Category: Immigration Policy

Grading Wrongo’s 2018 Predictions

The Daily Escape:

Military parade in Kremlin – October, 2018 photo by Wrongo

Wrongo dusted off his 2018 predictions and took a look at how he did. In the 23 categories, Wrongo had 16 substantially correct, and 7 incorrect for a 69.5% average. That would have been a “D” at his university. Of course, some grades could have been weighted more heavily than others, but we’re not grading on a curve here at Wrong U.

What follows are the 2018 prediction, followed by the 2018 result:

The US economy as measured by GDP will grow at greater than 2% for 2018.

  • Wrongo wins! The economy grew at an average rate of 3.65% in the four quarters through Sept. 30, 2018.

The US stock market as measured by the S&P 500 Index will end 2018 with little or no growth over year-end 2017.

  • Wrongo loses. Heading into Friday’s trading session, the Dow was down 6.4% in 2018, and the S&P 500 was off 6.9% for the year.

The Trump tax cuts will increase the deficit, and despite Paul Ryan’s best (or worst) efforts to push the country into austerity, that can will be kicked down the road for a few more years.

  • Wrongo wins! The Trump tax cuts increased the deficit to $1 trillion on an annual basis. Paul Ryan leaves office without destroying the social safety net.

The Democrats will not take control of either the House or the Senate in the 2018 mid-term elections.

  • Wrongo happily loses. The Dems took the House by winning 40 seats. They lost a net of two seats in the Senate to the Republicans.

Cyber and other forms of meddling by people who wish our democracy harm will continue in the 2018 elections, to broader effect than in 2016.

  • Wrongo loses. There is no real evidence that cyber meddling had a greater effect on the 2018 election.

Facebook and Google will be held to account for their failure to tamp down disinformation.

  • Wrongo wins! Both are under scrutiny for both their actions and failures to act in 2018.

Trump will continue to flounder as the leader of the Free World, while his “frenemies” in the GOP will continue to try to thwart him on domestic economic legislation.

  • Wrongo loses. The Trump tax cut was a big deal for Republicans, despite the fact that few of them felt that they could run on it in the mid-terms.

There will be some form of bi-partisan accommodation on DACA.

  • Wrongo lost, and so did the nation.

Trump’s public-private infrastructure deal will not pass the Senate.

  • Wrongo wins!

The House will pass legislation that messes with Medicaid, but the Senate will not.

  • Wrongo loses. Trump’s 2019 budget proposal called for a $1.5 trillion cut in Medicaid, but it didn’t pass.

Trump will have the opportunity to appoint another Supreme Court Justice.

  • Wrongo wins, but America lost. We got Kavanaugh ‘ed.

Trump will have a serious medical issue in 2018, but will not leave office, or be temporarily replaced by Pence.

  • Wrongo loses. Trump’s health seems unchanged.

Mueller: By March, MAGA will mean “Mueller Ain’t Going Away”. The storm will crest, a Russiagate conspiracy will be exposed, and crud will fly everywhere. This could lead to the Democrats taking control of one or both Houses.

  • Wrongo wins! It looks like conspiracy, not the collusion Trump talks about.

A few additional Trumpets will go to jail, or be tied up in court. Trump will not be impeached by the 2018 Republicans. 2019 might bring a different calculus.

  • Wrongo wins! Mueller’s team has indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 33 people and three companies that we know of.

Tillerson and possibly other cabinet members will resign to “spend more time with family”.

  • Wrongo wins! At least 40 senior people including 18 who were cabinet-level, resigned.

Middle East:

Syria – by this time next year, the war will be essentially over. Assad will still be in power, and the US will be out of the picture. The Syrian Kurds will switch sides, and collaborate with the Assad regime.

  • Wrongo Wins! We’re pulling out, and the Kurds have switched sides.

Iran – the current protest movement will fizzle out. Neo-cons in Trump’s administration will try to bring us close to war with Iran, but cooler heads at the Pentagon will prevail.

  • Wrongo wins! The protest movement did fizzle. Trump ended our participation in the Nuclear Deal and we re-introduced sanctions. We’re no longer on speaking terms with Iran.

Famine and death in Yemen will continue to be ignored by everyone in the US.

  • Wrongo won, but the Yemenis and world lost.

Russia, China, and Iran will have a “come together” moment, possibly resulting in an agreement for mutual economic cooperation.

  • Wrongo wins! Russia and China are indeed closer together, what with Trump as a common enemy.

Russia will continue to face ongoing battles with the US, but Putin will persist.

  • Wrongo wins! Putin persisted.

Ukraine: The US delivery of anti-tank missiles to the Ukrainian army will not cause them to begin military operations in the east.

  • Wrongo wins! We provided the weapons, they avoided attacks in the east.

Europe: The right-wing authoritarian movements in the Eurozone and England will become a larger factor in their domestic politics. Brexit will occur, and no one in the UK will be happy about the outcome.

  • Wrongo wins! Right-wing political parties are a bigger threat than ever throughout Europe. Brexit happened, with the final outcome still unclear, but no one is happy.

Will there be a war or “incident” with North Korea? Despite the scary politics, the Seoul Winter Olympics will keep the situation from escalating through June. The second half of 2018 could lead to some kind of incident between the US and NorKo, but will not be a nuclear incident.

  • Wrongo wins! There was no scary incident, in fact, relations have been slightly improved.

The year is almost ended, and we can’t pretend that America slid by with more than a D itself. Early in the New Year, we will make a series of predictions for 2019.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 16, 2018

A seven-year-old Guatemalan girl died on December 6th in the custody of the US Border Patrol. She and her father were apprehended with a group of 163 migrants near Antelope Wells, NM.

Reportedly, she hadn’t eaten, or consumed water for several days. She began vomiting on a bus that was taking her to a holding facility at Lordsburg NM, a 90-mile trip. She was not breathing when she arrived at Lordsburg, and was resuscitated there by the Border Patrol. She was then helicoptered to a hospital in El Paso, Texas. At the hospital, the girl was revived after going into cardiac arrest, but died less than 24 hours later.

Asked if food and water were given to the child, DHS blamed the father for taking his daughter on the dangerous journey to the US. But, she didn’t die on the 3,000-mile journey. She died in the US and in Border Patrol custody. She died while she was the BP’s responsibility.

The government is responsible for the health and safety of migrants they detain. They have to do better:

Trump has promised either he gets a wall, or we get a shutdown:

Trump ran into a wall he could have avoided:

Finding what you deserve:

White House Christmas carols won’t be much fun this year:

Reality starts to dawn:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 4, 2018

Truthout reports:

Wall Street donors have been lavishing the Democrats in the Senate with far more money than their GOP colleagues. The top six recipients (and nine of the top 10) of Wall Street money in 2018 among senators are Democrats. Of the top 20 Senate candidates to receive donations from Wall Street this cycle, 17 are Democrats, up from six in the last midterm in 2014…

Here are the top 12 recipients of Wall Street money. Eleven are Democrats:

Screen shot from Center for Responsive Politics

Why is Wall Street supporting these Dems? Seventeen Democrats helped repeal portions of the Obama-era Dodd-Frank legislation by voting with Republicans on the Dodd-Frank repeal. Nine Democrats also crossed party lines to appoint Goldman Sachs bailout attorney Jay Clayton to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. 37 Democratic Senators opposed his confirmation.

This is despite Pew saying in a May 2018 poll that two-thirds of Americans support laws to limit money in politics. Truthout says that for this mid-term, Wall Street has donated nearly $43 million to Senate Democrats, compared with only $19 million for Republicans, a departure from typical election years.

The Democrats’ dependence on Wall Street money is not new. In fact, President Obama raised more money from finance than any candidate in history in his first presidential campaign. Even though polling shows deep distrust over Wall Street, most politicians don’t seem to care.

Will taking Wall Street money be worth it? Will McCaskill, Tester and Heitkamp hold on? If voters really want this to change, they’ll have to stop electing politicians who represent Wall Street. On to cartoons:

Will Tuesday bring nightmares?

Tuesday’s choice:

Shouldn’t we be more worried about the gerrymandering, the crooked voting machines, the $ billions in corporate money, and the slander and attack ads?

Trump’s parade:

And a yoga class. The home of the brave has become the fortress of fear:

Keeping out the criminals:

It’s getting tougher for the GOP to keep using terrorism as their rallying call:

 

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The Democrats’ Closing Argument

The Daily Escape:

Autumn in full, near Hopkinton MA – 2018 photo by Karen Randall

We’ll know soon whether all the money and energy spent on the 2018 mid-terms have produced a good outcome for the Dems, or for the Republicans.

And what is the Democrats’ closing argument? The “closing argument” is a clichĂ© for the final messaging of every campaign. Many voters only tune in for the last few days before Election Day, and candidates make closing appeals to those newly opened ears.

The plan for the Democrats’ closing argument, as Carter Eskew says in the WaPo:

Run on issues such as health care, especially the Republican threat to not cover preexisting conditions, to win over independents, and then to rely on President Trump’s daily outrages to stoke Democratic turnout. I am sure that Democrats all across the country have millions of polling cross-tabs that show that the best way to build a winning coalition is not by attacking Trump, but by presenting solutions that help “everyday Americans.”

There is some logic to what Eskew is saying. Yesterday, we showed polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation about the top issues for Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Here it is again:

The top issues for Dems align with the top issues for Independents, but not with Republicans. A report by the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising, supports both the Kaiser survey and Eskew’s viewpoint:

Trump came up in just 10% of ads from Sept. 18 to Oct. 15 — and only 5.5% of them were negative. That’s by far the lowest proportion of attack ads against a sitting president since the 2002 midterms, when George W. Bush’s soaring popularity after 9/11 made him off-limits for Democrats.

Dems have downplayed dislike of Trump in favor of a closing argument focused on health care, taxes and protecting entitlements. The Wesleyan article suggests why Democrats have chosen to focus on the issues voters care most about, rather than on Trump: Dems think that likely voters have heard enough about Trump, and have made up their minds about whether or not they buy him, or his closing argument.

Meanwhile, Brian Stelter wraps up Trump’s closing argument for the midterms:

— Fear the caravan
— Hate the media

Trump is saying that a vote for Republicans is a vote for Trump, while a vote for Democrats is a vote for higher taxes, open borders, recession, and socialism.

So the question is, do the Dems have a winning closing argument? More from Eskew:

Democrats need to urgently remind their base and independents of the deeper and more emotional stakes of this election. They need to show their base and potential converts that there is a way to convert anger, malaise and resignation about Trump into an affirmative and liberating action.

To win a majority in the House next Tuesday, and have any chance of winning the Senate, Democrats need to raise the stakes of this election higher than simply who better preserves protections for preexisting conditions.

The stakes are very high. If the Dems fail to take back the House, the GOP and Trump will be emboldened to attack Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The Democratic Party should act like those programs are already in play.

With the midterm elections only a few days away, those are the closing arguments from Democrats and Republicans.

Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs will probably decide the mid-terms. Fear for survival and hate of those threatening it are what Trump is using to motivate his base. If you are betting person, take hate. Hate doesn’t always win, but in today’s America, it usually covers the point spread.

If you doubt that, try naming a single compelling emotion that comes to mind when you say “Democratic strategy.” When the NYT is putting photos of the “migrant caravan” on the front page above the fold every day, you’ve got to wonder what the Democrats are thinking.

While Trump inflames the immigration issue, Dems are ducking it. They are refusing to clarify how the US should deal with the caravan when it arrives, except to say that kids shouldn’t be in cages, which is an easy answer.

Should we let the illegals in or not? A few Dems say abolish ICE, but that’s a losing argument. The Party leaders instead change the subject to health care.

Is refusing to be drawn into the caravan debate part of a winning closing argument?

We’ll see.

If it isn’t, Wrongo’s message to Democrats is: Reform the party, kick out the dinosaurs, build a platform that truly helps the people.

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America’s Divided by Illegal Immigration

The Daily Escape:

Fall at Mount Assiniboine, Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park, BC, Canada – photo by Daniel Kodan

Happy Halloween! The spooky caravan of migrants heading northward to the US-Mexico border has sparked much debate. We’ve always heard that the US is “a nation of immigrants,” and that we’re a better country because of migrants who came here to chase the American Dream. But now, the country is divided about letting immigrants into the country. This has led to many immigrants becoming concerned about their legal status and seeking out the likes of Quijano Law, an Atlanta immigration law firm, to help them with the legal aspects of immigration that might be affecting themselves and their families.

On October 18th, the Kaiser Family Foundation published a survey that focused on the most important issues to voters. They found a significant difference between the parties on immigration:

Republicans rated immigration as their most important issue at 25% vs. 9% for Democrats, and Independents ranked it third at 15%. The sample included 396 Democrats, 309 Republicans and 399 Independents for a total of 91.8% of the overall respondents.

The differences were more pronounced in battleground states. Republicans in battleground states ranked immigration highest at 29% while Democrats rated it at 16% and fourth overall:

We say we are a nation of immigrants, but what that means is no longer clear. Trump and many Republicans running this fall have made the caravan seem like a powerful enemy army that we are at war with, albeit one that is unarmed, without funds and leaderless.

The Kaiser survey shows that this is working with Republicans in battleground districts/states. Whether it will prove helpful across the country will be determined on November 6th.

This anti-immigrant viewpoint has been with us for a very long time. After the Civil War, Congress realized that Blacks were going to be able to obtain citizenship just by being here, and then having children who would become citizens by birth. That ended when the 14th Amendment legitimized those children.

In the late 19th Century, there was another strong push to restrict immigration in order to maintain the whiteness of the country. It started with the restrictions against the Chinese and Japanese. Then it was extended even to those Europeans who were not considered to be white enough. People like the Irish, the Italians, the Greeks, the Poles, had their immigration quotas drastically cut back from 1917 through the 1920s.

We have always expressed our anti-immigrant bias explicitly in racial terms, even making up races, like the Irish and Poles. And today, it’s the Mexicans and Central Americans.

Even the term “illegal alien”, or “illegal immigrant” that we apply to those crossing the southern border has almost replaced race. It’s no longer legitimate to openly discriminate on the basis of race, but we’ve allowed one political Party to replace race with legal status.

So now it is legitimate again to discriminate against people. They are illegals, not a racial category, like they were in the 1800’s and 1900’s.

Today’s Republicans play to our fears: These less-than-worthy illegals want in, so that they can take a shot at the American Dream. If they get in, they may take jobs away from poorly educated, low skilled Americans. Therefore, we must be vigilant, and insure we protect our economy and the citizens who are already here.

There is some truth to that view.

America’s economy is predominantly service-based, and immigrants are over-represented in low skill, low-paying service occupations. They are in elder care, food services, in fact, they are hugely involved in the farming, harvesting and processing of most of our food as well.

These low-end jobs are going to grow, and it is highly questionable if low-skilled Americans will be lining up to take them.

And nobody’s talking about population growth as a reason to implement more restrictive immigration policies. By 2050, the US is projected to have 400 million people. Now it’s about 320 million. That’s a 25% increase in 32 years.

We need to ask: where will the jobs come from for all these people?

The division needs to stop. It’s a toxic stew of nativist, xenophobic ideas that must be sent back underground, and we have to end the rhetoric about “birthright citizenship” once and for all.

Let’s start by granting the DACA people citizenship. Second, those who came into our country illegally, and have not committed serious criminal offenses, should be offered a rigorous path to citizenship, one that does not give them an advantage over those who have complied with the law and are waiting their turn. Third, employers who have knowingly hired and exploited undocumented immigrants should be prosecuted, and not simply fined.

Fourth, we need clearer immigration rules, and better methods of processing of asylum requests. And we need more border security.

And if Trump’s wall is included, (as repugnant as that may seem), so be it.

 

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Trump Plans to End Birthright Citizenship

The Daily Escape:

Hocking Hills lower falls, Ohio – October 2018 photo by mattmacphersonphoto

President Trump said he plans to sign an executive order that would remove the right to citizenship for babies of non-citizens and illegal immigrants born on US soil. This is called “Birthright Citizenship”.

Birthright Citizenship, the common law concept of jus soli, has been the law since the ratification of the 14th Amendment. The Republican concern is that too many illegal immigrants have a child in the US who is automatically an American citizen, and therefore, has the right to vote. The 14th Amendment’s  first sentence reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The debate pertains to the clause, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. Conservatives contend that it means only citizens, while the preponderance of Constitutional scholars say it means located in the US.

Trump first made a case for ending Birthright Citizenship in 2015. Back then, he was following Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who said that Hispanics try to get a foothold in the country by coming here and having a child. King called them “anchor babies”.

Trump and the GOP are focusing on a largely imaginary abuse of birthright by foreigners.

Steve Kantrowitz, a US historian of the 19th century, wrote a series of tweets, condensed here: (emphasis by Wrongo)

On birthright citizenship, read the debate in the US Senate, Jan. 30, 1866. The framers of the Civil Rights Act — the immediate precursor to the 14th Amendment, and the first place national citizenship was codified — knew exactly what they were doing. They were clarifying the well-understood principle that children born in the US were citizens regardless of the immigration status of their parents. They even understood this to be true for children whose parents would then have been racially ineligible for citizenship, such as the Chinese. The only people excluded from citizenship on this basis were 1) Indians under tribal government and 2) children born to the families of foreign diplomats.

A new Executive Order on Birthright Citizenship would spark a legal battle, and pave the way for a showdown at the Supreme Court. To help get that party started, The Hill reported that Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) intends to “introduce legislation among the same lines as the proposed executive order.”

Consider the irony: The Republican Party accomplished something hugely enlightened and important with the 14th Amendment. Here is American Civil War historian Eric Foner:

The 14th amendment and birthright citizenship rank among the great and defining accomplishments of the Republican Party, back when it was the Party of Lincoln.

Yet Trump Republicans propose purging their historic accomplishment from the Constitution. The problem with eliminating Birthright Citizenship is that their idea is at its core, explicitly nativist, racist, and xenophobic.

The current Republican Party is showing that it is no longer related to the Republican Party of Lincoln. In fact, it is barely related to the Republican Party of Eisenhower. The only piece of common ground the current Republican Party has with the Party of Lincoln is its name.

It will take time to move Trump’s Executive Order to a hearing at the Supreme Court. So, announcing this now is really another attempt to energize the Republican base next week.

Republicans are playing to an idea deep in the American psyche that there’s always “a mob at the gates”. The mob wants in, so that they can take advantage of the good things we have, or they plan to lay waste to our culture and way of life. Therefore, we must be vigilant, because our innocence and openness makes us vulnerable to exploitation or infection from outside.

This is what makes the Caravan a huge issue to Republicans. They’re calling it “an invasion” or, “a national emergency”.

The Right Wing’s argument is that we shouldn’t “reward” people who come into the country illegally by “giving” their kids born here citizenship.

They answer the fact that we all came here from over there, by saying “they followed the rules“, even though for most of us, our ancestors faced few, or no rules on immigration.

This is the problem Wrongo has with the GOP. They begin the argument from their conclusion, and work backwards. Any fig leaf will do. So any argument in favor of the conclusion is all they require.

Voters. Please do not take this bait. Let’s keep our eye on the ball: Re-winning at least the House on Nov 6th. This other fight can wait until after the election.

There are two great things about the US: Strong free speech laws, and jus soli. The idea of blood citizenship—which pervades Europe, and the Middle East, is the root of much evil in the world.

Don’t bring that evil here, VOTE on next Tuesday.

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Sending Troops to the Southern Border

The Daily Escape:

Fall at first light, Northern VT – 2018 photo by mattmacphersonphoto

The caravan, again. From the WaPo:

The Trump administration is expected to deploy additional US troops to assist in security operations at the southern border in response to a caravan of migrants traveling north on foot through Mexico, three US officials confirmed Thursday.

The Pentagon is sending 800 more troops, including some active-duty forces primarily from the Army. The new deployments would add to the estimated 2,100 National Guard troops already involved in border operations. Zandar says:

The party of separating refugee kids from their parents and keeping them in cages in detention camps seems to think that martial law on the southern border is going to be a political winner for them in a couple weeks.

But will really be a winner for the GOP? Although the GOP and Trump are continually trying to instill fear of undocumented immigrants, most of us haven’t been persuaded. In fact, according to a Chapman University Survey of American Fears, a larger share of the public is afraid of Trump (59%) than are afraid of illegal immigrants (41%):

Fear of illegal immigrants
59.3% are not afraid
19.3% are slightly afraid
12.2% are afraid
9.3% are very afraid

The Chapman study shows that the proportion of Americans expressing concern about immigrants is about one in 3. So, why are Republicans acting like we’re about to be invaded? Here’s one Congress critter who’s sounding the alarm:

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) suggested that President Donald Trump might have to declare martial law along the southern border of the United States to prevent a large group of Central American refugees and migrants from entering the country.

Gohmert was speaking on a Fox radio show. When asked what “martial law” would look like, the congressman responded that it would mean Federal troops at the border dealing with the mob invasion: (brackets by Wrongo)

This has got to be so massive, I mean, you might have to declare martial law along the border…And the Democrats have been too stupid to realize that [by] encouraging this caravan they may actually empower the president to do things they never wanted.

It got worse: (emphasis by Wrongo)

The military needs to have their weapons pointed towards Mexico and not toward the American people, but it may be that we have to have enough federal law enforcement, and maybe we have to have the National Guard if Jerry Brown is going to force the issue ― but I hope and pray he won’t be so stupid as to try to stop the US government from enforcing our border because then we’re talking treasonous-type acts.

Wow, we know that Gohmert isn’t the brightest bulb in the House, but, training guns on Jerry Brown? And what’s treasonous? It is perfectly legal for persons to request asylum at the border. That’s how it’s done.

Anyone else see a line between this, and bombs showing up at the homes and offices of some Democrats who criticize Donald Trump?

There may be decent reasons to add more military on the southern border, assuming that the volume of migrants asking for asylum is about to increase. The key is that there will be a surge of people seeking asylum if/when the caravan gets to the border, so additional resources will be useful.

The guardsmen already at the border are under orders from their respective state governors and remain under their governor’s control. Gen. Mattis issued a memo this year that prohibits them from interacting directly with “migrants or other persons detained,” and that directive is still in place, said a Pentagon spokesman.

Officials said Thursday that the additional forces will mostly include engineers to build new traffic barriers, aviation support, doctors and lawyers to provide legal representation.

That’s fine, but Trump, the GOP, and especially Rep. Gohmert, ought to read up on the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act which expressly prohibits the use of US military forces to perform the tasks of civilian law enforcement such as arrest, apprehension, interrogation, and detention inside the US, unless explicitly authorized by Congress.

Despite Trump’s tweets, there is no crisis at the border. And using the military as Gohmert suggests, violates the Act.

As the mid-term election fast approaches, we need to see that there are many in Congress who are willing to flaunt, or straight up violate laws in order to make a political point.

They have to be turned out of office next month.

This time, make the 2018 election have consequences for the other side.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 26, 2018

The majority of Americans under 18 live in households that receive “means-tested assistance” from the US government. In 2016, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, there were approximately 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States, and 38,365,000 of them, 52.1%, resided in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.

Those programs include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Medicaid, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and the National School Lunch Program.

And when the Census Bureau excluded school lunch programs from its calculations, the percentage of those under 18 who lived in a household receiving means-tested assistance (44.8%), still exceeded the percentage in any other age bracket.

We have now had four straight years: 2013 – 2016, during which a majority of those under 18 lived in a household taking means-tested benefits.

The primary reason for this is that most in this category are single parent households headed by a woman. Many can’t find employment paying a decent wage with some benefits. Many have to choose between full-time work and childcare. Some are working 2-3 part time jobs but still can’t cover their expenses.

But, the economy is good, the stock market is great, so why worry about these banana republic statistics, America? On to cartoons.

Trump sings the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, “What’s That Smell?”

Speak to a Trumpist, and you’ll find a reasonable, fact-driven human being:

Trump tweets about “widespread” killings of white farmers in South Africa. Here’s the truth:

Immigration unmasks the hate:

DeVos shows that she’s a helper:

Mitch reserves his looks of disgust only for Democrats:

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Trump’s “Willie Horton” Moment

The Daily Escape:

The Bulgle Bungles, Purnululu National Park, Western Australia

Lost in the news this week was the discovery of the body of missing Iowa college student, Mollie Tibbetts. An undocumented immigrant, Cristhian Rivera guided police to her body, and he is now being held for her murder.

And the much-publicized search for yet another white co-ed comes to a tragic end.

But for Donald Trump, it was a beginning. Trump and other conservatives quickly cited Rivera, who worked on a farm owned by a prominent Republican family, as proof of the flawed immigration system and lax border security the president has long warned about. Here’s Trump on CNN:

You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in very sadly from Mexico. And you saw what happened to that incredible beautiful young woman. Should have never happened. Illegally in our country…We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad, the immigration laws are such a disgrace. We’re getting it changed but we have to get more Republicans.

Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, released a statement saying she was:

Angry that a broken immigration system allowed a predator like this to live in our community.

Fox News led with the story. After all, why would they voluntarily be talking about Manafort and Cohen?

A side note, Rivera’s employer, Yarrabee Farms, a company that operates dairy farms in Iowa, said that Rivera had been an employee in good standing for four years. They said initially that they had checked his immigrant status with the Fed’s eVerify system. Use of the eVerify system is not mandatory. In fact, the White House dropped its call for mandatory E-Verify in February when trying to reach a DACA deal.

Later, Yarrabee admitted that they hadn’t used eVerify, but had used another verification system. The company is owned by the family of Craig Lang, a prominent Republican who previously served as president of the Iowa Farm Bureau.

We should note that many undocumented workers are hired – often knowingly – by employers, particularly in agriculture. And typically the employers suffer few consequences when ICE raids, and takes their illegal employees away.

Trump and the GOP will try to turn this into a “Willie Horton” moment in the mid-term elections. Willie Horton was serving a life sentence for murder, but was released by Massachusetts for weekend furlough. He never returned, and committed rape, assault and armed robbery before being recaptured. This happened on the watch of Democratic governor, Michael Dukakis. The GOP then used the Horton case very successfully against Dukakis, who lost the presidential election in 1988.

And the Mollie Tibbetts murder is another example of Republicans using fear to scare the electorate. Facts never seem to matter, here are a few: (emphasis by Wrongo)

The CDC analyzed the murders of women in 18 states from 2003 to 2014, finding a total of 10,018 deaths. Of those, 55% were intimate partner violence-related, meaning they occurred at the hands of a former or current partner or the partner’s family or friends. In 93% of those cases, the culprit was a current or former romantic partner. The report also bucks the strangers-in-dark-alleys narrative common to televised crime dramas: Strangers perpetrated just 16% of all female homicides, fewer than acquaintances and just slightly more than parents.

If you say none of that matters to Mollie Tibbetts, or her family, you would be wrong. Sam Lucas, a cousin of Mollie’s, tweeted a response to Candace Owens, a representative of a right-wing student organization:

Hey I’m a member of Mollie’s family and we are not so fucking small-minded that we generalize a whole population based on some bad individuals….stop using my cousin’s death as political propaganda…. https://t.co/xxZNBF0Uv9

— sam (@samlucasss) August 22, 2018

Our hearts should break for Mollie and her family. But why then, is the GOP dragging out the old Horton playbook to whip up racism? Trump wouldn’t have made any mention about her murder if it had involved one of the many white men who rape and murder women (of any race) in our country, every day.

This is an entire political party dedicated to promulgating fear of the “other”, and a huge swath of the media are dedicated to blasting it out to their audience of (apparently) timid white people.

Where the killer comes from shouldn’t have anything to do with the publicity any crime receives. Except in Trumpworld, where it has everything to do with why they pay attention.

Their strategy is: Find one bad apple and then say no one should eat applesauce.

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 30, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Steptoe Butte from the Palouse Scenic Byway -2018 photo by Brooke Fitts for the WSJ

Wake up America! The Nation reports that a 6-year old migrant girl, who was separated from her mother at the border was sexually abused while in the “care” of your government: (brackets by Wrongo)

According to immigrant-rights advocates, a 6-year-old girl separated from her mother under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy was sexually abused while at an Arizona detention facility run by Southwest Key Programs. The child was then made to sign a form acknowledging that she was told to maintain her distance from her alleged abuser, who is an older [male] child being held at the same detention facility.

Let’s start with: What kind of company would make a 6-year old sign a release form? Second, what kind of company thinks a statement signed by a 6-year-old, will protect the company from liability?

It didn’t end there for the child, known by her initials D.L.:

But the nightmare wasn’t over. On June 22, Southwest Key again contacted D.L.’s father and informed him that the same boy initially cited for abuse had hit and fondled D.L. again.

The child, her mother and her father, who was already living in the US, have been reunited, but it wasn’t a happy ending:

According to D.L.’s mother, when the family came together again, the young girl was confused. “I hugged her, I was crying. She didn’t recognize me,” the mother said. “She told me that she thought I was never going to be with her again and that she was going to have to live with another lady. She behaved like she was still in detention. She wouldn’t touch me, hug me, or kiss me”….”She is still…following the rules of the detention center,” said the mother. “She doesn’t let them touch her, she doesn’t touch them. She wakes up at 6, and bathes and eats. She behaves like she is programmed.”

Recall that 30 days ago, one US immigration judge tried to call a halt to what ICE was doing: Bringing one and two-year-old children into the courtroom for proceedings where the children were supposed to represent themselves. That judge refused to move the cases forward.

Trump and his minions are willfully creating a generation of displaced people. People who have been traumatized so badly that they have lost the ability to stay connected to their families, pushed to estrangement by what had happened to them while in custody.

Abject cruelty has to be a dividing line for Americans. We need a new policy for dealing with families at the border. We need a top to bottom reform of ICE. The easiest question for any Independent voter or Democrat to answer is: “Here’s something Trump and the Republicans want. Do you want the same thing?”

There’s no excuse for agreeing with a party that celebrates cruelty to children.

It’s your Monday Wake Up. There are 99 days left until the midterm elections. Register friends who aren’t registered. Drive people to the polls on Election Day. To help you wake up, listen to Dave Alvin performing his version of a Tom Russell song, “California Snow”. This is from Alvin’s 1998 album “Black Jack David”. It is a story by a border patrol agent:

Sample Lyric:

I catch the ones I’m able to
And watch the others slip away
I know some by their faces
And I even know some by name
I guess they think that we’re all
Movie stars and millionaires
I guess that they still believe
That dreams come true up here.

But I guess the weather’s warmer down in Mexico
And no one ever tells them ’bout the California snow.

Last winter I found a man and wife
Just about daybreak
Layin’ in a frozen ditch
South of the interstate
I wrapped ’em both in blankets
But she’d already died
The next day we sent him back alone
Across the borderline.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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