GLIMPSES . . .

The GOP Far Right is Far Wrong on Immigration Reform

Is there any issue the GOP’s far right Frightfuls can’t turn into a cauldron of contention?

The correct answer is “No.!”

The latest issue to fall victim to the Frightfuls’ lack of empathy, disregard for common sense, and intransigence is the discussion over reforming the nation’s immigration laws. The Far Right specifically rejects the notion that the 11,000,000 so-called “illegals” who have been living and working in the United States should be allowed to stay in their jobs, live in the nation, and earn their way to full citizenship.

The President, and a number of legislators think those persons who entered the country illegally should remain and be offered a chance to become full -fledged citizens. A recent CBS News poll found that a majority of Americans (51 percent) agreed with the President. A Fox News poll found that 66 percent of Americans believe the undocumented should be allowed to apply for citizenship if they meet requirements.

It’s common knowledge that most of the undocumented workers who have been living in the nation are hard- working and respectable. They have children who were born here and are U.S. citizens. And throughout their stay here they have suffered from the constant fear of arrest and deportation, and from the many disadvantages of non-citizenship. That is unrelenting punishment of a sort. The Frightfuls want to convert the punishment to life sentences.

It’s only realistic—commonsensical—to acknowledge it would be impossible and horrendous for the national image to try and deport 11 million people. Otherwise what should be done? Would the Absurdists establish internment camps? Create gulags, meaning slave labor camps? Certainly not.

Among other things, the President would increase border security, create a temporary guest-worker system, require businesses to verify the citizenship status of those they hire, reform the visa-granting system, and increase incentives for admitting specially skilled foreigners. Importantly, he would establish a set of requirements for the undocumented to meet in order to gain citizenship.

There are a number of solid and persuasive reasons to adopt the President’s thoughtful outline. David Brooks, The New York Times’ brilliant conservative columnist, argues, “The forlorn pundit doesn’t even have to make the humanitarian case that immigration reform would be a great victory for human dignity. The cold economic case by itself is so strong.”

Mr. Brooks points out that illegal immigrants are not “socially disruptive.” They don’t “drain the federal budget.” And there is increasing evidence that they don’t even cause the wages of low-skill citizens to decline.

It’s fair to say that when most people think of “illegal” immigrants they typically think of Mexicans and others from Latin countries, for in the past they have seemed to swarm across our southern border. Americans can readily recall reports of “illegals” overwhelming U.S. hospital emergency rooms, of damaging crops, despoiling wells, and stealing poultry from border ranches. True some, maybe many, illegal border crossers created nasty mischief.

But most did not.

The typical illegal has been desperate to provide adequately for himself or his (or her) family. The illegal has done exactly what many U.S. citizens would do if caught in similar circumstances. Having run out of options at home and despairing of ever obtaining legal entry into their neighboring country, they risked intense suffering and death to cross relentless desert areas to a place where they might find work and survive.

Many, if not most, of the illegals possess the fundamental qualities—the “family values”—the GOP urges and presumably esteems. In general the border crossers have shown the kind of persistence and courage that most of us admire.

Sure, some have created problems: Some are criminals. Some are rowdies. Some are unbelievably ignorant and, for instance, try to drive without licenses and without really knowing how to drive. A number have been forced to obtain fraudulent identification.

For instance a small town Iowa police chief told Glimpse he had four guys in his lockup who were arrested for drunkenness and brawling. The chief said:

“They all speak Mexican, which I don’t. They all have identical phony identification. Each one is named Rodriquez. So what do you do?”

There is not much talk about the occasional Belgian student or the charming Irish bartender who has overstayed his visitor’s visa for a decade or so. We don’t bother much about such folks.

No, the unwanted illegal whom the Frightfuls want to punish rather than help is typically brown or black, and poor, and needy, and often desperate.

There’s a lady standing at one entry to America. She stands tall with a torch in her bronze hand. On the pedestal at her feet , are words the Congressional Frightfuls should heed. They say:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

For heaven’s sake Congress, give 11,000,000 of our neighbors a break.

--Gus Gribbin

>> The David Brooks column on immigration is titled “The Easy Problem.” It appeared on the Times Op- Ed Page on Friday 2/1/13.

The Second Inaugural—an eloquent, spirit-lifting call to act

The darkly handsome American President looked at a throng of hundreds of thousands of his citizens and spoke to them with clarity, common sense, and compassion--three of the qualities that won an election and have bred a devout new political majority.

In his 18-minute Second Inaugural Address, he precisely expressed the feelings, the wishes, the ideals of the millions who voted for him. He reaffirmed their belief that their ideals are based on the vision of our Founding Fathers and on our historic commitment to the “the most evident of truths” that all men are created equal.

That truth, the President declared, “is the star that guides us still just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall”—Seneca Falls, site of a first step toward women’s equality; Selma, Alabma, where cruelty to blacks spurred action toward civil rights; Stonewall, where barbarity toward homosexuals gave rise to gay power.

The inaugural address made history. No previous President had spoken the word “gay” in an inaugural, and Mr. Obama linked the cause of lesbians and homosexuals seeking their civil rights with the cause of blacks and other minorities.

“We will respond to the threat of climate change,” he insisted. And although the nation must “make hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit…we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generations that will build its future.”

For many if not most who heard his powerful and passionate voice, his words gave comfort and assurance. He understands their craving for a country built on confidence, optimism, and concern for those who need help to free themselves from poverty, illness, and despair.

Mr. Obama’s speech contained news. It sounded a call for “We the people” to realistically address the major concerns of our time. “For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militia.”

As Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson pointed out, no President since Ronald Reagan in 1981 has given such an ideological speech. But where Mr. Reagan demanded curtailing government programs, Mr. Obama has rightly declared we will continue them sensibly. He signaled that to the extent he and his majority can, they will block the Far Right’s 80-year fight to demolish Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and vastly diminish the solace it has given the nation’s jobless, aged, and sick.

During coverage of Mr. Obama’s address, CBS Anchor Scott Pelley asked CBS’s venerable commentator, Bob Schieffer to analyze the speech. Said Schieffer, “There were no really memorable lines.” No lines similar to President Franklin Roosevelt’s declaration that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” or President John Kennedy’s insistence that we should “Ask not what your country can or for you, but what you can do for your country.”

It’s true. But that’s an observation not an analysis.

In fact, Mr. Obama’s speech is historic and memorable in its entirety.

It eloquently expresses the feelings of those who wish to live in a strong, noble, caring nation that surges forward based on optimism, inventiveness, hard work, and sensible change.

He challenged us to act. “For now decisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.”

Maybe, just maybe—or hopefully—the not-so-loyal GOP opposition will carefully consider those words and not react as Texas Representative Pete Sessions did after the speech. The New York Times reported that Mr. Sessions said:

“It was apparent our country’s in chaos and what our great president has brought us is upheaval. We’re now managing America’s demise, not America’s great future.”

Poor Mr. Sessions. He doesn’t understand that as Mr. Meyerson explained, Mr. Obama was speaking “secure in the knowledge that the nation’s minorities had joined with other liberal constituencies to form a new governing coalition.”

Most Americans prefer Mr. Obama’s thinking to the grumpy thoughts of GOP Frightfuls like Mr. Sessions. Soon ,we can hope, the Frightfuls may be forced to flee to the exit.

Gus Gribbin

Ø Mr. Meyerson”s column appeared on the Washington Post Op Ed Page on 1/23/13. meyersonh@washingtonpost.com

Obama Refuses to Play Congress’s Nasty Game

The GOP’s far-right Frightfuls again are snarling and gnashing their teeth. They’re growling that they will blackmail the President, sayings they won’t raise the debt ceiling unless he yields on their demands that he slash spending on the poor, the sick, children, and the infirm among other cuts.

The Absurdists insist he must make enough cuts to equal the amount the U.S. is authorized to spend to pay its creditors. That would be $16.4 trillion, and that would be devastating.

Despite the President’s insistence that he won’t yield and deal as he did in the past, the Fringe Dwellers think he will. They seem to believe he has no choice because the results of failure to raise the debt ceiling are so ghastly and destructive.

But the President is telling them they’re wrong. He will not bargain over the debt ceiling. “They will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not bargaining chip,” Mr. Obama said at his January 14 press conference.

Here’s hoping Mr. Obama doesn’t relent. It is Congress’s job to pass enabling legislation to allow payment of the bills Congress has already racked up through its legislation. The legislators must do their job. The President has said he will have the “conversation” about measure to decrease the nation’s deficit later.

Less zany legislators are, of course, worried. On January 11, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Charles E. Schumer of New York, and Patty Murray of Washington, sent a letter to the President. They asked him to take “any lawful steps” to avoid a default on the debt if the Republicans continue threatening to shut down the government.

In response the President has indicated he won’t take such steps. “There are no magic tricks here, no loopholes. There’s no easy way out.”

So now the suspense increases. Who will blink first in what economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman calls the ”vile absurdity of the debt ceiling confrontation”?

There may be a couple tricks—well, possibly one—the President might use if the Absurdists decide to shut down the government to get their way.

On the off chance you haven’t heard, here’s what some have suggested.

Way One: Mr. Krugman has explains in his New York Times column that the President could order the Treasury Department to mint a platinum coin (or coins) with a face value of, say, a trillion or so dollars. The Treasury would then deposit the coin at the Federal Reserve. The Reserve would credit the trillion or more dollars to the government’s account, and the government could write checks against that account.

This gambit is possible because of an arcane law that allows Treasury to mint and issue special platinum coins as commemoratives—as collectors’ items. The number or denomination of such coins isn’t specified. The law allows the President to use what Mr. Krugman calls a “legal coin trick” to save the country from domestic upheaval and international scorn.

To those concerned that issuing the magic coin might trigger inflation, Mr. Krugman states:

“Aside from the fact that printing money isn’t inflationary under current conditions, the Fed could and would offset the Treasury’s cash withdrawals by selling other assets or borrowing more from banks, so that in reality the U.S. government as a whole (which includes the Fed) would continue with normal borrowing. Basically, this would just be an accounting trick, but that’s a good thing.”

There’s a problem with the coin trick. The Treasury has declared it won’t mint the coin. It’s not clear what would happen if the President ordered it to do so. Most say it’s a silly idea anyway.

Way Two: The President could issue “registered warrants,” meaning script or “IOUs” to the nation’s creditors, especially including federal workers, federal health care providers, contractors, Medicare recipients, and those on Social Security.

The idea comes from Edward D. Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California and former chief of staff at the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. He explains in a New York Times Op-Ed article that the IOUs could be redeemed for cash when the Treasury Department could assure there was enough money available in the general fund to cover the payments. Presumably that would occur when Congress raised the debt ceiling.

In favor of his idea, Mr. Kleinbard, states that the IOUs would not violate the debt ceiling because they, “wouldn’t constitute a new borrowing of money backed by the credit of the United States.”

Furthermore, he notes the IOU gimmick works. In July 2009 California began issuing 450,000 IOU’s, promising to pay creditors $2.6 billion. The IOUs went to aid workers, persons owed tax refunds, government contractors, and others. The IOU holders were in most cases able to sell those registered warrants to banks at face value.

That move by Gov. Jerry Brown broke the deadlock in the California legislature. The lawmakers quickly agreed on a budget. And on January 10 this year, Gov. Brown announced that California’s famously devastating budget “deficit is gone.” He said, “For the next four years, we are talking about a balanced budget.”

There might be other Presidential options too. But the President is right in dismissing them. He must hang tough, and not let the GOP Nasties blackmail him. He should show he can be as uncompromising as the Frightfuls. After all, they started the fight. And if they decide to bludgeon the nation and its citizens to get their way, they’ll surely regret it later.

--Gus Gribbin

The Season's Excitement? Gone. Fled North

January 2, 2013 rolled in like a flat tire. It led a caravan of days that thud and thump along, towing winter’s drab days.

Gone is the excitement and suspense of Christmas.

Gone is the lesser excitement of watching the ball fall in New York’s Times Square.

Calls from the kids and grandkids about what to bring to the parties—stop.

Lights that brightened and dazzled the neighborhood— switched off, unplugged.

The wreathes, tree balls, little statues of Santa, elves, galloping reindeer, and so much more had been placed accompanied by carols, hymns, and season songs. They’re put away tunelessly.

November and December’s excitement—all gone.

Where to?

At the university in a grand city by a Great Lake, events replaced the vanished excitement. You moved immersed in the whirr of cheery undergrads pounding up and down stairs, flopping into classroom seats, shoving into the arena’s student-section, screaming, “Shoot, shoot, shoot!…Defense, defense, defense!”

Would the Golden Eagles make the Big Dance? Oh my god! They will. They will!

Fresh excitement. Rising hopes.

In the grand city by the Great Lake, white flakes filter down and mound. Out the skis would come. Friends soon would glide along winding trails though evergreen forests.

In the grand city by the Great Lake, excitement thrived in bright wintry days. And Nature added her own decorations.

In a small city by a little lake near the World’s capital, Nature provides a less spectacular show.

How long ‘till spring?

---Gus Gribbin

Can House Right-Wingers Be As Irrational As They Seem?

Why do Tea Partiers and other GOP right-wingers work so hard to alienate their less dense, less obtuse fellow citizens?

Why do Tea Partiers and other GOP right-wingers fail to grasp that in a democracy the majority rules?

And what makes Tea Partiers and their fellow travelers so stubborn, so dedicated to the perverse and counter-productive policy against raising taxes?

They can be assured that the majority of U.S. citizens approve the plan the President has put forward for averting nasty problems raised by the so-called Fiscal Cliff. It seems the citizenry backs him even though he has even modified his plan to suit republican preferences.

Mr. Obama has tried to be fair. He has been upfront. He has been logical, consistent, and diplomatic. He knows that most of the nation does not want him to yield on the points he ran on in the election and that Americans don’t want the right-wingers to have their way.

And yet the stubborn, selfish Johnny- one-notes in the GOP keep defying the President and the majority of Americans.

Listen up right wingers. America knows you are the bad guys.

The President himself provided insight into why the rightists oppose him. He said:

“I’m often reminded when I speak to the Republican leadership that the majority of their caucus membership comes from districts that I lost. And so sometimes they may not see an incentive in cooperating with me, in part because they’re more concerned about challenges from a tea party candidate, or challenges from the right, and cooperating with me may make them vulnerable. I recognize that.

“But goodness….If there’s one thing we should have after this week [in which the slaughter of the innocent children in Connecticut took place] it should be a sense of perspective about what’s important…Right now what the country needs is for us to compromise, get a deficit reduction deal in place; make sure middle class taxes don’t go up….”

Though Mr. Obama’s words have most fair-minded people nodding in agreement, the House no-compromise Republicans dismiss them.

So on the first day of winter, a gray, wind-whipped day in our neighborhood, the House right-wingers have presented the nation with a bleak outlook. The President’s rational plan is still opposed by irrational Republicans.

The President—we sincerely hope—will stand fast. Consequently the universal tax increase and drastic cuts in government programs will take effect at the turn of the New Year. Many of us will see thousands drained from their incomes.

The Republicans will have engineered exactly what they’ve been arguing against—a tax hike. They will have infuriated the nation and proved again there is such a thing as a tyranny of the minority. Obduracy and disregard for the common good will have prevailed.

It seems likely, though, that when the constituents of the hard-headed right-wingers feel the sting of new taxes they’ll howl.

But wait. You know no politicians would be dumb enough to outrage their constituents—do you think?

---Gus Gribbin

Move over Grover the Pres is in the driver’s seat

After years, Grover Norquist, the chubby-faced GOP kingmaker with the pseudo beard, is watching his formidable clout weaken. In the face of a determined President, his loyalists are beginning to ignore their oath of fealty, the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

What’s more, one or Mr. Norquist’s staunchest soldiers, Senator Jim DeMint, a Tea Party icon, has deserted. The South Carolina Senator announced on December 6 that he is abandoning his Senate seat to assume the presidency of the conservative Heritage Foundation, an assisted living facility for feeble GOP ideas.

Also ,South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, Georgia Sen. Saxby Chamblis, Arizona Senator John McCain, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn and New York Rep. Peter King and Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell have inched away from Mr. Norquist’s no-tax-hike demand.

Plus, Lesley Stahl noted on 60 Minutes (Dec. 9, 2012) that several newly elected GOP Representatives have refused to take the Norquist pledge.

These developments cheer many U.S. citizens who have deplored the stubborn. Counter -productive and corrosive power of Norquist and his Tea Party cohorts.

The catalyst for change among the GOPers is the so-called Fiscal Cliff, the law that blends universal tax raises and spending cuts in an attempt to reduce the federal budget. The law takes effect on January 1 unless substitute legislation can be passed.

President Obama has been wonderfully stubborn in demanding that, to avoid the toxic mixture of tax raises and spending cuts, he wants a law that raises taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year. He would leave the tax rate as it is for those earning below that amount. He also says he is prepared to make significant cuts in spending. Many polls have indicated that a large majority of Americans like the President’s idea.

But as the world knows, Republican House members who cherish Norquist’s no- tax-raise philosophy as an article of faith refuse to go along with the President’s plan. This despite the widespread belief that the President’s plan is workable and fair.

Most Americans want the Republicans to yield. And if they do, their yielding may tip off a decline of the Republican Right wing’s passionately wrong-headed and unpatriotic no-compromise approach to legislation.

David Brooks, the New York Times’ famed conservative columnist, noted early this month (Dec. 4; Op Ed page) that the GOP Right is “stuck in a miserable position.”

Mr. Brooks points out that the majority of Americans have said they will blame Republicans if there is no deal to avoid the Fiscal Cliff. The business community desperately wants the issue to be resolved and is tending to blame the Republicans for failure to compromise. Mr. Brooks predicts, “The national security types and defense contractors who hate the prospect of sequestration—the tax hike, spending cut law—will turn against them.”

Mr. Brooks adds that the Republicans will have to give in on the tax-hike for the wealthy. Otherwise Republicans will be taxing the middle class to “serve the rich—shafting Sam’s Club to benefit the country club.”

In a December 6 article, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. pointed out that “…elections are 2x4s and many conservatives seem to realize the need to understand what just hit them.”

What hit them is the fact many citizens long for Norquist and his no-tax henchmen and Tea Party acolytes to shut up and go away. There’s now hope that might happen

---Gus Gribbin

An Odd Theft and an Odder Mystery

The thieves stealthily trucked ladders, an electricity generator and circular power saw into the Sierra Nevada’s Volcanic Tableland and carved, battered, and stole precious images carved into the area’s rugged cliffs some 3,500 years ago.

The event occurred on Halloween. The Los Angeles Times first reported the event on November 14, and television and eastern papers later carried spot accounts.

The media told when, where, and how the heist took place. There may be little hope of finding who did the deed, and no one has yet asked why they might have done it.

What was the motive for what archeologist Greg Haverstock of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management called, “the worst act of vandalism ever seen” on the Bureau’s 750,000-acre parkland?

Pondering the answer is interesting.

After all, the pillagers went to absurd lengths; this was hardly a Halloween prank. Clearly this was vandalism. But the evidence indicates it was much more than that.

Videos of the site show the thieves made clean careful cuts in removing four petroglyphs that occupied a spot 15 feet above ground. The pillagers botched one of the images, fruitlessly slicing into three sides. They managed to extract a sixth carving then apparently broke it. They left it near the site’s visitors’ parking lot. A dozen other images were defaced perhaps out of frustration, spite, or just for fun.

The theft outraged BLM officials, and grieved Paiute-Shoshone tribe members who regard the images as sacred. They treat the rock-carving site as a sort of church and bring their young there to learn of and venerate the tribe’s past and its traditions. The pillaging was to them equivalent to defacing Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall or the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Bernadette Lovato, BLM Office Manager at the site, said informing tribal leaders of the theft “was the toughest telephone call I ever had to make. Their culture and spiritual beliefs had been horribly violated.”

So why would the thieves go to such lengths? It’s estimated that the images might fetch between $500 and $1,000. That could be enough to temp down–and- out druggies or otherwise desperate people. But would they market images?

The carved- out slabs of stone are bulky and hard to transport, They’re not likely to show well at the local art fair. Importantly, reputable art dealers would probably know these images are stolen –bad news for the would-be seller.

Another possibility: the thieves were hired cop the images.

It’s well known that eccentric, greedy, and unscrupulous art connoisseurs will go to any lengths to obtain objects they covet. Such art collectors are known to hoard art even though they can’t display or sell acquired works that are too famous or are being actively sought. One example: In 1939 after the deaths of archeologist Howard Carter, precious bracelets and other objects stolen from King Tut’s tomb were found in his house. It was Carter who discovered the tomb.

Art crime is big time. It involves heists by mobsters, art dealers, small time hoods, and bungling amateurs. The FBI estimates that art-related crimes amount to some $6 billion a year. The agency has 14 special agents working to solve such crimes and operates the National Stolen Art File

It could take a while to find the culprits in the petroglyphs thefts. It’s not even clear the thefts are being investigated. Neither the FBI nor the Bureau of Land Management has responded to requests for information about the status of the case,

Someday though, those images which were patiently, tediously, and lovingly carved with the most primitive tools might turn up. They could be tossed on the side of the road, or thrown in a dump site, or charmingly mounted in the home of deceased art lover .

It’s even possible that whoever arranged or did the theft will have a change of heart and leave the rock carvings at the spot where they were taken.

I agree. That’s not likely.

--Gus Gribbin