Arizona Mom Fights Abusive Prosecution by Department of Child Safety
pacificlegal.org
pacificlegal.org
This wasn’t a problem until a woman with several foster children (I know this because she told me? I assume she was trying to virtue signal to me what a great person she was) moved into our neighborhood.
One day she came to our house with our daughter in tow, telling us “it isn’t safe” and other nonsense. Most of the people on the blocks are parents and we have each other’s numbers! The next time our daughter was out, then came home, a short time later we got a knock on the door by a police officer. He was friendly and asked to see our daughter to make sure she was okay, but said he’d gotten a call and he had to report it to CPS. So the man from CPS came and inspected our house to make sure we weren’t abusing our child.
Luckily nothing came from it but it was really annoying and I really hate that neighbor now. We bought our daughter an Apple Watch so she can call us and we can GPS track her so she’s not “being neglected”.
It’s frustrating because I lived in a much less safe neighborhood than we do now and was allowed to range much further when I was her age. It just takes one busybody to ruin your life, though.
I know about it from both sides.
First, CPS exists for a reason. I have family that used to run a group home for kids that were made wards of the state. The things that people will do to their own children is infuriating and heartbreaking. I have also been involved in an organization that deals with a lot of this stuff, for years, and have seen it, firsthand.
Child abuse also happens in UMC neighborhoods, but those folks are usually better at chasing away CPS cases, so you generally hear about them in less affluent areas, where the people don't have the means to fight (and also, the stress of living poor will often exacerbate child abuse/endangerment).
Second, CPS is notoriously "un-constitutional." Parents are guilty until proved innocent, and the caseworkers have great authority to be absolute tyrants. Anonymous tips from skeezballs, are given the weight of a policeman's sworn affidavit.
As a result, ratting out single moms to CPS is a favorite pastime of jerk ex-boyfriends. They make the poor girl (and, I guess, nowadays, boy)'s life a living hell, which they often can't bear, as they are already on the balls of their ass; not to mention tying up resources that could be better focused on real child abuse.
People can really suck.
*Upper Middle Class
...
Anonymous tips from skeezballs, are given the weight of a policeman's sworn affidavit...
This is one of those weird supposedly-balanced posts. The balance is, "on the one hand" CPS persecutes a lot of innocent people. "On the other hand", CPS fails to find determined and intelligent pedophiles working to evade it. You ever think that this isn't sane balance at all? Like maybe CPS is failing to find people doing calculated horrible things because it's approach is this abusive scattershot? Especially, any enforcement agency has a incentive laziness (heck everyone has one). If a worker can effortlessly produce cases against random schmucks, they have less incentive to work hard to find the people systematically evading them.
Hey, here's a suggestion:
Instead of sending out thinly-veiled insults, why not try just addressing the point you want to make (which is quite valid)? Wrapping it in ineffective ad hominem actually destroys it. I suspect that you may have some real experience, and could bring an important viewpoint to this thread.
As someone who has had close, intimate relationships with folks on both sides of this really heartbreaking and awful issue, I feel that I actually have the ability to see "both sides," so your insult looks a little flaccid, to me.
Bruce Schneier popularized the term "security theater." I would broaden that to "policing theater."
I've noticed that a lot of public protection agencies like to demonstrate to the normies that they're on the job by prosecuting the normies. After all, normies are much less likely to fight back than real pedophiles. And they still count as "enforcement actions."
There's no personal insult involved in my above. It's true I think the opinion of the above poster is both problematic and an approach that actually does real damage.
I mean, certainly "you ever think about that?" is a rhetorical turn of phrase but so is "I've seen both sides?" The discussion is informal here and emotional appeals happen on both sides. I don't really see the problem.
Edit: The problem with "balance both sides" is that it really is the position of one side. It's "sum of a (negative) utility function" outcome argument but generally put very emotionally. William Blackstone articulated the basic principle "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" but today's justice asks instead "What is the cost of persecuting ten innocent persons if it allows one guilty person to be caught" and then tells you of the (indeed true) horrors some guilty person has done. And one can't argue "small chunk" with that kind of bullshit. One has to attack this very conceptual framework for what it is, a pernicious approach. I feel no reason to be nice about it. This is not ad hominem, I'm not arguing from someone's personal failing to a claim of their argument being wrong. But there's requirement to be "touchy feely" and talk how much I respect everyone. We're beyond that at HN I think.
That's a fascinating thing to say, when discussing being polite and empathetic.
I could tell you stories (again from personal relationships with the folks being persecuted, and from friends that are social workers that are the "persecutors"), that would bolster my statement (which, for some strange reason, you can't seem to accept as valid).
But I won't, because they are not my stories to tell.
It's entirely possible to see multiple sides of difficult issues. We may not have the answer, but we can recognize the validity of everyone's position. I've been doing that for decades. It's not a "superpower." We're all quite capable of it. It's just that we seem to live in a culture that demands we "choose a side."
I don't really care whether or not you believe me. I said my piece, and I'll leave it at that.
Have a great day.
My argument above is not some claim either that horrible things don't happen or that you don't have experience with these horrible things - or even that you don't have experience with CPS getting out of hand. So it's false imo to say that there is something I "can't seem to accept as valid" in itself.
Which is to say, you're being very respectable while flagrantly misstating my position. This is a bad kind of "meeting in the middle" view.
I'm talking systems. I think we should talk systems - millions of people and millions of children are affected. There isn't an experience you could personally offer that's going fundamental change our concept of what CPS has become as a system.
Edit: A big thing is that in many US social services, we have a giant machine which does horrible, horrible things but where each person who's a part of it can honestly say they're doing their best and can point to other horrible things that might happen if they stopped doing the problematic thing they do now. It's a "tensile structure" ... of evil. It can't be fixed by balancing, it maintains itself with arguments of apparent balance. Which is why I feel justified making a call to cut through the broad "balance" perspective.
> Which is to say, you're being very respectable while flagrantly misstating my position. This is a bad kind of "meeting in the middle" view.
This sort of thing happens two for a penny on hacker news lol, you get used to it. I see more coherent discussions that are less vicious on somethingawful these days
I fail to see how cases against random schmucks require significantly less effort than "real" cases. A case worker getting the tips doesn't know a priori whether the tip is credible and they still need to go out and take a look at the same things either way. If anything, an open-and-shut case where there are clear signs of abuse should be quicker than a wild goose chase. Sure there are some monsters out there that are really good at covering their tracks, and it would take a lot of effort in those cases to find the evidence of abuse, but how do you tell the difference between someone who is fantastic at covering their tracks and someone who never made tracks to begin with?
Social workers are not paid much, it takes substantial effort to become one, and the work is extremely emotionally taxing. If someone wanted an easy job, there are a lot of better options out there. While I'm sure there are some people who have lost faith in the system and are just working till retirement, the overwhelming majority legitimately want to help kids escape abuse. If it's the same amount of effort either way, why not go for the more fulfilling option?
The simple fact is that innocent people should not be treated like criminals, but abuse can and does happen anywhere. Either you dismiss more tips and make it easier for abusers to cover their tracks, or you follow up more bs tips which leads to more innocent people being harassed. At the end of the day there is always going to be somebody unhappy.
Most CPS workers have good intentions, and would be competent. Except that they have to take on way too many cases with limited resources.
Yes but ... this process creates a rottenness that can't be fixed by more money by itself. CPS' understaffing problem isn't a matter of there being a fixed load that not enough money is given to. It is a natural product of the ideology of "government inefficiency" that pervades legislatures. So an increase in funding would result in an increase in mandates which would still be satisfied by finding easy targets rather than appropriate targets.
The situation is pernicious and I don't really have a suggestion for improving things. I do know throw more money would make things even worse for the reasons above.
This is true for many groups, public and private, and across all sorts of problem domains. I see it frequently in teams chartered to build software.
You can always make the case “we can do more with more resources”. But I want to see that you can be effective with only modest resources first. I want to see that you can make a dent in the worst part of the problem with the resources you have.
Too many groups of all sorts start with limited resources and focus on edge cases that don’t really do much to solve the problem that they’re chartered to solve. Such cases often are easier to address, or the solution is more obvious, or whatever- as other posters have said, it’s basic laziness. Hence, in the case of CPS, harassing people for minor issues.
In commercial endeavors, it’s mainly just waste resources on projects that won’t really help anyone. In public endeavors, it’s much worse - it erodes trust in the system, and often victimizes people due to the power of the state.
Between four(!) and twenty eight(!!!) more times:
https://www.focusforhealth.org/sex-abuse-and-the-foster-care...
And when these sorts of things happen, it never fails, all the 'parental rights advocates' out there that were previously pushing to be more lenient with parents scatter. And the judge and CPS are left holding the bag. (Some of the 'parental rights advocates' even flip flop, and now call for heads to roll, because now all of a sudden they are child welfare advocates. :eye roll:)
So now the judge, the police and CPS have not only the political leaders and the general population asking uncomfortable questions, but CNN and Fox News trucks outside their homes asking questions as well. For the judge and the CPS workers, their careers are ruined not only locally, but nationally. There's no coming back from that.
Well the other judges and CPS workers see what happens, and are that much less likely to give a single mother a break in the future for example. And it just iterates and escalates with each tortured, raped, or murdered (or all three) child.
[0] - https://www.invisiblechildren.org/2022/06/23/kamari-gholston...
This "learning" does not seem to me to be a sane evolution but rather a degeneration. A friend of mine describes how his father being a policeman let him see the worst in people. And there's a logical progression from seeing the worst to thinking the worst to not caring if you ruin someone's life through abusive prosecution. As I mentioned, catching a determined pedophile is hard but the "just put people in jail for nuisance and hope some of them are pedophiles" isn't protecting or helping anyone ... except an abusive and metastasized (in)justice system.
Off topic, but thanks for this idiom.
So she's grabbing other people's kids off the street? She sounds unhinged. I'd do everything I could to get a restraining order.
Given I am Canadian, here is our legal definition:
Kidnapping
279 (1) Every person commits an offence who kidnaps a person with intent
(a) to cause the person to be confined or imprisoned against the person’s will;
(b) to cause the person to be unlawfully sent or transported out of Canada against the person’s will; or
(c) to hold the person for ransom or to service against the person’s will.
You could argue the child did not want to be sent back home, but I think you would not be successful making this case in a court of law.
Escalating this by reporting her to the police will simply cause her to escalate back.
She reports you to CAS, you report her to the police. You now face a false police report charge, and if anything further happens you already have one strike against you as the police will document this interaction.
Clearly the child is in no danger, so what was the point of calling the police?
trust me, that's not a good feeling. especially if i am alone and i have to decide if i should wait to see if they come back or if i go search them.
if i think young kids are in a dangerous location, then i'd stay there and watch them, and call someone who can notify the parents. or i might tell the kids that it is dangerous here and tell them to go home. (if the kids say they are supposed to wait here, then that is what should happen). i would not just move them somewhere else, even to their home, unless explicitly asked to do so.
i would make an exception to this if i know the parents well, and i know the parents trust me to take care of their kids. but in that case i'd know how to reach the parents and let them know.
" All 50 states and the District of Columbia have some type of Good Samaritan law. The details of good Samaritan laws/acts vary by jurisdiction, including who is protected from liability and under what circumstances. "
I'm not advocating what what took place was correct but it is not "kidnapping" regardless of how you wish to twist things around.
I have three kids, so I am also a parent, does that change things? you mention you are a parent so it somehow contributes to the discussion?
you have now taken a story about an v "karen" walking a kid back home and painted it such that "Karern" has driven across the country and now you cant find the child.
i am aware of good samaritan laws. but protecting children from danger is one thing. removing them from a location where i expect them to be is quite another. there would have to be some obvious danger that wasn't there previously for that to be ok. (like a fire, or even just heavy rain and no nearby shelter)
i don't care what the legal term for this is. i care what effect the action has on the people involved. before you take children away from somewhere, think about that, and try to find a way to protect the children without moving them unless you can inform the parents or authorities.
We didn't have any trouble after that. But it was very very stressful.
If somebody reports child neglect, but doesn't report any indications that would invite a reasonable suspicion of child neglect, the government shouldn't be spending any more time on it than on all the other people who don't have any evidence of neglect. They're fearful of doing this, because if there turns out to be abuse or neglect and they got a call, they'll be lynched for it.
They should just triage with consistent rules that respect the individual freedom of parents and their children, accept that sometimes this will cause them to miss something, but not accept that they made a mistake as long as they have a record that they stuck to the rules. If the rules are not good enough, update the rules.
Child protection agencies should do this regardless of the justice system's view of what has happened. Keep a fund for settlements, make guidelines good enough that you won't have to pay them out often, and immediately settle whenever something happens, without taking responsibility. It may not appeal to the sense of justice for an agency to pay when it's done nothing wrong, but child protection isn't a person, it's a function of government, and compensating people who have lost something important to them (like a child, sibling, or grandchild) is restorative.
edit: Blaming the busybody is similar to being content to punish SWATters. We need a system that can receive an anonymous report about an innocent person, and not show up and kill them. There will always be borderline attention-seekers and people who will call in false reports; we need a system that expects them. The system failure is the problem that we can improve on. The scapegoat is an excuse not to improve.
If there was an actual government function focused on child protection then every child would receive a bottle of multi-vitamins every month, a new helmet every year, sunscreen, a winter coat with mittens, scheduled and subsidized annual checkups with their pediatricians, etc.
In this case above CPS and police just checked up as they should on a any complaint and then were fine with OP, the system is working as expected (neighbor is still being a dick)
Yes it is annoying, but I rather live in a world where the police or CPS chase every frivolous compliant than them unable to do anything without a court order or not stopping abuse enough.
we don’t realize how many of our rights society grant to us and can take away easily . Raising a child is a one for that matter so is marriage, or even managing your own affairs (conservatorship), while we no longer just put people in mental institutions, government absolutely have the power to do so. Compromises of living in a civil society is to abide by rules even if it invades the privacy and rights of any one individual.
No, I wouldn't. This is not a good tradeoff. The world sucks and evil exists, but that doesn't give anyone the right to come between me and my children, no matter how much good they think they're doing on balance. This notion must be categorically rejected.
There is a middle ground between "unnecessarily destroying people's lives over frivolous complaints" and "not doing anything without a court order". The term "not stopping abuse enough" is too vague to speak to. There is no system where no family will be hurt unnecessarily, and no system where abuse is completely prevented. The goal is to minimize both.
This is a noble goal, but there's a very serious flaw in this logic. Money. Our government doesn't prioritize child services as much as the military and CPS works on less of a budget than you would think,so chasing down frivolous calls to action and malicious calls without repercussions and someone saying, "They weren't parenting the way I thought they should be parenting" (like letting a 7 year old walk alone in a safe neighborhood - which is fine). These take away much needed resources from very real abuse cases and placement services and treatment services for children who need them. CPS workers are often over worked and under paid, as is.
This is what everybody always says. There's a serious problem with that however. Unfortunately CPS makes the situation of children worse, when they interfere, rather than better.
Everybody is always in favour of detecting abuse (never mind that there isn't any reliable method to do that, and most kids get placed effectively randomly, according to research). But when it comes to footing the bill of decently caring for the children ... nothing of that favour seems to be left. CPS is terrible for kids, and of course this raises the question: are they better than abuse at home? Or ... worse?
https://sci-hub.se/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583
Or, more dramatic:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820...
The biggest investigation ever into CPS had to come to the conclusion: a kid is better off abused at home than helped by CPS, even in the "average" case of actual serious physical abuse. Worse: most placements are effectively random, depending more on the CPS investigator than on the kid or their circumstances, so most kids in CPS haven't actually been abused. There's all sorts of extra investigations equally bad, for example one concluding that the violence in the life of a child increases when CPS intervenes to protect a child, rather than decreasing.
And that's ignoring the many CPS scandals where CPS employees get caught abusing kids themselves, even renting out children for sex, using them as drugrunners, ...
> Depends, if a person is really abusing a child which unfortunately happens more frequently than we all want to believe, then you would rather have the government intervene without complicated red-tape as soon as possible.
NO, I would not want the government to be enabled to do this. I would want the government to provide options for those children to escape such an environment IF AND ONLY IF they have the "durable" agreement of the child (meaning if the child wants to go back, they can immediately do so).
Basically you are saying that it is not possible for government to be competent no matter what we do, so we are better of without it interfering in our lives ?
That's a good thing. It does not mean CPS ceases to be, just that the (many) really bad parts will get into serious trouble. That will be a very good thing.
I want the power of government to FORCE themselves into 99% of the life of a child to cease. If that doesn't improve the lot of the child (the outcome), it's an abuse of power. I do not even imply it's their intention to abuse power (although clearly that exists), it just needs to stop.
So I must say I see your position as something you often see when it's about CPS: that they are about guaranteeing jobs/organisations' existence for existing employees/organisations (and subcontractors and ...), and absolutely not about children. That it's about guaranteeing punishment for "bad parenting", whether that means vaccinating children or NOT vaccinating children. About destroying lives of undesirable groups. The large majority of people working in CPS have zero interest in caring for children. That's fundamentally what needs to change: CPS needs to fundamentally be about caring for children.
Not about fixing society. Not about punishing whatever some people consider bad. Not about forcing people to live a certain way by means of threats and punishments.
How frequently does it happen?
As you point out, you take people who just cant help but "virtue signal" and combine this with an anonymous reporting system and now that system is being abused.
The other day I took my dog for a walk and a young girl (around 5) approached me to ask if she could pat him. I had a short conversation with the girl, told her to make sure she is careful with the roads (we met at an intersection) and asked if her parents know where she is. She told me she has a walky-talky and her mom is aware.
I did not see a need to do anything further, the young girl knew her way home, she was like 5-6 houses away in a safe and quiet area.
But some "stranger danger" nut jobs feel they have a duty to protect YOUR kids from their imagined danger?
My dog is rather large and a rehome with some bad behaviour attributes so at times i need to be firm with him to encourage him to change.
I certainly dont "beat" him as that accomplishes nothing, but he is "yelled at" and made to sit down and not allowed to continue walking until he calms down.
someone reported me to animal control, who then came to my house. They were not able to tell me who called, when, what took place, etc.
How do yo defend your actions when you are not allowed to know what the actions were?
Flip side, if my large dog bit one of the off-leash dogs in the area the owners would then be reporting me for this?
Cant discipline the dog for being bad around other dogs, cant let the dog be aggressive to other dogs?
These reporting systems are rapidly becoming "weaponized".
I don't know how we arrived at kids walking around in their own neighborhoods is neglect but life sure is poorer for it.
We also have run ins with CPS more often than normal because we have a disabled child. We were reported to CPS because our daughter has issues with holding her breath (her brain stem isn’t quite right, she essentially has a condition where if she gets upset she forgets to breathe and has to be “rebooted” by giving her breaths) the EMTs came into the house and found her crib with poop in it when they took her to the hospital.
The thing is, when she holds her breath she proceeds to have a massive bowel movement that no diaper can contain. Hence the poop in the crib. The crazy thing is that to “protect” her, the state withdrew her nursing care (as they were being investigated by CPS), and forced the burden of taking care of her fully onto me and my wife.
This was during the crazy nursing shortage in 2021 so of course our nurses found better jobs that pay far better Which I’m glad for them, but it left us in a tight spot. We’re lucky enough that we make enough money that my wife can stay at home but this would have been absolutely ruinous for other families. The nursing shortage is so bad that the state had enacted a program where my wife gets paid to be her caregiver (which is funny, being your child’s employee, her name is on the checks).
It’s all very frustrating and makes us cautious with what we say to doctors and other mandatory reporters, even if we think we’re being good parents. One time I gave my daughter a sip of Mountain Dew and mentioned it to the doctor and now it’s in the “permanent record” that I give her Mountain Dew.
It's horrible, but it's too large of a risk to do anything else, regardless of how actually pleasant and healthy your families environment may be. Assume that every fact you give any of them about your children will be misunderstood, interpreted as uncharitably as possible, taken out of context, permanently recorded, and distributed to hostile strangers to judge.
I don’t think anybody here has commented that the fact this woman fosters is actually directly connected to the fact that she reported you.
It’s indicative of how broken the whole system is that the training to be a foster parent declares things like letting a 7-yo walk alone to be unsafe.
Note that these are some of the same social workers that could be checking up on you when CPS is called. Thus, it is only a happy accident that there weren’t charges filed against you.
I used to think living in 100% indian community is a bit weird; after all america is about diversity, learning and understanding other cultures. But now i see the light and recommend this lifestyle for anyone with kids.
https://www.texasalmanac.com/articles/the-asian-indian-in-te...
"The Dallas-Fort Worth area is home to one of the oldest Indian American communities in Texas."
How many other residents in the US can live in a 100% indian community. Is that one still 100%, the family is indian?
the key takeaway being that it avoids this snitching system?
Indian Americans are no means more forward thinking than other communities, they just have different things they would be nosy about, for example many parents would disapprove of American boyfriends and even some Indian ones from different caste or communities.
I cannot speak of (or for) the indo-american community though, given that most of my life experiences have been in large cities, but amongst fairly diverse strata of society.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-political-s...
2. If the woman contacts your child again, file for restraining order. Tell your neighbors to do the same.
People have rights, better stand up for them or they'll get trampled by blue policies like CPS, which have a long history of abuse and lack of care.
Big adopters are also generally abusive parents. Sounds to me the woman is projecting.
Were you legally obligated to let him into your house?
Technically it was anonymous, so I’m not sure how I’d even make a complaint. We did call an attorney and strangely he just said “cooperate fully with CPS it’ll be fine”. Which I mean, it was in the end.
I'm the white parent of a black son we adopted at birth. We live in a white middle class neighborhood but one neighbor doesn't like having a black kid living there. They've called CPS multiple times. It's always nerve racking because you don't know what can happen even if though the claims are bogus. They come to the door assuming you are guilty.
See, the problem could have been avoided by calling police right there and reporting a kidnapping.
I'm involved in a case now where they took a 5 year old boy from the family and refused all contact for over 3 months. All with never filing a charge against the family or even telling anyone WHY they took him. It wasn't until we started writing large checks to good lawyers that we got their attention.
> she dropped off her seven-year-old son and his five-year-old friend at a park about five blocks from the store... a friend was teaching a Tai Chi class at the park and was watching the kids while Sarra went to buy groceries.
The friend called her when she saw the kids talking to the police, so it would indeed seem that said friend was indeed keeping an eye on them.
It's true (although it wasn't the police but rather the Ministry of Children & Family Development). It was a big local story. Fortunately he won.
http://5kids1condo.com/we-won-common-sense-prevails-in-bus-d...
My wife worked as a case manager and I worked in a group home from 19-21. It was appalling how cruel and terrible parents (or other relatives) could be. No matter what socioeconomic class you’re in, child abuse is not as uncommon as one would think.
And we haven’t even touched on vulnerable adults….
This particular experience is not an ideal situation. But also, I am concerned by how many commenters believe CPS and their related agencies are completely incompetent or unnecessary.
Yes that's insane but such insanity is hardly an argument for CPS making sane, reasonable decisions. It seems to point in the opposite direction.
But also, I am concerned by how many commenters believe CPS and their related agencies are completely incompetent or unnecessary.
Something like CPS seems necessary but that need doesn't imply that current CPS is competent. It seems like you have a grossly incompetent and abusive system that continuously defends itself by pointing to how necessary it is.
Doesn't the state and its agents have qualified immunity?
https://www.kare11.com/amp/article/news/investigations/mn-su...
Voters chose to not invest in agencies that protect the most vulnerable in the population. As a result, those who remain are overworked, more abuse gets through the cracks, and even the best in this group start to break or start giving up on caring. Pretty big bummer.
I understand being missionally invested in the opportunity to work on the bad cases, but, unfortunately, under-funding is almost the only defense voters have against malicious or obtuse family services agents, or bureaucracy with no emergency stop button.
Phoenix metro is pretty safe. It seems safety is just varnish over the real issue here, which is some kind of bizarre neuroticism I can't fathom. It seems like a story that a big American newspaper would smugly write about some backwater, unsophisticated Eastern European police state.
Unfortunately that's almost never how it works out in real life. The beaurocratic idiots that decided to ruin her life to boost their stats will get promoted and replaced by more idiots.
I would never let a child near a CPS worker.
It's the same kind of "its not really criminal until it is" regarding speeding and not wearing a seatbelt. Traffic court is a farce, and has been long used as a bypass of proper defense by saying "driving is a privileged and not a right".. when the very body punishing you is the state. That conveniently is thrown out the window as things move up the chain. Sure looks criminal at all phases, even if it is "minor crimes".
Naturally, other quazi-"not really criminal until it is" bureaucracies need destroyed. Like utterly, completely; until they start complying with proper courts for finding of fact and acting only upon punishment phase if found guilty.
IANAL, but I believe it says that an administrative agency's interpretation of the law, if it considers the law ambiguous, should govern. Overturning it will mean that the Legislature and Governor make the laws, not the agencies.
Yeah, that probably will mean that either nothing or the wrong thing (from your perspective) happens, but that's another problem.
Also practically the legislative branch cannot reasonably dictate laws about every single thing . Neither are they experts nor are is there remotely enough staff in all of Capitol Hill to do that.
Overturning chevron would take away force of law from regulation and make governing more legislative and judicial rather than executive.
Government cannot function with regulators unable to do anything unless congress or court saying so explicitly.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have a ton of over regulation or bad ones, removing Chevron is not a solution for that though.
PS : Arizona where this story is from already overturned chevron at the state level
That's a feature, because there should not be laws about every single thing.
If a law is ambiguous, a judge should decide how it applies. Not an bureaucrat in a governemnt agency.
Also there are not enough judges to take that kind of work load.
Judgements by lower courts don’t set precedents, so the same issue would be litigated 1000s of times each judge of jury giving different results.
Higher courts have even less judges.
Laws are guidelines, the real details of any law is in the code or regulations built around it. Chevron is about whether regulations have force of law or not .
Anything that can't be litigated should not be done. The due process clause is there for a reason -- if the only mechanism that ensures that due process is being followed, and the constitution is being obeyed, is not able to be applied to the execution of a given policy, then that policy should be preemptively off-limits until it can be retooled to make the necessary oversight feasible.
It IS possible to write laws that are reasonably broad without just saying "the agency will do whatever it wants here." Maybe it's not easy, but that's what the lawyers learn in law school.
Laws take a long time to change, regulations can change faster.
I may not know much about legal drafting & construction but in my experience negotiating enough contracts to know that it is very very hard to articulate and cover all the scenarios that you can encounter. No lawyer I have worked with has drafted something so unambiguous and perfect that there was no room for interpretation or conflicting clauses and everyone was clear and there was no dispute.
There is no reason to trust the judiciary anymore than the executive, they are just as capricious, inefficient and bureaucratic as the executive.
Laws delegating powers to executive agencies are done all the time, some successfully, some not. I've never heard anyone say that the FAA is overstepping its statutory authority, for example. Nor the PTO. Congress might disagree with what they're doing, but that's different than saying "they have no business regulating that."
Lastly, it's not about what branch you trust more. Judges were at least appointed by someone who was elected, not hired by a Civil Servant.
I can hold that observation and also realize that it will be wildly disruptive to make an adverse ruling on that power. I can also see there are other ways to reach the same result, its really not rogue or illegitimate for a court to simply say "leave that to your elected representatives", and thats what the court is going to do. Its extremely predictable and does not require any circular logic to do so.
I don't think the disruptive nature is a reason to avoid doing it, as a consensus bridging solution would be resilient as well, antifragile.
The case that established the federal government’s wide Commerce Clause powers is truly bizarre:
“An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The U.S. government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty. In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold, it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone ‘interstate’ commerce (described in the Constitution as ‘Commerce... among the several states’). The Supreme Court disagreed: ‘Whether the subject of the regulation in question was 'production', 'consumption', or 'marketing' is, therefore, not material for purposes of deciding the question of federal power before us.... But even if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect.'’”
In essence, not buying or selling wheat that is grown and consumed locally was somehow interstate commerce.
As you notice, it is unnecessary hyperbole to consider the current court to be the odd one.
The only thing “activist” about it is which cases it chooses to accept to rule on at all, as there are circumstances where the court can deny to hear a case under its appellate jurisdiction. But when choosing to hear a case, it is predictable what it will do to vacate an “abusive” interpretation that was in the benefit of the federal government subjugating all of the states. Many of these benefits can be recreated by Congress, and that is the process necessary to do it. If consensus within Congress is not possible, then the people will have to focus on something else for the time being.
In a country where Congress has been deadlocked for decades and a large number of states are racing to push the absolute limits of what they can take in corporate bribes and push moral crusades that'll be forgotten 5 years from now but have lifelong consequences, that's going to be an absolute disaster and it's mindblowing that it's being cheered on.
Some states might be better off. A few are trying to shoot their heads off and force others to do it with them.
So your answer to the problem of a government you don't like is: invent another one?
A better answer is just to write laws more carefully, broad enough to cover unforeseen circumstances, yet not so broad that they can be stretched to mean absolutely anything.
That IS challenging. On the other hand, there are a lot of lawyers working for our Congresspeople, so they should be up to the challenge.
It's the top several layers, actually, and those are the levels where all substantive policy decisions are made.
> The vast majority of them are civil servants, who basically can't be fired.
This is a myth. Civil servants absolutely can be fired, for cause, including things like poor performance as well as misconduct, and about 10,000 federal civil servants are fired each year.
It has no direct relevance to state agencies operating under state law. Some states do/did have equivalent doctrines, but many have explicitly forbidden judicial deference to administrative agencies either via statute law or via binding precedent created by their own supreme courts.
Everything being discussed in this thread is a matter of state-level policy that varies drastically among states, and has no direct relation to federal agencies or the way they apply federal statutes.
They do set a (non-binding) direction for state Supreme Courts, though.
I didn't read it so idk what it says
So if Big Media ignores the story, by definition it never happened?
Essentially no media outlet is reporting on it. At all. Heck, the link provided to HN is directly from the PR of the legal firm itself: that would be the definition of an ultra biased source. They haven't even gone to court yet. In short: we have zero evidence that these events occurred the way being claimed.
Shall I compile a list of stories that major media outlets have buried? Maybe reported once, and then forgotten about?
Supposing they do go to court, but major media outlets still don't cover it?
This is relevant how? You do understand the logical error you just made, right?
> Supposing they do go to court, but major media outlets still don't cover it?
Then we will have some evidence of the truthfulness (or falsehood) of the plaintiff's case.
No. Help me out.
You said "There does not appear to be a single non-ultra-biased source reporting this story. Which means, as far as we know, it could be entirely nonsense."
Which means that since there are no sources you like, you choose to disbelieve it entirely. Therefore, I pointed out that many stories are not covered in major media outlets but are nonetheless true. So where's the logical error?
> No. Help me out.
> You said "There does not appear to be a single non-ultra-biased source reporting this story. Which means, as far as we know, it could be entirely nonsense."
> Which means that since there are no sources you like, you choose to disbelieve it entirely.
You seem to know what sources I "like" (you have no idea at all), and that therefore I think they "must" be lying and I think it "never" happened, and I "choose to disbelieve it entirely" (you have no idea if I disbelieve it, and in fact I never said any such thing) -- you really like ad hominem, don't you? It's like your M.O. You've now hit me with like five ad hominem attacks. It's not a good look.
This isn't an opinion: there are literally no non-biased sources. This is a simple declaration of fact. By biased I don't mean conservative or even politically motivated. I mean a source with a high incentive to simply lie if necessary in order to promote their claim: that is, a legal team and their PR firm.
At present all we have is a claim made by a legal team and a single article which largely copied the legal team's claim verbatim. We have no independent verification of the story, no opportunity to hear the CPS's side of the story, no analysis or fact-checking, and in fact we don't even know if the case even has enough validity to avoid getting thrown out. All we have is a filing and a PR posting.
Claims require evidence before we get out the pitchforks, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So to the logic error. I point out that the media has not covered the story (one opportunity for evidence). Your response is: "Shall I compile a list of stories that major media outlets have buried?", as if this excuses the need for evidence. Even if this were true, it's not relevant: the lack of independent media coverage, for whatever reason, is a primary reason we have no evidence for the claim. You can't excuse a lack of evidence by spinning conspiracy stories for why the evidence is missing
Let's suppose, though, that the trial does happen, but only Fox News and right-wing news sources choose to cover it. Then what do you think? Is your answer still: no non-biased news sources so it may not have happened?
And if your answer is "that scenario would not occur" then I offered to disprove that. Calling that a "conspiracy story" is also not a good look.
You're missing GPs point.
They aren't saying that "no center-right media outlets like CNN or MSNBC are covering this, so we have no corroboration."
IIUC, they're saying that "no news outlets have covered this, and the only sources are the law firm filing suit and a think tank regurgitating the law firms press release."
They made no mention of what sorts of media outlets they consider biased, just that the actors providing the press release aren't media outlets at all. Rather, they are interested parties with an obvious viewpoint/agenda.
And if/when the case is adjudicated (however that turns out), perhaps it will be covered by a few/some/many/most (regardless of what you or anyone else thinks of any of them) media outlets.
And the outcome of the case will speak for itself, regardless of who reports (or doesn't) what.
tl;dr: you made assumptions about GP that aren't supported by what they said. That's why your argument appears to be specious.
Hard to find due to the sheer volume of cases against the CPS but wasn’t difficult enough to start a mini-rage.
GP is right about it SO FAR, as I admitted. However, most of the media these days, respectable and otherwise, are just "regurgitating press releases" which makes it difficult to separate Alex Jones-type conspiracies from the Hunter Biden laptop "conspiracies" which turn out to be true.
Absence of stories doesn't mean there isn't a story there. Unfortunately.
It makes it difficult to separate because the laptop story was also just as horseshit. Where is the laptop by chance?
>How much have you read about Nancy Pelosi's husband https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/business/a-congressional-...
Get out of here with your "MSM" conspiracy bullshit.
How about this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-new-york-times-a...
Calling it conspiracy bullshit: let's see what one of those crazy right-wing sites, Yahoo [1], says:
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nancy-pelosi-husband-just-bou...
Is there a law that kids a certain age can't be alone in public?
Regarding the other aspect to your comment, in all US states there is a division or department for the welfare of children. Those are all staffed with people who can make immediate administrative decisions for what they believe to be the welfare of a child. They can immediately take a child away from parents, who they believe to be abusive.
When the person makes the right decision, they and this system are hailed are wonderful. Unfortunately, things like this often happen far too often - administrators turn the life of a family upside down, due to their own beliefs, biases, and power over others.
I assure you that I can find a TON of people who will reactively cheer any reduction in "government" regardless of harm, who would never say they are anarchists. This is many, if not most, so-called "Libertarians."
what with the past not even being past and the future here but not evenly distributed, I'm thinking there might be some representative democracies somewhere that do manage nuanced thinking.
It’s a lot easier to have nuance and public support for government programs when everyone shares the same upbringing, culture, and beliefs.
NONE of them have been allowed to go home, despite the government, the judicial system and the tax office being convicted, plus the government falling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scand...
Before that, there were 3 investigations by parliament into Youth Services in the Netherlands. ALL 3 found the large majority of kids taken into care by the government were physically abused by Youth Services personnel (mostly beatings, sex, some being forced to commit criminal acts, some were denied medical care, ...)
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toeslagenaffaire
Specifically this section:
"Naast de gedupeerde ouders zijn er naar schatting 70.000 kinderen van deze ouders getroffen.[113] Ruim 1.675 kinderen van gedupeerde ouders zijn tussen 2015 en 2021 uit huis geplaatst volgens Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS). Het CBS benadrukte dat dit geen causaal verband hoeft te betekenen en doet nog onderzoek naar onder- of oververtegenwoordiging.[114] Volgens emeritus hoogleraar jeugdbescherming Ido Weijers zijn deze kinderen sterk overgepresenteerd in het aantal uit huis geplaatste jongeren.[115]"
Plenty of links to articles on the subject.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-exp...
If the government of the Netherlands was dropped in the states they would go back to the Netherlands because it is nicer there. But the principles of government might have a lot to offer.
Yeah, it is all about proper conditioning of your kids to these wild, wild nest of anti-social works.
If I were a city kid, I’d probably should not be doing that given the danger of kid-related crimes which are commonly prevalent in urban settings (not only by frequency, but by density).
I was a city kid and I rode my bike all over the place, played with other kids without adult supervision, rode the subway by myself, took myself (whether walking, biking or subway) to various activities all while around the same age.
And by the way, NYC was a tough place back then (mid 1970s) and we were generally just fine. None of my friends/schoolmates were kidnapped, tortured or killed.
And cities (especially NYC) is much, much safer now than it was back then.
I think you have some misconceptions about cities friend. I invite you to come visit us. It's really a wonderful place and not just to visit. Growing up in NYC was a great experience!
No misconception there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_murdered_American_chil...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_in_the_United_State...
and those new things entail controlling our lives...and I don't see any solution for this problem
This case and similar sound in federal employment law. I cite them frequently in the context of military discharges. But the government publishing stigmatizing material about someone is odious, and I see no reason why it implicates less of a liberty interest here than it does in an employment context. It's my personal opinion that this reasoning should extend beyond federal employment -- stigmatizing material published by the government should require a hearing.
Its the worst of all possible worlds: its a "bureaucratic policy" that was made without oversight, lawmakers, or anything. And it was powered because of some line "bureau will conduct appropriately the $thing"
And then, you start getting law/notlaws, lilliputian 'courts' that follow their own rules, fines and punishments that are expressly criminal but for some strained definition aren't defined as criminal.
I'm not some ultra-crunchy libertarian, but I sure wish people would stop to imagine "what if an asshole has the keys?" when they think about what they want their government to be able to do.
That being said, none of the facts presented here indicate that CPS action would have been warranted.
I don't know how supervision would prevent playground injuries. I broke my arm in a soccer game when I was 9, surrounded by adults. Life went on?
Which is how (and why) I learned first aid, when I was - I can't even remember how old, single digits anyway.
Right-wingers in the US would give their children guns before they gave them basic life skills.
How many of them would still want to put hands on a 7 year old if it means possibly getting their guts ripped open by the tool-wielding equivalent of a velociraptor claw?