Category Archives: culture

Sanctuary Cities and Federal Funding

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San Francisco asked a federal judge Wednesday to block President Trump’s order threatening to strip federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities that bar police from enforcing immigration laws.

This suit has a good chance of succeeding.  In 1987’s South Dakota v Dole, the Supreme Court ruled (in a dispute over the State’s minimum drinking age and Federal highway funds transfers to the State) that the Federal government cannot withhold already agreed Federal funds from a State in order to coerce State acquiescence with Federal wishes.  Funds can be withheld to “persuade,” but the withheld funds must be related to the question at hand rather than a blanket withholding, and the amount withheld cannot be coercive in its size, but only persuasive.  Without naming a threshold for the amount, the Court held that the 5% withholding imposed by the Federal government was not coercive.

Right or wrong, that’s the law of the land as things stand.  Congress and the President will have to statutorily overrule the Supreme Court to enable such a broad withholding of Federal funds from San Francisco.

On the other hand, stopping sending all Federal funds to all cities altogether would bypass the Court’s ruling (although legislation still would be necessary to stop completely the funds transfers).  In the end, we have to ask why the citizens of Illinois, for instance, should have to pay any part of, let’s say, San Francisco’s expenses at all.

It’s true enough that we’re all in this republican democracy nation of ours together, and so we support each other.  But that mutual support includes cities like San Francisco not creating themselves as burdens on the rest of our nation with its irresponsible, profligate spending while demanding OPM to pay for that spending.

Disingenuous Targeting

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Recall that President Donald Trump has signed a revised Executive Order that imposes a short moratorium on entry into the US from six (down from seven under his original EO) Middle Eastern countries.  Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin has filed suit in Hawaii’s Federal District Court to try to block this new EO.  The EO, Chin claims, will damage Hawaii’s

economy, educational institutions, and tourism industry; and it is subjecting a portion of the state’s citizens to second-class treatment and discrimination, while denying all Hawaii residents the benefits of an inclusive and pluralistic society.

This is disingenuous.  The folks whose entry is being temporarily blocked represent a vanishingly small per centage of Hawaii’s tourist population.  The foolishness of “damage” to educational institutions I’ve already addressed regarding a Washington Federal judge’s ruling on the earlier EO.  Chin’s beef about Hawaii citizens is nothing more than a cynically dragged red herring: the EO doesn’t even address American citizens, much less those who also are citizens of Hawaii.  This EO impacts only some refugees and potential immigrants.

About those refugees and potential immigrants: Chin made this charge in his filing, and he actually kept a straight face as he filed it:

This new executive order is nothing more than Muslim Ban 2.0.  Under the pretense of national security, it still targets immigrants and refugees.

Of course, the EO cannot be a ban; it’s a temporary moratorium with an expiration deadline.  More than that, it cannot be a ban of Muslims; it impacts only about 10% of the world’s Muslims.

Of course, it does target potential immigrants and refugees—those are folks outside our nation, and they are not citizens of our nation.  As such, these people have no right to enter our nation without our prior permission, nor do we have an obligation to let them in.  That’s what nation means, that’s what borders are for.

Nor do we know who these folks are, really—which is why the EO imposes the moratorium: to give State and DHS time to improve our vetting procedures, another requirement of the EO, and a requirement carefully ignored by Chin.

Of course Chin knows all of this.  The utter disingenuousness of this Democrat’s charge ought to get his filing dismissed on its face.

Europe Going Nuclear?

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That’s what The New York Times says the European Union is talking about.

…a European Union nuclear weapons program.

Under such a plan, France’s arsenal would be repurposed to protect the rest of Europe and would be put under a common European command, funding plan, defense doctrine, or some combination of the three. It would be enacted only if the Continent could no longer count on American protection.

Leaving aside the cynically manufactured hysteria underlying this idea, there are a couple of flaws in it.  One is that it assumes that France remains a part of the EU.  A Marine Le Pen victory in this spring’s French presidential election cycle would toss the whole idea into the circular file.  Another is that the French, extremely individualistic when it comes to military action and their military, would agree to such a thing.  Another is that bit about American protection.  The idea that we’d withdraw it is someone’s straw man; we’ve only argued that it’s time for our treaty partners to pay the shares they committed to paying when they signed up to NATO.

And: would Germany trust France—could Germany trust France—to risk French existence defending an attacked Germany, or would Germany begin to acquire its own nuclear arsenal?  After all, this scheme depends on German financing for the French—to show solidarity, of course—and the money might be thought better spent on acquiring a German nuclear arsenal they could more directly and completely control.  On the other hand, could the Germans, with their guilt complex, trust themselves with nuclear weapons?

Of course, there’s an upside, too.  The notoriously unreliable French military participation in NATO would be ameliorated by getting those nuclear weapons more reliably included in the NATO (not EU) arsenal, fulfilling some of the requirement that NATO signatories actually live up to the they obligations incurred with their signatures.

Misguided

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France’s soon-to-be-ex-President François Hollande is on the wrong track, and not just because of that soon-to-be part.  He’s now saying

My ultimate duty is to make sure that France is not won over by such a program [French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and her program], and that France does not bear such a heavy responsibility[.]

His ultimate duty, he says, is to prevent Le Pen’s election.

No.  Duty is to the safety and prosperity of the nation.  National level political goals should not be aimed at defeating a politician, a person.  Goals, to be durable after their achievement, need to be for something—policies good for the nation—not against something; that’s the fulfillment of duty.

The proper contests should concern ideas and policies, not personalities.  Winning the proper contest usually will carry along with it the defeat of a politician, but that must be a side effect of the larger struggle, not the purpose of it.

Contesting personalities leads, ultimately, to the defeat of those ideas remaining after the main body of them have been lost to the clashes of personality.  And that loss is far more long-lasting and far more dangerous to a nation than the momentary victory of an unsavory person.

Hollande’s mindset vis-à-vis Le Pen might be one factor in his failure as France’s President.

Chuck Schumer’s Coarse Misbehavior

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Does Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) condone the sexual abuse of children?

A snowshoe racer from India whose entry into the US to compete was made possible by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer was being held Friday in a New York jail on a sex charge.

It seems that after Indian snowshoe competitor, Tanveer Hussain, was denied a visa to come to the US to compete in the World Snowshoe Championship in upstate New York, Senators Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) intervened with the US embassy in India and got Hussain his entry visa.

Now Hussain is in jail, accused of molesting a 12-year-old girl, passionately kissing her and “touching her over her clothing in an ‘intimate area.'”

That’s pretty damning of Schumer’s morals and his fitness to continue as United States Senator.  Maybe he should resign.

Or not.  Does Schumer condone sexual abuse of children?  No, but by the logic he’s applying in his slander of Attorney General Jeff Sessions over a poorly phrased confirmation hearing question and a misunderstood (some might say cynically distorted) answer to that question, he does.