Ben___Garrison

Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 8d ago

PR doesn't end with just public facing statements. For example, if an organization is established to help the poor but all the workers openly hate poor people, that's a PR issue since news organizations or even just the poor people themselves would eventually realize how much the organization loathed them.

And again, Trump's loathing of illegal immigrants has never been a secret by any means.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 7d ago

You really seem to want to catch me with supposed double-binds and contradictions instead of actually addressing important points.

If the contradictions are true, then fair enough. Like earlier when you mentioned "hey you say Trump's restrictions didn't do much, but then say that illegal immigration exploded when Biden removed them". I could certainly see why someone would think that was a bit weird so a clarification was justified, and even with that clarification I probably wasn't giving Trump enough credit to what might have happened if he didn't do his EO's.

But this is just a nothingburger. I feel like I'm reading the following: "first you said 'immigration', then fell back to 'illegal immigration'. Aha! A concession! Then you said Trump had bad PR because of saying stuff like 'shithole countries', but he didn't say that in a televised address, meaning it wasn't public, yet PR has the word 'public' in it. A contradiction!"

To the object-level claim here, if Trump says something inflammatory to a group who all then promptly leak it to the press, then yes, that's a PR problem. The two options Trump has are either 1) get his leaky ship in order, or 2) think it but don't say it, or at least say it in ways that aren't so clearly controversial. Every time you hear the media complaining about "dogwhistling", it's just Republicans doing this. But Trump never seem to get the memo, which is why he keeps shooting himself and the cause of immigration restrictions in the foot.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 8d ago

If Biden wanted to cut down on illegal immigration, he could do it now, without any additional Congressional authority.

I addressed this in the post. To summarize, yes, he could fix it now, to at least some degree. Reimplementing the Remain in Mexico would help. The problem with all of these fixes though is that they're bandaids on bullet holes that don't address fundamental issues like this bill would have.

The Obama administration began counting repeated deportations of the same immigrant as multiple deportations. This was well-known at the time and confounds a simple analysis. Moreover, you neglect to discuss DACA.

His hawkishness was specifically a reference to this chart. Yes, Obama was also more willing to give amnesty than Republicans ever were.

The "shithole countries" remark was not something Trump said in public as part of a "PR" strategy. It was something allegedly said in a closed meeting. Are you saying that Trump is responsible for rumors about him?

Multiple people referenced the exact same remark shortly after the meeting was over, so I think it's safe to assume he really said it. If you want to keep contesting that specific statement, just choose any of his other ones. His hostile rhetoric towards immigrants wasn't exactly a secret.

So what? You were arguing just a few paragraphs ago that these policies don't matter! Trump's policies didn't do anything, because Obama was better, but then Biden undoes Trump's policies, which makes everything worse!

The overarching point on Trump was that his policies were bombastic and good at catching headlines, but that they didn't do much in practice. Comparing the number of illegal immigrant border encounters during Trump's term and Obama's second term is quite similar. Biden was worse than both of them because he tried to go back to Obama's policies, but by then the asylum loophole was well known.

I can grant that in a theoretical alternate universe where Trump didn't do anything on the border, immigration could have surged far worse than it did due to exogenous factors and immigrants catching on to the loophole faster, so Trump's actions might have stopped a surge that would have happened. It's tough to know for sure, but it's plausible.

The reason he did this was as obvious as it was cynical: he didn’t want Biden to have a “win” on the issue.

This is reading Trump's mind.

Multiple senators such as Tillis said this was the reason. Trump himself motioned at the idea on Truth Social when he said he didn't want to "absolve" the Democrats on the issue.

it really makes me question your ability to digest evidence

I just think you're not very astute.

Can it the personal attacks. I enjoy debating people who disagree with me because I think it makes my arguments stronger, but I've had problems in the past with you reverting to personal attacks.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 7d ago

Sure, the additional restrictions you mentioned do exist, but remember the priors here. The Border Emergency Authority is a draconian measures meant to be used sparingly for emergencies, not a "you must meet these criteria to even start deporting illegals" that Trump, Gaetz, and others painted it as. You could strip out the entire Border Emergency Authority and it would still be quite a conservative bill, adding funds for normal enforcement and closing the asylum loophole among other beneficial things. The biggest issue with the BEA is that it sunsets after 3 years so it's only really meant to be used for the current surge, but opponents of the bill keep neglecting to mention that since it screws with their narrative that the BEA is a permanent bad thing.

Despite those restrictions, under the current numbers Biden would be required to use the authority. This would have been a win-win for those who want enforcement. Either he uses the authority and gets illegal immigration under control, which would be good, or he wriggles out of using it, providing fodder for Republicans to say we need an even more draconian measure to stop illegal immigration.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 7d ago

Well there's nothing for me to really argue against here, just "I'm right and you're wrong", an ad-hominem, then "landslide for Trump in 2024!"

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 7d ago

You are not being honest when you say Trump tanked the bill.

If you're going to accuse me of lying, please don't strawman me. I never claimed there was no opposition to the bill before Trump came out against it. But whatever prospects the bill had, died when he did.

It’s far better to expose the immigration issue and pass a clean bill after the election.

This is just the double-or-nothing idea I mentioned in my post. Throwing away the biggest win on immigration in a generation, and instead banking on winning the Presidency AND the Senate AND the House AND hoping Trump actually cares about the issue enough to pass actual legislation instead of just trying EOs. Surely the last time he had a trifecta and passed no major legislation on immigration was just a fluke, right? Surely he won't be distracted by settling scores and getting revenge on his perceived enemies, right? And even if all that happens, hoping that Trump is tactful enough to actually do a (supposedly) extreme immigration bill without the Democrats freaking out and repealing it the minute they come into power.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 8d ago

The bill was basically a tactical retreat in a losing war.

Surely you mean a tactical victory in a losing war?

The correct play was to put the election on immigration as a major issue and try to get support to change the entire system.

How would not passing the bill come closer to that goal?

I can already see it now:

Trump: Biden has been terrible for the border!

Biden: What do you mean, I tried to fix the border but you wouldn't let me!

The result: Nobody's mind is changed. Then maybe Trump wins, he tries more executive orders, but they keep getting mutilated by the courts as they did in his first term.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 8d ago

How to square this with something like @gattsuru’s recent post (and follow-up)? He starts from the assumption that Republicans are, in fact, no longer interested in compromise

I agree, they're obviously not interested in compromise, and in some cases it's for good reasons. That said, even if this bill just added the text about amending asylum rules to the official US laws, this bill would have been worth it. Dealing with asylum stuff is something Trump struggled against for his entire presidency, and he kept failing due to the courts ruling that EO's couldn't override rules of Congress. Had this bill passed, then at least any EO's Trump would enact in his next potential administration would carry much more weight.

When you add in the rest of the bill and compare it to the paltry concessions given to Democrats, the choice to pass it should have been obvious even if the Democrats tried to stonewall it in some (or many) ways.

I suspect that relying on Trump’s branding is a strategic blunder. No, it’s relying on one man in general.

Couldn't agree more. Candidates should be avatars of the people to enact desired policies. Trump was plausibly this sort of person in 2016 which is why I voted for him then, but he's since proven that he's really not up to the task. The Republican base should have dumped him for Desantis or some other candidate in the 2020 primary. Sure, all candidates have problems, but if they didn't do what was wanted then they should have been dumped too, and the base should have kept dumping candidates until somebody actually enacted policies. Instead, the Republican party has effectively turned into a cult of personality since many Republicans' only barometer of candidate quality is "how much he makes leftists seethe".

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 8d ago

If illegal immigration got worse after Biden undid Trump's policies, why can't Biden just redo them?

Again, he could redo them. He could (and should) reimplement Remain in Mexico to at least reduce the current surge somewhat.

But they're mere bandaids because they don't address the root issues, the most major one being the asylum loophole. The best long term fix would be to remove the asylum loophole, which Trump tried to do but failed since he wasn't willing to do more than executive orders on immigration. Remain in Mexico would be better than the status quo, but it would still be subject to periodic legal challenges, as well as Mexico deciding they don't want to keep all these people and helping them enter the US.

Illegal immigrants!

Sure, illegal immigrants. The point is that calling them things like "animals", or saying they're "coming from shithole countries" is needlessly inflammatory if the goal is to pass substantive policy.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 28d ago

I don't deny the lock in effect is real and present to some degree, but it's not a way to avoid taxes, only to delay them a bit. Owning stocks is not an end unto itself for most people, they're a vehicle to get returns, either through dividends or appreciation. So yes, they can own the Apple stock for longer, but eventually they'll sell which triggers the full effect of the tax.

Also there are strategies to monetize without triggering gain (eg leverage, death).

The death loophole is bad and should definitely be closed. I'm not sure how leverage could be used to avoid taxes, but it should probably be closed as well.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 8d ago

The provisions that Republicans want are temporary. The provisions that Democrats want are forever.

All of the provisions that the Democrats received were minor, and they were (as far as I can tell) all temporary, either because they directly expired like the 50K more legal immigrants for 5 years, or because they were minor carveouts in the things Republicans wanted which would expire themselves.

The bill hands Democrats exactly what they want, and enshrines a permanent increase in "legal" unrestricted immigration forever.

Blatantly false. The increase in legal immigration had an expiration date of 5 years. Check the bill summary or even the full text if you think I'm wrong.

Democrats have been calling for years to have an asylum "express lane" where even if the conditions are stricter on paper, anyone coached to tell the right lies will breeze right through the process to a "legal" path to permanent residency and citizenship.

This is what's basically happened in the status quo with Catch and Release, something that the bill would have ended.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 29d ago

Huh? Nobody's obligated to either respond to an entire post or nothing at all. I called out a bit I found particularly objectionable.

I could easily turn it back on you: why did you respond to MY comment without addressing the issue of whether a statement like "is too stupid to be allowed to vote" should be disallowed or not?

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 15d ago

When people say "close the border" they typically mean closing it to all traffic entirely which would be utterly silly. There's tons of trade that goes between the border, and plenty of American nationals come and go all the time.

I agree the asylum stuff is BS, but again, this bill does crack down on much of that. I'm fine with a few statistically irrelevant dissidents coming through if they're seeking to evade persecution from a genuinely authoritarian government torturing them, but I'm not fine with people fraudulently claiming they're a refugee for essentially no reason, which is what a lot of the economic migrants are doing now.

Even if you think all asylum should be ended, surely no asylum > a little asylum > a lot of asylum. So I don't know why you'd oppose the bill.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 28d ago

Compare it to the people who oppose immigration or the sense of "being replaced". One could sneer at them, say they should just buckle up and accept changing racial demographics without complaint, that their sense of being a "stranger in their own land" is stupid and dumb, and that giving into their demands is defacto giving in to racism. Indeed, many coastal leftist elites do some version of this, but we'd generally regard them as pompous and out-of-touch.

So it goes with inequality. We could say to a poor secretary "no, no, your rich billionaire boss needs to have a lower tax rate than you, because the way he makes his money is special and taxing it too highly would be unfair". Somehow I doubt they would be convinced.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 15d ago

When people say "close the border" with no conditions, it usually implies they want to close the border unconditionally, like for military or pandemic reasons. When people are just talking about illegal immigrants, they can pretty easily specify "we should do something about illegal immigration.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 15d ago · Edited 15d ago

Why can’t we just have a clean bill that closes the border?

I presume you mean "close the border to illegal immigrants". I agree that would be the best, but it's like saying "why don't we make murder illegal". It already is illegal, it's just a question of enforcement. This bill would have beefed up enforcement.

You say the golden triangle. The south is richer than they have ever been. There is always going to be some excuse. America will always be richer than every where else so there will always be economic demand.

I presume you did an autocorrect error and meant to type "Northern Triangle", not golden triangle.

The causes I listed aren't excuses, they're explanations that lie on a continuum. It's like judging the performance of a CEO based solely on the stock price, when you really need to understand the whole underlying environment to make a proper judgement. If the company grew by 10% but the rest of the sector grew by 50%, the CEO probably screwed up. Similarly, extraneous factors affect enforcement at the border.

I prefer Trump over the bill because I know the bill does nothing when the wrong party is in power.

You keep saying this but that doesn't make it true. At the very least this bill would have given more money for enforcement and closed an obvious loophole that illegals were abusing to enter the country. If Biden actually used the bill to its full effect (which he said he would) then it would have done even more.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 16d ago

The Border Emergency Authority is a "break in case of emergency" tool that's specific to the crisis happening now. It sunsets in 3 years, so it won't be relevant if AOC takes office in a decade unless it's renewed. If it's not used then it would be no different than the status quo, but the rest of the bill expanding funding for border security and plugging asylum loopholes would still be in place. It's in no way formalizing that 5k migrants a day is "fine", it's simply a trigger when opaque and extraordinary measures can be taken.

Trump did NOT need to pass this bill to stop immigrant caravans.

Trump was really no better than Obama when it comes to border crossings. A lot of it is driven by the relative strength of the economy, but also by non-US factors like the state of Latin American countries especially in the Northern Triangle. Your answer of "Trump didn't need this" is exactly the handwavey "Biden Bad" thing I was talking about in my earlier post. The assumption you seem to be coming to is that the tougher laws are all just a ruse, that Biden must be doing something sneaky, but this is effectively unfalsifiable.

It’s toothless. If the POTUS is of the wrong party then the border is open.

This law doesn't open the border. If you think it does, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what the bill does.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 16d ago

You really have to jump through mental gymnastics to get to this conclusion.

"We must not enact tougher immigration laws so that the guy who says he wants to use the tougher laws loses, in order to get a guy who I say will enact even tougher laws but who failed to actually enact any lasting changes".

Or, you know, we could just enact tougher laws now, then continue fighting for them later?

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 28d ago

That just kicks the can down the road a bit. They eventually sell if they want to get access to the money to do other stuff with it.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 29d ago

All taxes are distortionary. A few like carbon taxes or cigarette taxes distort in good ways, while most distort in bad ways. Taxing labor income is almost exclusively bad, since it promotes sloth and working less, while taxing capital gains is a mix. There's the bad aspect of discouraging investment along with the positive aspect of reducing inequality. The author is saying the current privileged mix of taxing investments less than labor income isn't good enough, that we should institute massive taxes on labor to reduce all taxes from investments to 0.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 29d ago

This is predicated on Russia being willing to negotiate in ways that aren't essentially just a surrender of Ukraine. They've shown very little willingness to do this so far.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 29d ago

Strelkov started the chain of events that bubbled up to the war.

You're talking about 2014 here, right? If so, then sure, that checks out.

Putin didn't "just woke up" and create a war, there was already a war.

There was the frozen conflict that had been bubbling since 2014, but 2015-2021 was massively different from the invasion in 2022. There was little reason that status quo couldn't continue for another decade at least from the West's perspective, but then Putin decided he was unsatisfied with the state of affairs and that's how the invasion came to be.

I'm not saying there was no conflict prior to 2022. I'm saying the massive invasion itself that happened in 2022 was Putin's doing.

I don't think we're disagreeing on this point.

This is blatantly not true: The US refused to make a guarantee to Russia that Ukraine would not join NATO.

This was not a change, at least on the US's part! The US didn't let Ukraine join NATO, but they didn't rule it out either, same as 2015-2021. The US wanted to kick the can down the road some more (or indefinitely) by keeping Ukraine in limbo, and it was Putin who said that wasn't good enough now.

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Ben___Garrison Voltaire's Viceroy 7d ago

The 'Alt Right' hadn't cheered for Trump on immigration since he caved on the Government shutdown in 2018.

You're probably using a more concrete definition of the Alt Right than I am. I'm aware that people like Richard Spencer drifted away from Trump around 2018, but much of the rest of the far right remained loyal to him, including many people who ostensibly wanted to prioritize immigration reform. There's no credible right wing groups that are angry with Trump over his flimsiness on immigration, at least none large enough to be relevant.

I don't think you want to get immigration under control any more than someone in the 'Alt Right'. What you do want is to appear like a concerned and reasonable person as judged by 'the respectable people' representing the mainstream media morality.

Well this is just dead wrong. I absolutely want to crack down on illegal immigration, but even beyond that I want to lower legal immigration as well, which is why I classified the 50K increase per year for 5 years as a "concession", albeit a small one. I reckon many people on the right agree with me on limiting legal immigration, but they know it's highly controversial so they instead pretend they only care about illegal immigration because it's breaking the law or cutting the line. I'm more open with my concerns, in ways that I doubt the "mainstream media morality" would side with.

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