I used to work in the juvenile courts where they had a truancy program. Most parents welcomed the assistance. No one was arrested. The goal was not to arrest.

because her candidacy threatens some supporters of other candidates.

And Russia.

It's that time again. The same crowd that pushed their "purity" tests in the past are back, along with a whole lot of trolls.

The tough on crime posturing (on this, on the death penalty, on three strikes) is an issue where Harris's practices and the policies she advances are at significant odds with mine.

It's not a purity test - I ultimately voted for Bill Clinton, whoh paused campaigning to return to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector. But my support was far less enthusiastic after that event.

Here, campaigns are just beginning - it is precisely the time to identify what we want in a president, and to articulate how the plethora of candidates either meet (or do not meet) those ideals.

Characterizing people who dare to suggest a difference wtih some part of a candidate's positions or history as trolls is offensive.

I remember the "purity" gang here on DU. They claimed to be the "only" true Democrats, then Liberals, and then progressives. Those who didn't agree with them were made to be the bad guys. They had their own cult group led by Manny, and the all left here to star their own board at the JPR site, where their true hate came out. And yes many of them are back here stirring the pot. They are the ones I am talking about.

I don't have a problem with talking about problems a candidate may have, but there are no "perfect" candidates, and I really think that people start trashing everyone who is not on the same page as they are not helping unite the party.

And like it or not there are a lot of trolls posting here, and I never said that all those who disagree with another candidate are trolls, but some really are.

Only one will be the nominee.

Discussing actions and positions taken by each of the candidates - and how they match with general Democratic values, or with my personal values, is not "trashing everyone who is not on the same page." It is part of a healthy discussion that is necessary to select the best candidate for the party.

The problem is that the reaction by the majority of those participating in the discussion on DU to a factual recitation of Harris's actions and positions that differ from traditional Democratic policies are being met with challenges that the facts are "bullshit," and that the assertions are being made by trolls.

death penalty, but I don't feel your position on Kamala Harris, far too early!, is helpful to those on death row or who will be if we keep losing elections.

Kamala Harris is against the death penalty. You should have come across that in your minings on this subject. What you can't have found out yet is who your alternative choices will be and how viable they will be.

To be blunt, as you say, only one candidate will be our nominee, and I feel it's not only extremely misguided but far too early to hope a candidate who opposes the death penalty will not make it into the final choices.

Further, on November 2, 2020 either the Republican or the Democratic candidate will be elected president. Please keep that scary reality in mind as you consider whether you should oppose the candidates who are already identified by the Republicans and other hard-right groups as the ones they must take out.

None of us ever intend to sabotage our own deepest beliefs, but in 2016 a critical number who did just that helped turn the nation over to the white nationalist, pro- death penalty party. Maybe focus on a) electing a Democrat who is b) against the death penalty?

Against a cop killer. Not to say she matches your principles in all other ways.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read that NO ONE was jailed by anyone because of truancy - neither the child or the parent.

But at least two were jailed, one for 180 days, under the state policy she advocated in running for AG. There is no reccord I can find of how many parents were fined (up to $2000), or were prosecuted without resulting in conviction. One of those in the latter category is a single homeless mother of three, working two jobs. That woman now has a court record, adn likely an arrest record, that will follow her for the rest of her life and make it more difficult for her to pull herself up out of homelessness and poverty.

Some of us have researched well beyond the sensational headlines - and are disturbed by what we have found on this issue. As an educator in a poverty-stricken, 100% minority public school for more than a decade, I don't believe prosecution (or the threat thereof) is an appropriate tool to use against the parents of students who are typically most likely to be truant (poor and minority - factors which contribute to the parents' inability to avoid unexcused absences by things such as: no childcare for a sick child requiring an older child to stay home so that mom doesn't get fired from her job; a bus pass that runs out before the next paycheck, etc.; bus routes that take hours to get to school - assuming no late busses that cause a missed connection (and no car for alternate trasnportation).) Truancy is largely a class/social problem, not a criminal one - and not generally even a lack of care about school attendance. It should be addressed by rooting out and addressing the root cause without the threat of criminal prosecution.

I know the reason why. I find the defense of policies like this abhorrent. If Harris manages to win the nomination, I will vote for her because of Trump. But stuff like this is the reason why she's not my first choice.

might be being abused or neglected.

Usually it's just a matter of parents being overwhelmed-- it is very hard when you're working two jobs and don't have a car and have a kid who dallies and resists going to school. I had a very mild-mannered friend with a very strong-willed son, and she was really grateful when the truant officer came in with the rules and, yes, the power of the state. The boy was suitably impressed when he learned he could not go out in the evening and had to be there to accept a call from the officer at 7 pm and tell what homework he was working on right then. (He graduated from high school later, a real victory, given his history in middle school.)

But sometimes it's much worse than overwhelm. The Harts, for example (the ones who drove their children off the cliff), withdrew the kids from school (to "home school' them) the first time a teacher notified the authorities about possible abuse.
Once the children were no longer being seen every day by school staff and faculty, the children had no clear way to escape from abuse.

Truant officers aren't primarily punitive. They want to make sure children are okay. And education really is a right for children, like food and shelter. Jailing parents is by far the last resort. (and, frankly, if the Harts had been jailed, well... let's not go there. Too tragic.)

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/13/us/hart-family-abuse-isolation/index.html

My husband’s niece moved to Florida from New York. The oldest child was chronically truant. He told me, years after dropping out of school that in New York, where he attended a school in a poor district, if you missed more than one day, the truant officers would be banging on your door. In Florida, no one came. He missed the fact that NYC schools cared enough to enforce the law. Truancy is child neglect. Intervention is necessary. Yes, the overwhelmed parents suffer, but there is absolutely no hope for kids who don’t attend school. Law enforcement has to get involved.

without arresting and hauling into court a homeless mother of 3 working 2 jobs.

I don't see anyone suggesting truancy shouldn't be addressed. What I see are people raising legitimate concerns (concerns raised by Haris's own staff) that arresting and fining or jailing is not a healthy way to address the problem.

Name?

Can you name any "mother of three working 2 jobs" in CA that was "arrested and hauled into court" during her tenure?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/30/kamala-harris-truant-children-parents-prosecutions-clip

Can you point out where that is stated? It's very dramatic indeed, but it doesn't seem to be supported by your source.

Facts sort of matter. The credibility of one's argument can hinge on it.

Perhaps you skipped over this part of the OP:

https://thelawdictionary.org/prosecution/

Yes, ultimately, a non-punitive resolution was reached. But the woman now has a permanent record - at least of criminal charges filed against her, and likely also an arrest record. This will follow her for the rest of her life as she tries to move out of homelessness and poverty. My issue is with using actual prosecution, or threat of prosecution, to solve a social problem, rather than just addressing the social problems holistically in the first place; with seeing every problem as a nail - just becasue you have a hammer.

I live in a community with very prosecutors and courts who are very creative in crafting solutions other than criminal prosecution to solve social problems (drugs being one of them). In other works with prosecutors who don't see every problem as a nail just because their most promient tool is a hammer.

Can you confirm that she indeed had this on her permanent record? Because that doesn't seem to be consistent with the metric of success for the law.

Or is that something that you choose to assume based on your feelings concerning Harris?

Again... in case you missed this in the OP:

But if you have evidence that she has a record, and that Harris prosecuted her anyway after connecting her with social services, then please share.

it would actually be wrong to have a law against something and not enforce it because you personally don't like it. Sort of like Kim Davis.

As a liberal, the idea a parent being jailed for a child skipping school is offensive on the surface. I met a couple kids who parent was being called in for just this. The kids had missed up to 40 days of school. It was because the parent had no interest in parenting her kids. We need a system that address the parent not doing their job. Not the down and out, or desperate parent. We expect compassion, understanding and help. Reality is, there are too many parents that simply do not want the job.

Prosecutors are not inherently bad. We cheer the prosecutor when going up against a criminal. They are needed in our system of justice. We have issues when they abuse their power and system.

Surely we are clever enough to not see this as black and white. All or nothing.

I am not suggesting she is "bad." What concerns me is that in numerous circumstances, in her role as prosecutor and AG, when given the choice to act in a progressive v. regressive/punitive manner, she chose the regressive/punitive manner (opposing the abolition of the death penalty, supporting three strikes law, expanding the punitive truancy laws from her county to the state as part of her campaign for AG, and her failure to disclose to defendants the potentially exclupatory information that a lab responsible for evidence in 600+ cases had made errors).

In the period of time since then, I hope she has had a chance to reevaluate her actions and the policies she championed at that time. If not - I will support her if she is the ultimate Democratic nominee, but these are significant enough concerns for me that she does not currently have my support.

It appears that you can't really address what she actually did concerning the OP, but have decided to use it as a jumping off point for other issues you have with her.

Perhaps you can start an OP that addresses this?

That would enable fact checking, and a full discussion.

with links in other posts, with links. Or better yet - do your own search on her positions on these issues and make your own decision as to whether her positions are the ones you want our next president to hold.

There is a difference between bad, and disagreeing with her policies. I fundamentally disagree with her positions on each of the concerns I have identified (all of which loosely fall within the umbrella of "tough on crime," a collection of positions that has long tentacles - it reaches into social and racial justice, issues of income inequality, the school-to-prison pipeline. When the truancy question appeared, I searched - hoping to see that she had renounced her position. Instead, what i found was evidence that her position on truancy was consistent with her positions on other issues I care deeply about. Those positions are not minor difference I can just ignore.

I will not start out, at this stage in the campaign, supporting a candidate whose beliefs about criminal justice differ so significantly from mine - in large part because how we handle criminal justice is so much broader than just keeping us safe

"Arresting her and hauling her into court" is not a fact, it seems to spring from confirming an emotional judgement that was there prior to reading the source.

Perhaps you may want to take a look at that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

and would use legal words accurately. She used the word prosecute.

I certainly hope that it's more accurate than your definition of what "arrested and hauled into court" is.

Again, facts matter, even when we have a deep personal dislike of someone. In fact, especially so.

Ask any prosecutor.

Non-legal sources are notorious for misconstruing legal events.

Listen to Haris's own words.

What Harris is describing is not the threat of prosecution - but actual prosection.

As for your unfounded implication that I have a deep personal dislike of Harris - I will remind you that you claim to value facts, and your assertion has no basis in fact. Every single comment I have made regarding Harris is based on actions she took as a prosecutor or AG, and causes and laws she championed on her way from prosecutor to AG, and as AG. Actions and positions that differ significantly from actions or positions I want in a presidential candidate on such a significant issue (criminal justice).

I have no personal connection with Harris - so any like/dislike would not be personal. As a politician, what I have learned when I researched the truancy issue tells me that she is not likely to be my top candidate.

You, on the other hand, seem to have blinders on as to Harris. Your posture suggest you don't really support prosecuting parents for truancy - but rather than acknowledging Harris clearly stated practice and policy positions, and agreeing to differ with her on that issue (a legitimate position), you've spent a fair amount of time trying to convince me that 2010-ish reality did not really happen. This is not an productive way to have a conversation on an issue that will likely play a significant role in the campaign - give the centrality of criminal justice to issues Democrats champion.

You haven't even, for example, even bothered to explore her postures on other criminal justice issues to see whether they are consistent with her policy on truancy - or with your own values as to criminal justice.

Maybe you should listen to the people who have before deciding that Senator Harris is evil. You say your dislike of her "isn't personal" but it sure comes off like that.

11 of those as a high school teacher in a poverty stricken, 100% minority public school district- which included many homeless families. I think I have sufficient expertise to have an opinion on whther prosecuting and threatening prosecution of parents of children is good policy.

Please link to where I said Senator Harris was evil (or bad, or any variation thereof). You won't be able to do so, because I never said it.

I differ with her positions on a number of issues that are critical to me - the use of criminal prosecution to address truancy, fighting the abolitionof the death penalty, failing to disclose lab errors to defense attorneys regaring a lab that processed the evidence in 600+ criminal cases, and support for three strikes laws. I've already addressed my experience in education. I've been an anti-death penalty activist for more than 5 decades. I've opposed three strikes laws since they were introduced in the 90s. That I oppose withholding potentially exculpatory information - that could free wrongfully incarcerated individuals - should need no more explanation.

Please point to anything in the preceding paragraph that is personal, rather than a policy disagreement. You (and a few others) seem to have difficulty with the concept that a difference of political opinion is not personal.

As I have said repeatedly - because I differ with her actions and policy positions on a number of issues that are important to me, she is not my first choice as a candidate for president. If she is ultimately the candidate, I will vote for her - but it will not likely be an enthusiastic vote because (unless her positions have changed) I am compromising on matters that I see as critical to moving the US toward a position of social and economic equity.

So you change the subject.

As an educator for 16 years, you must know the definition of the "red herring" fallacy, yes?

That any parent that was threatened with it was then helped with different programs. The Governor passed the law and a short time later was declared unconstitutional.

I think this is a bogus attack against Harris.

I probably separate her AG role with her senate role more than you. But I have not decided either. I am open to information.

Who's the next target?

(of which dealing with truants is one) is critical to vetting candidates.

In exploring her position on truancy, I discovered several other criminal justice positions she advocated - and actions she took as prosecutor that trouble me.

That's not to say she won't end up being the best candidate - and if she is the ultimate nominee I will support her. But it is not healthy to ignore troublesome incidents merely becasue they are inconvenient. Sometimes (as here, apparently) they are indicative of more significantly troublesome positions. And those positions in things I care deeply about (death penalty, prosecutorial integrity, three strikes, holistic rather than punitive solutions to social problems) make her not my first choice, at the moment. The campaign season is still early.

That opinion is not substantiated by the news sources cited in the storyline.

There are sufficient reports of her actions as prosecutor, as candidate for AG, and as AG for you to find the truth and form your own opinion as to her position on truancy - including more than one in her own words.

In researching that, you might also explore her views and record on the death penalty and the three strikes concept - and on a troubling pattern in her office of failing to disclose to defense attorneys the known corrupted results in a lab responsible for the evidence in 600+ criminal cases.

Where a candidate stands on criminal justice is generally important to Democrats - and specifically important to me. More narrowly, the specific issues I listed above are important to me - I have been an activist against the death penalty for 5 decades, and an opponent of three strike laws since they were first introduced in the 90s.

In raising the concerns I have, I am not relying on an opintion piece - i am relying on the information I found when I did my own research - reading numerous articles and opinion pieces on each issue. I invite you to do the same, and to form your own opinion. As long as all you're doing is saying a single opinion piece is not substantiated, and you're wearing blinders to avoid seeing any suggestion that Harris is not a perfect candidate, it's not much of a conversation. We can disagree as to whehter we agree or disagree with her positions - or whether those are important issues for Democratic candidates, but we ought not blind ourselves to sorting out what her views actually are.

Because what I’m finding is bullshit.

But here's a start for you - with a link to the left/center-left bias to counter the suggestion that what I'm posting is BS.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/21700/kamala-harris-criminal-justice-reform-mass-incarceration-progress

Bias: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/in-these-times/



https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Judge-rips-Harris-office-for-hiding-problems-3263797.php

Bias: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sfgate/

Feel free to search for other posts I've made for links to different sources take on the issues.

Rejecting facts as to Harris' past actions and opinions as bullshit because they are potentially disagreeable facts is not a healthy way to vet a candidate.

There is considerable room for differing opinion - once we agree on the basic facts. For example, although she used prosecution (and the threat thereof) as a tool to coerce compliance on truancy, she rarely actually implemented imprisonment (not at all as prosecutor, but at least 2 were imprisoned under the state law she championed on her way to the AG). (I can't find information as to how many parents were find up to $2,000) For me, the means are as important as the end - so I find prosecution (even when it ends in a diversion program) or threats of prosecution an unacceptable means to coerce compliance with truancy laws. You, on the other hand, may cheer that she achieved her goal of more getting kids back in school - and you may find the tools she used acceptable. Those are legitimate discussions to have.

As to the death penalty, the AG has fairly broad discretion as to where to expend their resources. For example, AGs refused to defend the state marriage discrimination laws in some of the same-gender marriage appeals. Harris could have (and I believe should have) done the same with California's death penalty case. You may believe differently -you may believe that it is the AG's role to defend the laws as the intent of the people - so even though she personally opposed the death penalty she had an obligation to defend the state's law on appeal. Again - a legitimate discussion to have.

What I find troubling is the attack on the character and motives of anyone who dares to suggest Senator Harris is anything less than an absolutely perfect candidate, who represents every single one of Democrat's most cherished positions - and the refusal to seriously explore what her positions (and actions) actually are on matters of criminal justice.

Still bullshit. Now you take the bulk of Harris’s career, line it up with these particular scandals that infers she did or didn’t take action in particular circumstances, then there’s a conversation. I don’t do hair on fire about anybody.

California is a big fucking state, and she was AG over all of it. I’m not surprised to find cockups, but nothing there gives me the impression that she is devious, uncaring, not a fighter, not a Democrat, not competent or immoral or amoral. Nothing there that precludes her as a candidate for President.

of objective news reporting. The one news source that you do cite discusses problems in the AG's office rather than problems with the AG herself.

If one's argument is that the head of an office or organization is responsible for any wrongdoing that occurred within that organization, then that standard must be applied universally.

"I wasn't aware that it was happening / Nobody told me at the time" will not suffice as excuses.

Please don't assume that I think (or expect) that any candidate is perfect, that I haven't done the research, that I am wearing blinders, or that Harris is my top choice.

Anyone who wants to sort out the positions of a candidate needs to seek out objective measures, rather than sources that merely confirm their bias. I always start here:

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Kamala_Harris.htm

and rejecting out-of-hand any suggestion that she may have acted/hold beliefs that make her less than ideal.

As to your starting point - you are aware that the link you provide is not a very nuanced tool, right? As to the death penalty (for example), see the discussion at the bottom of this post. Your tool omits completely her defense of the death penalty on appeal as AG after it was declared unconstitutional. Personally, I find that troubling. It also completely omits her failure to disclose potentially exculpatory information about malfeasance in the drug lab for counsel for defendants potentially impacted by the corrupted results, as required by law.

Her record on criminal justice is, as one opinion piece accurately described it, complex. Viewed as a whole, there are significant aspects I find troubling - troubling enough that, for now, she is not my top candidate.

I think that's a valuable conversation to have - and we can't have that conversation as long as the primary response to anything suggesting she is less than perfect is, "bullshit," "troll," etc.

Now we have the Strawman fallacy.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/169/Strawman-Fallacy

This usually happens when someone is defensive, emotional, and unable to rebut a claim as it is, so it's misrepresented.

Before you say "Go look yourself!" I did.

The press picked up and ran with the ridiculous "flawed candidate" narrative in the GE 2016. "Perfection" is an impossible standard and one which it appears only woman candidates are expected to meet.

Although I'm sure this doesn't apply to you, it's beyond comprehension why anyone would enable this nonsense again.

It's like whoever they want is not good enough to win except by cutting the others down.

and "anti Harris resources" to anyone interested.

I'm more troubled about misogyny and sexual violence, Russia intervention in our elections, and legislators who vote without fully reading bills and/or duck or punt difficult votes.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11761542

The same outsized reaction to anything that "this is unprecedented!!" or "that makes me queasy!" at the first unstubstantiated report lacking any context.

Unselfaware bigotry on both the far left and the right towards any non-white or female candidate can be easily triggered, and is dry tinder for Russian propaganda. Especially since there are several POC and women candidates, so one can claim that one isn't affected by misgogyny or racism because they would TOTALLY support that other candidate, who isn't a frontrunner against their preferred candidate.

Makes sense. Those who had those emotional, knee jerk responses to confirmation bias before, be it unacknowledged misogyny or racism, will react the very same way when the bell rings again.

And even our Intel resouces say this is one our most pressing national security issues.

to those who are insisting that "Harris is perfect".

I don't see anyone insisting that any Democratic candidate is "perfect", so it the warnings are bewildering. I certainly hope that anti-Democratic party factions aren't trying to set up the "flawed candidate" talking point again.

No candidate has ever been perfect, but it seems that certain Democratic women are held to that standard more frequently than others.

The alarmed media and pundits' troubled concern about HRC's status as "flawed" probably did as much to put Trump in the White House as anything else.

By the time my 9th grade daughter confessed she'd been skipping school, she had managed to rack up over 60 absences. I found that out by calling the school office, and in a few keystrokes the clerk had the numbers. "But we called you every time she missed homeroom and you said she was home sick." Because she actually was sick in bed if she missed homeroom, and I was missing work to take care of her -- so why did you not call me when she cut classes? Because, said the woman snottily, we think a 14 year old should know better.

I was made to feel lower than a worm. I talked to the school counselor, who informed me he was in charge of hundreds of other students, some of whom "were setting lockers on fire," whereas my daughter was just quietly not causing any trouble by not being there at all.

It was the following year, when she was by then a 10th grade dropout -- I chatted with a woman I knew slightly, whose son was in a different high school, and she had the same story; same with a third mother whose son was in the third HS -- every one of us was blindsided, and none of us got any support from the school system. All of us had jobs to pay the bills. All of us were college-educated and had just assumed our kids would be too. All our kids were above-average intelligence. And apparently our kids were all champs at lying about their whereabouts and putting one over on their exhausted mothers.

So what the everloving hell.

I can tell you it would have been embarrassing to have the sheriff drop in with a truancy warrant, likewise whatever else was in store. But not nearly as devastating as finding out our bright children had cut short their educations and futures -- and that no one gave a good god damn except us.

The US incarcerates its citizens at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world, and African Americans are disproportionately affected. That's why policies like this need to go. There is no evidence they help, and it's time we reformed our justice system and weened them off their dependency on "the stick", as Kamala Harris puts it.

society's self-righteousness of thinking that we should punish those poorer than us and with less resources when we don't like outcomes that have essentially been baked into the system. Its a plan that kicks down. Coercive incentive towards those such circumstances seems entirely unwarranted, and hardly the best approach. All it does is add additional stress onto what might be say, a single mother trying to keep a roof over her head, but now she has to worry about staying out of jail too because her older son is skipping school? I don't care about the specific anecdotal story...that's an anecdote. Science says stress kills. Science says stress about these sorts of things results in what has been termed bandwidth poverty. It disperses a person's focus and attention across all of these different threats and it undermines their focus and their abilities.

Very little about Harris's record as DA in particular makes me very happy. I like a lot of other things about her. She's talking a very progressive game on a lot of other fronts...but those law enforcement roots have a taint that makes me a little queasy.

Last edited Sun Feb 3, 2019, 10:28 AM - Edit history (1)

Interesting phraseology.