Tag Archives: responsibilities

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.

A Key Point

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…from George Friedman’s piece in RealClear World, Nationalism and Liberal Democracy.  Friedman was writing about a different, if related matter, the relationship between liberalism (in the classic sense) and nationalism.  The point I’m calling out bears on our own immigration debate.

A nation is a group of people who share history, culture, language, and other attributes. It is the existence of a common identity, a coherent sense of self and nationhood that make self-government possible, because it is that sense of self that permits self-government.

Notice that: shared history.  This is not the same thing as possessing the same history.  Assimilation is what bridges the gap; assimilation is what brings people with widely differing histories—as widely different as English from Germans from Russians from Chinese from Japanese from…—into the jurisdictional boundary of a polity to become part of the nation that exists there.  Assimilation is what lets those folks with and from those differing histories obtain a shared history, the common history of the nation to which they’ve come and of which so many of them wish to become a part.

Assimilation is critical to nationhood because

a random collection of people without a core set of shared values cannot form a coherent regime, because nothing would hold the regime together or prevent internal chaos.

Misguided

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In light of whose DoJ it’s been doing this most recently, it’s easy to say it was nefarious.  But the whole thing could be eliminated with either of a couple of steps and a change in underlying procedure.

What is “it?”  It’s a secret (or merely secretive) slush fund fed by settlement proceeds from DoJ civil suits against large banks.

When big banks are sued by the government for discrimination or mortgage abuse, they can settle the cases by donating to third-party non-victims. The settlements do not specify how these third-party groups could use the windfall.

So far, investigators have accounted for $3 billion paid to “non-victim entities.”

Those third-party non-victims, under the Obama administration, were grassroots activist organizations favored by the Obama crowd.  These organizations consisted of the National Council of La Raza, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the National Urban League, and the like.

That arouses suspicion.  As Ted Frank, Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Director of the Center for Class Action Fairness, put it,

The underlying problem with the slush funds is we don’t know exactly where the money is going. Using enforcement authority to go after corporate defendants, DoJ bureaucrats are taking billions away from taxpayers to fund their pet projects overriding congressional preferences.

It’s bad enough that the money is going to those favored groups—directly to them and not going through DoJ or Treasury enroute—but as Frank noted, it’s taxpayer monies once the banks have paid the settlements, whether these were legitimate settlements or coerced ones.

It also turns out that much of the funding of the slush funds are “voluntary” extra payments, “encouraged” by DoJ.  Except that when DoJ is holding a lawsuit over the banks’ heads, there’s very little voluntary about acceding to “encouragement.”

The better solution is one of two: pay the money exclusively to the Treasury Department for the use of the Federal government.  That, though, leaves in place incentives for DoJ to browbeat the banks rather than seek justice for those the banks have been alleged to be cheating.  The better alternative, then, is for the banks to pay the money directly to the alleged victims.

The change in underlying procedure—the best solution—is for DoJ to stop being spring-loaded to settling.  If they have a case, bring it to court, and push the pace on it (the banks should do this, too; neither side should be allowed to stall the other).  If DoJ isn’t ready to bring the case, it should drop it altogether.  The settlements, even well-intended ones, just look like lawfare extortion.

The Sons of the American Legion is a Gang?

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This happened in a Dave & Buster’s restaurant last Saturday in Kentwood, MI, but corporate headquarters in Dallas has confirmed the thing and said it’s corporate-wide policy.  Two members of the Sons of The American Legion, wearing their SAL vests, and their wives entered the restaurant hoping for a nice dinner.  Management stopped them and told the men to turn their vests inside out.  The men and their wives chose to leave, instead of suffering the insult.  Victor Murdock, Assistant Director of American Legion Post 179 in Grandville, MI, and one of the men, told 24 Hour News 8,

It’s just a good group of guys that want to raise awareness for PTSD, fallen veterans, for the ones that didn’t come back, even for those who did come back and are dealing with situations they never got over.

And

The vest is one way Murdock and other members convey their message. After all, they say, there are few things that define American pride more than the flag and the eagle featured on the vest.

“It says we believe in America. We believe in our troops. We support our veterans,” Murdock said.

The full statement, from April Spearman, Dave & Buster’s Vice corporate President for Marketing:

We are extremely grateful to all of our active military members and veterans and are honored to have them as valued guests in any of our locations.

Our dress code, which prohibits evidence of gang affiliation, is in place to ensure that everyone is able to enjoy themselves in a fun and safe environment. Though we understand that the American Legion promotes a positive mission, for consistency reasons we cannot allow motorcycle jackets displaying patches or rockers. Our policies are in no way meant to be disrespectful and we apologize for any frustration this may have caused.

In addition, please know that this group was not asked to leave, but to simply turn their jackets inside out. Again, we apologize for any misunderstanding.

Because this affiliate of the American Legion is equivalent to a gang.  Notice, too, that last bit of disingenuousity.  No, the four were not asked to leave.  They were just told to disrespect everything they stood for.

Absent a turnover in management, Dave & Buster’s has lost my business.

The Left Gives the Game Away

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Again.  Buried at the bottom of a Wall Street Journal piece on the auto industry’s effort to get the Obama administration’s last-minute (almost literally) attempt to make permanent fuel standards (also last minute because the underlying research wasn’t even going to be complete until 2018) is this rationale from Roland Hwang, at the National Resources Defense Council’s Director, Energy & Transportation Program, as paraphrased by the WSJ.

relaxing standards could hurt Americans depending on clean-car technology jobs.

Because EPA regulations are all about creating jobs and not about mitigating pollution.