Treason Season??

[hazard]

Except that the Republicans for all those reasons have every reason to ignore all the evidence and vote to not impeach the president once the trial concludes. Deliberately voting counter to the evidence is itself an act of sabotage.

Personally? I think that the best time for the Democrats to impeach is shortly after the Republican primaries conclude. Either the party doesn't choose Trump, in which case the Republicans have to decide whether they stick with that decision and impeach or ignore it and tear at their party's unity, or the party does choose Trump who then gets an avalanche of evidence shoved over him in the trial along with much of his administration and his political supporters. I'm not sure Pence will be able to avoid getting tarred with the same brush either, nor the rest of the party due to how obstructionist they themselves have been.

Will it get his base going? Sure. But it'll also get the rest of the population going, while political engagement among the sections of the population that traditionally are both low engagement and leaning Democrat has already seen a historic rise in the USA (and not just the USA either). The Republican party may've thoroughly locked down the older white/male section of USA demographics, they're not seeing a large supply of new blood streaming into the party, and their rhetoric and tactics are repulsive to voters in the age bracket that usually decides what way a voter is likely to go for the rest of their lives.

While a rise in violence from right wing terrorists is likely following an impeachment (or for that matter any event that ousts Donald Trump, even the 2020 election) that is not an improvement for the Republican Party. The USA is tired of the empty platitudes that follow such things, and I can see rumblings in USA society that indicate a shift is very likely on many of the issues the Republican party has avidly advocated, away from the Republican stance.


Of course, one option that is available to the Democrats is making an example of Lindsey Graham, whom I will note and remind you tried to tamper with a witness and advised another to not heed a subpoena from Congress while in Congress and on live television. That sounds like attempted obstruction of justice to me...

[Rajvik]

The problem with doing that Hazard is that it will be a blatant and obvious political play that will likely backfire horribly, worse than the Clinton impeachment attempt.

[classicdrogn]

No matter what any side does, it will be derided as a blatant political ploy... and most likely accurately. The only question is who can spin harder, all the rest of us can do is grab a bag of marshmallows to roast while the dumpster fire crackles merrily and spreads.

[Matrix Dragon]

Politicians doing their actual job is a 'blatant and obvious political play'. AHAHAHAHA... You're all fucked. And we're all going down with you.

[Labster]

Politicians doing their actual job is a 'blatant and obvious political play'. AHAHAHAHA... You're all fucked. And we're all going down with you.

This. So much this.

[classicdrogn]

Yes. Yes we are.

[Matrix Dragon]

Meanwhile. Your Commander In Chief goes on about how much he loves the leader of North Korea. Declares that the people involved with the Mueller Report are 'The Worst People On Earth'. Admits Russia helped him, then turns around and says he never said that. The bullshit with the USS John S. McCain. Tariffs against Mexico. Children dying at the border. Selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. Declares Ron Moore to be a good man.

And people will still sing his praises even as he burns everything down. Because in the end, they're just as cruel, vindictive, hateful and evil as he is.

[Isodecan]

The sad thing is that most of them aren't (as cruel, vindictive, hateful and evil as he is, that is).  Most of the people I know who voted Republican and live in the Right Wing infobubble (just as many of us live in the Left Wing infobubble) would, if confronted by an actual real person of the sort that Republican politicians rail against, who needed help would attempt to help them.  By and large though, they live in parts of the country where they never (or very rarely) encounter a black person, much less a latino.  All they have to inform them is the fears about the menace of the other fed to them by people whose job it is to lie to them, but whom they trust because they are saying things that they believe in their gut to be true.

The real problem is that they have been told over and over again that the Democrats are going to come and take their guns away and make their daughters have abortions and that they are responsible for everything bad that happens in the economy that affects "Real Americans".  When you try to point out that while Republican economic policy over the last generation (possibly two) has been good for the bottom line of big corporations and the ultra-wealthy, it has been not great (arguably bad) for the country as whole, and disastrous for the sort of small town folks who vote them into office.

And when you try to tell them that, they pull out the same old stories that they have been told over and over again, and believe that you must be lying to them, because that not what the people they trust tell them.

[Rajvik]

Isodecan, that is the biggest pile of horseshit I have read on this board to date, and that is saying something.

Blacks and latinos, I work and have worked with them all my life, went to school with a few too. People who need HELP, no problem, can do. The problem starts when people say "I WANT" and refuse to work for it, refuse to even TRY to work for it. And don't say that I am repeating a right-wing lie, because I have literally stood there and watched it happen. I have no problem with an immigrant who comes here through the legal process, hell, I applaud them because of the time, effort and patience it took to do so. I have NO SYMPATHY WHATSOEVER for the people caught coming across the border illegally no matter where they are coming from.

And BA, the comment you made about the non-english speaking illegals only working the orange groves, (might have been a different thread), I wanted to make a more detailed post but here is as good a place as any. Go work during ginning season in a cotton gin, I hope you speak Spanish though, because MAYBE one of the workers in the entire shift, (and usually the one in charge of the group) speaks ANY English, and that badly.

Edit: Also, FYI, considering most of you don't know where I grew up, up, I am from so deep in the woods we have to pipe in sunlight. This area, where I have lived almost my entire life is Trump country, white black, red, brown, and yellow. So take your identity politics and shove it

[hazard]

Rajvik, do you believe that migrant labour is an important part of at least some sections of the USA economy?

[Matrix Dragon]

Rajvik, do you believe that migrant labour is an important part of at least some sections of the USA economy?

He might. He still hates them.

[Rajvik]

Yes Hazard, I understand that it is,
No Matrix, I don't hate them, neither because they are migrants nor because they are "non-white" as you imply there.
My argument where migrant labor is concerned is that there are other people than ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, and by that I mean people who have crossed the border without permission or being checked by the government, that can do the work.

To expand on the cotton gin example I gave earlier, of the 5 cotton gins in my area, all of which use migrant labor, there are also 10 communities/towns that workers could be hired from either seasonally, or permanently. The gin owners do, in fact, hire there permanent personnel from these towns. Temporary hands for the season could be arranged through a temp agency in advance, but instead they hire migrants because they are cheaper.

[Norgarth]

Blacks and latinos, I work and have worked with them all my life, went to school with a few too. People who need HELP, no problem, can do. The problem starts when people say "I WANT" and refuse to work for it, refuse to even TRY to work for it. And don't say that I am repeating a right-wing lie, because I have literally stood there and watched it happen. I have no problem with an immigrant who comes here through the legal process, hell, I applaud them because of the time, effort and patience it took to do so. I have NO SYMPATHY WHATSOEVER for the people caught coming across the border illegally no matter where they are coming from.

I've seen plenty of white, natural born, citizens that have that exact same 'I WANT' attitude.  It's not something that only involves immigrants (legal or otherwise).

[Epsilon]

To expand on the cotton gin example I gave earlier, of the 5 cotton gins in my area, all of which use migrant labor, there are also 10 communities/towns that workers could be hired from either seasonally, or permanently.  The gin owners do, in fact, hire there permanent personnel from these towns. Temporary hands for the season could be arranged through a temp agency in advance, but instead they hire migrants because they are cheaper.

Looks like someone has a problem with capitalism. Why do you hate capitalism Rajvik?

[robkelk]

...

To expand on the cotton gin example I gave earlier, of the 5 cotton gins in my area, all of which use migrant labor, there are also 10 communities/towns that workers could be hired from either seasonally, or permanently.  The gin owners do, in fact, hire there permanent personnel from these towns. Temporary hands for the season could be arranged through a temp agency in advance, but instead they hire migrants because they are cheaper.

Exactly.

Now, what will Trump's wall do to that supply of inexpensive labour?

And what effect will that have on the price of cotton?

[hazard]

Yes Hazard, I understand that it is,
No Matrix, I don't hate them, neither because they are migrants nor because they are "non-white" as you imply there.
My argument where migrant labor is concerned is that there are other people than ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, and by that I mean people who have crossed the border without permission or being checked by the government, that can do the work.

To expand on the cotton gin example I gave earlier, of the 5 cotton gins in my area, all of which use migrant labor, there are also 10 communities/towns that workers could be hired from either seasonally, or permanently.  The gin owners do, in fact, hire there permanent personnel from these towns. Temporary hands for the season could be arranged through a temp agency in advance, but instead they hire migrants because they are cheaper.

Then if you understand that, do you believe that the labour demand could be filled at a cost the US customer is willing to pay in a legal manner? Do you believe that that demand for temporary hands can be filled at a rate USA born workers will accept so that it's them doing the work? And do you believe that the USA migrant handling systems are capable of handling the amount of migrant labour that needs to be moved around? And I'm not just talking customs and border patrol agents, I also mean the vast administrative system that would be needed to provide the large number of visa, or the inspectors in the plants making use of migrant labour to check if everyone who should have a visum or permanent resident permit does so.

Because if the answer to any of these questions is no, illegal migrant labour is an inevitable factor because otherwise there are chunks of the economy not working due to lack of labour. 

You actually saw this last year when Trump cracked down on migrant labour of any stripe with the Maryland crab fishing industry taking a major hit because everything was ready to go except for the labourers whom were still stuck outside the USA, and barred from entry. It was a massive hit for the industry because everybody still had to pay for all the material and maintenance but there was a substantially smaller amount of money moving into the business buying crab.

[Dartz]

They'll get the prisoners to do it. They're even cheaper than migrants and it's easy to make more prisoners.

And prisoners have even less rights than migrants. You don't even have to pay for prisoners - just pay the prison operators.

[Matrix Dragon]

Oh yeah, I forgot America still has slave labor via the prison system.

[Dartz]

Yep. "Work sets you Free".

Or not, once the demand for cheap labour goes up. And now you've got the moral certaintly that everyone of them total deserves their fate because they're "Bad people who did Bad Things who need to be taught a lesson" and not for other reaons at all.

[Matrix Dragon]

Yep. "Work sets you Free".

Or not, once the demand for cheap labour goes up. And now you've got the moral certaintly that everyone of them total deserves their fate because they're "Bad people who did Bad Things who need to be taught a lesson" and not for other reaons at all.

The American prison system is, and always has been, the stuff of nightmares.

[hazard]

'Don't have to pay for prisoners.' That one's rich.

Prisoners are expensive, according to the Bureau of Prisons own internal reporting they cost some 34 700 USD per inmate in 2016 and 36 300 USD in 2017. And that's just the incarceration, not counting the entire judicial system around the prisons themselves like courts and police.

This while the average farm worker according to Indeed.com costs some 9.89 USD per hour as of this post. Let's round that to 10 dollars an hour for ease of calculation, and presume an average working week of 40 hours a week (the seasonal nature of much agricultural work tends to mean working long days in summer and no to very limited work during winter), and an average working year of 48 weeks. This would mean 400 dollars a week, and 19 200 USD per year.

This means that, on average, the US economy would save about 50% of the cost of agricultural labour if it used freeman labour instead of prisoner labour. Not that this cost is necessarily immediately apparent to the customer mind you, because much of the cost of prisoner labour will be unloaded on the taxpayer rather than the customer.

[Matrix Dragon]

And yet the system is still there and well established. Thank you 13th Amendment and corporate for-profits.

[Dartz]

Meant to be 'Dont Pay Prisoners' - just the prison operators. They're the ones that have the inmate - they're the ones that get paid. And that's different really. That's a corporation rather than a human being.

[SilverFang01]

I think this essay nails it with regards to immigration, the wall, and a lot else. The simpleminded are always looking for simple solutions to complex problems.

[Rajvik]

I am going to try and take these in order.
Norgarth: yes, as have i, maybe I didn't word the statement concisely enough and maybe I should have put the physical break of a line between those points. The I WANT mentality exists across all barriers save one, the willingness to work for it.

Epsilon: I don't hate capitalism, what I PREFER is that companies hire local labor at reasonable wages so that their local communities are reinvested in instead of the gin owners being able to buy a new pickup truck for themselves and the wife a new Mercedes sedan every season.

Rob: the wall will at best decrease the available labor pool forcing employers to hire more locals. The price of cotton will go up by weight as a result, but not an unreasonable amount.

Hazard, the cost of using US born workers would be acceptable to the paying public because the money would be going back into local economies.

The use of prisoners for labor is tightly constrained depending on what state you are in and mostly limited to roadside and forestry work. The old "making license plates" trope was something from the 40s and 50s and prisoners are not allowed into public businesses as they are required to be under constant supervision.

Edit:
And sometimes the answer to a complex problem Silverfang is to realize that it isn't as complex as you want to think they are. Simple answers are best because they are easy to keep to