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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35165 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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More developments in DeSantis' political stunt of sending some migrants to Martha's Vineyard.

If you didn't already know the migrants were not even in Florida when they got on the flight. The migrants started in San Antonio, Texas. The Bexar County Sheriff (which covers San Antonio) has announced a criminal investigation into the matter. They do not currently have the names of any suspects or particular statutes in mind that may have been violated but they have started an investigation. I'm not an expert on Texas law but it seems to me their law on unlawful restraint may be applicable. The law provides:

(1) "Restrain" means to restrict a person's movements without consent, so as to interfere substantially with the person's liberty, by moving the person from one place to another or by confining the person. Restraint is "without consent" if it is accomplished by:

(A) force, intimidation, or deception;

...

(a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally or knowingly restrains another person.

Did DeSantis' agents move a person from one place to another by deception such that the persons so moved did not consent? Seems like it to me! If any of the people so moved were children under the age of 17 the offense is a state jail felony otherwise it is a Class A misdemeanor.

On the civil front some of those same migrants have filed a class action lawsuit against DeSantis (maybe flying them to the island full of rich lawyers was unwise.) There are 12 listed causes of action in the complaint (starting on page 23 in the pdf). These range from violations of constitutional rights (since this was ostensibly done under color of law, using state government funds) to regular torts like false imprisonment, fraud, and infliction of emotional distress (intentional and negligent).

I will lodge the prediction that this will prove to be a self-own. The optics here are already horrendous. 53 migrants dead in the back of a truck is a statistic, 50 getting a free vacation to Martha's Vineyard is a human rights violation. Whose rights? Why, the right of rich, progressive Sanctuary Citizens to not have to look at poor brown people, of course.

And now they're keeping this disaster in the news for months to come with the prospect of bilking thousands of billable hours from leftist billionaires and money laundered NGOs to engage in blatant lawfare over a free plane ticket to a sanctuary city, after refusing to pay for a single hotel room for a single migrant? The "Democrats want illegals to have more rights than you, and then charge you for making them look at a poor person" ads practically write themselves. This is "Umbridge as a comic book villain" territory.

And now they're keeping this disaster in the news for months to come with the prospect of bilking thousands of billable hours from leftist billionaires and money laundered NGOs to engage in blatant lawfare over a free plane ticket to a sanctuary city, after refusing to pay for a single hotel room for a single migrant? The "Democrats want illegals to have more rights than you, and then charge you for making them look at a poor person" ads practically write themselves. This is "Umbridge as a comic book villain" territory.

Well that's the Trick isn't it? The Texas and Florida Republican State Committees are explicitly banking on the DoJ and Democratic party establishment being too mind-killed by "Trump Derangement Syndrome" and their own racism to recognize what this looks like from the outside.

Whose rights?

How about the constitutional rights of people on US soil to not be arbitrarily seized and transported by agents of the state? The asylum seekers themselves have rights, which are the ones that were violated.

  • -28

I think Desantis' stunt here was stupid and may be a marker for the end of the Republican Party based on them cheering for a clear waste of taxpayer dollars.

But seized?

That's just as gross an exageration as the fools saying that Martha's Vineyard "kicked out" the 50 immigrants. Shame on them, and shame on you.

Bringing attention to the subject has the potential to save taxpayer dollars in the long run.

And with that logic you excuse every dollar spent ever.

Congratulations.

Unfortunately “don’t spend taxpayer dollars” is a losing proposition, especially when many voters don’t even contribute any taxpayer dollars.

We are well past the point where penny pinching made even the slightest sense. Biden just executed a unilateral handout to his base worth billions, plural. The money is getting looted regardless; it might as well serve our interests rather than our enemies'.

What do you think is required for you to be "seized" within the meaning of the fourth amendment? From the complaint:

Particularly after the individual Plaintiffs had boarded the airplanes and were in mid-air, Plaintiffs were not free to leave, and were induced into that condition through false promises and misrepresentations. This constitutes a governmental termination of Plaintiffs’ freedom of movement through means intentionally applied.

  • -18

After the individual Plaintiffs had boarded the airplanes and were in mid-air, Plaintiffs were not free to leave

Oh no! DeSantis did not provide them all with parachutes so they could jump out of the plane if they changed their minds!

This is bonkers. Of course you can't be "free to leave" a plane in mid-air, not unless you are planning to commit suicide. Who wrote this complaint, the scriptwriters for Rings of Power?

deleted

What did you want the aircraft to do, pull over at the nearest truck stop so the passengers could get a fountain drink and a bag of skittles?

...Is that not what other airports can act as? Granted, that's mostly an emergency thing, from what little I know, but theoretically, if the law allowed for/required it, a hypothetical plane carrying people in an illegal manner could be compelled to divert and land.

If you think delays and cancellations are anoying, just wait until every airport ever has to plan for an unlimited number of unexpected pitstops from an unlimited number or airplanes in a given day. The Airlines would cease to exist before the end of the week.

Then I suppose the protocols around putting undocumented immigrants on planes will be tightened up to avoid large-scale emergency diversions.

More comments

I think it will be extraordinarily tough to prove they were deceived without some sort of contract or audio recording of exactly what they were told. All DeSantis has to say is that he gave them a brochure about Asylee benefits for if they get approved and that Boston is a major city in MA and a good place to head towards once they land.

arbitrarily seized and transported by agents of the state? Offered a free plane ticket to a rich sanctuary city.

Your phrasing here is histrionic to the point of derangement.

Fraudulently induced to take a free plane ride to a rich city. Which, can still be a tort. Defrauding someone to travel somewhere is still a tort even if the place you're defrauded to go is really nice.

  • -19

So Massachusetts isn't willing to help refugees? Because they're not legal migrants? It's a novel form of fraud, tricking someone into receiving a valuable service for free with no strings attached or expectations. And it's fraud because MA lawyers and politicians are hilarious hypocrites about illegal immigrants to Texas vs illegal immigrants to MA?

Fun fact, "Defrauding someone to travel somewhere" appears to be a newly coined phrase. Google has no record of it ever appearing anywhere on the internet before.

The win for the left here was to house the migrants for a while, refuse to raise a fuss about it, quietly find new accommodations for them and send them along, meanwhile make certain changes to ensure that no more migrants flights could land without forewarning.

The actions they're taking seem to be revealing that they REALLY take it personally when the GOP manages to slip a trick by them that doesn't get leaked in advance and so puts them on the defensive. As well it should, since this indicates that Desantis has REALLY solid OpSec, unlike Trump. This is also keeping the issue of illegal immigration on the forefront of the national discourse, which may be preferable to them to avoid talking about the economy but also makes the issues at the border more salient for voters.

This is free publicity keeping Desantis in the national spotlight. He doesn't really need it to win his election this year, that's all but a foregone conclusion.

But they're absolutely helping him build his legend for 'future endeavors' and they're insane if they think he didn't account for this particular reaction and doesn't have a countermove already prepped.

But as we have seen, the left's rule these days is that they NEVER have to take an L, even when doing so is the sensible route. Doubling and tripling down to prove they're not owned is the tactic du jour.

See also: the Supreme Court handing down a ruling that strengthens 2A protections and New York and California immediately implementing more firearms restrictions which are mostly going to be struck down (and strengthen the legal precedent) and do little but piss in the eye of the pro-gunners who might otherwise vote Blue. Not to mention Biden talking up an assault weapons ban.

The win for the left here was to house the migrants for a while, refuse to raise a fuss about it, quietly find new accommodations for them and send them along

I've seen progressives in my facebook feed saying that the left did just that. I don't think it was specifically the people in Martha's Vineyard, but maybe other people from MA mainland. I see leftists on facebook saying that this just proves that republicans suck and are cruel, and leftists are compassionate. So if you're saying the opposite came to pass, clearly there are two different worlds happening, and that means that no one is going to learn anything, and everyone is just going to stick to/create their own narratives to satisfy their own worldviews.

For the record, I haven't followed this story at all, so I have no clue if your account or the progressive account is closer to the truth (and I also don't trust very much the specific progressives on my facebook who said this, I know them personally and they're brainwashed people). But what exact actions are you referring to when you say this:

The actions they're taking seem to be revealing that they REALLY take it personally when the GOP manages to slip a trick by them that doesn't get leaked in advance and so puts them on the defensive.

So if you're saying the opposite came to pass, clearly there are two different worlds happening, and that means that no one is going to learn anything, and everyone is just going to stick to/create their own narratives to satisfy their own worldviews.

Same as it ever was.

Although I think Desantis and Co. have learned something about pulling off covert political stunts and maximizing the outrage received for effort input. Just impose a little discomfort and inconvenience on the wealthiest communities in the country!

But what exact actions are you referring to when you say this:

The attempts to smear Desantis as a 'human trafficker,' to the point of opening up a criminal investigation in Texas? That's in the OP's comment. There's also a lawsuit in Federal Court now.

Oh, also the decision to unironically refer to the situation as a 'Humanitarian Crisis', which certainly implies that the situation at the U.S. border must be at least a couple orders of magnitudes worse as a crisis.

So if you're saying the opposite came to pass, clearly there are two different worlds happening,

AIUI, the migrants were given cots in meeting room in a church for 1-2 evenings, then escorted off the island by the national guard to a military dormitory. At no point did any one of the compassionate, rich progressives offer to put someone up in a hotel room, much less let a family use an empty beach house for the weekend.

But what exact actions are you referring to when you say this:

The aid given and compassion shown was more or less the absolute bare minimum needed to calmly make the poor brown people go away ASAP. Conversely, we've seen much more effort put into flattering themselves in the media, and launching furious legal and PR attacks back at DeSantis for making them look bad. When, remember, there are probably 5 figures worth of residents who could have each put the entire group up in a resort hotel for a week for pocket change.

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