CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY: More Trump White Nationalist Lies Exposed: Facts Show That, Beyond The Compelling Legal & Humanitarian Reasons, Refugees & Asylees Are A HUGE Economic Benefit For The United States!

https://publicintegrity.org/immigration/data-defies-trump-claims-that-refugees-and-asylees-are-a-taxpayer-burden/

Madeline Buiano & Susan Ferriss report for the Center for Public Integrity

DATA DEFIES TRUMP’S CLAIMS THAT REFUGEES AND ASYLEES BURDEN TAXPAYERS

In this May 18, 2018, photo, Majed Abdalraheem, 29, a Syrian refugee and chef with meal delivery service Foodhini, prepares Moussaka, a grilled eggplant dish, at Union Kitchen in Washington. (AP Photo/Noreen Nasir)

Researchers found that between 2005 and 2014, refugees and asylees here from 1980 on contributed $63 billion more to government revenues than they used in public services.

Data defies Trump’s claims that refugees and asylees burden taxpayers

Introduction

How does someone gain refugee or asylee status?

Refugees come with nothing

Madeline Buiano

James R. Soles Fellow

Susan Ferriss

Immigration Project Manager and Senior Reporter

In this post, we’re answering a question we received from Jen: What is the economic impact of refugees in the near and long term (transition time between needing assistance and adding to the economy)?

Since the beginning of his presidency, Donald J. Trump and top advisers have portrayed refugees and asylum seekers as a risky, undesirable demographic.

In 2016, Vice President Mike Pence tried to ban the resettlement of Syrian refugees while he was Indiana’s governor. A federal appeals court blocked the attempt, finding that Pence lacked evidence supporting claims that Syrian refugees were a threat to the people of Indiana. Trump, for his part, issued an order in March 2017 with language suggesting that refugees are a fiscal burden.

The order demanded that U.S. officials produce a report “detailing the estimated long-term costs of the United States Refugee Admissions Program at the Federal, State, and local levels, along with recommendations about how to curtail those costs.”

The draft report didn’t support that assumption of burden, though.

In fact, researchers found that during the 10 years between 2005 and 2014, refugees and asylees here from 1980 on contributed $63 billion more to government revenues than they used in public services. Senior administration officials, possibly including White House aide Stephen Miller, quashed the 55-page draft and submitted a three-page report instead, The New York Timesreported. Soon after, the White House released a fact sheetselectively borrowing from the draft report by noting that the U.S. “spent more than $96 billion on programs supporting or benefitting refugees between 2005 and 2014.”

There were no references to the $63 billion more in taxes that refugees put into public coffers than the value of the services they used.

This pattern of cherry picking one side of the ledger isn’t unusual for those seeking to bolster a political argument. Trump used similar cherry-picked numbers to link immigration, in general, with American wage decline and fiscal strain during his 2016 campaign, as the Center for Public Integrity reported previously.

Before diving deeper into fiscal research on refugees, though — including what the quashed draft report found in detail — it helps to understand how refugees and asylum seekers differ. Some fiscal studies, including the study Trump ordered, scrutinize both groups. It’s also helpful to understand the size of these groups compared to the U.S. population.

HOW DOES SOMEONE GAIN REFUGEE OR ASYLEE STATUS?

Refugees are fleeing persecution or war and are admitted from abroad. To vet them, U.S. officials are dispatched to interview candidates as part of a lengthy screening process. United Nations or U.S. embassy officials refer candidates to the U.S. State Department. Refugees often seek temporary shelter in neighboring countries to escape violence and threats. Many Syrian war refugees, for example, have fled to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. After intensive screening, approved refugees enter the U.S. with the help of resettlement organizations and must sign promissory notes to repay the U.S. government for travel costs. About 75 percent of loans are repaid within 15 years and 64 percent within five years, according to the U.S. State Department.

Asylum seekers claiming to be fleeing violence or persecution, by contrast, can present themselves at a U.S. port of entry and request to apply for asylum, as outlined in international treaties the U.S. has signed, as well as U.S. law. The law also allows foreigners to apply for asylum after they’re already inside the United States, whether they entered originally on visas or entered illegally, with some restrictions. Immigration judges review cases to determine whether the asylum applicant’s fear meets the criteria for granting refuge. Asylum seekers have a right to retain an attorney at their expense — or seek pro bono help — but they don’t have a right to an appointed attorney in proceedings.

In 2018, even as refugee numbers surged globally, the Trump administration capped refugee admissions at 45,000. Only 22,000 were ultimately admitted, mostly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma and Ukraine. Trump used his executive power to cap refugee admissions this year to a new low, for annual caps, of no more than 30,000. In 2016, under President Barack Obama, the U.S. admitted 85,000 refugees.

Trump has also sought to deter mostly Central American migrantswho are arriving often with children at the southern border and asking for asylum.

“The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility … not on my watch,” Trump said last year. In April of this year, after tweeting that the “country is full,” Trump unveiled an unprecedented proposal to require that asylum seekers pay an application fee. Trump argues that changes to the asylum system are needed because he believes that the vast majority of migrants are faking or exaggerating their fears — despite U.S. State Department recognition that murder rates, gang rapes and extortion are rampant in Central America, especially the main source countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Refugees and asylees are a tiny fraction of the U.S. population, so it’s hard to credibly pin major national fiscal impact on either group.

Between 2009 and April 2019, a total of 648,482 refugees were admitted to the U.S., according to U.S. Department of State refugee data. That admissions total is equivalent to about 0.2 percent of the U.S. population of 328 million. Separately, between 2007 and 2017, a total of 263,215 people were granted asylum, according to the 2017 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. That cumulative number is equivalent to about 0.08 percent of the U.S. population.

But isn’t there a backlog of asylum requests, potentially adding more people?

Yes. As of January 2019, 325,277 asylum request cases were pending. But even if all those cases were approved (they won’t be), that number would be equivalent to 0.1 percent of the U.S. population of 328 million. Further, if you were to multiply all those asylum cases by 10 — to account for an exaggerated number of family members who could benefit — that number would add up to the equivalent of 1 percent of the U.S. population.

But can’t refugees or asylees have a noticeable fiscal impact on communities, especially if the newcomers settle in groups, as immigrants often do? Yes. Let’s see what reputable studies show.

REFUGEES COME WITH NOTHING

Randy Capps is the director of research at the Migration Policy Institute, or MPI, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., that’s studied how refugees with a range of language skills and education integrate over time.

“Refugees come to the U.S. with nothing,” Capps said, but they “start making economic contributions right away and they’re not living off government assistance for very long.”

A 2015 MPI refugee-integration study found that between 2009 and 2011, the proportion of refugee men working was 7 percentage points higher than among their U.S.-born counterparts. Refugee women were as likely to work as U.S.-born women. Refugees’ income increased the longer they were in the country. The median income of refugees in the U.S. for at least 20 years was $31,000 higher than the median income of refugees here for five years or less.

MPI researchers also found that refugees’ use of public benefits decreases substantially over time.

Unlike other immigrants, refugees can access public health insurance and some other forms of aid when they arrive. Between 2009 and 2011, food-stamp assistance was a relatively high 45 percent for refugees for their first five years or less, the MPI study found. But food-stamp assistance fell to 16 percent among refugees here at least 20 years. Cash aid dropped from 7 percent to 2 percent for refugees in these same respective cohorts. And reliance on public health insurance fell from 24 percent to 13 percent.

Capps and his fellow authors suggested that providing English classes and job training for refugees while they’re still in camps undergoing the long vetting process could lead to even better outcomes. Ironically, the report also suggests, refugees’ high rate of employment in the U.S. could make it difficult for many to find the time to pursue more education to upgrade skills and earning potential.

Even so, as the Center reported in 2017, refugees are readily sliding into jobs in areas where labor is in short supply. Refugees from various countries are filling jobs at a Chobani facility in Twin Falls, Idaho, the world’s largest yogurt factory. And newly arrived refugees from rural areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Asia are finding work at dairy farms.

In 2017, a draft of the refugee fiscal report that Trump had ordered was leaked to The New York Times, which posted it. The report was produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, whose Office of Refugee Resettlement is involved in refugee arrivals and initial integration. Research looked at both refugees and asylees.

Researchers looked at local, state and federal expenditures on refugees — as well as refugees’ tax contributions to those government coffers over the 10 years between 2005 and 2014.

The study found that 8 percent of refugees received Social Security or Social Security Disability benefits compared to 15 percent of the U.S. population. About 12 percent of refugees relied on Medicare benefits compared to 15 percent of the U.S. population.

On the other hand, 21 percent of refugees used SNAP, or food stamps, compared to 15 percent of the U.S. population. But only about 2.3 percent of refugees received TANF benefits, or cash aid, close to the same percentage as the U.S. population generally.

Overall, during the 10-year period, refugees and their non-refugee family members received $326 billion in government benefits and services, 60 percent from the federal government and 40 percent from state and local government. K-12 education accounted for 11 percent of expenditures on refugees. But that K-12 spending was only 0.4 percent of spending on K-12 nationally.

In the end, because of taxes they paid, refugees and their family members contributed more than $343 billion in revenue to federal, state and local coffers. On balance, refugees contributed $63 billion more than they received in benefits from various programs.

“In general,” researchers wrote, “after 10 years of residence those who entered the U.S. as refugees were similar to the U.S. population in terms of income and employment.”

The HHS draft also referenced research produced in various regions.

A 2012 analysis of the Cleveland, Ohio, area credited refugees with the creation of 650 jobs and $48 million worth of economic impact. A 2015 study of the Columbus, Ohio, area found that about 16,600 refugees supported more than 21,200 jobs and added $1.6 billion to the local economy.

Randy Capps of the Migration Policy Institute cautioned against putting too much faith in fiscal studies that zero in on costs alone. For example, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, a group that advocates slashing legal immigration, published a study in 2018 focusing on the first five years of refugee settlement and arguing that “the American taxpayer is being asked to feed, clothe and shelter” people with “few marketable job skills.”

In 2017, the Center for Public Integrity reported that U.S Department of Homeland Security staff were discussing adding an assessment of a refugee applicant’s “skills” to criteria that’s part of the foundation for the vetting process. The skills idea, confirmed by a Homeland Security spokesperson, upset U.S. refugee officers who screen applicants who’ve fled the trauma of war and persecution. It hasn’t gone anywhere.

“The [current] litmus test is: Does the person have a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political

Adding a skills test would mark a profound change, Knowles said, for U.S. criteria developed in the wake of World War II, a time when the U.S. and other countries turned away some desperate Jewish refugees.

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A number of things are absolutely clear: 1) refugees and asylees are a huge benefit to the United States from any legitimate perspective; 2) we could easily absorb everyone applying for asylum status right now; 3) there is no “invasion;” 4) the country is not “full;” 5) Trump, Pence, Miller, Cotton, Perdue, and the rest of their “White Nationalist Gang” are liars.

PWS

05-22-19

TRUMP & HIS ENABLERS IGNORE THE REALITY THAT EVENTUALLY WILL DWARF HIS BOGUS BORDER CRISIS: “The UN estimates that by 2050, there will be 200 million people forcibly displaced from their homes due to climate change alone. . . . If we want people to be able to stay in their homes, we have to tackle the issue of our changing global climate, and we have to do it fast.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/06/us-mexico-immigration-climate-change-migration?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Lauren Markham reports for The Guardian:

The northern triangle of Central America, the largest source of asylum seekers crossing the US border, is deeply affected by environmental degradation

@LaurenMarkham

‘Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.’ Photograph: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images

Media outlets and politicians routinely refer to the “flood” of Central American migrants, the “wave” of asylum seekers, the “deluge” of children, despite the fact that unauthorized migration across the US borders is at record lows in recent years. Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing, but perhaps this tendency to lean on environmental language when describing migration is an unconscious acknowledgement of a deeper truth: much migration from Central America and, for that matter, around the world, is fueled by climate change.

Read more

Yes, today’s Central American migrants – most of them asylum seekers fearing for their lives – are fleeing gangs, deep economic instability (if not abject poverty), and either neglect or outright persecution at the hands of their government. But these things are all complicated and further compounded by the fact that the northern triangle of Central America – a region comprising Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and the largest sources of asylum seekers crossing our border in recent years – is deeply affected by environmental degradation and the impacts of a changing global climate.

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‘Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration.’ Photograph: Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images

The average temperature in Central America has increased by 0.5C since 1950; it is projected to rise another 1-2 degrees before 2050. This has a dramatic impact on weather patterns, on rainfall, on soil quality, on crops’ susceptibility to disease, and thus on farmers and local economies. Meanwhile, incidences of storms, floods and droughts on are the rise in the region. In coming years, according to the US Agency for International Development, countries in the northern triangle will see decreased rainfall and prolonged drought, writ large. In Honduras, rainfall will be sparse in areas where it is needed, yet in other areas, floods will increase by 60%. In Guatemala, the arid regions will creep further and further into current agricultural areas, leaving farmers out to dry. And El Salvador is projected to lose 10-28% of its coastline before the end of the century. How will all those people survive, and where will they go?

El Salvador is projected to lose 10-28% of its coastline before the end of the century. How will all those people survive, and where will they go?

This September, I travelled to El Salvador to report on the impacts of the US government’s family separation policy. I’d been to El Salvador many times before, but never to the Jiquilisco Bay, a stunning, shimmering and once abundant peninsula populated by mangroves and fishing communities and uncountable species of marine life. It is also one that, like many places in El Salvador, and like many places in the world, is also imperiled by climate change. Rising sea levels are destroying the mangrove forests, the marine life that relies on them, and thus the fishermen who rely on that marine life to feed themselves and eke out a meager economy.

I met a man there named Arnovis Guidos Portillo, a 26-year-old single dad. Many people in his family were fishermen, but they were able to catch fewer and fewer fish. The country’s drought and devastating rainfall meant that the area’s farming economy, too, was suffering. The land was stressed, the ocean was stressed, and so were the people. Arnovis got into a scuffle one day at a soccer game, which placed him on a hitlist with a local gang. He had been working as a day laborer here and there, but the drought meant there was less work, and it was hard to find work that didn’t require crossing into rival gang territory. If he did, he would be killed. So he took his daughter north to the United States, where border patrol agents separated them for two months, locking them up in different states and with zero contact.

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‘People really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land.’ Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images

Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration. An unstable planet and ecosystem lends itself to an unstable society, to divisions, to economic insecurity, to human brutality. When someone’s home becomes less and less livable, they move elsewhere. Wouldn’t each and every one of us do the same?

This week, the New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer published a series of pieces about the impacts of climate change in the Guatemalan highlands, where farmers are struggling to grow crops that they have been farming there for centuries. “In most of the western highlands,” Blitzer wrote, “the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when.” A few years ago, I reported from Guatemala’s dry corridor, several hours away from where Blitzer was reporting, where persistent drought had decimated the region’s agriculture, and particularly the coffee crop, on which roughly 90% of local farmers relied. It was a wildly different landscape from the one Blitzer described, but it faced the same problem: if you live in an agricultural zone, come from a long line of farmers and can’t reliably harvest your crops any more, what else is there to do but leave?

if you live in an agricultural zone, come from a long line of farmers and can’t reliably harvest your crops any more, what else is there to do but leave?

It’s abundantly clear that climate change is a driver of migration to the US – we have the data, we have the facts, we have the human stories. Still, the Trump administration has done nothing to intervene in this root cause. In fact, the US government has systematically denied the existence of climate change, rolled back domestic regulations that would mitigate US carbon emissions and thumbed its nose at international attempts – such as the Paris accords – to curb global warming.

Now, in his latest futile, small-minded and cruel attempt to cut migration off at the neck (something we know is not possible – an unhealthy societal dynamic must be addressed at the root, just like with a struggling tree or crop), Donald Trump announced last week that he would cut all foreign aid to the northern triangle. It’s a punitive move, and one that – just like building a wall, separating families, locking people up indefinitely, and refusing asylum seekers entry across the border – is a petty intimidation tactic that will do nothing to actually curb forced migration.

In fact, cutting aid to Central America will do quite the opposite, for as much waste and imperfections as there are in international aid, aid in Central America has been vital for creating community safety programs, job skills development and government accountability standards. It has also helped with drought mitigation and supporting climate-resilient agricultural practices. In other words, foreign aid to Central America – a place unduly hit by climate change – is supporting the kind of climate change resiliency that will keep people from having to leave in the first place.

Because people really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land, particularly when that land proves itself again and again to be hostile to migrants’ very existence. People don’t want to be raped along the route north, or die in the desert, or have their child ripped away from them by the border patrol, or be locked up indefinitely without legal counsel, without adequate medical care, with no idea what will happen to them and when. Who would risk this if things were OK back home? People like Arnovis leave because they feel like they have to.

Eventually Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials convinced Arnovis to sign deportation papers with the promise that, if he did, he would be reunited with his daughter and returned to El Salvador. But he was shooed on to a plane back home without her. It took a tremendous amount of advocacy, but, after months locked up in the US, she, too was returned home. They are now back together, which is a good thing, but the fundamental problem hasn’t changed: he can’t find work. His society is ill. So is the planet, and the land and sea all around him.

Today, there are 64 million forced migrants around the world, more than ever before. They are fleeing war, persecution, disaster and, yes, climate change. The UN estimates that by 2050, there will be 200 million people forcibly displaced from their homes due to climate change alone.

Migration is a natural human phenomenon and, many argue, should be a fundamental right, but forced migration – being run out of home against one’s will and with threat to one’s life – is not natural at all. Today, whether we choose to see it or not, climate change is one of the largest drivers of migration, and will continue to be for years to come – unless we do something about it. If we want people to be able to stay in their homes, we have to tackle the issue of our changing global climate, and we have to do it fast.

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Quote of the Day: “Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.”

One week ago, I was a guest participant in an Environmental Justice Seminar here at Lawrence University taught by Professor Jason Brozek of the Government Department. I was inspired by the students’ collective degree of knowledge, thoughtfulness, informed dialogue, and commitment to addressing this pressing problem. “Environmental Due Process” is certainly an important facet of the mission of the “New Due Process Army.”

PWS

04-08-19

TAL @ SF CHRON: Dreamer Deal To End Shutdown Seems Unlikely — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: My Essay “Let’s Govern!”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Why-a-DACA-deal-to-end-the-shutdown-is-unlikely-13517915.php?t=e29fabd761

Tal reports:

WASHINGTON — A perennial trial balloon is once more floating on the horizon: Could protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation in exchange for border security money get Washington out of a lengthy government shutdown?

The idea is already rapidly falling back to Earth.

President Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, have both brushed aside suggestions that passing protections like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program could be a way out of the shutdown, which is nearing the end of its third week with no hint of a resolution.

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DACA temporarily protects many undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. under the age of 16 from being deported. Trump, whose attempt to end DACA is tied up in the courts, said Sunday that he would “rather have the Supreme Court rule and then work with the Democrats” on extending protections for program recipients.

“They’re two different subjects,” Pelosi said last month when asked about trading DACA for Trump’s southern border wall — $5.7 billion for which he is demanding before he will sign any government funding bills for the agencies that have been shut down.

Democrats are not universally against the idea. San Mateo Rep. Jackie Speier told MSNBC last week that she “personally would support it” and “there is a willingness to look” at a DACA-for-wall money deal in the caucus. DACA protections for nearly 700,000 immigrants nationwide, 200,000 of whom are in California, are in limbo, and hundreds of thousands more would be eligible for the program.

But numerous other Democrats — including several on the influential Hispanic, Asian Pacific and black caucuses that have leadership’s ear on immigration — said a DACA deal involving wall money is a nonstarter in shutdown negotiations without serious and uncharacteristic overtures from Trump.

Here’s why it’s unlikely:

Trump thinks time, and the Supreme Court, are on his side. The White House believes the court will ultimately invalidate the Obama-era DACA program or side with Trump’s attempt to end it, which has been blocked by lower courts. When that happens, the administration believes, Trump will have more leverage to cut a better deal with Democrats desperate to keep sympathetic young DACA recipients from being deported, and Congress will be forced to deal with a dilemma it has long avoided.

Democrats don’t trust Trump, who has walked away from a number of DACA proposals in the past year. “Donald Trump is not a deal-maker, he’s a deal-breaker,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz. “We’ve seen this happen numerous times, and we’re not going to come approach him with a deal that he’s only going to take and then reject and then come back and move the goalposts on.”

Pelosi is in touch with her base, and her base isn’t eager to broach that deal. “People don’t want to trade a wall for something that isn’t even real,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “People don’t want a wall, period, and I think there’s no trust that there’s any credible negotiation around something positive on immigration, given (Trump’s) history.”

Trump wants much more on immigration than just physical border security, where there are some areas of potential compromise. A presentation that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen prepared for congressional leaders last week included calls not just for the wall, but the rollback of a bipartisan bill designed to protect human trafficking victims and a court-ordered settlement intended to safeguard immigrant children. Both of those are nonstarters with Democrats, who say the protections are needed and getting rid of them does not promote border security.

Republicans question whether Democrats are as motivated as they say they are to resolve the DACA issue. They’re skeptical Democrats want to take the political leverage off the table. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, a moderate Republican who has long worked on immigration reform, called the potential to get a deal out of the shutdown fight the “opportunity of a lifetime.”

“It requires the Democratic leadership to actually do something that they have not done in the past,” Diaz-Balart said, “which is match their rhetoric on DACA with actual action.”

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan

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HERE’S YOUR “BONUS COVERAGE” ESSAY FROM “COURTSIDE:”

LET’S GOVERN!

By

Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

I still think the best deal for America would be some form of “Wall for Dreamers” compromise. To me, the huge downside of “The Wall” would be more than offset by getting 800,000 great American young people — literally the future of our country – out of the shadows and contributing their maximum skills, talents, and creativity to making America really great (not the hollow mockery of “greatness’ peddled by Trump and his base).

But, Tal’s usually got her head “closer to the ground” than I do these days from my retirement perch in Alexandria. So, I’ll assume for the purposes of this piece that Tal is correct and that the “great compromise” isn’t in the cards – at least at this time.

So, where does we go from here? This is crystal clear: Trump can neither govern in America’s best interest nor can he cut any reasonable deal. So, it seems like the only alternative for America is for the Democrats in Congress to get together with the GOP and develop a plan for governing in the absence of a competent Executive. That means passage of “veto-proof” legislation that also places some specific limits and directions on Executive actions.

What could a “veto proof” compromise to reopen Government look like. Well, of course, to start it must fund the affected Government agencies through the end of the fiscal year.

But, it also could include a robust $5.9 Million “Border Security” package. Here’s what could be included:

Additional Asylum Officers;
Additional port of entry inspectors;
Additional Immigration Judges and court staff;
Additional funding for Office of Refugee Resettlement for health and safety of children;
Required e-filing and other management improvements at EOIR (including elimination of counterproductive “quotas” on judges, and providing at least one judicial law clerk for each judge);
Additional Assistant Chief Counsel for ICE;
Funding for counsel for asylum applicants and resettlement agencies;
Additional Anti-Smuggling, Intelligence, and Undercover Agents for DHS;
Smart Technology for and between ports of entry at the border and the interior;
Required improvements in management planning, hiring, and supervision within DHS;
Limitations on wasteful immigration detention (including a prohibition on long-term detention of children except in limited circumstances) and reprogramming of detention funds to alternatives to detention;
Funding for additional border fencing or fencing repairs in specific areas with an express prohibition on additional physical barriers without a specific appropriation from Congress.
Assistance to Mexico, the UNHCR, and other countries in the hemisphere to improve refugee processing and address problems in the Northern Triangle;

Sure, Trump could, and maybe would, veto it – although he’d be wise not to. And, I suppose, that veto, which would be overridden, could be the “red meat” for his base that he apparently favors over the “art of governing.”

But, in the meantime, Congress would fulfill its important role of governing in a bipartisan manner that will keep America moving forward even in the times of a weak and incompetent Executive. And, unlike the bogus “Wall,” the foregoing measures would actually contribute to our country’s security and welfare without wasting taxpayers’ money or trampling on individual rights and legal obligations. In other words, “smart governance.” That seems like a fair and worthy objective for both parties in Congress.

PWS

01-09-19

KAREN TUMULTY @ WASHPOST: Trump Is The Ugliest American – Amazingly, He Keeps Getting Uglier!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/29/with-trump-there-is-no-bottom/

Karen Tumulty writes in WashPost:

With President Trump, there is no bottom. Every time you think you have seen it, he manages to sink even lower.

It is not news that the president is indifferent to human suffering. His limp response to the devastation of the 2017 hurricane in Puerto Rico — which he claimed to have been a “fantastic job” on the part of his administration — stands out in that regard. But on Saturday, we saw yet another level of depravity when Trump made his first comments regarding the deaths in recent days of two migrant Guatemalan children after they were apprehended by federal authorities. It revealed not only callousness but also opportunism, as he sought to turn this tragedy into a partisan advantage in his current standoff with Democrats over the government shutdown.

His statements came, not unexpectedly, over Twitter. First this:

Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try! The two…..

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12:30 PM – Dec 29, 2018

And then, minutes later, this:

…children in question were very sick before they were given over to Border Patrol. The father of the young girl said it was not their fault, he hadn’t given her water in days. Border Patrol needs the Wall and it will all end. They are working so hard & getting so little credit!

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12:36 PM – Dec 29, 2018

Not a word of sympathy here — much less remorse on the part of the government over the deaths of a 7-year-old girl and 8-year-old boy while in its custody. Nor does Trump address questions that are being raised about whether the administration’s new policy seeking to limit the ability of immigrants to seek asylum protection might be a factor in putting more at risk. Under recent changes, migrants must remain in Mexico as their asylum cases are processed, possibly increasing their willingness to do something reckless to come across the border.

Then there was the dissonance: His blast came on a day that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was visiting Yuma, Ariz., after stopping in El Paso, Tex. Her department has promised more thorough medical screenings and is calling on other agencies to help. “The system is clearly overwhelmed and we must work together to address this humanitarian crisis and protect vulnerable populations,” Nielsen said in a statement.

Even if Trump were to get funding for the wall — and even if the wall were the deterrent he promises it would be, a more dubious proposition — that would be many months if not years in the future. This is an immediate crisis, for which the president seems to have no concern. Nor does Trump address the fact that what he claims are Democratic immigration policies have been in place for decades, and yet, until this month, it had been more than a decade since a child had died while in Customs and Border Protection custody.

It is true that greater numbers of vulnerable Central American children are being put into treacherous situations. My colleagues Joshua Partlow and Nick Miroff have done excellent reporting on how smugglers are gaming a dysfunctional immigration system:

This is happening because Central Americans know they will have a better chance of avoiding deportation, at least temporarily, if they are processed along with children.

The economics of the journey reinforces the decision to bring a child: Smugglers in Central America charge less than half the price if a minor is part of the cargo because less work is required of them.

Unlike single adult migrants, who would need to be guided on a dangerous march through the deserts of Texas or Arizona, smugglers deliver families only to the U.S. border crossing and the waiting arms of U.S. immigration authorities. The smuggler does not have to enter the United States and risk arrest.

The Trump administration tried to deter parents this spring when it imposed a “zero tolerance” family-separation policy at the border. But the controversy it generated and the president’s decision to halt the practice six weeks later cemented the widely held impression that parents who bring children can avoid deportation.

As Trump fulminates about the wall, he rarely brings up the idea of doing anything about the source of the problem: the desperation of people who are being driven from their native countries by poverty and violence. Until those forces are addressed, migrants will keep coming, even if it means taking greater risks to do so.

In the meantime, we have a president who is willing to politicize the deaths of two young children to score points against the opposition party. And the most shocking thing about seeing him scrape along a new moral bottom is this: It is no longer shocking at all.

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

Read the original article at the link.

The key:

As Trump fulminates about the wall, he rarely brings up the idea of doing anything about the source of the problem: the desperation of people who are being driven from their native countries by poverty and violence. Until those forces are addressed, migrants will keep coming, even if it means taking greater risks to do so.

Walls, detention centers, tent cities, and more Border Patrol Agents won’t solve this problem. Nor will proposed changes in the law and administrative actions aimed at further undermining our legal obligations toward refugees and asylum seekers. In fact, as we can see, the Administration’s approach is making things worse.

Establishing a fairer and appropriately more generous interpretation and application of our asylum and related protection laws, investing in addressing “push” conditions in Central America, establishing robust “in country” refugee programs in the Northern Triangle, cooperation with the UNHCR is seeking “regional solutions” closer to the Northern Triangle, more well-trained Asylum Officers, and more well-trained, fair and impartial U.S. Immigration Judges with a prior background in fair and humane treatment of asylum seekers would, over time, improve the situation. Perhaps in the long run, it would even solve the problems.

PWS

12-31-18

MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/jeff-sessions-donald-trump-resign-disgrace.html

Stern writes:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned on Wednesday at the request of Donald Trump. He served a little less than two years as the head of the Department of Justice. During that time, Sessions used his immense power to make America a crueler, more brutal place. He was one of the most sadistic and unscrupulous attorneys general in American history.

At the Department of Justice, Sessions enforced the law in a manner that harmed racial minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. He rolled backObama-era drug sentencing reforms in an effort to keep nonviolent offenders locked away for longer. He reversed a policy that limited the DOJ’s use of private prisons. He undermined consent decrees with law enforcement agencies that had a history of misconduct and killed a program that helped local agencies bring their policing in line with constitutional requirements. And he lobbied against bipartisan sentencing reform, falsely claiming that such legislation would benefit “a highly dangerous cohort of criminals.”

Sessions’ attack on immigrants was equally ruthless. He compelled immigration judges to order the deportation of more unauthorized immigrants and punished them when they did not. He barred most victims of domestic violence from seeking asylum in the United States, deporting survivors back to their persecutors. He attempted to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, subjecting hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to deportation but was too inept to do so lawfully. He tried to prevent states and cities from protecting immigrants within their borders. And he implemented the “zero tolerance” family separation policy, imprisoning thousands of individuals at the border for the misdemeanor of unlawful entry, then seizing their children and locking them in cages. (Hundreds of these kids are still separatedfrom their parents.)

Meanwhile, Sessions mobilized the DOJ’s attorneys to torture immigrant minors in other ways. He fought in court to keep undocumented teenagers pregnant against their will, defending the Trump administration’s decision to block their access to abortion. His Justice Department made the astonishing claim that the federal government could decide that forced birth was in the “best interest” of children. It also revealed these minors’ pregnancies to family members who threatened to abuse them. And when the American Civil Liberties Union defeated this position in court, his DOJ launched a failed legal assault on individual ACLU lawyers for daring to defend their clients.

As he oversaw family separation, forced birth, and mass incarceration, Sessions found time to degrade LGBTQ Americans and their families. He issued a memo alleging that federal civil rights laws do not protect transgender employees, a position the Justice Department recently reiterated to the Supreme Court. He also argued that these civil rights laws do not protect gay people. His DOJ defended Trump’s ban on open transgender military service by claiming that trans people are disordered deviants. Under his leadership, the DOJ also asked the Supreme Court to rule that many businesses have a First Amendment right to turn away same-sex couples. (Sessions gave a speech to the anti-LGBTQ group that brought that case to SCOTUS, thanking them for their “important work” on behalf of religious liberty.)

The guiding principle of Sessions’ career is animus toward people who are unlike him. While serving in the Senate, he voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act because it expressly protected LGBTQ women. He opposed immigration reform, including relief for young people brought to America by their parents as children. He voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He voted against a federal hate crime bill protecting gay people. Before that, as Alabama attorney general, he tried to prevent LGBTQ students from meeting at a public university. But as U.S. attorney general, he positioned himself as an impassioned defender of campus free speech.

While Sessions doesn’t identify as a white nationalist, his agenda as attorney general abetted the cause of white nationalism. His policies were designed to make the country more white by keeping out Hispanics and locking up blacks. His tenure will remain a permanent stain on the Department of Justice. Thousands of people were brutalized by his bigotry, and our country will not soon recover from the malice he unleashed.

His successor could be even worse.

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

Can’t overstate the intentional damage that this immoral, intellectually dishonest, and bigoted man has done to millions of human lives and the moral and legal fabric of our country. “The Father of the New American Gulag,” America’s most notorious unpunished child abuser, and the destroyer of Due Process in our U.S. Immigration Courts are among a few of his many unsavory legacies!

The scary thing: Stern is right — “His successor could be even worse.” If so, the survival of our Constitution and our nation will be at risk!

PWS

11-06-18

MAWA IS DOOMED: Demographics & Mutual Dependency Make Trump’s White Nationalist Racist Assault On Minorities Both Economically Stupid & Ultimately Futile – “Through his rhetoric and actions, Mr. Trump stands for keeping America white, appealing to his base by implicitly promising to preserve the racial status quo. But Mr. Trump’s supporters, and the country in general, must not ignore the generational dependency between older whites and younger minorities.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/opinion/trump-cant-win-the-war-on-demography.html

William H. Frey writes in the NY Times:

Opinion

Trump Can’t Win the War on Demography

A proposed citizenship question on the 2020 census reveals the dependency between older white voters and America’s growing young minority population.

By William H. Frey

Mr. Frey, a demographer, is the author of “Diversity Explosion.”

Sept. 30, 2018

Image
A press conference held last April, when New York State filed suit against the Trump administration over the proposed changes to the 2020 census form.CreditCreditDrew Angerer/Getty Images

Since the early days of his campaign, from his proposal to build a wall along the Mexican border to his discredited committee on voter fraud, President Trump has declared war on America’s changing demography. His administration has followed through on that strategy with a proposal to add a question to the 2020 census asking about citizenship. If the question remains on the form, millions of households, particularly Hispanic and Asian-American, could skip the census, leading to an overrepresentation of white Americans during this once-a-decade count.

Six lawsuits seeking to remove the proposed question are moving through the federal courts, with the first trial likely to take place this fall.

If it is added to the census form, the citizenship question will distort our understanding of who resides in the country. What this selective underenumeration will not do is make America’s growing racial minority populations disappear. The losers from this undercount include members of Mr. Trump’s older white base, who will suffer from lost investments in a younger generation, whose successes and contributions to the economy will be necessary to keep America great.

The demographic trends make this plain. America’s white population is growing tepidly because of substantial declines among younger whites. Since 2000, the white population under the age of 18 has shrunk by seven million, and declines are projected among white 20-somethings and 30-somethings over the next two decades and beyond. This is a result of both low fertility rates among young whites and modest white immigration — a trend that is not likely to change despite Mr. Trump’s wish for more immigrants from Norway.

The likely source of future gains among the nation’s population of children, teenagers and young working adults is minorities — Hispanics, Asians, blacks and others — most of whom are born in the United States.

Indeed, the only part of the white population that is growing appreciably is older people, the same group to whom Mr. Trump is appealing. Thanks to aging baby boomers, the older retirement-age white population will grow by one-third over the next 15 years and, with it, the need for the government to support Social Security, Medicare, hospitals and the like. Revenue for these programs will have to come from the younger minority population. If the census does not accurately count this population, then all the services that support children and future workers, such as public education, Head Start, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid, will be shortchanged.

Although the slowly growing, rapidly aging white population will be accurately counted, the fast-growing minority school-age and young adult populations that represent the nation’s future will not get their due — demographically, politically or economically.

An in-house Census Bureau analysis based on 2010 survey data found that the inclusion of a citizenship question reduced the response rate among households that have at least one noncitizen individual. While 7 percent of United States residents are themselves noncitizens, 14 percent live in households that include one or more noncitizens. The latter figure rises to 46 percent among all Hispanics and to 45 percent among Asian-Americans, compared with just 8 percent among blacks and 3 percent among whites.

Let’s assume that one in three people in Hispanic and Asian noncitizen households refuses to answer the census. If that’s the case, the Hispanic share of the United States population would drop by 2.1 percentage points (from 17.3 to 15.2 percent) and the total white population share would rise by 2.2 percentage points (from 62 to 64.2 percent).

This imbalance would influence congressional reapportionment, hurting large, immigrant-heavy states. It will also shape how congressional and state legislative districts are drawn, favoring rural and small areas at the expense of large metropolitan areas, since noncitizen households are far more prevalent in the latter.

The underenumeration of racial minorities would also misallocate billions of dollars in state and federal funds for housing assistance, job training, community development and a variety of social services that should be distributed on the basis of census counts. It would provide a faulty framework for surveys that will inform thousands of policy and business decisions, such as where to locate schools, hospitals, employment sites or retail establishments catering to different population groups, over the next decade.

Through his rhetoric and actions, Mr. Trump stands for keeping America white, appealing to his base by implicitly promising to preserve the racial status quo. But Mr. Trump’s supporters, and the country in general, must not ignore the generational dependency between older whites and younger minorities. Forcing an inaccurate accounting of who resides in the nation will have long-term negative consequences for everyone.

William H. Frey, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a population studies professor at the University of Michigan, is the author of “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America.”

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

Yup! Racist bias and bigotry are always the enemies of truth, justice, and intelligent actions.

As Willie Nelson says “Vote ‘Em Out!”

PWS

10-01-18

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: HOW THE TRUMP/SESSIONS WHITE NATIONALIST CABAL PLANS MORE CHILD ABUSE – THIS TIME U.S. CITIZENS – WHILE FURTHER DIMINISHING US AS A NATION – All In The Name Of Xenophobic Racism!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/three-reasons-trumps-new-immigration-rule-should-make-your-blood-boil/2018/08/09/1f59a7fe-9b4c-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html?utm_term=.01d421f3f621

Catherine Rampell reports for the Washington Post:

Once again, the Trump administration is looking to punish immigrants. And once again, innocent children are getting hurt in the process.

This time, however, many of those innocent children are likely to be U.S. citizens.

On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the Trump administration is readying a new rule that should make your blood boil. The initiative, in the works for more than a year, would make it harder for legal immigrants to receive either green cards or citizenship if they — or anyone in their households — has ever benefited from a long list of safety-net programs. These include the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), food stamps or even health insurance purchased on the Obamacare exchanges.

Three points are worth emphasizing here.

First is that, again, this policy would apply to immigrants who are in the country legally . It’s not about punishing people for “sneaking across the border,” that apparently unforgivable transgression that Trump officials have previously used to justify state-sanctioned child abuse. And, in any case, undocumented immigrants are already excluded from nearly all federal anti-poverty programs.

As such, the proposal fits into President Trump’s agenda to dramatically cut levels of legal immigration, despite his rhetorical focus on the undocumented.

Second, this rule is ostensibly about making sure immigrants are self-sufficient and not a drain on public coffers. But NBC reports that the rule could disqualify immigrants making as much as 250 percent of the poverty level.

Moreover, an immigrant’s past use of benefits does not necessarily mean he or she will need them forever. Even the immigrant populations that you might expect to have the most trouble achieving economic self-sufficiency have proved to be a good long-term investment for the nation’s fiscal health.

For instance, refugees initially cost the government money; they need a lot of help, after all, given that they often arrive penniless and without proficient English-language skills. But over time, their work and wage prospects improve and, by their fifth year here, they pay more in taxes than they received in benefits on average, according to a government report commissioned and subsequently suppressed by the Trump administration last year. (The report eventually leaked to the New York Times.)

Third, and most important, is that under the proposal, it’s not only immigrants who must forgo safety-net benefits if they don’t wish to be penalized by the immigration system. It is everyonein a given immigrant’s household.

That includes — based on an earlier leaked draft of the proposal published by The Post — an immigrant’s own children, even if those children are U.S. citizens who independently qualify for safety-net benefits.

That’s right. Legal-immigrant moms and dads may soon face a choice between (A) guaranteeing their U.S.-born children medical care, preschool classes and infant formula today, or (B) not threatening their own ability to qualify for green cards or citizenship tomorrow.

The universe of U.S.-citizen children who could be affected is large. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that, in Medicaid and CHIP enrollment alone in 2016, about 5.8 million citizen children had a noncitizen parent.

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The rule has not yet been issued. But various versions of it have leaked over the past year and a half. These have received coverage in foreign-language media, and fears about changes to immigration policy already appear to be discouraging participation in services meant to help low-income American children.

Including, perhaps most distressingly, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), a critical lifeline that provides access to food, prenatal care, breast pumps and other services for low-income mothers and children. WIC was listed in the draft rule published by The Post, and it’s not clear whether it remains in the latest version; but, either way, some immigrant parents and parents-to-be are already unenrolling, just in case.

“I had one family come and tell me, ‘Please remove us from WIC program, all services, medical, dental, everything,’ ” says Aliya S. Haq, the nutrition services supervisor at International Community Health Services in Seattle. The family had a child less than a year old who needed medical attention, but Haq could not convince them the benefits outweighed the risks of staying in the program.

Another patient, who is pregnant, asked to stop receiving prenatal assistance because she’s applying for citizenship.

Haq said the clinic’s WIC enrollment has fallen by about 10 percent over the past year; she worries daily about whether infant and maternal mortality rates will worsen, and whether there will be a negative effect on the brain development and long-term health of newborns.

Any policy that discourages, even a little bit, poor families’ use of such services is not just heartless. From an economic perspective, it is foolish. We need healthy, well-nourished, well-educated children to become healthy, well-nourished, productive workers.

But once again, children and the economic future they represent are the casualties of Trump’s casual cruelty.

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

Catherine is being too kind to the Trumpsters. So, I’ll lay it on the line for you. This isn’t just “casual cruelty.” It’s intentional racist, xenophobic cruelty of the kind that Trump, Sessions, and Miller have promoted throughout their sordid careers.

We need regime change. In the meantime, here’s hoping that the New Due Process Army will keep these outrageous, racist, irrational, and unneeded regulations changes tied up in litigation until the White Nationalist regime can be thrown out of office.

PWS

08-09-18

AS WHITE SUPREMACISTS GATHER TO DISRUPT NATION’S CAPITAL, SESSIONS SUCKS UP TO NOTORIOUS HOMOPHOBIC HATE GROUP – Blames SPLC For Outing His Misconduct & Group’s Agenda Of Hate & Intolerance, Cloaked In Bogus Christianity!

https://thinkprogress.org/jeff-sesions-says-adf-not-hate-group-e0e5af4dfe70/

Zack Ford reports for ThinkProgress:

Jeff Sessions wants to keep working with this hate group, so he told them they aren’t a hate group

The Alliance Defending Freedom is totally a hate group.

ZACK FORDAUG 9, 2018, 9:53 AM

SHARE

CREDIT: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

A week after announcing a mysterious new “religious liberty task force,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions once again addressed the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on Wednesday. He assured them that he does not believe they are a hate group for constantly advocating for discrimination against LGBTQ people, and then claimed that his Department of Justice does not “partner with any groups that discriminate.”

Sessions previously spoke to ADF last June, and his at-the-time secret address caused quite a backlash as many in the media pointed out that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has identified ADF as an anti-LGBTQ hate group. His remarks were later made public, and ADF took a conservative media tour to claim that they were a victim of this false accusation.

This time, Sessions addressed the controversy head on. After mentioning “the ordeal faced bravely by Jack Phillips,” the baker ADF represented in Supreme Court who blatantly discriminated against a same-sex couple, Sessions told the group that people of faith are facing “a bigoted ideology which is founded on animus towards people of faith.”

“You’ll notice that they don’t rely on the facts,” he said. “They don’t make better arguments. They don’t propose higher ideals. No, they just call people names—like ‘hate group.’”

Sessions claimed that groups like the SPLC wield the “hate group” designation to “bully and intimidate” conservative groups “that refuse to accept their orthodoxy and choose instead to speak their conscience.” He noted, for example, that the label led Amazon to disqualify ADF from its Smile fundraising program.

“You and I may not agree on everything — but I wanted to come back here tonight partly because I wanted to say this: you are not a hate group,” he said.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions repeats ‘Lock her up!’ chant during speech to students

Contrary to Sessions’ claims, there are ample facts to substantiate ADF’s designation as an anti-LGBTQ hate group — so much so that it’s pure gaslighting to say otherwise. The group has defended wedding vendors challenging nondiscrimination laws, parents and schools that want to reject transgender students, and businesses that want the right to refuse to even employ LGBTQ people. They have even repeatedly advocated for the criminalization of homosexuality. Media Matters recently published a massive report cataloging the litany of ways ADF has demonized LGBTQ people and lobbied against their basic civil rights.

Sessions had made similar remarks about hate group designations at last week’s religious liberty summit, and the SPLC responded. In a letter to Sessions, SPLC President Richard Cohen highlighted some of the facts that led to hate group designations for groups like ADF and the Family Research Council (FRC). “Linking the LGBT community to pedophilia as the FRC and the ADF have done is not an expression of a religious belief,” he wrote. “It is simply a dangerous and ugly falsehood. As you know, FBI hate crime data show that the LGBT community is the minority group most likely targeted for violent hate crimes.”

“If the ADF had its way, gay people would be back in the closet for fear of going to jail,” Cohen wrote. “It’s inappropriate for the nation’s top law enforcement officer to lend the prestige of his office to this group. And it’s ironic to suggest that the rights of ADF sympathizers are under attack when the ADF is doing everything in its power to deny the equal protection of the laws to the LGBT community.”

Sessions rescinds workplace protections for transgender people

Sessions may also have been trying to protect his own reputation. In the same speech to ADF, he also insisted that the DOJ “will not partner with hate groups. Not on my watch.”

But of course the DOJ partners constantly with ADF. The Trump administration has backed ADF’s position in multiple cases, ADF’s representatives were front and center at last week’s religious liberty summit (including former ADF staff who now work for the DOJ), and Sessions even consulted with ADF when drafting the “religious freedom” guidance that the new task force will enforce. It’s just that Sessions himself has long advocated against LGBTQ equality, so he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong or hateful when it comes to taking such positions.

Anti-LGBTQ conservatives were quite flattered to have the U.S. attorney general’s support. The Heritage Foundation and The Federalist, as examples, were quick to praise Sessions’ remarks and join the pile-on to smear the SPLC. Rather than respond to the detailed critiques the SPLC provides about their prejudiced positions, anti-LGBTQ hate groups have instead campaigned to besmirch the historic civil rights organization’s reputation.

With Sessions constantly catering to these groups, they have only been more emboldened to express their discriminatory beliefs — further confirming the legitimacy of the SPLC’s designation.

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

Yeah, pretty much says it all about our totally unqualified AG. Pumping up hate groups on the eve of a White Supremacist rally. Just what the country needs from its chief law officer! But, I suppose what you’d expect from a unrepenitent child abuser. Senator Elizabeth Warren tried to tell America who Jeff Sessions really is. But she was silenced and smeared by Mitch McConnell and the GOP, just like the SPLC is being smeared by Sessions.

I actually do have some “higher ideals” to propose — stop misusing the loving, inclusive, foregiving teachings of Jesus Christ in support of hate campaigns against the LGBTQ community; tolerate and respect all people as they are; stop discriminating against LGBTQ individuals; let transgender kids use the bathroom; stop trying to criminalize consenting sexual relations between adults; stop defending business people who bring their religion into the public marketplace by refusing to supply goods and services to members of the LGBTQ community based on so-called “religious beliefs.” Fundamentally, it’s no different than a lunch counter owner claiming that his “religion” forbade him to serve African Americans or Jews.

This story is “Classic Gonzo.” Confronted with facts — ADF is a hate group — and the law — ethics considerations forbid the AG from speaking to hate groups, Sessions lies — says ADF isn’t a hate group — implicitly blames the victims — the LGBTQ community,— and smears their defenders — the SPLC — who happened to be on the side of truth. He also, as he no doubt intended, sent a strong message to all hate groups in America, from White Supremacists on down — Don’t worry, I’ve got your back! As if there were ever any doubt!

Fortunately, Sessions and his disingenuous cohorts won’t be able to evade the judgment of history. That’s why it’s important to keep making the record about who he really is and what he really believes in. And, I can guarantee you it’s not the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, human decency, or American democracy!

PWS

08-09-18

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.

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

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

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR – Ryan Closes Out A Truly Toxic Career Aimed at Widening The Income Gap, Promoting Social Inequality, And Destroying the Safety Net That Most Americans Depend On In One Way Or Another! – “Boy Wonder” From Wisconsin (Who Betrayed His Working Class Home Town & Was Re-elected Only Because Of Massive Gerrymandering) Was One Of America’s Worst Politicos

Here’s the latest “Levin Report” from Vanity Fair:

Since the day he developed what would become a lifelong, unremitting, probably-actually-really-awkward-for-his-wife crush on Ayn Rand, House Speaker Paul Ryan has dreamed about two things: cutting taxes on the wealthy and destroying the social safety net. (Three things if you count convincing his wife to style her hair in a side-swept bob, which he’s been told time after time is never gonna happen, so stop asking.) So devoted was he to the hallowed principle of redistributing wealth to the people at the top that, for the past year and a half, he’s put up with just about everything that’s come out of the White House, be it the firing of the F.B.I. director, a refusal to condemn white supremacists, an alleged affair with a porn star, hush money, the attacking of his colleagues via Twitter, and the strong suggestion that special counsel Robert Mueller may be next to get the ax. Because in Donald Trump, Wisconsin’s first son saw the potential for a payoff that outweighed having to align himself with a born swindler who’s made a mockery of the White House and sought to destroy America’s standing in the world: a historic transfer of wealth thinly disguised as tax “reform.” With the bill once known as the “Cut Cut Cut Act” safely signed into law—a moment Ryan cited as one of the proudest of his career—the speaker announced to rank-and-file Republicans on Wednesday that he would retire at the end of the year, ducking out at a crucial crossroads for his party.

So what gives? Aside from facing political headwinds at home, and a pre-emptive battle for his job on the Hill, Ryan likely looked into the future and saw little hope of carrying out the rest of his agenda, even under a Republican president. For a brief moment after the tax legislation was passed, Ryan was lustily eyeing the opportunity to embark on welfare “reform,” positioning it, basically seconds after ushering in a historic giveaway to corporate America and the ultra-wealthy, as the reason the country’s finances were in total disarray. But sadly for Ryan, Mitch McConnell almost immediately put the kibosh on those plans, realizing how politically unfeasible they were. And so, as New York’s Ed Kilgore put it, Ryan likely “look[ed] ahead to a straitened G.O.P. margin in the House . . . and the prospect of having to wait until 2021 at the earliest to resume the fight against the welfare state [and] decided to go home to Wisconsin and regroup.”

By bowing out, Ryan will also be well clear of Washington by the time his tax bill really starts to bear fruit. We speak, of course, of the report released by the Congressional Budget Office just two days before Ryan announced he was throwing in the towel. Among other things, the report estimates that, thanks in large part to December’s tax bill, the U.S. deficit will top $1 trillion annually starting in 2020, with the national debt soaring past $33 trillion by 2028, a situation that increases the likelihood of a fiscal crisis. Which, come to think of it, is something Ryan used to care about when tax cuts weren’t so close he could taste ’em. (Under Barack Obama, Ryan absolutely railed against deficits, turning them into the right’s monster in the closet, and winning a hilariously named “Fiscy” award in 2011 for “being the first [congressman] in several years to step forward with a specific scorable budget plan that would actually solve the nation’s long-term structural deficits.”)

Five years later, however, he can take credit for setting the U.S. on a path to run trillion-dollar deficits from now to eternity, beginning in 2020. Because, as his supply-side brother from another mother Larry Kudlow explained Monday night, deficits are fine when they’re for tax cuts or the type of spending that will line the private sector’s pockets, but for things like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? Well, then they’re a total scourge on society that must be stopped at all costs. Luckily, at roughly half the age at which he wants Americans to work until they can retire, Ryan has plenty of years left to collect checks from the Brothers Koch and other corporate donors, who coincidentally just came into a large amount of money.

The Trump organization finds a new way to lower its tax bill

You would think, what with the historic tax law passed in December that was particularly kind to real-estate enterprises like the Trump Organization, that the president’s family business would be content to pay whatever taxes the I.R.S. decides it owes. But, given who we’re dealing with here, you would of course think wrong:

Across the country, the Trump Organization is suing local governments, claiming it owes much less in property taxes than government assessors say because its properties are worth much less than they’ve been valued at. In just one example, the company has asserted that its gleaming waterfront skyscraper in Chicago is worth less than than its assessed value, in part because its retail space is failing and worth less than nothing.

No president in modern times has owned a business involved in legal battles with local governments. “The idea that the president would have these interests and then those companies would sue localities is really a dangerous precedent,” says Larry Noble, of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. The dynamic between local and federal governments is impossible to ignore in these cases, says Noble. Municipalities “rely on resources from the federal government and the federal government can make your life easier or much more difficult.” The concern arises because the president did not fully separate from his businesses, he says.

For its part, the Trump Organization has naturally claimed that there’s nothing to see here and that, in fact, anyone suggesting otherwise should be ashamed of him or herself. In a statement, a spokesperson for the firm told ProPublica: “Like any other business or property owner when property taxes become inflated it is not uncommon to challenge the process to ensure fair treatment. This is a routine practice and any suggestion otherwise is simply ridiculous.”

The gun industry can’t believe Bank of America is being so rude

As part of corporate America’s decision, in the wake of the Parkland massacre, to step back and assess whether or not associating with mass murder is a good look, Bank of America has decided to stop lending money to companies that produce assault-style weapons for non-military purposes. And the new policy is not sitting very well with those companies.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry lobby, puts the economic impact of the gun and ammunition industry at $51.1 billion nationwide in 2017. That organization criticized the bank’s move on Tuesday, saying it’s wrong to deem semiautomatic rifles long available to civilians to be military-style weapons.

“We as an industry would welcome the opportunity to sit down with Bank of America executives and explain our industry’s perspective to discuss what really would work to keep firearms out of the hands of those who should not have them,” Michael Bazinet, a spokesman for the N.S.S.F., told Bloomberg. “We should be part of the discussion.” (Bazinet did not get into specifics, re: what would “really” work to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, but presumably it falls under the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” umbrella.)

John Paulson’s gonna need a bigger check

The billionaire hedge-fund manager, for whom the last several years have amounted to basically being kicked in the ribs and then kneed in the balls while coughing up blood, apparently owes a large amount of money to the I.R.S.:

By April 17, the hedge-fund manager must make federal and state tax payments of about $1 billion, on top of roughly $500 million in taxes he paid late last year, said people close to the firm. That sum is so big it dwarfs the maximum amount the Internal Revenue Service will allow any single taxpayer to pay with a single check. (That’s $99,999,999, in case you’re wondering.)

Mr. Paulson, 62, isn’t exactly struggling to pay the $1.5 billion bill. But he’s also not as flush as the heady days of 2008. In fact, after a string of poor results, a bad bet on pharmaceutical stocks and client defections, Mr. Paulson has been selling various investments to cover the bill. He’s also in the process of cutting costs and shrinking his firm, including laying off senior traders.

“It is safe to say it is one of the largest tax bills on earned income in history,” Henry Bregstein, co–global head of the financial-services group at the law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, told The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Zuckerman.

And speaking of taxes . . .

Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, whose house, hotel room, and office were raided by the F.B.I. on Monday, reportedly owes $54,000 in taxi-medallion back taxes, which sounds about right.

Scott Pruitt contains multitudes

Time was, we thought E.P.A. administrator was simply all about the cause of destroying the Earth for the benefit of his buddies in the private sector. But according to a new report from The New York Times, he’s actually also a complete and total megalomaniac:

When Scott Pruitt wanted to refashion the Environmental Protection Agency’s “challenge coin”—a type of souvenir medallion with military origins that has become a status symbol among civilians—he proposed an unusual design: Make it bigger, and delete the E.P.A. logo.

Mr. Pruitt instead wanted the coin to feature some combination of symbols more reflective of himself and the Trump administration. Among the possibilities: a buffalo, to evoke Mr. Pruitt’s native Oklahoma, and a Bible verse to reflect his faith. Other ideas included using the Great Seal of the United States—a design similar to the presidential seal—and putting Mr. Pruitt’s name around the rim in large letters, according to Ronald Slotkin, a career E.P.A. employee who retired this year, and two people familiar with the proposals who asked to remain anonymous because they said they feared retribution.

“These coins represent the agency,” Slotkin, a former director of the E.P.A.’s multimedia office, told the Times. “But Pruitt wanted his coin to be bigger than everyone else’s and he wanted it in a way that represented him.”

Elsewhere!

Dow closes more than 200 points lower after Trump taunts Russia (CNBC)

China Talks Stalled Over Trump’s Demands on High-Tech Industries, Source Says (Bloomberg)

Larry Kudlow: Tariffs might come before negotiations with China (CNBC)

Elon Musk is stressed, says he’s sleeping on Tesla factory floor and has no time to go home and shower (CNBC)

It Turns Out $25 Million Won’t Buy Schwarzman His Name on a High School (Bloomberg)

Wynn’s Boston Casino Is Rising on Land Tied to a Mobster (Bloomberg)

Zuckerberg tangles with Congress on control of Facebook data (Reuters)

Federal Reserve policymakers all saw strengthening economy, inflation (Reuters)

Escaped tortoise traveled a five-minute walk in three days (UPI)

The Levin Report by Bess Levin at Vanity Fair

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Ryan and his “Reverse Robin Hood Philosophy” has always been among the “worst of the worst” frauds in American politics. Like many others, he has benefitted from the “Age of Trump.”

By taking idiocy, ignorance, and inhumanity to new levels, Trump has eclipsed less overtly outrageous yet truly “bad guys” like Ryan and to some degree allowed them to escape complete accountability for their grotesque anti-Americanism and crimes against average Americans. Given the ugliness of today’s GOP, his replacement easily could be even worse. But, still, good riddance!

PWS

04-12-18

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S UNWARRANTED ATTACK ON OUR CHILDREN IS AN ATTACK ON AMERICAN VALUES!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/do-we-really-want-16-million-children-without-parents/2018/03/29/46d78b6a-335b-11e8-94fa-32d48460b955_story.html?utm_term=.5602ef577586

Former Delaware Governor Jack Markell in the Washington Post:

Jack Markell, a trustee of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, was governor of Delaware from 2009 to 2017.

Reading recent stories about U.S. citizens being forcibly separated from their undocumented parents reminds me of a visit I made to South Africa in 1985.

During that trip, I spent several days with the Black Sash in Johannesburg and Cape Town. This group of white women had formed 30 years earlier to protest legislation designed to remove voting rights of “coloured” South Africans. Over time, the Black Sash evolved from protest to advocacy, and by the time of my visit, it had grown to thousands of women who volunteered their time to help black and mixed-race South Africans deal with the horrendous laws and regulations of apartheid.

Among the most painful of the system’s effects was the destruction of families. Meeting with the Black Sash volunteers, I saw teenagers who had been removed from their families and black families forced to move from Johannesburg to a far-off rural “homeland” where they had no relatives.

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Now, in our own country, the Trump administration is preparing to threaten the well-being of 16 million U.S. citizens who live with their immigrant parents.

That’s right. Sixteen million U.S.-born children under 18 would be on the receiving end of a series of new proposals from President Trump’s team that could make it more difficult for parents to stay in the United States legally — and, even if they remained here, would reduce the likelihood that those parents would avail themselves of the services designed to keep their children healthy.

The proposals are embodied in changes to the “public charge” regulations, which limit the cost to the government of caring for immigrants. This concept has been in the law for decades. The difference with these proposals is that they would allow officials to include nutrition, health and other programs among the benefits that can be used to define an immigrant as being too dependent on public aid. That means immigrants availing themselves of those benefits — even for their children who are U.S. citizens — could be barred from obtaining a new visa or becoming a lawful permanent resident.

So, not surprisingly, an increasing number of immigrants are no longer enrolling their citizen children in government-sponsored health-care programs or feeding them with groceries purchased with food stamps. (Almost half of all immigrant-headed households with children buy food with the assistance of the government.)

Our country has historically made sure that a safety net will prevent our most vulnerable children from going hungry or without health care. These proposed changes reflect a betrayal of our core values.

Administration officials claim that they are proposing these changes in order to protect taxpayers. This argument is — at best — penny-wise and pound-foolish. Hungry and unhealthy children are more likely to be chronically dependent on government services and less likely to find good jobs and pay taxes.

Even without the rules being put into effect, we’re seeing massive negative consequences for many of these children. The advocacy group CLASP recently released research that reveals how the combination of fear caused by possible separation from parents and increased economic uncertainty has increased toxic stress among children from families who have members with different immigration statuses.

While these rules have not yet taken effect, once they are introduced, they could become the law of the land within a few months. In the meantime, once the regulations are posted for public comment, it’s critical for those who care about fiscal prudence as well as those who believe that it’s important to help keep our citizen children with their families to act. They must protest on behalf of these vulnerable children and on behalf of our core American values.

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Yup, an Administration of liars and child abusers is about as low as it can go. But, that’s what we have until 2020 and perhaps longer if decent Americans don’t wake up,.get motivated, and vote Trump and his corrupt GOP enablers and fellow travelers out of office!

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!

PWS

04-02-18

AMERICA THE UGLY: WHY ARE WE ALLOWING OUR GOVERNMENT TO ABUSE THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF FAMILIES & CHILDREN? — “This policy is tantamount to state-sponsored traumatization.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/immigrant-children-deportation-parents.html

DORA GALACATOS, ALAN SHAPIRO and BRETT STARK in the NY Times:

“The Department of Homeland Security may soon formalize the abhorrent practice of detaining the children of asylum-seekers separately from their parents. Immigrant families apprehended at the southwest border already endure a deeply flawed system in which they can be detained indefinitely. In this immigration system, detainees too often lack adequate access to counsel. But to unnecessarily tear apart families who cross the border to start a better life is immoral.

Sadly, such separations are already happening. The Florence Project in Arizona documented 155 such cases by October and other immigrant advocacy organizations report that children are being taken away from their parents. If the secretary orders this practice to be made standard procedure, thousands of families could face unnecessary separation.

The Trump administration’s goal is to strong-arm families into accepting deportation to get their children back. Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, admitted this when she told the Senate on Jan. 16 that separating families may “discourage parents” from seeking refuge in America.

But the increasing informal use of family separation has not proved to be a deterrent. Last year, the number of family apprehensions at the southwestern border skyrocketed from 1,118 families in April to 8,120 in December.

Parents will continue to flee violence to protect their children and themselves. It is reprehensible to punish them for that basic human impulse. It is also despicable that the government would use children as bargaining chips. This policy is tantamount to state-sponsored traumatization.

Those of us who have seen the sites where families are detained and work directly with children and families who have gone through the system know what’s at stake.

The children we work with call the Border Patrol processing stations for migrants stopped at the border “iceboxes” (hieleras) and “dog kennels” (perreras). “I was wet from crossing the river and it was so cold I thought I would die,” one child said.

Another told us: “The lights were kept on day and night. I became disoriented and didn’t know how long I had been there.” A third said: “I was separated from my older sister. She is the closest person in my life. I couldn’t stop crying until I saw her again a few days later.”

In our work we have heard countless stories about detention. But the shock of bearing witness to them is hard to put into words. In McAllen, Tex., you enter a nondescript warehouse, the color of the dry barren landscape that surrounds it. It could be storage for just about anything, but is in actuality a cavernous, cold space holding hundreds upon hundreds of mostly women and children.

Chain-link fencing divides the harshly illuminated space into pens, one for boys, a second for girls and a third for their mothers and infant siblings. The pens are unusually quiet except for the crinkling of silver Mylar blankets. This is where family separation begins, as does the nightmare for parents and children.

The parents whose sons and daughters have been taken from them are given two options: either agree to return home with their children — or endure having those children sent on to shelters run by the Health and Human Services Department while they themselves languish in detention centers scattered around the country.

This country’s medical and mental health organizations have rightly recognized the trauma of this practice. The American Academy of Pediatrics has condemned immigrant family separation, and family detention overall, as “harsh and counterproductive.” The American Medical Association has denounced family separation as causing “unnecessary distress, depression and anxiety.”

Studies overwhelmingly demonstrate the irreparable harm to children caused by separation from their parents. A parent or caregiver’s role is to mitigate stress. Family separation robs children of that buffer and can create toxic stress, which can damage brain development and lead to chronic conditions like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and heart disease. For that reason, more than 200 child welfare, juvenile justice and child development organizations signed a letterdemanding that the Trump administration abandon this ill-conceived policy.

Family separation is also unjustifiable legally, as “family unity” is central to our immigration laws and our longstanding policy of reuniting citizens and permanent residents with their relatives.

More fundamentally, family separation is anathema to basic decency and human rights. For our government to essentially hold immigrant children as hostages in exchange for the “ransom” of their parents’ deportation is simply despicable.

It is every parent’s nightmare to have a child snatched away. To adopt this as standard procedure to facilitate deportations is inhumane and does nothing to make Americans safer. This country, and Secretary Nielsen, must reject family separation.

DERELICTION OF DUTY! — VLADI PUTIN SCORED A DIRECT HIT ON OUR “SHIP OF STATE!” – WITH THE SHIP LISTING AND THE CREW FRANTICALLY WARNING OF OTHER IMMINENT ATTACKS, “CAPTAIN COWARD” ROWS AWAY TO SAVE HIS OWN SKIN WHILE LEAVING OUR NATION TO “SINK WITH THE SHIP!” – How Is This Right? – Why Are We Letting Him Get Away With It?

FROM TODAYS’ WASHINGTON POST — THE EDITORIAL BOARD WRITES:

“By Editorial Board February 16 at 8:09 PM

FRIDAY’S FEDERAL grand jury indictment of 13 Russians for conspiracy to interfere illegally in the 2016 presidential election presents powerful evidence that Moscow staged an attack on the United States’ democratic political process. The facts, doggedly accumulated by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III despite much hostility from President Trump, show that the Russians’ goal was to foment “distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general,” as the indictment puts it. And the chosen means was “information warfare,” reportedly waged via provocations on social media and the occasional in-person grass-roots activity. It began in 2014 and involved Russians engaging in political activities under false, sometimes stolen, identities; no Americans wittingly cooperated with this particular plot, though some did so unwittingly, according to the indictment.

The indictment thus undercuts any lingering suggestion that Russian interference is a myth or a hoax, and Mr. Trump, who has often suggested as much, should have acknowledged the new evidence Friday. Instead, his first reaction was to claim vindication on Twitter. “The Trump campaign did nothing wrong,” he wrote, adding, “no collusion!” This was inappropriate on two levels.

First, though the indictment did say that there was no knowing American collusion with the Russian social media campaign, and though it did not say that it affected the results, it also showed that the vast majority of Russian propaganda supported Mr. Trump’s campaign and attacked that of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. You would think Mr. Trump would take a moment to repudiate that support, even in hindsight, and to declare that no foreign power has a right to campaign secretly against an American candidate.

Second, Mr. Mueller has not finished his investigation and has not ruled out the possibility of collusion. We don’t yet know whether Donald Trump Jr.’s eagerness to meet with Russians offering “dirt” on Ms. Clinton’s campaign was an isolated incident. Nor has the special counsel yet weighed in on the question of possible obstruction of his investigation by President Trump.

Meanwhile, the evidence of a Russian assault on the U.S. election is a serious development in and of itself that any responsible president would respond to in a serious way. Such an attempt to delegitimize the American system could only have gone forward with the knowledge and approval of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It reflected the Kremlin’s all-too-accurate judgment that a divided and polarized U.S. electorate would be vulnerable to the same sort of dirty tricks Russia has pulled in Europe. In a statement, Mr. Trump declared that “we cannot allow those seeking to sow confusion, discord, and rancor to be successful,” though he strangely blamed not Russia, but rather “outlandish partisan attacks” by his opponents, which, he said, “further the agendas of bad actors, like Russia.” The only message he should be sending now, both to the American people and to Moscow, is that Mr. Putin is responsible and that the U.S. government will respond to his covert attacks with appropriate retaliation.

President Trump continues to insist the Democrats are responsible for any story relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Video: Meg Kelly/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The grand jury’s indictment shows how far Russia is willing to go to manipulate and discredit our democracy. Mr. Trump’s own intelligence chiefs warned this week that the 2018 election is under threat. Given the baffling and inexcusable absence of presidential leadership, Congress must step up to defend the nation.”

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An “inexcusable absence of presidential leadership.” Sorry, I don’t find that “baffling” or surprising at all. In fact, it’s a depressingly accurate and succinct description of Trump’s entire “Joke Presidency.”

Trump’s own intelligence officials, including National Security Advisor Gen. McMaster are all warning of the seriousness of the threat Russia poses to our electoral integrity and national security. Trump is, as normal, focused entirely on trying (totally unsuccessfully) to cover his own behind. This is a guy who up until now has been calling Russian interference with the 2016 Election “a hoax” and “fake news.”

And, there is zero chance that the spineless and complicit GOP-controlled Congress will step into the breach. They are too busy looting our country before Armageddon comes!

There is, however, one way available to all of us to save our country! Throw the GOP scoundrels, enablers, and “Fellow Travelers” out of office. A Democratic Congress is the best hope for the people to take back control and save America from Putin, Trump, and the “New American Oligarchs” and “Kleptocrats” who are enabling both of them!

Otherwise, we all ought to start studying Russian. Because we’re all going to need it to communicate with our “future real rulers” in Moscow!

PWS

02-17-18

E.J. DIONNE, JR. @ WASHPOST – “SIMPLE DECENCY MOVEMENT” LIKELY TO BE BAD NEWS FOR TRUMP’S INDECENT GOP – “[D]emanding simple decency is a radical and subversive act.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-real-split-in-american-politics-isnt-left-vs-right/2018/02/14/9ca64696-11bc-11e8-9570-29c9830535e5_story.html

Dionne writes:

“. . . .

Some members of this dispirited group overlap with a third key constituency that is underanalyzed because its ranks are not exceptionally partisan or ideological. They are citizens who ask for a basic minimum from those in charge of their government: some dignity and decorum, a focus on problem-solving, and orderliness rather than chaos. Trump and the conservatives sustaining him are completely out of line with this behavioral conservatism built on self-restraint and temperamental evenness.

It is not to romanticize the heartland to say that anyone who spends time in the Midwest runs into such solid citizens all the time. They are horrified by spousal abuse. They include small-business owners who prefer low taxes but care about schools, roads, libraries and parks. They may be critical of government, but they also expect it to do useful things. They don’t much like bragging and find an obsession with enemies unhealthy.

They are churchgoers who don’t watch TV preachers, may have doubts about this or that doctrine, and don’t tell others how religious they are. But they take from their faith and scripture that they have obligations to their communities and a duty to try as best they can to live by the standards they uphold.

They like to look up to their leaders with respect, and they feel betrayed when the powers that be give them every reason not to.

The obvious political calculation is that this fall’s elections will be decided by which side mobilizes its most ardent supporters. But here is a bet that there is also a quiet revolution of conscience in the country among those who are sick to death of the chaos they see every day on the news, a White House whose energy is devoted to stabbing internal foes in the back and a president who can’t stop thinking about himself. In the face of this, demanding simple decency is a radical and subversive act.”

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Read the rest of Dionne’s op-ed at the link.

One can only hope that at some point, reason will prevail over the greed, immorality, clownishness, disrespect, dishonesty, and incompetence that has come to symbolize today’s GOP and the Trump regime. Even today, there are a number of stories about how well-to-do yet fundamentally dishonest Trump appointees and their families continue to loot the Treasury and run up a huge deficit while essentially proposing a “death to the poor and vulnerable” budget. This is what a kleptocracy and gross indecency looks like! Reading our newspapers on a daily basis reminds me of passages I used to see only in State Department Country Reports on corrupt, Third-World dictatorships.

PWS

02-15-18

TOO GOOD TO WAIT FOR SATURDAY SATIRE: ANDY BOROWITZ @ THE NEW YORKER – “Millions of Americans Demand $130,000 for Not Having Sex with Trump”

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/millions-of-americans-demand-130000-for-not-having-sex-with-trump?mbid=nl_Borowitz 021418&CNDID=48297443&spMailingID=12931975&spUserID=MjQ1NjUyMTUwNjY5S0&spJobID=1341291132&spReportId=MTM0MTI5MTEzMgS2

Satire from The Borowitz Report

Millions of Americans Demand $130,000 for Not Having Sex with Trump

By Andy Borowitz

10:37 A.M.

Photograph by Mait Juriado / Getty

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of Americans on Wednesday demanded that Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, issue them checks in the amount of $130,000 for not having sex with Trump.

After Cohen revealed that he had issued such a check to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who he claims never had intimate relations with his client, there was widespread outrage among other Americans who had also not had sex with Trump but had not been paid for not doing so.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for Stormy Daniels,” Tracy Klugian, a florist in Santa Rosa, California, said. “I just want my check, too.”

Harland Dorrinson, a bank teller in Akron, Ohio, said that he had already e-mailed Cohen to demand payment. “I have never come close to having sex with Trump, and that should be worth something,” he said. “Specifically, $130,000.”

But, even as millions of Americans clamored to be compensated for abstaining from sex with Cohen’s client, others, like Carol Foyler, of Tallahassee, Florida, took a different view. “Never having sex with Donald Trump should be a reward in itself,” she said.

Andy Borowitz is the New York Times best-selling author of “The 50 Funniest American Writers,” and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes the Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news, for newyorker.com.

Read more »

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Sounds like a good deal to me! What a “win-win!”

PWS

02-14-18

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WARNING: THIS IS “FAKE NEWS” BUT COMES WITH MY ABSOLUTE, UNCONDITIONAL, MONEY BACK GUARANTEE THAT IT CONTAINS MORE TRUTH THAN THE AVERAGE TRUMP TWEET OR SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS NEWS BRIEFING, AND ALSO MORE FACTUAL ACCURACY THAN ANY REPORT PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF “AGENT DEVON!”

HOW DOES SOMEONE GAIN REFUGEE OR ASYLEE STATUS?

REFUGEES COME WITH NOTHING

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Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

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As Willie Nelson says “Vote ‘Em Out!”

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Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!

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FROM TODAYS’ WASHINGTON POST — THE EDITORIAL BOARD WRITES:

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WARNING: THIS IS “FAKE NEWS” BUT COMES WITH MY ABSOLUTE, UNCONDITIONAL, MONEY BACK GUARANTEE THAT IT CONTAINS MORE TRUTH THAN THE AVERAGE TRUMP TWEET OR SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS NEWS BRIEFING, AND ALSO MORE FACTUAL ACCURACY THAN ANY REPORT PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF “AGENT DEVON!”

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