forced to be a wealthy democracy by those wicked Amerikkkans! If Nanking didn’t want to be raped, it shouldn’t have dressed so suggestively.
September 21st, 2005 at 7:12 am
“Oh, by the way, a goo-goo is short for “goody-goody liberal,” which I believe was Mike Royko’s term (but used now by lots of folks like the centrist Mickey Kaus) for the kind of uncritical, empathetic 60s liberalism that poured tax dollars on the Black Panthers and then made excuses when they used it to fund crime.”
That, incidentally, is totally inaccurate – at best. “Goo-goo” is a term specifically derived from “good government” and has been applied, usually cynically, by Royko and others to those who earnetly believe they can clean up politics significantly and, thus, achieve some nirvana of efficient, responsive, responsible government. Folks like Common Cause.
“Uncritical, empathetic ’60s liberalism” associated with Black Panthers and such was most memorably dubbed “radical chic” by Thomas Wolfe, although that term seems as time-worn as the stereotype itself from the vantage point of 2005.
September 21st, 2005 at 9:07 am
You are correct– to a point.
Goo-goo came from Good Government and was used cynically by Royko et al. to indicate the impossibility of ever really cleaning up Illinois politics. Goo-goos could occasionally get elected (Adlai Stevenson, Paul Simon, etc.) but they never really affected the power of the (Machine, Combine, Outfit, take your pick).
However, if you do a search for “goo-goo liberalism,” say (on what else, Google) you will see that today it tends to be used in the sense I describe, for the kind of liberalism that doesn’t believe in consequences or accountability and will forgive the downtrodden anything, not realizing that excessive compassion makes things worse for them.
Your idea that it has disappeared from the political scene with other relics of the 60s is quite remarkable.
September 21st, 2005 at 9:48 am
Mgmax…. Okay, a short-form response to your question: Crime reduction and public safety are complex subjects. Unfortunately in this country at the moment, there is still a law and order fever that does not work in the best interests of the health and safety of the community at large. Poor urban communities—recent immigrant-based or not—are seeing the worst side of this policy. Although crime is down nationwide—particularly juvenile crime—it is still tragically high in places like East and South LA, and equivalent areas of Chicago, NY, DC, New Orleans etc. etc. I know this isn’t news to you or you wouldn’t be repeatedly bringing it up.
Solving this problem, however, is not as simple as you would have it be. And the so-called soft on crime meme that you keep advancing as being at fault for all possible suffering and criminal activity simply doesn’t hold up. The country as a whole has been in lock-em-up-and-to-hell-with-rehabilitation mania since the early 80′s, and the result has been the second largest prison system in the world, an out-of-control recidivism rate, and the slow destruction of the very communities the policy purports to want to save.
We simply cannot incarcerate our way out of the problem of inner city crime, no matter how much you who make pronouncements from a great moral height about “people with a felony conviction who have done prison time ARE different from me” and wish we could—any more than you can punish your way to good child raising.
To cite one small example, there are excellent studies by such people as Todd Clear at John Jay College that show that a certain number of arrests in inner city neighborhoods lower crime. But when the arrests exceed a particular ratio, crime actually goes up—because the community is destablized. This IS what’s going on in too many of our poorer communities. I could deluge you with like studies and anecdotal examples, but we have neither the time or space here.
By the same token, immigration policy that splits up families for the more-moral-and dserving-than-thou reasons you advance, without being able to differentiate between the criminal immigrant who deserves to be tossed out, and the long-time permanent resident with family, who’s grown up in the US—is for all intents and purposes an American, except for the citizenship paper—and has made a single mistake that he or she hasn’t repeated—such policy is not in the best interest of the health of the nation as a whole. Sorry, but anyone who’s looked closely at the issue—on the right or the left—has come to that conclusion. Only folks like you with your bullshit fear-of-goo-goo agenda fail to recognize this.
In terms of inner city crime in general, we need better, smarter policing—not *harder* policing. (And what’s your deal about “community policing†anyway? Do you even know what the term means? You throw around terms like “broken windows†but your understanding of law enforcement policy sounds juvenile at best.) Better prison and parole policies. (95 percent of those incarcerated are returned to the communities from which they came—800,000 in this year alone. And they are usually in far worse shape then when they went in. But, hey, why be practical, when you can’t act all bad and tough.)
In addition to smart crime supression policy (which needs more money allocated for police officers, for starters), we need to make public education a first priority, and decide that that the poverty that still exists in America—that we saw writ large during the worst of the Katrina crisis— is unacceptable. In short, we need to do the heavy lifting that real change requires, not fall for the Get Tough horseshit that creates two problems for every one it purports to solve. This means we also need to weed though all the “get tough†statutes presently on the books, like California’s Three Strikes, and keep only what actually works, and eliminate the laws that simply made us feel righteous at the time, but have—in a purely practical sense—done more harm than good. And there are a lot of the latter.
If you’re truly concerned about inner city/immigrant community crime, then start reading up on what works and what doesn’t in terms of crime policy. Self-righteous, faux-informed attitudes such as yours fix exactly nothing. They only do damage.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:07 am
PS: If I’ve taken an angry tone above, it’s because all this does make me angry. Mgmax, you’re clearly bright, and you seem to care about these issues, or you probably wouldn’t have spent so much time on this thread, but—with all due respect—you’re advancing a political/emotional POV that doesn’t correspond with on-the-ground facts—all politics aside. Because I see the heartache that has resulted from those attitudes up close among people I know well and care deeply about, day after day, year after year, due to the nature of the work I do—it gets to me. And by the way, your statement of “you’re claiming badass street cred based on other peoples’ tragedies…” is completely offensive. You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:14 am
Careful, Rosedog, you just used the words “heartache” and “care deeply”–you’re outing yourself as a “goo-goo” and essentially delegitimizing any point you’ve set out to make. When will you ever learn?
(btw, I’d never heard of Todd Clear–I’m going to have to look up that interesting study of his you referenced. Thanks for the tip.)
September 21st, 2005 at 10:27 am
Uh…lots of typos. Sorry. The sentence that read, “But, hey, why be practical, when you can’t act all bad and tough..” That was supposed to be “CAN act all bad and tough…” I particularly hate it when my poor proof reading derails my high-horsey righteousness.
Rich I’m out for most of the day, but will try to link you to that study later, if my middle-aged brain remembers to do so.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:44 am
Rosedog, I am dismayed that you find the need to keep stressing that you’re so much smarter and better informed than me, a conclusion that the vagueness of so much of what you say does not exactly support. The argument from authority adds little. Nevertheless, I appreciate that you have, 45 posts down, talked about these issues I’ve been raising since the beginning.
Fundamentally– and you can call me simpleminded for this, but I am going to reduce things to core principles rather than throw up a flurry of semi-connected views– there are two current ways of looking at improving life and prospects for the disadvantaged. One is, if only we fixed everything at once (schools, economic prospects, etc.) then order would follow. The other is, until you have some order you cannot meaningfully improve education, economic prospects, etc. You can sneer at that as “get tough bullshit” or whatever you said, but the record of one approach versus the other is clear. To quote– not because it’s the be-all and end-all, but because it’s concise and handy– from Michael Barone’s Hard America, Soft America (pp. 99-102):
“In 1982, [George] Kelling and James Q. Wilson wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly in which they argued that, among other things, the existence of broken windows in a neighborhood was a signal of disorder which told criminals and noncriminals alike that crimes would be tolerated and criminals would go unpunished… The great vogue in the 1980s was community policing, which many police leaders described ‘in ‘soft,’ social science terms,’ said Kelling and Wilson… For cops on the beat, Kelling later wrote, it seemed ‘a strategy that is soft on crime, has little impact on it, emphasizes social work, cares more about the rights of the offenders than the interests of the community, and is in the ‘grin and wave’ tradition of community relations.’…
“In 1989 Kelling became a consultant to the New York Transit Authority police and helped design a program to end disorderly behavior in the subway… Rudolph Giuliani, running for mayor in 1993… won, and he installed Transit Authority police chief William Bratton as his police commissioner and Kelling as an adviser. From the top came orders: crime had to be stopped…
“Seldom has a public policy so quickly and spectacularly proved its worth… Police officials from other cities went to New York to learn what their counterparts were doing and hired veterans of the New York experience to advise their departments. Crime declined across the nation, more in some places and less in others, but at record rates– by 32 percent between 1993, the year Giuliani took office, and 2000, any by even more after that. It turned out that high crime rates were not inevitable. Hard penalties and hard policing could make America a safer, less fearful, more pleasant country… The New York Times excoriated Giuliani, at least until September 11, 2001, as a near-fascist whose policies were abusive to blacks and Hispanics– this despite the fact that the decline in the murder rate meant that thousands of blacks and Hispanics were alive who would have died had the rate remained what it was under Giuliani’s predecessor.”
The fact is, we DO know how to improve life for the poor and immigrants, and what you dismiss as “get tough bullshit” is one of our primary tools. Do I think it’s as simple as that? No, it’s merely a starting point, but it has started after the decades lost to less effective tactics. Does it mean that every law is logical in origin or intelligently applied? Of course not, I believe that neither of every law nor of every government handout program. Criminal justice is an issue that lends itself easily to demagoguing, both the “lock ‘em up” kind and the “George Bush hates black people” kind.
But I do believe that for non-citizens, remaining in the U.S. is a privilege, not a right. Javier (and his parents) made a host of bad choices over a period of years. If consequences do not follow bad choices for someone like Javier, then other consequences– increased gang activity, the luring into gang life of other salvageable young people, the shootings of innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time, the worsening of economic prospects for everyone in those neighborhoods– will follow, and not because some conservative was being mean, but because that’s just the way things work, over and over around the world. To return to the very beginning of all this, some people seem to think that thinking that way is “irrational,” “heartlessly stupid,” a “national embarassment,” “vindictive,” “utilitarian,” etc.
Well, I will plead guilty to utilitarianism. I want to see what works to make life better for the communities that people like Javier come from. If that makes me an asshole, so be it.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:58 am
Rosedog, that may indeed have been harsh, though I remind you that as I said, you really have no idea what similar personal experience I may bring to this (apart from the parental one I mentioned). Using “the screams of the mothers” is an emotional appeal designed to trump an opponent and shame them into silence. My very point is that fewer mothers will ever have to emit those screams when tougher policing takes gangs off the streets, when economic prospects improve because streets are safe to walk and shops can attract customers, when kids in school can concentrate on learning because the schools are free of gang activity. The irony is that, once again, it is the mean old conservative (not that I consider myself conservative) who sees hope and offers it, while it’s the kindhearted liberal who seems to have given up on those kids and those communities. Don’t, and keep an open mind. I spent Saturday with my older son helping clean up the yard for a Waldorf preschool that’s opening in a Latino neighborhood shortly. I can’t wait to see the kids playing and learning there, and the hardworking parents who are making sacrifices to send their kids there, believing that the community can support something like that because the area is so much safer than it was just a few years ago, thanks to hard, sometimes very hard, but necessary decisions made and actions taken by our police.
Keep hope, and peace.
September 21st, 2005 at 11:12 am
“You can sneer at that as “get tough bullshit” or whatever you said, but the record of one approach versus the other is clear.”
Mgmax, you’re not reading carefully enough. Just before your post, rosedog made quite clear that it’s not a matter of one approach versus another, but one approach (“get tough”, for simplicity’s sake) being applied excessively and unpragmatically:
“…the so-called soft on crime meme that you keep advancing as being at fault for all possible suffering and criminal activity simply doesn’t hold up. The country as a whole has been in lock-em-up-and-to-hell-with-rehabilitation mania since the early 80′s, and the result has been the second largest prison system in the world, an out-of-control recidivism rate, and the slow destruction of the very communities the policy purports to want to save.
We simply cannot incarcerate our way out of the problem of inner city crime”
I think one problem is that you insist on building your straw man–er, “goo-goo”–and applying it incorrectly here to some arguments that are hardly as simplistic as you’re making them out to be. You’re fighting a 1980′s “soft on crime” battle that’s hardly relevant in a country–certainly a state (California)–that has tried all sorts of “get-tough” measures, with varying results. As Rosedog said succintly (sorry to keep quoting you, but you’re quotable), we need to “weed though all the “get tough†statutes presently on the books, like California’s Three Strikes, and keep only what actually works.” Get that? Keep what works. Incarcerating more minor drug offenders is resulting in a bloated and expensive prison system that you and I are forced to pay for, directly and indirectly. As a pragmatist and penny-pinching taxpayer, that’s certainly an issue that gets my attention. Oh, and if I see any imaginary goo-goos or fairies running around anytime soon, I’ll try to explain my pragmatic approach to them, so we can rid those wily creatures once and for all!
September 21st, 2005 at 1:13 pm
“Thomas Wolfe” – sorry, make that Tom Wolfe.
September 21st, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Mgmax – you can google “bleeding heart conservatism” and come up with tons of links as well. Ain’t Google wonderful…
Just because a bunch of people wrench a word out of context and abuse it’s meaning and origin doesn’t impress me. At least “bleeding heart conservatism” has the virtue of intentional irony…
I think you’re succumbing to one of the inherent hazards of the internet – Goo-Googling.
September 21st, 2005 at 1:35 pm
Also I never claimed that “goo goo” has disappeared from the political lexicon. Only that the way you use it is an intentionally ignorant deformation common to…well, right-wing assholes, among others.
September 21st, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Rich– imposing excessive mandatory sentencing for drug offenders, to name one such California measure, may be a “get tough” measure, but it is hardly the exact same thing as the kind of the policing I’m talking about. Assuming that I’m monolithically in favor of all such things is, well… have any of you ever actually MET and talked to a conservative, or even a moderate, before?
And you know, just because Rosedog said these things aren’t different approaches doesn’t mean I’m compelled to accept her definition of things, and thus in need of such elementary correction. (Anyway, you should write to Michael Barone and straighten him out– I’m sure he’ll be grateful to hear that after attending Harvard, 30 years of writing for national magazines and authoring The Almanac of American Politics, etc., he still makes such obvious mistakes.)
As for Reg, how French of you, to insist that the way a word is commonly used is not what it means. Actually, I should really point out that “asshole” is an anatomical feature of the human body and thus not an accurate way to describe a human you disagree with. Try not to make that mistake in the future. (Petit con.)
September 21st, 2005 at 8:09 pm
Mgmax: “3) Okay, you didn’t call me a Nazi cannibal, mere suggested so far as I could make out that I was in favor of banishment to Somalia and the reinstution of slavery. My apologies for not being strictly, tediously literal in cataloguing your hysterical overstatement of your case.”\
No, I didn’t say you were in favor of those things. I wrote a reductio ad absurdum satire, based on a premise that you haven’t signed up to (yet, anyway): that we might simply deport ALL felons. How strictly, tediously literal you are, Mgmax, except when you miss the important parts entirely. (While at the same time seeing yourself as licensed to be as sarcastic as you want.)
“4) Poor Japan, forced to be a wealthy democracy by those wicked Amerikkkans! If Nanking didn’t want to be raped, it shouldn’t have dressed so suggestively.”
Excuse me, but I’m not a leftist, and I never use the term “Amerika” except when I’m recommending the Kafka novel by that name. For your information, I am not a leftist. In those stupid little web polls, I keep coming out looking more Libertarian than anything else. Also, I deal the same way with Japanese here who try to downplay the Rape of Nanking as I do with Americans here who try to pretend that killing non-combatants on a large scale in the firebombings of Japan was somehow justified in that case. (By the way, Japan was on its way to becoming a wealthy democracy quite on its own, prior to military fascism. It wasn’t “forced to be a wealthy democracy.” It already had such a tradition, one that a wealthy democracy like Germany had already lost in a similar way. And I’m not defending Japan’s response to having a constitution forced on it as either rational or right — just understandable, under the circumstances. More properly, it wasn’t “Japan’s response”, but the response of *some* Japanese, many of them powerful.)
Mgmax, you don’t know who I am, you jump to conclusions about what I believe, and you do so in an insulting manner, putting words on my mouth based on those false conclusions.
OK, Marc, it’s time to ban me. Because of what I’m about to say. This guy is the biggest fucking asshole to come along in your forum in a very long time. I’m not allowed to say that here, right? That’s getting personal, right?
September 21st, 2005 at 8:30 pm
Rich writes: “Mgmax, you’re not reading carefully enough.”
Why should he? It might discourage him in what he really comes here for: not to engage in reasoned debate, but to crap on people. Reading carefully just doesn’t work for him. Where does he get off with condescendingly telling rosedog to not give up on kids in poor communities, and to keep an open mind? She’s given up? She’s got a closed mind? News to me. Even when he’s trying to sound reasonable, he insults.
Hey, thanks, Mgmax, for going out and weeding in the ghetto for that Waldorf school. Some “street cred” you got there. I’ve lived in neighborhoods where you could hear automatic weapons fire almost every night. And you know what? They don’t seem to get as many patrol cars cruising around as the nice neighborhoods I’ve lived in. (They also seem to drive a lot faster on patrol when they are out there, kinda like they just want to get it over with.) What’s with that, anyway? Any clues, Mr. Cluemeister?
September 21st, 2005 at 9:43 pm
“(While at the same time seeing yourself as licensed to be as sarcastic as you want.)”
Where do I get my free speech license? I want to use dirty words like Michael Turner. (“And, Mr. Cooper, what do you call your readers?” “The Aristocrats!”)
“Americans here who try to pretend that killing non-combatants on a large scale in the firebombings of Japan was somehow justified in that case.”
Not somehow, abundantly. Don’t put your factories in neighborhoods if you don’t want neighborhoods bombed. Better yet, don’t be a militaristic aggressor– oh wait, the Japanese figured that one out.
“Any clues, Mr. Cluemeister?
More patrol cars. And don’t talk like a Saturday Night Live character from ten years ago.
Any more questions, email them. To those who, sooner or later, tried to think seriously about some of the questions I and a few others raised, and gave as good as you got (especially Rosedog, once she got over the impertinence of anyone daring to question something set in the august majesty of LA Times type), I thank you for engaging with questions that were asked, initially at least and intermittently thereafter, quite seriously, and that represent the real issues that Javier’s case and the issue raises– but were not really raised in Rosedog’s piece. Blow me off if you wish, but Jim Rockford said some very good things.
To the rest, look at the company you keep, like 11-year-old Bob P., and ask yourself if you’re learning anything in an echo chamber. I very much doubt you’re learning how to end the Republican dominance of American politics, at the very least.
September 21st, 2005 at 9:47 pm
“As for Reg, how French of you, to insist that the way a word is commonly used is not what it means.”
Oh, fuck off. You’re a damned bore, and not very bright to boot. Sorry I busted you on that bit of stupidity.
September 21st, 2005 at 9:56 pm
Mgmax…
I think if you read my posts over you’ll see I never suggested I was smarter than you are. I did, however, in some of my more irritable moments suggest I was more knowledgeable on these issues than you are, although—you’re right— I have no way of knowing if that’s true. Nor do I know what life experience you bring to the discussion.
In any case, I suggest a truce. I, for one, don’t have the energy to continue this, since—as Rich says—you continue to argue with what I *haven’t* said and shoot down conclusions that I haven’t made. I give up.
(I should note that my truce suggestion was helped along by the fact that, about five minutes ago, I wrote a long, slightly snotty, anecdotal rejoinder to your post with the Michael Barone quotes regarding Bill Bratton’s use of Wilson and Kelling’s theory in NYC. Among other things, since I report on law enforcement in LA, I know Bratton and his command staff quite well. And, for the record, I’m a Bratton fan. Okay—anyway, as I was preparing to post this swell treatise, my computer accidentally ate the whole thing, and I decided to view it as a cosmic elbow from the universe suggesting that I ought to freaking cease and desist already.)
Here’s the thing: I’ve researched and written about criminal justice for 15 years. I’m not saying that to pull rank, or to say that I’ve got all the answers, or that I “own the issue or am right even 50 percent of the time about fucking anything— in any area of my life. Nor am I suggesting that you haven’t done as much or more. I’m just stating a context for my admittedly quickly written posts.
Over the years, I’ve written about gang violence, and guys trying to get out of gangs, and the long-term effect of a single gang murder on a neighborhood, and about the women of a particular community dealing with the gang milieu in their midst, and about law enforcement theory, and sentencing policy, and parole practices, and broken windows, and dirty cops and great cops, and police training practices—and about those inner city kids you urge me not to “give up on,†(some of whom are my God babies, thank you very much. Jeez-us!!), ….blah, blah, blah…whatever… on and on..
The point is, it’s all out there on the web for anyone to find. (A quick search of the LA Weekly site, for example, would pull up a representative gaggle of pieces.) I don’t expect you to read any of it. Nor do I suggest that you’d be a better, happier, more moral, sexier, funnier, better informed person with improved dental hygiene if you did read it. I mention it at all because it assuredly expresses what I have to say better than any of the reductive stuff I’m going to be able to continue to throw up here, just for the sake of argument.
So, truce. Peace. Hope.
All of it. And good night.
September 21st, 2005 at 9:57 pm
tell him how he used echo chamber wrong too dude
September 21st, 2005 at 10:04 pm
PS: I enjoyed the Michael Barone quotes, though, and appreciate you posting them, Mgmax. Even though I don’t agree with his underlying premise, it’s a discussion very much worth having. (But it’s not really possible, frankly, in this kind of limited context.)
September 21st, 2005 at 10:12 pm
No, Rosedog, it’s not. When your initial serious questions are met with “asshole” and “vindictive” rather than the slightest thoughtfulness, it’s tough to resist the temptation to simply toy with the monkeys in the cages for the amusement value their exaggerated antics provide, I plead guilty to that (and will take my punishment like a man).
But I do appreciate those who responded seriously, and I’ll look up some of your stuff.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:14 pm
lucky – this clown specifically invoked Mike Royko – who I’m very familiar with and who used “goo goo” exactly and only as I noted, and as it’s since been used by everybody who has the intellect to discern it’s context and derivation – as his “source” for a totally clueless “definition”. If he were merely sloppy and ignorant, as opposed to his parading nonsense as fact, I’d give him a pass. On the evidence, I can only conclude he’s an asshole, and an arrogant one at that.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:32 pm
PPS: Thanks to Rich, MT, and Reg, for helping to clarify things.
And Rich…. About the Todd Clear stuff I mentioned: I’ve gotten most of it through written material, plus interviews and conversations with him. I did a quick web search to see if I could find a good link for you, and didn’t turn up the underlying study itself (I imagine it’s out there, if one takes enough time), but I found this article, written by a smart friend of mine, that refers in general terms to some of Clear’s work, and gets to cause and effect issues of crime reduction, at least in broad strokes:
http://www.madison.com/wsj/spe/prison/index.php?ntid=24857&ntpid=1
BTW, if you do a search with Todd Clear’s name, plus “communities” and “crime,” you’ll turn up some very intriguing stuff that you might enjoy poking into. He’s an extremely interesting and insightful researcher and theorist.
September 22nd, 2005 at 4:28 am
Mgmax: “When your initial serious questions are met with “asshole” and “vindictive” rather than the slightest thoughtfulness, it’s tough to resist the temptation to simply toy with the monkeys in the cages for the amusement value their exaggerated antics provide, I plead guilty to that (and will take my punishment like a man).”
Got that? We’re monkeys in cages, to be toyed with. Whereas he’s a MAN. This guy just won’t let up with the condescension, will he? Let’s go back to his initial “serious question”, just in case it really was put in a way worth taking seriously:
—
“Okay, I realize conservatives were told in advance that their views were beyond the pale (what is this, the Robert confirmation?) so I’ll just throw it back to you good people: what exactly is the positive case for allowing known felons to remain in the US? Seems to me that this is a classic goo-goo point of view ….”
—
See it? “goo-goo” There’s the first name calling.
Were conservatives told that there Andrew wrote “Before any conservative starts mouthing off about how wonderful this horrid, little law is …. you might want to go back and read all of Fremon’s article.”
Andrew DIDN’T tell any conservative that his views were beyond the pale. There was no such “warning” saying “conservative thought beyond pale, don’t bother.” Andrew said they should read the article first before commenting. Did you, Mgmax? No, you didn’t.
And how about this accusation that the first responses showed no thoughtfulness? Let’s roll back and look at the record.
Davidson dismisses him, first off. But then GM Roper calls that dismissal too harsh. Davidson responds to Roper more thoughtfully, admitting to being somewhat harsh.
Rosedog responds asking Mgmax if he’d read the article, then puts in some time, in a completely inoffensive manner, explaining her position.
What does Mgmax come back with? He attributes to Davidson an “abhorrence” of Mgmax, saying that he’s “copiously blessed with disgust” at Mgmax’s very existence, that “your argument is simply that I’m abhorrent for not agreeing that felons should be allowed to remain in America.” I don’t like what Davidson started with, but it wasn’t that inflammatory. He never called Mgmax “abhorrent” or even anything like that.
Rosedog comes back asking if Mgmax had read the article in question, as Andrew had suggested. And in a very civilized way lays out her position. Mavis Beacon lays out an argument in a civilized manner.
Mgmax comes back, admitting to not reading the article, putting some words in his own mouth (“imperfect” legislation suddenly becomes something that could be a lot worse), then we get it again:
“That’s a goo-goo talking.”
THEN we get Mavis Beacon starting in with “asshole”. After Davidson had backed down after being scolded by a conservative, after rosedog had cut him some slack, after GM Roper had agreed with him, he goes out there again with his insulting condescension.
Mgm’s very next post treats the entire comment forum as if nobody had given him a hearing. Here it is, still dripping snot:
“Rosedog, sorry if it’s NOT your article which especially interested me [the article which was Andrew's announced topic of discussion], but rather the attitudes on display here which made no distinctions in condemning the very idea of deporting felons (see language examples quoted above). That’s what I chose to engage with and I see nothing wrong with that. It has been VERY revealing.”
Perhaps he’d like to go back and change that “which” to a “that”, so as not to seem insulting to those who had actually agreed with him.
What a fucking asshole.
I’m gonna say something that I hope doesn’t piss off Jim ROckford, a conservative I’m increasingly willing (occasionally delighted, in fact) to hear from in this forum. Rockford was frequently coming out here with posts where you’d figure out it was him from some signature overstatement within the first three sentences — and we started pointing out those overstatements that put us on speed scroll to get past it all. And … it seemed to me he started cleaning up his act. Or was that just my imagination? Am I overcorrelating?
Let’s do an experiment. Let’s do the same with this Mgmax character. I think he’ll go away if he can’t clean up. Trolls do like to be fed, after all, and if he’s really just a troll, he can feed elsewhere.
And if he does clean up, this forum will be better: we’ll have another conservative voice here who has become more worth listening to.
So we win either way with this strategy. But if we keep engaging him (beyond pointing out the precise phrase where we tuned him out), we’ll just get crapped on, with more of his condescension, and wear out our carpal tunnels writing stuff that he responds to only by crapping on us yet again.
September 22nd, 2005 at 4:34 am
For the sentence starting “Were conservatives told that …” read “Were conservatives told that there opionions wouldn’t be listened to?” Sorry, I’m as tired of this thread as anybody, and just plain tired.
March 9th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
[...] What we can show you are the memorial crosses for the 3500 migrants who died as they were pushed deeper into the desert by Clinton’s various border “operations” We can show you the deportation orders for literally tens of thousands of legal immigrants (that’s right, legal green-card holding permanent residents) who have been deported and in many cases have had their families shattered thanks to the policies imposed by Bill Clinton. [...]
October 8th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Yo!
What do you think about Apple Iogo? >:)
November 13th, 2008 at 11:00 am
separating permanently ,dads from the children and wife for smashing the tv set when his wife called the police not suspecting that a one yr sentence (probation) will turn their lives into a permanent nightmare
Husband comes home after double shift. Wife’s soaps took priority over preparing meal for the family;wife does not work and prefers not to work.Asset on home:$350,000. Savings:$60,000: 401k $65,000.;other assets; $50,000.one child-HS grad;2 children-college grads; 2 very young children in primary school;dad is long time PR. Got deportation for life for smashing his own tv.
And the heartaches quadrupled. Thanks to the SS Republicans,defenders of the Son of God, Jesus -in their back pockets. Ye hypocrites!!!!!