The BBB kicks anyone who is single and without kids/with kids over 14 off Medicaid if they don't work at least 80 hours every month of work, absent some really obnoxious paperwork requirements that may or may not have an agency to process them by the time the rule goes into effect.
Cops and other security workers regularly just get to sit around in their trucks playing Candy Crush and racking in overtime up to the six figures.
ICE just got a $175B budget increase in order to swell its ranks with a bunch of unemployed single men who need healthcare.
I'm not saying this is a deliberate policy decision but... it's one hell of a coincidence.
Are we sure ICE agents even get healthcare? They usually look like just random dudes pulled off the street and given a balaclava and a rented van and told to round up brown people. I'll bet they don't get much more than minimum wage and no benefits.
I suspect the $175B isn't going to matter a whole lot in terms of the number of boots on the street. Most of that money is just going to be absorbed by the higher-ups.
My city closed a two block stretch of road for a day this week. Instead of a sign or cones, they had cops just park their cruisers across the lanes with their lights on and sat there all day.
Well the cops put some cones around their cruisers too, but this way about six got a full days salary, if not that overtime pay.
No body has ever begrudgingly become an ICE agent either. You do not stumble into it. Every ICE agent did so because they wanted to be deport people. Remember that.
It doesn't even pay that well. Like, it's fine, but a sheriff's deputy or city cop makes more; multiples in a big city.
Every single one of these fuckers needs to be hanged when the regime falls. Any government that won't back that effort is just some vichy west german bullshit.
the same way nobody forces you to work at mcdonalds and shit
but sometimes you just can't take the risk to lose your job
Many are probably not in this situation though
Their boss was like "youre going to breaching charge a baby because their mom talked shit about us on facebook"
and they were like "hell yeah"
Nobody forces anyone to be a police officer.
These thugs have all willingly chosen to do that job. They could quit any time they want.
Remember that.
Same for CBP and TSA. There are other jobs. You don’t need to actively fight the 4th amendment.
Their names faces and home addresses of them and their close networks need to be published when this is over.
If we had killed every member of the nazi party, or even a majority of the SS after world war 2, this would not be happening.
I respectfully disagree on the TSA, anecdotally.
I know a few people who applied there simply because it WAS a job in their area that paid more than minimum wage and, at least until recently, by virtue of being a government job, it was more likely to actually care about federal protections for employees with disabilities than, say, retail work, which only gives the minimum required number of fucks, and only then when someone is watching or has a lawyer handy.
Also, a significantly larger amount of the population has unfortunately accepted the questionable stipulations of the patriot act than have decided due process is simply too much work, so I feel that's a distance of an order or three of legal magnitude, comparison-wise.
I'm not saying everyone who works for the TSA is there due to lack of other options, but given it's ubiquity and level of employee turnover in airport towns, at least SOME them are.
True for all cops. True for all garbage careers built solely on harassment and fucking with people.
Fuck em all.
I know I'm gonna get shit for this, but I'm someone who always tries to be fair and look at things from all sides so...
I suspect like many things in late stage capitalism, for at least some not insignificant portion of them, it's not much of a choice. I'll lay odds a good number have a hard time getting jobs that pay worth a damn. I wouldn't be surprised if many were ex-cons, for example - which is why they're encouraged to wear masks, because those in charge don't want to allow that fact to be used to "de-legitimize" what they're doing. The "choice" from the agent's perspective is quite possibly do this, or be homeless & hungry. It's more deliberate cattle-herding of the powerless by those at the top.
I'm sure the majority are probably into the job, but I suspect those that are just doing it for lack of options is not a small percentage.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many were ex-cons
proudboys, oath keepers and 2%s, of COURSE they were at J6th. so while I agree with the conclusion, I have zero fucking sympathy for their tenuous position. It's probably real hard to keep a job in the real world when you hate everyone.
Yep, I'm sure that's absolutely true for most of them. But it's unlikely to be all of them. If we are to be the better people, then we need to remember not to dehumanize them like they do their victims. Absolutely defend yourself (or whoever they're after if you're up for putting yourself in harm's way), but no more than necessary, or you will be no better than them.
Nah, fuck em.
Plenty of ex cons or people in shitty situations in general do their best to get by without directly harming people, by having or gaining morals and trying to genuinely be a good person.
Taking the path of least resistance in terms of 'career options' just makes you a bully and a coward.
I am a person who has gone homeless and hungry, from being the victim of these kinds of people... I've never hurt anybody, I put up with all the bullshit and paperwork and constant harassment from every member of society that comes along with being homeless, and managed to crawl my way back to not being homeless, and doing PT, and repairing my credit after having my wallet/bank cards/id stolen.
I have infinitely negative sympathy for people who have actually done crimes and then victimize more people out of the mere fear of ending up dispossed.
Fuck, they could just go work on the farms instead, that would be a legitimate line of work, lots of job openings there!
Your logic is horrendous and allows for a society where anyone doing anything shitty for basically any reason can be pearl clutched and crocodile tear'd away by unduly sympathizing with their personal sob story.
You really think you'd feel the same if these ex con neo nazis fucks busted down your door and sent you to GITMO, CECOT, or Alligator Auschwitz, simply on account of your skin being too melinated and you having a foreign sounding last name?
Gimme a break.
You gonna sympathize with their victims? Write an opinion piece from their perspective?
You are doing apologia for the modern Gestapo, that shit didn't fly at Nuremberg, if it flies with you now, you're a fascist apologist.
These motherfuckers looked a job description that read 'You will routinely carry out crimes against humanity' and said 'Hell yeah, sign me up!"
They deserve all the sympathy of the Nazis captured by the Inglorious Basterds, tap tap tap goes the baseball bat.
EDIT: But hey, at least your user name is apt, Sanctimonious Ape.
How very absolutist of you. The real world isn't so black and white as your idealistic view of things. There's nuance to everything, and to go straight to labeling me as a "fascist apologist" for recognizing that fact makes you no better than any other the other propagandists. Black & white judgements of people are designed to separate us into camps where each thinks they're better than the others, rather than recognizing the humanity in all of us making us all rather imperfect.
EDIT: also, how convenient of you to ignore the fact I acknowledged that most were likely indeed into the job. No, you're not manipulative at all. 🙄
Regarding your edit: I probably haven't moved my profile description over from Reddit, but it went something along the lines of "to 'ape' is an old term used as a verb for imitation, so I'm 'aping' your sanctimoniousness, and giving it right back to you."
And Putin doesn't have a choice either or he will be killed, same with Kim Jong Un and Trump would be in prison if he wasn't a tyrant.
It's always a choice no matter how you try to paint it, stealing from supermarkets to eat is above being an ICE officer morally speaking.
I don't really get your first paragraph - there's a world of difference in options between those at the top & those at the bottom.
Nonetheless, I agree it's always a choice... to an extent. When you've got others depending upon you to provide, or you're not educated or mature enough to understand what all this means and are just trying to survive - how much of it is really a choice?
I'm not saying they're saints, but I expect at least some of them would rather be doing something else if they could get enough pay for it.
It’s always been class warfare. The rich and powerful subjugate the poor, and hold poverty over us to ensure that we do what they want, and we hate who they want us to hate.
Us infighting doesn’t stop the ultra-wealthy from continuing to win, it enables them to. The only way to win is to band together as a people regardless of our race, status, or job, against them.
Fully agreed. The problem is getting that to happen - particularly when they own the bulk of the media from which so many of us "commoners" get what passes for "information." Never mind overcoming the long-ingrained tribalism keeping the infighting going so strong.
Well, yes, but this is a necessity.
You can't (yet) run such a system otherwise, it would take way too much funding & time/indoctrination to get unwilling-ish people to do this shit.
Currently ICE HR uses the base mass unemphatic culture with strong branding (+propaganda) & sense of belonging. Which are cheap to exploit/already there.
But even the most sadistic such agents have a limit, more of a hardwired shellshock type of thing that builds up (the more extreme example is how Nazis just had to stop mass executing villages bcs even soldiers that really wanted to do it had like a gore limit that built up to the point of them being unable to physically work).
With ICE agents not seeing the full horror first hand (and just willing to not imagine the consequences) this limit is far off I imagine, unfortunately.I'm not advocating violence, this is just as a system explanation/mechanic, but ICE agents morale (and thus the effort) is def very vulnerable to any violence at this point. That is the reason why they are getting only the tamest job assignments (=human targets), suspiciously so. It's not like it wouldn't help the propaganda machine if they busted violent gangs (they have all the equipment & overwhelming numbers, just not the people capable of not falling apart with such actions).
I kind of want to see how badly these shit gargling einsatzgrupen wannabees would fuck up going after a hard target of some sort.
I mean, besides everything being horrifically bad, from a strictly entertainment pov, yeah, I wanna see a vid where 20 of them run away from a single Florida-man wielding a musket & a gator after the initial assault fails to be effective.
(Still all of the 20 heroes would get medals & lifetime annuities for ptsd.)
Yeah, it sounds like the "escort an immigrant" drives have been pretty effective so far - it sounds like they're pretty conflict avoidant when they don't have overwhelming force. So far, at least.
Likewise, "just following orders" didn't fly at Nuremberg, it should fly anywhere.
war criminals should be allowed to fly a few feet until the rope stops progress.
-not
I think you dropped this
they get paid absolute dick so many of them are just in it for the love of the game https://www.liveabout.com/ice-agent-career-profile-974493#toc-ice-agent-salary
From your link:
- Median Annual Salary: $63,380 ($30.47 /hour)
- Top 10% Annual Salary: More than $106,090 ($51/hour)
- Bottom 10% Annual Salary: Less than $36,550 ($17.57/hour)
Unless you're living someplace like Martha's Vineyard, those are definitely respectable numbers - particularly for those usually on the low end of the income scale it's at the very least not "absolute dick." Never mind it says those numbers are from 2018, so they're probably going up considering the recent abomination of a budget bill that was passed having increased their budget to an absurd (practically suspicious) level.
they get paid absolute dick
Maybe op just values (absolute) dick way higher than you do!
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)/s
(So only the bottom 10% get paid about the national median income, 90% are above that. That's about how much one would pay a "public-"private militia to get. But it's not even a new organisation, so ofc they are paid OK-ish. And their funding just exploded like an infected haemorrhoid.)~$30 dollars an hour is, across the whole country broadly, just shy of a basic, liveable wage.
~$30 dollars an hour is what the minimum wage would now be, if it was still as it was originally intended to be, a wage allowing for a reasonably comfortable, non poverty existence.
If you think those are respectable numbers, you've normalized the idea of tens of millions of people living in poverty.
https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-year
If trends continue, the average renter will pay $19,801 in 2025 ($1,650/month).
There ya go, 1:3 rent to income ratio means you need to make ~$60k to afford the average apartment.
Annual rent per square foot in 2025 is an estimated $27.67//ft2, up 47.3% from 2020 ($18.79/ft2).
Yep, ~50% increase in rent prices in 5 years.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/renter-households-cost-burdened-race.html
A household has on average ~2.6 people, so thats uh, ~55 million people that couldn't really afford rent in 2023... and those are the people who have since 2023ish been putting everything on credit, on klarna, on afterpay... you don't even want to know how bad the US looks if you take net wealth into the equation... basically, at least 25% of US households have negative net wealth, and that's obviously going to be more concentrated amongst those who can't afford rent.
And no, I'm not using the US gov's definiton(s) of 'poverty', because they are bullshit that doesn't account for what I have above described.
Also, thanks Mr. Trump, bye bye Section 8, bye bye foodstamps/EBT, bye bye Medicaid! I'm sure all those things weren't helpful or needed by anyone struggling to afford rent.
Thug life! Dave Chappelle, that ain't your wife
