Hispanic vote: GOP cruelty is their point; 16.7 million families could be ripped apart updated 9/1//2024

 {Update on illegal border crossings: lowest in 3 years thanks to Biden; no thanks to Trump. https://www.cbsnews.com/.../border-crossings-us-mexico.../ Trump sabotaged the only bi partisan bill to address it this past winter. Biden used what executive powers he had and the result was the lowest illegal crossing in 3 years. We would have been on our way to even lower figures without Trump)

I don't get it: 46% of Latinos support Trump and 40% Biden via a recent NY Times poll. Perhaps those figures also include immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela who seem eager to substitute a Trump dictatorship for the ones they had fled. Latinos of all kinds make up 15% of the US vote. All migrants, documented or not will be impacted. Every traffic stop or encounter or a nosy neighbor "turning them in" will cause anyone who looks "Mexican" to be "showing their papers" if they are documented. If they are not, they will be sent first to concentration camps and then deported. 16.7  million families have both documented and undocumented members in them, and all would be at risk if Trump/Vance won.

(Update: 8/8/2024: Nation's oldest and largest Latino civil rights group endorsing Harris (msn.com)

(Update: 7/31/2024:  A humane approach to immigration policy is the bi-partisan bill Trump killed because he wanted the issue to still be hot as he campaigns. He tried to pain Kamala Harris as a failed immigration czar, but Harris quickly struck back from a rally platform on 7/30/24 in Atlanta and followed it up with an attack ad...turning the issue back on Trump for killlig the bill...and "talk not walking the walk", not caring about immigration, but only himself.  https://thehill.com/homenews/4801766-kamala-harris-donald-trump-border/)

What was in the bill Trump tanked:

“The bill provides funding to build the wall, increase technology at the border, and add more detention beds, more agents, and more deportation flights. The border security bill ends the abuse of parole on our southwest border that has waived in over a million people.Feb 4, 2024" https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/new-immigration-asylum-reform-bill-released-senate-text-rcna136602

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-collapse-of-bipartisan-immigration-reform-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/

In response, Pres. Biden issued an executive order that at least stopped the surge. This, of course, was not enough to do the whole job. but it does point to the need for Congress to act because executive orders are not enough.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/migrant-crossings-plunge-near-level-lift-biden-border-crackdown/ 

Updated and edited:.7/19/2024 follows: 

Trump's RNC Convention nomination acceptance speech was vintage Trump,  delivering the drumbeat of fear-mongering, deception, and lies. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fact-checking-donald-trumps-rnc-speech-immigration-economy/story?id=112091019 The MAGA's vulnerability and fear have been given a dose of fear and a case of amnesia about how Trump's "crisis" was extended an extra year when he ordered the bi-partisan immigration bill crafted by the Senate killed in the House in February 2024.  Some crisis, Trump. I guess it was not so much it had to be fixed immediately.  The crisis was that the bi-partisan bill would have hurt the effectiveness of his main campaign plank: be very afraid of the invasion of brown people at the border and "only I can fix it"..That Biden could fix it was the crisis Trump faced.

Following media coverage of the RNC Convention, the greatest roar from the crowd was when speakers advocated mass deportation of as many as 20 million of undocumented migrants (called "illegals" by MAGA) , depriving them of human and civil rights, separating families, yanking them out of their homes and from their families, and hyping fears with lies that have failed fact checker reviews..  There is no more evidence of the racist and hatred-driven nature of the members of the GOP who cheered and heartily waved signs promoting mass deportations and ignoring the blatant lies of the rousing speakers. Any solution like the bi-partisan bill Trump shot down this year is not acceptable without the election of concentration camps holding mass deportees.. According to the Census Bureau, Hispanics comprise over 19% of the US population. That is over 65 million. .  Dreamers had no choice as babies carried by undocumented immigrants.  

Trump's policies were not effective. Aside from Trump's cruelty and walls when he was in office, apprehensions at the southwest border were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year in office, an (indication of how many attempts at illegal crossings,  compared with the last full year before he was sworn in.)  https://www.factcheck.org/2024/04/trumps-misleading-chart-on-illegal-immigration/ He ignores the impact of the pandemic and, in fact, uses it to take credit for doing such a good job.  The deception is where he placed the arrows and took credit for what the pandemic caused.

Funding border patrol and providing more court judges so they could screen border crossers for non-criminality and fit what the law provided for refugees seeking asylum., Economic opportunity, poverty bad governance are not qualifications for granting asylum, but it takes screening to separate the qualified from the others..Continuing to build more of the wall was also part of the bi-partisan, historically conservative Senate bill to immediately relieve the crossings surge.  However, Trump, the demagogue, told the House members to kill it because he needed the surge to continue as the fear factor appealing to his base.  Biden then took some actions using executive orders, and the attempted crossings are now cut in half, and in effect, closed the border to a surge that could not be handled by existing resources.

 Fear and lies again are Trump's tools to hype fear and ride that to victory...  Fentanyl is carried mostly in trucks, not by migrants themselves, and there are very effective machines to detect that, but it also needs funding.   That gets ignored by the base of Trump's supporters.  Their goal, expressed on the poster waivers at the RNC convention, was "mass deportations," and anything less just was not cruel enough. Turning back illegal crossings is only part of the GOP's plan. The rest is to kick out those living in the USA, 20 million of them, who have been law-abiding and quietly good neighbors who are beloved and are already part of the fabric of US society but are "others" claiming Democrats want them here for their illegal votes. (Another big lie with no evidence or facts showing that is happening).

What was in the bi-partisan bill Trump ordered killed in the House?  Best discussion and details at

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-collapse-of-bipartisan-immigration-reform-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/us/politics/trumps-support-among-latinos-grows-newespoll-shows.html 

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/16/11-facts-about-hispanic-origin-groups-in-the-us/

 .

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/they-just-go-latino-mixed-status-families-uncertainty-way-life-n1086141

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/dialogue-with-another-refugee-from.html

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/supreme-court-reinstates-arizona-show-me-your-papers-law-strikes-down-three-other

Trump's destruction of the balance of power. We have a republic,but can we keep it

Revised: 10/19/19
Updated 10/31/19

We have a republic, but can we keep it?




Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, speaking on behalf of the rules for the impeachment inquiry as it enters the public testimony phase, said  "What is at stake in all of this is nothing less than our democracy," as she quoted Benjamin Franklin who was asked by citizens what sort of government the delegates had created, his answer was: "A republic if you can keep it."   Our founders threw the ball to us; it is now in our court , we the people. The opposite of democracy and our Republican form that ensures its survival is a word our founders used: tyranny. The resurrection of tyranny in 2019 is not at the top of our list of concerns per polls.  This is hardly the stuff that stirs the soul, but it should be. That is why there was a revolution and the United States of America was founded.

The purpose of the founders of our Constitutional government to establish a republic was to prevent what they most fear:, the rule of tyranny in the future. Their prime weapons: balance of powers as constructed in the Constitution and the rule of law.  Wrote founder James Madison in the Federalist Papers,  “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” President Trump has set about to destroy the balance of powers that stands of his way to become "a really strong leader"., which now we know means to him the admired autocracies of Putin of Russia and Erdogan of Turkey, both of whom have taken over and control those three power centers of modern democracy.  

The fundamental balance of powers is under attack by the very same political party that once dedicated itself to limited government. Instead, they are the legislators who now bow down to their feared leader, Donald Trump,  who promises to primary anyone who steps out of his line. The same President Trump claims a sitting president cannot be indicted per a Department of Justice rule,  prosecuted, or investigated for criminal behavior. Recently, a judge ruling on Trump's refusal to turn over tax returns because he argued a sitting President could not even be investigated or prosecuted said those claims were " repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values ". Trump is also preventing close members of his administration and allies from testifying to Congress during impeachment inquiries, defying Congressional subpoenas and making it difficult for Congress to carry out its Constitutionally granted power and duty of impeachment. Congress is left with taking the matter to court,  waiting years for decisions,  or including the defiance as contempt of Congress in the articles of impeachment. They are doing both. Fortunately for the House impeachment inquiry in 2019,  most of the evidence and confessions they need to proceed with impeachment are already on public record in press, media, tweets, and documents. Many witnesses have already honored subpoenas and are testifying.

A realistic fear is that the ascendence of dictators can creep up on populations until it is too late to use democratic means to stop them.  Both Erdogan and Putin are current cases in point.  In modern history, the fascists from Hitler to Mussolini also used the ballot box to rise to power. Our founders also learned from the history of the failure of the Roman Republic 1800 years earlier. The Constitution provided ways to head off dictatorships and to have peaceful regime changes.  Their improvements included the Bill of Rights, protecting citizens also from the tyranny of the majority who could suppress those in the minority,  and an impeachment process in the hands of Congress to rid those committing high crimes, treason, and bribery. The Constitution identified three power centers, legislative, executive, and judicial,  and gave them checks and balances over each other while giving citizens the ability to express their desires in free and fair elections of their representatives and president without foreigners interfering.    We are seeing the impeachment process in action now that involve many of those issues, from bribery to contempt of Congress, to soliciting foreign interference in our elections. To permit such actions to be unchecked and unpunished is giving the green light for future leaders to go and do likewise.  Per  Rep. Elijah Cummings who passed away last week: “When we’re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked: In 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?”
But does anyone care?  In Colorado, polls conducted by Colorado pollster KOM and Channel 7 in mid-October, the majority of Coloradans supported the impeachment inquiry.

______________________________________________________

  The problem with mature dictatorships  or governance by hereditary kings is that they have the unchecked power to  trample the rights, govern by force and fear, take away civil rights and the ability  of the disenfranchised to protest, destroy the independent press and whistleblowing, have a free reign to be corrupt, or make decisions which turn out to harm national security interests, make elections a sham, controlled and without real choices.   The only option left to the population is to take to the streets, a military coup, a civil war, and bloodshed. That is the eventual fate of every dictator and country ruled by such methods and is as true today as it was in the late 1700s or even 2000 years ago. The Constitution provided peaceful means for protest and regime change and protection from a tyrannical leader

Our founders were students of classical history, fluent in Greek and Latin and aided by translations, with access to ancient manuscripts reproduced by the printing press.   The architecture and government they constructed reflected an attempt to improve on the model they admired the most, the  Roman republic.    They had seen what happened 2000 years ago when Tiberius Gracchus, the Trump of his time, became Rome's first strong man, deriving his power from Populares,  the populist movement he led. The movement was the result of a great concentration of wealth and an underclass of those who had struggled as they returned from wars to find themselves without land and a way to make a living.  He left any check of his powers by the Senate in ruins by creating factions that pitted interests of citizens against elites, resulting in a hundred years of turmoil and the eventual death of the Roman republic. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river to bring order and grab power and engineered Senate rules changes to become the first dictator for life.  Augustus, Caeser's adopted nephew,  became the first Roman emperor. It was this history our founders feared would be repeated in their newly independent country. 

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL34097

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ive-long-opposed-impeaching-trump-thats-different-now/2019/10/10/0991817e-eb8e-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html

https://www.people-press.org/topics/political-issue-priorities/

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/impeachment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Gracchus

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-isnt-julius-caesar-hes-republic-killer-tiberius-gracchus?source=articles&via=rss

https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-department-directs-gordon-sondland-not-to-appear-for-house-testimony-lawyer-says-11570538414

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/politics/5-rulings-against-trump-taxes-border-wall-immigration-public-charge/index.html

https://www.skyhinews.com/news/muftic-trump-and-the-gop-congress-madison-warned-us/

From a New Yorker article last week:"In dismissing a request from Trump’s lawyers for a preliminary injunction to prevent Cyrus Vance, the District Attorney for Manhattan, from getting hold of the tax returns, Marrero rejected their legal arguments in a long and, at times, impassioned ruling. “Bared to its core, the proposition the President advances reduces to the very notion that the Founders rejected at the inception of the Republic and that the Supreme Court has since unequivocally repudiated: that a constitutional domain exists in this country in which not only the President but, derivatively, relatives and persons and business entities associated with him in potentially unlawful private activities, are in fact above the law,” Marrero stated. “Because this Court finds aspects of such a doctrine repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values, and for the reasons further stated below, it ABSTAINS from adjudicating this dispute and DISMISSES the President’s suit.”

https://news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-isn-t-julius-092155958.html?soc_src=community&soc_trk=ma