Civility, Principles, Decorum
On June 4, 1954, during a Senate Hearing on Communist infiltration of the U.S. Army, Special Counsel for the U.S. Army stated to Senator McCarthy (R-WI), “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” Unfortunately, there is no one left to ask the same of Marjorie Taylor Greene who lives by the adage, “The Empty Barrel Makes the Most Noise!” And noisy she is. Greene is an example of political prostitution. Willing to capitalize on a mother’s grief for solely political reasons without batting an eye, Greene demonstrates the new normal in Washington, DC’s GOP. Having intelligent debates are gone, replaced, instead, with the “…because…” argument of a three year old. Civility? Decorum? Principles? All gone and replaced with raucousness, rudeness, and one-upmanship on the volume meter to entertain rather than lead. It is the epitome of a never-ending spring-break in the once revered Halls of Congress. With the clown act now running the circus, the ringmaster (aka House Speaker Mike Johnson) has lost all control and appears as a figurehead only. Bills of any consequence are shelved for political reasons…public be damned. It’s all about the gamesmanship….Smile over substance.
The State of the Union Trailor Park scene is just a microcosm of a far bigger issue. Let’s start with immigration since Taylor Greene was so vocal about it.
It has been almost 40 years since the last comprehensive immigration bill was passed…and it was under Ronald Reagan. Republicans have had control of at least one House of Congress for 22 of the last 30 years. 14 of those years, they had control of BOTH houses. 6 of those years, they had control of both houses AND the Presidency…. the most recent being with Donald Trump for two years. No immigration bill was even proposed under Trump.
Last October, Senate Democrats and Republicans started work on a bi-partisan immigration bill. After 4 moths of negotiations, a bill emerged that had the support of enough members in the Senate to pass. Then, in 4 days, it collapsed. It has widely been reported that former President Trump called several Congressional leaders and told them to shelve the bill because if it passed, it would help Joe Biden in an election year. And so, without so much as whimper of protest, Republicans in both houses refused to take up the bill, until the day of the State of Union when the House of Representatives put up a sham bill that focused only on incarcerating illegals that are involved in misdemeanor crimes like shoplifting that usually result in a fine. It was done for the benefit of TV and for Laken Riley’s grieving mother who has been dragged into the fray by Greene as a political stunt with no shame. So now, we must wait for border security until the election. Apparently Trump and company know that the illegal threat is fictitious so they can put a pin in it for now and use the fallout politically against Biden.
To be sure, Biden’s initial policies were disastrous, relative to immigration. Migrant encounters with border patrol increased from 1.7 million in FY 2021 to 2.5 million in FY 2023 once Biden complied with court orders and international law to stop the Trump era policies of separating families and deporting people back to known hostile locations. And that is the importance of context in some of the data. We can call the rescission of Trump’s Executive Orders (that actually broke international law and treaties and that Biden was compelled to rescind) “Biden’s policies,” but in the context of compliance with court orders, treaties and international law, it would be more sincere and correct to say it was Biden’s clean up of Trump’s violations. Still, while he was required to comply with the international laws and treaties we have entered into decades ago, there should have been a legal alternative or at least an explanation to the American public detailing what the problems were that needed to be corrected. Instead, Biden took the heat for policies of international compliance. The GOP knows this. They have received the same briefings that all legislators receive when the Courts make decisions that effect the Country’s International obligations. They CHOOSE to remain silent on it…amplifying, instead, the political rhetoric to create descension, xenophobia, and ethno-centric violence. It is disingenuous at the very least and despicable at the core.
So what about these illegals engaged in criminal activity? From the political rhetoric, one would think that nearly all immigrants are criminals.
Graham Ousey, a criminologist at William & Mary, and Charis Kubrin, a criminologist at the University of California at Irvine, surveyed more than two decades of research on immigration and crime for their 2023 book “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock” found “that long-standing concerns about immigration as a major source of crime are unfounded.” Instead, they concluded that communities with more immigration tended to have less crime, especially violent crimes like homicide, and that they are less involved in crime as both offenders and victims compared with the native-born.
And it doesn’t stop there. Ran Abramitzky, a Stanford University economist, found male immigrants over the last 150 years have had lower incarceration rates than people who were born in the United States. In fact, incarceration rates of immigrants have dropped since 1960. and male illegal immigrants are 60% less likely to engage in criminal acts than our own home grown citizens. Where are those pathologically rabid calls from Marjorie Taylor Green and Katie Britt to deport/incarcerate all the Americans guilty of violent crimes and felonies?? According to FBI statistics, it is estimated that roughly 30% of Americans have criminal records compared to 10% of non-detained immigrants. That means some 31 million Americans would washout, with Trump leading the pack if convicted on all 91 counts in several different states where indictments have been served.