Tabby Thursday
- Via AZPM: U.S. citizen in Arizona detained by immigration officials for 10 days. Basically he ended up being detained because he was brown in the wrong place without his papers. This is inevitable when there is such an emphasis on deportations, as law enforcement will racially profile, whether consciously or not.
- Via ABC News: Van Hollen: ‘I am not defending the man, I am defending the rights of this man to due process’. As it should be.
- Via the NYT: White House Assesses Ways to Persuade Women to Have More Children. (sorry, I am out of gift links to the Times). First, this sounds just like people like Viktor Orbán. Second, I am no expert on these policies, but experts I have read state that these policies do not work. BTW, if the administration thinks we need more people in the US, there is an easy way to make that happen: make immigrating easier.
And you have to love this.
“Look at the number of kids that major leaders in the administration have,” Ms. Collins said, adding: “You didn’t hear about kids in the same way under Biden.”
[…]
Much of the movement is built around promoting a very specific idea of what constitutes a family — one that includes marriage between a man and a woman, and leaves out many families that don’t conform to traditional gender roles or family structures. In contrast to the intense emphasis on cost cutting so far during Mr. Trump’s second term, this focus on families could result in spending more money to back a new set of priorities.
First, as one may recall, Biden had four children. His first daughter was killed in a car accident along with his first wife and one of his sons famously died of brain cancer. He talked about his kids, you know, a lot.
Second, in terms “a very specific idea of what constitutes a family,” you mean like major leaders who have six children with three marriages, two of which ended in divorce? (And where one of the daughters is almost entirely ignored?). Or the kind of major leader who has at least 14 children with multiple women, only two of whom he married?
I guess having families that don’t conform to traditional family structures is just for the little people.
It is unclear precisely when Musk will leave the government; his status as a special government employee is expected to expire at the end of May. The billionaire is ready to exit because he is tired of fielding what he views as a slew of nasty and unethical attacks from the political left, according to a person familiar with his thinking. He believes his departure will not diminish the power or work of DOGE, his brainchild, the person said, noting that DOGE team members are already established across scores of federal agencies. DOGE stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, though it is not a Cabinet-level agency.
Funny, he has faded since he failed to deliver that Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. Plus, he is likely getting bored with his new toy.
“No one can say DOGE has not achieved a historic amount of success. The results speak for themselves,” said a senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
I can. I can say that. And a lot of other people can, too. The results do, in fact, speak for themselves: diminished state capacity to do important work while cruel and unnecessarily disrupting the lives of thousands of people to achieve a pittance of “savings.” Heckuva job, Muskie.
Article on Memeorandum this AM reporting the number of births continue to fall. Bringing a child into this country is a big risk for the child.
Just as soon as we have an economy where one employed parent can support a family, we may see a slight uptick in births. That’s not happening because of the whole thing of time only moving in one direction.
Many governments around the world have tried to spur births. All have failed. The incentives for having children are slight, and the disincentives are huge.
No one can say DOGE has not been a historic failure at achieving its stated objective.
A child implies an 18-25 year commitment, if not longer. Having several children extend this to 30-40 years. A financial and emotional commitment. Square this with wage stagnation, the lack of paid parental leave, lack of affordable childcare, working long hours, working exclusively at the office, being on call after working hours, etc.
Also the personal choices and desires of couples about how many children to have and when. Even if everyone could afford six children, not everyone wants to have that many. Six children about two years apart each implies 12 years of taking care of infants, with all that carries, and ever more grown children as time goes on. Not everyone wants this.
It’s easy for reproductive abusers like the nazi, who can shunt off their brood to nannies and have little to nothing to do with them beside the occasional photo op. It’s not like that for a couple who needs the two incomes and work full time every week. And no amount of one time payments per child nor child tax credits will change that.
BTW, immigration is a stopgap solution. pretty much all countries tend to lower birth rates as living standards improve and contraception is available.
Solutions are needed to finance things like social security, other types of pensions, elderly medical care, etc., that do not rely on population growth. A beginning might be made by tapping huge concentrations of wealth taxed currently at very low rates.
The birth rate issue is not confined to the US. With the exception of Africa, birth rates are below replacement almost everywhere. Japan, Italy, Taiwan are all below replacement. Hungary has used several pronatalist tactics without success. I don’t know how this can be reversed. I’m not sure it should be. The population of the world was 3.6 billion in 1970. It didn’t feel underpopulated to me. If we get back to that number via gradual attrition, would that be bad?
Government efficiency initiatives–meaning measures intended to actually increase the efficiency of government operations–are nothing new. An example from the Clinton administration was discussed in a Newsweek op ed a few weeks ago… some excerpts:
@Slugger:
I forget where I saw it, but someone pointed, as you note, that birth rates have fallen all over the developed world, but in a few places, IIRC Japan, S. Korea, and Italy were the examples, birth rates have cratered. The assertion was that it craters in countries that modernized rapidly and social norms haven’t kept up. S. Korean wives, it said, spend an average three more hours a day supporting a household than their husbands. If they have a kid, hubby’s going to expect the wife to do all the child rearing. When? So it’s give up career and income, or don’t have kids.
@Kathy:
Agreed.
But if the US were to remain a massive economy, the gap will be stopped for quite some time.
ICE also claimed that the guy said he was in the country illegally, and had him sign a statement saying so.
The guy has learning difficulties and cannot read. His signature was a scribbled “Jose”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/us-citizen-jose-hermosillo-wrongly-detained-ice-patrol-governments-account-false/
As a rule of thumb, I would say that if someone cannot write their last name, they do not understand what they are signing.
Also, in a game of “who is lying?” I don’t think we can give ICE the benefit of the doubt. These are not good people. They know exactly what they are doing.
But would these people share our values? Apple pie, baseball, American cheese and pale skin, for instance?
Yes, “natalism” is a dead end:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/04/maga-natalism-is-a-dead-end
@ys.Affairs: @ys.Affairs: When a double post results in a double cat portrait it’s purrfect!
@Mister Bluster:..
It must have been a Cheshire Cat. It has disappeared!