Update no.819

Update from the Heartland

No.819

4.9.17 – 10.9.17

Blog version:  http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

            To all,

            For all of the contributors and readers of this humble forum who have accused me of political bias against Donald Trump, the week has finally arrived – nothing but positive.  Shall we mark the chronology?  Will wonders ever cease?

            President Trump reportedly signed an executive order (not yet publicly available) rescinding a series of instructions issued by President Obama beginning in June 2012, creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.  Republicans railed against President Obama’s action at the time, declaring it an unconstitutional usurpation of congressional authority.  The DACA program deferred immigration action (deportation) against people who entered this country illegally as children and grew up here, i.e., this is the only country they have ever really known.  Ahead of the government announcement, President Trump tweeted Tuesday morning, “Congress, get ready to do your job - DACA!”

            On this one, I share the President’s angst and position.  The responsibility and authority to act on immigration law rests clearly with Congress.  Yet, for years, nay decades, Congress has been unable to perform their constitutional responsibilities.  The political partisanship and intransigence within successive sessions of Congress have prevented the necessary compromise to achieve meaningful results.  Then, after all the brouhaha erupted, Trump tweeted, “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do).  If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!”  Strangely, that is exactly what President Obama did, i.e., Congress would not act, so the President did.

            Deporting the so-called Dreamers is simply wrong on many levels.  It is quite akin to punishing the son for the sins of the father.  The President is correct in his efforts to force Congress to do the correct thing and fix the ambiguity in the law.  However, Congress really needs to update immigration law to account for all the changing immigration dynamics of contemporary society.  Hopefully, if Congress can bring themselves to do what must be done, rather than kicking the can down the road, they can find the path to dissuade the President from the foolish “Wall” notion and give him a face-saving way out with a virtual wall.  The failure of Congress to pass proper, comprehensive, immigration reform to seal our porous borders is a direct threat to national security.

            The bottom line in this whole immigration situation: I believe President Obama did the proper thing five years ago, and I think President Trump did the proper thing this week.  I also believe President Trump will again do the proper thing, if Congress continues to abdicate their responsibility and fails to do their job.  I am not optimistic Congress is capable of standing up to the mark.

            Well, I’ll be damned!  I must confess my true and genuine amazement.  President Trump agreed with congressional Democratic leaders and sufficient Republican members to raise the federal government's borrowing limit for just three months as part of supplemental appropriations to the Disaster Relief Fund, principally for Hurricane Harvey damage.  The President’s deal with Democratic leaders shocked congressional Republican leaders.  Just hours before the President’s deal, House Speaker Paul Ryan sharply criticized the plan.  Even more surprising, Congress passed H.R. 601 in a couple of days with predominant, bipartisan support and sent the bill to the President on Friday afternoon.  At the publication time for this week’s Update edition, I do not have confirmation that President Trump signed H.R. 601 into law; however, I cannot imagine him not signing the bill, since he received exactly what he agreed to with congressional Democratic leaders.  If this deal portends further efforts by Trump to seek compromise for the good of this Grand Republic, then his stature as president in my eyes will rise.  I choose to see the positive in this episode and hope for a better future.

            The most powerful category 5 tropical storm ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean ravaged the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, Turks & Caicos Islands, Bahama Islands, Hispaniola, Cuba, and then this Grand Republic, making landfall at Cudjoe Key Sunday morning as a category 4 storm and a second landfall at Marco Island later in the day.  The storm racked the state on Sunday and into Monday.  We have yet to assess the damage to Florida.  Undoubtedly, the disaster relief supplemental funding mentioned above will have to be increase further in the next few weeks.

            Comments and contributions from Update no.818:

Comment to the Blog:

“I have finally decided the North Korean leaders are not as insane as they appear.  After this much time, insane leaders would have gone the way of Idi Amin.  I agree with a couple of articles I’ve read.  What the Parks are doing is trying to remain independent.  Having seen what happened to many other nations, they refuse to let their economy, and indirectly their government, be taken, over for the benefit of corporations in the ‘advanced’ nations.  Our next move, assuming we survive Trump, ought to be supporting their independent development by non-intrusive means.  How to do that remains in question.

“On the ‘political correctness’ topic, I support people’s right to say anything they want that’s not covered by such laws as inciting to riot or inducing panic, but not a right to dictate others’ responses to their words.  This is the USA, after all. Everyone has a right to be offended by bigoted, hateful, or aggressively stupid words and ideas.  We are entitled to act on that offense, too.  If I manage people, for example, it’s written into the employment agreement that certain behaviors are firing offenses.  People may say what they choose so long as they take responsibility for their consequences.

“I think you misstated Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s motivation.  He has no interest in outcomes as seen in the long term. He just wants to punish people.”

My response to the Blog:

            Re: “Parks.”  Do you mean the Kim family?

            Re: insane.  I have never thought Kim Jung Un was insane in the clinical sense, nor his father or grandfather.  However, they definitely dance to a different tune – a tune that is hard for us to hear.

            Re: “ought to be supporting their independent development by non-intrusive means.”  What the heck does that mean?

            Re: “How to do that remains in question.”  That has been the question for the last 64 years and remains the central question.  The sad reality demonstrated by history remains that dictators need an enemy or adversary to retain the focus of their supporters and support systems.  Kim is no different.  Neither is Putin.

            Re: offensive language.  We need to be careful to separate freedom of speech as an individual citizen and as an employee representing a company, organization or group.  The First Amendment protects individual citizens, not employees or representatives of organizations.  “People may say what they choose so long as they take responsibility for their consequences.”  To that I would say, spot on!  Precisely!  Full stop!  Unfortunately, it seems most folks do not make it to that conclusion.  Part of our freedom is our right to decide whom we choose to associate with depending upon any one or combination of social factors or spoken words.

            Re: Arpaio.  Well, actually, that is his expected outcome.

 . . . Round two:

“What I mean by supporting North Korea's independent development is that, first and foremost, it's in our interest to basically preserve their economic and national sovereignty.  That's what they want and they are entitled to it.  North Korea has mineral wealth so great that they are unable to mine it all.  I have noticed that pretty much every time one of the powerful nations claims to ‘help’ another nation, the result is that the powerful one dominates the weaker one to the profit of the stronger nation's corporations or (in the case of Communists) government.  That's called ‘neocolonialism.’  No doubt the Kim’s have noticed that as well and that's the source of their behaviors.  As I have mentioned before (with reliable sources), they know as well as I do what happens if they accept help from Russia, the USA, the EU countries or (more) from China.

“Taking offense to people's language and ideas is not and should never be limited to employment situations. I guess I didn't make that clear.”

 . . . my response to round two:

            Re: DPRK.  Interesting perspective.  Resources do not often appear in discussions regarding the motivations of the DPRK leadership.  While I cannot disprove your hypothesis re: DPRK, I will say it seems rather cynical to me.  Yes, there are bountiful examples to validate your hypothesis; however, there are also exceptions, e.g., Saudi Arabia & the Gulf emirates.  That said, there are ways to protect sovereignty and exploit resources.  Oh, if it was only that simple to solve the DPRK problem.

            Re: freedom of speech.  Likewise, I did not intend to suggest limiting offense to employment situations or associations.  Freedom of speech works both ways.  Objection (offense) is the inverse and equally protected.  Where my objection to political correctness blooms is when we start limiting the speech of others.  If we disagree with someone’s speech, we should voice our objection – do not attempt to restrict the objectionable speech.  It is the preemptive aspects of political correctness that are so bloody wrong.

 . . . Round three:

“I still hold my opinion about North Korea's motivation. ‘Cynical’ or not, history bears out the money motivation.  Again and again, if we study history more deeply than what we are taught in K-12 schools, we find people of great wealth making more wealth by manipulating international affairs.  Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are stronger than North Korea, and so they get to control the wealth in partnership with other OPEC nations.  Even given that, the Saudis are not completely independent of the USA.  They depend on unending weapons from the USA.  The fact that we do not try to make them more democratic reflects the money flowing to the wealthy without democracy.  None of the people making the decisions is really interested in democracy.”

 . . . my response to round three:

            “I still hold my opinion.”  I would expect nothing less, my friend.

            “Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are stronger than North Korea.”  They were not so strong when oil was discovered and exploited by British and American companies in the early 20th Century.

            “The fact that we do not try to make them more democratic reflects the money flowing to the wealthy without democracy.”  Perhaps.  That is one plausible hypothesis.  There are others.  U.S. foreign policy is largely driven by commerce and thus money.  It’s been that way since the founding of this Grand Republic and I cannot imagine that reality changing in the foreseeable future.

            “None of the people making the decisions is really interested in democracy.”  I cannot go that far.  U.S. foreign policy is not devoid of that motive.

            My very best wishes to all.  Take care of yourselves and each other.

Cheers,

Cap                        :-)