Legacy Admissions, And More

On Wednesday's The View. Joy Behar stated 

Legacy admissions, which means if your parents went to Brown, or to Howard, or UP (sic), you can go. But it's interesting because the idea of legacy admissions is racist in nature and I'll tell you why. It started in the 20's to keep out upwardly mobile immigrants who had started pushing for admission to elite schools. And I think that is a very, very bad system, legacy. Why should your kid get in because you got in?

Meghan McCain, the daughter of Captain John McCain and granddaughter of Admiral John McCain, both of the United States Naval Academy, struck back, confusedly. In response, Cenk Uygur, the top Turk of The Young Turks, remarked

But back to the legacy admissions. It does go to the point that we're all making here, which is legacy admissions don't make sense. I want my kids to go to all the same schools but that's unfair, an unfair advantage for them to have when if you're poor in West Virginia or Kentucky or the Bronx or wherever you are and you worked up and you didn't have the advantages my kids had, well, then, you earned it even more, not less.

Starting out strongly, Brooke Thomas added "we don't talk about  it enough, legacy admissions are the original affirmative action, which should make liberals/progressives question the concept of affirmative action itself." However, it was not to be, because fully recognizing the role of class is unacceptable when we can lay the entire blame upon race. So Thomas, unfortunately, continued

when you think about the college application process, you gotta get those letters of recommendation, you got to do, you know, your extracurriculars, you gotta list all this stuff, the personal essay, your score, all of that. Legacy admissions- they skip all of that and still account for almost 30% at some of these Ivy League programs and only the original people who could to go the universities were like wealthy white men and so these are their descendants.

As a form of affirmative action, granting preference where it is not earned, legacy admissions discriminate against blacks (and Latinos and Asian-Americans). But it is discriminating also against whites from backgrounds which aren't privileged, especially whites who attended high schools in lower-ranked high schools, generally in economically distressed (majority-white or majority-minority) communities.  And white- and especially Asian- applicants are additionally handicapped by more conventional affirmative action programs. The sins of the fathers, failure to attend the most elite schools, should not be visited upon their sons or daughters.

As Uygur emphasized, legacy admissions are unfair. They disadvantage students based on a factor- where their descendants attended college, if at all- which they cannot possibly control. The criterion of race does the same, rendering advantages and disadvantages based upon one's descendants, the color of their skin and/or the continent inhabited by their descendants.

The current scandal alleging massive bribery schemes to secure admission of individuals to several elite colleges may strike a blow against the practice of favoring applicants based upon the academic history of their descendants.  But we shouldn't stop there. Applicants should be accepted at colleges based on who they are and what they've done rather than who their parents are

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Another Gun Fiction

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

That might be what Meghan McCain was thinking about when on Friday's "The View" she stated (in remarks beginning at 11:02 of the video below)

I agree that bigotry has to be called out wherever you see it, however you see it, agreed. New Zealand in particular- um, you know, guns are banned in New Zealand. So this obviously. There's obviously conversations regarding that to be had and it was obviously smuggled in or bought on the black market.

She might have gotten this from the NRA, or from a GOP politician, or from her husband, conservative Republican speechwriter/blogger/columnist Ben Domenech.

It's not surprising, then, that the allegation is fallacious.(She corrected herself after a couple of commercial breaks, but still....) As The New York Times reports, in New Zealand

an extraordinary number of people own weapons, with few restrictions. The authorities say the suspect in the assault used five guns he had acquired legally, including two semiautomatic assault weapons....

There is no dispute that acquiring a military-style semiautomatic weapon is relatively easy in New Zealand, where guns are plentiful. According to a 2017 small arms survey, there are more than 1.2 million firearms among the population of 4.6 million, or more than one gun for every three people.

Under New Zealand law, anyone 16 or older may seek a firearms license, and anyone 18 or older who has applied for a firearms license can seek a permit to possess a military-style semiautomatic weapon.

Perhaps McCain confused New Zealand with Australia, in which gun laws

were tightened following a 1996 mass shooting in which 35 people were killed by a lone gunman in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Within two weeks, Australian lawmakers banned rapid-fire rifles and shotguns and introduced tighter laws governing ownership of other weapons. New applicants must undergo thorough background checks and present a "justifiable reason" for ownership -- with self defense not applicable.

The laws have had a dramatic effect on the frequency of mass shootings, as well as homicides. In the years after the Port Arthur massacre, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50% -- and stayed there.

This is the core of the mythmaking conservatives practice. Something inaccurate gets passed off as fact to an unwitting audience and then is repeated a hundred times over.  It's what they do.  Meghan McCain should stick to her habit of honoring her father.

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A Peculiar Advantage

In "Beto 2020 Has No Reason To Exist," Slate's Josh Voorhees outlines the case against nominating Beto O'Rourke for President and even for his candidacy.   He does so, oddly, without referring to Barack Obama" as a tall, slender charismatic politician who carried his impressive charisma and limited experience and ideological grounding to the White House.

The comparison is hardly diminished when Voorhees knocks "O'Rourke's allergy to specifics (which) is worsened by his refusal to give voters any real clue of his guiding ideology." Nor is it when he explains

This is not some new verbal tic O’Rourke developed while thinking about the White House. It was on display before he was elected to the U.S. House, as Politico Magazine illustrated recently with the story of how he came to run a 2012 campaign commercial floating the possibility of raising the Social Security retirement age to 69—emphasis on possibility. During his Senate campaign, O’Rourke was similarly open to ideas without advocating for specific ones. He specifically avoided policy-specific language like “Medicare for all,” instead saying he was open to a variety of paths to universal health care coverage, “whether it be through a single payer system, a dual system, or otherwise.” (“Beto 2020: Or Otherwise!”)

Given Obama's continuing, impressive support among Democratic party voters, perhaps O'Rourke should be a little more specific and suggest that he merely wants to fulfill the 44th President's vision, such as in the matter of earned benefits. 

In June 2016, three Huffington Post writers reviewed Social Security politics in the Obama Administration. The Simpson-Bowles Commission was created by the President forge an agreement "to reduce the long-term debt, through a combination of Social Security and Medicare cuts" (video below, from 3/12). After its proposals stalled and the GOP took over the House of Representatives in 2011

Obama decided to put one of the commission’s proposals — the chained Consumer Price Index — on the table.

The chained CPI would change the formula used to adjust Social Security and other benefits for inflation. Although scholars debate whether it represents a more accurate price index than the one currently used, one way or another, it lowers the value of benefits over time relative to what they would be otherwise.

Obama appears to have come closest to striking a deal with the benefit cut during last-minute budget negotiations with Republicans at the end of 2012, in the lame-duck session of Congress after he won re-election. The country faced what was dubbed a “fiscal cliff” at the start of the new year as a slew of Bush-era income tax cuts were due to expire and automatic spending cuts were set to take effect.

Obama offered Republicans chained CPI in exchange for providing more tax increases. But under pressure from hardline anti-tax legislators, Republican leaders in Congress refused to compromise more.

At one point, the White House reportedly suggested putting chained CPI back on the table after Republicans had not presented a counteroffer on taxes with the budget deadline less than 36 hours away.

President Obama's effort to cut Social Security benefits initially was stalled when

Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was apparently so peeved at the idea that he threw a note with the proposal into a blazing fire in his office fireplace.

Reid ruled out reconsidering chained CPI because it seemed to him that Republicans weren’t serious about giving ground on the Bush tax cuts, according to Jim Manley, a longtime spokesman for Reid who by then had stopped working for the senator. And that was the last time Reid ever entertained the idea of messing with Social Security.

“Since then it’s been, ‘Hell no,’” Manley said.

Damaging an essential leg of the social safety net was further stymied by the right in that

“One of the ironies is that the tea party was more useful than Democratic leadership when it came to killing a grand bargain that would have cut Social Security benefits,” said Adam Green, co-chair of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an online activism group at the forefront of the fight against cuts. “They were so crazy and unwilling to take ‘yes’ for an answer. That allowed us to live to fight another day.”

“Thank you, tea party!” Green added.

But the President wasn't done with trying to undermine the retirement benefits of current and future retirees (their health benefits through Medicare, also) and

In his second term, Obama even appeared to embrace chained CPI as his own, including it in his annual budget proposal in April 2013, which came after a fierce internal debate, according to one participant.

The budget encountered stiff resistance from congressional Democrats and progressive activists, spurring a petition delivery and protest outside the White House where Bernie Sanders spoke.

The following year, the provision disappeared from the president’s budget.

So perhaps unfortunately and for all the wrong reasons, Beto O'Rourke's effort to win the Democratic nod for President is not a lost cause. All he has to do is to convince a major block of primary voters and caucus attendees that he is not only the inspirational leader that Obama the Great was, but also the ideological heir. It wouldn't be good for either theParty or the nation but as Voorhees understands, that really isn't the objective, anyway.

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One Small Step, Opposed By Republicans

If blood is thicker than water, as the old saying goes, guns are thicker than immigration. This was demonstrated with the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, which would extend both the background checks to private dealers, such as purchases made at gun shows and on the Internet, and the time limit for the checks.  On March 2 the New York Daily News reported

An unapologetic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unloaded Saturday on the “splinter group” of fellow Democrats who backed Republicans on a controversial gun control bill amendment involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“If you’re mad that I think people SHOULD KNOW when Dems vote to expand ICE powers, then be mad,” the freshman Democratic congresswoman wrote in a series of sharp-edged tweets.

“ICE is a dangerous agency with (zero) accountability, widespread reporting of rape, abuse of power, + children dying in DHS custody. Having a D next to your name doesn’t make that right.”

The party infighting followed a bipartisan vote where the minority Republicans, aided by middle-of-the-road Democrats, added a provision to a gun control bill that requires notification of immigration authorities if an undocumented immigrant attempts to purchase a weapon....

“Mind you, the same small splinter group of Dems that tried to deny (Nancy) Pelosi the speakership, fund the wall during the shutdown when the public didn’t want it, & are now voting in surprise ICE amendments to gun safety legislation are being called the “moderate wing” of the party,” she wrote.

Ocasio-Cortez is flat-out wrong on this, as was Speaker Pelosi, who urged Democrats (largely successfully) to vote against the motion to recommit. The vast majority of illegal immigrants work, obey the law, and keep a low profile while trying to remain in the country. Those brazen enough to try to purchase a weapon not only should be reported to ICE but are precisely those immigrants (along with those who commit a felony) who most need to be detained and deported.

All but 26 Democratic House members voted against this GOP proposal, On final passage, Ocasio-Cortez was one of 232 (one not voting) of 235 Democrats voting in favor of the bill while 188 of 197 Republicans (one not voting) voted against the proposal.

So Republicans- and a few wise and courageous Democrats- got what they wanted with agreement to have immigration enforcement notified when a person in the country illegally attempts to purchase a firearm, the most lethal weapon an individual might commonly possess. (Note to most Republicans and a few Democrats: not all persons are entitled to a firearm for any purpose at any time.) 

With opposition from the National Rifle Association, a Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell's GOP, and a President who won't cross the gun lobby, passage is unlikely.  However, this is a reminder (including to those liberals and progressives who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton in November 2016) that there are a lot of differences between Democrats and Republicans, some of them deadly.

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A Policy Argument Can Be Made. Omar Declined.

With passage in the House of Representatives of a resolution denouncing hate, meat loaf, and neighbors with loud lawn mowers- and GOP surrender on the issue- the Ilhan Omar saga itself appears over.

For now, anyway. Yet the disagreement over the path of Mideast peace and justice continues, and will continue.

One week ago the New Republic's Ben Ehrenreich argued that following Omar's remarks at the event at Busboys and Poets bookstore in Washington, D.C. "All attention went to just five words: “allegiance to a foreign country.” Never mind that Omar was talking about politicians, and not about Jews at all..."

Alas, a transcript has been provided by a defender of Omar's remarks. Two paragraphs prior to the Minnesotan stating "so for me, I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is ok for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country," Omar had maintained

And so for me I know that when I hear my Jewish constituents or friends or colleagues speak about Palestinians who don’t want safety, or Palestinians who aren’t deserving I stay focused on the actual debate about what that process should look like. I never go to the dark place of saying “here’s a Jewish person, they’re talking about Palestinians, Palestinians are Muslim, maybe they’re Islamophobic.” I never allow myself to go there because I don’t have to.

She refers here to "my Jewish constituents or friends or colleagues speak about Palestinians who don't wan't safety or Palestinians who aren't deserving." That's Jewish constituents or friends or colleagues who in her view are narrow-minded. 

Ehrenreich wants us to understand that "criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitism."  Of course, it only seems to be anti-Semitic when the words come from an individual who had the previous month tweeted "it's all about the Benjamins, baby" in favorable response to a tweet by Glenn Greenwald criticizing the allegedly reflexive support of politicians for Israel. And suspicion of anti-Semitism was inevitable when the subject had several years earlier referred (in a tweet , like the other, now deleted) to Israel's "evil doings," to which she hoped Allah would "awaken" people. 

To be sure, Ehrenreich is not alone in failing to recognize Omar's motivation.  Less critical of the congresswoman than I, Michelle Goldberg (though below, overly generous of Omar's motives) noted

As that resolution was being hashed out, The Hill published an interview with House Majority Whip James Clyburn that poured gasoline on a trash fire. Defending Omar, who spent four years of her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp, he seemed to describe her suffering as more visceral than that of Jews. "There are people who tell me, 'Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.' "My parents did this.'" Clyburn said. "It's more personal with her: I've talked to her, and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain."

Truly, when you see that your god has not extinguished a nation which you consider "evil," it would mean a lot of pain. The likes of Clyburn and Ehrenreich may not understand that criticism of the Israeli government would be more credible coming from someone more credible.  Allow New York Times columnist and Jew Thomas Friedman to explain that, like Omar, he doesn't like the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, in his case

because I strongly believe in the right of the Jewish people to build a nation-state in their ancient homeland — a nation-state envisaged by its founders to reflect the best of Jewish and democratic values. And I believe Aipac for many years has not only become a rubber stamp on the right-wing policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has resulted in tens of thousands of Israeli settlers now ensconced in the heart of the West Bank, imperiling Israel as a democracy. Aipac has also been responsible for making support for Israel a Republican cause, not a bipartisan issue, which poses a real danger to Israel’s support in America in the long run, and particularly on college campuses.

I dislike Aipac because I am devoted to Israel as a Jewish democracy and because I believe that only a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians can ensure that. Given how Aipac has let itself become the slavish, unthinking tool of Netanyahu, who opposes a two-state solution, I believe Aipac works against Israel’s long-term interests.

Aipac is a self-appointed lobby that does not represent my feelings as an American Jew. But neither does Representative Omar.

Everything I have heard from her leads me to conclude that she dislikes Aipac because she dislikes Israel, because she does not really believe the Jewish people have a right to an independent state in their ancestral homeland. She seems to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, known as B.D.S.

Representative Omar has not made a similarly, or even differentiated, reasoned argument against the policies of the Netanhayu government. She has not even had the awareness, courage, or whatever it would take to call out AIPAC itself. Rather, it has been about the Benjamins, the Almighty, and dual allegiance, twin brother to treason. Nor has the vast majority of Representative Omar's defenders, unlike Friedman, explained why they believe that the current Israeli government is simultaneously injurious to Palestinians and Israelis. 

This certainly does not mean that most of them are anti-Semitic. But for many of them, it does mean that they condone that sentiment at this moment in history from this individual, and that does not bode well for either American support of Israel or justice in the Middle East.

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Rooseveltian Wisdom

Understandably, it's doubtful that Elizabeth Warren would endorse the recommendation of author David Frum in his article in The Atlantic that the USA begin "reducing immigration, and selecting immigrants more carefully." It's also unlikely that Senator Warren or any other candidate seeking the Democratic presidential nomination would suggest an immigration policy which would

enable the country to more quickly and successfully absorb the people who come here, and to ensure equality of opportunity to both the newly arrived and the long-settled—to restore to Americans the feeling of belonging to one united nation, responsible for the care and flourishing of all its people.

Nonetheless, when MSNBC's Ari Melber on Friday asked the Massachusetts senator whom her "dream running mate" whether "living or dead" would be, she picked Theodore Roosevelt

Because he was brave, and he took on the trust and he didn`t care how many people were going to be mad about it, and he did it.  This is what`s amazing for the right reasons.  It wasn`t just that they were big. It wasn`t just that they were dominating an economy.  It wasn`t just that they were putting farmers out of business and competitors out of business and small companies out of business,  it was that they had too much political power.

 Not only was it a good choice and for very good reason, but another reason to celebrate Theodore Roosevelt is embodied in this passage from Frum's ("from Frum?") piece:

Where once the nation’s cultural leaders condemned “hyphenated Americanism,” today the hyphen has become a tool of cultural power. Those white Americans who might not have a hyphen obviously at hand now scramble to invent one. They have become “hardworking Americans” or “everyday Americans” or “real Americans”—separating themselves from a shared destiny with other Americans.

No American more eloquently deplored hyphenation than Theodore Roosevelt. Read his words in full, and you see that Roosevelt’s insistence on a singular national identity was founded not on any sense of hereditary supremacy, but on his passionately patriotic egalitarianism.

The children and children’s children of all of us have to live here in this land together. Our children’s children will intermarry, one with another, your children’s children, friends, and mine. They will be the citizens of one country.

That does not dictate a specific formula for determining the number and nature of individuals who should be admitted to the country. However, as Frum notes, "the challenge for today’s Americans is to allow that new demography" of ever-greater ethnic diversity "to develop in an environment of social equality and cultural cohesion." It is a concept T. Roosevelt would have understood, Democrats should embrace, and by which President Trump is appalled.

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Baseless Charge

You will read many stupid and/or dishonest things today but none more so than this:

We learned today what we knew for a long time. Never Trumpers like @davidfrum believe many of the same things about immigration and race as Donald Trump they just say it more politely and with the imprimatur of liberal media outlets.

— David Slavick (@davidslavick) March 11, 2019

Frum is being condemned across Twitter for taking on a topic few people will, in an article entitled "How Much Immigration is Too Much?" in the print edition and "If Liberals Won't Enforce Borders, Fascists Will" online.

Imagine whether Donald Trump would ever say

across the developed world, very high levels of immigration have coincided with widening class divisions, the discrediting of political and economic elites, and the rise of extremist politics.

Discrediting of political and economic elites and the rise of extremist politics, exemplified by the rise of Turkey's Erdogan, Egypt'sel-Sisi, Hungary's Orban, and the USA's Trump, has coincided with a high level of immigration, or what Americans believe is a very high level of immigration.  Class divisions, not unlike what the the American left refers to as "income disparities," also have increased. That is not a good thing.

Frum explains

Neither the fiscal costs nor the economic benefits of immigration are large enough to force a decision one way or the other. Accept the most negative estimate of immigration’s dollar costs, and the United States could still afford a lot of immigration. Believe the most positive reckoning of the dollar benefits that mass immigration provides, and they are not so large that the United States would be crazy to refuse them.

For good or ill, immigration’s most important effects are social and cultural, not economic. What are these effects, then? Some are good, some are bad, and some depend on the eye of the beholder.

Since Donald Trump became a candidate, the number of times he has said- in whatever words- "for good or ill" or that some effects "are good, some are bad, and some depend on the eye of the beholder" ranges from zero to, well, zero.

It is not surprising, then, that Frum is right about the impact of immigration.  So, too, is he when noting immigrants "are lowering America's average skill level." He notes also that they "are making America safer" and "are making America less self-destructive."  These are things Donald Trump has said, and will say, approximately never.

If you're wise enough to read this blog, unlike President Trump and the Twitterer quoted above, you might have noticed that visa overstays are a critical problem. Frum boldly takes aim at the GOP's rallying cry of "secure the border," arguing

The phrase border security seriously distorts our understanding of illegal immigration. By some tallies, more than half of the most recent immigrants in the country illegally arrived legally—typically as a student or tourist—then overstayed their visa. They obeyed the law when they entered. They broke it by failing to leave. They get away with this because the U.S. concentrates its immigration enforcement on the frontier—while slighting the workplace. President Trump seethes against illegal border crossings. Yet at least five of his golf resorts employed undocumented laborers for the first two years of his presidency. At one of his resorts, fully half the winter-season employees worked illegally.

We never have heard candidate or President Trump argue

Even more urgently, employers who take advantage of immigration status—to cheat workers of their pay, or harass or abuse them sexually, or force them to work in unsafe conditions—should be prime targets for criminal prosecution. As states raise their minimum wages, the temptation to hire people of precarious immigration status will intensify. It is the workplace that most needs additional enforcement resources.

As one of those employers himself, Donald Trump is not anxious to target such unscrupulous employers for criminal prosecution, and is at best barely interested in additional resources for workplace enforcement. Accused of saying the same things as the President about race, Frum mentions Mexicans only once, in which "illegal immigration to the United States by Mexicans is now declining."

Without details- because "Americans are entitled to consider carefully whom they will number among themselves"- Frump believes the USA would benefit by "reducing immigration" and "selecting immigrants more carefully."  Nonetheless- or perhaps therefore- he recognizes "the Trump-era debate about a wall misses the point."  Trump "thinks about immigration in terms of symbols, " especially the "slabs of concrete arrayed like incisors in a line running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean."

Trump was elected President most of all because of his promise to build a wall financed by Mexico. If Frum believes the same things about immigration and race as that guy, there must be a second "Donald Trump" running around somewhere.


Next up: Frum/E.Warren/T. Roosevelt 

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