New York Times: President Trump Suggested Shooting Migrants In The Legs to Slow Them Down
[guest post by Dana]
We all know that President Trump ran on immigration reform, and that central to his campaign was his promise of securing the border and building The Wall. Now, according to a report adapted from an upcoming book by two New York Times reporters, so focused on immigration was the President, and so frustrated by what he perceived as a lack of progress on the issue, his suggestions for solutions became more extreme. The report focuses primarily on a single week in March, 2019:
The Oval Office meeting this past March began, as so many had, with President Trump fuming about migrants. But this time he had a solution. As White House advisers listened astonished, he ordered them to shut down the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico — by noon the next day.
The advisers feared the president’s edict would trap American tourists in Mexico, strand children at schools on both sides of the border and create an economic meltdown in two countries. Yet they also knew how much the president’s zeal to stop immigration had sent him lurching for solutions, one more extreme than the next.
Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.
“The president was frustrated and I think he took that moment to hit the reset button,” said Thomas D. Homan, who had served as Mr. Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recalling that week in March. “The president wanted it to be fixed quickly.”
Let’s just ponder this a moment: a sitting President of the United States allegedly suggested that the U.S. shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down while crossing the border…
According to the report, because of his inability to get co-signers on his outlandish, and in certain instances, illegal plans to secure the border, Trump did what he typically does whenever he’s told no: he turned on those who stood up to him, and replaced them with “yes men” and individuals whose views on the issue lined up more closely with his own:
Mr. Trump’s order to close the border was a decision point that touched off a frenzied week of presidential rages, around-the-clock staff panic and far more White House turmoil than was known at the time. By the end of the week, the seat-of-the-pants president had backed off his threat but had retaliated with the beginning of a purge of the aides who had tried to contain him.
Today, as Mr. Trump is surrounded by advisers less willing to stand up to him, his threat to seal off the country from a flood of immigrants remains active. “I have absolute power to shut down the border,” he said in an interview this summer with The New York Times.
A couple of things to note: The President mocked the report, calling it fake news:
Now the press is trying to sell the fact that I wanted a Moat stuffed with alligators and snakes, with an electrified fence and sharp spikes on top, at our Southern Border. I may be tough on Border Security, but not that tough. The press has gone Crazy. Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2019
Now the press is trying to sell the fact that I wanted a Moat stuffed with alligators and snakes, with an electrified fence and sharp spikes on top, at our Southern Border,” Trump wrote…I may be tough on Border Security, but not that tough. The press has gone Crazy. Fake News!
The White House responded to the report, in part:
“President Trump has clearly and publicly stated many times that he wants to make American communities safer by building a wall, closing dangerous loopholes that incentive child smugglers and drug cartels, and implement a merit based immigration system.”
Also, The Times has been compelled to defend their decision to hold back on reporting the information when it happened because it was being included in their reporters’ upcoming book, “Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration,” which is being released next week. It’s a wee bit troubling when you consider that, if Trump’s suggestion to shoot migrants had been carried out and the public was clueless about his proposal – made seven prior:
The New York Times is under fire again for its handling of revelations in a book by its reporters.
The paper is defending its reporters Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, who faced criticism on Twitter from fellow journalists and readers for appearing to wait months to report on President Donald Trump’s suggestion in a March meeting that migrants might be shot in the legs to slow them down at the southern border. The Times revealed the news this week in an excerpt to promote Shear and Davis’ book, “Border Wars,” which comes out next week.
The dispute highlighted the problem of reporters developing information for book projects that dovetail with their beats, and then saving those revelations to help promote the book.
Social media critics insisted the importance of the news should have prompted Shear and Davis to immediately reveal the outlandish nature of some of Trump’s private ideas, such as digging an alligator-filled moat alongside a border wall that would feature flesh-piercing spikes.
[…]
“Julie Davis and Mike Shear took a leave from The Times to report ‘Border Wars,’” the Times spokesperson wrote. “Their reporting for the book, like all reporting, was subject to conditions agreed to with their sources. When they could, they shared newsworthy and imminent information with The Times for its continuing coverage of immigration. This news was best suited for the book excerpt.”
[Ed. In spite of the spokesperson’s explanation, how something so obviously newsworthy is determined to be more suitable for a book excerpt, yet ends up appearing in the Politics section of the NYT daily publication seven months after the fact anyway, is still a bit of a mystery...]
Interestingly, “the authors brought detailed accounts of what they were reporting to the White House in advance of publication… pushback… from the deputy press secretary was “not a denial” of the facts.”
Two days ago, Fox News reported that they had received confirmation about the “shooting migrants in the legs” conversation:
A source who was in the room at the time confirmed the conversation about shooting migrants in the legs to Fox News late Tuesday.
The White House did not respond to Fox News for comment.
Also two days ago, ABC News reported that they had received confirmation about the President’s “shooting migrants in the legs” conversation:
The account, first reported in a book excerpt released by the The New York Times on Tuesday, was confirmed to ABC News by a senior administration official who was in the room at the time…
(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)
–Dana
I don’t have a problem believing Trump would have made the comments. It sounds like something he would say. Further, if anything, the historical evidence clearly demonstrates that he has never been a paragon of discretion or self-discipline with regard to flapping his gums since becoming the President. Prove it otherwise.
Dana (05f22b) — 10/4/2019 @ 12:58 pmEqually, it was the New York Times that had to defend reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly and their book on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and a new allegation of sexual misconduct. The NYT and the authors were criticized for for omitting a key factual detail, which led to an editor’s note.
Dana (05f22b) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:04 pmYeah… the fact that they sat on this for months doesn’t give them credibility on this.
At this point, any salacious details coming from the media that relies on unmaned sources should be handled with large amount of salt.
whembly (fd57f6) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:12 pmOh no! Now FoxNews is Deep-State. You know. Everyone but Donald is.
noel (f22371) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:13 pmrats leaving the ship except hannity who will go down with (on) trump.
lany (2dfdca) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:27 pmhttps://dailycaller.com/2019/10/04/new-york-times-kavanaugh-book-bombs/
narciso (d1f714) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:30 pmBorder deniers don’t object to millions of foreigners swamping the country of their fellow citizens. They’re appalled because “someone says” that Trump passingly suggested shooting people in the leg.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:32 pm6. How is the hard-hitting, unbiased, NYT Peter Baker’s “Obama: The Call of History” doing?
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:34 pmAccording to the Trump administration’s published statistics, there are about 100,000 successful illegal entries between PoE per year, not “millions”.
Stop making stuff up.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:46 pmThis story just proves (yet again) what an imbecile Trump is.
Land mines are the obvious, maintenance-free, solution.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:47 pmDave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:47 pm
President Trump was so – what’s the word? – that he thought the Washington Post ran that story, not the New York Times.
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:54 pm“This story just proves (yet again) what an imbecile Trump is.”
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:47 pm
Trump is too stoopid to go the WMD/invasion route, or a Great Recession to remove the incentive.
Munroe (53beca) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:56 pmso another apocryphal story, the hamptons fundraiser that went nowhere, the gatestone institute one, that could have represented couglin and taheri, but not Bolton, and this unsourced trash, I don’t care they dumped some offal at fox,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:57 pmObama brought up that idea….as a reducto ad absurdum.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/464051-clip-of-obama-joking-gop-will-want-a-moat-with-alligators
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:57 pmIt could be that detail was false and made Trump angry.
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 10/4/2019 @ 1:59 pmah transparency that’s the whole ballgame right,
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=383601
narciso (d1f714) — 10/4/2019 @ 2:01 pmObama in 2011:
Ted Cruz in 2016:
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 2:04 pmFox recently dumped some other offal to make room for the incoming offal.
urbanleftbehind (1ea985) — 10/4/2019 @ 2:07 pmyou spelled shep smith wrong, but he’s the fair haired boy of the Murdoch boys, almost as dyspeptic as Andrew Sullivan,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/4/2019 @ 2:09 pmSo, I’m not sure I follow, and maybe the NYT is deliberately muddling the stories here: Did the President suggest that it would be just regular everyday illegal border-crossers who would be shot in the legs, or was that specifically in regards to the illegal border-crossers who were throwing rocks (and bottles, fireworks, etc.)? I’m a bit more sympathetic if he was referring to the latter, though I don’t think that using potentially lethal force is justifiable. I could probably support firing beanbag rounds at them, treating them the same way that mobs in U.S. cities are treated (except Antifa in Portland and the Bay Area, who have carte blanche to run amuck).
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/4/2019 @ 2:11 pmBrainstorms generate climate change.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 10/4/2019 @ 2:43 pmTrump has some theory about the DNC server that people are trying to figure out (what it is)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/29/us/politics/tom-bossert-trump-ukraine.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/us/politics/crowdstrike-ukraine.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/us/politics/trump-ukraine-conspiracy.html
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 10/4/2019 @ 2:44 pm9. Dave, Dave:
Cherry-picking one misleading stat from one year isn’t up to your normal level of response. (Must be that Trump Derangement Syndrome I’ve heard about). In any event, try these on:
“In FY18, a total of 396,579 individuals were apprehended between ports of entry on our Southwest Border.” https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
(I won’t ask how man were not apprehended.)
and this year: “US Border Patrol says it has made 688,375 southwest border apprehensions since October 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44319094
And from years past: “U.S. data on Mexican inflows tell the rest of the migration story from this side of the border. Flows—the number of people added to the U.S. population each year—dropped markedly from 2005 to 2010, totaling 1.4 million for the five-year period, according to estimates based on U.S. Census Bureau data. This represents a marked break from previous years: Total inflows reached about 3 million in each of the two preceding five-year periods. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2012/04/23/ii-migration-between-the-u-s-and-mexico/
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/4/2019 @ 3:01 pmLost me at “migrants”. By any chance, did the Sarah Jeong Times mean “illegal aliens”?
nk (dbc370) — 10/4/2019 @ 3:22 pmI know it’s true because I read it in the NY Times….and was confirmed by an “unidentified source”. If you can’t trust The Times and a faceless entity, who can you trust?
Russ from Winterset (f6666a) — 10/4/2019 @ 3:27 pmI know it’s ancient history, like with the usfl
https://www.theepochtimes.com/russian-collusion-look-to-joe-biden_2858519.html
narciso (d1f714) — 10/4/2019 @ 3:30 pmnow this would be merely deranged, if it wasn’t for her hamas ties,
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2019/10/04/rashida-tlaib-wants-us-marshals-to-hunt-down-white-house-officials-n2554189
narciso (d1f714) — 10/4/2019 @ 3:57 pmMeanwhile….from the ‘better late than never’ dept.:
ErikWemple
@ErikWemple
Bloomberg Law has retracted it’s faulty article on Leif Olson: “In reporting on a series of social media posts from [Olson], we failed to meet our editorial standards for fairness and accuracy. We regret that lapse and apologize to our readers and to Mr. Olson.”
__ _
Boy, that took a while. Wonder what persuaded them….
Email exposes Bloomberg for misleading readers about reporter’s hit job on Trump Department of Labor appointee
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/email-exposes-bloomberg-for-misleading-readers-about-reporters-hit-job-on-trump-department-of-labor-appointee
harkin (58d012) — 10/4/2019 @ 4:00 pm_
It’s not from one year. It’s from the last three years reported (2015-2017). See Figure 3 of this Trump administration report.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 4:16 pmWhen it comes to illegal aliens, illegally sneaking through the border, we are not stopping enough of them. The numbers are meaningless. There should be zero illegals, none whatsoever, not a single one, coming in.
nk (dbc370) — 10/4/2019 @ 4:34 pmJust remember the first round is a bean bag, so a couple bruised legs for everything free in America and you can Schiff anywhere in California isn’t that bad a deal. Kinda like the Schiff hole you came from.
mg (8cbc69) — 10/4/2019 @ 4:42 pmFor which other crimes do we stop 100% of the attempts? Attempts to assassinate of the president are the only other one that comes close, and of course, the number of attempts in a given year is many orders of magnitude less (perhaps a few per year, as opposed to hundreds of thousands).
Roughly 80% of illegal crossings between PoE are stopped. That compares extremely favorably to any other type of offense.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 4:45 pm“For which other crimes do we stop 100% of the attempts?”
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 4:45 pm
Wrong comparison. For which other crimes do we know you did it, and you’re given a pass?
“Roughly 80% of illegal crossings between PoE are stopped.”
There’s no possible way to know that. Furthermore, does an asylum claim count as a stop?
Munroe (53beca) — 10/4/2019 @ 5:14 pmLike I said: Meaningless. Are you content to keep 80% of fecal matter out of your food? 80% of your students from cheating on their exams? 80% of the radiation inside your nuclear reactor?
Crime is a red herring. We can eliminate 100% of crimes be repealing the criminal laws. “There! All done, now we have a crime-free society!” The purpose of border security is to secure the border. A 20% porous border is not a secure border.
nk (dbc370) — 10/4/2019 @ 5:17 pmIt is possible to object to both illegals crossing the border and Trump possibly suggesting that we shoot them in the legs to slow them down.
Dana (05f22b) — 10/4/2019 @ 5:18 pm30: Dave thinks you are catching enough.
Dave=We caught X, so ignore the Y you didn’t catch, and the Z that are refugee seekers who are let in, and have kids while waiting for a hearing. (I’m not sure, but Dave might have once worked for Enron.)
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/4/2019 @ 5:18 pm33: “If it saves just one life . . . !”
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/4/2019 @ 5:20 pmSo the Trump administration is lying then? UNPOSSIBLE. Why do you hate America, Hillary lover?
In any event, I would expect them to low-ball the true interdiction rate, to feed the crisis atmosphere the administration wants to maintain.
Asylum claims are not, inherently, illegal crossing attempts.
If someone attempts to cross illegally between PoE, is caught, and then claims asylum (what the statistics call a “defensive asylum claim”), yes, it would count.
If someone walks up to a PoE and claims asylum it would not count, first because it is not an unlawful entry attempt, and second because it is not between PoE.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 5:22 pmThe proper way to look at this is a cost/benefit analysis. Stopping 100% of illegal crossing attempts between PoE would likely require more than 20 times the resources we currently devote to border security. Doubling the resources would not double the effectiveness, since we are already about 80% efficient. Diminishing returns, comrade.
Saying “we should stop 100% of illegal crossing attempts” is just silly. That is not to say we shouldn’t *try* to (and we do).
In fact we do not keep 100% of fecal matter out of food, or 100% of students from cheating, or 100% of radiation inside nuclear reactors. Instead, we calibrate the marginal cost of doing a little better with the marginal benefit of doing a little better, and when the former exceeds the latter we look for better places to spend our resources.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 5:34 pmI am familiar with the concept of acceptable losses. As are the families of Kate Steinle and Mollie Tibbetts. We can show them the better places we spent our resources.
nk (dbc370) — 10/4/2019 @ 5:56 pmBTW, just what percentage of students cheat on their exams, what percentage of radiation leak from nuclear reactors, and what percentages of foodstuffs are fecal matter? Please don’t tell me it’s 20%?
nk (dbc370) — 10/4/2019 @ 6:01 pmThe proper way to look at this is a cost/benefit analysis.
Apropos of nothing, anyone ever notice how much Donald Rumsfeld resembled Robert MacNamara?
Ptw (094b61) — 10/4/2019 @ 6:48 pmThere are over 35,000 traffic fatalities in the US every year, far more than the number of violent deaths caused by illegal immigrants. If we reduced the speed limit to 5 mph, nationwide, it would prevent nearly all of them. You’re in favor of doing that too, right?
What difference does that make? It should be the percentage for which the marginal cost of doing better exceeds the marginal benefit.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 7:02 pmIts darn well possible Tibbetts and peer community accept the calculus of labor supply for hog farming and other agro pursuits, unlike other Angel kin. How the Willis family didnt go that route, I’ll never know but a combination of focusing instead on political scalps and they themselves being accused of running a nile-glovers evangelical church in catholic redneck my. Greenwood might explain it.
urbanleftbehind (1ea985) — 10/4/2019 @ 7:21 pmhere are over 35,000 traffic fatalities in the US every year, far more than the number of violent deaths caused by illegal immigrants. If we reduced the speed limit to 5 mph, nationwide, it would prevent nearly all of them. You’re in favor of doing that too, right?
That’s bullsh!t. A fatuous non-sequitor.
What difference does that make? It should be the percentage for which the marginal cost of doing better exceeds the marginal benefit.
Doubly bullsh!t. We’re not talking about whether we should use real walnut or laminates to panel your office.
nk (dbc370) — 10/4/2019 @ 7:24 pm33, “What are most traffic/moving violations witnessed and verifiable by law enforcement prior to the last few days of every month?”
urbanleftbehind (1ea985) — 10/4/2019 @ 7:25 pm“That’s just nit-picking, isn’t it?”
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:01 pm– Nigel Tufnel, Spinal Tap
But I would be interested to know why you think we must prevent 100% of illegal border crossings, but not 100% of traffic fatalities.
I think it’s an untenable position.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:09 pmComparing citizens murdered by illegals to traffic accidents…..
Lol
harkin (58d012) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:36 pmBut I would be interested to know why you think we must prevent 100% of illegal border crossings, but not 100% of traffic fatalities.
I think it’s an untenable position.
non se·qui·tur
/ˌnän ˈsekwədər/
noun
a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.
“his weird mixed metaphors and non sequiturs”
fat·u·ous
nk (dbc370) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:41 pm/ˈfaCHo͞oəs/
adjective
silly and pointless.
“a fatuous comment”
Yeah well, Dave is a protected species here
steveg (354706) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:51 pmLA mayor is big on teh zero pedestrian fatalities. To the point where if drunk people crossing in the dark at 3:00 AM get run down by sober drivers, the solution is to remove a traffic lane
steveg (354706) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:54 pmDutch sailors found the dodo bird easy to catch and eat because it could not fly and was sorta slow.
steveg (354706) — 10/4/2019 @ 9:30 pmThese days we’d preserve it
The victims are just as dead, are they not?
We give man potato to watch border. Man catch 10 people trying to cross. Is good.
We give second man potato to watch border. Two men catch 15 people trying to cross. Is good, but second potato only catch five people instead of ten.
We give third man potato to watch border. All three men work just as hard, but only catch 16 people trying to cross. Paying third man potato to watch border maybe such not great idea. Maybe do more good somewhere else.
Catch every illegal crossing take too many men, cost too many potato.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/5/2019 @ 2:23 amknow what you can do with those potatoes?
mg (8cbc69) — 10/5/2019 @ 2:37 amDave (1bb933) — 10/5/2019 @ 2:23 am
I’m thinking the illegals that are successfully crossing are paying better than one stinking potato to somebody.
felipe (023cc9) — 10/5/2019 @ 5:51 amI’m thinking that a generalized cost-benefit bromide with or without an illustration is a pile of digested potatoes. Why shouldn’t we pay five additional agents five additional potatoes to catch that one sixteenth illegal? What evidence can you show that it wouldn’t be worth it and that the potatoes would be better given somewhere else?
Ok, I won’t insist on fecal matter in food. De gustibus etc. What are your your acceptable percentages of students who cheat on their exams and leakage from nuclear reactors and how much would you consider worth spending to have them at that acceptable level? Say and I tell you where best potato patch is.
nk (dbc370) — 10/5/2019 @ 6:19 amAnd since I just started my second cup of coffee, let’s look at the other fatuousness:
What makes lowering the speed limit to 5 mph the only solution to reduce traffic fatalities?
How much do we already spend on:
1. Safer drivers, with such things as drivers education; licensing which includes lower and upper age limits, vision tests, written tests and road tests; a multitude of traffic regulations with police and courts to enforce them; and license revocations and vehicle forfeitures?
2. Safer vehicles?
3. Safer roads?
Ask how much more we should spend — since you like examples, let’s say on every car having Mercedes’s automated proximity-sensing braking and alcohol detector ignition interlocks, both doable right now — to bring down the current number of fatalities?
And we’re still off the mark, anyway. How much should we have spent to eradicate smallpox and polio? Was the government right to mandate vaccination? Taxpayer-paid vaccination at that! Closing down swimming pools? Was the cost worth it? In money? In “libertarian principles”? That’s the better example.
nk (dbc370) — 10/5/2019 @ 6:53 amNow, you wanna do a cost-benefit analysis? Do it on the all-woman spacewalk.
nk (dbc370) — 10/5/2019 @ 7:19 amnk (dbc370) — 10/5/2019 @ 7:19 am
You know there’s going to be a movie…
felipe (023cc9) — 10/5/2019 @ 7:33 amThe one about the crazy astronaut?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/10/the-week-in-pictures-epicycle-edition.php
Narciso (d1f714) — 10/5/2019 @ 7:37 amSo what would be the outer space equivalent of a Sewer Mouse?
urbanleftbehind (ae0e89) — 10/5/2019 @ 8:00 amthe creature in the force awakens,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/5/2019 @ 8:22 amLets apply liberal logic. There are 35,000 traffic fatalities and no one cares, so why not shoot a couple liberal journalists to encourage better reporting? What’s the diff?
Or, the budget is $2 trillion, so why not give each Congressmen $50 million/year in “walking around money” – what’s the diff?
rcocean (1a839e) — 10/5/2019 @ 8:37 amPersonally, I like the idea of Big angry Grizzly bears and maybe a few Tigers patrolling the border. The can eat what they catch.
rcocean (1a839e) — 10/5/2019 @ 8:39 amSince you’re the one who argued that we must do that, it seems to me that you’re the one who should provide the evidence that the benefit of catching that last illegal crosser is worth the cost. That was, in fact, the whole point of my objection.
You again mis-cast the question in terms of “acceptable level”. It is not about any “acceptable level”, it is about marginal cost and marginal benefit.
I don’t run any nuclear reactors, so I don’t have a cost-benefit analysis of radiation safety available. But it is definitely the basis on which nuclear reactor safety is designed.
For cheating, I can more readily answer your question based on experience. The “acceptable” level of cheating is, of course, zero. But to ensure that, we would have to give students exams individually and simultaneously (i.e. in a class with 250 students, we would need 250 rooms, with 250 proctors). Due to the additional cost and administrative burden that would create, the university does not provide individual testing rooms and proctors, so we have to give exams in the same room where the class normally meets. This results in students sitting right next to each other during the exam, which would make cheating quite easy.
One effective counter-measure to that problem is to use different versions of the exam, and arrange that no two students seated adjacent, or in front/behind each other, have the same version. This involves additional effort in preparation (making the different versions) and administration (making a seating chart and individualized exam coversheets), but in my judgment is a worthwhile investment (i.e. the benefit exceeds the cost). Sometimes people are even stupid enough to copy the answer from their neighbor despite having different versions, and we catch cheaters that way.
There are a number of other counter-measures that I do not use, because I consider the time required to implement them is too great for marginal benefit. For example, I know a few professors who have their TAs make photo-copies of students’ graded exams before returning them. That way, if a student alters their exam and tries to claim a mistake in grading was made to gain points, they can be caught. Just as the university does not provide individual testing rooms and proctors, I consider this too much effort (several hours of someone’s time) for the potential benefit of (maybe) catching one or two people raising their score by a point or two.
I never said it was. You are the one who took an absolutist position. Regardless of anything else done, lowering the speed limit to 5 mph is certain to reduce traffic deaths still further.
Development of a vaccine and widespread inoculation is far cheaper than treating millions of people afflicted with the diseases, so I’m not sure this example works the way you want it to.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/5/2019 @ 8:45 amIllegal immigration disproportionately impacts 4 states. If it isn’t worth it to American citizens from a cost-benefit standpoint to stop illegal immigrants from crossing the border then let the 4 states decide what to do. We can’t do that now because immigration is a federal matter (as I think it should be). But if the government is going to handle immigration in a way that hurts 4 states, I think a change is needed.
For instance, let those 4 states decide and pay for it. Ironically, I suspect Texas would not care about illegal immigrants if we didn’t have to provide food, shelter, education and medical care … but we do, so we care. It isn’t right to force states to provide benefits without giving them the tools to deal with what causes the problem.
If you want to call this a cost-benefit problem, you should factor those costs in for the border states, instead of ignoring them or spreading them across all 50 states.
DRJ (15874d) — 10/5/2019 @ 9:50 amWell, if they cant nail who killed Mollie Tibbetts, why not get this one on some moving violations/no license/learners permit: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/04/greta-thunberg-drives-tesla-iowa-join-climate-strike/3869884002/
urbanleftbehind (ae0e89) — 10/5/2019 @ 10:25 amFirestarter gets a little tedious, as the powerline week in review shows,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/5/2019 @ 10:26 amWell, station 3 or 4 swarthy young men in the front row of her next speech and see what her reactions…as a nubile (though not “all that”) Swedish female…will be like.
urbanleftbehind (ae0e89) — 10/5/2019 @ 10:32 amshe’s the definition of an eloi, I’ve read Lapidus as well Larson, there’s the shiny Sweden, and then there is the one on Benzedrine, where Serbian and Russian hoods rule the roost,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/5/2019 @ 10:50 am38. And this:
“Border Patrol agents working along the United States-Mexico border took into custody approximately 851,000 people in the U.S. government’s fiscal 2019, marking the highest number of arrests since 2007, according to federal data exclusively obtained by the Washington Examiner.
But the 40,000 people taken into custody in September is less than one-third of the 132,000 arrests made in May at the height of a surge of illegal immigrants.” https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/most-illegal-crossings-in-12-years-border-patrol-took-851-000-into-custody-during-fiscal-2019
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/5/2019 @ 4:36 pm51. …and put in a green painted bike lane, and a longer than needed traffic light to accommodate the one out of 2,000,000 that can’t make it across the street in 30 seconds. ANYTHING to get rid of those “horrid cars,” and get people into “sensible” buses. “Vision Zero,” what a joke.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/5/2019 @ 4:38 pmGators
Plenty of them in Texas.
Ya know what some of them border jumper types are gonna do?
Catch them. Turn them into boots, purses, belts, wallets, tacos, gater jerkey, a whole industry of gater products.
Taste like chicken. Better.
Echo (e92c55) — 10/6/2019 @ 1:26 am