Profiteering from migrant kids held in detention camps

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The Trump administration has been holding migrant children -whether they came to the U.S. alone or were forcibly separated from their guardians – in a network of makeshift tent camps. An unnamed official at the Department of Health and Human Services told NBCNews that housing costs $775 per child per day.   That’s more than a $675 deluxe guest room at the Trump international hotel in Washington, D.C. (the  average U.S. hotel room costs $229.00).

Maintenance reportedly eats up most of the $775 daily cost per child for the tent camps, since it’s difficult to keep temporary structures suitable for humans in a desert. In permanent facilities run by Health and Human Services, the cost is $256 per person per night, and NBC News estimates that even keeping children with their parents and guardians in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities would only cost $298 per night.

Even at the permanent facilities, the conditions are bad, with a lack of soap and blankets.  Clinical-law professor Warren Binford interviewed child detainees at a facility in Clint, Texas, and told  Isaac Chotiner at The New Yorker  “There was food on their shirts, and pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them said they had only brushed their teeth once, that there was a lice infestation, as well as an influenza outbreak, at that facility, and that a number of the children are being taken into isolation rooms, quarantine areas where there’s nobody with them except for other sick children.”

Like the prison industry for the U.S. criminal justice system, private companies can make a lot of money in the immigrant-detention business. Private-prison firm Geo Group has reportedly already made $500 million from migrant detention centers since Trump’s “zero tolerance policy” began (reported by the Miami New Times).  Southwest Key Programs, a nonprofit that set up a boys’ shelter, reportedly netted $955 million in federal contracts between 2015 and 2018, according to The New York Times. A network of nonprofit groups, BCFS, reportedly received $179 million in the same time period. BCFS is the same contractor that held migrant kids in parked vans for 39 hours earlier this year, as ICE slowly did the paperwork to reunite the children with their families.

The Texas Tribune reports that Texans have been collecting donations of diapers, soap, and toothbrushes. So far, Customs and Border Protection has refused to accept the donations.  (reported in The Ballot, Conde Nast,  26 June 2029).

My comment:  its hard to know how to express one’s disgust.  This is the United States they are talking about?  We as taxpayers are being made to pay for this Trump policy of “everything has to turn a profit for the election donors”?   How can you support treating little children like this?

But there is another point, seldom discussed: why are the migrants coming in such numbers in the first place?  Have you noticed that the reason for the huge numbers of migrants is described as “fear of the violence”, and little more is said.

As I understand it, this violence in Central America is driven by drug gangs fighting for market share, mostly in the United States. So, if I am right, the poor people of Central America are suffering for the drug habits of rich Americans, while the average US taxpayer, who doesn’t touch a “recreational” drug,  is joining the poor migrants in paying for the self-indulgence of the few, mostly untouchably rich, and having to watch while our government botches the migrant crisis, at huge cost.  This, apparently is making America great again.  Worse, there is no sense of shame – the base loves it. Epicurus, on the other hand, would have condemned everything about it.

 

Environmental concerns begin with population

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Letter to The Guardian:

“Your article on “zero heroes” ( e.g zero emission champions) was worthy but it tiptoed around the main factor causing increased global pollution: increasing human numbers.  Progressives often parade their environmental concerns loudly, but are strangely silent on the question of population growth.  How can we get on top of warming planet, increased pollution, habitat destruction snd species extinction if we add 80 million people to the population every year?

“Every country should have a population policy that seeks to stabilise or reduce their population.”

Gordon Payne, Fremantle,  Western Australia. (Guardian Weekly 31 May 2019)

It is astonishing, is it not, that so few people focus on population growth when talking about the climate crisis? What we ought to be doing is offering family planning to people all over the globe who, for cultural, religious and financial reasons, have no access to it – if they want it (we can’t make them).  This particularly applies to Africa, whose population growth is a huge and destabilising problem (we have only seen the tip of the iceberg so far in terms of African migration to Europe).  India, already the most populous country on Earth, is another example.  There they already have  a serious water problem.  Culture and religion stand in the way of sensible policy.

 

How to behave on a date

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Unbelievably, The Independent newspaper recently offered the following tips on dating behaviour:
  • Even if the conversation has run dry within 15 minutes, do not do a runner. It’s just mean and rude.
  • No “negging” – handing out backhanded compliments to gain the psychological upper hand. Although recommended by pick-up “experts”, it usually backfires for those looking for long-term romance.
  • Even if you are getting on brilliantly, rein in your fantasies about the future. Don’t make jokes about your wedding, and do not invite your companion to an event too far in the future.
  • Don’t treat it like a job interview. “How did you choose to spend your time during the career gap you had in 2017?” is not an appropriate question. Try to make the sharing of personal information reciprocal.
  • Don’t bring a friend. It may put you at ease, but it’s sure to have the opposite effect on your date.
  • Even if it’s going badly, don’t exploit your date for their professional expertise, however tempting it may be.

Wouldn’t you think all this would be common sense?  Whatever happened to judgment?  It might have been appropriate to tell the reader, not only what not to do, but what works best.  If I may make  some common sense suggestions:

*    Make her laugh

*    Make her laugh

*    Make her laugh

*    Ask her questions and don’t talk about yourself unless she asks.

*     Self-deprecation with a wry grin often works a treat ( in England, anyway!)

Please add to the above.  Only the experienced and successful need apply.

 

The genius of Einstein

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Walter Isaacson, biographer ofAlbert Einstein, writes the following (page 550):

Perhaps the most important aspect of his personality was his willingness to be non- conformist. “The theme I recognise in Galileo’s work” , he said, “ is the passionate fight against any kind of dogma based on authority”.

Plank, Poincare and Lorentz all came close to some of the breakthroughs Einstein made in 1905.  But they were a little too confined by dogma based on authority.  Einstein alone among them was rebellious enough to throw out the conventional thinking that had defined science for centuries.

Einstein’s fundamental creed was that freedom was the lifeblood of creativity.  “The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit, “ he said,” requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudice”.  Nurturing that should be the fundamental role of government and the mission of education”.

There was a simple set of formulas that defined Einstein’s outlook. Creativity required  being willing not to conform.  That required nurturing free minds and free spirits, which in turn required “a spirit of tolerance”. And an underpinning of tolerance was humility – the belief that no one had the right to impose ideas and beliefs on others

The world had seen a lot of impudent geniuses.  What made Einstein special was that his mind and soul were tempered by this humility.  He could be serenely self- confident in his lonely course yet also humbly awed by the beauty if nature’s handiwork…….

For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God’s existence.  For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence.  The fact that the cosmos is comprehensible, that it follows laws, is worthy of awe”.   ( Einstein – his Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson, published by Simon & Schuster, 2008)

What kept them?

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Copthorne Primary school in West Yorkshire, UK, has banned its pupils from using the word “like” as a filler.  In future, those who pepper their sentences with “likes” will be asked to spend five minutes thinking about how they might have expressed themselves better.

The verbal tic is thought to be spreading thanks to shows like Love Island: in 2017, a contestant said “like” 36 times in 90 seconds.

Spreading?   It’s already everywhere.  It’s like (whoops!) “you know”, also a filler and I suppose it is popular because the user hasn’t thought through what he or she intended to say, and is trying to prevent interruption. Leaving aside the United States for a moment (students at Georgetown University can be heard using it every five seconds, walking down the street talking interminably on their phones), I fear that the good old British class divisions will ensure that “like” becomes a class identifier.

Well, it isn’t classy, is it?

(You thought people had stopped talking about class in Britain?  Yes, they have, but it is still there)