Rov_Scam
6hr ago
There's a degree of equivocation though. The worst thing the mobs you described did was mildly irritate people for periods lasting up to five minutes (if I'm being generous). The feect on one guy was that there was a parade of cars behind him honking, which happens to anyone who drives in rush hour on a daily basis. It's not nothing, but it isn't in the same league as being detained for a day or more. The acceptable false positive rate you're really looking for is the number of people who were accosted by ICE but weren't detained.
Rov_Scam
8hr ago
The fact that Jennifer Welch is a divorced divorce attorney probably puts her in the 99th percentile for hatred towards men.
I'm willing to give divorce attorneys a pass on pretty much anything. Back in April I was having a really bad day at work. I was appearing for a Zoom deposition and instead of doing it at a hotel Plaintiff's counsel thought it was a good idea for an old guy with limited technical ability to do it from his home without assistance. He lived in the middle of nowhere. And there had just been major storms in the area. The whole thing was delayed due to technical difficulties beginning about 15 minutes in, and every time we tried to continue with questioning some other issue would occur. After several hours of this the court reporter had a "technical expert" call in and try to walk the guy through some process. This woman had a high, whiny voice and talked to the guy like he was in kindergarten. I was about at the end of my rope, it was 1 pm, and the guy had answered about ten questions so far.
I went into the kitchen to get coffee and the wisened old of-counsel in my office asked me how I was doing. I told him that I probably died in a car wreck on the way to work and was actually in hell, and proceeded to tell him about my shitty morning. He said "Just look on the bright side: You could be practicing family law. And you'd have to carry a gun." That pretty much stopped me cold and I vowed that I wouldn't get too annoyed by minor professional inconveniences anymore.
I would add that I interned for a family law judge in law school, which judge handled child custody, and it's nothing I have any desire to get within a mile of.
Rov_Scam
8hr ago
From January to October of last year, only 170 US citizens were detained by ICE as reported by ProPublica. Of those 170, many were arrested for interfering with ICE operations. Compare this with 234,211 removals (I don't have data on arrests or detentions, but I can assume the number of arrests/detentions is greater than removals. The "US Citizen arrest rate" is at most 0.07% of the ICE arrestees, probably much smaller due to fact that there are more detentions than removals.
It's interesting that you preceded this little tidbit with examples of four non-ICE being accused of ICE. How many people accused of being ICE actually were ICE? If you're implying that a certain false positive rate is acceptable, at least show that the behavior you're complaining about is above that rate.
Rov_Scam
9hr ago
if anything I might expect group 3 to be more free with their money, justifying a higher fee
This is not true. The reason credit card companies aggressively market Group 4 cards, and are able to charge higher fees for them, is because Group4 cardholders generally have more money than Group 3 cardholders, and since interest isn't a factor, they charge a much higher percentage of their purchases. They are the most valuable customers which is why credit card companies aggressively market rewards programs. Merchants tolerate the higher fees because the people with those cards spend more money. When you tell them that they have to pay the same fees for low-value customers, it doesn't make sense, especially since the banks are already getting paid for the processing costs through interest payments. The only reason they charge fees at all on these is to offset the cost of offering lower interest rates than on other cards.
Rov_Scam
23hr ago
Tagging @Opt-out and @magicalkittycat to continue their inclusion in the discussion.
You got it half right. I practiced bankruptcy law for a couple years, and I've seen the credit card industry a little closer-up than I would have liked. The first thing that should be noted is that all credit cards charge interchange fees ranging from around 1%–3% to cover the cost of processing the transaction. From there we can put cards into four rough categories:
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Secured Cards: These are the lowest level, and aren't advertised. I dealt with them a lot, though, because they exist more or less to help people who just filed for bankruptcy build credit. The way they work is the borrower puts a small amount of money down (I usually recommended around $500) that acts as their credit limit and collateral for the "loan". Then they use it like any other card, except I usually recommended they only charge a small amount on it each month and just pay it off to build a consistent payment history. There are still interest rates and late fees, but I honestly never looked at them because they aren't designed for people who are going to be paying interest.
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Cards for People with Terrible Credit: These are just what they sound like. They have no rewards and the highest interest rates, and are only given people with the worst credit scores. People with recent bankruptcy discharges would often get applications for these in the mail; I would tell them to put them in the garbage and go the secured route. These were people trying to reset their financial lives, and the last thing they needed was access to easy cash whenever things got tough. With secured cards the loss is limited to the amount of the deposit, while with these things can quickly spiral out of control. I gave this advice even to responsible bankrupts who filed due to e.g. medical debt or because of an atypical rough patch (divorce, unemployment, disability) where they were forced to rely on credit cards; these people didn't need my lecturing and were quite different than people who just overspent. Most of the overspenders, though, were so chastened by the experience that they never wanted to look at a credit card again, and I had to talk them into the safety of the secured route since it was worth it for them to build their credit if they wanted to get a car loan or mortgage in the future.
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Credit Cards for People Who Use Them For Credit: These last two categories are available to anyone with a halfway decent credit score, but they're targeted at people who pay interest. It's really easy to target this market—advertise low rates. No one would be enticed by a low interest rate if they didn't have any intention of paying interest. These predictably have the lowest interchange fees, since the banks are making money from the interest payments. They don't offer any rewards, because the reward is the lower monthly payment. They're marketed through their interest rates, credit limits, and introductory 0% periods.
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Reward Cards: These cards are specifically marketed towards people who don't run balances. After people realized that getting a credit card and paying the balance off every month was a convenient way to build credit and not deal with the inconvenience of cash, banks realized that that they were ignoring an important market segment. The ubiquity of credit card use allowed the companies to charge higher interchange fees, and since the fees were accounting for a share of revenue on par with interest payments, it made sense to try to attract these no-balance customers through reward enticements, which are paid for out of the fees. The interest rates are relatively high because the people who apply for these cards aren't concerned about the rate, and if they end up paying it it's just a bonus for the issuer.
The point I'm trying to make here is that outside of the absolute bottom of the market, credit worthiness doesn't really play into how these cards make their money, because the cards' users are differentiated by what marketing segment they belong to. There's nobody out there who would qualify for a low-interest card that wouldn't qualify for a rewards card, or vice-versa. The reason the interest rates are so high on credit cards (the lowest I've seen a client have was around 15%) is because of the ease of use. I may be able to get a better rate from a bank, but I have to go to the branch and submit paperwork and wait and then get a fixed amount of money with fixed repayment terms. With a credit card I get a limit and I can borrow money pretty much on the spot. Regardless of credit worthiness, this is an inherently riskier form of lending.
That's simply a value judgment that doesn't get us anywhere. Being anti-ICE is only "wrong" when the activity in furtherance of that position breaks the law. You may not like the fact that people are protesting, recording their activity, or warning the community of their presence, but all of these things are both legal and constitutionally protected.
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