Poverty – Page 3 – immigrationcourtside.com

THE UGLY SIDE OF HISTORY: AMERICA CONTINUES TO TREAT ITS ESSENTIAL MIGRANT WORKERS AS “SUB-HUMAN” — “We cannot help what the virus does; all we can control is our reaction to it, and what we do next. This pandemic has shone a light on the ugliness of our “here.” Until the US treats all its immigrants as human beings, with full equal rights, we will still be far from ‘there,’” writes Maeve Higgins in the New York Review of Books.

https://apple.news/Ay-5bxf63ML-TZgioC-ixQA

Higgins writes:

While corporations are going on life support thanks to this huge government bailout, undocumented immigrants and their families, among them US citizens, are being allowed to suffer, to starve, and, without access to health care, perhaps even to die. As things already stood, undocumented immigrants were ineligible for any federally funded public health insurance programs. On top of that, the millions who have tax IDs, so that they can work without formal authorization, are now denied help in the form of unemployment benefits—they are the only US taxpayers excluded from the coronavirus stimulus package.

. . . .

It’s also troubling to single out immigrants because of the historic scapegoating of immigrants during other health crises. The historian Alan M. Kraut writes that in the 1830s, Irish immigrants were stigmatized as bearers of cholera, and at the end of the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was dubbed the “Jewish disease.” Scapegoating also obscures a longer thread in a bigger pattern, regardless of which party or administration is in power. According to Professor Viladrich, the American government’s denying assistance to this group of working immigrants is the historic norm.

“A lot of this is related to a labor force that is disposable,” she said. “There is no contradiction here; it is very consistent with ACA, with welfare reform, all of that. The systematic exclusion of immigrants is parallel with the systematic exploitation of immigrants.”

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, lobbied hard to ensure that people without work authorization would be excluded from the CARES Act. On the Senate floor, he spoke against child tax credit going to people without social security numbers:

If you want to apply for money from the government through the child tax credit program, then you have to be a legitimate person… It has nothing to do with not liking immigrants. It has to do with saying, taxpayer money shouldn’t go to non-people.

His office later said he was referring to people who fraudulently claimed a child in order to reap the federal benefit. Whatever he meant by “legitimate person” and “non-people,” the effect was the same: in the eyes of the law, undocumented immigrants would be non-people.

Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher, used the term “bare life” to describe a life reduced to plain biological facts, the robbing of a person’s political existence by those who have the power to define who is included as a worthy human being and who is excluded. While the labor of undocumented people is gladly accepted, their humanity has been tidily erased by lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

The immigration and legal historian Daniel Kanstroom reminds us that in times of trouble, like wars or national emergencies, immigrants are the first to get thrown overboard. It was in part due to the ban on Chinese immigrants back in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century that the demand for Mexican workers increased dramatically. In his 2007 book Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History, Kanstroom explained how this ban combined with wartime labor needs in 1917 led to the US government’s systematic recruitment of Mexican workers: “From 1917 through 1921, an estimated 50,000–80,000 Mexican farm workers entered the United States under this program, establishing a legal model and cultural mindset that endured for decades to come.”

Kanstroom cites a line from the 1911 Dillingham Commission, an extensive bipartisan investigation into immigration, that “The Mexican… is less desirable as a citizen than as a laborer.” The precedent was set, and what followed was a cycle of recruitment, restriction, and expulsion. More than one million people of Mexican ancestry were forcibly removed from the United States during the Depression years. Some of the people deported by the government to Mexico were US citizens, but then as now, because of their undocumented relatives, they were subject to the same brutal treatment.

In 1942, as a wartime labor shortage loomed, the US worked out an agreement with Mexico for short-term, low-wage workers to fill in the gap. The Bracero Program, as it was known, continued until 1964, with some 4.5 million Mexican workers legally entering the country during those years. There were enormous contradictions in the way those workers were treated: ad hoc legalization programs designed to help big farmers took place at some times; then, at others, there were huge deportation drives when the demand for labor fell off—most notoriously, the terrifying round-ups of 1954’s so-called Operation Wetback.

According to the scholar of migration Nicholas De Genova, “It is precisely their distinctive legal vulnerability, their putative ‘illegality’ and official ‘exclusion,’ that inflames the irrepressible desire and demand for undocumented migrants as a highly exploitable workforce—and thus ensures their enthusiastic importation and subordinate incorporation.” It is no mistake that there remain millions of “illegal” workers of Latino ethnicity contributing their labor, taxes, and humanity to this country; it suits America very well in the good times, and always has.

. . . .

*********************************

Read the rest of Maev’s outstanding analysis of our sordid history of abusing essential immigrant workers, from enslaved African Americans, to Chinese laborers, to Latino workers who have been propping up our economy and keeping us alive during the time of pandemic. Their reward: dehumanization, degradation, deportation without due process, and sometimes death.

I speak often at Courtside about how Trump’s self-righteous, immoral, scofflaw White Nationalist cabal — folks like Miller, Bannon, Sessions, Barr, Cuccinelli, Paul — have been engineering a vile “Dred Scottification” program to dehumanize, abuse, and exploit the most vulnerable, yet often most essential, among us.

I have also highlighted how the Trump kakistocracy’s efforts to create an extralegal, unconstitutional “Reincarnation of Jim Crow” too often have been supported and encouraged by some of those highly privileged Supreme Court Justices whose job was supposed to be protecting all of us, and particularly the most vulnerable persons, from invidious Executive abuses: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.

The latest example: In the middle of humanitarian trauma, the “socially distant Justices” managed to find time for a little gratuitous cruelty: denying an application to stay the regime’s irrational, racist, and unlawful “public charge rules” that threaten the lives and safety of immigrants, their U.S. citizen families, and U.S. society as a whole. https://apple.news/ABNL4e_DtRPS4eN5m5gx1ug

Amy Howe writes at Scotusblog:

Under federal immigration law, noncitizens cannot receive a green card if the government believes that they are likely to become reliant on government assistance. The dispute now before the court arose last year, after the Trump administration defined “public charge” to refer to noncitizens who receive various government benefits, such as health care, for more than 12 months over a three-year period. The challengers had argued that the rule is “impeding efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus, preserve scarce hospital capacity and medical supplies, and protect the lives of everyone in the community” because it deters immigrants from seeking testing and treatment for the virus out of fear that it will endanger their ability to obtain a green card. The federal government countered that it has made clear that the use of publicly funded health care related to COVID-19 “will not be considered in making predictions about whether” immigrants are likely to become a public charge.

https://shar.es/aHxGIP

The Government’s argument doesn’t pass the “straight face” test. The monetary savings from this rule are minuscule; its overriding purpose was to dump on immigrant families and intimidate ethnic, primarily Hispanic, communities. It was the “brainchild” of neo-Nazi Stephen Miller. What greater proof could there be of its White Nationalist purpose? Given the regime’s well-established record of lies and unbridled hostility toward immigrants and communities of color, why would anyone have confidence in the regime’s often hollow or disingenuous “promises?”

Those of us who believe in honoring our immigrant heritage, making our constitutional guarantees reality rather than unfulfilled promises, that human values, empathy, and kindness matter, and that we can and must do better than shallow, often outright evil, folks like Trump, Miller, Cuccinelli, Roberts, Barr, et al. need to retake our Government at the ballot box this November and build a better, fairer, more humane future for America and all persons in our country.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

04-27-20

JIM CROW WINS, AMERICA LOSES, AGAIN — WHITE NATIONALIST CLOWN-IN-CHIEF 🤡 HALTS IMMIGRATION TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM MASSIVE FAILURE OF GOVERNANCE, AS FECKLESS DEMS PROTEST! — Announced By Tweet At Time When Borders Closed Anyway — A “pathetic attempt to shift blame from his Visible Incompetence to an Invisible Enemy,” Says Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) 😰👎🏻

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

April 21, 2020. Migrants didn’t bring coronavirus to the U.S. Inevitable as its arrival was, U.S. travelers returning from abroad hastened the infection. The Trump regime ignored advanced warnings, wasted time, failed to prepare, and intentionally misled the public into believing that the problem was minor and under control. As we know, it was neither. No wonder the “Chief Clown” needs to shift attention to “the usual suspects.”

Rather than being a threat, courageous, talented, hard-working migrants of all types have been at the forefront of our battle against coronavirus. They put their own lives at risk to provide health care, medical research, food, sanitation, delivery, stocking, transportation, cleaning, technology, and other essential services. Their reward from Trump, Miller, and the other regime racists: to be scapegoated and further dehumanized by those whose “malicious incompetence” actually threatens the health and safety of all Americans.

Nobody knows what the U.S. economy will look like post-COVID-19. But, we can be sure that migrants will play a key role in our future. And, of course, permanent legal immigrants are carefully screened and required to undergo health examination before being admitted.

Meanwhile, Democrats complain, but show show no sign of actually using their leverage to halt the regime’s invidious assault on migrants. They weren’t even to get all taxpaying immigrant families included in the initial stimulus payments nor have they been able to require immigration authorities to comply with best health practices for detained migrants. Nor does it look like the needs of migrants will be addressed by the latest proposed legislation, although exact details are still pending. So, their bluster is just that —bluster.

Undoubtedly, the brave lawyers of the New Due Process Army will mount legal challenges to this latest assault on the rule of law. While some challenges might succeed in the lower Federal Courts, to date the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes have shown no inclination to look critically at any of the regime’s many misuses and abuses of so-called “emergency” and “national security” rationales, even when they are transparently bogus “pretexts” for xenophobia, religious bigotry, and racism.

Perhaps it’s largely a moot point right now. Market forces affect immigration. With worldwide travel restrictions, borders closed, and 22 million out of work in the U.S., the allure of migration to the U.S. should be sharply reduced.

The Trump regime’s open hostility to immigrants plus our chaotic response to COVID-19, perhaps the world’s worst overall at this point, might make the U.S. a less attractive place for future immigration, particularly for legal migrants who have other choices. Demand for migration is normally a sign of economic and social health. As America fades into disorder under the kakistocracy, so might our ability to attract migrants, particularly those we claim to prize.

According to James Hohmann at the Washington Post, senior officials at the DHS were surprised by Trump’s late night tweet announcing the impending action. As Hohmann noted, that’s an indication of the deep thought, analysis, and preparation that went into this action. Trump has normalized incompetence and dumb decisions made based on a racist political agenda to the point where they barley cause a ripple in our distorted national discussion anymore. I’d say it was like being “goverened” by a five-year-old, but that would be a supreme insult to most five-year-olds I know.

While the “Chief Clown” can’t move fast enough to reopen the economy, even in the face of solid evidence that the it’s premature in most areas, don’t expect the bogus “immigration emergency” to end as long as this regime is in power. Crisis becomes yet another opportunity for the “worst of the worst among us” — the kakistocracy — to act on their biases and prejudices and get away with it.

Here’s a report from Rebecca Shabad @ NBC News:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/xenophobe-chief-democrats-blast-trump-s-plan-suspend-immigration-u-n1188551

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats slammed President Donald Trump after he announced that he plans to suspend immigration to the United States, arguing that such a move does nothing to protect Americans from the coronavirus and deflects attention away from his handling of the outbreak.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., tweeted that Trump is the “xenophobe. In. chief.”

“This action is not only an attempt to divert attention away from Trump’s failure to stop the spread of the coronavirus and save lives, but an authoritarian-like move to take advantage of a crisis and advance his anti-immigrant agenda. We must come together to reject his division,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Shortly after 10 p.m. ET on Monday, Trump announced in a tweet, “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”

There were no additional details. A senior administration official said Trump could sign the executive order as early as this week.

The tweet came as the death toll in the U.S. from COVID-19 topped 42,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins’ Coronavirus Resource Center.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Democrats’ 2016 vice presidential nominee, called it a “pathetic attempt to shift blame from his Visible Incompetence to an Invisible Enemy.”

. . . .

*****************

Read Rebecca’s full article at the link.

Due Process Forever. The White Nationalist Kakistocracy Never!

PWS

04-21-20

FORCED ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRATION: The Next Global Crisis Is Coming – Walls, Gulags, Weaponized Courts, & Institutionalized Cruelty Won’t Stop It! – “The benefits of accepting more migrants goes far beyond economics. Studies show that increasing immigration quotas improves both economic innovation and community resilience, proving that diversity and inclusion make the United States stronger.”

https://apple.news/AEhIK_rMuTuussVUz0LMm9w

Rosemary Dent writes for International Policy Digest:

“Pacific Island states do not need to be underwater before triggering human rights obligations to protect the right to life.” – Kate Schuetze, Pacific Researcher with Amnesty International

This is a quote in reference to a landmark human rights case brought to the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) in February 2016. Ioane Teitiota of the island nation of Kiribati was originally refused asylum as a ‘climate refugee’ by New Zealand’s authorities and was subsequently deported. While the HRC did not rule this action unlawful, the committee did set a global precedent in recognizing the serious threat to the right to life that climate change poses on many communities globally. Furthermore, the HRC urged governments to consider the broader effects of climate change in future cases, essentially validating the concept of a ‘climate refugee’ outside the context of a natural disaster.

As the impacts of climate change become more severe and widespread, the United States must prepare for the resulting surge of human migration. Climate scientists are currently predicting that both primary and secondary impacts of climate change will collectively produce 140–200 million climate refugees by 2050. This sharp increase, if mismanaged, would likely overwhelm refugee processing systems, flood points of entry to the United States and strain both society and the economy. In order to protect the United States from these potential shocks, the government must begin to prepare the appropriate infrastructure, processes, and funding for integrating climate refugees into the population. As the coronavirus ravages the country, it is highlighting many of the systemic failures that occur when the government is not adequately prepared or pro-active.

In 1990, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognized human migration as the biggest impact of climate change. The IPCC predicted that primary impacts like shoreline erosion, coastal flooding, and agricultural disruptions would create massive disruptions to the livelihoods of millions. The resulting secondary impacts relate to the effects on society globally; such as political unrest, food insecurity, and mass migrations. As four out of five refugees flee on foot to nations bordering their home country, most human migration is localized to areas affected by conflict. However, as climate change affects communities globally, the flows of refugees will no longer be concentrated to conflict zones and their surrounding nations, bringing the issue to U.S. borders. The sheer scale of migration that the IPCC is predicting renders any previous methods of dealing with refugees unsuitable for this impending crisis.

In terms of physical processing capacity, the United States is currently severely unprepared. Presently, it takes between eighteen to twenty-four months for a refugee to be screened and vetted before being approved to be resettled. This process involves in-person interviews, ongoing vetting by various intelligence agencies, health screening, and application reviews. These are all important and necessary steps to take in order to safeguard domestic security and safety of American citizens. However, expanding the capacity of these processes is necessary to prevent overwhelmed systems and employees, as it can result in errors or oversights. The administration must begin to work with sector experts and employees to determine the most efficient and effective way to expand these services.

These initial consultations are a necessary first step to creating a cohesive plan of action for the imminent refugee crisis. It would be irresponsible to simply increase the refugee intake limit without first establishing an effective process, as this would generate fragmented and disjointed state-level responses. A unified federal approach to intake climate refugees will standardize the procedure for smooth resettlement and promote economic growth.

Ensuring a legal framework is in place, with clear and inclusive classifications and resettlement plans will allow migrants to fully participate and enrich society. Unpreparedness will strain the U.S. economy, systems and society. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), admitting migrants is beneficial for a domestic economy because they add human capital and boost the working-age population. The United States has an aging population, as people over the age of sixty-five are projected to outnumber children in the United States population by 2030. If this gap continues to grow, it will cause the number of dependent individuals to be greater than those contributing to the economy. Accepting more migrants into the United States can alleviate this problem, provided that sufficient processing and resettlement programs exist to direct migrants into the workforce effectively.

The benefits of accepting more migrants goes far beyond economics. Studies show that increasing immigration quotas improves both economic innovation and community resilience, proving that diversity and inclusion make the United States stronger. In view of the abundant challenges ahead for the United States, as highlighted by the current pandemic, uniting communities and reinforcing the economy to maintain employment levels will be key to survival. As a global leader in developing methods for climate change adaptation, the United States must be prepared to take these first steps.

*****************************************

Needless to say, we’re not going to get the necessary enlightened humanitarian leadership and careful expert planning necessary to deal with such a global crisis from the Trump kakistocracy. That’s why regime change in November is essential for both the future of our nation and the future of our world.

Due Process Forever! Kakistocracy Never!

PWS

04-20-20

TIME TO RECOGNIZE THE TRUTH: UNDOCUMENTED RESIDENTS ARE KEY TO OUR SOCIETY, OUR RECOVERY, & OUR FUTURE — They Must Be Included In Coronavirus Relief, Says León Krauze @ WashPost: “Undocumented immigrants are productive members of society who deserve all the care afforded to others.“

Leon Krauze
Journalist, Author, Educator

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/13/undocumented-immigrants-essential-us-economy-deserve-federal-help-too/

Krauze writes in the WashPost:

The novel coronavirus has been particularly harsh on immigrants. After facing years of harassment and persecution from the Trump administration, the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States have now been left unprotected, unable to receive aid from the government’s historic stimulus package, even though they pay billions of dollars in taxes every year

Local and state officials, especially those in immigrant-friendly states such as California, are scrambling to find a way to help their undocumented communities, but it might not be enough. Without appropriate federal support, prompt access to more effective unemployment benefits or paid sick leave for those in need, many communities could be devastated. Left with the agonizing decision of going to work in the midst of a pandemic that requires strict limits on public movement or see their livelihood disappear, many undocumented people are already risking their health.

[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]

This is a travesty. Undocumented immigrants are productive members of society who deserve all the care afforded to others.Even this administration has deemed workers who harvest and process the country’s food supply as essential, asking them to keep their “normal work schedule” during the crisis. “It’s like suddenly they realized we are here contributing,” Nancy Silva, an immigrant from Mexico who works in the fields of Southern California, told the New York Times. “Contributing” is an understatement. The immigrant workforce is critical for a significant number of industries in the United States.

In June, I interviewed John Rosenow, a Wisconsin dairy farmer who has relied on Mexican immigrants for years. “Our industry doesn’t exist without immigrant labor,” he told me. “Eighty percent of the milk in Wisconsin is harvested by immigrants. If you took the immigrants away, way over half of the farms would go out of business.” Wisconsin’s dairy industry is not alone in its dependence on immigrant labor. Indeed, almost 20 percent of food processing workers and more than 36 percent of agricultural workers are undocumented. The health-care industry relies heavily on immigrants as well,as do the country’s construction and service businesses.

. . . .

Martínez worries that a protracted economic crisis could worsen the nativist backlash against immigration. “If things continue this way,” he said, “we could see further restrictions on work or entrepreneur visas, no matter the obvious contributions we all make to the economy.”

The United States will be worse for it, both morally and economically.

**************************

Read the complete op-ed at the link.

The well-being of the United States as a whole has never been a part of the Trump agenda. Nor is it for the White Nationalist restrictionists who promote his immigration agenda. Their agenda is based largely on racist myths and preconceived false narratives about the dangers of the “other.”

But, in any emergency creating an economic downturn there will be a race to find “scapegoats.” Indeed, essentially “caught red-handed and in full view in failure,” Trump is desperately looking to shift the blame elsewhere for his Administration’s poor initial response and lack of planning. “With great power comes no responsibility” could be his motto.

The nativists are already toting out their shopworn arguments that the pandemic should be an excuse and justification for yet harsher and more restrictive immigration measures. The rest of us need to fight back against their counterproductive nonsense.

PWS

04-14-20

MIGRANTS, REGARDLESS OF STATUS, ARE ESSENTIAL TO OUR SOCIETY & OUR RECOVERY AS A NATION – Excluding Them From Pandemic Relief Is Counterproductive

Javier H. Valdes
Co-Director
Make the Road NY

https://apple.news/AZ3raIrMIQX2JtEjfdMbJRw

Javier H. Valdés & Nedia Morsy write in the NY Daily News:

Immigrants are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they’re being left out of the federal government’s solutions.

Immigrants are our delivery workers, grocery-store and warehouse workers, nurses, janitors and more. They make up more than 50% of the city’s frontline workers. Many don’t have the luxury of working remotely; millions are going to work, putting themselves at risk to provide others with food, basic necessities and care.

Few employers provide adequate protective materials or protocols to reduce risk to workers. Amazon workers on Staten Island, many of them immigrants, have walked off the job because the company failed to provide safe working conditions despite confirmed COVID-19 cases on-site. Employees at another company’s New Jersey warehouse were told to report to work and were not given adequate protective gear, before being unlawfully told they could not take paid sick days. They continue working in a tinderbox of potential infection.

Meanwhile, other immigrants have been devastated by joblessness. Unemployment has disproportionately hit Hispanic and immigrant communities. In New York City, where a CUNY study found 29% of households have at least one newly jobless person in this crisis, the figure for Hispanic households is 41%.

Immigrant communities have also been hit hardest by the virus itself, with communities like Corona, Queens and the South Bronx reporting the highest death tolls.

We hear daily from desperate workers who have lost their jobs, but, because they are undocumented, are ineligible for unemployment insurance. And they don’t have enough savings to pay rent.

Take Alejandra, a pregnant Long Island mother, who, until last month, worked a minimum-wage factory job. She was laid off and doesn’t know how she will pay her bills. Since her health insurance was through work, she also faces the uncertainty of getting through her pregnancy uninsured.

So far, the Trump administration and Congress have mostly excluded immigrants like Alejandra from relief. The cash assistance passed in the third stimulus bill, the CARES Act, excludes Individual Taxpayer Identification Number filers, a tax status many undocumented immigrants use. Many of the millions of children and spouses of ITIN holders will also be ineligible, even if they are U.S. citizens.

. . . .

Having already prioritized the Trump administration’s enormous slush fund for Wall Street, Congress must advance a just recovery package that puts people first, regardless of immigration status. That means immediate, recurring cash payments and unemployment insurance for all. It means testing and treatment for all. It means worker safety provisions and paid sick leave for all. It means a rent freeze so families have safe spaces to self-quarantine. And it means releasing people from jails, prisons and detention centers at grave risk.

While state and local governments must also respond quickly and prioritize the most vulnerable, only Washington can ensure recovery at the necessary scale.

We need a recovery package that goes directly to working-class and low-income people and includes everyone. If we leave immigrants behind, everyone will suffer.

Valdés* is the co-executive director of Make the Road New York. Morsy is the organizing director of Make the Road New Jersey.*

***************************************

Read the complete article at the link.

The GOP Right’s view of who is “critical” or “essential” to society has been wrong from the git go. Indeed, the many undocumented workers laboring in our food supply chain have proved to be essential to our survival. In fact, they always have been essential. The pandemic and ensuing crisis has just made the truth more obvious.

But, don’t expect the dose of reality dished out by the pandemic to change GOP dogma going forward. Policies driven largely by racism, classism, and the desire to maintain disproportionate power have always dealt in myths, rather than facts, anyway. That makes them largely “factproof.”

It will be up to the rest of us, working together and cooperatively, to build a fairer, juster, more humane, better nation “on the other side” of the current crisis.

Join the New Due Process Army & Fight For a Just America For Everyone!

PWS

04-11-20

VOTE ‘EM OUT: Selfish GOP Politicos Spent Years Dismantling The Already-Inadequate U.S. Safety Net & Distributing The Spoils To Their Fat Cat Buddies Through Unnecessary Tax Cuts (a/k/a “Welfare For The Rich”) & Misdirection Of Money To Wasteful Spending — Now They Need It To Save Their Sorry Political Butts — But, Don’t Expect A Long Term Change Of Heart From A Party Of Selfish Elites & Their Wannabe Enablers!

“Vote ‘Em Out”

By Willie Nelson

If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out
That’s what Election Day is all about
The biggest gun we’ve got
Is called “the ballot box”
So if you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out

Vote ’em out (vote ’em out)
Vote ’em out (vote ’em out)
And when they’re gone we’ll sing and dance and shout
Bring some new ones in
And we’ll start that show again
And if you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out

If it’s a bunch of clowns you voted in
Election Day is comin’ ’round again
If you don’t like it now
If it’s more than you’ll allow
If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out

Listen to Willie here:

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/willienelson/voteemout.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/25/trillion-dollar-stimulus-checks/

Tracy Jan reports for the WashPost:

Conservatives gutted the social safety net. Now, in a crisis, they’re embracing it.

By Tracy Jan

March 25 at 10:00 AM ET

Throughout his term, President Trump has chipped away at the social safety net, proposing budgets that gutted housing assistance, food stamps and health insurance for the poorest Americans. When Congress rejected those cuts, the Trump administration enacted rules to make it harder to access federal benefits, such as requiring recipients to work.

Now, with businesses shuttered, workers laid off, and scores more worrying about buying groceries, being evicted and getting sick, the swelling need for federal assistance has forced even conservative lawmakers to embrace government protections in a series of sweeping stimulus bills.

Under the $2 trillion stimulus deal reached in the Senate early Wednesday, Republicans are proposing sending direct cash payments of $1,200 to individual Americans, an idea that, on the surface, echoes former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s universal basic income platform. They want to bolster the unemployment insurance system after many GOP-led states spent years enacting restrictive criteria and reducing benefits.

“Anybody who is a moderate-wage worker who just experienced an economic lockdown in their state is in distress. Most people don’t have savings,” said Robert Rector, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that guides much of the Trump administration’s policymaking.

[Facing eviction as millions shelter in place]

Rector, an architect of the 1996 federal welfare overhaul that instituted work requirements under President Bill Clinton, generally opposes safety net measures that do not promote work and marriage. But he would like to see more-generous benefits for individuals and cities in crisis in response to the coronavirus — for a finite period of time.

“Quite frankly, I’m willing to spend more money right now,” he said. “It’s a very different thing in an emergency.”

[[Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.]]

The $100-billion-plus Families First coronavirus response package Trump signed last week dramatically expands paid sick leave and family medical leave for tens of millions of workers, provisions aimed at blunting the economic impact of the pandemic.

The United States lags behind other developed countries when it comes to providing universal health care as well as paid leave for sick workers and those who have to care for family members.

“Here we had this ‘strong economy’ and all of a sudden the bubble has burst, and policymakers are scrambling to put into place basic protections other societies have,” said Rebecca Vallas, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

[As layoffs skyrocket, the holes in America’s safety net are becoming apparent]

*********************

Read Tracy’s full article at the link.

We recently went through a period of sustained economic growth and high employment that started under Obama and continued under Trump, until now. A wise nation might have used increased tax revenues to shore up the safety net, repair infrastructure, reduce spending on futile wars and defense overruns, invest for the future, and/or reduce deficit. Instead, the GOP frittered away the opportunity by mindless Government shutdowns and unnecessary tax cuts that lined the pockets of the already well-off while doing little to help the long term situation of the average American family. Indeed companies were encouraged to cut benefits to workers to pay out more to shareholders and to their executives, without much regard to the competence or value to the company of the latter.

Now, the embarrassing inadequacies and gaps of our safety net are being exposed every day. Even the GOP has turned, albeit somewhat reluctantly, to throwing several trillion into the breach, as long as it all doesn’t all go to those who need it most. Natural disasters have become the “new normal.” But, under Trump and his kakistocracy, America has consistently been underprepared to meet them.

That the hardest hit Americans get a substantial chunk of this emergency funding is a tribute to Pelosi, Schumer, and the Dems. Left to their own devices, Trump, Mitch, and the GOP would have basically mailed a modest check (or checks) to most Americans (other than the poorest) and funneled the rest into the pockets of their businesses buddies and state cronies with little oversight or accountability. Can you imagine the Grifter-in-Chief and his toadies being allowed to divvy up the loot, in secret, no less?

This emergency is unusual in nature. But, emergencies come and emergencies go. Presidents come and they (thankfully) go. What doesn’t go away is the need for a strong well-developed safety net that covers basic health care, unemployment, income assistance, and retirement benefits for all Americans, not just the wealthy. History has shown that’s not likely to happen as long as the GOP grifters remain in power.

We have a chance to save America and put ourselves on a better course for the future. Vote Trump and his GOP out in November. Your future and that of future generations will depend on it.

PWS

03-25-20

COMPLICIT 9TH CIRCUIT JUDGES CONTINUE TO CODDLE TRUMP — This Time Legal Immigrants Are The Victims Of Trump’s Judicially-Enabled White Nationalist Agenda — Judges Jay Bybee & Sandra Ikuta Tank, While Judge John Owens Files a Feeble Dissent!

https://apple.news/AJHrFUWorRIyFv_yLCkI5Aw

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

Trump nabs win on rule that could reshape legal immigration, but hold remains in place

Updated 12:17 PM EST December 6, 2019
Washington

A federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on a rule that makes it more difficult for immigrants who rely on government assistance to obtain legal status to take effect.

But the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t have an immediate practical effect because the policy is still on hold due to nationwide rulings in two separate federal courts.

In August, the administration unveiled its regulation broadening the definition of “public charge,” a provision that dates back at least to the Immigration Act of 1882. The rule introduced by the Trump administration affects people who receive most forms of Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers. It was immediately met with pushback from advocates and several states who argued that the changes would penalize immigrants who rely on temporary assistance from the government and impose costs on the states.

While the majority of the three-judge panel recognized many of these arguments, they also found that the administration would likely succeed in its argument that it has the legal authority to define what makes someone a public charge.

In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay on rulings that have blocked the so-called “public charge” rule from taking effect. The panel has jurisdiction over nine western states. Legal challenges in other parts of the country continue to halt the rule from being implemented.

The ruling was a rare victory for the President, who has repeatedly railed against the Ninth Circuit.

“We find that the history of the use of ‘public charge’ in federal immigration law demonstrates that ‘public charge’ does not have a fixed, unambiguous meaning,” wrote Judge Jay Bybee. “Rather, the phrase is subject to multiple interpretations, it in fact has been interpreted differently, and the Executive Branch has been afforded the discretion to interpret it.”

Judge John Owens dissented in part because of the “lack of irreparable harm to the government at this early stage.”

The White House lauded the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in a statement Friday, but noted the obstacles the rule still faces before it can be implemented.

“Unfortunately, as a practical matter, the ruling has accomplished nothing to vindicate the rule of law due to the destructive practice of individual district judges taking over national policy issues by issuing nationwide injunctions,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. “Such subversions of the rule of law must come to an end.”

The 73-page majority ruling recounted the history of the rule and noted that Congress didn’t define the regulation, thereby leaving it “subject to multiple interpretations.”

Bybee, however, also recognized the difficulty of the issues at hand, writing separately that “we as a nation are engaged in titanic struggles over the future of immigration in the United States.” He also appeared to take aim at administration officials, including the President, who have accused courts of making decisions based on policy preferences, as well as Congress for lack of legislative action.

“My first point is that even as we are embroiled in these controversies, no one should mistake our judgments for our policy preferences” he wrote, adding: “In the immigration context, whatever dialogue we have been having with the administration over its policies, we are a poor conversant.”

Judges Bybee and Sandra Ikuta were appointed by George W. Bush while Owens was appointed by Barack Obama.

© 2019 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Judge Jay Bybee’s majority opinion reads like something written by White Nationalist Stephen Miller: Judges should never, ever, think of the clear and logical consequences of their actions, nor should they worry themselves about an Administration with a clearly invidious racially motivated agenda of dismembering the Constitution.

And, gosh, the world might come to an end if the Executive were actually forced to act in a reasonable manner, consistent with the facts: This regulation would do far more harm than good and has, even without implementation, already been responsible for the spread of disease and immigrants not getting available health services, sometimes for U.S. citizen family members, because of the fear and confusion that Trump has intentionally sown in ethnic communities. Just because we make the services legally available, doesn’t mean we will allow you to use them if you are an immigrant. This is the kind of nonsense that Bybee promotes in his decision.

Bybee also seems totally indifferent to the simple fact that every time Article III Judges “tank” on their legal and Constitutional responsibilities, actual innocent human beings suffer, and even die, at the hands of Trump, Miller, and the rest of their bullying and cowardly White Nationalist “wrecking crew.” Inaction, particularly in the face of tyranny, can have just as grave consequences as action.

Bybee’s brain-dead colleague Judge Sandra Ikuta joined his blathering subservience to Trump’s White Nationalist mission.

Bybee even wrote separately to absolve himself of any moral responsibility for his complicity and to finger the “real culprit” here, a feckless Congress. The latter point is correct. But, according to Bybee, in the face of a Congress that has abdicated its Constitutional responsibilities, life-tenured Article III Judges also get to ignore theirs. The last thing that should be expected of the life-tenured is any “heaving lifting” or courage in the face of tyranny! Nope, they are there to “go along to get along.”

After all, while most of us have no difficulty recognizing the undisguised ethnic and racial basis for the Trump regime’s anti-immigrant agenda, and while many U.S. District Judges, and even some Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers, are able to figure it out, such level of awareness is completely beyond Court of Appeals Judges. Nor, can they be expected to discern that a regulatory proposal adopted over the objections of most of the 266,077 commenters is likely to be based on something other than reasonable, responsible, fact-based policy making: Like, perhaps racial and ethnic biases or arbitrariness that violate our Constitution. Not to mention that the policy also makes little sense from a socio-economic standpoint.

This is an Administration whose proclivity to present “pretextual reasons” to cover their tracks for improper and illegal motives has been recognized all the way up to the Supreme Court in the “Census Case.” And, while ideally policy-making should be informed by “Executive Expertise,” that clearly isn’t the case with immigration under the Trump Regime. Trump’s utter disdain, disrespect, and disregard for Executive Branch civil servants with expertise and a fact-based approach to policy making is well-established.

But, of course, all of this is too deep for Article III Judges like Bybee and Ituka to be expected to grasp. Better to just turn the other way, put on blinders, ignore the Constitution and the rule of law, and let the abuse of immigrants continue unabated. Leave the “tough stuff” to others.

But, just whom might those “others” be who will eventually put an end to this anti-Constitutional, and ultimately anti-American, rampage of Executive overreach? An interesting question when you consider that those courageous lawyers and U.S. District Judges trying to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law in the face of Trump’s onslaught have too often been “dissed,” ignored, and undercut by Bybee and his complicit colleagues.

Did our “Founding Fathers” really intend to empower a despotic Executive to act freely against individuals without without any realistic restraints? If the Trump Administration is what they aspired to, then why didn’t just stick with good old K. George III? If, on the other hand, the Trump Administration is, in fact, “Our Founders’ Worst Nightmare,” as most informed (e.g., other than GOP toadies, Fox News, and other extremest media) observers have concluded, why are the Article III Appellate Courts too gutless to say so and stand up for our rights?

Got to wonder who is going to stand up for the rights of Judges like Bybee and Ituka, and even Owens, when Trump, Miller, and the rest of the regime come for them?

The case is City and County of San Francisco v. USCIS, and you can read it at the link in Priscilla’s article.

Sadly, Due Process and Fundamental Fairness don’t seem to have any “friends in high places” these days. Ultimately, that’s going to be a problem for our nation even if the Bybees and Itukas of the world are too blind and self-interested in preserving their ivory tower sinecures to recognize it and act accordingly!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

12-06-19

NICOLE NAREA @ VOX: “CONFIRMING THE AMERICAN DREAM” –Debunking Another Trump White Nationalist False Narrative: Even The Poorest Immigrants Quickly Adapt & Become Self-Sufficient! — “The adult children of immigrants, almost universally, show more upward economic mobility than their peers whose parents were born in the United States.”

https://apple.news/A54Jcss-aTZ21cr6npgpyDA

Nicole Narea reports at Vox News:

A new study shows that even the poorest immigrants lift themselves up within a generation

It appears that the idea of the “American Dream” has some truth.

By Nicole Narea @nicolenarea Nov 1, 2019, 2:20pm EDT

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Carmen del Thalia Mallol holds her daughter Lia, 4, after becoming a new US citizen during a naturalization ceremony inside the National September 11 Memorial Museum on July 2, 2019, in New York City. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The adult children of immigrants, almost universally, show more upward economic mobility than their peers whose parents were born in the United States. Indeed, a new working paper by Stanford University’s Ran Abramitzky; Princeton University’s Leah Platt Boustan and Elisa Jácome; and the University of California Davis’ Santiago Pérez finds that this is especially true for the lowest-income immigrants and remains true for the most recent cohorts for which data is available.

Drawing from census data, publicly available administrative data, and federal income tax data, they traced the income levels of millions of fathers and sons over time dating back to 1880. The children of immigrants climbed higher in the income rankings than those born to US natives across history and in 44 of the 47 sending countries they studied.

The paper contradicts President Donald Trump’s rhetoric suggesting that immigrants drain the social safety net rather than pulling themselves up and that immigrants from a select few countries are more desirable than others. On that basis, the president has pursued numerous policies aimed at preventing low-income immigrants, particularly those from what he has referred to as “shithole countries,” from entering and settling in the US.

Even poor immigrants’ kids achieve success

Prior research has shown that immigrants who start out earning less than their US-born peers are unlikely to catch up in their lifetimes. And among more recent immigrants, that initial income gap is growing bigger and harder to close.

But the new study shows that, even if immigrants start out with low income levels, most are not only catching up eventually but surpassing their US-born peers — even if it takes a generation.

Even children of the poorest immigrants from most countries have higher levels of economic mobility than their peers born to American parents. https://economics.princeton.edu/2019/10/25/immigrant-mobility-abramitzky-boustan/

The typical explanation offered for this kind of immigrant achievement is some inherent quality resulting from cultural differences, such as a strong work ethic or placing a value on education. But the working paper offers a more tangible explanation for the mobility gap: Immigrants tend to settle where there is more economic opportunity and take jobs that are below their true skill level.

“We don’t even have to reach for these cultural explanations,” Boustan said in an interview. “A lot of it has to do with immigrants being willing to move anywhere and choosing locations where there are growing industries and a good set of job opportunities for their kids. Those are choices that immigrants are making that are different from the US-born and that could be a feature of immigrant success.”

It makes sense why immigrants choose to move to areas of higher economic opportunity as compared to the US-born. Without social and professional networks anchoring them to one place, they are more “footloose” and flexible in where they ultimately settle, Abramitzky said. Historically, that has meant that foreign-born populations tend to cluster in urban areas.

The first generation arriving in the US, however, might also have difficulty finding work at income levels that reflect their true talents and abilities due to a variety of factors: limited English skills, lack of an established professional network in the US, and discrimination, Boustan said.

A classic scenario might be a Russian scientist who comes to the US and works as a cab driver. In that case, the second generation might be able to move up more quickly than their father’s income ranking would suggest.

“What might matter for the kids is what their father’s true talents and abilities were, rather than where he gets placed in the labor market,” Boustan said.

The economic mobility gap, the paper finds, is particularly stark when examining the children of those on the lowest rungs of the income ladder, ranked below the 25th percentile. In that category, the children of immigrants climb three to six percentile rank points higher than the children of natives.

The gap narrows, however, when examining families from the top income levels. And it even reverses slightly when comparing children growing up in the same geographic area.

The paper, while expansive, has some limitations: It relies on federal income tax records that likely do not capture unauthorized immigrants, the primary target of the president’s ire as he attempts to make the southern border all but impenetrable to migrants from Central America attempting to cross illegally.

But it’s reasonable to speculate that unauthorized immigrants would also settle in areas of economic opportunity and take jobs below their skill level, potentially resulting in similar rates of economic mobility as compared to other immigrants, the researchers said. The only caveat could be that unauthorized immigrants and their children experience more discrimination in the US, limiting their access to higher-paying jobs.

All kinds of immigrants move up the ladder

Boustan said the paper pushes back on the idea of “model minorities”: that minorities from certain ethnic or racial backgrounds tend to find more socioeconomic success than others. It’s typically been used to describe Asians in contrast to Hispanics and African Americans. But regardless of race or ethnicity, children of immigrants from the overwhelming majority of the countries they studied performed better than the US-born.

The paper’s findings also challenge Trump’s ideas about who should be allowed to immigrate to the US.

In January 2018, he reportedly derided immigrants from what he considers “shithole countries,” including El Salvador and African nations, while simultaneously calling for “more people from Norway.” And he infamously maligned Mexican immigrants when launching his campaign for president in 2015.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us.”

In fact, immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, and African nations such as Nigeria are all performing better than the US-born. And in past waves of immigration, immigrants from Norway actually performed worse than the US-born.

“We take it as a warning against taking a nostalgic view of immigration,” Abramitzky said.

****************************

Trump’s (and his fellow White Nationalists’) racist-inspired false narratives are harming America and preventing us from becoming even greater. Obviously, a smarter, more decent Administration would cut the xenophobic nonsense, legalize the law-abiding migrants already here, and propose ways to expand legal immigration across the board.

Those actions, not expensive, mean-spirited, and ultimately futile “enforcement only” gimmicks, would address the “immigration issue” in a fair, humane, and mutually beneficial manner. Also, by reducing the “unnecessarily undocumented population” and providing more realistic opportunities for future legal immigration and integration into our society, immigration enforcement would become far more focused, efficient, and effective.

Instead of treating needed workers and legitimate refugees like “bank robbers” (often actually ignoring the real criminals), the DHS could concentrate on a smaller number of individuals attempting to evade a more reasonable and realistic system. Additionally, with real lines for legal immigration, rather than imaginary ones the Trump crowd often disingenuously references, being sent “to the back of the line” would be more of a deterrent than it is now.

Although, as Nicole points out, the study didn’t specifically cover undocumented individuals, the findings of this study certainly match my “real life” experiences in Immigration Court. The overwhelming majority of those coming before me on the non-detained docket were basically decent, law abiding folks performing productive functions in our communities. For a short time at the end of the Obama Administration, ICE actually recognized the futility of removing such individuals and exercised “prosecutorial discretion” (“PD”) through “administrative closing” in many cases where removal would actually diminish our nation while wasting limited court time.

Those very few individuals who ”flunked out” of the “PD program by getting in trouble were returned to court, usually on the detained docket, and in most cases removed. The others formed a “natural core” for a future legislative legalization program that a smarter, kinder, braver Administration would have proposed.

Naturally, one of the first things the Trump White Nationalists tried to do was end two of the most successful programs ever instituted within DHS: DACA and PD. The results of these mean-spirited and short sighted actions have been highly problematic for the individuals involved as well as our country.

PWS

11-02-19

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: “Twofer” — Trump Combines Assault On Healthcare With Attack On Legal Immigrants!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-found-a-way-to-simultaneously-sabotage-our-health-care-and-immigration-systems/2019/10/07/6fb734dc-e943-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html

President Trump sabotaged the health-care system. Separately, he’s sabotaged the immigration system.

And now, in a presidential twofer, on Friday night the administration found a way to sabotage both simultaneously.

Unable to repeal Obamacare, the Trump administration has worked to make it less functional and more expensive. It has done this by zeroing out the individual mandate, expanding the availability of cheap but worthless junk insurance and curtailing the annual open-enrollment period, among other actions.

The cumulative effect of these policies has been to reduce the share of people who have (real, non-junk) insurance; those still motivated to seek comprehensive insurance tend to be sicker and more expensive to cover. The predictable result? Premiums hundreds of dollars higher than they would otherwise be, according to estimates from health-care analyst Charles Gaba.

And, unsurprisingly, those who don’t qualify for the subsidies that shield enrollees from these price hikes are dropping out of the individual market altogether because they can’t afford the insurance.

But no worries. For years, administration officials and fellow Republican lawmakers have argued this is merely an expansion of a fundamental American freedom — the freedom to go uninsured.

Simultaneously, of course, the administration has also been undermining our legal immigration system. Emphasis on “legal” here: For all of Trump’s vitriol for undocumented immigrants, he’s also been targeting people who are trying to come to this country lawfully.

Among the creative, non-legislative ways the administration has sabotaged the legal immigration system: huge and arbitrary delays in visa and citizenship application processing; cruel and inhumane treatment of families seeking asylum; reductions in the refugee admissions cap to its lowest level on record; and, of course, the travel ban placed on several majority-Muslim countries.

And then there are all of the policies intended to penalize legal immigrants whom the Trump administration claims are a financial burden.

To be clear: Immigrants are in fact a net fiscal boon to the United States, according to a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and their children are “among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population.” But Trump and his aides are convinced that immigrants are, and will forever be, a drain on society.

Or, as Trump’s acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Ken Cuccinelli put it: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet.”

Cuccinelli was talking about a new administration rule — currently being challenged in eight lawsuits — that makes it harder for immigrants to receive green cards if they have ever used or might someday need safety-net benefits such as food stamps or Medicaid. But it’s actually one of several policies the administration has devised to drive down immigration numbers under the guise of fiscal prudence.

The latest such development was rolled out Friday night. This new policy, issued via presidential proclamation, bars issuance of visas to immigrants unless they can prove they will obtain health insurance within 30 days of their arrival in the United States, or otherwise demonstrate that they can pay medical expenses out of pocket.

That’s right, the Trump administration has brought back the individual mandate, but for immigrants only — the GOP’s supposed commitment to “freedom” notwithstanding. The Migration Policy Institute estimates the change could end up excluding about two-thirds of future immigrants.

The new policy is vague about how would-be immigrants would even be able to prove they meet the new requirement. Maybe they’d need to somehow buy insurance before they leave their home countries, while still waiting in that interminable visa queue; maybe not.

What’s more, if they get subsidized insurance through the individual exchanges, Trump’s proclamation says it won’t count. This is yet another way the administration is sabotaging Obamacare, which explicitly allows immigrants to purchase subsidized exchange insurance. It also places low- and moderate-income immigrants in an impossible position, since they’re now stuck buying insurance at the sticker prices that the Trump administration has helped jack up through its earlier rounds of Obamacare sabotage.

Under the proclamation, immigrants could instead buy junk insurance. But, as the administration also surely knows, these Trumpcare plans cover almost nothing. So forcing immigrants to buy such policies seems unlikely to shield taxpayers (or hospitals) from immigrants’ emergency medical costs — which is allegedly the goal here.

Of course there is also a fundamental tension between arguing that uninsured immigrants impose huge costs on the country but uninsured native-born Americans don’t cost anyone anything. But no one said consistency was this administration’s strong suit — aside from its consistent desire to find new ways to destroy as many institutions as possible.

********************

Yup! Catherine nails the GOP’s disingenuous approach to almost everything. But, perhaps there are unifying principles of the GOP: hate, dehumanization, cruelty, selfishness, intolerance, intellectual dishonesty, and short-sightedness.

Of course the requirements of the new “policy” are “vague.” That’s because the intent is not to have immigrants get insurance coverage before they come. The real intent is to keep them from coming at all even though they meet all of the legal requirements. It’s just another aspect of the Trump GOP’s racist, extralegal assault on all migrants, legal and undocumented. The next time you hear one of his GOP or bureaucratic sycophants disingenuously claim that they are “in favor of legal immigration, just not unlawful migration” call out “BS” at the top of your voice!

Catherine’s column “connecting the dots” supports my own observation that the Trump GOP’s attack on migrants is just a “placeholder” for attacks on the majority of Americans who don’t fit the GOP’s toxic White Nationalist agenda.

PWS

10-09-19

“NEO KNOW NOTHING” KELLY LOBS RACIAL GRENADES AT HARD-WORKING MIGRANTS & THEIR “ASSIMILATION” — “Like Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Kelly has made it clear that ‘law and order’ — perhaps based on stereotypical ideas of outsiders — will be the dominant philosophy he employs when responding to immigrants seeking the American Dream that Kelly’s ancestors pursued.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/05/11/john-kellys-assimilation-into-a-hard-line-stance-against-illegal-immigrants/?utm_term=.e2507001a73c

Eugene Scott writes in “The Fix” @ WashPost:

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly provided another reminder that he continues to support President Trump’s hard-line immigration policies in an NPR interview that aired Friday.

Kelly was defending the Justice Department’s policy that includes separating children from parents being prosecuted for immigrating illegally into the United States, when he told NPR that undocumented immigrants do not “easily assimilate” into American culture. Here’s what he said:

The vast majority of the people that move illegally into the United States are not bad people. They’re not criminals. They’re not MS-13. … But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They’re overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English; obviously that’s a big thing. … They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills. They’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws. … The big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.

Kelly’s belief is a popular one from hard-line conservative groups, and that line of thinking often extends to claims that undocumented and legal immigrants are more of a drain on the American economy than an asset.

In a 2016 piece on welfare use in immigrant households published by the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group advocating for lower immigration, Jason Richwine claims that both legal and illegal immigrant households cost taxpayers more than native citizens in welfare dollars than the average household of native-born citizens, and that “The greater consumption of welfare dollars by immigrants can be explained in large part by their lower level of education and larger number of children compared to natives.”

However, other right-leaning think tanks disputed the findings in the CIS report. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, picked apart the methodology used by CIS to support their claims, calling their findings “exaggerated.”

CIS — and many hard-liners on immigration — don’t want to see less illegal immigration. They want to see less immigration period, wrote Alex Nowrasteh, a senior immigration policy analyst at Cato. If they can argue that immigrants struggle to “Americanize” well and instead end up draining this country’s resources, they hope lawmakers will back policy ideas that keep immigration numbers as close to zero as possible.

It’s true that immigrants from rural communities, with little education, no command of English and a lack of skills to gain meaningful employment do not find assimilating into “modern society” easy. But it’s not impossible. Beginning more than a century ago, nearly 2 million immigrants from Ireland — the country from which Kelly’s ancestors descend — came to the United States, where they faced harsh backlash from native citizens. People of Irish heritage now make up 10 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Census Bureau.

As with previous cases, not all of Kelly’s statements Friday totally meshed with the president’s.

In the same NPR interview, Kelly spoke in favor of granting a path to citizenship for immigrants who have been in the United States under temporary protected status from countries like El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras, if they had been here long enough to assimilate.

You take the Central Americans that have been here 20-plus years. I mean if you really start looking at them and saying, “Okay, you know you’ve been here 20 years. What have you done with your life?” Well, I’ve met an American guy and I have three children and I’ve worked and gotten a degree or I’m a brick mason or something like that. That’s what I think we should do — for the ones that have been here for shorter periods of time, the whatever it was that gave them TPS status in the first place. If that is solved back in their home countries they should go home.

Still, Kelly’s strong stance against illegal immigration will probably land well with Trump’s base, and could help him remain in good favor with his boss despite frequent reports that Trump is often frustrated with Kelly’s performance in other areas. Kelly spoke to NPR the same day Trump reportedly unleashed a tirade on Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, a close Kelly ally, over what Trump views as unsatisfactory border security.

But it’s worth highlighting that significant percentages of Americans don’t share the Trump White House’s hardest positions on immigration. And separating children from their parents has previously been a line that even conservatives did not want to cross.

Like Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Kelly has made it clear that “law and order” — perhaps based on stereotypical ideas of outsiders — will be the dominant philosophy he employs when responding to immigrants seeking the American Dream that Kelly’s ancestors pursued.

************************************

Also in the Post, Karen Tumulty provides a little history lesson to Kelly:

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly wants you to know that he does not think most immigrants who come to this country illegally are bad people. His concern, as he explained it in an interview with National Public Radio on Thursday, is that they are “overwhelmingly rural people,” with little education. “They’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society,” he said.

It would be disturbing to hear any person in a position of trust express such lack of regard for the fundamental values that have made this country what it is. But in Kelly’s case, it was particularly egregious because … well, because his name is Kelly.

His ancestors came from Ireland, as mine did. He grew up on Bigelow Street in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, where reminders of his heritage — and of the opportunities made possible by his immigrant forebears — would have been everywhere he looked.

The Irish came to America with plenty of assimilation challenges of their own. They had mostly lived in rural areas, which made it difficult for them to adjust to the big cities in which they found themselves. They had little education. As they were fleeing seven years of famine, few had been able to scrape together more than the fare to get them on the boat over. They arrived hungry and sick after a journey that lasted four weeks. They were seen as lazy and shiftless. In the 1850s, 70 percent of charity recipients in New York City were Irish.

They were hated for their religion as well. In Boston, posters proclaimed: “All Catholics and all persons who favor the Catholic Church are … vile imposters, liars, villains, and cowardly cutthroats.” Some back then might have said that when Ireland sent its people, they were not sending their best.

That wave of Irish immigration arrival sparked a nativist backlash, and even a new political party, The Know-Nothings. This was no mere fringe movement, as Smithsonian Magazine has noted:

At its height in the 1850s, the Know Nothing party, originally called the American Party, included more than 100 elected congressmen, eight governors, a controlling share of half-a-dozen state legislatures from Massachusetts to California, and thousands of local politicians. Party members supported deportation of foreign beggars and criminals; a 21-year naturalization period for immigrants; mandatory Bible reading in schools; and the elimination of all Catholics from public office. They wanted to restore their vision of what America should look like with temperance, Protestantism, self-reliance, with American nationality and work ethic enshrined as the nation’s highest values.

Does all that sound familiar? There are still Know-Nothings among us. They are the people who forget their own history.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/05/11/john-kellys-know-nothingism/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3f18462ae01f

***********************************

Yeah, but Kelly’s ancestors were (presumably) White. So, in the long run that outweighed their (presumed) Catholicism and made them OK (but only in retrospect).

I met migrants, legal, undocumented, first generation, second generation in my courtroom every working day for more than a decade. The vast majority have skills, lots of them, along with courage, resourcefulness, a work ethic, determination, and persistence that would put most “native-born Americans” to shame, particularly Trump, his family, and his boorish, overprivileged, under-humanized cronies.

The skills migrants often bring — working with crops, construction, child care, elder care, cleaning, repairing, building, cooking, teaching, coaching, running small businesses are absolutely essential to our economic survival. They just aren’t the skills that are recognized and respected by arrogant, bigoted, members of the privileged classes like Trump, Kelly, Sessions, Cotton, Pence, etc. But, as I’ve pointed out before, none those restrictionists would last very long or be very valuable picking lettuce or laying shingles in the hot sun.

And, many migrants don’t “choose” to come here outside the legal system. Conditions in their home countries, along with the US’s stubborn refusal (magnified by this Administration) to set up viable overseas refugee processing in Central America leaves many no realistic choice but to come here to seek refuge through our asylum system.

Under both U.S. and international law they have every right to seek refuge in the U.S. and to receive humane treatment and a fair and unbiased determination of their claims for protection — something that is not happening under the current system as administered under the toxic, biased, and often lawless leadership of Trump & Sessions. Such refugee migrations have been taking place for decades and will continue, in some form or another, until the problems causing individuals to flee their home countries are addressed by leaders much wiser, more talented, and less bigoted than Trump, Sessions, Pence, and Kelly.

Also, just how are folks being encouraged to “assimilate” by an Administration that spreads racial slurs, bias, and false narratives, encourages racists within its own “base,” advances bogus rationales to terminate the legal status of many long-time residents, rails mindlessly against legal immigration, and actually prides itself on destroying migrant families and spreading terror and fear among ethnic communities?

Another of my predictions coming true: Kelly’s reputation and integrity will fit in a thimble with plenty of space left over by the time he finally parts ways with “Don the Con” and his ugly, dysfunctional White House Circus.

PWS

05-14-18

HERESY IN THE HOUSE?: DID RYAN AX CHAPLAIN FOLLOWING UNWELCOME REMINDER THAT “THE POOR ARE CHILDREN OF GOD?” – Is He Seeking WASP Male Evangelical Replacement Qualified To Minister To Needs Of House GOP Kleptocracy!👹👹👹

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/paul-ryan-patrick-conroy?mbid=nl_th_5ae255955bf9e03bdb5e6fd3&CNDID=48297443&spMailingID=13395516&spUserID=MjMzNDQ1MzU1ODE2S0&spJobID=1382357241&spReportId=MTM4MjM1NzI0MQS2

Bess Levin writes in Vanity Fair:

Levin Report

DID PAUL RYAN FIRE THE HOUSE CHAPLAIN FOR TAX-CUT BLASPHEMY?

It sure seems like something he’d do.

BY

BESS LEVIN

APRIL 26, 2018 6:27 PM

“I don’t care who you are, you bite your god damn tongue!”

By Alex Edelman/Getty Images.

The December 2017 passage of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” was thrilling to a great many people, among them Donald Trump, corporate America, and the uber-rich, whom the legislation was structured to disproportionately benefit. But in truth, the day belonged to one man: CrossFit devoteeand Eddie Munster doppelgängerPaul Ryan, who had fantasized about redistributing wealth to those at the top since his boyhood days in Wisconsin, devoted his entire career to making it happen, and promptly announced his retirement when it became clear that his other lifelong dream—dismantling the social safety net and cutting off the lazy takers—wasn’t going to happen ’til at least 2021. So we imagine it must have really frosted Ryan’s cookies when, in the midst of many a late night and early morning on the Hill devoted to dragging this sucker across the finish line, Reverend Patrick Conroy, the House chaplain since 2011, had the stones to include these outrageous lines in one of his prayers:

“God of the universe, we give You thanks for giving us another day. Bless the Members of this assembly as they set upon the work of these hours, of these days. . . . As legislation on taxes continues to be debated this week and next, may all Members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great Nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle. May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”

Ryan, one assumes, had never heard such sacrilegious words from a man of the cloth and was probably of a mind to drag Conroy out of the room by his collar and throw him out on the Capitol steps then and there. But because he is a disciplined lawmaker whose Holy Grail was so close he could taste it, he stayed focused and decided to deal with the blasphemy at a later time. And apparently that time came earlier this month, per The Hill:

House Chaplain Patrick Conroy’s sudden resignation has sparked a furor on Capitol Hill, with sources in both parties saying he was pushed out by Speaker Paul Ryan. Conroy’s own resignation announcement stated that it was done at Ryan’s request.

“As you have requested, I hereby offer my resignation as the 60th Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives,” the April 15 letter to Ryan, obtained by The Hill, states.

While one source claimed that “some of the more conservative evangelical Republicans didn’t like that the Father had invited a Muslim person to give the opening prayer,” others offered a more compelling reason: Ryan “took issue with a prayer on the House floor that could have been perceived as being critical of the G.O.P. tax cut bill.” According to a Democratic aide, Conroy’s ouster was “largely driven by [the] speech on the tax bill that the speaker didn’t like.” The New York Times notes that a week after his sermon, a staffer from Ryan’s office told Conroy “We are upset with this prayer; you are getting too political,” and that the next time he saw the Reverend in person, Ryan told him “Padre, you just got to stay out of politics.” AshLee Strong, a spokesperson for the speaker, declined to explain the personnel decision, noting only Minority Leader Nancy Pelosiand her office “were fully read in and did not object.”

Now, could Ryan have forced the guy to resign for completely legitimate reasons? Sure! But it also seems entirely plausible that this is exactly the sort of thing that would constitute a bridge too far in his book. Stand up for neo-Nazis? Water off a duck’s back. But suggest that a $1.5 trillion tax cut should help all Americans and not just the already-rich? That’s obviously a (potentially!) fireable offense right there. And don’t bother saying sorry after the fact to Ryan, Reverend. Say sorry to God. As a major corporate shareholder and beneficiary of the legislation, you’re in the doghouse with him, too.

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Read the rest of the “Levin Report” at the link!

Obviously, it takes a very special type of pastor to provide spiritual counseling to a bunch of guys who have devoted their entire careers to taking from the underprivileged and giving to the over-privileged. It also takes a very special kind of theological scholarship, since almost all of Christian theology suggests that exactly the opposite is required and that greed, promoting inequality, and abusing the less fortunate are actually sins that could have serious repercussions in eternal life.

These dudes have to face the very real chance that they will pass into an another world where those whom they have dispossessed, mistreated, mocked, dumped on, and scorned in life will be the “honored ones” and the GOP lifetime grifters will be at their mercy. The day of reckoning for today’s GOP and their evangelical backers could get ugly — they almost have to hope that there is no God, or if there is, that She is not a “Just God” or they will have “Hell to Pay” so to speak! No wonder they are in need of serious spiritual help!

Ryan apparently had to act quickly to scotch the blasphemous rumors floating around the Hill: JESUS WASN’T REALLY A RICH WASP. HE WASN’T EVEN A CHRISTIAN, AND HE DIDN’T BELONG TO ANY CHURCH AT ALL. HE SUPPOSEDLY TURNED FISH INTO LOAVES OF BREAD AND DIDN’T EVEN DENY BREAD (let alone cake) TO THE LGBTQ GUYS IN THE CROWD!

Some misguided souls are even claiming that ”our very own” Jesus Christ actually was an indigent swarthy Palestinian disgruntled Jew who led a ragtag band of vagrants — some of whom had quit gainful employment and abandoned their families — around Palestine undermining legal authority, failing to respect THE LAW, and spreading seditious lies like “The meek shall inherit the earth,” “Blessed are the poor,” and “Fat Cats riding camels will never make it through the eye of a needle or pass through the gates of Heaven!” They were “takers” — non-self-supporting, non-contributors to the community, and lived on handouts and public charity!

Some apparently have the audacity to claim that Jesus spoke of a “spiritual kingdom” unrelated to material possessions and tax breaks where rich White Guys would be judged equally with everyone else. Shucks, what’s the purpose of being rich & White if it won’t even buy you preferential treatment? Heck, even a poor guy who wasn’t a lobbyist would have direct access to Mick Mulvaney under that scenario!

This obviously false Prophet reputedly was so poor that he couldn’t afford a lawyer for his trial, not even Rudy Guiliani. He tried to represent himself, and the result was pretty ugly.

False news, false news, false news! Gotta find a true minister who preaches the gospel according to Fox & Friends!

PWS

04-28-18

🏀🏀FINAL FOUR RETRO: Back When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Was Still Known As Lew Alcindor, He Was So Incredibly Great That The White Guys Who Ran The NCAA Changed The Rules To Stop Him — It Just Made Him Even Better! – And, He Never Was Afraid To Stand Up For Black America!

https://theundefeated.com/features/lew-alcindor-kareem-abdul-jabbar-ucla-boycot-1968-olympics/

Johnny Smith reports for theundefeated.com:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is known as one of the greatest basketball players in history. During his 20-year professional career with the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers, he appeared in 19 All-Star Games, won six championships and collected six MVP awards. In retirement, he has become a prominent cultural commentator and writer, a leading voice on the intersection between sports and politics. Recently, he published a memoir about his collegiate career at UCLA, Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court.

Fifty years ago he was the most dominant college basketball player America had ever seen. Between 1967 and 1969, he led UCLA to three consecutive national titles and an 88-2 record. Yet, his legacy transcends the game; in the age of Black Power, he redefined the political role of black college athletes. In 1968, when black collegians debated boycotting the Olympics, Lew Alcindor, as he was then still known, emerged as the most prominent face in the revolt on campus.

Why did Alcindor refuse to play in the Olympics? To answer that question we have to return to Harlem, New York, in July 1964, the first of many long, hot summers.

HARLEM, 1964

Basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (center), then Lew Alcindor, speaks at a news conference at the Power Memorial High School gymnasium in New York City.

DON HOGAN CHARLES/NEW YORK TIMES CO./GETTY IMAGES

The death of James Powell, a 15-year-old black youth from the Bronx, outraged Alcindor. On a sweltering July day in 1964, outside an apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Lt. Thomas Gilligan, a white off-duty cop, shot and killed James, piercing the ninth-grader’s chest with a bullet from a .38 revolver. Conflicting accounts grayed a story that many saw in black and white. Gilligan, a 37-year-old war veteran, claimed that James charged at him with a knife, but bystanders insisted that James was unarmed.

Two nights later, on July 18, in the heart of Harlem, a peaceful rally organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) turned into a march against police brutality. Demanding justice for Powell, hundreds of demonstrators surrounded the 123rd Street precinct, some threatening to tear the building apart “brick by brick.” Incensed by decades of racial profiling and violent policing, the angry crowd began hurling rocks and bottles at officers. Suddenly, a scuffle broke out and the cops rushed the protesters, cracking their nightsticks against a swarm of black bodies. In a matter of minutes, violence spread through Harlem like a grease fire in a packed tenement kitchen.

That same night, Alcindor, an extremely tall, rail-thin 17-year-old, emerged from the 125th Street subway station, planning to investigate the CORE rally. Climbing up the steps toward the street, he could smell smoke coming from burning buildings. Angry young black men took to the streets and tossed bricks and Molotov cocktails through store windows. Looters grabbed radios, jewelry, food and guns. The sound of gunshots rang like firecrackers. Trembling with fear, Alcindor worried that his size and skin color made him an easy target for an angry cop with an itchy trigger finger. Sprinting home, all he could think about was that at any moment a stray bullet could strike him down.

“Right then and there, I knew who I was, who I had to be. I was going to be black rage personified, Black Power in the flesh.”

For six days, Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant burned. The “Harlem race riots” resulted in 465 arrests, hundreds of injuries and one death. When the smoke cleared, Martin Luther King Jr. visited New York and encouraged black residents to demonstrate peacefully. But Alcindor, like many black youths, had grown impatient with King’s pleas for nonviolence and began questioning the direction of the civil rights movement. That summer, writing for the Harlem Youth Action Project newspaper, he interviewed black citizens who were tired of segregated schools, dilapidated housing, employment discrimination and wanton police violence.

The Harlem uprising fueled his anger toward white America and convinced him more than ever that he had to turn his rage into action. “Right then and there, I knew who I was, who I had to be,” he said a few years later. “I was going to be black rage personified, Black Power in the flesh.” Silence was no longer an option. In the future, he vowed, he would speak his mind.

. . . .

A few days after UCLA beat Dayton for the national title, the NCAA’s National Basketball Committee banned the dunk. The committee argued that too many players got injured stuffing the ball through the hoop or trying to block a player attacking the basket. Coaches were concerned, too, about players breaking backboards and bending rims. Curiously, the committee also claimed, “There is no defense against the dunk, which upsets the balance between offense and defense.” But the truth was that Alcindor threatened the sport’s competitive balance. He upset the balance between offense and defense.

Immediately, critics deemed the dunk ban the “Alcindor rule.” In a time of white backlash against black advancement, the UCLA star interpreted the rule through the lens of race. He could not help but feel like the lily-white committee had targeted him. “To me the new ‘no-dunk’ rule smacks a little of discrimination,” he told the Chicago Defender. “When you look at it … most of the people who dunk are black athletes.

. . . .

Not even the dunk ban could stop Alcindor from dominating the game. In fact, the new restriction made him even better. It forced him to expand his offensive arsenal and develop a devastating signature move: the “skyhook.”

He made it look so easy. With the cool confidence of Miles Davis, Alcindor transformed his game. The skyhook became an innovative expression of individuality and empowerment, a reflection of his intelligence and creativity, an active mind that could see the ball falling through the net like a raindrop the moment the leather sphere touched his fingertips. Over and over again, he pivoted toward the basket, extended his arm toward the sky and gracefully flipped the ball over the outstretched arms of any player who dared to guard him. “Of all the weapons in sports,” Sports Illustrated’s Gary Smith wrote of his skyhook, “none has ever been more dependable or unstoppable, less vulnerable to time, than that little stride, turn, hop and flick from far above his head.”

CLEVELAND, 1967

On June 4, 1967, at 105-15 Euclid Ave. in Cleveland, a collection of some of the top black athletes in the country met with — and eventually held a news conference in support of — world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (front row, second from left), about Ali’s refusal to be drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967. News conference shows (front row) Bill Russell, Boston Celtics; Ali; Jim Brown and Lew Alcindor. Back row (left to right): Carl Stokes, Democratic state representative; Walter Beach, Cleveland Browns; Bobby Mitchell, Washington Redskins; Sid Williams, Cleveland Browns; Curtis McClinton, Kansas City Chiefs; Willie Davis, Green Bay Packers; Jim Shorter, former Brown; and John Wooten, Cleveland Browns.

BETTMAN/GETTY IMAGES

Alcindor refused to let the white world define him as a basketball player and as a man. He no longer considered himself a “Negro.” He was black and proud. As he became more politically self-aware, he identified with the most successful, outspoken black professional athletes in America: Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell and Jim Brown. He admired their political activism and their courage to confront white supremacy.

. . . .

Alcindor suddenly found himself at the center of a national controversy. Critics called him a disgrace, unpatriotic and much worse. If he did not play for the U.S. Olympic team, then UCLA should revoke his scholarship, they charged. Many white Americans opposed the boycott because they believed that sports were meritocratic and immune to racism. But their objections also revealed discomfort with assertive black athletes who challenged the power structure of American sports, a plantation culture that valued black bodies more than black minds. New York Times columnist Arthur Daley couldn’t imagine Alcindor thinking for himself and suggested that Edwards was exploiting the UCLA star’s fame for personal gain. “I think that charge is sheer idiocy,” Edwards told the San Jose Mercury News. “How can you manipulate anybody like Lew Alcindor?”

But Alcindor was his own man, and his revolt emanated from the deep history of African-American activism and the burgeoning Black Power movement on campus. What the sports establishment failed to recognize was that his experience in Harlem, his identification with Malcolm X and his connection to Ali had transformed the way he viewed protest, patriotism and American sports. How could he stay silent while police brutality, poverty and prejudice afflicted the black community? How could anyone expect him to represent the United States when the moment he confronted the nation’s racism bigots deluged him with hate mail and death threats? How could they expect him to love America when America didn’t love him back?

NEW YORK, 1968

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then Lew Alcindor, sits on the bench at the UCLA-Holy Cross game at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1968.

BARTON SILVERMAN/NEW YORK TIMES CO./GETTY IMAGES

Alcindor had made up his mind. He wouldn’t play for the USA. Although the boycott movement lacked widespread support and ultimately stalled, he and his UCLA teammates Mike Warren and Lucius Allen refused to attend the Olympic trials. His explanation, however, complicated his image as a Black Power hero. Alcindor said that if he participated, then he would miss class and delay his graduation, which was true, but only part of his rationale. He also told a reporter from Life magazine that he and his UCLA teammates “don’t want to get caught in the middle of anything.” He had principles, but discussing them publicly only brought more stress. It was much easier to distance himself from Edwards and the OPHR.

“Yeah, I live here, but it’s not really my country.”

In the summer of 1968, he worked for Operation Sports Rescue, a youth program in New York City. Leading basketball clinics, Alcindor mentored African-American and Puerto Rican youths, encouraging them to get an education. In July, he appeared on NBC’s Today show to promote the program. Co-host Joe Garagiola, a former professional baseball player, began the interview by asking Alcindor why he refused to play in the Olympics. During a heated exchange, Alcindor said, “Yeah, I live here, but it’s not really my country.” Then Garagiola retorted, “Well, then, there’s only one solution, maybe you should move.” It was a common reply among white Americans who demanded accommodation and gratitude from black athletes — a refrain that still exists today.

Alcindor’s comments echoed Malcolm X, who said, “Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.” If black people were Americans, he argued, then they wouldn’t need civil rights legislation or constitutional amendments for protection. Alcindor recognized that while he was fortunate because of his basketball ability, he couldn’t celebrate his privileged status as long as racial inequality persisted. Only when black citizens enjoyed true freedom could he call America his country.

Although we remember the 1968 Olympics for John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s demonstration on the victory stand, Alcindor was the most famous athlete who avoided the games. More than any other college basketball player, he defined his times, proving also that black athletes could speak their minds and win. No one could tell him to shut up and dribble.

Professor is the Julius C. “Bud” Shaw Professor of Sports, Society, and Technology and an Assistant Professor of History at Georgia Tech. His research focuses on the history of sports and American culture. He is an author whose books include “The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty That Changed College Basketball,” which explores the emergence of college basketball as a national pastime and the political conflicts in college athletics during the 1960s and 1970s.

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Read Professor Smith’s full article at the link. Not only is Kareem one of the greatest basketball players ever, but he has established himself as an informed, articulate, and committed social commentator. I never saw Kareem play in person during his days with the Milwaukee Bucks. But, Cathy and I once were fortunate enough to see him “live” as a contestant on “Celebrity Jeopardy” at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington DC, ironically a venue where he once would not have been welcome.

PWS

03-31-18

BESS LEVIN – THE LEVIN REPORT – After A Year Of Being One Of Trump’s Chief Toadies To Fulfill Dream Of Big Tax Cuts For Fat Cats That Cripple The Government, Screw The Needy, & Blow Up The Deficit, “Spineless Paul” Ryan Panics When Trump Goes Bonkers On Tariffs!

Levin writes for Vanity Fair:

“For his entire adult life and, let’s be honest, probably a good portion of his teen years, Paul Ryan has fantasized about tax cuts the way some people fantasize about having sex with a porn star. Not just any old tax cuts, of course, but the kind that disproportionately benefit corporate America and the upper-echelons of the ultra rich, while handing average Americans an extra buck fifty a paycheck and expecting an outpouring of gratitude in return. We know this because 1) he’s openly and unabashedly obsessed with Ayn Rand, and 2) just a few short months ago, the House Speaker released a sizzle reel highlighting his many urgent calls for tax cuts spanning nearly 20 years in office. In Donald Trump, a man who has never demonstrated conviction in anything other than enriching himself and other people named Trump, Ryan saw an opportunity for his longtime dream to become a reality. That’s why, for more than a year now, Ryan has put up with everything from the president demanding loyalty from the head of the F.B.I. (“he’s new at this!”) to his decision to give Nazis a free pass (“he’s learning!”) to his refusal to release his tax returns, even though Wisconsin’s first son could compel to do so (“tee-hee!”). And in December, Ryan’s commitment to holding his nose and looking the other way paid off, big time.

This week, though, we learned that there are, in fact, limits to what Ryan will put up with, and they involve imperiling the legacy of his tax bill and upsetting his corporate sugar daddies. In the wake of the president’s decision to announce that he plans to effectively start a trade war, Ryan’s spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said in a statement on Monday: “We are extremely worried about the consequences of a trade war and are urging the White House to not advance with this plan. The new tax-reform law has boosted the economy and we certainly don’t want to jeopardize those gains.” To be clear, most people outside of the G.O.P. already expect the long-term effects of the tax bill to be a deficit-busting mess. But with Trump’s call to slap steel and aluminum imports with 25% and 10% tariffs, more or less out of spite, the havoc wreaked on the economy could be even worse, with experts estimating 146,000 job losses, among other consequences. Presumably, Ryan was also inspired to find his voice on the issue—and to fire off at least one passive-aggressive tweet—on account of the fact that the Koch brothers, who donated half a million dollars to his fundraising committee after the bill passed, harshly condemned the tariffs. And as they teach lawmakers on their first day on Capitol Hill, one mustn’t upset one’s benefactors.

Trump, though, apparently could not care less about Ryan’s (or anyone else’s) concerns, telling reporters Monday “we’re not backing down” and that the tariffs are “100 percent” happening. The U.S., he said, has been “ripped off” by other countries for too long, and “we are going to take care of it.” Perhaps the one ray of hope in this otherwise terrifying situation? Because this whole thing was put together in such a half-assed, completely slipshod way, Trump’s advisers—the ones who support the tariffs—are already hedging their bets:

Peter Navarro, an adviser and the architect of many of Mr. Trump’s campaign-trade promises, confirmed on Sunday that the president would not exclude any country from the tariffs but said individual companies could apply for exemptions for certain products. . . . Navarro [also] left room for change in the timing of the tariffs, which the president said would be signed this week. “Toward the end of the week,” Mr. Navarro said in a separate appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, when asked when the tariffs would be announced. “At the latest, it would be the following week.”

Wilbur Ross, the secretary of commerce, also appeared to leave room for the president to change his mind. “Whatever his final decision is, is what will happen,” Mr. Ross said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “What he has said he has said. If he says something different, it’ll be something different.” “If he for some reason should change his mind, then it will change,” Mr. Ross added, noting that he had no reason to believe that the president would do so.

Or as a top Republican put it to Politico: “I’ve stopped worrying and reacting to the day-to-day because you get all stressed out about something, then you realize tomorrow morning by lunch that it’s never going to happen.”

Report: Trump’s personal lawyer couldn’t believe he wasn’t immediately reimbursed for $130,00 porn-star payment

It’s almost as though you can’t trust a guy who (allegedly!) had an affair with an adult film star named Stormy Daniels right after his wife gave birth to their son:

The lawyer, Michael Cohen, wired the money to a lawyer for former actress Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, from an account at First Republic Bank. The money was received on Oct. 27, 2016, 12 days before the presidential election, another person familiar with the matter said…Mr. Cohen said he missed two deadlines earlier that month to make the $130,000 payment to Ms. Clifford because he couldn’t reach Mr. Trump in the hectic final days of the presidential campaign, the person said.

Ms. Clifford was owed the money in return for signing an agreement that bars her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in 2006, people familiar with the matter said. After Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Cohen complained to friends that he had yet to be reimbursed for the payment to Ms. Clifford, the people said.

Honestly, finance departments should really provide expense-report templates for this kind of thing. (Asked for comment from the Wall Street Journal, Cohen responded: “Fake News.”)

You might want to sit down for this . . .

This might come as a shock, but there are whispers the Trump Organization is attempting to profit off the presidency:

In recent weeks, the Trump Organization has ordered the manufacture of new tee markers for golf courses that are emblazoned with the seal of the president of the United States. Under federal law, the seal’s use is permitted only for official government business. Misuse can be a crime.

Past administrations have policed usage vigilantly. In 2005 the Bush administration ordered the satirical news website The Onion to remove a replica of the seal. Grant M. Dixton, associate White House counsel, wrote in a letter to The Onion that the seal “is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement.”

Area man demands media leave the Trumps alone!

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Now is is a great time to re-read Andy Borowitz’s (all too true) satire on “Spineless Paul” that I reprinted on Courtside in December 2017:

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/koch-brothers-and-nra-reach-timeshare-agreement-over-ownership-of-paul-ryan

“WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a unique accord, the billionaire Koch brothers and the National Rifle Association have reached a timeshare agreement over the ownership of House Speaker Paul Ryan, representatives of both parties have confirmed.

Speaking on behalf of the Kochs, Charles Koch said that he contacted the N.R.A.’s executive director, Wayne LaPierre, with the timeshare proposal “so that we could all get the maximum enjoyment out of owning Paul.”

The arrangement is intended to minimize conflicts between the Kochs and the gun group that have arisen in the past when both co-owners have wanted to use Ryan at the same time, Koch said.

“I said to Wayne, ‘This is craziness,’ ” he said. “ ‘Let’s work something out where you get Paul half the year, and we’ll take him the other half.’ ”

Under the timeshare deal, the Kochs will have the exclusive use of Ryan during the months when tax cuts and environmental deregulation are put to a vote, while the N.R.A. will have him for the months when gun legislation is to be defeated.

Additionally, each co-owner is responsible for insuring that Ryan is well maintained and in good condition when the other’s period of using him commences.

Koch indicated that, if the timeshare agreement is a success, the two parties are likely to work out a similar deal for their longtime joint ownership of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.”

However, the deep corruption of the GOP and its leaders, from Trump on down, isn’t really something to laugh about. At some point, the “nickel and dime” income boost given to average Americans by the GOP’s totally bogus and unwarranted “tax cuts” for the rich will automatically expire (but, naturally, not for the rich) and the true bill for running up the deficit so the Koch Bros and others can get richer will come due. By that time, conveniently, Trump, Ryan, and hopefully McConnell will be out of office. But, the damage they are doing to our country will be left for others, likely the Democrats, to clean up. That’s what Kleptocracy is all about, folks. Steal what you can when you can and then get out of Dodge while the getting is good!

PWS

03-06-18

TRUMP ON PACE TO DEPORT ALL 11 MILLION UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS BY 2070!

Tal Kopen reports for CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/23/politics/trump-immigration-arrests-deportations/index.html

“Arrests of immigrants, especially non-criminals, way up in Trump’s first year

By Tal Kopan, CNN

In his first year in office, President Donald Trump’s administration’s arrests of immigrants — especially those without criminal convictions — were up substantially, but actual deportations lagged behind his predecessor, according to statistics released Friday.

The jump corresponds to Trump’s central pledge to crack down on illegal immigration, at least in terms of casting a wide net to catch undocumented or deportable immigrants.

Days after being inaugurated, one of Trump’s first actions was to release immigration agents of specific prioritization of who to go after, giving them wide discretion to target almost any undocumented immigrant as a priority.

According to new data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there was a 41% increase in the number of undocumented immigrants who were arrested by the agency in 2017 compared to 2016.

But the increase was driven by the agency arresting a significantly higher rate of immigrants without a criminal background. While the share of criminals arrested was up 17%, there was an increase 10 times that — of 171% — in the share of non-criminals arrested.

ICE had previously released fiscal year data, but on Friday released additional numbers from the last three months of 2017 as well, allowing for the year-to-year comparison.

In 2017, ICE made routine arrests of more than 155,000 immigrants, 30% of whom were not criminals. The final three months of the year, the rate of non-criminals arrested was even higher, at 35%.

That number was far lower, though, in 2016. That year the Obama administration arrested almost 110,000 immigrants, nearly 16% of whom were not criminals. In 2014, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security set priorities for ICE that focused first on serious criminals and national safety threats, followed by other public safety threats and immigrants who had recently had an order of deportation signed.

Unlike the increased arrests, at the end of 2017, deportations continued to lag behind the Obama administration’s pace, despite Trump’s repeated pledges to get undocumented immigrants “out” of the country.

In 2017, the administration deported nearly 215,000 immigrants, 13% fewer than the nearly 250,000 deported in 2016. The percentage of those individuals who were non-criminals was steady at just over 40%.

Deportations are a complex statistic to compare, however, because it can take many years to work an individual case through the immigration courts. The administration has also cited a decrease in the number of people apprehended at the border as part of the lagging numbers.”

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While “Gonzo” immigration enforcement is demonstrably bad for America, the good news here is that the pace at which it is proceeding insures its own ultimate failure. That’s great news for America and our future!

If Trump, Sessions & Co were actually able to remove all 11 million so-called “undocumented” Americans tomorrow, the American agriculture, hospitality, technology, construction, dairy, teaching, health care, child care, technology, restaurant, and sanitation industries, to name just a few, would cease to function, thus throwing our country into an economic and social tailspin from which we likely would never recover. When you are being governed by idiots, sometimes your only protection is in the idiocy and self-defeating nature of their own policies.

PWS

02-26-18

TRUMP BUDGET: VLADI’S PUPPET WOULD LITERALLY SELL OUT AND SELL OFF AMERICA, MUSHROOM DEFICIT TO LINE THE POCKETS OF THE RICH, BUILD BOMBS (BUT WITH NOBODY TO DROP THEM ON, ONCE THE RUSSIANS TAKE OVER), WHILE THOROUGHLY SCREWING THE POOR, THE VULNERABLE, AND THE VAST MAJORTY OF AMERICANS – No, It Won’t Pass, But It Stands As A Monument To The Corrupt & Perverted “Values” Of Trump and The GOP & Their Stunning Contempt For The Shortsighted Voters Who Put Them In Power!

Here’s what James Hohmann of the Washington Post has to say about the “Grifter-In-Chief” in his “Daily 202:”

BY JAMES HOHMANN

with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump campaigned like a populist, but the budget he proposed Monday underscores the degree to which he’s governing as a plutocrat.

Many of his proposals are dead on arrival in Congress, but the blueprintnonetheless speaks volumes about the president’s values – and contradicts many promises he made as a candidate.

“This is a messaging document,” Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters at the White House.

Here are eight messages that the White House sends with its wish list:

1. Touching third rails he said he wouldn’t:

As a candidate, Trump repeatedly said he would never cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security.

Now he proposes cutting Medicare by $554 billion and Medicaid by around $250 billion over the next decade.

His plan includes new per-person limits on the amount of health care each Medicaid enrollee can use and a dramatic shift toward block grants, which would allow states to tighten eligibility requirements and institute work requirements that would kick some off public assistance.

Impacting the middle class, Trump also calls for cutting the subsidies that allow more than four in five people with marketplace health plans to afford their insurance premiums under the Affordable Care Act.

2. Scaling back support for the forgotten man:

Many displaced blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt took the president at his word when he promised to bring back their manufacturing jobs. But Trump’s budget calls for cutting funding for National Dislocated Worker Grants – which provides support to those who lose their jobs because of factory closures or natural disasters — from $219.5 million in 2017 to $51 million in 2019.

Also at the Labor Department, the president wants to slash support for the Adult Employment and Training Activities initiative, which serves high school dropouts and veterans, from $810 million last year to $490 million in 2019.

3. Giving up on a balanced budget:

Trump repeatedly promised that he would balance the budget “very quickly.” It turns out that a guy who has often described himself as the “king of debt” didn’t feel that passionately about deficits. Last year, he laid out a plan to balance the budget in 10 years. This year he didn’t even try. Trump now accepts annual deficits that will run over $1 trillion as the new normal.

Going further, the president also promised on the campaign trail that he’d get rid of the national debt altogether by the end of his second term. But his White House now projects that the national debt, which is already over $20 trillion, will grow more than $2 trillion over the next two years and by at least $7 trillion over the next decade. The administration repeatedly denied this in December as officials pushed to cut taxes by $1.5 trillion.

“After Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in the 1980s, deficits exploded in the same range as Trump’s now, when calculated as a percentage of the economy, or gross domestic product. But Reagan’s famous ‘riverboat’ gamble came when the total national debt was a fraction of what it is today. Trump is pushing the envelope when debt is already near 80 percent of GDP, leaving far less room to maneuver if the economy turns downward,” David Rogers writes in Politico. “Economists and politicians alike don’t know what happens next. There’s all the edginess of breaking new ground. But also, as with Faulkner’s famous line, there is a sense that the past ‘is not even past.’ … Nothing now seems obvious, except red ink.”

Trump blames state of U.S. infrastructure on ‘laziness’ after WWII

4. Relying on fuzzy math:

Trump’s team knows full well that they’ll never get most of the spending cuts they’re proposing, but they’re using them to make the deficit look less bad than it really is. Just last Friday, the president signed into law an authorization bill that blows up the sequester and increases spending by more than $500 billion.

The White House also makes the unrealistic assumption that the economy will grow by more than 3 percent every year between now and 2024, which makes its projections for revenue growth rosier than they should be. No serious economist thinks that level of growth can be sustained. A recession seems probable in the next decade.

Senate Democrats noticed that Trump’s budget plan, if it was enacted, would actually result in a net decrease in federal spending on infrastructure. Chuck Schumer’s office identified more than $240 billion in proposed cuts over the coming decade to existing infrastructure programs, which is higher than the $200 billion Trump simultaneously proposed in new spending. “The cuts identified by Schumer’s office include a $122 billion reduction in outlays over the coming decade to the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for road projects and mass transit,” John Wagner reports. “Other proposed reductions would target an array of programs that fund rail, aviation [and] wastewater…”

5. Paying for tax cuts that mostly benefit the rich by cutting holes in the safety net for the poor:

In 1999, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush denounced a House Republican plan to save $8 billion by deferring tax credit payments for low-income people. “I don’t think they ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor,” he said at a campaign stop. “I’m concerned for someone who is moving from near-poverty to middle class.”

That sentiment seems quaint now. While Trump has never claimed the mantle of “compassionate conservatism,” his budget validates several of the negative stereotypes that Bush tried to shed.

This is a budget for the haves. The have-nots get left behind.

Trump wants to cut $214 billion from the food stamp program in the next decade, a reduction of nearly 30 percent.

The budget shows Ben Carson has no suction at the White House. Despite his efforts, the secretary of housing and urban development was unable to stop Trump from reducing Section 8 federal housing subsidies by more than $1 billion, zeroing out community development block grants and eliminating a $1.9 billion fund to cover public housing capital repairs. The 14 percent cut at HUD is even deeper than what Trump proposed last year.

The budget cuts 29 programs at the Education Department, many of which are designed to help needy children – including after-school activities to keep kids off the street and a grant program for college students with “exceptional financial need.” Trump’s plan also gets rid of a tuition initiative that makes college affordable for underprivileged D.C. residents, who don’t have access to strong in-state universities.

6. Deconstructing the administrative state:

Trump wants to neuter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by starving it of resources, limiting its enforcement power and changing its funding stream so that it’s more vulnerable to pressure from Wall Street.

He seeks to cut more than $2.5 billion from the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is about a quarter of its spending. He’d eliminate funding for state radon-detection programs and end partnerships to monitor and restore water quality in the Gulf of Mexico, Puget Sound and other large bodies of water.

“Funding for the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay would fall from $72 million to $7 million, and a similar program for the Great Lakes would be cut from $300 million to $30 million — although neither would be wiped out,” Brady Dennis reports. “In addition, the Trump budget would eliminate — or very nearly eliminate — the agency’s programs related to climate change. Funding for the agency’s Office of Science and Technology would drop by more than a third, from $762 million to $489 million. And funding for prosecuting environmental crimes and for certain clean air and water programs would drop significantly.”

7. More guns, less butter:

Make no mistake, Trump is not calling for a reduction in the size of government. He seeks to spend $4.4 trillion next year, up 10 percent from last year. He’s calling for spending less on the homefront to cover a massive military buildup.

Trump asks for $716 billion in defense spending in 2019, a 13 percent increase. “The Trump plan provides more money for just about everything a general or admiral might desire,” Greg Jaffe notes. “The United States already spends more on its military than the next eight nations combined.”

Meanwhile, Trump proposes slashing the State Department’s budget by 23 percent. As Secretary of Defense James Mattis told Congress in 2013, when he was a Marine general leading Central Command: “If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition.”

Another campaign promise Trump is making good on: building his “Deportation Force.” The budget allocates $2.8 billion to expand immigration detention facilities so that 52,000 beds are always available, $782 million to hire 2,750 additional border agents, and $1.6 billion for the construction of 65 miles of border wall in Texas. (Whatever happened to Mexico paying?) He also adds $2.2 billion for the Secret Service to hire 450 more people.

Trump claims that U.S. has spent $7 trillion in the Middle East

8. Leaning in on privatization:

Trump wants to outsource as many public functions as possible to private, for-profit companies.

His budget calls for selling off scores of prized federal assets, from Reagan National and Dulles Airports to the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. “Power transmission assets from the Tennessee Valley Authority; the Southwestern Power Administration, which sells power in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas; the Western Area Power Administration; and the Bonneville Power Administration, covering the Pacific northwest, were cited for potential divestiture,” Michael Laris reports. “It was not immediately clear what public or private entity might buy those roads, whether they might be tolled, or other details. Some state officials said they were uncertain about how their residents would benefit from such a proposal.”

The White House is re-upping its plan to shift the nation’s air traffic control system out of government hands, even though it went nowhere in Congress last year.

Trump proposes to end funding for the International Space Station after 2024 by privatizing the orbiting laboratory.

Finally, he wants to increase spending by more than $1 billion on privateschool vouchers and other school choice plans while slashing the Education Department’s budget by $3.6 billion and devoting more resources to career training, at the expense of four-year universities.

*************************************

Don’t be fooled by the “paper money” you might be making in the stock market (if you are one of the fortunate minority of Americans with money to invest). 2017 was one of the worst years in the history of American democracy, and 2018 promises to be even worse. Indeed, while American democracy has been resilient enough to stand up to Trump and the utterly corrupt GOP to date, they are now upping their attack. There is absolutely no guarantee that their plan to destroy our country and hand it over to an unholy mixture of Russian Oligarchs, Chinese Government Corporations, and greedy Capitalist plutocrats won’t succeed.

Donald Trump and today’s GOP are a clear and present danger to our national security and the future of our democracy!

PWS

02-13-18

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

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“Vote ‘Em Out”

By Willie Nelson

If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out That’s what Election Day is all about The biggest gun we’ve got Is called “the ballot box” So if you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out

Vote ’em out (vote ’em out) Vote ’em out (vote ’em out) And when they’re gone we’ll sing and dance and shout Bring some new ones in And we’ll start that show again And if you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out

If it’s a bunch of clowns you voted in Election Day is comin’ ’round again If you don’t like it now If it’s more than you’ll allow If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out

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If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out
That’s what Election Day is all about
The biggest gun we’ve got
Is called “the ballot box”
So if you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out

Vote ’em out (vote ’em out)
Vote ’em out (vote ’em out)
And when they’re gone we’ll sing and dance and shout
Bring some new ones in
And we’ll start that show again
And if you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out

If it’s a bunch of clowns you voted in
Election Day is comin’ ’round again
If you don’t like it now
If it’s more than you’ll allow
If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out