Tag Archives: political parties

A Party’s Failure on Immigration

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The Party in question isn’t the Republican Party.  Those folks always have had a very stringent position on immigration, and they’ve not hidden their view from the public’s eye.  No, the failing party is the Progressive-Democratic Party.  Those folks have long claimed—a claim we now know to be a cynical pretense, a pretense consistent with the underlying philosophy of the party of Jim Crow and of racist and sexist affirmative action—to be champions of immigrants and of DACA children.  But last week, they voted against every bill, Republican-offered and “bipartisan,” that was brought up.  The Progressive-Democrats wouldn’t even vote for cloture so the bills could be openly debated on the Senate floor.

Many Republicans voted against the bills, too, it’s true enough.  But as I said, they’ve had a sterner view of immigration all along.  It’s the Progressive-Democrats who voted against their avowals, who welched on their public commitments to DACA children and to immigrants and immigrant wannabes.

The Progressive-Democratic Party has shown with last week’s display that they don’t give a damn about DACA children or about immigration reform generally.  They only want the issue for campaigning for their political gain.

DACA children aren’t human children.  Prospective immigrants—including the illegal aliens already present—aren’t adult humans.  They’re just shovels for digging up votes.

This is how the Progressive-Democratic Party so shamefully has said they view these people.  This is what all of us need to remember in the fall.

A Sandbag Attempt

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House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D, CA), in response to the Committee’s Republican members’ four-page memo—the Nunes Memo—regarding the FBI’s abuse of FISA court-approved surveillance of Americans, produced a ten-page Progressive-Democrat member response, which the committee voted unanimously to release to the House with an eye to getting the memo released to the public via the White House’s security vetting.  The House approved the release and sent it to President Donald Trump, who had five days to disapprove the document, or it would be released.

Concerns that the Progressive-Democrat members had larded their memo with information that, if released, would jeopardize intelligence and FBI methods and sources in order to make political hay over their redactions have been justified.

The White House on Friday told Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee to redraft their rebuttal to a controversial GOP memo alleging government surveillance abuse during the 2016 campaign, saying sensitive details need to be stripped out before the document can be made public.

It isn’t simply a refusal to release the memo with its cynically included classified information, though, nor is the White House playing guessing games with the Progressive-Democrats about what would be releasable.  In a letter advising the committee that the Progressive-Democrat memo could not be released in its current form, White House Counsel Don McGahn wrote,

However, given the public interest in transparency in these unprecedented circumstances, the President has directed that Justice Department personnel be available to give technical assistance to the Committee, should the Committee wish to revise the February 5th Memorandum [the Schiff Memo] to mitigate the risks identified by the Department.  The President encourages the Committee to undertake these efforts.

Notice that.  It’s not a refusal to release at all, as the committee’s Progressive-Democrat members had voted to do with the Nunes memo.  It’s a refusal to release with the deliberately included classified material and a willingness to release with those data removed by the Progressive-Democrats in coordination with DoJ.

And the Progressive-Democrats are busy growing their political hay.

The Budget Deal

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…was just passed in the small hours of Friday morning.  The high points of what it does is provide funding for the Federal government into late March, provide a budget good for two years, raise the debt ceiling a smidge, and increase spending authorization for defense by $165 billion over the next two years and for domestic items by $131 billion over those two years.  It does not include anything regarding immigration, particularly DACA, despite House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) 8-hour speech Thursday, nor does it include anything regarding welfare reform.

The lack of immigration matters in the budget deal is appropriate; Pelosi’s long harangue notwithstanding.  Immigration has nothing to do with the budget, and it will be handled separately, as both House Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) have said repeatedly.  The lack of welfare reform does matter, but it needn’t have been a deal breaker in the present instant.  There needs to be a stronger consensus both in Congress and in the nation before that can be done properly—recall the fiasco that is Obamacare.

A number of Republicans in both houses objected to the deal, though, and voted against it and held it up in the Senate.  Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) wanted a vote on his amendment to restore the prior spending caps, which would have eliminated those $196 billion in spending increases.  The Conservative Caucus of House Republicans also objected to the vasty spending increases.  In all cases, those increases will add to the Federal budget deficit and through that to the national debt by up to $1 trillion, depending on how much our growing economy adds to Federal revenues.

Except.

One thing the budget deal does not do, and this is a Critical Item, is require all that money to be spent.  The bill is an authorization bill; it sets an outer bound on how much can be spent.  That’s all it does.  Actual spending will come from the several appropriation bills that must now be passed.  This is where those Republicans’ concerns can be addressed, and they should be; the concerns are entirely valid.

In the coming appropriations bills, Republicans must hold the line on the defense spending increases—there’s nothing domestic of any import if we can’t support our friends and allies or even defend ourselves—and reduce spending in other, domestic, areas (including welfare reform, even if only a series of tweaks this year) to pay for the defense increases.  And that includes on holding the line on those domestic appropriations bills already passed by the House, which were passed under the lower caps.

The Progressive-Democrats in Congress will howl over this; they view authorization to spend as an absolute requirement to spend.  Let them howl.  Let the Progressive-Democrats continue to be the heavy spending, deficits and debt be damned, party.  Let the Progressive-Democrats run on a platform of profligate spending.  They’ll drag out every tear-jerking trope they can dream up—it’s for the children, our grandmas are getting pushed off the cliff, think of the poor people in Illinois and Connecticut, and on and on.

Americans aren’t as stupid as the Progressive-Democrats make us out to be.  Our kids, our parents, our poor regardless of where they live will be better off for that spending discipline.  Let the Progressive-Democrats try to sell their snake oil budgeting that Government spending and Government income have nothing to do with each other.

One more thing.  The budget deal, good for two years like it is, means Republicans won’t be able to pass anything, including those appropriations bills, without nine Senate Progressive-Democrats on board.  Appropriations bills aren’t subject to reconciliation votes.  Without actual spending authorization, the Federal government will shut down in late March.  Without nine Democrats to support ending a Senate filibuster, spending won’t be authorized.  Let Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) shut down the government again because he can’t get wastrel spending done.  Let the Progressive-Democrats throw another temper tantrum.  That won’t play any better than the just ended Schumer Shutdown did.

A Hong Kong Trial

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Some of you may recall the umbrella protests in Hong Kong a few short years ago concerning the rapid erosion of freedoms there as the People’s Republic of China accelerated its walk away from its promise to Great Britain to respect Hong Kong liberties after the island city was surrendered to the PRC.

Joshua Wong, one of those protesters, sentenced to jail for participating and speaking his mind, is out of jail pending his appeal.  Hong Kong Commissioner Clement Leung had a Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal earlier this week objecting to a WSJ piece decrying the whole sorry charade that is the current Hong Kong judiciary.

Surprise: I have my own response to Leung.

Joshua Wong was convicted because he was resisting the enforcement of a court injunction to reopen the roads in a blocked protest site.

No, Wong was convicted for continuing to exercise his free speech rights in the face of a court ruling that erroneously subverted those rights.

Mr Wong and others were also convicted and sentenced in another case, not for exercising their freedom of expression, but for their disorderly and intimidating behavior….

The use of the “disorderly and intimidating behavior” charge was simply a Communist Party of China-directed cynical euphemism for “speaking too freely.” The only ones who saw disorder or who were “intimidated” were those unused to being disobeyed in their diktats and others unused to the rollicking noise of democracy.

As an experienced Commissioner, Mr Leung should know better.

Immigration, Progressive-Democrats, and Votes

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President Donald Trump has an immigration bill on offer before the Congress, the Republicans have one, and a bipartisan group of two Senators have one.  Trump’s bill includes legalization and an eventual possibility of citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers (1.2 million, or so, beyond ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) illegal DACA program Dreamers), funding for a border wall, and changes to our visa programs.  The Republicans’ offer centers on DACA protections and a border wall.  The “bipartisan” bill has only DACA protections, not even border security.

The Progressive-Democrats in Congress oppose both of the first two, and all three bills don’t look promising for passage, with that third a non-starter for its lack of protections for our nation.

This is what we see from the Progressive-Democrats.  They’ll vote against a bill that provides protections for the Dreamers protected under DACA.  They’ll vote against a bill that provides protections and legal status for three times the number of Dreamers than were protected under Obama’s DACA.

This is the conclusion that follows.  The Progressive-Democratic Party and its Congressional members don’t see DACA Dreamers—and especially the added Dreamers under Trump’s offer—as human beings.  Not at all.  These people are just a mechanical commodity, a tool to be used politically as a campaign issue on which to raise money and get votes.

The Progressive-Democrats claim that Trump’s offer would reduce overall immigration through the visa changes, and it likely would.  That, though, is just a broader, immigrants-as-commodity for Party political gain, argument.  Immigrants generally aren’t human beings in the eyes of Progressive-Democrats; the mass of immigrants is just a tool.

Of course, the Progressive-Democrats could prove me wrong.  They could stop playing politics with human lives and support Trump’s bill.  Or they could stop playing politics with human lives and support the Republicans’ DACA plus border security bill.

If they don’t, remember their attitude toward men and women and children this fall.