Taking A Stab At Immigration Reform

On April 5 Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote favorably of the "framework" by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to effect the legalization of illegal immigrants.

The main facets of the plan are a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a program to let in future workers, the improvements in enforcement and the biometric Social Security cards to help employers weed out illegal workers.

Tucker notes that the effort of Senators Schumer and Graham, which includes both accomodation of illegal immigrants and more than a nod to enforcement, constitutes a "pledge of bipartisanship." Nevertheless, she understands, "few think the process will be anything but long and bloody — just like health care reform. And, in the end, there’s no guarantee of Republican votes."

But a portion of her reasoning is deeply flawed. Tucker rhetorically, and eloquently, asks "What kind of country would deport promising teen-aged Americans just because their parents came from Guatemala or Gambia without permission? What kind of country would exploit the labor of workers but refuse to allow them the chance at legal status?"

Apparently, the kind of country with a Senator Schumer and a Senator Graham, who write their

blueprint also creates a rational system for admitting lower-skilled workers. Our current system prohibits lower-skilled immigrants from coming here to earn money and then returning home. Our framework would facilitate this desired circular migration by allowing employers to hire immigrants if they can show they were unsuccessful in recruiting an American to fill an open position; allowing more lower-skilled immigrants to come here when our economy is creating jobs and fewer in a recession; and permitting workers who have succeeded in the workplace, and contributed to their communities over many years, the chance to earn a green card.

The guest worker program scheme rears its ugly head- and apparently is supported by a columnist who moments earlier typed "What kind of country would exploit the labor of workers...." Rightfully aghast at exploitation of human labor, Tucker should not avert her eyes from the temporary worker aspect of the Schumer-Graham framework.

Failing to recognize the nexus between temporary worker programs and exploitation of human labor, Tucker goes on to add two and two and come up with five. She approvingly quotes James Carville, who was two-thirds accurate when he commented that immigration reform "divides them (Republicans) worse than us. Politically, I think it is a good issue for Democrats to bring up. It gives them (the GOP) fits, real fits.”

The issue of immigration reform does divide Republicans more than Democrats and give the GOP "fits." Or rather, it has given Republicans more trouble than it has Democrats because the latter have merely "brought it up." Make immigration reform ("amnesty! amnesty!") a major issue and the political calculus shifts dramatically.

Several weeks ago, The Washington Times reported

President Obama gave a thumbs up Thursday to the outline of a plan to legalize illegal immigrants and create a flow of low-skilled foreign workers for the future, saying the immigration bill being worked on by a Republican and a Democrat is "promising"....

"I congratulate Senators Schumer and Graham for their leadership, and pledge to do everything in my power to forge a bipartisan consensus this year on this important issue so we can continue to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform," Mr. Obama said in a statement soon after the two senators published their blueprint in a column submitted to The Washington Post.

The carefully orchestrated rollout came just three days before immigrant-rights advocates expect at least 50,000 supporters to rally and march in Washington, D.C., calling for Congress to act. The organizers of the rally had met with Mr. Obama last week and told him he needed to embrace a bill or else the thousands of marchers would be told that he had failed to live up to his promises on this issue.

The President, wisely, signaled to marchers his support in a manner geared to avoid widespread publicity. The immigration reform position is salient primarily to supporters of legal/illegal immigration. It is not a pivotal issue to individuals, probably in the majority among the American populace, who oppose measures congenial to illegal immigrants. Advocates of the reform position would do well not to awaken the majority- or at least plurality- of voters who do not agree with them, but for whom the issue now is below the radar.

If Mr. Obama, unlike Carville and Tucker, appears to recognize the popular opposition to making illegal immigrants more comfortable, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) surely does. On March 31, Menendez- a strong support of comprehensive reform who regrets only that the Schumer-Graham blueprint has an enforcement component- told a New Jersey newspaper "I think the time to get it done is in November, right after the elections."

This wasn't (to be condescending) a bad effort on the part of a Pulitzer Prize winner. But Tucker, as well as Democratic strategists who support a path to legalization, need to recognize both the political explosiveness of immigration and the threat to the American worker posed by any temporary, or guest, worker program.

Pentagon Accepts Gay Members

A 1993 study by the Rand Corporation, as President Clinton was considering modifying the policy banning gay persons from the military, concluded

the most promising policy option for achieving the President’s objectives focuses on conduct and considers sexual orientation, by itself, as not germane in determining who may serve in the Armed Forces.

Soon after, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was implemented by which, according to Wikipedia quoting The New York Times quoting the Pentagon

Sexual orientation will not be a bar to service unless manifested by homosexual conduct. The military will discharge members who engage in homosexual conduct, which is defined as a homosexual act, a statement that the member is homosexual or bisexual, or a marriage or attempted marriage to someone of the same gender.

That was back in a time of the rather quaint notion that an individual may not be judged on the basis of inherited characteristics (such as attraction to someone of the same gender) but may be judged by his/her behavior (including sexual).

That is a distinction which has proven virtually impossible to maintain. According to wikipedia, there have been over 13,000 discharges of individuals known to be gay or bisexual since announcement of DADT, though the rate has declined since September 11, 2001 (perhaps a variant of necessity being the mother of invention).

Then, and now, the main argument against allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military was the belief that it endangers unit cohesion.

Not having served in the armed forces, I could not be sure whether there is much merit in that reasoning, but apparently Lt. Gen. Robert R. Allardice of Scott Air Force Base in Illinois does not find it credible.

Lt. Robin R. Churasiya left active duty in 2007 but returned in 2009 and was sent to Scott. Then, as Stars and Stripes tells it

a male former service member she once dated forwarded a group e-mail she had written to her commander. In that e-mail, Chaurasiya said she was a lesbian.

After an investigation, Chaurasiya submitted a memorandum to her commander declaring herself a lesbian.

"I want to be respected for it, and if I am going to be disrespected I don't want to be here," Chaurasiya said.

Chaurasiya said she did not enter into the union or declare herself a lesbian to get a discharge. "My intention is not to get out," she said. "But if I am going to be kept in and treated unfairly either from my peers or by the military itself ... then I want to be loud about it to bring about the change or I do not want to be here."

General Allardice could have discharged Chaurasiya

under the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Instead, he determined in February that she should remain in the Air Force because she acknowledged her sexual orientation for the purpose of "avoiding and terminating military service."

Now, isn't that great: if you violate DADT by "outing" yourself, you're worthy of staying in the military; if someone inappropriately "outs" you, you get tossed like a salad (no stand-up routine for me, admittedly). Evidently recognizing irony, the Stars and Stripes reporter noted "The decision had the flavor of a Catch-22: if you admit to being homosexual you can be discharged from the military, but if you admit it for the purposes of being discharged you won't be."
Or as a senior research fellow Santa Barbara's Palm Center of the University of California observed:

If commanders are ignoring or rejecting credible evidence of homosexuality because of the alleged motive of the person who makes the statement, the bottom line is they are keeping gay people in the service. That gives the lie that known gay people undercut the military.

DADT shouldn't be overturned on the basis that most Americans appear to support its repeal- or even because most members of the military reportedly find service by gay individuals acceptable. But if the military is allowed to retain individuals who declare their homosexuality, it is acknowledging that gay men and women are serving, and openly. And if those individuals are not uniformly banished from the military, the institution has a de facto policy of supporting this reality. Who (except John McCain), then, is left to make the argument of maintaining a ban on homosexuals in the service?

The Limbaugh Manipulative Machine: #4

It is President Ronald Reagan as the great, principled, even doctrinaire, conservative.

In a minority of areas, it is accurate. However, it is usually a figment of GOP imagination- or of deliberate obfuscation. Let's consider when Rush Limbaugh on Thursday, April 8 argued

If he wants to create jobs, he's gotta cut taxes, he's gotta remove some federal regulations, he's basically gotta get out of people's way. He's gotta stop taxing achievement; he's gotta stop punishing risk-takers; he's gotta do the exact opposite of what he's doing. The blueprint for coming out of one of these recessions exists back in 1981 and '82. It goes by the name of Ronaldus Magnus and it worked so well that this regime is doing everything they can to reverse every aspect of Reaganism.

Literally, a portion of those is accurate. As Paul Krugman noted in 1984 when he compared President Reagan to President Bush the XLIII, the nation’s 40th President cut income taxes dramatically in 1981, then raised them the following two years. The 1982 tax increase diminished the cut of 1981 by approximately one-third and the 1982 increase primarily increased the payroll tax that paid for Social Security and medicare hospital insurance.

It is not illegitimate (though simplistic and debatable), therefore, to claim President Reagan issued “the blueprint for coming out of one of these recessions.” (Leave aside the qualitative and quantitative difference of this recession.) It is misleading, though, for Limbaugh to imply- as he surely is- that insofar as the change was brought about by a change in tax policy, it was exclusively a result of lowering taxes. Taxes were cut (substantially), then raised- by more, and on more people, than any President ever has done in peacetime.

The impact on the middle-class, however, was not as benign as Rush implied, inasmuch as

For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax cuts. In 1980, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, middle-income families with children paid 8.2 percent of their income in income taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. By 1988 the income tax share was down to 6.6 percent -- but the payroll tax share was up to 11.8 percent, and the combined burden was up, not down.

The benefits of the Reagan tax policy mostly accrued to the upper class while the middle class was called upon (in 1982 and 1983) to pick up the tab. It’s possible Limbaugh, while no doubt aware that President Reagan’s tax policies helped the wealthy more than the middle class, was not aware that the overall federal tax burden of middle-income families with children increased. On this discourse from Thursday, therefore, Rush Limbaugh was merely misleading his audience.

This is all part of a larger issue. Republicans everywhere put on the mantle of “Reagan Republican” and claim President Reagan was a true-blue, rock-solid conservative while the 43rd President (widely regarded as a failure) was an impostor. The truth, of course, is virtually the opposite: Krugman notes Reagan, in contrast to Bush, “showed both some pragmatism and some sense of responsibility”….. which would, not insignificantly, be something he had in common with our 44th President.

Abortion, Life, Choice, Birth

National Public Radio has adopted a new policy to identify on the air individuals and groups on each side of the abortion controversy. No longer will it use the terms "pro-life" and pro-choice," but instead employ

"abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)" and "abortion rights opponent(s)" or derivations thereof (for example: "advocates of abortion rights"). It is acceptable to use the phrase "anti-abortion", but do not use the term "pro-abortion rights".

NPR's ombudsman (ombudswoman? ombudsperson?) notes that "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are not as cumbersome as other terms, but are loaded phrases advanced by partisans in the debate. She found that NBC, CBS, CNN, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer do not use these terms.

What, then, to make of an abortion rights opponent like House Minority Leader John Boehner? His website, however dishonestly, slams "taxpayer funding of contraceptives and the abortion industry" and contends

all states are now free to offer Medicaid “family planning” services – even for those who are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid – without receiving approval from the federal government. This will pave the way for more taxpayer dollars to go to clinics that undercut parents and promote abortions.

Dante Atkins at DailyKos argues

the fact that Leader Boehner is attacking birth control funding just goes to show that the forced birth cult wing of the Republican Party isn't really interested in snowflake babies. After all, it would stand to reason that making contraception readily available would make a significant dent in the number of unplanned pregnancies. Rather, they are far more concerned with making sure that women--especially poor women--suffer consequences for daring to have sex unless they make sure to do it with a strong, powerful man who they know can provide for them--in other words, the medieval model of gender relations.

Maintaining that "the forced birth cult wing of the Republican Party" is fostering "the medieval model of gender relations" is a little rough. That would be "the medieval model of gender relations" part, not recognition of a "forced birth" wing of the GOP.

Promptly after the surprise selection by Republican presumptive presidential nominee John McCain of then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, interest arose in the teen-aged, unmarried pregnancy of Palin's daughter Bristol. At the convention on September 3, The Daily Beast's Dana Goldstein wrote "The idea that the Christian right would have judged Sarah Palin a failure in imparting proper values to her sexually active daughter is silly, a typical liberal misreading of contemporary conservative ideology."

Silly us liberals, believing conservative rhetoric about "family values," including the merit in a married woman choosing family over career. But Goldstein was right- Christian conservatives have believed Palin "the very epitome of conservative professional motherhood" and far from a failure for not imparting traditional sexual values to her daughter. Goldstein notes

The underlying message is that pregnancy is a gift you should never turn down -- even when it's unexpected, even when you are 17, even when you haven't had the chance to get an education, or a job, or learn to live as an adult away from your parents. (And even if you're the victim of domestic violence or have been raped.) In other words, choice, schmoice.

Pregnancy is a gift you should never turn down. Further, though, Goldstein didn't say it: a gift which should be applauded and celebrated.

The Majority Leader's opposition to the use of Medicaid for family planning is consistent with this approach to birth. Subsidizing family planning for poor people who choose such assistance, thus discouraging unwanted conception and abortion, becomes not only of secondary concern but actually counter-productive.

That would not exactly be "pro-life." The Post ombudsman quotes a District of Columbia resident stating "I am a 'pro-life' voter. For instance, I would vote for someone opposed to the death penalty over someone in favor of it." "Life," like "choice," has plenty of ramifications.

Viewed in the light of the reaction to the Palin family and of Representative Boehner's hostility to family planning, the guiding principle of much of the abortion rights opposition may be pro-natalism, reasonably defined as "an attitude or policy that encourages childbearing." Or maybe it isn't, and I'll be proven as wrong as those of us who assumed conservatives actually once believed in what they termed "family values."

Failure At The Top

Rush Limbaugh, who never has met a right-wing corporate executive he didn't defend, today superficially addressed the mining disaster at the Upper Big Branch coal mine and said of CEO Don Blankenship

Well, here you got a guy, and they're really running this Massey CEO through the coal, folks, they're making this guy out to be the second coming of some world tyrant.

Not surprisingly, Limbaugh didn't tell his audience about the $75 million lawsuit (video below, from an ABC television report) a relatively small coal company initially won against the fifth largest coal company in the nation. Massey Energy had been accused of using fraud to force out of business a company owned by Hugh Caperton. After the latter won the case and the award in early 2002, Massey appealed to the West Virginina Supreme Court.

While the case was pending, Massey left little to chance, helping to raise $3.5 million (in a state in which that's real money) for an advertising campaign to defeat an incumbent Justice, resulting in the election of Brent Benjamin to the Court. That summer, Chief Justice Elliot Maynard and CEO Don Blankenship spent three days with their girl friends on the French Riviera, in Monaco, and in Italy.

The following year, Maynard voted with Massey, which won the case. But a new hearing was ordered after photographs of the European vacation were exposed. A week before this report from ABC News, the Court heard the appeal again, this time without Chief Justice- and Justice Larry Starcher, who recused himself because of his criticism of the Court's cozy relationship with Massey. And again, the coal giant won and the judgement was set aside. When filming the report, there was an altercation between the ABC cameraman and Blankenship, who warned "if you're going to start taking pictures of me, you're likely to get shot."

This is the individual Rush Limbaugh is defending. And so is this, according to the Mississippi Business Journal:

Massey ranks among the nation’s top five coal producers and is among the industry’s most profitable. It has a spotty safety record.

The federal mine safety administration fined Massey a then-record $1.5 million for 25violations that inspectors concluded contributed to the deaths of two miners trapped in a fire in January 2006. The company later settled a lawsuit naming it, several subsidiaries and Chief Executive Don Blankenship as defendants. Aracoma Coal Co. later paid $2.5 million in fines after the company pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges in the fire.

Apparently, Don Blankenship did little to ameliorate the violations, the Associated Press reporting

Testimony showed that Massey CEO Don Blankenship suggested firing two supervisors for raising concerns about conveyer-belt problems just before the belt caught fire.

According to the AP, the Uppper Big Branch mine has been cited for 600 violations in less than 18 months. In the past year, there have been 495 citations, for which $911,802 in fines had been proposed. At least 50 of the 105 violations found this year

accused the company of "unwarrantable failure" to comply with safety standards such as following an approved ventilation plan, controlling combustible materials, or designating escape routes.

"If you look at other mines that are the same size or bigger, they do not have the sheer number of 'unwarrantable' citations that this mine has," said Ellen Smith, editor of Mine Safety & Health News.

But Blankenship's company didn't let all this stand in the way of profit as production has more than tripled and profits skyrocketed.

The incident apparently was not uncharacteristic of the company because

J. Davitt McAteer, a former assistant director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the Massey company “is certainly one of the worst in the industry” when it came to safety and called recent violations at the mine for substandard ventilation and other problems “cardinal sins.”

Brian Ross' ABC report from 2006 centered on the relationship between a couple of judges on the West Virginia Supreme Court and Massey Energy. While there still is a possibility that a few miners will be rescued, there understandably has been little attention focused on the domination by corporate interests of state judicial systems in which judges are elected. At some point, however, there are going to be a lot more questions about the judiciary in West Virginia, Don Blankenship, and the shoddy regulation of the mining industry which contributed to this tragedy.





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Better Quote Of The Week

"If the orgy of financial deregulation that led to the crash had two prime sponsors, the Democratic one was Rubin and the Republican one was Greenspan. Inviting these characters to a fiscal summit to devise a way out of the crisis is like inviting arsonists to design a seminar on fire prevention."

Journalist, writer, and economist Robert Kuttner, criticizing composition of the fiscal summit sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation

Job Security

On one level, it's difficult to figure out why the GOP has not yet canned its national party chairman, Michael Steele.

After consistently embarrassing the party, early January featured the release of a new book by Steele while a Washington Post blogger noted

"Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda," surprised Republican congressional leaders, some of whom first learned of the book by watching Steele's television appearances this week, three top GOP congressional aides said Friday. The staffers would only describe their bosses' communications with the Republican National Committee chairman on condition of anonymity.

"The book came out and everybody went, 'Whoa, what happened?'" one aide said, adding that his employer, a senior House Republican, learned of the book by watching cable news.
"No one in the House or Senate leadership knew he had a book contract."

"He's freelancing," said another top congressional aide.

Asked in a radio interview whether, according to the WaPo (lingo for the pretentious), he was "a detriment to GOP fund-raising," Steele threw down the gauntlet (video below):

I am in this chair. If they want it, take it from me. Until then, shut up, step back and get in the game and help us win -- and stop the back-biting and the name-calling and the finger-pointing....

I hope you play this tape over and over again because these folks are the problem, not the solution. Get with the program. I'm the chairman. Deal with it.

Generally, telling one's employer- in this case the Republican National Committee- to "shut up (and) deal with it" is not a sound prescription for job security.

Not so, however, with Steele. Certainly, there is wide dissatisfaction with Steele, under whose leadership the RNC has spent more than it has raised. The Daily Caller recently reported that in February the National Committee spent $17,514 on private aircraft and $12,691 on limousines; a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel with $6,596 spent at the nearby Four Seasons; and $1,946,25 "at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex." Other expenses have included "bills from a long list of chic and costly hotels such as the Venetian and the M Resort in Las Vegas, and the W (for a total of $19,443) in Washington. A midwinter trip to Hawaii cost the RNC $43,828, not including airfare." Fiscal conservatism, indeed.

Nonetheless, the chairman remains, despite- or perhaps because of- his challenge to the party.

A new controversy arose with this exchange (video way below) on ABC's Good Morning America on April 5:

STEPHANOPOULOS: We’ve got questions on my blog for you, this morning. One came in from Myron, he asked, do you feel as an African-American, you have a slimmer margin for error as another chairman would?

STEELE: The answer is yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why is that?

STEELE: It just is. Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. A lot of folks do. It’s a different role for, you know, for me to play and others to play. That’s just the reality of it. But you take that as part of the nature of it. It’s not — it’s more because you’re not someone that they mow. I’m not a Washington insider, even though I grew up here in D.C. my view on politics is much more grassroots oriented. It’s not old boy network oriented. And so, you know, I tend to come at did stronger, streetwise, if you will.

Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic posits five reasons he believes the Republican National Committee will not fire Michael Steele:

Reason one: It's hard. Being the party of loyalty and hierarchy, the Republicans have made it virtually impossible for members to throw out a chair; it'd take a vote of two thirds of the membership.

Reason two: Steele is no less popular, publicly, than other Republicans -- it's not like he's a magnet for negative energy. OK, well maybe he is. But not MORE of a magnet than other Washington-based party leaders.

Reason three: Fundraising tactics aside, he's proven to be a fairly competent fundraiser. And there'll be plenty of money for Republicans outside the RNC.

Reason four: The press would focus obsessively on the impeachment process, and Republicans could look bad...uh, worse, than they do now.

Reason five: He's black. Republicans don't want to be stuck with the symbolism of having rejected their first elected black chairman because of financial issues or problems controlling his public image.

With approval of two-thirds of the 168 members of the RNC required to discharge a chairman, Steele will not be fired short of an indictment. And then it would be a toss-up. This would not be because of reasons 2, 3, and 4. It is because of reason five. If the GOP found it difficult to fire its first black chairman prior to his recent outburst, it would be far more uncomfortable now that he has drawn attention to race (all hail the "streetwise"!).

Talking Point Memo's Josh Marshall commented that the GOP response to Democratic nomination of Barack Obama was to

turn around and hire someone to lead their party pretty much for the sole reason that he was black. As is so often the case, the critics of racial progress, because they don't comprehend it, resort to a parody of it.

Steele was hired because he was black. And the other truth is that now he can't be fired, in significant measure, because he's black. Because canning Steele now would only drive home the reality that Republicans were trying to paper over, fairly clumsily, when they hired him in the first place.

Perhaps Marshall had read The New Republic's Jonathan Chait, who in mid-January explained (and now has been quoted twice on this site)

Republicans, though, have treated Obama’s race as a trump card. Thus the immediate Republican response to Obama has been to find their own black guy.

The perfect token antidote seemed to be Michael Steele, who

perfectly embodies modern Republican racialism. Democratic racialism represents a perversion of the civil rights ideal--an opposition to racism taken to excesses of hypersensitivity, occasionally devolving into a mere political tactic. Republican racialism is an attempt to mimic Democratic racialism without first having any grasp of the original sentiment underlying it--a parodic replica of the original thing, like a person who decides to convert to Judaism by studying Madonna.

Republican racialism is not an expression of racism but, rather, a failure to understand racism.

And the GOP, at least for now, is stuck with him. This won't be forever because at some point party leaders will make Mr. Steele an offer sufficiently attractive that he will make a graceful exit, a far superior outcome than having the chairman resign amid the charges of racial insensitivity he would trumpet.











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