Immigration Change

Tonight the President is likely to announce a sweeping program wherein as many as four million undocumented immigrants will get a chance to apply for a program that will allow them to work here legally. They won’t get food stamps, federally subsidized health care, or medicaid despite what the right wing nuts at FOX will most likely rant. It’s a broken system and we have the worst Congress in the history of the United States. They have done approximately 1/10th of what the famous “Do Nothing” Congress the Truman administration faced. So somebody had to take the bull by the horns. 

Eric Cantor was helping to construct a bipartisan plan that would have been a route to citizenship. In it, the person would be required to not have a criminal record, serve in the armed forces, and get a college degree. Not exactly a walk in the park for the immigrant, but good for America overall. Yet the Tea Party went crazy and made sure Cantor didn’t even get the nomination again in his bid to keep his seat. 

Below is an essay I heard on Michigan Radio this afternoon:

I saw a poster the other day on the Internet that I really wish I could have framed and put on the wall. It said something like “Illegal immigrants refuse to learn our language, yet still get food assistance.”

What it showed was the first Thanksgiving.

What it could have added was that those same undocumented aliens were often guilty of tremendous violence against the native population.

Today, the descendants of those illegal immigrants have been wrestling with what do to about those who followed in their footsteps, centuries later.

The fact is that there are millions of so-called undocumented aliens in this country, maybe 100,000 in Michigan, and that our economy depends on them.

These immigrants, by and large, do the jobs nobody else wants, working hard for little money. When they do become legal, they tend to be tremendous job creators. Gov. Rick Snyder knows this; that’s why he has asked Washington to make more visas available for immigrants with special skills to come to Detroit.

There are legal immigration routes, complex and bureaucratic. But there are also millions who came without papers, or were brought here as children.

They have no other home. They are, by and large, productive members of our society. But they live in fear that any day they may be found out and deported.

President George W. Bush, no great liberal, wanted to set up a legal path for citizenship for many of them, but his plan was rejected contemptuously by his fellow Republicans in Congress.

Tonight, President Obama is apparently going to announce a program whereby as many as four million undocumented immigrants can apply for a program that will allow them to work here legally, if they have no criminal record, and protects them from deportation.

They won’t be citizens, and they will be second-class residents in every sense of the word. They won’t get federal subsidies for health care. Nor are they likely to qualify for food stamps or Medicaid.

Farm workers won’t be eligible at all. Some people brought here as children will be shielded from deportation, but not their parents. The president plans to do this with an executive order, since he knows perfectly well he could never get this through Congress, especially after Republicans take full control next year.

Denying them health care assistance is unlikely to appease Republicans. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas attacked the idea.

Ironically, Mr. Cruz, whose real first name is Rafael, was born in Canada to a father who fled Castro’s Cuba and who did not become an American citizen until nine years ago.

The senator is now a citizen of both Canada and the U.S., and his eligibility for the presidency is in some doubt. His parents were able to bring him here when he was four, because his mother was an American citizen.

But he doesn’t want to allow others like himself without a citizen parent to stay. There is something to be said for basic humanity. And for recognizing reality, which is that these people are here to stay, and that our economy needs them. Thanksgiving is coming.

And my guess is that the ghost of Squanto would agree. -Jack Lessenberry

On the upside, this will either force Congress to get serious about their jobs, or voice how they really feel about the largest voting minority. 

Health Care Choices to Double in 2015

To all the lame Republicans that are still trying to run on and spew "I'll repeal Obamacare", um, that ship has sailed. The Detroit News reported last week (November 14, 2014) that the choices for health care plans in Michigan will double in 2015. Double. That means prices will fall. Insurance companies will get more competitive. This thing is going to work. Like it or not Republicans.

I know the Republican mantra is "Repeal and Replace." Ever wonder what the replacement is? It's a health care law written by HMO's and Pharmaceutical companies. Do you honestly think they have our best interests at heart?

You know when President FDRoosevelt supported Social Security he was called all the things that President Obama has been called for the Affordable Health Care Act. This only supports the fact that he's right. Fortunately for Roosevelt, he didn't have to contend with the internet and unreasonable deadlines to ensure the software would work correctly.

Are you Republicans really ready to pull insurance plans out from under 8 million Americans?

My friend Larry a couple years ago priced health insurance on just himself. It was over $800 a month on just him. He now insures his family of four for $232 a month.

The people that claim this it socialism were the same kind of folks that said the same thing about Social Security. By the way, these folks also count on our socialist Police Departments, our socialist Fire Departments, the socialist Public Library, the social roads they drive on, the socialist Military that protects them, and the socialist Public Schools that educate their children.

The Tax and Spend Republicans are at it again.

I see last week state Republicans in the State Senate voted for an enormous gas tax to help repair crumbling roads. Why do the Republicans enjoy the reputation of being the "anti-taxes" party when all they do is tax us to death? This could mean more than thirty cents a gallon. Okay, so gas prices have fallen recently. Convenient time to run this crap through. But when it goes back to $4 a gallon, now it's gonna be $4.30. How many times have you run to the station across the street because their gas was 5 cents less?

The Republicans have put a tax on my retirement. They have raised fees at the Secretary of State's Office. Call it what you want but that's a tax. Everywhere you go there is a new Republican tax, and then they have the gall to call Democrats the "Tax and Spend" party.

The fiscal conservative President Reagan left us a $200 Billion deficit. The fiscal conservative Bush 41 in one term left us with a $300 Billion deficit. The "Tax and Spend Liberal" President Clinton left us with a $200+ Billion SURPLUS, and then fiscal conservative President G. W. Bush left us with a $482 Billion deficit. Will the day ever come the voting public starts thinking straight?

So now were going to get hammered at the pumps even more. Wouldn't have to be if the Washington Republicans would just sign the President's Jobs bill, that has been on their desk so long it's gathering dust. But no, no way. (He's half-black, don't you know). Instead they are gearing up, in exchange for a few summer jobs, to run an ugly nuisance through our back yard for us to trip over forever. And of course all the oil will go to Europe, South America, and China. But the Republicans will be their chest and feel all triumphant.

Will Rogers said it best: "Don't be to hard on Congress. They're the best men money can buy."

Come and listen to my story about a man named Jeb.....

Jeb Bush is toying with the idea of running for the Presidency. Bad news for the Dems, because Jeb Bush is the only viable candidate the Repubs have. As a matter of fact it was said for years the George H.W. Bush envisioned Jeb being the son that might be able to get there, not George. Mrs. Barbara Bush on the other hand does not want him to run stating "There have been enough Bushes in the White House."

But herein lies the rub: Jeb Bush is a moderate Republican. The whacked out right will hate him for not being radical enough, and they undoubtedly won't get behind him. If he sells out his principles and succumbs to the radical right pressure the way that John McCain did, he won't be electable. But if he tells the radical right to go to blazes, he could actually be electable. And a reasonable moderate Republican is not my first choice, but we can live with it if we have to. The Ted Cruz's and Ron Paul's will never understand that the general American public is a lot smarter than they are. We won't elect one of their crazies. Not now, not ever.

I can see the Dems owning the White House for 20 years. Or at least until the Tea Party takes a hike. I've said it before. Repubs, you can have the Tea Party, or you can have the White House, but you can't have both. But a moderate Repub, might sway enough voters away from a woman.

Buy the way, affirming my view that being a past President is a greater fraternity than being a Beatle, last week George W. Bush referred to Bill Clinton as "My brother from another mother." I don't suppose there's any way that that brother could run for President in 2016?

The Speaker of the House

John Boehner is already laying out a course of destruction of the middle class now that the Republican's have captured the Senate and now control Congress. Of course he's preaching the same old "Repeal Obamacare" mantra. Thank goodness that although they have control of the Senate, but they don't have the muscle to override a Veto. So what does that mean? For one thing is means that their attempts to let Pharmaceutical Companies and HMO's write new legislation to replace Obamacare ain't gonna happen. Honestly does anyone really believe those companies have our best interests at heart? But it may lead to some healthy tweaks which is what the Republicans should have been striving for from the beginning. Democrats would most likely go along with that if it's reasonable. And by the way, eliminating the individual mandate is not reasonable.

The Speaker also has warned the President to not try and take Executive action on immigration outside of his authority. Well, Mr. Speaker, that may mean you Republicans will have to get off your dead asses, and actually work with the President like he's been begging you to for 6 years. The onus of this do-nothing Congress is not on him. It's on you Mr. Speaker. Get your pals to set aside their bigotry and try to accomplish something for the country. But he's not gonna let you stick it to the middle class the way you want to. And just so you know Mr. Speaker, we haven't forgotten about the credit down-grade your party gave us, or the government shut down. We never treated you guys with this much ugly racist contempt.

Only 35% of the entire voting public show up for the mid-terms, and as I stated earlier, that is always good for the Republicans. But then they get this false sense of a mandate, and then they screw us for two years and then they get a shellacking and they scratch their heads and wonder what happened. Because this is not a mandate Mr. Speaker, it's what happens when Democrats don't vote. But by the Presidential election 55% of the voting public turns out and that changes things.

Hopefully, on November 8th, 2016 your party gets to switch from being racists to sexists.

North Carolina's Voting Legislation

A couple of weeks ago, part of North Carolina's new voting law, one of the toughest in the nation, was struck down by the courts it was likely to disenfranchise voters. Ya think? After all, that's what it was designed to do.

In a 2 - 1 ruling the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals suspended part of the Republican bill that would have eliminated same day registration during early voting, and voided ballots cast on election day outside of a person's assigned precinct.

All in the name of preventing voter fraud. And the fact that in the history of the United States there have only been four documented cases of actual voter fraud. Four votes in 238 years. This is such a bogus non-issue that it would be laughable if it weren't so sad. But the legislature in North Carolina had to come up with some excuse to not allow Blacks (usually Democrats) to vote.

Some might ask, "What's so bad about insisting that a person vote in their assigned precinct?" That seems reasonable. And on face value, there is nothing wrong with that. Except Republicans are notorious for calling people to inform them that their voting site has changed, or greeting black voters at the door to convince them they have to vote in another precinct, so that their vote won't count. There are hundreds of documented cases of that, hundreds more in fact of cases of voter fraud.

But the North Carolina legislature simply can't be bothered to pass legislation to make that real voter fraud a crime.

Asking for Sermon Approval is Wrong No Matter the Religion

The Mayor's Office of Houston, Texas, has recently issued suboenas  asking for copies of any pastor's sermons in which they violate the newly enacted HERO law. Snopes.Com describes it as a mixture of truth in this way:

The measure bans discrimination based not just on sexual orientation and gender identity but also, as federal laws do, sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, pregnancy and genetic information, as well as family, marital or military status.

The ordinance applies to businesses that serve the public, private employers, housing, city employment and city contracting. Religious institutions would be exempt. Violators could be fined up to $5,000.

Opponents of the equal rights ordinance are hoping to force a repeal referendum when they get their day in court in January, claiming City Attorney David Feldman wrongly determined they had not gathered enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. City attorneys issued subpoenas during the case's discovery phase, seeking, among other communications, "all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession."

The issue centers around a subpoena sent to some pastors actively involved in collecting petition signatures against Houston's non-discrimination ordinance. The subpoena asked the religious leaders to turn over "all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession."

Pastors claim it's an overly broad fishing expedition. "The city council and its attorneys are engaging in an inquisition designed to stifle any critique of its actions," said a rep for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal firm. "Political and social commentary is not a crime; it is protected by the First Amendment."

But their complaints make it sound like the pastors are about to be tried for hate speech using the new law, which is far from the case.

[City attorneys] were looking into what instructions pastors gave out to those collecting signatures for a referendum on the non-discrimination law. (What exactly the pastors said, and what the collectors knew about the rules, is one of the key issues in pending litigation around whether opponents of the law gathered enough signatures for a referendum.)

Feldman said the pastors made their sermons relevant to the case by using the pulpit to do political organizing. That included encouraging congregation members to sign petitions and help gather signatures for equal rights ordinance foes, who largely take issue with the rights extended to gay and transgender residents.

"There's no question, the wording was overly broad. But I also think there was some deliberate misinterpretation on the other side," [Houston mayor Annise] Parker said at a press conference. "The goal is to find out if there were specific instructions given on how the petitions should be accurately filled out. It's not about, 'What did you preach on last Sunday?'"

To reiterate: The mayor's office is not interested in what they preached, or how the pastors feel about Parker or her sexual orientation. (Those things are all well protected under the First Amendment, as they should be.) All officials want to know is what kinds of instructions the pastors gave out with respect to collecting petition signatures, and whether what they said agrees with what they're arguing in court while appealing the referendum.

All this presupposes that the information in the subpoenaed sermons really is substantially relevant to a case or an investigation. I don't quite see how "all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession" would be relevant to the litigation about the validity of the referendum petitions. At the very least, the subpoena seems vastly overbroad. And the fact that it seeks the contents of religious speeches does counsel in favor of making the subpoena as narrow as possible (which would likewise be the case if it sought the contents of political speeches). I'm not sure what sort of legally relevant information might be contained in the subpoenaed sermons. But the subpoena ought to be narrowed to that legally relevant information, not to all things about homosexuality, gender identity, the mayor, or even the petition or the ordinance.

For the churches, the issue of whether those subpoenaed documents could call their tax-exempt status into question also is at stake. Legal and political science experts said it is a politically fraught issue that governments generally have trod carefully, or avoided altogether.

Tax-exempt churches cannot use the pulpit to promote a specific candidate, but can use it as forum to discuss policy, such as the city's equal rights ordinance, Southern Methodist University political science Professor Matthew Wilson said.

"The city was counting on the fact that the distinction would be muddled in the court of public opinion," Wilson said. "It wasn't."

Feldman said the intent behind the subpoena was never to prove the churches were violating the terms of their tax-exempt status, but to produce proof that pastors who organized a petition drive to put a repeal referendum on the ballot knew the city's rigorous charter rules but failed to follow them.

At the crux of opponents' lawsuit is whether Feldman incorrectly invalidated their petitions to force a referendum.

"The fact that you happen to be a pastor and you happen to be at a church doesn't provide you with protection," Feldman said.

The city may have a point, University of Houston law professor Peter Linzer said. While the churches are correct that the original subpoena was too broad, the city likely has a legitimate right to seek communications about what specific petition instructions may have been given out, he said.

The original subpoena requests much more than that, seeking "all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession."

Much of that request likely would be difficult to obtain, Linzer said, but instructions germane to the case should not be protected.

"When it comes to whether the ballot petition was correctly done, I see no constitutional problem with that," Linzer said. "I do see most of the current subpoena as overly broad."

Mayor Parker agrees with those who are concerned about the city legal department's subpoenas for pastor's sermons. The subpoenas were issued by pro bono attorneys helping the city prepare for the trial regarding the petition to repeal the new Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) in January. Neither the mayor nor City Attorney David Feldman were aware the subpoenas had been issued. Both agree the original documents were overly broad. The city will move to narrow the scope during an upcoming court hearing. Feldman says the focus should be only on communications related to the HERO petition process.

My question is simply this. Where is the ACLU, an agency dedicated to protecting the Bill of Rights? Where are all the free speech advocates and why aren't they going nuts about this? Why is it that if this were Buddhists or Muslims being persecuted, these folks would be going crazy making this the number one story on the nightly news? I encourage interested parties to go to snopes.com and read the entire text. Parts of it I could not cut and paste. 

Why is there this double standard for Christians?