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DeSantis and Abbott Fly Migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, NYC, and D.C. at Taxpayer Expense |
| Map to help locate Martha's Vineyard. (Anyplace on this map is superior to anyplace in DeSantis' Florida.) |
It should sicken most Americans that Republicans still pull stuff like this, sending migrants to places they consider ‘sanctuary’ cities, most recently, Martha’s Vineyard.
It’s a reprise
of what opponents of civil rights did back in the Fifties and Sixties to
attempt to embarrass those who believed that skin color had nothing to do with
being an American. That the Florida legislature, dominated by a bunch of
heartless Republicans (the other kind seem to keep their mouths shut out of
fear of losing the fascist vote) authorizes $12,000,000 to pay for these
schoolyard pranks is reason enough to throw them all out of office on November
8. Voting for any Republican is
insanity. Clinically as well as poliically
The cruel
governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, taking time off from tormenting women who want
an abortion, is just as bad, sending planeloads of migrants to Washington, DC,
and busing them to Vice President Harris’ street and dropping them off
there. Of course, just like dumb
Floridians, dumb Texans paid for this stunt, believing it was done with federal
funds provided to these States, albeit for other purposes.
The federal
government, which is trying mightily to solve the immigration problem on our
Southern border, should not sit idly by as these two schoolyard bullies play
games with these would-be immigrants’ lives, many of whom are awaiting court
action on their claims of seeking asylum.
They should come back at them with whatever legal remedies are possible.
This is just another reason why it is insanity, and of course, un-American, to vote for any Republican, not that their opposition to women’s abortion rights and every single American's voting rights isn’t already enough. Just 50 days remain until Election Day! Regardless of where you live, your vote is essential because there are a lot of insane voters out there who will vote Republican. Vote and make sure all of your like-minded friends and relatives do too! Vote!
The poem
inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty includes the words, ‘Send these,
the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me. I
lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.’
Unless you’re a Native American, you or your ancestors were immigrants to this
country. Never forget that, Ron and
Greg. On what boat did your relatives cross the ocean? And was their entry into
the United States totally legal?
And while on
this subject, I wonder if the
many fine actions of those real Americans on Martha’s Vineyard who have stepped
forward to aid those put on planes as pawns by un-American Republican
politicians, and whose efforts thereby kept lit the lamp beside the Golden Door
about which Emma Lazarus wrote, involve a feeling of guilt for our immigration
policies of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in many deaths in the
Holocaust. Could it be that Americans have listened to and heard the slogan,
'Never Again'?
JL
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When Compromise to Achieve Consensus Comes Back
To Bite You: The Senate is the Problem
I came across an interesting
theory about the American Revolution the other day. It contends that while the Founding Fathers
spoke in noble terms about ‘all men being created equal,’ etc., the
Constitution they ended up producing included a couple of unconscionable concessions to Southern slaveholding States
in order to get them to support its passage.
And these made a joke about ‘all men being created equal.’
Specifically, they designed a
Senate where each State had two Senators, regardless of population, and at
least until 1913, these weren’t even directly elected, but appointed by State
legislatures. This put a lot of power
into the hands of the Senate, where this arrangement shortchanged the majority
of the people, over-representing rural states with fewer people.
To make things worse, this unfair
composition of the Senate was carried over into the mechanism of choosing a
president by an Electoral College where a State’s electoral votes included one
for each of those two senators, regardless of the State’s population. The icing on this cake was putting the
confirmation of federal judges, including the Supreme Court, in the hands of
the Senate, with its built-in undemocratic structure.
Some European critics saw the
American Revolution as a breaking away from what they saw as a socially more progressive England so that they might
be able to pass laws protecting slavery, important to a good portion of the new
nation’s economy, and that all of their pious statements about democracy and
equality were just so much malarky.
A couple of years ago, the ‘1619
Project,’ marking the four hundredth anniversary of the introduction of slavery
into what later became the United States, was developed as an educational
program. The viewpoint explained above
was included in it, although most reputable historians disagreed with its
importance, pointing out that the Founding Fathers really were much more
dedicated to trying to guarantee that ‘all men were created equal’ than to
establishing mechanisms to impede that goal.
To get the Constitution ratified, they reluctantly made compromises that
they felt the new nation would ultimately overcome.
The unpopularity of the‘1619
Project,’ because of its opening the door to viewing the Founding Fathers
without their usual haloes was augmented in the eyes of many by the awarding of
the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for ‘commentary’ to Nickole Hannah-Jones for her essay
introducing the ‘1619 Project.’ She went
so far as to say that the Founding Fathers didn’t really create a nation fully
dedicated to the proposition that ‘all men are created equal,’ pointing out that
that didn’t happen until the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments, finally extending
that equality to persons of color, the former slaves that the Civil War freed.
This is an interesting thing to
think about, especially since the Senate today still exercises an undemocratic
‘thumb on the scale’ precisely in the manner described above.
Here’s an example. Allowing the
five least populated States in the nation (Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, North
Dakota and South Dakota with their combined population of about 5,200,000, only
about one and a half percent of the nation’s total population) to get to elect
ten Senators, 10% of that body, seems ridiculous. The remaining 326,800,000 of Americans do get
to elect the remaining 90 Senators but that is proportionately very unfair. But
that’s the way it is.
While the other deliberative half
of Congress is officially called ‘the House of ‘Representatives,’ the Senate
might sarcastically be called the ‘House of Non-Representation.’ It serves as a brake on there being too much representative
democracy in America. That might have
been a good idea at one time, but it is not today.
The Founding Fathers did not
realize how much they were giving away.
Many of the challenges the nation faces today, particularly those
resulting from unpopular actions of the Supreme Court in the areas of abortion
rights, gun violence, and government regulation, are the result of their
compromises made in 1787, chiefly in the designing the composition of the Senate. (The Constitution took effect two years later in 1789.) Sometimes, compromise in order to achieve consensus can come back to bite you.
JL
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The Irish Funnies
Many years ago, I was working in an office where one of the employees, an older woman, assiduously read the old New York Journal-American each morning. When asked, she referred to what she was reading as the ‘Irish Funnies.’ (She was Irish.)
Of course, they were that paper's extensive obituary pages and she was looking to see who had died lately. Today, where I reside, we get that
information by email, which might be called the online ‘Florida Funnies.’ It may be important information, enabling you to attend a funeral, pay a condolence call, or send a card, but it also piques your curiosity as to
what new neighbor might purchase the deceased’s home, if there isn’t a widow or
widower who might choose to stay on.
JL
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Threatening Cops
Does the defeated former president’s intentionally ambiguous statement saying that if he were to be indicted, there would be 'problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we've never seen before' constitute a threat to the government? Is it an incitement to his mob of supporters as were his words on January 6? Get pulled over for speeding and say something like that to the police officer as he starts to write out a ticket, and see how quickly he will get out his handcuffs and call for back up.
JL
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A Deluge of Emails
Maybe I’m a sucker, but I do make
donations to some of the political entities which ask for them via email. I have donated to the campaigns of Val
Demings, Charlie Crist, and a few other candidates whom I want to win. I’m not a big hitter, but they do add up to a
low three-figure number. Obviously, that puts me on the list of every other
Democratic candidate who wants to reach into my wallet including State and
national party organizations. (Oddly,
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson who still challenges the legitimacy of President Biden's election keeps asking me for donations.
I think his campaign was dumb enough to purchase a list which turned out
to be all Democrats. That’s just typical
Republican gullibility.)
As a result, I receive, and this
is no exaggeration, about ninety emails every day asking for money for various
campaigns. Fortunately, incoming mail sent
to my Gmail address identifies most of these and puts them into a folder
labeled ‘Promotions’ which I quickly screen each morning for emails which ended
up there by mistake before deleting the rest with one click. That whole process takes less than a minute.
JL
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America Afloat
(A poem that is always worth repeating in these blog postings. To learn more, visit this blog's posting of July 30, 2022, accessible from the Archives off to the right.) JL
America
Afloat
The greatness of America
Is
that it does survive
Attacks
upon democracy
Whose
flame it keeps alive.
The
laws that blossom from the words
The
Founding Fathers wrote
Still
serve us well today to keep
America
afloat.
This
doesn’t happen by itself,
We
cannot wish it true,
The
bottom line, my friends, is that
It
all depends on you.
To How Many People Have You
Forwarded This Blog Posting?
That’s Not Enough!
By a Longshot
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