Totally insane that you can be prosecuted now for letting your kids play in a park. If this is truly the whole story, I hope she gets a nice fat settlement and the agency that did this gets gutted.
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 assume very few people who deal with actually abusive parents and their kids (as CPS often does) would come out the other end without severe mental trauma.
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.
Governance in a monoculture of 17m people is a lot simpler than governing a country like the US. Not saying we can’t do better, but if you dropped the govt of the Netherlands here, it would fail rather quickly.
It’s a lot easier to have nuance and public support for government programs when everyone shares the same upbringing, culture, and beliefs.
The Dutch equivalent of DCS/CPS was caught placing at least 1670 children as a way to pressure their parents to pay a wrong tax charge. The number is provisional and it might be 16000 children.
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.
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, ...)
Wow, that’s a totally wild article. Thanks for sharing. I don’t think it is the same mindset as in the states, but it shows the challenges of dealing with vulnerable populations, that’s for sure.
Do you have a better source? Nothing in the Wikipedia article mentions children being taken away, only child benefits being taken away. Maybe I missed it.
"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]"
You obviously have no idea how diverse the Netherlands is. A monoculture it is not.
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.
This itself is dangerous thinking; what people miss way too much is the variance across localities. Some are great and some are terrible -- but the whole "All government is terrible" mindset frequently enables even worse private intervention.
Unless you've encountered anarchists, few truly think all government is terrible. Rather it's that government must always be scrutinized. Who will will intervene on you're behalf against a government that can have you castrated under an assumption that you're mentally deficient enough to deserve it (Buck vs Bell)? At least one can have his day in court against against another individual. However, thanks to broad interpretations of the 11th amendment, qualified immunity, and national security laws, the means to achieve vindication against government abuses have grown narrower.
Wrong way to think about it. A lot of people, if interviewed, will never say out loud "All government is terrible," and yet will still knee-jerk react as if it is.
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."
That's the thing. If they were laws proper, then we'd get a proper defense.
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.
And it all seems fine until people you don't like from the other side get elected.
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.
The cynic in me reads this and thinks: “Well of course. America is not safe for children. It’s only truly safe for capitalists and cops.” Then I wonder how much of that is cynicism, and how much of it is the infuriating reality.
That the Arizona Department of Child Safety chose to prosecute this woman is an unstated recognition of this.
We live in an upper middle class neighborhood and the only people who drive through are other people who live here. Our daughter is seven now but we’ve let her go to her friends house of her own volition since she was five.
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.
By what metric? This is a normal everyday thing in some countries. I was running to the corner store and grabbing milk, cheese or beer, among other groceries, when I was under 10. This was Spain in the 80s/90s and afaik is still a thing. Or walking clear across town to hang out with friends or go to school. In what way is teaching kids independence and giving them your trust not beneficial?
Are you a parent? Part of a child growing up is developing independence in sometimes controlled, sometimes impromptu scenarios. Most 7 year olds are entirely capable of cruising around a couple houses where the adults all know each other.
If you put your child in a bubble you not only stunt their development you also rob them of so much joy.
The tl;dr is that helicopter parenting is relatively new — only something that's come into play in the last few decades — and in all the time before that kids had far more freedom to roam compared to today. Even factoring in an uptick in the murder rate in the last couple years that came about during Covid policy, it's still half of what is was in the early 90s or prior to that.
It seems like the world is more dangerous now because of the outsized attention crime gets in media, but objectively speaking, it's not.
And keeping kids at home on their screens is having definite negative consequences on their maturation and later ability to succeed in the world. Here's a good article on the subject:
Life has many risks. Some risks can be recovered from, and others are life long damage. It’s the latter, catastrophic risks that parents should be curating the environment from.
Kids learn from failure. It’s letting them fail and learn that grows strong adults.
Some risks can be mitigated. Learning to tumble and take a fall, for example, mitigates risks of falling well into the elderly years.
And as for 5 or 7 year old, yes. Or flip to the other side— traditional society, including indigenous societies, start training their toddlers on chores. Toddlers already want to help, and these are often behaviors they are already doing, like pulling clothes from laundry baskets.
Five year old and seven year olds are capable. In Japan, two year olds are sent on errands.
And, I have heard at least one story of an American family where the mother had her 7 and 8 year old kid take over meal planning and prep for dinner, and paying the bills. (She didn’t just throw them into the deep end either).
There was an article about a parent who tried to do exactly that, in America. But the parent did not throw the kid into the deep end. For at least a year, the child was taken on those errands, being familiarized with the rule of the road, introduced to store clerks.
Ideas this author generated include — sending an older child along; secretly following to observe without intervening on anything less than catastrophic risks; sending the kid to neighbors to borrow a cup of sugar (and acquaint them to the neighborhood), and so forth.
I was leaving the house alone by 5 and 6. I'd go hours in the local forest, down by the lake, through the neighborhood, and to the city. My mom made sure I understood landmarks and what places that could help me looked like. Of all the trauma I experienced in my early life, none of it was from those activities. If anything they taught me a lot about getting along on my own.
It seems to have stopped being a thing in the US in the `90's, for whatever reason. I recall walking to and from school as a 1st grader, although everyone was doing it which made everyone inherently more likely to reach their destination.
If I was in charge, I would set the residential speed limits to 20mph and have the Police enforce those speed limits 24/7.
You didn't. But you were making blanket statements about unsafe neighborhoods, which are blatantly false... Except for schools.
It's funny how having a 7yr old in a small group wandering around together is some horrible thing (as you point out to mostly mythical violence), but sending kid to public school where bullying is routine and other terrible things are never considered child abuse.
If I sent my child to a building for 40h a week, and they suffered 8h abuse across the week, they'd be taken from me. But since it's called "School" it's acceptable.
This person's go-to responses to tell people to kill themselves. I think this is a violent potentially abusive person. Maybe someone should call the cops/CPS if they have kids.
Using social services as retribution for real or perceived slights, online or otherwise, is incredibly destructive to the system and to the victims it can affect. Don't call CPS on people who insult you on the internet.
Nothing happens to children when they walk down roads alone. Almost all kidnappings are a result of people the child knows, trusts, and is otherwise close to.
> And frankly, the 7yr old has more to fear at school with 'assault drills' and the mass shootings of some foreig.... 'mentally instable white guy'.
This is an extreme exaggeration of the threat of mass shootings at public schools. Children have far more to fear at home or on the street than at school, which is the safest place they'll be all day.
> "What if governments learned from the MKUltra experiments in the 50's that trauma allows you to control people, so they purposely orchestrate disastrous events to keep their citizens afraid + dependent on them, and that's one of the reasons that mental illness has been rising? lol"
Where I live (Canada) those are only for disabled children or those attending a school more than 1.5 km away from where they live. And after the age of 10, they take public transit.
This thread is making me realize how variable different locales are on this.
It really is. We don't generally have dedicated school buses here, just a public transit system that takes school scheduled into account. I took a public bus to school, on my own, on my very first day of school at age 6.
Anecdote, much? I ran around with other kids in the neighborhood without direct adult supervision all the time as a child. I now make well north of your 250k USD with a loving wife and a house.
A single self-reported datapoint is not a "source." Sounds like you don't know what you might have been missing and don't care to find out. Good for you, I guess?
Edit: parent's dead reply is an incredibly clear illustration of how such an isolated, unenriched childhood can impact social development. My kid's out playing in our neighborhood, thanks.
> Edit: parent's dead reply is an incredibly clear illustration of how such an isolated, unenriched childhood can impact social development. My kid's out playing in our neighborhood, thanks.
They went completely off the rails. Strange, it didn't look quite like the average cheap troll account either.
But I don't think the behavior should be taken as "an incredibly clear illustration" of anything. Just like their initial claim, it is an unverified anecdote at best, not data.
But the outburst might have been childhood trauma causing a bad reaction to the topic and discussion. I hope they're okay...
Agree to disagree, I was pretty careful to not describe that as an inevitable consequence or "data."
Somebody who flees a conversation imploring everybody to "kill yourself" after mild disagreement has all the appearance of a grievously immature person, raised on gamer culture, lashing out in greatly disproportionate response to a narcissistic injury. The person I've got sympathy for in this situation is the poster's "loving wife." I was once married to a narcissist, too.
> Agree to disagree, I was pretty careful to not describe that as an inevitable consequence or "data."
It just wasn't the "incredibly clear illustration" that you claimed. We know almost nothing about the person, and narcissism and probably other kinds of behavioral issues they may have displayed are probably not caused by playing video games or having an isolated, unenriched childhood.
If you had gotten out of the house more, you might have learned that we live in an incredibly diverse world, and not everyone needs to grow up exactly like you did.
Even if it isn't "amazingly beneficial", who the fuck cares? Chewing bubblegum or playing a gameboy isn't "amazingly beneficial" but we still let kids do that. What he hell kind of standard is that?
Edit: Wew this thread went from bizarre to disturbing in record time. No parting rage-quit response for me? I feel left out...
I walked and biked miles from my house, alone, at that age. What's the harm? Kidnappers and childrapists aren't exactly common, and independence is a good thing.
I’d argue that the incrrasing neuroticism and mental health issues of each succeeding generation after the Millennials is precisely because the lack of this kind of autonomy combined with usage of social medial.
Life is risky. Our job as parents are not to keep a child from any and all risk, but to curate environments where risks are not catastrophic. It’s this ability to freely explore that a child would exercise initiative and independent thinking.
It is this ability that allows a generation to know what they can do for leading society when you and I and every preceding generation are gone, and they have their own kids to raise.
I would argue that previous generations had such issues as well but they just didn't get talked about as much. It would help explain some of the damn the long term all that matters is the next year / six months type of thinking.
They did have those issues, but I don’t think it was as bad. It also depends on circumstances unique to that generation.
MacLuhan of the “the medium is the message” watched with concern an entire generation of electrification and broadcast radio and TV. He watched as people become passive consumers of content, content which shaped and homoginized culture.
Another example is there if you read the history and the fictional literature of the Gilded Age (around 1890s). Automation of household tasks combined with a shift to industrial jobs outside of home lead to the rise of the movement for the right for women to vote … and also, the discontent and malaise from no longer being able to contribute meaningfully for the household outside of raising of children. That went on well in the 50s.
The ability for someone to be able to meaningfully contribute unique to them to something greater than themselves is a key to well-being for both the person and the community they belong to. The erosion of that ability has been going on for multiple generations.
When kids today are restricted from being able to meaningfully contribute (because it is not risk-free), they turn to other places. Social media are that place, but the social media companies are out to make a profit, not to enable meaningful engagement. Internet use is largely uncurated by parents. So we end up with a society where we have this veneer of keeping kids “safe” by keeping them off the streets, but letting them run wild on the internet. (Example: Roblox)
There is that, but TikTok has basically allowed the explosion of the “psych 101” effect where you learn a very surface level about psychology and start self-diagnosing.
I would argue to disagree with ascribing mental health issues after the Millennials due to whatever is also relatively new at the time like kids having more supervision. This essentially boxes your theory to apply to only one generation (gen Z), so what you're describing is only that Gen Z are more mentally ill than Millennials, which... are you sure you can neatly form causal relationships between one generation to one specific change? How are you doing that?
At that age I was walking two blocks to school, and was going to friend's houses to see if they wanted to play. By age 12 I was riding my bike two miles to go buy ice cream & candy. In my early 20's I drove across the US (South Carolina to California) by myself over several days. No cell phone or other safety net.
Being overprotective means your kids don't develop a spirit of adventure and self-reliance. Is there a risk of their coming to harm? The statistics say chances are lower than ever. Violent crime peaked in 1991 and has trended downward (+/-) ever since (this site is run by the FBI):
By 12 I would sometimes (through choice, or because I'd missed the daily bus) walk 4 miles to school along country roads, before cellphones were a thing.
I'd also go camping, alone or with friends, in the middle of nowhere, with my parents only knowing very roughly where I was (e.g. "we're camping on such-and-such estate, near the area with the wild boars" :)
Now, as a parent, I keep catching myself being a helicopter parent, and hate myself for it! Nothing catastrophic happened to me or my siblings, or anyone else I knew of. So I don't even know why I act this way now.
This is a real shame, it's bad for your daughter and life in general. I have three kids and as much as I'd love to let them roam a bit like my wife and I did as kids, stories like yours scare the hell out of me.
I don't know how we arrived at kids walking around in their own neighborhoods is neglect but life sure is poorer for it.
Now that she’s seven and has the watch everything seems fine. She goes further than ever and we haven’t gotten complaints. Maybe the lady gave up or decided my daughter’s magically old enough now.
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.
That is one lesson I've learned. Keep your mouth shut around doctors, counselors, therapists, teachers, and daycare workers. Treat them politely, professionally, and keep them at a distance and never give them details about your family. Gently coach your children to do the same, but not explicitly.
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 have family that choose to live in 100% Indian community in dallas for this exact reason. Kids can go in and out of the house at will. They walk around outside and find other kids to play and hangout. No playdates, no schedules, no dropoffs.
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.
I don’t know if I would recommend it necessarily and saying this is an Indian living in America.
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.
While i agree in part with your generalization about Indian parents, issues of caste have come down a lot over the past 75 odd years...
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.
Depending on your ingroup, espousing this opinion can ruin your life and career in the US. It is true regardless, as measured by numerous and repeated studies.
That is infuriating. What right does the government have to come and inspect your house and invade your privacy over your child walking around outside?!? In her own neighborhood? Surely despite everyone’s political leanings we can all agree that this is an egregious abuse of power.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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).
This is an opinion that’s risky to have because at a superficial level it’s not oriented enough around “save the children”. But there’s some good evidence for it. There’s some great analysis in “The Future of Capitalism” by Paul Collier if anyone is interested in a deeper look
Solution to bad government is not less government. If the CPS is terrible we should figure out how to fix it not throw in the towel.
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 ?
Why does everybody always that that offering children the choice of CPS or not is effectively "throwing in the towel"? Yes, CPS will have to offer something meaningful (ie. a reasonable path to a decent future) to children, or not have any children.
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.
> 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.
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.
>>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.<<
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.
Unfortunately there isn't a way to know ahead of time which complaints are frivolous and which aren't. They don't know whether the person who is calling in a complaint is a busybody worked up over nothing or if it's a jealous ex who wants a leg up in a custody hearing or if it's someone has misinterpreted what they've seen or if it's someone who has just witnessed the tip of an abusive iceberg. A quick visit by a trained professional is not particularly expensive and is much more effective means of data collection than a slow trickle of information from poorly informed and possibly malicious random people. Considering that this case worker is probably not getting pulled off a "real" abuse case to do this visit but is instead going when they have an opening in their schedule and would otherwise be idle, the claim it is drawing away much needed resources is questionable.
> 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 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.
Benjamin Franklin said, paraphrasing William Blackstone, that “it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.” I feel like society chucks that principal out of the window as soon as children are involved.
If the government steps in and tries to help kids grow up to be modern citizens (read: pious, hard-working, conservative), then I don't see a problem with inspecting houses.
We always love to blame the busybody snitch for this, and we somehow let the government off the hook, or even paint it as a victim.
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.
I've always considered child protection to be the parents' responsibility and not a function of government.
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.
This shows that it's not really about actually "thinking about the children", otherwise they'd be actually thinking about the children long term and not just using them to gain political platitudes.
Most child abuse is happening inside families. The whole thing of child protection is to protect kids against parents/caregivers who either neglect them or abuse them.
I grew up with CPS being reported against my family on multiple occasions. At one point we had 7 CPS reports against us. At the end, CPS sent two people -- one being a supervisor to make sure nothing was missed -- and two sherrifs with a wagon to take away the kids if anything untoward was found. The supervisor determined nothing was wrong and that the CPS reports were malicious and put a note on our file and address stating that further reports need to go that specific supervisor.
We didn't have any trouble after that. But it was very very stressful.
If she has boundary issues, she may not stop until she suffers from a firm response. It may also be why she has the strange hobby of approaching and interrogating someone else's children (she may feel 'safer' with them since a polite kid rarely sent her to mind own business).
Can you elaborate how you feel returning a kid to their own home is "kidnapping"?
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?
as a parent if i expect my kids to be in a certain location, and say i planned to pick them up from that location, someone removing them from that location has effectively kidnapped them, because when i get there, and the kids are gone, then i can't find them.
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.
Are you aware that almost every country has some sort of "good Samaritan" which would offer protection in this situation.
"
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 live in a country where child abductions do happen. they are rare, so that doesn't turn me into a helicopter parent that wouldn't let their kids out of their sight, although may other parents here do just that, but if they are not where i expect them to be, then i'll silently panic.
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.
Yeah, I think a restraining order is a reasonable course of action. The 'strange neighbor' does not seem to have the best intentions and she could have easily spoken to the parent without involving the child.
It seems to have stopped. I’m not sure if they moved or she just gave up or what. This was two years ago and we were cautious about sending her to friends houses but she’s largely autonomous again. I think having a cell phone watch helps immensely (she can say “call mom” and “call dad” to Siri).
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.
Typically the first visit is a request to be voluntarily let in. If denied they will return with a police officer and a warrant to enter, and will be more likely to try to hurt your family rather than do a cursory walkthrough. It’s a bit of game theory but it’s best to let them in the first time.
As the story demonstrates, there could be extra-legal consequences whether one allows them in or not. For average people without very deep pockets, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I denied the police officer entry. He made me produce my child (to show she was there and safe) but that was it. A CPS representative came a few days later and we were advised by a lawyer to let him in and take a look. He made some minor suggestions about cleaning up around our younger daughter’s high chair (she’d thrown some food around her chair) but nothing came of it.
Folks that live in UMC* neighborhoods seldom see much of the "dark side" of CPS.
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.
This is absolutely true. In the US there are so many situations that have gone south, that CPS and the courts have an almost learned reflex to never give breaks. These cases could be physical child abuse, or sex abuse, and could even go all the way up to death. As a kind of 'prototypical' example of what I'm talking about, Google Kamari Gholston [0].
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.
CPS and the courts have an almost learned reflex to never give breaks...
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.
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.
> I know about it from both sides.
...
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.
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.
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).
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.
This is an extremely good way to put this, and it's nice to see it stated outright here. Thank you!
> 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 don't think this was a thinly veiled insult either. It was what we call "robust debate."
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."
CPS is failing because it’s severely understaffed and underfunded. It’s hard to find dedicated abusers or even just neglectful parents when you have thousands of cases, few social workers, and computer systems from the 1980s. It also allows apathetic and downright sadistic people to keep their jobs, because you don’t have the resources for proper oversight or the competitive job offers to replace them anyways.
Most CPS workers have good intentions, and would be competent. Except that they have to take on way too many cases with limited resources.
CPS is failing because it’s severely understaffed and underfunded.
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.
No matter how noble the cause, the last thing I want to do is to provide more resources to ineffective, often abusive agencies. Reform first; show you can be effective without being abusive, and then we can talk about resources.
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.
> 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.
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.
This is common these days. People use CPS to try to bully people.
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.
> 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.
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.
This is actually a fairly large problem these days.
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".
This kind of bureaucratic law/not-law is because it's a bureaucratic determination and not a "law" proper.
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.
> 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.
So just how many kidnappings of children by total strangers there are on average? Must be quite a lot if it is so feared? How many vans are driving around blocks and looking to abduct kids with or without candy each day?
There are many bad outcomes to unattended children that don't involve kidnapping (think uncommon but normal childhood injuries of kids on playgrounds).
That being said, none of the facts presented here indicate that CPS action would have been warranted.
Is self-defense not a basic life skill?
A blade might be a better choice than a firearm for a young child though. Either a karambit or maybe a Fairbarn-Sykes Fighting Knife.
Have you considered the possibility that there are physical security threats to children besides school shooters? Kidnappers, bullies, gangs, thieves, etc...
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?
I have had multiple experiences with CPS over the years through friends and family. Over time I have developed a pretty dramatic hatred of them. We took in our niece for a few months years ago and the way they ran their 'system' was mind blowing. The rules that make their life hard were freely broken whenever they wanted and the rules that made our lives hard were written on stone tablets.
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.
Some time ago I watched a Not Just Bikes (bear with me) video where Jason mentioned how ridiculous the oversight expectations were in US/Canada. He mentioned a Vancouver parent that was "fighting police for the right to send his kids to school alone on public transit" or something. I thought that was ridiculous, it can't possibly be true. I guess its not ridiculous after all.
CPS could well be the spawn of Satan. But with the exception of a minor (Breitbart-like rag) Tennessee Star article, 100% of the references I can find on the Google appear to be postings and promotions from Pacific Legal and its partner, the Goldwater Institute. 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.
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.
> You do understand the logical error you just made, right?
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?
> You do understand the logical error you just made, right?
> 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
OK, you're right about the single source (the law firm) and the incentive to lie.
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.
>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?
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.
I'm sorry, but there are certain stories that are just not covered by "respectable" media outlets at all, and never will be. How much have you read about Nancy Pelosi's husband, for example? Or AOC's fake handcuffs?
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.
On average yes but that average hides wide disparities. Republicans have only 10% trust but democrats have much higher rates, independents are in the middle.
HN sure has a strong libertarian presence, but I guarantee you its not here. This is more the urbanism, liveability and anti-NIMBY crowd. I don't have data but I very strongly sense intersection between both is nil.
There's a SCOTUS decision, nickname Chevron deference which is due to be overturned, and I think most of the posters here should be in favor of overturning it. In AZ, I'm pretty sure the Legislature and Governor never intended that parents like this should be prosecuted, but DCS is interpreting their broad statutory authority that way.
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.
Hardly, overturning chevron especially in the polarized grid locked congress of today would be chaos.
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
The roles that the federal legislative branch has assumed over the past 100 years are misguided and mostly based under an interpretation of the interstate commerce clause and how much power can be delegated away from the legislature.
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.
> mostly based under an interpretation of the interstate commerce clause
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.
That’s the secret, there are none. People are arguing congress can make abortion laws now because of the interstate commerce clause, anything goes at this point.
Huh wow. How many of these totally illogical scotus judgements are out there exactly? No wonder the US left is freaked out by the new supreme court. It feels like they could pretty deeply change how US law and government works in favour of state's rights just by vacating obviously abusive rulings from earlier eras.
There is usually a pattern, and there is a pattern now.
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.
Everything cannot be litigated. Litigation is expensive and time consuming.
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 .
You might want to study up on legal drafting & construction.
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.
The same good lawyers can also write good regulation that is transparent , clear and unambiguous if they could write good law.
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.
Speed of change is not an argument for the administrative state. If anything, it's an argument against.
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.
> Everything cannot be litigated. Litigation is expensive and time consuming.
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.
> Overturning it will mean that the Legislature and Governor make the laws, not the agencies.
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.
> In a country where Congress has been deadlocked for decades
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.
Your better answer isn't possible. Not only is passing laws basically impossible at this point, but giving bureaucratic institutions authority to solve unforeseen problems is a good thing. It just isn't possible for lawmakers to conceive of every loophole and edge case. It's too slow to pass a new law every time one comes up, if it's even possible at all.
Bureaucrats picked by the executive branch, elected every 4 years. If anything Americans have a better chance of getting things they want by picking a president who will implement their policies than they will hoping the legislative branch gets around to doing anything ever.
Actually, no. Only the top layer of bureaucracies can change every 4 years. The vast majority of them are civil servants, who basically can't be fired.
> Only the top layer of bureaucracies can change every 4 years
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.
West Virginia v EPA is the case that overturned the chevron case you're complaining about. I'm not sure that it applies to state agencies though, might only be federal.
Chevron deference is a federal doctrine related to self-interpretation of statutory powers by federal agencies.
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.
Why not let the govt people find other work? It isn’t a law of nature that the public sector must never shrink, though it does feel that way sometimes.
Right? How could you possibly write a story like this without mentioning whether the kids were 2, 7, or 14? Those would be very different stories from each other...
277 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 401 ms ] threadUnfortunately 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.
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://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-exp...
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
If you put your child in a bubble you not only stunt their development you also rob them of so much joy.
What if I get HIV from a needle at a park bench? Do I need to inspect every park bench I sit on with UV light at night and leather gloves to be sure?
Where do you draw your line. Clearly your lines are different than others.
You should consider that their lines are based on rational investigation of the risk. Is yours?
https://letgrow.org/crime-statistics/
The tl;dr is that helicopter parenting is relatively new — only something that's come into play in the last few decades — and in all the time before that kids had far more freedom to roam compared to today. Even factoring in an uptick in the murder rate in the last couple years that came about during Covid policy, it's still half of what is was in the early 90s or prior to that.
It seems like the world is more dangerous now because of the outsized attention crime gets in media, but objectively speaking, it's not.
And keeping kids at home on their screens is having definite negative consequences on their maturation and later ability to succeed in the world. Here's a good article on the subject:
https://reason.com/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generation/
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome
Kids learn from failure. It’s letting them fail and learn that grows strong adults.
Some risks can be mitigated. Learning to tumble and take a fall, for example, mitigates risks of falling well into the elderly years.
And as for 5 or 7 year old, yes. Or flip to the other side— traditional society, including indigenous societies, start training their toddlers on chores. Toddlers already want to help, and these are often behaviors they are already doing, like pulling clothes from laundry baskets.
Five year old and seven year olds are capable. In Japan, two year olds are sent on errands.
And, I have heard at least one story of an American family where the mother had her 7 and 8 year old kid take over meal planning and prep for dinner, and paying the bills. (She didn’t just throw them into the deep end either).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMZp8KsZ5k
Is Japan safer than the US on average? Yes. Is the US so unsafe that sending a 7-year old to the neighbouring kids' homes should be frown upon?
Ideas this author generated include — sending an older child along; secretly following to observe without intervening on anything less than catastrophic risks; sending the kid to neighbors to borrow a cup of sugar (and acquaint them to the neighborhood), and so forth.
If I was in charge, I would set the residential speed limits to 20mph and have the Police enforce those speed limits 24/7.
And frankly, the 7yr old has more to fear at school with 'assault drills' and the mass shootings of some foreig.... 'mentally instable white guy'.
If something bad happens to your kid while they walk down the road alone, what will the cops and CPS do to you then?
It's funny how having a 7yr old in a small group wandering around together is some horrible thing (as you point out to mostly mythical violence), but sending kid to public school where bullying is routine and other terrible things are never considered child abuse.
If I sent my child to a building for 40h a week, and they suffered 8h abuse across the week, they'd be taken from me. But since it's called "School" it's acceptable.
This is an extreme exaggeration of the threat of mass shootings at public schools. Children have far more to fear at home or on the street than at school, which is the safest place they'll be all day.
> "What if governments learned from the MKUltra experiments in the 50's that trauma allows you to control people, so they purposely orchestrate disastrous events to keep their citizens afraid + dependent on them, and that's one of the reasons that mental illness has been rising? lol"
https://twitter.com/itrevormoore/status/1400158963748917249
This thread is making me realize how variable different locales are on this.
You got a source for that?
Neither story means anything in the general case.
Edit: parent's dead reply is an incredibly clear illustration of how such an isolated, unenriched childhood can impact social development. My kid's out playing in our neighborhood, thanks.
They went completely off the rails. Strange, it didn't look quite like the average cheap troll account either.
But I don't think the behavior should be taken as "an incredibly clear illustration" of anything. Just like their initial claim, it is an unverified anecdote at best, not data.
But the outburst might have been childhood trauma causing a bad reaction to the topic and discussion. I hope they're okay...
Somebody who flees a conversation imploring everybody to "kill yourself" after mild disagreement has all the appearance of a grievously immature person, raised on gamer culture, lashing out in greatly disproportionate response to a narcissistic injury. The person I've got sympathy for in this situation is the poster's "loving wife." I was once married to a narcissist, too.
It just wasn't the "incredibly clear illustration" that you claimed. We know almost nothing about the person, and narcissism and probably other kinds of behavioral issues they may have displayed are probably not caused by playing video games or having an isolated, unenriched childhood.
Edit: Wew this thread went from bizarre to disturbing in record time. No parting rage-quit response for me? I feel left out...
Life is risky. Our job as parents are not to keep a child from any and all risk, but to curate environments where risks are not catastrophic. It’s this ability to freely explore that a child would exercise initiative and independent thinking.
It is this ability that allows a generation to know what they can do for leading society when you and I and every preceding generation are gone, and they have their own kids to raise.
I would argue that previous generations had such issues as well but they just didn't get talked about as much. It would help explain some of the damn the long term all that matters is the next year / six months type of thinking.
MacLuhan of the “the medium is the message” watched with concern an entire generation of electrification and broadcast radio and TV. He watched as people become passive consumers of content, content which shaped and homoginized culture.
Another example is there if you read the history and the fictional literature of the Gilded Age (around 1890s). Automation of household tasks combined with a shift to industrial jobs outside of home lead to the rise of the movement for the right for women to vote … and also, the discontent and malaise from no longer being able to contribute meaningfully for the household outside of raising of children. That went on well in the 50s.
The ability for someone to be able to meaningfully contribute unique to them to something greater than themselves is a key to well-being for both the person and the community they belong to. The erosion of that ability has been going on for multiple generations.
When kids today are restricted from being able to meaningfully contribute (because it is not risk-free), they turn to other places. Social media are that place, but the social media companies are out to make a profit, not to enable meaningful engagement. Internet use is largely uncurated by parents. So we end up with a society where we have this veneer of keeping kids “safe” by keeping them off the streets, but letting them run wild on the internet. (Example: Roblox)
The hell it isn’t! Kids learn a ton by being on their own, and not relying on a grownup 100% of the time.
Being overprotective means your kids don't develop a spirit of adventure and self-reliance. Is there a risk of their coming to harm? The statistics say chances are lower than ever. Violent crime peaked in 1991 and has trended downward (+/-) ever since (this site is run by the FBI):
https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/cri...
I'd also go camping, alone or with friends, in the middle of nowhere, with my parents only knowing very roughly where I was (e.g. "we're camping on such-and-such estate, near the area with the wild boars" :)
Now, as a parent, I keep catching myself being a helicopter parent, and hate myself for it! Nothing catastrophic happened to me or my siblings, or anyone else I knew of. So I don't even know why I act this way now.
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 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.
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...
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
How frequently does it happen?
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.
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.
We didn't have any trouble after that. But it was very very stressful.
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.
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.
Were you legally obligated to let him into your house?
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
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.
...
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.
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
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."
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.
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.
Off topic, but thanks for this idiom.
Between four(!) and twenty eight(!!!) more times:
https://www.focusforhealth.org/sex-abuse-and-the-foster-care...
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.
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.
See, the problem could have been avoided by calling police right there and reporting a kidnapping.
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.
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".
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.
> 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.
That being said, none of the facts presented here indicate that CPS action would have been warranted.
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?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WckWFmgi8Fg
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?
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.
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...
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...
I didn't read it so idk what it says
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
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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.
They do set a (non-binding) direction for state Supreme Courts, though.
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.
and those new things entail controlling our lives...and I don't see any solution for this problem
(1) https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/arizona-mo...