George Will misread's the source of Republican's Immigration Quagmire

Two quotes from Yogi Berra seem appropriate looking over the field of Republican Presidential candidates – and particularly their tortured responses to America’s desire for leadership on immigration. 

“You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there.”

Today’s column on immigration (and particularly the xenophobic approach of Donald Trump to the issue) by George Will hints at the disconnect between the Tea Party “base” that allegedly captures the Republican Primary vote, and the reality of America’s history and modern economy.  In a nut shell, Mr. Will reports on, but doesn’t really analyze, the disconnect between the vast majority of Americans who favor a path to legal status for America’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, and Mr. Trump’s call for mass deportations and a border wall that keep the “bad” immigrants out while allowing the future return of the “good” immigrants – a deportation and return that will require (in Mr. Will’s estimation) a significant growth in the size of government, since immigration and border control are a governmental function that cannot (yet anyway) be outsourced to a private entity.  Mr. Will casts Mr. Trump’s immigration plan as a mysterious assault on the Small Government Principles the Republican Party allegedly stands for, and manages to include the supposed failures of the “government” to “run” Amtrak as but one example of why bureaucracy will fail to do what Trump suggests.

For starters, Mr. Will grossly misleads readers on why Amtrak has problems.  Created in 1970 to answer the abandonment of passenger service by private railroads, AMTRAK is not a government agency like the FBI or USDA – rather is a Congressional Chartered semi-private corporation providing a public service to Americans.  Further,  Amtrak’s budget is approved every year by a Congress that insists it make a profit (competing against airlines and personal automobiles), while starving it of operating capitol, failing to invest in highspeed rail, and (until the late 1990’s) preventing Amtrak from advertising in the same way as airlines or even Greyhound.  So Mr. Will’s operational analogy is failed on its face, a fact the WaPo would do well to correct publicly.

All that, however, pales in comparison to Mr. Will’s most notable and most enduring failure as a pundit – his unwillingness to call out Republican’s for the bed which they have created for themselves.  After decades of demonizing minorities to gain electoral advantages (including Blacks, Asians, Muslim Arabs, and now Latinos); after claiming to want to reduce the reach of government while bailing out Too Big TO Fail banks for their misdeeds in the Great Recession, and after taking America into a decade long war based on purposely falsified intelligence (a war used to create and enhance fear and mistrust of “the other”) – What exactly does Mr. Will think the Republican base would accept as immigration policy?  Republicans have fought tooth and nail (added and abetted by a spineless Democratic Party since late 2001) to create a xenophobic surveillance state where needs of corporations outweigh the needs and freedoms of average citizens.  Those illegal immigrant – who FWIW pick our fruits and vegetables, clean our offices, build our homes, and care for many of our children – can no more be successfully turned away from our borders then can the lily white poor who became Tea Party supporters because they wanted the same bailout the banks and stock brokers and hedge fund managers got.

In his closing, Mr. Will notes that mis-handled immigration policy –in a nation built on and proud of its immigrant heritage – has cost the republican Party national elections before.  As Yogi also says:

It's like deja-vu, all over again.

A well regulated militia . . . Didn't do this. A violent society did.

This is a memorial to victims of gun violence in Washington DC since the start of 2014. I photographed it today on the lawn of the Northminster Presbyterian Church, which sits just into DC from Silver Spring, MD. No matter your views on the Second Amendment to the Constitution, we all need to remember that guns are used regularly in our violent society to kill innocent people. That's a social justice/ public health issue we all need to focus on.

The Economics of the Black Live Matter protests why Republicans need to get the log out of their own eye

Much as it pains me to write it, I agree with Mark Thiessen on two points:

• First, I do think Republicans should follow the lead of their only declared African American candidate and engage the #Blacklivesmatter movement before protesters disrupt more rallies. 
• And Second, I also think it would be good if those same protestors show up at more Republican rallies.

But that’s where our agreement ends.  I don’t think the “over the top” tactics of the movement will backfire – in its day privileged, powerful whites called the Montgomery Bus Boycott an over the top uncivil approach to civil rights – and yet it crippled a major American city and led to the Civil Rights Act  whose impact is still being felt today.  Those who are threatened by protest movements, whether Black Lives Matter or Occupy – always say the tactics are uncivilized and will backfire – even though those same tactics are the least radical response a marginalized, oppressed community can deploy (see Riots – Watts for the more violent approach to the same problem).

I also disagree that President Obama’s policies are the reason African Americans (and poor whites, and Latinos and Asians) are in the straights they are.  Minority and impoverished communities are reaping 30 years of Trickle Down Economics write both large and small, and it hasn’t worked.  The 300 to 1 ratio often quoted in the news media as the return to COE’s vs. return to employees in our “recovery” is NOT related to anything the President has done – rather it reflects both corporate boardroom choices, and the Republican insistence on deficit funding wars (while reducing domestic spending to allegedly pay for them) along with the idea that tax cuts for the rich and corporations will spur growth (which they haven’t) – with a healthy side order of “free trade agreements” supported by BOTH parties that have been nothing more the shell games to move American manufacturing to cheaper countries – gutting the middle class and all but destroying private sector unions.  Supply Side economics has certainly benefitted the American rich who are overwhelmingly white; it has done absolutely nothing to benefit the poor – who are more often than not people of color.

Further, Thiessen sidesteps completely the fallout of all the domestic cuts he and his Party of Record have supported – namely the reduction in services for poor people who want to climb out of poverty.  Thiessen talks about how Republican should create equal opportunity for everyone to succeed economically.   Which would be great if Republicans would actually fund job training programs, daycare, effective public transportation, drug rehabilitation, and quality public education which are all needed services if our Nation’s poor will ever hope to compete on the economic stage. Absent that critical support – a strong recognition that Black Lives Matter if ever there was one - Mr. Thiessen and his ilk are blowing so much more smoke to hide the true intentions of their oligarchic political establishment.  Republicans need to address the log in their own eyes before they shout again about the spec in someone else's.