"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
The Republican senator Ted Cruz has drawn criticism for taking a trip to America’s southern border as the conservative Texan politician once again became the butt of internet jokes and memes.
In the style of a wildlife documentary, Cruz captured his experience with the help of professional photographers and shared his recent journey to the US-Mexico border Thursday night on social media, where he aimed to shed light on what Republicans have dubbed a crisis.
Sporting a dark green fishing shirt and matching baseball cap with the Texas flag, Cruz spoke at a press conference where he sought to paint a dramatic picture of his experience: “On the other side of the river we have been listening to and seeing cartel members – human traffickers – right on the other side of the river waving flashlights, yelling and taunting Americans, taunting the border patrol.”
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Despite his claims that the border situation is a direct result of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, residents in the Rio Grande Valley have said no such crisis exists. In fact, the number of border crossings under the Biden administration largely mirror those under the former Trump administration. Cruz was accompanied by 18 other Republican senators including John Cornyn, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.
After claiming he ran into heckling cartel members and saw a dead body floating in the Rio Grande, Cruz was derided by many, including the former congressman Beto O’Rourke who said:“You’re in a border patrol boat armed with machine guns. The only threat you face is unarmed children and families who are seeking asylum (as well as the occasional heckler).”
. . . .
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Read more at the link about the GOP’s complete farce — while much more courageous individuals, asylum seekers, are forced to risk their lives because the U.S. is incapable of administering our own asylum laws in a fair, responsible, and competent manner. Cruz & co apparently view this as a “photo op.” Actually, it’s a human tragedy for which history will hold Cruz and his racist party largely responsible, even if the voters fail to do so.
The best solution is to hire experts from the private/NGO/academic sectors; build a functioning asylum and refugee system that will process applicants fairly, generously, predictably, and efficiently; reopen legal ports of entry; establish a robust “on site” refugee program for the Northern Triangle; and work with the international community to alleviate the causes of forced migration. Figure out how new arrivals who qualify for legal status can help rebuild our economy moving forward. Develop a humane program for returning those who don’t qualify without endangering their lives, health, and safety.
An absolutely essential part of the solution is a new, “reimagined” EOIR, staffed with real judges who are experts in asylum, human rights, and due process. An EOIR that will “through teamwork and innovation, be the world’s best courts, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Judge Garland, where are you in American justice’s hour of dire need?
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Imperfect as our current laws may be, they cover all of the foregoing. What we really need to do is follow our own laws with common sense, humanity, and a sense of urgency!
What we don’t need is more inane walls, more border enforcement directed against asylum seekers, and more cruel and illegal schemes to return refugees to back to danger without any due process. And, we certainly don’t need any more photo ops from Cruz and his GOP cronies.
Leon Krauze in the WashPost tells us what’s really happening at the border. WARNING: It has little to do with the myths and false narratives being peddled by the GOP, the Administration, and the media.
The current emergency at the border has found the U. S. media at its most solipsistic. Coverage seems more focused on whether the emergency should be called “a crisis” (it should) and what the political fallout for the Biden administration will be. With few exceptions — like the remarkable work of MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff or Politico’s Sabrina Rodriguez — many news outlets seem utterly uninterested in the stories of the migrants themselves.
This is wrong because it fails to provide one crucial piece of the puzzle: the very concrete context of human suffering.
. . . .
This by no means excuses the stories of anguish and confinement that have emerged over the last few weeks from within the facilities set up by the Biden administration to deal with the number of young migrants crossing the border, nor does it absolve the president himself from delivering on his promise of a humane immigration system, diametrically opposed to Trump’s cruel policies, designed in collaboration with unapologetic racist xenophobes like Stephen Miller.
The Biden administration can and should do better. But the current debate cannot ignore the very concrete despair facing thousands of immigrant families who, under the direct threat of violence or abuse, chose to push their young children to the United States, in search of safety.
If the alternative was famine, gang violence, kidnapping, rape or sexual slavery, wouldn’t you bet it all on the journey north? If more people understood this, the political debate and the coverage surrounding the crisis would be much more empathetic and we would get closer at delivering concrete, humane solutions.
Now, let’s hear more “simple truth” from Suzanne Gamboa over at NBC News:
Suzanne Gamboa, Political Editor, NBCLatino, NBC NewsDate: October 21, 2013 Place: Washington, DC Credit: Maria Patricia Leiva/OAS Creative Commons License
America’s immigration impasse — an endless loop across different administrations — is largely self-inflicted, because Congress has repeatedly failed to acknowledge one simple thing: Immigration happens.
Accordingly, immigration laws must be continually adjusted, reformed and revised, experts say.
“People will always want to come to the U.S., and the U.S. will always need people,” said former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who was a top immigration adviser to President George W. Bush.
Until there is a system that allows enough legal immigration to meet the economy’s needs, there will be illegal immigration, Gutierrez said.
“That’s just part of how our economy is set up. It’s part of demographics,” Gutierrez said. “Our birthrate is not high enough to be able to fill the needs of our economy.”
The coronavirus pandemic reinforced the importance of immigrant labor to the American economy, including labor by the undocumented.
All of those people and many other immigrants, including young immigrants — often called “Dreamers” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act — will play a key role in helping the economy recover from its pandemic bust.
But immigration requires periodic calibration, and the economics and the changing patterns are lost in the politics.
“People are going to move — as they are all around the world — where they think they can find places to better feed their children. That’s the bottom line, and that’s the history of migration to the United States,” said Luis Fraga, director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
. . . .
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Everyone should read the rest of the stories at the above link.
Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration
By Judge (Ret) Paul Wickham Schmidt
“Courtside” Exclusive
March 26, 2021
Notwithstanding the endlessly disingenuous and self-centered alarmist rhetoric coming from all directions on the border mess, often mindlessly regurgitated by the press (not just Fox News), the real “crisis” involves the human lives at stake and the unnecessary human misery we are causing by failing to establish, professionally staff, and fairly and competently operate the legal refugee and particularly asylum systems required by law. This “due process crisis” actually has devastating and debilitating practical effects, starting with the dysfunctional immigration, refugee, and asylum system and the beyond dysfunctional Immigration Courts.
Heck, we don’t even pretend to comply with Constitutionally-required due process of law for asylum seekers who present themselves to us seeking life-saving refuge. Most of those who show up at legally-established border ports are told that the border is “closed” and that there is no way for them to apply. OK, so they attempt to cross between ports and immediately present themselves to the Border Patrol. But, they also are told there is no way to apply and are orbited back to some of the most dangerous countries in the world without any process whatsoever, let alone due process of law. Who are we kidding with all our dishonest pontificating about “the rule of law?”
It’s a strange way to implement the statutory command that any foreign national “irrespective of . . . status, may apply for asylum,” along with a constitutional guarantee that “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Gee, you don’t even need one of those fancy Ivy League law degrees to understand that language. You just have to be able to read, comprehend, and act.
What you do have to do to get where we are today is to view asylum seekers and other migrants (predominantly people of color) as less than human — “non-persons” in a constitutional sense. It’s what some of us call “Dred Scottification of the other” and it has accelerated over the past four years — not just in immigration.
The whole idea of a “court system” being run by the Executive who also is the chief of enforcement is beyond constitutionally preposterous. It’s a “negative tribute” to the Supremes and other Article III life-tenured judges who have grown so distant from their own humanity and immigration stories as to become willfully blind to the ongoing farce that constitutes “justice” and “due process of law” for asylum seekers and other immigrants in the U.S.
Today’s nearly non-existent “asylum system” is a deadly and illegal “catch 22,” with the Supremes sitting in their marble palace refusing to do the primary task that justifies their continued existence: enforce the Constitution against Government misbehavior and in favor of the “little guys” and the “vulnerable.” No thanks, not up to the job!
The real tragedy is that there are plenty of folks out here with the knowledge, integrity, courage, and ability to establish a legal system that would actually comply with out laws, our Constitution, and further offer the hope of constructively addressing some problems before refugees arrive at our borders. But, they remain “benched,” even by the Biden Team. So the “good guys”are going to keep attacking the corrupt and broken system in court and at the polls for as long as it takes to get some course correction — years, decades, centuries — ask most African Americans how long it takes to achieve the true justice that America promises to all, but historically has only delivered to some.
In the long run, a fair system would undoubtedly accept many more legal refugees and asylum seekers. That’s what happens in refugee situations — it’s the core of what we call “forced migration” — when you sign on to international conventions intended to prevent the “next holocaust,” and you fairly and humanely apply the rules meant to protect refugees and those who face torture. And, as they have in the past, the overwhelming number of refugees and asylees, like the overwhelming majority of immigrants (essentially all of us, except Native Americans) will adapt, fit in, and contribute to the health, wealth, and future of our nation. They will change, but so will we — ultimately for the better!
Sure, America wouldn’t be as white, “Christian” (to the extent that adherence to a nominal Christian denomination, rather than actually performing Christ’s extremely difficult, self-sacrificing, risky, compassionate mission, defines Christianity), and nominally heterosexual as it was when White Nationalist myths and whitewashed history ruled the roost. But, it would be a better nation — one that actually has a chance of prospering, realizing the full potential of all its residents, and leading the world in the 21st century. A nation that could devote more human, natural, and monetary resources to building and exporting greatness, rather than to an endless stream of cruel, inhuman, stupid, and wasteful enforcement and deterrence gimmicks.
Bottom line, folks are going to come to America, as they have throughout history. Some will stay, some won’t. But, come they will, unless and until those like Trump and the GOP create such a mess that our own people start fleeing to foreign shores. Immigration, regardless of status, is a sign of strength. Xenophobia a sign of fatal weakness.
Our real choice isn’t whether we want to “close” borders, bar refugees, and abuse children as the Cottons, Cruzes, Millers, and Hawleys advocate. It’s whether we create a robust, orderly, rational legal system to screen, regulate, and distribute the inevitable flow or whether, as we have for the past decades, we force millions to reside and work underground — part of an “extralegal” or “black market” system that pols of both parties and those who profit from that underground system have created.
Sprawling mismanaged enforcement bureaucracies, dysfunctional “courts,” armies of publicly-paid lawyers defending the indefensible, for-profit civil prisons, big agriculture, hospitality giants, loads of upwardly mobile professionals who need child care to pursue careers, communities that live off of marketing ethnic culture, meat packing conglomerates, architects and construction firms who are “building America,” even news media fixated on hyping the problem rather than fixing it (see, e.g., yesterday’s Biden press conference), the list of those who profit from a talented, hard working, reliable, loyal, yet politically and socially disenfranchised, workforce is endless.
Even the GOP’s “Cotton-Cruz crowd” benefits from having an imaginary enemy to rant and rail and gin up hate against — safe in the knowledge that the tanking of our economy, upheaval of society, and possible threat to their privilege that would result from realizing their disingenuous call to boot the entire undocumented population will never happen. Their kids and grandkids can continue to reap the privilege that comes from exploiting an essential, yet politically neutered, workforce. It’s really more about institutionalizing racism to maintain economic and political power over the eventual non-white majority that drives their bogus and ugly narratives.
We can degrade ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever! It’s a vision based on a written promise, not a “pipe dream!”
The great virtue of President Trump’s smoking subversion tape is that it clarifies the goals of all concerned.
The president’s stated objective is not to expose abuses in the electoral system. It is to pressure the Georgia secretary of state into manipulating the electoral system to squeeze out 11,780 additional votes — Trump specifies the exact number — in his favor. His cynical, delusional justifications are beside the point. He would say anything — invent any lie, allege any conspiracy, defame any opponent, spread any discredited rumor — to perpetuate his power.
This, in turn, illuminates the motives of his congressional enablers. In light of Trump’s clarifying call, the term “enablers” now seems too weak. When Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and their GOP colleagues try to disrupt and overturn a free and fair election, they are no longer just allies of a subversive; they become instruments of subversion. They not only help a liar; they become liars. They not only empower conspiracy theories; they join a conspiracy against American democracy. They not only excuse institutional arson; they set fire to the Constitution and dance around the flame.
Their pathetic motivations no longer matter. Some are simple cowards, frightened by angry people wearing red hats. Are we supposed to indulge their cravenness out of pity? Are we supposed to sympathize with people who want to keep their jobs at the cost of their country? Others eventually want the angry people in red hats to support their political ambitions. Are we supposed to humor people who seek the presidency by spitting on the institution of the presidency? Are we supposed make allowances for a selfishness so comprehensive that it eclipses duty, loyalty and love of country?
We are witnessing what happens when treacherous politicians run in packs. A solitary betrayal of the constitutional order by a member of Congress is a source of shame and, perhaps, a cause for expulsion. When 100 and more Republicans join hands and betray the constitutional order, it is a populist cause. They gain the confidence, even the thrill, of shared disloyalty. But their oath of office — in every single case — has been dishonored. They have demonstrated their unfitness for office and called their own patriotism into question.
So maybe it is for the best that they stand up and be counted. Maybe it is best for Americans to know who will “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” — and who will not. By all means, let’s engrave their names into a marble slab — a roll call of those who failed the most important test of self-government in our lifetimes. There are a lot of monuments honoring bravery. Let’s have one dedicated to abject cowardice.
. . . .
It is fortunate for the country that Trump is a clownish figure. In his subversion tape, he ricochets between ominous threats and pathetic lunacy. He is not capable of an organized thought, much less an organized coup. Any revolution with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood in the vanguard is likely to end in the joke bin of history.
And yet: Trump and his congressional implementers have purposely placed a virus in the public order. A significant portion of the country has expressed support for the triumph of anger over institutions. These are potential recruits for anarchy. Trump, Hawley, Cruz and the others may be laying the path for a rougher beast slouching toward Washington. They are shredding the careful work of America’s founders. And they deserve nothing but contempt.
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Read Michael’s full op-ed at the link.
Evil clowns🤡, cowards🤮, traitors🏴☠️, all of them! American needs an opposition party with some integrity. But, the hopes of getting one out of the debris of today’s anti-democracy, corrupt GOP seems pretty slim. The majority of us are going to have to figure out a way to move forward into the future even with this ballast dragging us down. Hopefully, it’s not “mission impossible.”
Biden and Harris are much smarter, more capable, and better qualified than Trump & Pence. But they can’t do it alone. They are going to need lots of help from the majority of us who still believe in our national democracy and are willing to stand up for it. (The “New Due Process Army” for one).🇺🇸
Heather Cox Richardson Historian Professor, Boston College
Professor Heather Cox Richardson writes in “Letters From An American” (01-02-20):
. . . .
It seems clear that, with no chance of proving this election fraudulent, Trump is now trying to incite violence. Nonetheless, Republicans who are jockeying for the 2024 presidential nomination want to make sure they can pick up Trump’s voters. While McConnell doesn’t want Senators to have to declare their support either way, those vying to lead the party want to differentiate themselves from the pack.
On Wednesday, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced he would join the efforts of his House colleagues to challenge Biden electors from Pennsylvania and perhaps other states. This will not affect the outcome of the election, but it will force senators to go on record for or against Trump. In a statement, Hawley listed Trump talking points: the influence of “mega corporations” on behalf of Biden and “voter fraud.” Hawley seems pretty clearly to be angling for a leg up in 2024.
On Wednesday night, Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) made his own play for the future of the Republican Party. He refuted point by point the idea that Trump won. He scolded his colleagues who are signing on to Trump’s attempt to steal the election, calling them “institutional arsonists.”
“When we talk in private, I haven’t heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent – not one,” he wrote on Facebook. “Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will “look” to President Trump’s most ardent supporters.” They think they can “tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage,” he wrote, but they’re wrong. “Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.”
Today, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, launched his own bid to redefine the Republican Party with an attack on Trump’s apparent botching of the coronavirus vaccine rollout. In a press release, Romney noted “[t]hat comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”
But he didn’t stop there. Romney went on to say that he was no expert on vaccine distribution, “[b]ut I know that when something isn’t working, you need to acknowledge reality and develop a plan—particularly when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.” He offered ideas of his own, offering them “not as the answer but as an example of the kind of options that ought to be brainstormed in Washington and in every state.” After listing his ideas, he concluded: “Public health professionals will easily point out the errors in this plan—so they should develop better alternatives based on experience, modeling and trial.”
Romney’s statement was about more than vaccine distribution. With its emphasis on listening to experts and experimenting, it was an attack on the rigid ideology that has taken over the Republican Party. Romney has said he comes to his position from his own experience, not his reading, but he is reaching back to the origins of conservative thought, when Irish statesman Edmund Burke critiqued the French Revolution as a dangerous attempt to build a government according to an ideology, rather than reality. Burke predicted that such an attempt would inevitably result in politicians trying to force society to conform to their ideology. When it did not, they would turn to tyranny and violence.
Sasse’s point-by-point refutation of Trump’s arguments– complete with citations—and Romney’s call to govern according to reality rather than ideology are suggestive. They seem to show an attempt to recall the Republican Party to the true conservatism it abandoned a generation ago.
Much as the idea appeals to me, and much as I admire Professor Richardson, it seems like an noble, yet unrealistic, hope rather than a slice of reality. As noted by Professor Richardson, the current GOP abandoned any real values at least a decade ago. They now rely on the “anti-democracy right” to keep them in business as a party that wields political strength out of proportion to the minority of voters it represents.
I find it perversely amusing, yet fundamentally disturbing, to have heard a Trump voter on TV recently claim to have “voted for the GOP platform” not the man in the last election. She was woefully ignorant of the fact that the GOP had no platform in 2020 other than “whatever Trump says.”
The history of those in the GOP who have been openly critical of Trump and his cult supporters is that they generally either 1) fall into line behind Moscow Mitch and Trump on most issues (e.g., Romney, Collins, et al.) or 2) head for the hills (e.g., Flake, Corker). Unlike the Dems, where spirited opposition is always threatening to rock the boat, true opposition and public dialogue are nearly non-existent in today’s GOP.
Nor does the lack of GOP soul searching and public recognition of Trump’s toxic, highly dishonest, and fundamentally anti-American “non-leadership” and responsibility for his own defeat, as well as the disastrous course his “maliciously incompetent non-leadership” has set for America, lead me to believe that the GOP will head in a “new direction” any time in the foreseeable future.
For example, as I’m writing this Cruz and ten other corrupt GOP “Senators” (or “Senators-elect”) are openly spreading lies and preaching sedition 🏴☠️ in the U.S. Senate.
That shows where the anti-American “Party of Putin and White Nationalist Extremists” ☠️🤮🤥 is headed these days. They might be the minority in their party, but you can bet that they won’t suffer any censure, much criticism, or real consequences from the rest of the GOP for essentially fomenting treason and seeking to undermine the credibility of an election fairly and overwhelmingly won by Biden and Harris.
The real hope for America’s survival is that under Biden and Harris, the Dems can finally figure our how to turn their numerical advantage in the general elections into actual political power to govern. Remains to be seen. Certainly hasn’t happened to date! That’s why we’re in this position, with Dems having won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections, but held the Presidency after only five of those seven elections.
While I agree with some of what Romney says these days, he is somewhat unique in the GOP. He is one of the few GOP Senators with sufficient independent standing in his home state to be largely immune to criticism and attacks by Trump and his cronies.
Based on their overwhelming refusal over the past four years to put our national interests above Trump’s personal agenda, I (unfortunately) think that a “loyal opposition” springing from today’s GOP is more of a “Dem pipe dream” than a realistic possibility.
Then again, it was only two weeks before Election Day that four of the court’s conservatives announced their potential willingness to throw out votes on the basis of this theory of state legislative supremacy over electoral votes. It is very easy to imagine a world in which the election was a little closer, where the outcome came down to one state instead of three or four, and the court’s conservatives could use the conflict over a narrow margin to hand the president a second term.
With no evidence that Republicans have really thought about the implications of a victory in the courts, I think we can say that these briefs and lawsuits are part of a performance, where the game is not to break kayfabe (the conceit, in professional wrestling, that what is fake is real). Still, we’ve learned something from this game, in the same way we learn something about an audience when it laughs.
We have learned that the Republican Party, or much of it, has abandoned whatever commitment to electoral democracy it had to begin with. That it views defeat on its face as illegitimate, a product of fraud concocted by opponents who don’t deserve to hold power. That it is fully the party of minority rule, committed to the idea that a vote doesn’t count if it isn’t for its candidates, and that if democracy won’t serve its partisan and ideological interests, then so much for democracy.
None of this is new — there is a whole tradition of reactionary, counter-majoritarian thought in American politics to which the conservative movement is heir — but it is the first time since the 1850s that these ideas have nearly captured an entire political party. And while the future is unwritten, the events of the past month make me worry that we’re following a script the climax of which requires a disaster.
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Read Jamelle’s full op-Ed at the link.
Always interesting for those of us who grew up during the Cold War, to see how the Commie-fighting, “law and order” GOP has become a party of neo-Stalinists and nihilists!
Although the GOP right claims to shudder at the threat of ”socialism,” (most probably have little or no idea what that actually means) dangerous clowns 🤡 like Ted Cruz would have been right at home in a Leninist-Stalinist dictatorship, its cult of personality, its utter disdain for the “real will of the people” and the common good, and its brutal suppression of both truth and dissent in favor of a politically fabricated “party line.”
America needs and deserves better from its opposition party. Whether we’ll get it seems doubtful based on current performance.
The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank, is categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
BY SEBASTIAN MURDOCK
SENIOR REPORTER
HIUFFPOST
The New York Times published an op-ed decrying immigration by an author claiming to be a “liberal restrictionist” who is in fact attached to a known hate group.
The column, published Friday, was written by , “a senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies,” according to the biography listed under his byline.
CIS, which calls itself “an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization,” is a known hate group that has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-immigrant movement that hires racist writers and associates with white nationalists.
“I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” Kammer’s headline reads. The piece begins with an anecdote about how immigrants take the jobs of American-born workers and later claims “many liberal Democrats” want illegal immigration to run rampant:
Now many liberal Democrats, including those who call for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seek to erase the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Under the banner of inclusiveness, equality, human rights, racial reconciliation and reparations for American interventions in the third world, those liberals demand sanctuary for those who make it past the Border Patrol or overstay a visa. Few speak openly of open borders, but that is essentially what they are calling for.
Throughout the piece, Kammer seems set on reminding readers that he is liberal, even if his views might suggest otherwise.
“That’s why I call myself a liberal restrictionist,” Kammer, a former journalist, writes. “I have long considered myself a moderate liberal, in part because Democrats have always been the allies of working people.”
White House adviser Stephen Miller, a white nationalist, has cited CIS when speaking about immigration, and in 2011, the group released a report attempting to connect immigration with the creation of future terrorists, calling them “terror babies.”
The organization has gained credibility by writing pseudo-science “research” papers that are little more than racist ideology dressed up in scholarly language. According to the SPLC, “longtime CIS executive director Mark Krikorian’s contributions to the immigration policy debate rarely rise above petulant commentary dashed with extremist statements.”
Running a column by an author employed by a known hate group is the latest in the Times’s run of publishing racist pieces in its opinion section. In December, columnist and known bedbug Bret Stephens cited a study by a white nationalist that falsely claimed Ashkenazi Jews have a higher IQ than other races. The study he cited “traffics in centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes,” according to the SPLC.
The New York Times opinion section under editor James Bennet ostensibly aims to challenge the paper’s predominately liberal readers by presenting them with thoughtful critiques of their worldview. In practice, it runs pieces like this recent argument that launching a war against Iran would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East—which was written by a veteran of the Bush administration who had predicted confidently in a 2003 piece also published by the Times that launching a war against Iraq would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East. There was no acknowledgment in the new piece of the old one, as an opinion section committed to intellectual honesty might require, nor was it particularly challenging in the sense of being difficult to rebut. But it did make people on the left feel bad, and like they were losing their minds, which is the bar that Bennet’s section requires an argument to clear.
The essay “I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” published in the Times Thursday, may represent the nadir of this approach. It makes a familiar argument: that “the left” believes in a “post-national” system of open borders which sacrifices the interests of native-born working Americans to the interests of low-skilled foreign immigrants who drive down wages and disrupt the cultural cohesiveness of their communities. It argues for respecting a distinction between legal and illegal immigration and asserts that Donald Trump’s position on immigration can be appreciated, in a non-racist way, as “a patriotic battle to defend common people.” It accuses Trump’s critics of having had their minds addled by “tribal passions” and a fetish for conflict “between ethnic groups,” and it proposes a “conciliatory” policy that would offer amnesty to existing undocumented workers but institute a crackdown regime of visa enforcement that would prevent future undocumented individuals from finding jobs.
The familiarity of the article’s arguments is matched by the familiarity of its flaws. While large-scale immigration is, in fact, believed by some non-racists to flatten wages at the bottom of the pay scale, it’s also known to accelerate rather than retard economic expansion overall, and tends to be supported by progressives who advocate for other means of increasing working-class wages and sharing the benefits of GDP growth. The distinction between “legal” and “illegal” immigration is not some ancient, race-agnostic pillar of global affairs, but rather a concept that was instituted in the United States in the early 20th century to explicitly discriminate against Asian, southern European, and eastern European individuals and expanded in the 1960s to explicitly discriminate against Mexicans. Trump’s support is strongest in areas where there are fewer undocumented immigrants, not more, and he lost four of the five states that have the highest undocumented populations per capita. Many of the most immigration-heavy and ethnically diverse cities in the U.S. are also the safest and wealthiest and are considered so desirable to live in by migrating native-born Americans that they are experiencing housing crises.
As to whether criticizing an administration that instituted the premeditated, systematic separation of young children from their parents after they applied legally for asylum is a matter of unseemly “tribal passions,” or whether support for the principles of inclusive American citizenship described on the Statue of Liberty constitutes “post-national” anti-patriotism, perhaps we can agree to disagree.
More concerning than any of these specific problems, though, is the piece’s provenance: It’s written by someone named Jerry Kammer, a fellow at a think tank called the Center for Immigration Studies. Kammer has made a career out of covering immigration policy, he writes, for two reasons: “I was fascinated by its human, political and moral complexity. I also wanted to push back against the campaign by activist groups to label restrictionism as inherently racist.” He expresses regret that “odious people” with white-power affiliations have given the cause of cutting back on immigration a “bad name.”
What neither Kammer nor the Times discloses is that the Center for Immigration Studies was in fact founded by these people, most prominent among them a white nationalist named John Tanton who died last year. Tanton, as the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, believed that the United States needed to maintain a “European-American majority, and a clear one at that”; he founded CIS, he wrote in the 1980s, in order to give his ideas the appearance of independent “credibility.”
Kammer does write that he disagrees with “some of the center’s hard-line positions.” Among his more hard-line colleagues at CIS are a writer named Jason Richwine, who contributed to a journal founded by white supremacist Richard Spencer and who has said that “IQ” is the “most important” difference between racial groups. (As the SPLC has documented, CIS has circulated literally hundreds of articles by explicit white supremacists like Spencer via links in its weekly newsletter. Its director once accused Barack Obama of trying to “foment race war.”) A statement of purpose on the CIS website is credited to longtime Tanton collaborator Dan Stein, who once complained that mass immigration was a tool developed by “Ted Kennedy and his political allies” in approximately 1958 to “retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance.”
In 1997, the Wall Street Journal wrote about Tanton in a piece called “The Intellectual Roots of Nativism.” It was a scathing article which noted that Tanton had once described the immigrant’s contribution to society as “defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” The piece expressed concern that “otherwise sober-minded conservatives” and “reasonable critics of immigration” were affiliating themselves with his ideas. The author of that WSJ article, a 28-year-old journalist named Tucker Carlson, has since made the career-advancing decision to embrace Tanton-style nativism; he was in the news not too long ago for complaining in his role as a Fox News host that immigrants make the United States physically “dirtier.”
Whatever space ever existed between mainstream conservatism and white-power nationalism, Carlson demonstrates, has collapsed. And it turns out that the “odious people” that Kammer references in the Times are actually his colleagues and forebears, who created his organization so that policies intended to perpetuate “European-American” and “Anglo-Saxon” superiority could be laundered into the respectable discourse. What else is there to say but: It worked!
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So, we have a White Nationalist in the White House assisted by neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Miller actually turning nativism into “Government policy.” Other white supremacists are scattered in key positions throughout the Government, particularly the immigration bureaucracy. Trump tweets and right-wing media put out a constant barrage of nativist lies, misrepresentations, false narratives, and racial, ethnic, and religious slurs.
So, just why is it that the “mainstream media” owes White Nationalists yet another forum to spread their nativist propaganda?
It’s not limited, of course, to just the Times. The WashPost regularly publishes largely fact and value free right-wing blather from professional shills like Marc Thiessen and Hugh Hewitt under the guise of “op-eds.”
And Chuck Todd regularly invites GOP congenital liars and Trump toadies like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to spread their lies, false narratives, and debunked “conspiracy theories” from the “bully pulpit” of “Meet the Press.” To top it off, Chuck then appears to be flabbergasted that when he confronts these guys with truth and facts, they “double down” continuing to lie to his face, ignore established facts, and spread Putinesque conspiracy theories.
Fact is, most of the Trump agenda is corrupt, counterfactual, unethical, inhumane, divisive, and corrosive to American democracy. We receive enough of it from lots of sources every day, pretty much 24-7-365. Is it really necessary for those supposedly dedicated to truth and democracy to give more free “air time” to nativist shills spreading their racially corrosive, divisive, anti-democracy propaganda?
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Irony, declared dead after 9/11, is alive and kicking in Trump’s America. It’s the concepts of truth and shame that are on life support. The definition of “facts” has been so thoroughly vandalized that Americans can no longer agree on what one is, and our president has barreled through so many crimes and misdemeanors with so few consequences that it’s impossible to gainsay his claim that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Donald Trump proves daily that there is no longer any penalty for doing wrong as long as you deny everything, never say you’re sorry, and have co-conspirators stashed in powerful places to put the fix in.
No wonder so many fear that Trump will escape his current predicament scot-free, with a foregone acquittal at his impeachment trial in the GOP-controlled Senate and a pull-from-behind victory in November, buoyed by a booming economy, fractious Democrats, and a stacked Electoral College. The enablers and apologists who have facilitated his triumph over the rule of law happily agree. John Kennedy, the Louisiana senator who parrots Vladimir Putin’s talking points in his supine defense of Trump, acts as if there will never be a reckoning. While he has no relation to the president whose name he incongruously bears, his every craven statement bespeaks a confidence that history will count him among the knights of the buffet table in the gilded Mar-a-Lago renovation of Camelot. He is far from alone.
If we can extricate ourselves even briefly from our fatalistic fog, however, we might give some credence to a wider view. For all the damage inflicted since Inauguration Day 2017, America is still standing, a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump, and the laws of gravity, if not those of the nation, remain in full force. Moral gravity may well reassert its pull, too, with time. Rather than being the end of American history as we know it, the Trump presidency may prove merely a notorious chapter in that history. Heedless lapdogs like Kennedy, Devin Nunes, and Lindsey Graham are acting now as if there is no tomorrow, but tomorrow will come eventually, whatever happens in the near future, and Judgment Day could arrive sooner than they think. That judgment will be rendered by an ever-more demographically diverse America unlikely to be magnanimous toward cynical politicians who prioritized pandering to Trump’s dwindling all-white base over the common good.
All cults come to an end, often abruptly, and Trump’s Republican Party is nothing if not a cult. While cult leaders are generally incapable of remorse — whether they be totalitarian rulers, sexual Svengalis, or the self-declared messiahs of crackpot religions — their followers almost always pay a human and reputational price once the leader is toppled. We don’t know how and when Donald Trump will exit, but under any scenario it won’t be later than January 20, 2025. Even were he to be gone tomorrow, the legacy of his most powerful and servile collaborators is already indelibly bound to his.
Whether these enablers joined his administration in earnest, or aided and abetted it from elite perches in politics, Congress, the media, or the private sector, they will be remembered for cheering on a leader whose record in government (thus far) includes splitting up immigrant families and incarcerating their children in cages; encouraging a spike in racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic vigilantes; leveraging American power to promote ethnic cleansing abroad and punish political opponents at home; actively inciting climate change and environmental wreckage; and surrendering America’s national security to an international rogue’s gallery of despots.
That selective short list doesn’t take into account any new White House felonies still to come, any future repercussions here and abroad of Trump’s actions to date, or any previous foul deeds that have so far eluded public exposure. For all the technological quickening of the media pulse in this century, Trump’s collaborators will one day be viewed through the long lens of history like Nixon’s collaborators before them and the various fools, opportunists, and cowards who tried to appease Hitler in America, England, and France before that. Once Trump has vacated the Oval Office, and possibly for decades thereafter, his government, like any other deposed strongman’s, will be subjected to a forensic colonoscopy to root out buried crimes, whether against humanity or the rule of law or both. With time, everything will come out — it always does. With time, the ultimate fates of those brutalized immigrant and refugee families will emerge in full. And Trump’s collaborators, our Vichy Republicans, will own all of it — whether they were active participants in the wrongdoing like Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, Mike Pompeo, and William Barr, or the so-called adults in the room who stood idly by rather than sound public alarms for the good of the Republic (e.g., Gary Cohn, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson), or those elite allies beyond the White House gates who pretended not to notice administration criminality and moral atrocities in exchange for favors like tax cuts and judicial appointments (from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr.).
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Read the rest of Rich’s article at the link.
“Tomorrow will come, eventually.” Yup!
Just yesterday, the usually reliable “Trump Toadies” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) were whining and sputtering upon learning what toadyism really means after being “treated like Democrats” during an insulting and clownish “after the fact briefing” on Iran. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/politics/impeachment-watch-january-8/index.html .
But, that moment of lucidity and outrage will pass quickly, and they will undoubtedly rejoin their colleagues like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Teddy Cruz (R-TX), Sen. John “Vladimir” Kennedy (R-LA), Lindsey “Braindead” Graham (R-SC), and the rest of the “Party of Putin” in groveling before their Clown-in-Chief.
I would include the Article III judges who tanked in the face of tyranny and failed to protect the legal and human rights of the most vulnerable in the list of those whose misdeeds, spinelessness, and complicity in the face of tyranny eventually will be “outed.”
On the sunny Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, Messman Doris Miller had served breakfast aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia, stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was collecting laundry when the first of nine Japanese torpedoes hit the ship. In the deadly confusion, Miller reported to an officer, who told him to help move the ship’s mortally wounded captain off the bridge. Unable to move him far, Miller sheltered the captain behind the ship’s conning tower. Then another officer ordered Miller to pass ammunition to him as he started up one of the two abandoned anti-aircraft guns in front of the conning tower. Miller had not been trained to use the guns because, as a black man, his naval assignment was to serve the white officers. But while the officer was distracted, Miller began to fire one of the guns. He fired it until he ran out of ammunition. Then he helped to move injured sailors to safety before he and the other survivors abandoned the West Virginia, which sank to the bottom of Pearl Harbor.
That night, America declared war on Japan. Japan declared war on America the next day, and four days later, on December 11, 1941, Italy and Germany both declared war on America. “The powers of the steel pact, Fascist Italy and Nationalist Socialist Germany, ever closely linked, participate from today on the side of heroic Japan against the United States of America,” Italian leader Benito Mussolini said. “We shall win.” Of course they would. Mussolini and Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, believed the mongrel Americans had been corrupted by Jews and “Negroes,” and could never conquer their own organized military machine.
The steel pact, as Mussolini called it, was the vanguard of his new political ideology. That ideology was called fascism, and he and Hitler thought would destroy democracy once and for all.
Mussolini had been a socialist as a young man and had grown terribly frustrated at how hard it was to organize people. No matter how hard socialists tried, they seemed unable to convince ordinary people that they must rise up and take over the country’s means of production.
The efficiency of World War One inspired Mussolini. He gave up on socialism and developed a new political theory that rejected the equality that defined democracy. He came to believe that a few leaders must take a nation toward progress by directing the actions of the rest. These men must organize the people as they had been during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that business and politicians worked together. And, logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an “other” that their followers could hate.
This system of government was called “fascism,” after the Latin word “fasces,” which were a bundle of sticks bound together. The idea is that each stick can be easily broken alone, but as a bundle are unbreakable. (It was a common symbol: in fact, Lincoln’s hand rests on fasces in the statue at the Lincoln Memorial.) Italy adopted fascism, and Mussolini inspired others, notably Germany’s Adolf Hitler. Those leaders came to believe that their system was the ideology of the future, and they set out to destroy the messy, inefficient democracy that stood in their way.
America fought World War Two to defend democracy from fascism. And while fascism preserved hierarchies in society, democracy called on all men as equals. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the war, more than 1.2 million were African American men and women, 500,000 were Latinos, and more than 550,000 Jews were part of the military. Among the many ethnic groups who fought, Native Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied men from 18-50 joined the service—and among those 25,000 soldiers were the men who developed the famous “Code Talk,” based in tribal languages, that Hitler’s codebreakers never cracked.
The American president at the time, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hammered home that the war was about the survival of democracy. Fascists insisted that they were moving their country forward fast and efficiently—claiming the trains ran on time, for example, although in reality they didn’t— but FDR constantly noted that the people in Italy and Germany were begging for food and shelter from the soldiers of democratic countries.
Ultimately, the struggle between fascism and democracy was the question of equality. Were all men really created equal, or were some born to lead the rest, whom they held subservient to their will?
Based in the principle that all men are created equal, democracy, FDR reminded Americans again and again, was the best possible government. Thanks to armies made up of men and women from all races and ethnicities—a mongrel population– the Allies won the war against fascism, and it seemed that democracy would dominate the world forever.
But as the impulse of WWII pushed Americans toward a more just and inclusive society after it, those determined not to share power warned their supporters that including people of color and women as equals in society would threaten their own liberty. Those reactionary leaders rode that fear into control of our government, and now, once again, democracy is under attack by those who believe some people are better than others.
In June 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that democracy is obsolete. He believes that a few oligarchs should run the world while the rest of us do as we are told, and he is doing his best to destroy both American democracy and the international structures, like NATO, that hold it in place. The interests of reactionary American leaders and Russian president Putin run parallel. Astonishingly, that affinity has recently come out into the open. Some of our leaders are publicly echoing Putin’s propaganda, apparently willing to work with him to undermine the principles on which our nation rests so long as it means they can stay in power.
Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?
When America came under attack before, people like Doris Miller refused to let that happen. For all that American democracy still discriminated against him, it gave him room to stand up for the concept of human equality. He did so until 1943, when he laid down his life for it. Promoted to cook after the Navy sent him on a publicity tour, Miller was assigned to a new ship, the U. S. S. Liscome Bay, which was struck by a Japanese torpedo on November 24, 1943. It sank in minutes, taking two-thirds of the crew, including Miller, with it.
I hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the oligarchs will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller.
Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller.
Who would have thought that Putinist fascism would take over such a large portion of the U.S. Government without firing a shot?
“Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?” Interesting question on which, unfortunately, the jury is still out.
Anyone who watched Ted “Out Of Cruz Control” (R-RUS) suck up to and double down on V. Putin’s & Trump’s favorite false narrative about the Ukraine on “Meet the Press” yesterday couldn’t be too optimistic for the survival of our democracy if the GOP has any say in the matter! Chuck Todd was left almost speechless by Cruz’s outright lies and Putinist propaganda!
WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Cruz defended President Donald Trump Sunday amid reports that are raising new questions about the president’s relationship with Russia, insisting that Trump’s record shows he has been “tougher” on the U.S. adversary than past presidents.
When asked about The New York Times report that broke Friday — which says Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey triggered a counterintelligence investigation into whether the president was wittingly or unwittingly working to benefit Russia — the Texas Republican said the focus on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is a Washington-centric fascination.
“When you get outside the Beltway, I don’t see anyone concerned about this at all,” he said.
“If you compare objectively, President Trump’s policies to Russia compared to President Obama’s policies to Russia — by any measure, President Obama was much easier, was much more gentler on Russia,” Cruz said.
News outlets reported in 2017 that Mueller was interested in the Comey firing as a possible example of obstruction of justice by the president. And Trump himself connected the firing of Comey to his frustration with the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian election interference during a 2017 interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt.
But the new Times report connects that event to the larger investigation into Russian interference in American politics and elections, asking if the president was acting effectively as a Russian agent, regardless of his intentions.
“Our collective understanding was much narrower — it was just on obstruction: Did the president break the law there?” New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt, who broke the story, said on “Meet the Press” to explain the significance of the revelation.
“Now we know it was much broader, it has national security concerns. The FBI was afraid that the firing of Comey was a way to help the Russians stop the FBI from figuring out what they did in the election.”
Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who spent much of the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign criticizing Trump’s posture toward Russia, called the report proof that Congress must protect Mueller’s investigation from any meddling from the administration.
“They had to have a very deep level of concern about this president to take this step,” Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee, said of the FBI’s decision to open the investigation.
“And that’s again why we need to protect the Mueller investigation,” he added.
Trump criticized the New York Times story in a Saturday morning tweet, and called the accusation he might be working to advance Russian interests “insulting” during a Saturday night interview on the Fox News show hosted by ally Jeanine Pirro.
The president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, also dismissed the report in a phone call with NBC News, where he argued “they obviously found nothing or else they would have reported it.”
The Times story wasn’t the only potential bombshell report to come out over the weekend about Trump and Russia.
On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that Trump personally intervened to hide readouts of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The White House also panned that report, pointing to new sanctions on Russia as proof the administration is being tough on the adversary.
Now that Democrats control the House, it’s possible that committees may look into the details of either story. Cruz, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he’d “consider any allegations” as part of his roles on the committee.
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Yeah, Teddy, who cares if our President is a dupe of Vladimir Putin! And, the lies about the Obama Administration just keep flowing. Clearly, Putin was so worried about Hillary Clinton becoming President that he went to great lengths to divide America and hand the Presidency to Trump. The only real debate is whether his efforts actually had a determinative effect on the elections. And, there were never any allegations of connections between Obama and Putin. Trump is sleazy, incompetent, and carrying out a program that has to delight Vladimir Putin. Obama was none of these things. And, it’s certainly worth getting to the bottom of the relationship among Trump, his organization, his family, his associates, and Vladimir Putin.
“(CNN)It’s important to politicize Hurricane Harvey. Not politics in the sense of political parties, or politics to win elections. Politics to protect America.
The priority in the next hours and days is to save lives and reduce suffering, without hesitation and without question of costs or politics. But then must come the reckoning.
Once the immediate crisis ends, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, should resign with an apology to his state and his country. Then the Texas delegation in Congress should make a public confession. They have lied to their constituents for too long, expecting the rest of America to keep bailing them out.
The reason is this. Texas politics aims to bring profits to the oil and gas industry, but it does this at high cost and dire threat to Texas residents and the American people.
Hurricane Harvey was a foreseeable disaster. Indeed, a massive hurricane strike on Houston, followed by massive flooding, was widely anticipated.
But Houston is an oil town, and the American oil industry has been enemy No. 1 of climate truth and climate preparedness. Most oil companies and Texas politicians see nothing, say nothing, do nothing. Even worse, they hide the truth, and then beg for help as needed. Gov. Abbott has played this game one disaster too many.
Abbott, for example, was the governor to sign a new law in 2015 that prevents cities and municipalities in Texas from setting their own regulations that might rein in oil and gas drilling activities. On his watch, Texas supported withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Over many years, he has raked in millions in campaign contributions from the oil industry, including in his former role as Texas attorney general, where he sued the Environmental Protection Agency repeatedly over rules designed to curb carbon emissions.
And the state, under Abbott’s direction, has taken no significant steps toward flood protection, despite the recognized risks of a mega-hurricane and flood.
The problem is not about his crisis management this week. I can’t judge that. It’s about his long-standing relentless opposition to environmental protection, including his blind eye to global warming and the grave dangers it poses.
The Texas Tribune and ProPublica published a 2016 award-winning report on “Hell or High Water,” explaining why Houston is a “sitting duck for the next big hurricane.” In 2015, Inside Climate News wrote that “as weather extremes like flooding batter Texas, its refusal to prepare for an even more volatile climate leaves residents at risk, experts say.”
On June 16 of this year, citing the city’s widening concrete sprawl and deaths from flooding in recent years, the UK Guardian wrote that “Houston fears climate change will cause catastrophic flooding: It’s not if, it’s when.”
. . . .
So, what has been the policy response in Houston and Texas more generally in terms of prevention, resilience, and preparedness? Almost nothing until disaster hits. Then the response is to ask for federal bailouts.
In other words, Texas is the moral hazard state.
Here is what has not happened: There has been little or no effort at zoning protection to keep development clear of floodplains; little or no offshore and onshore infrastructure for flood protection; no discernible heed paid to the scientific evidence and indeed the growing practical experience of catastrophic flood risks; and of course, relentless, pervasive climate change denial, the mother’s milk of Texas politics.
So, here’s the deal. Those of us elsewhere in the US also suffering from flooding and other disasters from warming temperatures, rising sea levels, and more intense storms (such as New Yorkers who are still rebuilding from 2012 Hurricane Sandy) want truth from Texas politicians and the oil industry.
We are bearing the costs of your lies. We are tired of it. More importantly, we are in pain and solidarity with the good people of Houston who are losing lives, homes, and livelihoods because of your lies.
Why Harvey's devastation is so severe
Why Harvey’s devastation is so severe
Gov. Abbott, we would like to bid you a political adieu. Perhaps you can devote your time to rebuilding Houston and taking night classes in climate science. Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, you will soon be asking us for money to help Texas.
My answer will be yes, if you stop spewing lies about climate dangers, agree to put US and Texas policy under the guidance of climate science, back measures to lower carbon emissions and stay in the Paris Climate Agreement. Then, of course, let’s help your constituents to rebuild.
And to ExxonMobil, Chevron, Koch Industries, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, and other oil giants doing your business in Texas: You put up the first $25 billion in Houston disaster relief. Call it compensation for your emissions. Tell the truth about growing climate threats. Then, as citizens seeking the common good, we will match your stake.”
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The “common good” is something that never crosses the collective so-called “minds” of Texas’s corrupt GOP pols. They are all bought and paid for by “Big Oil” and other fat cats. And, they are busy picking on Blacks, Hispanics, refugees, migrants, children, the poor, gays, Muslims, Dreamers, etc.
So, not for the first time, it’s for the rest of us taxpayers to bail out Texas. (But, don’t think that will earn the support of hypocrites like Cruz & Co. the next time we might be in need — they are cruel, ignorant, and selfish because — well, because they can be and get away with it). Fortunately for Texas, some of us still do have the common good in mind.
