In both of this month’s Republican presidential debates, Rep. Michele Bachmann hailed what she evidently believes was the golden age of American immigration — the period before the mid-1960s when, she said, “immigration law worked beautifully.”
Ms. Bachmann’s nostalgia is touching but misplaced, unless she really pines for a return to laws that explicitly favored white immigrants from a handful of Northern European countries while excluding or disadvantaging Jews, Asians, Africans and practically everyone else.
Ms. Bachmann didn’t frame it that way, of course. She blamed “liberal members of Congress” for upsetting a system that she characterized as requiring immigrants to have money, sponsors, and clean health and criminal records. In Ms. Bachmann’s world, those immigrants would learn American history and to speak English.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 fundamentally changed the system of immigration in this country but not in the way Ms. Bachmann evidently imagines. That law, pushed by Democrats including Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.), threw out four decades of immigration quotas whose explicit goal was to emulate America’s ethnic balance as it stood in the year 1890, when the country remained overwhelmingly white.
Specifically, the 1965 measure ended a legal regime dating from the early 1920s that generally shut out Asians (especially Japanese) and capped immigration from Latin America, Eastern and Southern Europe, and other areas at very low levels. The effect was to overhaul that hidebound, exclusive quota system. The new system, whose cornerstone gave preference to family reunification and job skills, broadened what had been a narrow pool of immigrants to include soaring numbers of newcomers from Asia and Latin America.
The shift has contributed to the nation’s diversity, dynamism and rich cultural kaleidoscope even as it challenged society, especially schools, to accommodate waves of new Americans whose looks, language and customs were unfamiliar to their neighbors.
By talking about sponsorship, English-language competency and the like, Ms. Bachmann is either confused or deliberately misleading. Most legal immigrants are still required to have family or employer sponsors, as they did in the gauzy past she idealizes. As for learning English, American history and the like, those were, and remain, requirements for citizenship, not immigration.
Ms. Bachmann, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, may not care for the changes and effects wrought by the 1965 bill; many other critics on the right do not. Patrick Buchanan, for example, has blamed the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech on the immigration overhaul, noting that the gunman “was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation’s doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people.” If Ms. Bachmann shares such views, let her address the issue honestly and head on, not in code.
By: Editorial Board, The Washington Post, September 15, 2011
September 17, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Bigotry, Birthers, Class Warfare, Congress, Conservatives, Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Education, Elections, Equal Rights, GOP, Government, Human Rights, Ideologues, Ideology, Immigrants, Immigration, Liberty, Politics, Racism, Republicans, Right Wing, Teaparty | Africans, Asians, Citizenship, Diversity, Ethnic Groups, Ethnicity, Immigration and Nationality Act, Jews, Liberals, Pat Buchanan, Quotas, Rep Michele Bachmann, White Immigrants |
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We heard plenty of contradictions, distortions and untruths at the Republican candidates’ Tea Party debate, but we heard shockingly little compassion — and almost no acknowledgement that political and economic policy choices have a moral dimension.
The lowest point of the evening — and perhaps of the political season — came when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a hypothetical question about a young man who elects not to purchase health insurance. The man has a medical crisis, goes into a coma and needs expensive care. “Who pays?” Blitzer asked.
“That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks,” Paul answered. “This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody. . . .”
Blitzer interrupted: “But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?”
There were enthusiastic shouts of “Yeah!” from the crowd. You’d think one of the other candidates might jump in with a word about Christian kindness. Not a peep.
Paul, a physician, went on to say that, no, the hypothetical comatose man should not be allowed to die. But in Paul’s vision of America, “our neighbors, our friends, our churches” would choose to assume the man’s care — with government bearing no responsibility and playing no role.
Blitzer turned to Michele Bachmann, whose popularity with evangelical Christian voters stems, at least in part, from her own professed born-again faith. Asked what she would do about the man in the coma, Bachmann ignored the question and launched into a canned explanation of why she wants to repeal President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told the Pharisees that God commands us to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” There is no asterisk making this obligation null and void if circumstances require its fulfillment via government.
Bachmann knows a lot about compassion. She makes much of the fact that she and her husband took in 23 foster children over the years. But what of the orphaned or troubled children who are not lucky enough to find a wealthy family to take them in? What of the boys and girls who have stable homes but do not regularly see a doctor because their parents lack health insurance?
Government can reach them. But according to today’s Republican dogma, it must not.
Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Bachmann, Paul and the others onstage in Tampa all had the same prescription for the economy: Cut spending, cut taxes and let the wealth that results trickle down to the less fortunate.
They betrayed no empathy for, or even curiosity about, the Americans who depend on the spending that would be cut. They had no kind words — in fact, no words at all — for teachers, firefighters and police officers who will lose their jobs unless cash-strapped state and local government receive federal aid. Public servants, the GOP candidates imply, don’t hold “real” jobs. I wonder: Do Republicans even consider them “real” people?
Government is more than a machine for collecting and spending money, more than an instrument of war, a book of laws or a shield to guarantee and protect individual rights. Government is also an expression of our collective values and aspirations. There’s a reason the Constitution begins “We the people . . .” rather than “We the unconnected individuals who couldn’t care less about one another . . . .”
I believe the Republican candidates’ pinched, crabby view of government’s nature and role is immoral. I believe the fact that poverty has risen sharply over the past decade — as shown by new census data — while the richest Americans have seen their incomes soar is unacceptable. I believe that writing off whole classes of citizens — the long-term unemployed whose skills are becoming out of date, thousands of former offenders who have paid their debt to society, millions of low-income youth ill-served by inadequate schools — is unconscionable.
Perry, who is leading in the polls, wants to make the federal government “inconsequential.” He thinks Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and a “monstrous lie.” He doesn’t much like Medicare, either.
But there was a fascinating moment in the debate when Perry defended Texas legislation that allows children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at state universities. “We were clearly sending a message to young people, regardless of what the sound of their last name is, that we believe in you,” Perry said.
The other candidates bashed him with anti-immigrant rhetoric until the evening’s only glimmer of moral responsibility was snuffed out.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 15, 2011
September 17, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Affordable Care Act, Class Warfare, Congress, Conservatives, Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Economy, Federal Budget, Freedom, GOP, Government, Health Care, Human Rights, Ideologues, Ideology, Immigration, Lawmakers, Liberty, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Religion, Republicans, Right Wing, Teachers, Teaparty, Wealthy | Anti-Immigrant, Christian Right, CNN, Compassion, Compassionate Conservatism, Evangelicals, Faith, Gov Mitt Romney, Gov Rick Perry, Low Income, Religion, Rep Michele Bachmann, Rep Ron Paul, Teaparty Debate, Wolf Blitzer |
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In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care. Higher education is a luxury reserved almost exclusively to the very rich. Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it. Fathers compete with their adolescent children for sub-minimum wage jobs. And our national leaders are utterly powerless to do a thing.
At least, that’s what would happen if the Tea Party succeeds in its effort to reimagine the Constitution as an antigovernment manifesto. While the House of Representatives pushes Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to phase out Medicare, numerous members of Congress, a least one Supreme Court justice, and the governor of America’s second-largest state now proudly declare that most of the progress of the last century violates the Constitution.
It is difficult to count how many essential laws would simply cease to exist if the Tea Party won its battle to reshape our founding document, but a short list includes:
- Social Security and Medicare
- Medicaid, children’s health insurance, and other health care programs
- All federal education programs
- All federal antipoverty programs
- Federal disaster relief
- Federal food safety inspections and other food safety programs
- Child labor laws, the minimum wage, overtime, and other labor protections
- Federal civil rights laws
Indeed, as this paper explains, many state lawmakers even embrace a discredited constitutional doctrine that threatens the union itself.
What’s at stake
The Tea Party imagines a constitution focused entirely upon the Tenth Amendment, which provides that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”—which is why their narrow vision of the nation’s power is often referred to as “tentherism.” In layman’s terms, the Tenth Amendment is simply a reminder that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers—such as the power to regulate interstate commerce or establish post offices or make war on foreign nations—and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress’s authority.
The Tea Party, however, believes these powers must be read too narrowly to permit much of the progress of the last century. This issue brief examines just some of the essential programs that leading Tea Partiers would declare unconstitutional.
Social Security and Medicare
The Constitution gives Congress the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” thus empowering the federal government to levy taxes and leverage these revenues for programs such as Social Security and Medicare. A disturbingly large number of elected officials, however, insist that these words don’t actually mean what they say.
In a speech to the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, Texas Gov. Rick Perry listed a broad swath of programs that “contradict the principles of limited, constitutional government that our founders established to protect us.” Gov. Perry’s list includes Medicare and “a bankrupt social security system, that Americans understand is essentially a Ponzi scheme on a scale that makes Bernie Madoff look like an amateur.” And Perry is hardly the only high-ranking elected official to share this view.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) mocked President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for calling upon the federal government to provide “a decent retirement plan” and “health care” because “the Constitution doesn’t give Congress any of those powers.” Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), who engineered the House of Representatives’s dramatic reading of the Constitution earlier this year, claimed that Medicare and Social Security are “not in the Constitution” and are only allowed to exist because “the courts have stretched the Constitution to say it’s in the general welfare clause.” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said we should eliminate Medicare because “that’s a family responsibility, not a government responsibility.”
Because this erroneous view of our founding document is rooted in an exaggerated view of the Tenth Amendment’s states rights’ provision, many so-called tenthers claim that eliminating Social Security and Medicare wouldn’t necessarily mean kicking millions of seniors out into the cold because state governments could enact their own retirement programs to pick up the slack. This proposal, however, ignores basic economics.
Under our current system, someone who begins their career in Ohio, moves to Virginia to accept a better job offer, and then retires in Florida pays the same federal taxes regardless of their residence. These taxes then fund programs such as Medicare and Social Security. If each state were responsible for setting up its own retirement system, however, the person described above would pay Ohio taxes while they worked in Ohio, Virginia taxes while they lived in Virginia, and would draw benefits from the state of Florida during their retirement. The state which benefited from their taxes would not be the same state that was required to fund their retirement, and the result would be an economic death spiral for states such as Florida that attract an unusually large number of retirees.
For this reason, tenther proposals to simply let the states take over Social Security and Medicare are nothing more than a backdoor way to eliminate these programs altogether. If the Tea Party gets its way, and our nation’s social safety net for seniors is declared unconstitutional, millions of seniors will lose their only income and their only means to pay for health care.
Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and other health care programs
The Tea Party’s constitution has plenty of bad news for Americans below the retirement age as well. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), for example, recently claimed that any federal involvement in health care whatsoever is unconstitutional because “the words ‘health care’ are nowhere in the Constitution.”
Sen. Coburn lumped Medicaid in with Medicare when he claimed that providing for the frailest Americans is a “family responsibility,” and Gov. Perry includes Medicaid on his list of programs that “contradict[] the principles of limited, constitutional government.” Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) claim that “the Constitution doesn’t give Congress” any authority over health care is a blanket statement encompassing all federal health programs.
If this vision were to be implemented, all federal health care programs would simply cease to exist and millions of Americans would lose their only access to health insurance.
Education
Education is also on the Tea Party’s chopping block. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) routinely grills education secretaries at congressional hearings, insisting that the Constitution does not authorize any federal involvement in education. Similarly, Rep. Foxx insists that “we should not be funding education” because she insists doing so violates the Tenth Amendment. And Sen. Coburn does not “even think [education] is a role for the federal government.”
In its strongest form, this position wouldn’t just eliminate federal assistance for state-run public schools. It would also eliminate programs enabling Americans to pay for their college education. Millions of students would lose their Pell Grants and federal student loans if the Tea Party’s full vision of the Constitution were implemented.
Some tenthers, however, offer a slightly less drastic position. It is commonplace for the federal government to grant money to the states if those states agree to comply with certain conditions. Federal law, for example, provides generous public education grants provided that states gather data on student achievement and comply with other such conditions. Many Tea Partiers argue that these conditions violate the Constitution. Thus, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX), claims that the Constitution only permits the federal government to provide states with “block grants.”
The truth, however, is that the federal government has never told states how to educate their children—and it could not do so if it tried. Under a Supreme Court decision called Printz v. United States, federal laws ordering a state to take a specific action actually do violate the Tenth Amendment. So, the state of Texas is perfectly free to turn down federal grants if they do not like the conditions attached to them.
Moreover, it is not clear how federal grants of any kind can exist if Congress is not allowed to attach conditions to them. If Congress cannot constitutionally require states to spend grant money on standardized testing, for example, how can they require that it be spent on education and not on building a new wing for the governor’s mansion? Thus, even the slightly more moderate position advocated by people like Rep. Farenthold would likely eliminate the federal government’s ability to provide educational assistance to low-income students or otherwise help fund public schools.
Antipoverty programs, federal disaster relief, and other help for the less fortunate
Sen. Lee would go even further in cutting off assistance for low-income Americans. In an interview with a Utah radio host, Lee claimed that the framers intended all antipoverty programs to be dealt with exclusively at the state level. This would not only eliminate programs like income assistance and food stamps, it could threaten unemployment insurance, federal job training, and other programs intended to provide a bridge out of poverty.
In the same interview, Sen. Lee claimed that federal relief for hurricane, earthquake, tornado, and other disaster victims is “one of many areas where we ought to focus on getting that power back to the states,” a position that would kill the Federal Emergency Management Agency and prevent the nation as a whole from rallying to the support of a state whose financial resources are overwhelmed by a major natural disaster.
Food safety
Sen. Lee also claims that “the framers intended state lawmakers deal with” food safety in this same radio interview. This position would not simply endanger the residents of states with inadequate regulation of their food supply, it would also create costly and duplicative state inspection programs and impose logistical nightmares on food-importing states.
If a cow is raised in Texas, slaughtered in Oklahoma, and then sold as steaks in New York, which state is responsible for inspecting the meat? The likely answer is that all three states would have their own system of laws, tripling the regulatory compliance costs for the meat producer.
Moreover, if New York decides that Oklahoma’s inspections’ regime is inadequate, its only recourse would be to require meat producers to submit their products to a customs check at the border before it could be sold in that state. The result would be higher taxes for New Yorkers forced to pay for these customs stations, and higher costs for businesses forced to submit to inspections every time they brought food across a state border.
Child labor laws, the minimum wage, overtime, and other labor protections
Nearly 100 years ago, the Supreme Court declared federal child labor laws unconstitutional in a case called Hammer v. Dagenhart. Twenty-two years later, the Court recognized that Hammer’s holding was “novel when made and unsupported by any provision of the Constitution,” and unanimously overruled this erroneous decision.
Sen. Lee, however, believes that, while Hammer might “sound harsh,” the Constitution “was designed to be that way. It was designed to be a little bit harsh,” and thus we should return to the world where federal child labor laws are unconstitutional. Moreover, Lee has a very powerful ally prepared to sweep away nearly all national protections for American workers.
Under existing Supreme Court doctrine, Congress’s authority to “regulate commerce … among the several states” includes the power to regulate the roads and railways used to transport goods in interstate commerce, as well as the goods themselves and the vehicles that transport them. Additionally, Congress may regulate activities that “substantially affect interstate commerce.” This “substantial effects” power is the basis of Congress’s authority to make labor laws universal throughout all places of employment.
Yet Justice Clarence Thomas claimed in three separate cases—U.S. v. Lopez, U.S. v. Morrison, and Gonzales v. Raich—that this “substantial effects” test is “at odds with the constitutional design.” It is possible that Thomas’s vision would still allow some limited federal labor regulation—such as a law prohibiting children from becoming railway workers—but anything resembling the essential web of federal laws that protect American workers today would be impossible.
Civil rights laws
Shortly after he won his party’s nod to be a U.S. Senate candidate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) revealed that he opposes the federal bans on whites-only lunch counters and race discrimination in employment. In a rambling interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Paul explained that, while he believes that Congress may ban discrimination from “public institutions,” he does not support antidiscrimination laws that regulate private business.
As Sen. Paul suggested in that interview, these basic civil rights laws—like national laws banning child labor and establishing a minimum wage—can be snuffed out of existence if Congress’s power to enact commercial regulations is read too narrowly.
In 1964, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters—once again relying on the “substantial effects” test to do so. For this reason, it is likely the Justice Thomas would strike down this and other federal laws protecting civil rights.
The union
Gov. Perry suffered well-deserved ridicule when he suggested in 2009 that Texas may secede from the union if “Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people.” But Gov. Perry’s ill-considered remark is merely a distraction compared to a much larger movement to effectively secede from the union one law at a time.
Gov. Perry joins lawmakers from New Hampshire, Montana, Virginia, Idaho, Florida, and many other states in backing unconstitutional state laws purporting to “nullify” a federal law. Many state legislatures have passed, and a few governors have signed, laws claiming to nullify part of the Affordable Care Act, and Perry signed a law that partially nullifies federal light bulb standards.
Nullification is an unconstitutional doctrine claiming that states can prevent a federal law from operating within their borders. Although nullification conflicts directly with the text of the Constitution, which provides that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land…anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding,” it has experienced a significant revival among state lawmakers eager to second-guess national leaders’ decisions.
This doctrine is not simply unconstitutional, it is a direct attack on the idea that we are the United States of America. As James Madison wrote in 1830, allowing states to simply ignore the laws they don’t want to follow would “speedily put an end to the Union itself.”
Conclusion
America has long endured the occasional politician eager to repeal the entire 20th Century, but, as President Dwight Eisenhower observed nearly 60 years ago, “Their numbers [were] negligible and they are stupid.” Sadly, this is no longer the case. Tenthers increasingly dominate conservative politics and their numbers are growing.
If this movement succeeds in replacing our founding document with their entirely fabricated constitution, virtually every American will suffer the consequences. Seniors will lose their Social Security and Medicare. Millions of students could lose their ability to pay for college. And workers throughout the country will lose their right to organize, to earn a minimum wage, and to be free from discrimination.
Worse, because the Tea Party believes their policy preferences are mandated by the Constitution, they would do far more than simply repeal nearly a century of essential laws. Once something is declared unconstitutional, it is beyond the reach of elected officials— and beyond the voters’ ability to revive simply by tossing unwise lawmakers out of office.
For this reason, the Tea Party’s agenda is not simply one of the most radical in generations, it is also the most authoritarian. They do not simply want to eliminate decades of progress; they want to steal away “We The People’s” ability to bring it back.
By: Ian Millhiser, Center for American Progress, September 16, 2011
September 16, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Affordable Care Act, Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Commerce Clause, Congress, Conservatives, Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Economy, Education, Elections, Equal Rights, GOP, Government, Health Care, Ideologues, Ideology, Income Gap, Jobs, Labor, Lawmakers, Medicaid, Medicare, Middle Class, Minimum Wage, Politics, Public, Regulations, Republicans, Right Wing, SCOTUS, Social Security, State Legislatures, States, Tea Party, Unions, Voters | Anti-Poverty Programs, Child Labor Laws, CHIP, Civil Rights, Disaster Relief, FEMA, Food Safety, Gov Rick Perry, We The People |
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Elizabeth Warren, consumer advocate and chief architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will announce on Wednesday that she will run for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts currently held by Republican Scott Brown.
Should Warren prevail in defeating the six candidates who have already announced their intention to compete in the Democratic primary, the result may be the greatest economic boon to Massachusetts media outlets since the days of Kennedy money as Wall Street ponies up serious bucks in an effort to defeat their arch-nemeses. Democratic contributors can be expected to respond in kind as bringing the Massachusetts senate seat back into the Democratic column is considered an important key to retaining the Democratic majority in the Senate.
While Warren is not expected to make a formal, public announcement, the Boston Globe reports that a video will go up on Warren’s website tomorrow announcing her intentions and saying, in part—
The pressure on middle class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington. I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts.
If track record counts for anything, you can believe that Elizabeth Warren will do precisely as she says. Because of that track record, the Harvard Law professor, who went to Washington and built a major following by relentlessly attacking the financial institutions for their anti-consumer agenda, will surely have the support of national progressives and Democrats, support she has unquestionably earned.
The possibility of Warren’s election presents GOP senators with a rich dose of irony. Warren was the obvious and most deserving person to serve as the first leader of the CFPB, the consumer protection agency she almost single-handedly created. However, in an effort to protect their Wall Street cronies and financial backers, the Republicans in the Senate made it very clear that her nomination would never be approved.
As the administrator of the CFPB, Warren would have been under the thumb of Congress. As a member of the Senate, it will be a very different story.
Payback can be rough.
By: Rick Ungar, Mother Jones, September 13, 2011
September 14, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Congress, Conservatives, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumers, Corporations, Democrats, Financial Institutions, GOP, Government, Media, Middle Class, Politics, Public, Regulations, Republicans, Right Wing | CFPB, Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts, Senate, Wall Street |
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