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Foosters

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Foosters

  1. Quote

    Yesenia Magali Melendrez Cardona told her father she wanted to follow in his footsteps.

    He had made the trek from Guatemala to the U.S. 15 years earlier in search of a new life. In February, she left a job and her studies behind and headed north.

    Chiquimulilla, the town where she had spent her 23 years, had been ravaged by the pandemic. Unemployment was rising. The population was desperate. The streets were too dangerous to walk at night.

    On Tuesday, Yesenia found herself in a situation just as perilous as the one she had fled.

    A maroon Ford Expedition bore a suspected smuggler and 24 people racing toward what they hoped would be safety. Yesenia and her mother, Verlyn Cardona, were wedged in the back when it drove through a breach in the fence separating Mexico from California.

    It was broadsided by a semi hauling two empty trailers. It came to a stop, windshield shattered, at the intersection of Highway 115 and Norrish Road.

    Seventeen passengers were ejected from the SUV. When Verlyn regained consciousness in the back of the crumpled vehicle, her daughter was sprawled across her legs.

    Dead.

    “El sueño Americano no se le cumplió,” said Yesenia’s father, Maynor Melendrez. She couldn’t reach the American dream.

    Although the car’s occupants hailed from different cities and countries — from Guatemala to Mexico — they were united by the hope of a better life and the false promise, fed by rumors, that now, under a new U.S. administration, was the moment to reach for it.

    Instead, 13 of the car’s 25 occupants were killed. Families were shattered. At least 10 of the dead were Mexican nationals. At least four women inside the car when it crashed were Guatemalan; two of them died.

    Falsehoods have increasingly spread in Guatemala, claiming that with a new president and new policies the doors were open for anyone to cross into the U.S., said Tekandi Paniagua, Guatemala’s consul general in Los Angeles. In reality, he said, “the politics haven’t changed a lot.”

    “Migrants come on a trip that is sold to them as an American dream,” Paniagua said. “But in reality, it’s an uncertain journey.”

    Yesenia’s uncle, Rudy Dominguez, fled Guatemala first — 16 years ago.

    Ahead of the trip, he said, he thought about the risks: the chance that he could be kidnapped, the possibility that he could be left to die in the desert. “These are decisions you make, where you ask yourself, ‘Do I die over there? Or do I die fighting for a dream?’”

    When the pandemic hit, Dominguez said, the economy came crashing down. There were no jobs. Some people turned to theft and drug trafficking.

    Yesenia had been in her fourth year at the University of San Carlos — where she was studying to be a lawyer — when she and her mother decided to leave. The young woman was being harassed and threatened, according to her uncle.

    “It was an emergency decision,” Dominguez said. “There they threaten you and they kill you.”

    Their journey began Feb. 2 and led them to Baja California, Mexico, where they stayed for about a week before getting into the Ford Expedition.

    Yesenia was in one of two vehicles that would be caught on surveillance footage coming through a breach in the border fence near the Gordon’s Well exit off Interstate 8 in the predawn hours Tuesday. Normally, the 1997 Expedition would hold seven or eight people. But this one had just two seats, one for the driver, one for a front passenger. When it collided with the empty tractor-trailer at 6:15 a.m., 23 other men and women were jammed into the back.

    “To have 25 people in that SUV, it’s unimaginable,” Dominguez said. “It’s inhumane.” David Kyle, a sociology professor at UC Davis and an expert on human smuggling, said, “It must have been hell in that SUV even before the crash.”

    Eight people were still in the SUV when first responders arrived. Six were dead, the other two taken to a hospital.

    Verlyn suffered a severe blow to her head that caused a cerebral hemorrhage. She’s since been released from the hospital. She doesn’t remember the accident. Only waking up and seeing her daughter dead.

    “She always tried to give her daughter a better life,” Dominguez said. “Never imagining that the price she would pay would be this.”

    The second vehicle seen crossing the border, a Chevy Suburban, was found engulfed in flames, its 19 occupants discovered hiding in the nearby brush and detained by Border Patrol agents.

    Paniagua, the Guatemalan consul general, said he was concerned about the increased risks migrants are taking to come to the U.S., encouraged by smugglers who he said are misrepresenting the situation at the border.

    The objective of Guatemalan officials, he said, “is to inform people of the reality that’s happening on the border so they can make the best decisions for their health and their life.”

    “They don’t know if they’re going to go into a tractor-trailer, if they’re going to hide in the false bottom of a bus, if they’re going to hide in a truck with 25 people like what happened here,” Paniagua said. “We’re seeing the lives lost.”

    At the start of the pandemic — with closed borders in Central America, fear about the virus and Trump’s harsh immigration policies — there seemed to be a drop in those migrating north, said Tiziano Breda, a Guatemala-based analyst for the International Crisis Group.

    But as the pandemic has dragged on — and people have suffered the economic fallout — it has started pushing people to the U.S. once more.

    “Unfortunately, accidents like these possibly won’t be the only ones,” Breda said.

    Family members described Yesenia as friendly and loving. She was like a big sister to Dominguez’s daughter, who was six years younger. She loved to play soccer and had such an impact on her townspeople that they are organizing tributes ahead of her body being sent back, Dominguez said.

    The last time Melendrez saw and hugged his daughter, she was 6. Although he was in another country, he said, the two remained in close contact.

    Last year, Yesenia told him that she wanted to come to the U.S. He told her how difficult it’d be to get in and asked her to wait until he found a way. He didn’t know she and her mom were coming.

    Melendrez, who lives in New York, learned the news of the accident from Dominguez.

    “There are no words,” said Melendrez, who arrived in California on Wednesday night. “I couldn’t see her again, I couldn’t hug her.”

    Undated handout photo of Yesenia and her mother

    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-04/guatemalan-daughter-killed-in-suv-crash-near-border

    Also failing to see the "lulz" here.

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  2. 7 minutes ago, Js1 said:

     

    I'd ask if you're both doing this unintentionally, but you're both being disingenuous as fuck.  Also it was Dave Sirota's org, so I don't expect it to be accurately portrayed - gotta get the Twitter hearts.

    They did not vote NO on a $15 minimum wage.

    They voted no on overriding the Byrd Rule for the wage increase after the Parliamentarian said it doesn't fit in reconciliation. 

    Totally different votes.  But keep out #outraging.

     

    By the way, Sinema said she wants an actual debate and amendment process for the $15 wage and not attaching minimum wage increase to the COVID reconciliation bill.  Aka, legislating. 

    Do you think the Dems will successfully pass a $15 minimum wage sometime in the next 2 years? I don't. Hope I'm wrong.

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  3. It certainly is an intriguing idea. One major question is what will be the catalyst that will set it off. No one wants to be the first for fear that people will not follow.

    Where I live, the public schools are absolute shit, so like half the city sends kids to private schools. The decrease in kids means decrease in funding, leading to a cycle of poorer and poorer schools. The white and wealthy decry this and all understand that the issue could be fixed if they all just sent their kids to the public schools. But no one wants to be that guinea pig.

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  4. 1 hour ago, Lou said:

    I like the sentiment.  But I have a question for the lawyers.  How hard will it be to find a juror who will vote to acquit regardless?  Doesn't the decision to convict have to be unanimous in a federal criminal case?  If that's true, we might see a lot of hung juries and a lot of money spent with few convictions.

    Can't speak for US Attorneys, but its not uncommon to take a look at a prospective juror's facebook page. And, knowing how MAGA operates, they're all going to have pages festooned in MAGA shit.

  5. 2 hours ago, softlynow said:

    So a 16 year old rapes and murders a couple girls and is released from TJJD on his 19th birthday with no criminal conviction on his record?

    Not sure you have the votes for that particular reform.

    I spent 3 years inside the juvenile justice system including representing 3 kids the state was trying to lock up for the rest of their lives for crimes committed at 15 and 16. California has since ended the practice of "transferring up" kids younger than 15.

    Not sure how Texas would do it, but I'm unclear why they would have to be released on their 19th birthday. Here, juvenile jurisdiction for those in DJJ (Juvy prison) ends at age 25. Honestly, the programming and rehabilitation that the kids get for the 7-9 years they are in is so far beyond what adult prisoners receive its not even comparable. They get mentors, they get actual job training and linkage to union jobs upon release, and they receive an actual education with teachers in classroom settings. Not to go to deep into it, but the life stories of the three I represented would bring even the most hardened to tears. These were persons who never had a chance and they had all been severely abused throughout their lifetimes. 

     

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  6. 15 minutes ago, Randolph Duke said:

    How about "racism anywhere, in any form, must be challenged."

    If minstrel roots are the definition of blatant racism, shouldn't we be sending enlightened Americans to Cape Town to tell them to end their racist ways? Or are you one of those who willingly ignores racism out of personal convenience.

    Chuckie Finster insisting that racism be ignored because he finds doing so more aligned with his "true beliefs."

    (See how easy it is to ignore someone's message and instead fly off on some meaningless tangent?)

    The subject is much more complex than minstrel=blatant racism. Start trying to look at the subject less superficially.

    Slavery today is extremely prevalent around the world. Most people, black or white, don't care about slavery. If they did, they would try to make the world a better place and so something about the problem.

    Minstrel culture is accepted as a part of life in South Africa today because of its cultural context. Cultural context. Blacks in South Africa wearing white face can sing EOT, because minstrel celebrations are accepted there, but whites singing EOT in Texas is racist. Think about that.

    Yes, you can have minstrel celebrations that are not racist. Depending on the cultural context. Think about that.

    Now, help me understand the cultural context of how EOT was developed.

    And please site sources. I'll hang up and take my answer off line.

    Is there a carbon monoxide leak in your house

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  7. 5 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

    These folks truly believed in the aftermath of what they did they were absolutely immune to any kind of legal recourse that might come their way.

    Deez Nuts guy, for example, knows it's illegal to rob a bank.  If he did it, he sure as hell would not have bragged about his actions.  But walking into the capitol building and doing whatever it was that he did?  Why, that's in the Constitution.  How dare anyone question what he and others did that day, and if they did, so what?

    One more time for the folks in the back...

    Quote

    Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

     

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  8. 13 minutes ago, Newy25 said:

    In a shocking development, the woke Twitter mob actually does not have any financial resources. I’m really surprised by this. I assumed these were the most successful and influential people in our community. 

    Correct. From these emails, it appears the most successful and influential people in our community are racists.

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  9. 1 minute ago, RomaVicta said:

    You opened a bottle of the old stuff. Not so much the good stuff, but that stanky old stuff. Smells of whining and dogma.

    I never developed a taste for it.

    @dcar00 has a point. Obama said that Trayvon Martin could've been his son. Trump spent 4 years calling millions of Americans "traitors" and "enemies of the State."

    I can definitely see why the former would bother someone more than the latter. Well, a particular type of person anyway.

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  10.  

     

    10 minutes ago, Ojo Rojo said:

    This has always been the biggest question for me.  I spent a few hours one day researching on the web.  I tried to find reliable sources and those with juxtaposed policy positions.  What I discovered is that undocumented immigration either has a small benefit, net zero or small cost.  It's not huge one way or the other.

    I haven't read anything about it, but I do worry about what the long-term effects would be of flooding the country with new poor people via some new guest worker or open borders policy. I'm reliably left of center on social issues, but I also would like to preserve our high standard of living. I would think at some point immigration would reach critical mass and would start overtaxing social services, schools, hospitals, etc. I would also think it would greatly increase the supply of cheap labor, which would lower wages among the poorest people and drive them further into poverty. I worry now about public schools.  I have seen in my own neighborhood public school that more than 50% of the kids are Hispanic (and I live in a white-ass neighborhood). I don't know for sure, but I think it's the presence of multifamily housing.  I see that doing nothing but increasing here. I'm guessing, but wouldn't a higher ratio of multifamily to single family tend to decrease the property tax base and the source of school funding? 

    Anti-Immigration | Hoosier State Chronicles: Indiana's Digital Newspaper  Program

     

    Chinese Exclusion Act | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica

     

    How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics | History  | Smithsonian Magazine

     

    A 1903 cartoon by Louis Dalrymple in Judge magazine depicts European immigrants as rats. (New York Public Library Digital Collection)

     

    How Racist Anti-Immigration Rhetoric Is Perpetuated Throughout US History -  Everyday Feminism

     

    Same as it ever was.

     

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  11. 58 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    Who's saying stop immigration ?  The issue is folks who have no skill sets who only add to welfare rolls, or criminals, traffickers coming in, and we have no idea who they are or where they are.  Knowing who's coming into the country is a basic responsibility of gov't.

    You can't simply let everyone just come in.  That is not a good way for a country to maintain a healthy socio economic state.  The cost of raising a family coupled with higher, and higher costs/ taxes/ fees/etc. is also a contributing factor to a decreased population.

    We don't take care of our impoverished citizens now, and to just let more, and more (uneducated, unskilled) folks cross the border only makes that task more difficult if not impossible.

    How is an ever increasing cost of an increased welfare roll, increased costs for housing, social programs, medical services, schools, to an already poorly run system now not a compelling reason to limit how many folks (who often have no economic self support) come here ?

    Releasing citizens before a trial who have SS numbers, drivers licenses, home addresses that can be verified is in no way shape or form similar to releasing a non citizen with no way to keep track of them.  Couple  that with the fact they fear being kicked out of the country makes for a huge number of those folks  simply not showing up for their court dates.  There's no way to track them.

    Hey, look who's concerned about the budget again.

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  12. 1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

    Yes, this is exactly the type of data we need to inform gun control legislation.

    Damn, I must be rusty. I'm clearly not being serious with that post.

  13. On 1/11/2020 at 8:42 AM, Anastasis said:

      

    I am curious if you are aware of any published research on the specific topic.  I did a light search and did not find much in the way of quantitative research.

    Is there a strong reason why active shooter drills would create more psychological trauma than, say for instance, fire drills?

     

    Just take a look at the Boomers. They were told to hide under their desks as kids because the Communists wanted to drop bombs on them. 55 years later, they're storming the Capitol to stop communism.

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  14. 1 hour ago, ztejas said:

    Is that the reaction? My reaction is that telling anyone to be less anything race or creed related is pretty offensive. I mean, I think we can all agree that telling a black person to be less black is pretty hairy. Or telling a Muslim to be less Muslim. 

    Besides that, I don't even know what "less white" is supposed to mean. 

    Is this like the corporate version of "how come we cant say the 'N' word too?"

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