US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1766

On August 18 2019 09:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:
[...]
I also fundamentally disagree with the idea that good doesn't outweigh bad - in principle. I think that's just wrong. The question is whether the ratio is good enough, which it might not be (although personally I think the ratio is better in Norway than in most other countries because being more intrusive lets us uncover more cases, and I don't accept that a family of 4 being ruined because the two children are wrongly displaced is a bigger tragedy than 4 other children being abused for 12 years. )

On August 18 2019 10:58 Ben... wrote:
I'll see if I can find the piece I read on Fox's reporting of the "caravan", but to surprise absolutely nobody, within a day or two of the midterms ending, Fox had essentially stopped reporting on the migrant caravan completely and Trump basically didn't mention it nearly as frequently. A few weeks later they started talking about it again at a politically convenient time for a day or two, and then did again right before the SOTU so he could blab about border security.

It's almost like the entire thing was complete bullshit and they just use it to fearmonger and distract from other, actual issues going on. Just like all the antifa fearmongering.

On August 18 2019 07:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:


That's still adults deciding what is the desired behavior. Pedagogues favoring Piaget over Skinner will often feel that this is too controlled, too much viewing children as learning machines rather than independent actors pursuing their own goals and dreams. (obviously this depends a bit on age).

I mean I'm not saying you're wrong. I believe behaviorism has a place in pedagogy, we're still at the point where some knowledge and skillsets need to be attained even if doing so isn't enjoyable, and behaviorism is very good at motivation. But there isn't a consensus among pedagogues in terms of what types of adults we want to inspire future children to be, and which approach you take yields different results. My impression is that the more behaviorist approaches had fallen out of flavor for a couple decades in Norwegian (and quite possibly german, although I don't know that) pedagogy, however with more modern digital learning platforms, it's seeing a big resurgence. I'm not fully positive towards that.

On August 18 2019 19:15 Liquid`Drone wrote:
It's not even remotely close to a third. Over the past 15 years or so, I think there's 25+ cases that have been successfully appealed. Even if I say that the real number of wrongdoings is ten times as big, we'd be looking at 250 cases out of well above 10000, which would put it at 2.5%. Frankly I think the real number is less than 1%. And if the numbers are 9750 children saved from domestic abuse with 250 broken families, I think that is a preferable outcome to 0 broken families and 9750 abused children.

That doesn't mean it's acceptable, in a 'wanna make an omelet, gotta break some eggs' type of thing. But abused children not being helped also isn't acceptable. I'm absolutely on board with investigations, with revisions, it's very possible that they are overreaching in some number of cases, and if there's need for some structural change or more oversight or more transparency, I'm supportive of that too. I'm not saying that barnevernet would be justified in taking away children if it was a 70:30 ratio of good:bad, but I'm saying that in terms of how tragic it is for the humans involved, then 4 children being abused for years is to me, as tragic as a family being wrongfully separated from each other.

On August 18 2019 14:17 Gorgonoth wrote:

Antifa has been documented using violence. Why are you wishing good luck to a group which has attempted to firebomb a government building and beaten up journalists? They condone violence as a political tool.
As early as 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warned state and local officials that antifa had become increasingly confrontational and were engaging in “domestic terrorist violence.”
+ Show Spoiler +
The use of violence should be condemned whether it comes from far left or right.

On August 19 2019 01:34 Nebuchad wrote:


Literally everyone condones violence as a political tool. One of the main purposes of political ideology is to define the acceptable targets of violence.

My post is repetitive so here's some journalism to go with it:

+ Show Spoiler +

On August 19 2019 03:14 Mohdoo wrote:
I only ever hear about ANTIFA in the context of them battling Nazis. I don't hear about them at any other time. For this reason, I have an entirely positive view of them. When I consider how many people have died this year because of far right extremism, it is clear this has become a matter of self defense as well. Nazis are actively conducting mass killings on American soil. This isn't about prevention, this is about responding. If I knew someone was about to go kill 20 people, I would give the thumbs up to someone killing that person first.

When I consider the idea that Nazi ideology spreading leads to more death, it stands to reason that it should be considered extremely important and concessions should be made to destroy their movement.

On August 18 2019 07:58 GreenHorizons wrote:


Maybe, but I think it's more insidious than that. Since 9/11 "terrorist" has experienced an ever expanding definition and allowable countermeasures as well as executive power to determine who is a terrorist.

Proud Boys seem to model themselves after brown shirts and we're entering a new version of Nixon's drug war. With Biden leading the Democratic nomination still it's quite possible Trump gets another 4 years to work it out as well.

On August 19 2019 07:10 iamthedave wrote:


Isn't it practically a given Trump beats Biden?

On August 18 2019 19:15 Liquid`Drone wrote:
It's not even remotely close to a third. Over the past 15 years or so, I think there's 25+ cases that have been successfully appealed.

Even if I say that the real number of wrongdoings is ten times as big, we'd be looking at 250 cases out of well above 10000, which would put it at 2.5%. Frankly I think the real number is less than 1%. And if the numbers are 9750 children saved from domestic abuse with 250 broken families, I think that is a preferable outcome to 0 broken families and 9750 abused children.

... I'm absolutely on board with investigations, with revisions, it's very possible that they are overreaching in some number of cases, and if there's need for some structural change or more oversight or more transparency, I'm supportive of that too...

On August 19 2019 11:35 ggrrg wrote:
I intended to answer your previous post, Drone, but Biff's last response basically incorporates everything I wanted to say and to reiterate the points extensively seems redundant and pointless. However, there is one thing you said that certainly deserves to be answered separately:



One of the main issues with barnevernet is the virtual impossibility to successfully appeal a decision (not to mention that such appeals happen in inacceptable time frames compared to the gravity of the measures taken). I would say it is a fair assumption to claim that neither of the cases I mentioned in my previous post are counted towards the "successfully appealed" statistic since none of the children were ultimately returned to their parents. The appeals were all unsuccessful despite the parents being cleared of the initial charges. Those may be the only 3 instances of such outrageous injustice or they may be just the tip of the iceberg - the only parents who had the strength, ability, means, and luck to make public their inhumane experiences with this institution. Either way, any statistic about successfully appealed cases becomes meaningless given the fact that exonerated parents are still kept apart from their children.




Normally, I support simplified pragmatic approaches to complex issues as long as the benefits strongly outweigh the negatives. But here we are not talking some minor unfairness. Such a utilitarian approach seems wholly unacceptable when the negative side encompasses grave personal tragedies for children and parents alike. This is a systematic error in the process that requires immediate and resolute remedy.
On a side note - while it is mostly irrelevant to the point I am making - when you are reducing the problem to a purely numerical issue, it should be noted that the exemplary number of 250 has to multiplied by a factor upwards of 2 accounting for the child affected as well as at least one parent (often enough two) as well siblings and grandparents who can also be affected.




None of this is happening, though. As a matter of fact, barnevernet has the ability to act on a whim and outside any oversight without any accountability.
And personally, I consider the formulations you use awfully inappropriate:
It is not "very possible that they are overreaching in some number of cases". It is a fact that they do. There is no need naming lesser known cases to support this when one can simply take a look at the cases accepted by the ECHR.
Also, it is not a question "if there's need for some structural change". It is a fact that major changes are required better yesterday than today. Causing one tragedy is enough to take a good hard look at the way this institution operates. Causing a string of such tragedies proves a fundamental flaw in the system.

On August 18 2019 19:15 Liquid`Drone wrote:
It's not even remotely close to a third. Over the past 15 years or so, I think there's 25+ cases that have been successfully appealed. Even if I say that the real number of wrongdoings is ten times as big, we'd be looking at 250 cases out of well above 10000, which would put it at 2.5%. Frankly I think the real number is less than 1%. And if the numbers are 9750 children saved from domestic abuse with 250 broken families, I think that is a preferable outcome to 0 broken families and 9750 abused children.

On August 19 2019 19:04 Belisarius wrote:
It's useful to bring up the police, here, because the constraints that the police operate under, like presumption of innocence and an independent judiciary, are precisely the things that bureaucratic state organs like barnevernet lack. Over here the tax office has this problem, but it's a similar situation.

For very serious punishments - which separation of children from their families certainly qualifies as - we usually work on the principle that an innocent person wrongfully convicted is a very bad thing, and we set the filters to allow a certain rate of guilty people slipping through, in order to minimise the number of bystanders who get crushed by the machine. That's a very different paradigm to "wanna make an omelet, gotta break some eggs".

Even if you take the position that children's welfare is a unique case that justifies such an approach, there's still the very serious issue that the only real means of challenging a decision made by barnevernet is to go to barnevernet itself. Especially when the people most likely to run afoul of this will not have the skills or the resources to pursue other channels like the courts.

To resort to a one-liner:

Organisation with famously inadequate appeals process finds that few appeals are successful. More news at 11.

I don't think anyone is arguing to abolish these agencies, but I think there's a strong case that there are major structural problems that warrant a serious rethink.