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A NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie suggested (in jest) that the next Democrat administration send armed IRS agents to gated communities in Florida, to "investigate t
by mekdoonggi 9mo ago
A NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie suggested (in jest) that the next Democrat administration send armed IRS agents to gated communities in Florida, to "investigate tax fraud".
But this is exactly why all citizens should be concerned about the infringement of rights happening in Minnesota. If it is allowed without prosecution, you are next.
- iugtmkbdfil834 9mo agoZero disagreement. Rules of engagement should be clear to everyone. How can you possibly play the game if the rules keep changing based on political expediency. And we all know.. that that kind of a game is rigged from the start. That said, I was thinking more about people all of us building tools that got us into the situation we are in now.
- hsuduebc2 9mo agoPeople rarely recognize that force can be turned on them until it happens. If one side uses force and the other refuses to, you cannot expect the first to grasp that force is always a two way street, because for them it is not real until they feel it.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- tom_808 9mo agoFirst they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
- direwolf20 9mo agoForce can be turned on even if there was no force before. Biden didn't have anything like the current ICE, but Trump just made one out of thin air and then turned it on people.
- terespuwash 9mo agoHis brilliant columns is the only reason I would ever consider a NYT subscription.
- antonymoose 9mo agoWhy would anyone be opposed to the IRS catching tax cheats? This seems like such a bone-headed take. In any case it’s also historically illiterate, the IRS has long been used as a political weapon, infamously against “Tea Party” activists.
- ihsw 9mo ago[dead]
- tock 9mo ago> Why would anyone be opposed to the IRS catching tax cheats? This seems like such a bone-headed take. And ICE says they only go after illegals.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoSpeaking of historically illiterate... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy > Conservatives claimed that they were specifically targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny.
- fwip 9mo agoI feel like you can both want illegal aliens to get deported, but not approve of how ICE is executing protesters in the street, entering homes without warrants, and kidnapping people in unmarked vans. Similarly, you can think it would be good to catch tax fraud, but think that it should be handled without executing folks.
- sejje 9mo ago[flagged]
- crawfordcomeaux 9mo agoYou aren't seeing them because you aren't looking for them. And you're making excuses for the ones you see. Go find them. Do searches.
- guywithahat 9mo ago[flagged]
- gizzlon 9mo agoDid you just link to grokipedia?
- dmajor2 9mo agoLinking to actual sources would reveal that the keywords the IRS was looking for were politically biased, yes, but across the spectrum. The keywords included "Tea Party", "Patriot", "Progressive", and "Occupy." https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555975207/as-irs-targeted-tea-party-groups-it-went-after-progressives-too https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555975207/as-irs-targeted-tea...
- jeffbee 9mo ago"Biased but across the spectrum" is nonsense.
- ajross 9mo agoPurely semantic arguments aren't helpful to anyone. The word "bias" clearly has two senses in this context. The original term from signal processing indicates a persistent offset, which got appropriated in politics to reflect the idea of a "lean" in coverage. So now "Bias" means "politically charged in some direction or another". So you can have a "biased" term ("occupy") next to another biased term ("tea party") in a search. And it's reasonable to call the whole thing a collection of biased terms even though by the original definition I guess you'd say they cancel out and are "unbiased". Language is language. It may not be rational but it's by definition never "nonsense". Don't argue with it except to clarify.
- jeffbee 9mo agoYour comment is longer nonsense. Individual data points in a population cannot be biased. Bias is an aggregate statistic of the sample population.
- gadders 9mo agoNot massively different to Obama weaponising the IRS against the Tea Party.
- iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago[flagged]
- gadders 9mo ago[flagged]
- acdha 9mo agoThat’s not something which really happened: conservative groups screamed about it loudly but the investigation found that the IRS was looking at liberal groups, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
- direwolf20 9mo agoA democratic administration would be extremely unlikely to do that, I think. Democrats are usually middle–of–the–road, don't–upset–anyone types. Radical centrists, if you will. That's why the elections of people like Mamdani are so shocking.
- __loam 9mo agoPeople who care about their community?
- goatlover 9mo agoThere's going to be a lot of pressure on Democrats from their base to hold people accountable for what happens during Trump's 2nd term. And there is going to be some new blood that runs on that. You have state governors like Newsom, Pritizker and Waltz documenting abuses with future accountability in mind. What baffles me is how conservatives supporting the current government overreach aren't worried about the coming backlash. Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? Even when there is no more Trump?
- ModernMech 9mo ago> Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? There's a degree of that. But really it's learned behavior; MAGA literally sacked the Capitol in a violent insurrection and Democrats managed to botch the response to that. The only reason we're talking about future malfeasance is because Democrats didn't punish past malfeasance, thereby shifting the Overton window. And of course this goes back further than Jan 6 -- Trump might actually get a pardon from the next Democratic president if history repeats.
- magicalhippo 9mo ago> Do they think they'll just win all the future elections? Let's say the administration require physical in-person voting due to supposedly mail-in vote fraud and similar in past elections, like when Trump lost. Then they place a bunch of ICE agents outside of each voting location, checking any immigrants and others they've declared unwanted that are about to vote. Suddenly a lot of democratic voters no longer feel safe voting. Will the democrats still win?
- rurp 9mo agoRight, if a future democratic president starts sending masked government thugs out to assault and kidnap American citizens we all know that 100% of the people who are defending the current ICE atrocities will suddenly be outraged about government tyranny.
- order-matters 9mo agoa surprising amount of people seem to genuinely believe law enforcement (generally, not just police) is at its core based on discretionary actions guided by their moral values and not a morally neutral action upholding agreed upon contracts that is to say, the law only applies to you if you do "bad" things. and ill be honest, there is a level of truth to this to me. from a practical standpoint, it is infeasible to formally understand every nuance of every law ever created just to be a citizen. The underlying core social contract does appear to be one of "if you do 'good' things, generally the law will agree with you and if it doesnt then we wont hold it against you the first time" *the important caveat here is that this leaves a rather disgustingly large and exploitable gap in what is considered good vs bad behavior, with some people having biases that can spin any observable facts into good or bad based on their political agenda. Additionally, personal biases like racism for example, influence this judgement to value judge your actions in superficial ways
- goatlover 9mo agoThe other caveat is if you're a historically persecuted minority group, then those assumptions toward law enforcement don't usually apply. And now the political opposition to the current US administration is also feeling that way.
- mekdoonggi 9mo agoI have never considered this perspective, but this fits very well with people's actions. Thank you for sharing. To me, the system of codified law and courts makes intuitive sense, and most people misunderstand or abuse the system. But other people's intuitive understanding of the law as you mentioned is a much easier way to understand and actually IS a rough approximation of what the system does.
- eunos 9mo agoIf Dem could win big soon the lawfare against Trump business could be huge. DOGE purge alone was making a lot of bad blood.
- jimbokun 9mo agoWould probably be very popular, outside the kind of people whose donations fund political campaigns.
- jcul 9mo agoI'm repeatedly shocked by the images of these ICE agents dressed like they are soldiers in a war zone. I was just thinking how in my country immigration officials would be probably wearing formal clothes and have clipboards and paperwork. Your comment about armed IRS agents made me laugh / reminded me about this.