He's also making it difficult/impossible for people without work visas to obtain auto loans which is destroying the used car market in latino communities and cities with large latino populations. Executive Order 14406 defends this with,
> Low-dollar cross-border funds transfers have been used to facilitate or commit terrorist financing, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, and other illegal activity.
They're banging the national security drum to make it unlivable here for some.
>He's also making it difficult/impossible for people without work visas to obtain auto loans [...]
>They're banging the national security drum to make it unlivable here for some.
But they're not supposed to be here in the first place? As for the people who are supposed to be here, but are collateral damage (ie. "which is destroying the used car market in latino communities") should we have sympathy for people in such situations? If a local casino is laundering money for drug cartels, but that casino funds the community because it employs workers, should we be against the FBI coming in and busting the casino? What if it's more benign than drug cartels, like run of the mill securities fraud?
But they're not supposed to be here in the first place?
Like any other system, the purpose is what the system actually does. Especially a system that's been around for decades.
We let them in, so they can work our fields and process our meat and whatever else. We shouldn't be surprised they want to buy cars, own business, and do other completely normal things.
If we want to stop illegal immigration, "not getting a car loan" and "harder to move money across the border" feel like the most humane ways to slow it down.
Plus, the drug trade coming in from Mexico is, in fact, a huge problem, not just for the US, but for Mexico itself. Mexico is run by cartels specifically because of how much money is made off selling drugs to Americans. This isn't some non-existent problem they are using as cover.
> If we want to stop illegal immigration, "not getting a car loan" and "harder to move money across the border" feel like the most humane ways to slow it down.
I can think of a more humane way: Prosecuting the employers who break the law by hiring undocumented workers. The prospect of employment is what draws migrants here in the first place.
Anecdotally speaking, I've personally lived in multiple countries on multi-year-long temporary resident visas without the right to work, because getting the right to work is a separate process from being allowed to be somewhere. So have family members. And in case it makes a difference, which it might, one of those countries was the US.
In fact, did you know, in Canada it doesn't count as work for visa purposes if you work over the internet for a foreign company and get paid into a foreign bank account and don't compete professionally with local interests? (This is a free hot tip for anyone wanting to live in Canada. It might be true in some other places too, but I don't know.)
So why would anyone give a loan to someone who can't legally work? If it's really spouse that's the sole earner, why not have the spouse take out the loan?
People with tourist visas I expect fully entitled and able to get car loans... (Edit: maybe I am misunderstanding the whole thing: is it "loaning cars" or is it "loaning the money to buy cars"?)
Whether or not they're "supposed" to be here, they've been an integral part of the US economy for decades. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Is it creating the manual of the dystopia planner to list the excuses for totalitarism? "National security", "Personal security", "The safety of your kids", "the children"...
Or is it prodromic to a "stop talking to guts and let us put the factors in a computational framework, where all targets and constraints and consequences are laid out with their demographics"? A Cost/Risk/Benefit for policies?
One day hopefully another president will use the national security drum to close down all Trump golf resorts and properties on the grounds that they are used to facilitate illegal activity.
Economists keep track of the number of "unbanked" people. At the lower end of the spectrum the % of "unbanked" individuals is quite high and they live almost exclusively in an all-cash economy. Particularly in immigrant communities. There are a number of problems with being "unbanked", in particular if your house is burglarized you can lose your entire life savings, and you have little to no access to formal credit, which in the US at least, is the primary path to accruing wealth or at least savings.
They systemically lock people out of banking, home ownership, employment, running a business, selling their products, getting famous, and so-on.
There's a class of people that has to have "more" than the rest. And they do that by controlling access to everything. They spend tons of money on distractions and concepts like moneylending which makes everyone have to go through the "loan" and "approval" process - of course only some people get approved lol So nobody else gets a house!
Instead of trying to become better themselves and make new discoveries, and build genuine wealth they can give back, the gatekeeping/inheritance mindset is to stop others who are trying to better themselves. To knock them back. It doesn't stop at preventing others from attaining wealth and status, they don't even want you to have a roof over your head.
If they had it their way, you wouldn't have a bank, house, car, and barely any money. You'd be wearing some goofy uniform working for them living in poverty.
Depends. Why can't banks offer more debit cards to more people and, I don't know, stop honoring overdrafts? Transactions should decline, not overdraft, even with overdraft off.
We've built lots of traps for people that have balances near-zero that keep them near zero, and one little mistake snowballs into blacklists from Telecheck, ChexSystems, and other fun companies.
Meanwhile once you can keep your balance with at least three significant zeros in it, the bank will be happy to shower you back in rewards and cashback, ripped away from the fees and interest levied to the poor.
Bank of America had a class action against them because they would reorder transactions to make you overdraft.
For example, when I was relatively poor and near 0 balance in like 2009 era I’d wait for my direct deposit to come so I could grocery shop and pay bills.
When it deposited, the funds would become available to use even though the transaction wasn’t cleared, pretty normal so far.
So say you pay 2 bills and grocery shop, come back on Monday and you’d see that your pending deposit vanished, 3 transactions cleared for 3 overdrafts, then your deposit cleared afterward.
This is just one that I know about because it happened to me. I wonder how many less blatant scams like this exist that most people aren’t even aware of.
This is 100% true and also a tactic used by PNC when I was a near zero person. The hack around it was to try to withdraw cash, then use that. They wouldn't let you overdraft cash withdrawal. That's one anecdotal likely stale trick to avoid the traps they set.
The problem is then you have the card number sitting in some online card wallet, set for Autopay or something, and suddenly it's just... allowed to charge you next month even though the card's got nothing.
Hell no, that shit should have bounced. Now you're in the hole $80 because your phone payment took an autopay from your Visa number.
Blindly allowing recurring auths to bypass the overdraft rules is utterly insane. Whoops, let's just autobill a few extra zeros!
> a violation of the fourth amendment that protects the rights of people against unreasonable searches and seizures
So there exist juridical interpretations that call monitoring low value money transfer «unreasonable searches and seizures»? This is immensely interesting. Does anyone have further info?
It surprises me how much Americans don't understand how deeply the cartel is in every transaction. Yes, sending money to Grandma to pay for a car is funding the cartel who probably got paid to make the car available. Grandma may even pay small direct bribes to the cartel just to be able to live her life.
Either all of Mexico can move to the US (probably not a winning solution) or we can make Mexico a safe and excellent country again, and that means getting rid of the cartel.
And yes, other countries have their issues too and we should help stabilize those countries as well.
If the Mexican government can fix their cartel issue, we can go back to normal remittances. Until then the US will make policy choices to resolve problems.
As always, the salt of the earth people will pay the cost for politicians being bad at things.
Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission. It is a fundamental purpose of money. To deny this purpose puts the validity of particular money into question. Putting up fences results in a very high rate of false positives. No wonder people use crypto as they should.
If you want to go after cartels, then actually go after cartels. That's not what they're doing.
> Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission.
They got Al Capone for tax evasion, not any of the other obviously illegal stuff he was doing. I don't know the details, but I imagine it was because he put in effort to create an organization that made it difficult-to-impossible for the law-abiding feds to go after him directly. That's why it's important to also prohibit the ancillary activities of crime.
And money laundering isn't an absurd concept, it just means it's additionally illegal to conceal the origin of illicit income.
If you want to get all dogmatic against stuff like laws against money laundering, come up with an effective alternative. Otherwise those laws aren't going anywhere and few will care about your objections, because they're unreasonable.
Obvious solution is to make soft drugs like fentanyl fully legal. Just apply sufficient purity to standards as regulation like with any other drug. Issue solved instantly. It is not like other deathly drugs aren't already legal.
Obvious solution is to make soft drugs like fentanyl fully legal. Just apply sufficient purity to standards as regulation like with any other drug. Issue solved instantly. It is not like other deathly drugs aren't already legal. [emphasis mine]
Just pointing out the double standards and the main funding source being due to illegality. And we all known how many people die due to ethanol each year. But because it is drug of the choice by too many totalitarian fascists it won't get banned like other drugs do.
> Just pointing out the double standards and the main funding source being due to illegality. And we all known how many people die due to ethanol each year. But because it is drug of the choice by too many totalitarian fascists it won't get banned like other drugs do.
Alcohol is a drug with a huge amount of cultural significance going back millennia. Don't be a robot: it's in a different category and not a double standard.
Buy yeah, one easy solution to crime problems is just to make everything legal. Sure, it totally misses the point, but it seems very clever to the software engineer mind.
> Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission.
This ignores that taxes are a thing that need enforcement. Its like saying basic necessities should be free, the world should be without pollution, or cancer shouldn't exist.
This article is repeating a transparently false framing as the truth. This wasn't a law about cartel money laundering, which doesn't happen near the border anyway. Money laundering at scale happens in the global market and always has.
The clear purpose of the regulation was exactly the "side effect" detailed in the article: hurting immigrant communities that maintain ties across the border. And it worked. It does no one any good to pretend otherwise.
The issue is that it wasn't "clear" to sufficient people. Too many people believe at face value the claims. Some of them honestly believe the face value claims.
I'm not sure that more information will help those people. I saw an interview with a Haitian-American restaurant chain owner who voted for Trump and was dismayed that he might have to close a couple of locations due the removal of Temporary Protective Status for Haiti causing him to lose employees. He said that Trump sold him on the idea that "he was a businessman, and would act like a businessman", and that he now regrets his vote.
Like, the "eating the cats and dogs" line, specifically targeted at Haitians, wasn't enough for you to think that maybe this guy didn't have your best interest at heart? Also Trump's history as a "businessman" is anything but wildly successful or something to envy.
These people will see whatever they want to see until they get hit, so unless you're in a position to provide the hit, or somehow impart discernment that most elementary school kids have, they can only be contained and we should be happy if they pay their taxes and don't vote.
> Also Trump's history as a "businessman" is anything but wildly successful or something to envy.
Maybe we should stop treating these contradictions with Polyanna level of naivety. What is more likely: a.) these people did not seen the obvious contradictions or b.) these people are giving out publicly palatable sympathetic responses. It is all economic vote, except that conservatives were never good for small businesses.
What if these people are not as dumb as they pretend to be. What if they are actually attracted to the same thing that makes other men attracted to Trump - the male supremacy ideology and the racism against "not them exactly". The fun ugly part of it. The cruelty against homosexuals and trans. Saying that openly will still makes you look bad, so we get the "we had no idea, this was just economic vote" kind of nonsense.
One can be both malicious and naive. Regardless, more information isn't going to solve the issue. The information was presented; they ignored it for whatever reason.
Getting them to stop ignoring information they don't like is the problem.
We have plenty of those, we are just ignoring them.
> "What if they were all perverts". Well, that would have been remarkable in the distribution of chances.
There would be absolutely nothing remarkable about distribution of chances here. It is the most plausible and explanation. It is also completely consistent with all the data we have - including the fact that record of abuse never harms republican politicians. Instead, it raises their credit. It is also consistent with philosophies the leadership openly pushes for.
Its a particularly galling policy for disproportionately hurting small businesses given the number of money laundering, sanctions avoidance, etc big fish Trump has pardoned, ended investigations and enforcement generally.
The belief that all the people you yourselves elected are lying all the time and openly out to get you is such an uniquely Gringo idea it's entirely possible the migrants in this community, like the one showcased in the article, mistakenly took the racists' word at face value.
Retrospectively, looking at the various kinds of concentration camps set up all over the country, that might have been a bad choice to make. But that doesn't make it a less reasonable one at the time.
Ah yes let’s ruin someone’s life over $200 but nobody look at Trumps accounts. He definitely was debanked for political reasons and not because he was laundering money.
the problem with Poe's Law is that when someone else violates it by misreading your sarcasm you're the one who has to pay the fine in fake internet points.
> He definitely was debanked for political reasons and not because he was laundering money.
What proof do you have? On what planet would major banks piss off the most capricious and unrestrained president in modern US history? What possible upside could there be for them? Trump (34 time fraud felon known for scamming everyone he can and using his position in government to massively enrich himself) was almost certainly "debanked" because he is doing more of the same shady shit that he's known for and the banks are obligated by the law to treat him like anyone else.
Capital One closed hundreds of Trump's accounts in 2021. Trump is suing them, claiming it's a political debanking. CapOne fighting back because they feel their AML team was correct to close those accounts.
The amount of nickel-and-diming and outright being screwed over at local businesses I've experienced in my lifetime vastly eclipses generous return policies and treatment by megacorporations.
Let’s keep in mind that US corporations just received literal billions in tariff refunds, effectively stealing money from everyone who bought anything in the last year.
But i’m sure being charged an extra dollar at a small store that’s barely getting by (assuming this is true) is the real problem..
Hot take: it’s generally probably less harmful psychologically to be screwed over by an identifiable individual than a faceless mega corporation. Rationalizing a bad experience as “one bad apple” feels better than ruminating over systemic oppression.
"The purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure as many patients as possible" seems also like an extreme? They are businesses, after all, and there will be cases that would be unreasonable to pursue?
Don't you know? Our great leaders are playing 4d chess on a higher dimension and everything they do is carefully planned and executed. Every failure and blunder is a move beyond our comprehension as part of the supreme master plan. Haven't you read The Art of War???
Obviously sarcasm... But in all seriousness, it's scary how many people genuinely believe this.
He's also making it difficult/impossible for people without work visas to obtain auto loans which is destroying the used car market in latino communities and cities with large latino populations. Executive Order 14406 defends this with,
> Low-dollar cross-border funds transfers have been used to facilitate or commit terrorist financing, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, and other illegal activity.
They're banging the national security drum to make it unlivable here for some.
>He's also making it difficult/impossible for people without work visas to obtain auto loans [...]
>They're banging the national security drum to make it unlivable here for some.
But they're not supposed to be here in the first place? As for the people who are supposed to be here, but are collateral damage (ie. "which is destroying the used car market in latino communities") should we have sympathy for people in such situations? If a local casino is laundering money for drug cartels, but that casino funds the community because it employs workers, should we be against the FBI coming in and busting the casino? What if it's more benign than drug cartels, like run of the mill securities fraud?
But they're not supposed to be here in the first place?
Like any other system, the purpose is what the system actually does. Especially a system that's been around for decades.
We let them in, so they can work our fields and process our meat and whatever else. We shouldn't be surprised they want to buy cars, own business, and do other completely normal things.
If we want to stop illegal immigration, "not getting a car loan" and "harder to move money across the border" feel like the most humane ways to slow it down.
Plus, the drug trade coming in from Mexico is, in fact, a huge problem, not just for the US, but for Mexico itself. Mexico is run by cartels specifically because of how much money is made off selling drugs to Americans. This isn't some non-existent problem they are using as cover.
> If we want to stop illegal immigration, "not getting a car loan" and "harder to move money across the border" feel like the most humane ways to slow it down.
I can think of a more humane way: Prosecuting the employers who break the law by hiring undocumented workers. The prospect of employment is what draws migrants here in the first place.
> feel like the most humane ways to slow it down
(Let us not feel:) How many innocent economic actors does the regulation hit.
Everything else aside,
> "people without work visas"
is not the same legal category as
> "they're not supposed to be here"
1. So you'd agree that AI datecenter with 100 (or whatever) jet turbines merely "lacks a permit" rather than "not supposed to be there"?
2. Practically speaking, how many people lack a work visa (or similar documentation), but are supposed to be here?
Anecdotally speaking, I've personally lived in multiple countries on multi-year-long temporary resident visas without the right to work, because getting the right to work is a separate process from being allowed to be somewhere. So have family members. And in case it makes a difference, which it might, one of those countries was the US.
In fact, did you know, in Canada it doesn't count as work for visa purposes if you work over the internet for a foreign company and get paid into a foreign bank account and don't compete professionally with local interests? (This is a free hot tip for anyone wanting to live in Canada. It might be true in some other places too, but I don't know.)
Spouses of folks on many kinds of visa are allowed to be here, but aren't allowed to work.
So why would anyone give a loan to someone who can't legally work? If it's really spouse that's the sole earner, why not have the spouse take out the loan?
Ability to work and ability to repay a loan are not the same thing.
People with tourist visas I expect fully entitled and able to get car loans... (Edit: maybe I am misunderstanding the whole thing: is it "loaning cars" or is it "loaning the money to buy cars"?)
A car loan is usually loaning money for the purpose of buying a car, not loaning a car.
Whether or not they're "supposed" to be here, they've been an integral part of the US economy for decades. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Is it creating the manual of the dystopia planner to list the excuses for totalitarism? "National security", "Personal security", "The safety of your kids", "the children"...
Or is it prodromic to a "stop talking to guts and let us put the factors in a computational framework, where all targets and constraints and consequences are laid out with their demographics"? A Cost/Risk/Benefit for policies?
Why don't they have work visas?
One day hopefully another president will use the national security drum to close down all Trump golf resorts and properties on the grounds that they are used to facilitate illegal activity.
That already happened: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/08/politics/mar-a-lago-search-wa...
I'd say the law has achieve exactly the effect it intended.
My question is , why don't these people have bank accounts?
Economists keep track of the number of "unbanked" people. At the lower end of the spectrum the % of "unbanked" individuals is quite high and they live almost exclusively in an all-cash economy. Particularly in immigrant communities. There are a number of problems with being "unbanked", in particular if your house is burglarized you can lose your entire life savings, and you have little to no access to formal credit, which in the US at least, is the primary path to accruing wealth or at least savings.
They systemically lock people out of banking, home ownership, employment, running a business, selling their products, getting famous, and so-on.
There's a class of people that has to have "more" than the rest. And they do that by controlling access to everything. They spend tons of money on distractions and concepts like moneylending which makes everyone have to go through the "loan" and "approval" process - of course only some people get approved lol So nobody else gets a house!
Instead of trying to become better themselves and make new discoveries, and build genuine wealth they can give back, the gatekeeping/inheritance mindset is to stop others who are trying to better themselves. To knock them back. It doesn't stop at preventing others from attaining wealth and status, they don't even want you to have a roof over your head.
If they had it their way, you wouldn't have a bank, house, car, and barely any money. You'd be wearing some goofy uniform working for them living in poverty.
Depends. Why can't banks offer more debit cards to more people and, I don't know, stop honoring overdrafts? Transactions should decline, not overdraft, even with overdraft off.
We've built lots of traps for people that have balances near-zero that keep them near zero, and one little mistake snowballs into blacklists from Telecheck, ChexSystems, and other fun companies.
Meanwhile once you can keep your balance with at least three significant zeros in it, the bank will be happy to shower you back in rewards and cashback, ripped away from the fees and interest levied to the poor.
Bank of America had a class action against them because they would reorder transactions to make you overdraft.
For example, when I was relatively poor and near 0 balance in like 2009 era I’d wait for my direct deposit to come so I could grocery shop and pay bills.
When it deposited, the funds would become available to use even though the transaction wasn’t cleared, pretty normal so far.
So say you pay 2 bills and grocery shop, come back on Monday and you’d see that your pending deposit vanished, 3 transactions cleared for 3 overdrafts, then your deposit cleared afterward.
This is just one that I know about because it happened to me. I wonder how many less blatant scams like this exist that most people aren’t even aware of.
This is 100% true and also a tactic used by PNC when I was a near zero person. The hack around it was to try to withdraw cash, then use that. They wouldn't let you overdraft cash withdrawal. That's one anecdotal likely stale trick to avoid the traps they set.
The problem is then you have the card number sitting in some online card wallet, set for Autopay or something, and suddenly it's just... allowed to charge you next month even though the card's got nothing.
Hell no, that shit should have bounced. Now you're in the hole $80 because your phone payment took an autopay from your Visa number.
Blindly allowing recurring auths to bypass the overdraft rules is utterly insane. Whoops, let's just autobill a few extra zeros!
> a violation of the fourth amendment that protects the rights of people against unreasonable searches and seizures
So there exist juridical interpretations that call monitoring low value money transfer «unreasonable searches and seizures»? This is immensely interesting. Does anyone have further info?
How would you like this wrapped?
It surprises me how much Americans don't understand how deeply the cartel is in every transaction. Yes, sending money to Grandma to pay for a car is funding the cartel who probably got paid to make the car available. Grandma may even pay small direct bribes to the cartel just to be able to live her life.
Either all of Mexico can move to the US (probably not a winning solution) or we can make Mexico a safe and excellent country again, and that means getting rid of the cartel.
And yes, other countries have their issues too and we should help stabilize those countries as well.
If the Mexican government can fix their cartel issue, we can go back to normal remittances. Until then the US will make policy choices to resolve problems.
As always, the salt of the earth people will pay the cost for politicians being bad at things.
A safe and prosperous Mexico would be a huge advantage to America. We should be investing a lot more into this.
The US has been investing heavily in Mexico. They are our top trading partner.
I think it's possible, but pretty difficult. There's just too much money to be made selling drugs to the US.
I wonder how much this will drive adoption of crypto for remittances.
I don’t see how. Their problem is they have cash and want to turn it into something else. The law criminalizes that transaction without reporting.
Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission. It is a fundamental purpose of money. To deny this purpose puts the validity of particular money into question. Putting up fences results in a very high rate of false positives. No wonder people use crypto as they should.
If you want to go after cartels, then actually go after cartels. That's not what they're doing.
> Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission.
They got Al Capone for tax evasion, not any of the other obviously illegal stuff he was doing. I don't know the details, but I imagine it was because he put in effort to create an organization that made it difficult-to-impossible for the law-abiding feds to go after him directly. That's why it's important to also prohibit the ancillary activities of crime.
And money laundering isn't an absurd concept, it just means it's additionally illegal to conceal the origin of illicit income.
If you want to get all dogmatic against stuff like laws against money laundering, come up with an effective alternative. Otherwise those laws aren't going anywhere and few will care about your objections, because they're unreasonable.
Obvious solution is to make soft drugs like fentanyl fully legal. Just apply sufficient purity to standards as regulation like with any other drug. Issue solved instantly. It is not like other deathly drugs aren't already legal.
Obvious solution is to make soft drugs like fentanyl fully legal. Just apply sufficient purity to standards as regulation like with any other drug. Issue solved instantly. It is not like other deathly drugs aren't already legal. [emphasis mine]
sarcasm or typo?
Just pointing out the double standards and the main funding source being due to illegality. And we all known how many people die due to ethanol each year. But because it is drug of the choice by too many totalitarian fascists it won't get banned like other drugs do.
> Just pointing out the double standards and the main funding source being due to illegality. And we all known how many people die due to ethanol each year. But because it is drug of the choice by too many totalitarian fascists it won't get banned like other drugs do.
Alcohol is a drug with a huge amount of cultural significance going back millennia. Don't be a robot: it's in a different category and not a double standard.
Buy yeah, one easy solution to crime problems is just to make everything legal. Sure, it totally misses the point, but it seems very clever to the software engineer mind.
> Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission.
This ignores that taxes are a thing that need enforcement. Its like saying basic necessities should be free, the world should be without pollution, or cancer shouldn't exist.
This article is repeating a transparently false framing as the truth. This wasn't a law about cartel money laundering, which doesn't happen near the border anyway. Money laundering at scale happens in the global market and always has.
The clear purpose of the regulation was exactly the "side effect" detailed in the article: hurting immigrant communities that maintain ties across the border. And it worked. It does no one any good to pretend otherwise.
The issue is that it wasn't "clear" to sufficient people. Too many people believe at face value the claims. Some of them honestly believe the face value claims.
I'm not sure that more information will help those people. I saw an interview with a Haitian-American restaurant chain owner who voted for Trump and was dismayed that he might have to close a couple of locations due the removal of Temporary Protective Status for Haiti causing him to lose employees. He said that Trump sold him on the idea that "he was a businessman, and would act like a businessman", and that he now regrets his vote.
Like, the "eating the cats and dogs" line, specifically targeted at Haitians, wasn't enough for you to think that maybe this guy didn't have your best interest at heart? Also Trump's history as a "businessman" is anything but wildly successful or something to envy.
These people will see whatever they want to see until they get hit, so unless you're in a position to provide the hit, or somehow impart discernment that most elementary school kids have, they can only be contained and we should be happy if they pay their taxes and don't vote.
> Also Trump's history as a "businessman" is anything but wildly successful or something to envy.
Maybe we should stop treating these contradictions with Polyanna level of naivety. What is more likely: a.) these people did not seen the obvious contradictions or b.) these people are giving out publicly palatable sympathetic responses. It is all economic vote, except that conservatives were never good for small businesses.
What if these people are not as dumb as they pretend to be. What if they are actually attracted to the same thing that makes other men attracted to Trump - the male supremacy ideology and the racism against "not them exactly". The fun ugly part of it. The cruelty against homosexuals and trans. Saying that openly will still makes you look bad, so we get the "we had no idea, this was just economic vote" kind of nonsense.
One can be both malicious and naive. Regardless, more information isn't going to solve the issue. The information was presented; they ignored it for whatever reason.
Getting them to stop ignoring information they don't like is the problem.
> What if these people ... What if
What if we got proper stats instead of adding slices to the pie chart not knowing how big they are.
"What if they were all perverts". Well, that would have been remarkable in the distribution of chances.
> What if we got proper stats
We have plenty of those, we are just ignoring them.
> "What if they were all perverts". Well, that would have been remarkable in the distribution of chances.
There would be absolutely nothing remarkable about distribution of chances here. It is the most plausible and explanation. It is also completely consistent with all the data we have - including the fact that record of abuse never harms republican politicians. Instead, it raises their credit. It is also consistent with philosophies the leadership openly pushes for.
Its a particularly galling policy for disproportionately hurting small businesses given the number of money laundering, sanctions avoidance, etc big fish Trump has pardoned, ended investigations and enforcement generally.
The belief that all the people you yourselves elected are lying all the time and openly out to get you is such an uniquely Gringo idea it's entirely possible the migrants in this community, like the one showcased in the article, mistakenly took the racists' word at face value.
Retrospectively, looking at the various kinds of concentration camps set up all over the country, that might have been a bad choice to make. But that doesn't make it a less reasonable one at the time.
in fairness: the people we elected lie a lot and one of them has built a personal army that he uses to fill the concentration camps you allude to.
Ah yes let’s ruin someone’s life over $200 but nobody look at Trumps accounts. He definitely was debanked for political reasons and not because he was laundering money.
the problem with Poe's Law is that when someone else violates it by misreading your sarcasm you're the one who has to pay the fine in fake internet points.
Internet points are real and carry weight. Online friends are real, too.
> He definitely was debanked for political reasons and not because he was laundering money.
What proof do you have? On what planet would major banks piss off the most capricious and unrestrained president in modern US history? What possible upside could there be for them? Trump (34 time fraud felon known for scamming everyone he can and using his position in government to massively enrich himself) was almost certainly "debanked" because he is doing more of the same shady shit that he's known for and the banks are obligated by the law to treat him like anyone else.
My post was sarcastic. July 12th Capital One said they closed accounts due to AML concerns.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/capital-one-close-trump-ac...
I think the parent post was sarcasm.
Capital One closed hundreds of Trump's accounts in 2021. Trump is suing them, claiming it's a political debanking. CapOne fighting back because they feel their AML team was correct to close those accounts.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/capital-one-says-it...
Congratulations on your humour bypass! I hear it's a difficult surgery. You must have had a good surgeon.
And to think I have censored my "Welcome to the Internet, where you will find post-flatearthers that believe in the shape of a 2.5d Moebius bottle".
Given the type of things vocal people believe, no, posters must know we cannot assume people be joking.
The amount of nickel-and-diming and outright being screwed over at local businesses I've experienced in my lifetime vastly eclipses generous return policies and treatment by megacorporations.
Let’s keep in mind that US corporations just received literal billions in tariff refunds, effectively stealing money from everyone who bought anything in the last year.
But i’m sure being charged an extra dollar at a small store that’s barely getting by (assuming this is true) is the real problem..
Hot take: it’s generally probably less harmful psychologically to be screwed over by an identifiable individual than a faceless mega corporation. Rationalizing a bad experience as “one bad apple” feels better than ruminating over systemic oppression.
I forget where I read this but I agree that if you want to know the real reason for a government policy, look at the effect is has.
It's pretty obvious what they're doing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
"The purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure as many patients as possible" seems also like an extreme? They are businesses, after all, and there will be cases that would be unreasonable to pursue?
Yes! That one, thanks.
This meme needs to die, such a complete thought terminating cliche.
I would love to better understand your thinking behind this statement, if you care to elucidate.
So there is no such thing as unintended consequences? Everything always works to the master plan?
Don't you know? Our great leaders are playing 4d chess on a higher dimension and everything they do is carefully planned and executed. Every failure and blunder is a move beyond our comprehension as part of the supreme master plan. Haven't you read The Art of War???
Obviously sarcasm... But in all seriousness, it's scary how many people genuinely believe this.