Claims And Issues

"OH, LOOK, A SQUIRREL!"

Small children are easily distracted. Adults relearn this by hanging around them, such as coaching or umpiring Little League games.

Adults generally grow out of distractions. But not always.

“You can fool some of the people all of the time. And you can fool all of the people some of the time. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time,” Abraham Lincoln famously said.

This is true even though adults in modern times have something in their lives that comes between them and their squirrels, their distractions. The filter for adults is the corporate media. The corporate media is so loud and so relentless, it never stops and never seems to shut off. They broadcast squirrels shamelessly (so long as they make money from it, at least).

Even so, you can still fool some people all of the time of course, and you can still fool all of the people some of the time, it’s just easier now.

But you still cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Not now. Not ever.

Download CI 07.31.19.

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THINK ABOUT WHAT you’re GOING TO DO.

On January 20, 2017 the story was that the crowds were huge. That has been said so many times since then, despite all the photographs to the contrary, that some people believe it. The next day – one day later – the first Women’s March was attended in the United States by so many more people that it is reportedly the highest attendance at a protest in American history, ever. Not to mention the many people who marched in other nations.

In the Fall of 2018, the story was that Democrats would lose big. They were big losers, supposedly, and that mantra was repeated so many times that many people either believed it or feared it, or both. The Democrats cleaned their opponents’ clocks in the Midterms of 2018. They did it by running their races with boldness, grace, and courage. Their opponents pushed fear and lost.

My daughter attended a softball camp when she was younger. The coach was Lonnie Richardson. At the time, he was a coach of a college softball team and his sister was and is Dr. Dot Richardson, a softball Olympian and a true great of the sport. Lonnie Richardson said that when his sister is at bat “she’s not thinking of what the pitcher is going to do, she’s thinking of what she’s going to do.”

The moral of the story is really simple: Think about what you’re going to do.

Download CI 07.24.19.

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ANTI-CATHOLIC DISCRIMINATION AT THE BORDER?

The treatment of immigrants at the border is not completely understood but it is well-known to be bad. Many if not most of the immigrants are Catholic. Are they being discriminated against because they are Catholic?

Centuries ago this country gave shelter in some places to the “Know Nothing Party.” The Know Nothings hated immigrants and minorities, and just about anybody that was not white. They made some exceptions to their hatred of people who were not white, though.

They reserved a lot of their hatred in particular for Catholics.

It deserves asking again, then: Are the actions of the occupiers of the current federal government unjustly discriminating against immigrants because they are scared of Catholics?

The Know Nothings ride again. On the same hatreds.

Download CI 07.22.19.

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IT’S ALL IN THE WRIST. MAYBE IT’S IN ATTITUDE INSTEAD.

    A woman was born with polio. Let’s call her Dianne. (That’s her name.)
    She can still walk but it’s becoming more of a chore. She uses a motorized wheel chair a lot now.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

    Today Dianne went for an x-ray. Alone.
    She pulled into the parking lot by the front door. Luck or her guardian angel or both were with her. She found a space right near the front door which opened automatically.
    The x-ray office was down the hall near the back door to the building. The back door is not automatic.     Neither is the door to the x-ray office.
    Dianne waited by both doors until someone came through the back door. (It would have to be an able-bodied person, of course, since the back door does not open automatically.) Soon a woman entered the building through the back door. She had children in tow, one child holding each hand. Dianne asked her if she could ask a favor.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

    The woman said “Sure.” She may have had the back door in mind since a handicapped person in a wheelchair clearly cannot open it, and that’s what she had in front of her, namely, a handicapped person in a wheelchair. Although the back door had no sign on it one way or the other.
    However the favor that Dianne asked was instead to open the nearby door to the x-ray office. The woman said “Of course,” and she did.
    Dianne said to her then: “You see, you didn’t know when you woke up this morning that you were going to be an angel. But you were.”

    The children beamed to hear this truth be told about their mom.

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Download CI 07.17.19.

THANK YOU, JOSH GOTTHEIMER.

The House passed a bill to re—fund Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which would have contained some protections for the children at the border. The Senate passed its own bill first, however. Blessed both by Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer, the Senate bill contained no protections but a lot of money with conditions that could easily be broken when the money – taxpayer money, your money and my money -- is spent.
    Then the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was confronted by a group of Representatives who insisted on passing only the Senate bill when it came to the House for a vote. (Senator McConnell refused to take a vote in the Senate on the House bill.) The group is called “the Problem Solvers” caucus. Half of its members are Republicans, and half describe themselves as Democrats. One of their co-chairs is Rep. Josh Gottheimer from New Jersey.
    Speaker Pelosi decided that she had no leverage and caved on the bill which the House had already passed, in favor of the Senate bill which Rep. Gottheimer and his caucus insisted was the only bill they would vote for now.
    That is how the House of Representatives passed the Senate bill as the law of the land with no conditions restricting how the current federal government spends the ICE money, whether to build a wall, or build or destroy something else, their choice.
    Representative Gottheimer and his caucus are interesting stories. Mr. Gottheimer was first elected to Congress in 2016. He represents a district that had previously elected Republicans for more than 20 years. During his short time in the House, he has represented Republicans although he registers as a Democrat. “He has consistently voted against the party even on procedural motions, threatening to hand control over the House to the GOP.” Ryan Grim, The Democratic Counterrevolution Has a Self-Appointed Leader: Josh Gottheimer, THE INTERCEPT online May 8, 2019.
    During a hearing in April of the House Financial Services Committee, on which he currently serves, Mr. Gottheimer was careful to present the Wall Street side of how they actually do good for their customers. The Chair of the Committee, Rep. Maxine Waters, called the hearing “Holding Megabanks Accountable.” Representative Gottheimer’s idea of holding megabanks accountable was to ask Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase whether Dimon could talk about “the work that your firm has done in the small-business lending arena and how those loans are helping to facilitate small-business growth.” So, in Gottheimer’s mind, that is holding megabanks accountable.
    Mr. Gottheimer has voted with much the same view against holding Saudi Arabia to account for its activities in Yemen, activities in which thousands of innocent civilians – men, women, and children too – have lost their lives at the hands of the Saudis. Despite that, and despite the dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi Arabia’s monarchy, Mr. Gottheimer not only voted against the initial House resolution based on the War Powers Act to demand that the current federal government stop supporting the Saudi’s war in Yemen.  He actively worked against it, essentially declaring according to reports that a vote for the resolution would be a vote against Israel.  (I don't know how a vote for the resolution to stop U.S. assistance to Saudi war-making in Yemen could possibly be twisted into a vote against Israel, but I am not the one who said so in the first place.)  

    The resolution eventually was passed in both the House and the Senate (it was ultimately vetoed). However, Mr. Gottheimer’s opposition as a so-called Democrat was not welcome. “This is a thing that he’s doing consistently, helping to organize against progress,” as Elizabeth Beavers described Gottheimer’s conduct on the War Powers resolution. Ms. Beavers was Associate Policy Director of Indivisible at the time.
    Disappointing, perhaps, but Representative Gottheimer’s attempt to intervene in the House on behalf of Saudi Arabia should not have come as a surprise. Mr. Gottheimer is reportedly among the top 20 recipients of Saudi money who serve in Congress, whether Republican or Democrat. However, the top 20 includes many leaders and legislators who have been in Congress long before 2016, when Mr. Gottheimer arrived. “Nobody as junior as Gottheimer comes anywhere close.” Grim, The Self-Appointed Leader: Josh Gottheimer, supra.
    Josh Gottheimer’s New Jersey district changed hands when the federal government changed hands, in 2016. An official of Indivisible who supported him in that election, says “we just want him to meet us halfway and act like a normal Democrat who believes in the party.” Quoted in Grim, The Self-Appointed Leader: Josh Gottheimer, supra.

    Still waiting.

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Download CI 07.15.19.

WHY IS CURRENT APPOINTEE BERMAN INDICTING EPSTEIN, RISKING TELLING TALES?

Geoffrey Berman is indicting Jeffrey Epstein in federal court in the Southern District of New York. There is no issue but that Epstein deserves the indictment. But why has Mr. Berman indicted Mr. Epstein?
Geoffrey S. Berman is the current appointee as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was Rudy Giuliani’s law partner before he was appointed U.S. Attorney. See Alan Feuer, Trump May Nominate a Giuliani Law Partner as U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, NEW YORK TIMES online August 7, 2017 (New York Times may charge for online access).
Epstein apparently would have much to say about New York figures, if he talks.
So why has Berman been allowed to make that risk happen? Berman’s boss is Bill Barr. We all know who Bill Barr’s boss is.
I sense that not just current occupants of office are potentially in this picture, but I sense that Bill Clinton is also in this picture somewhere. And possibly Hillary Clinton too.
The stories Epstein could tell. If he talks.

Download CI 07.10.19.1.
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JULY 9 LAST DAY TO COMMENT ON "MIXED STATUS FAMILIES RULE."

Tomorrow at the close of day, Tuesday, July 9, 2019, the Comment period will end for HUD to accept Comments to the proposed Mixed Status Families rules changes.  The changes, proposed by Mr. Stephen Miller, are worth a look and so are the Comments.

Comments on proposed rules changes are easy to make.  Just go to regulations.gov and input the Docket Number or RIN (or both, in an abundance of caution).  That information is included in my own Comments, below, which I left on Monday, July 8, 2019.

July 8, 2019
BY POSTING TO FEDERAL eRULEMAKING PORTAL
IN WORD AND pdf

Federal eRulemaking Portal: www.regulations.gov.
Regulations Division
Office of General Counsel
Department of Housing and Urban Development
451 7th Street SW, Room 10267
Washington, DC 20410-0500

Re: HUD Docket No. FR-6124-P-01. RIN 2501-AD89.

To the Department of Housing and Urban Development:

These Comments concern changes to Mixed Status Families Rules proposed by HUD. My Comments break down into a number of concrete areas, identified below.

    1. The origin of your proposed Rules changes is irrational. I understand that HUD’s
proposed Mixed Status Families Rules changes were not written or researched by HUD. They were written by a current employee of the White House, Mr. Stephen Miller, who has parenthetically not been appointed to any position in the federal government. Mr. Miller’s proposals were shown to HUD Secretary Benjamin Carson, who I understand did not like them but neither did he oppose them.
    The origin story of these changes exponentially increases the chances that a Court will find the changes irrational. As noted below, there are other reasons that your proposed changes are irrational. My first point is that, whether taken separately or together with the other reasons discussed below, a Court is more likely than not to hold that your proposed changes are irrational and even “contrived,” to borrow a word from Chief Justice Robert’s recent opinion on proposed rules changes to the United States Census.

    2. Millions of dollars will be lost to HUD if your proposed Rules changes are finalized
because undocumented immigrants are among the most reliable tenants HUD has. The current status of the law is that so long as one member of a family is a citizen of the United States, the family is entitled to HUD housing as I understand it. Your proposed Rules changes would stand the law on its head. Mr. Miller’s proposal would be to deny HUD housing to anyone in a family who is not a citizen or is an undocumented immigrant, leaving behind the person(s) in that family who are U.S. citizens, mostly children.
    “The primary cost would be the economic costs of moving.” HUD’s Regulatory Impact Analysis (“RIA”) of these proposed rules changes, Docket No. FR-6124-P-01, at 13 (April 15, 2019). HUD’s Regulatory Impact Analysis does not come out and say so, but the moving costs estimated by HUD at between $9,500,000 and $13,000,000 would be borne by the mixed families assuming that they could come up with that amount of money.
    A secondary but inevitable cost would be formal eviction. HUD would bear the costs of formal eviction. HUD estimates its costs for formally evicting families under the proposed Mixed Status Families rules as between $3,300,000 and $4,400,000, or between $3.3 Million and $4.4 Million. RIA, Docket No. FR-6124-P-01, at 4 and 15 (April 15, 2019).
    Any parent knows that most children will follow their evicted parents. As HUD’s own Regulatory Impact Analysis crudely put it, “Most ineligibles live in small households that could not easily separate.” RIA, Docket No. FR-6124-P-01, at 16 (April 15, 2019).
    That means that inevitably HUD will lose these people as tenants. Putting to one side the moral and ethical failures of such changes, the loss of these families as tenants would be an economic catastrophe.
    Undocumented immigrants are among the most reliable tenants that HUD has. They do not want to attract the attention that would come their way if they do not pay their rent on time. It would be irrational to evict them or otherwise force them to move out of the HUD housing on which they currently and faithfully pay rent. Their rent payments total millions of dollars, all of which would be lost to HUD and the federal taxpayer. This result is not rational. The proposed changes under consideration do not serve any other purpose which is itself either rational or desirable.

    3. Replacing these mixed immigration households that would be displaced if the Rules
changes are finalized would cost HUD millions of dollars excluding even lost rental monies. HUD would be required to pay full subsidies for each resident that would be left in a household in subsidized public housing. Under the law, the amount of subsidies is prorated according to the number of undocumented immigrants (no subsidy) vs. the number of legal residents (subsidized). If these proposed changes were made, the costs to HUD would then be in the millions of dollars because HUD would be paying direct subsidies calculated by each individual person that remains in HUD housing. There would be no prorating HUD’s payments then.
    HUD published its own “Summary of Transfers” Table to show the total estimated costs of replacing mixed status families currently receiving HUD housing assistance (subsidies), with households in which every single individual is eligible for HUD housing assistance, at $372 Million “annually” (without saying for how long these “annual” costs would continue) as a “Low Estimate,” and $437 Million “annual” costs as a “High Estimate.” In other words, in just the first year the costs of these proposed Rules changes are estimated by HUD to run between $372 Million and $437 Million. HUD RIA, Docket No. FR-6124-P-01, at 11 (April 15, 2019).
    No telling how many years such “annual” costs or any “annual” costs like them would continue if the proposed Mixed Status Families rules changes are finalized and adopted.
    And for what return on this expense? This too is another reason that the proposed Rules changes are irrational. They are almost certain to be found irrational by a Court as soon as they are challenged in litigation. Knowing that up front, so to speak, what reason can HUD give for pursuing these proposed changes and incurring these certain expenses?
    If there is a good reason, I have not heard it.

Conclusion

The fact that HUD did not write or research the proposed rules changes in question is an untreatable wound to the viability of the Mixed Status Families rules changes. The fact that these proposals were presented to HUD by political employee(s) without HUD’s involvement and without HUD’s intervention, but only with HUD’s acquiescence in their false presentation of “contrived” reasons for their adoption, is fatal to their implementation as law in the United States.
Further, finalization and adoption of these proposals will result in the loss of millions of dollars of rental payments to HUD with no offsetting benefits whatsoever.
    Finally, additional “annual” costs will accrue to HUD by HUD’s own best estimates over an unstated period of time, if these proposed Rules changes are finalized and adopted, somewhere between $372 Million and $437 Million a year.
    Whether these considerations are taken separately or together, they require HUD to withdraw the proposed Mixed Status Families rules changes or suffer certain judicial rulings striking them down as what they are, “contrived.”
    Instead, HUD itself has proposed alternatives. Some of them are rational. See RIA, Docket No. FR-6124-P-01, at 17, in paragraph titled, “Alternatives” (April 15, 2019). Consider them instead, even as you withdraw the current proposed rules changes.

    Thank you for your consideration.

Download HUD'S MIXED STATUS FAMILIES RULE COMMENTS.07.08.19.

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THIS IS HOW WE CELEBRATE THE FOURTH OF JULY NOW.

Really? Really.

Here is the full report of the Inspector General:   Download OIG-19-51-Jul19_.

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THEY ARE HIS PARTY ALSO. WHAT DIFFERENCE DO DEMOCRATS MAKE?

A majority of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives were very afraid of giving their potential re-election opponents something to say about them if they left town for July 4th without passing a bill to fund border control and ICE, that they voted for a bill to provide the money without any restrictions.

They voted for a bill that was already approved by the White House and by the Senate. It has no restrictions on how the current federal government spends the money. The White House and the Senate refused even to look at the House bill that had restrictions.

After voting for the Senate version, the House Democrats left town.

They voted like Republicans. What difference do Democrats make?

See Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Emily Cochrane, House Passes Senate Border Bill in a Startling Setback for Pelosi, New York Times, Friday, June 28, 2019, p. A1. Parenthetically, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was not startled, despite the headline on the linked article.  She almost certainly knew what was going to happen all week long.  So did Chuck Schumer as we know from an earlier article posted here this morning.

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CHUCK SCHUMER, IT'S NO RUMOR: YOU'VE GOT TO GO.

The idea was that the House would propose restrictions on the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The non-negotiable restrictions would include limitations on spending to protect the children in ICE custody and the right of Members of Congress to check on ICE detentions without warning.

The Senate would then vote on its own budget bill for ICE. After that, the two versions would be reconciled and the non-negotiable restrictions on spending would be in the budget.

That did not happen. Instead, Chuck Schumer ("the Senator from Wall Street") once again voted like a Republican. Once again, he also urged the Democratic minority in the Senate to vote Republican.

What was also unmistakably on display this time was Chuck Schumer's new tactic. He acted opposite to what he promised the Democrats in the House. Once the Senate passed the Republican bill, the House had no more negotiating leverage. And the House capitulated. No restrictions on the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to protect the children as in the House bill.

See Jennifer Haberkorn and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Pelosi Takes a Hit as Congress Approves Border Crisis Money, Los Angeles Times online June 27, 2019.

Chuck Schumer, it's no rumor: You've got to go.

Keep looking behind you on his way out.

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