The Fourteenth Amendment Guarantees Birthright Citizenship To All

Since Donald Trump is totally unaware of anything he doesn't learn from tv, he cannot know that his immigration plan is pure racism. The tip-off comes from right-wing websites and Ann Coulter, who have this strange idea that the Fourteenth Amendment does not guarantee US citizenship to anyone born in the US. They cite Judge Richard Posner as the most authoritative holder of this view. (It's amazing how all these websites and right-wing pundits use exactly the same language and arguments, isn't it?)

The American Civil Liberties Union disagrees:

Citizenship under the 14th Amendment includes those born in the United States to parents who are not U.S. citizens. This was clearly established over 100 years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Fourteenth Amendment states it clearly:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

Someone reading this Amendment should logically conclude that anyone born in the US, regardless of the nationality of his parents, is a US citizen. But Trump's lawyer friends say that, no, the Congress that passed the 14th Amendment intended it to apply to slaves and their children, not to the children of immigrants. Because, they say, the Congress in 1868 didn't have an immigration problem.

As with almost everything to do with racists and their beliefs, this opinion presents a false idea of history. That's how they operate. In fact, immigration was a huge issue in 1868, much bigger than slavery in the North and West. There was no concern about illegal immigrants in 1868 because immigration was uncontrolled. Whoever wanted to emigrate to the US was welcome. Even the Chinese--who were widely regarded as an inferior race--were allowed to freely immigrate because their labor was necessary for the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Between 1880 and 1920, 20 million people immigrated to the US. All of their children enjoyed birthright citizenship.

Why should we change the law now, if it has worked so well in the past? There is only one answer. Many people who declare that the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't mean what it says are avowed racists who believe that Latinos are incapable of governing themselves.

The first court test of the 14th Amendment was US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). The Supreme Court ruled that Wong was a citizen of the US by virtue of his birth in San Francisco and could not be prevented from entering the country. Since that time, numerous court rulings have upheld this ruling and concurred that the 14th Amendment does, indeed, make all children born in the US American Citizens, regardless of who their parents are. In the early days, the acceptance of birthright citizenship was essential, since about 15% of the population came from other countries and their children were only citizens by virtue of their being born here.

Judge Posner states his viewpoint in Oforji v. Ashcroft, 354 F.3d at 621 (2003). Posner concludes that the courts cannot outlaw birthright citizenship, but the Congress may, simply by passing a law. Posner unaccountably gives as one of his arguments against birthright citizenship that the 

Federation for American Immigration Reform [FAIR] estimates that 165,000 babies are born each year in the United States to illegal immigrants and others who come here to give birth so their children will be American citizens

This figure is pure fiction. Factcheck.org concludes that, while it is true that there are millions of immigrants who have children in the US, Mexicans come to the US to work, not to have babies. 

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Federation for American Reform (FAIR) is a hate group whose sole purpose is to severely limit immigration into the United States. Its members include avowed racists and eugenicists like FAIR founder and Board Member John Tanton, who wrote

I've come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that."

— John Tanton, letter to eugenicist and ecology professor Garrett Hardin (now deceased), Dec. 10, 1993

and FAIR President Dan Stein, who claimed that the 1965 immigration act 

was a great way to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance and hubris, and the immigration laws from the 1920s were just this symbol of that, and it's a form of revengism, or revenge, that these forces continue to push the immigration policy that they know full well are [sic] creating chaos and will continue to create chaos down the line. 

These are not just the views of racial supremacists, although they are that. These are the views of eugenicists, people who believe that inferior people should be eliminated to make way for superior ones. They view Latinos as both inferior and expendable, since they want to maintain an Anglo-Saxon majority by any means possible.

Judge Posner should have known the racist basis of FAIR and he should have realized that statistics provided by them could not legitimately be relied on. Did he intend to incorporate the racist, eugenicist views of that group into the legal record? If not, he should apologize for his actions. If he did, then all of his judgments should be reviewed for racist bias and expunged from the record if necessary.

Hell yes, "anchor baby" is offensive to Latinos!

Jeb Bush probably tanked his presidential hopes by copying Donald Trump's use of the term "anchor baby" to describe a child born to immigrants in the US. Trump went on to describe how he would kick all immigrants out of the country. All. Right away.

"What about the children? Do you think families should be separated?"

"Well, no, " Trump replied. "But they all have to leave."

Donald Trump raises cognitive dissonance to a higher level. That's where you say one thing while you believe the opposite to be true. Trump changes what he says depending on the mood he's in. Maybe this should be called "emotional dissonance".

Trump doesn't have any chance to become President, despite those polls, because his unfavorable ratings--these are people who just plain don't like him--are over 50%. You have to win at least 51% of the vote, generally speaking, if you want to win the election.

But Jeb! has been considered the establishment choice for several months now, despite low poll numbers--$100 million in attack ads should take care of that. One reason the Republican party likes him so much is because he appeals to Latinos. His wife is a Latino. That's why his use of offensive racial slurs is so surprising, and also so harmful to his candidacy. The Republican establishment likes him because they think he can win the key swing state of Florida, but if he keeps on offending Latinos, they could go looking for someone who doesn't.

Donald Trump Continues to Bloviate

Trump appears to have only a minimal understanding of politics. He doesn't understand, for instance, that John Bolton was one of the architects of the Iraq War. George W. Bush (another clueless wonder) made Bolton ambassador to the UN. Bolton didn't recognize the authority of the UN and tried to sabotage it every way he could. But Trump didn't understand that. You see, Trump thinks talking tough impresses other countries.

Trump says the Iraq War was pointless, and he is right about that, but his administration would start other pointless wars that would end up killing American soldiers for no purpose. Trump's promise to have a "tough" foreign policy, and his praise for Bolton's toughness, seem to indicate that he would let the neoconservative cabal convince him to invade Iraq and Syria.

Chuck Todd interviewed Donald Trump on MSNBC last Sunday. Todd, whom most pundits criticize as a lightweight, made Trump look like a schoolboy. Trump seemed unable to complete a sentence.

Trump and most of his supporters believe foreign policy as a kind of football game. In a football game, you pretend you are tough. You wear fierce animal emblems on your helmets. You talk tough to the opposing players, calling them sissies or worse. During the action of the game, you use all the underhanded tactics you know to harm or permanently injure the opposition.

And you cheat. You take the air out of the footballs to give yourself an advantage. You steal their plays. You punch opposing players when the referees turn their backs. You use your helmet as a battering ram and later whine that it was an accident, that the refs are unfairly picking on you. Naturally, if a ball hits the ground before you pick it up, you claim loudly that it didn't and dance around the field inciting the crowd to roar their disapproval. If you are successful with these sorts of tactics, the referees will be afraid to call close fouls against you. So you win by cheating.

The big difference between football tactics and foreign policy in the real world is that football is a game. You schedule a game every Sunday. It's great fun. Everyone goes home alive. In the real world, the same tactics used in football games result in real wars. People get killed. People flee their homes and become refugees. Bombs explode in cities and kill innocent civilians. 

That's why most real diplomats don't threaten to go to war every time there's a border dispute. It's also why a Trump presidency would be a disaster for the world. The Neocons see Trump as the second coming of G.W. Bush. Their hearts are filled with bloodlust.

Foreign affairs is a dangerous game. Let's hope Trump never gets a turn at bat.

New York Times Does Hatchet Job On Amazon

Over the weekend the New York Times published a hatchet job about the company culture at Amazon.com. You can tell it's a hatchet job--meaning an article intended to unfairly and one-sidedly attack some one or thing--because the article goes on at length about the terrible employee morale at Amazon. For example, the article says:

The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses.

Now there's a revelation. The company encourages employees to fink on their fellows to get in tight with management. The problem here is that every company in the world has employees who rat on their fellows. Nothing new or different here.

A more serious charge is the following:

Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.

But this is the sort of thing that happens in many large corporations, including Apple and Microsoft. The fault lies not with the company, but the law. The law says employment is "at will", which means the company can fire you at any time for any reason.

The Times could have written an exposé of personnel practices in American corporations and shown how only unionization could protect the workers from these practices, since just having the CEO say he'll take care of it will not cut it. But this is not about personnel practices. This article is about how bad Amazon is, no matter how little the company differs from every other capitalist company.

The underlying reason for this hatchet job is the print media's anger, frustration, and hatred of digital media. Amazon happens to be the focal point. The anger felt by members of the print media against Amazon is real and unreasonable. I recently self-published my own book with a print-on-demand publisher who is affiliated with Amazon. I went to an independent bookstore in Washington, DC, and asked them if I could have a book-signing event at their store. They told me it was their policy not to hold book-signings for books published by Amazon.

"Wait a minute," I complained. "Your policy is not going to hurt Amazon, but it will hurt me and other authors like me who need a chance to bring their work before the public."

The management than assured me that if anyone ordered my book, they would be glad to fill that order. In other words, they were throwing a roadblock in my path to success, but if I ever, somehow managed to succeed, they would be glad to share my profit with me.

Thanks, guys. Your generosity is overwhelming.

But anger against Amazon is justifiable because people in the newspaper and bookselling industry are losing their livelihood with no possibility of recovery. The anger is not going to help, though. These jobs are going away and will never come back. These white-collar, salaried positions are not being moved to Singapore or China. They are vanishing. Automation is destroying them.

There is a hatchet job that could be done about that, but it's not one that the New York Times wants to write. It's a story about how capitalism is failing to provide jobs for the people that automation is making obsolete. This automation is making big profits for corporations like Amazon and its ilk, but it isn't doing much for newspapers like the Times, which has laid off hundreds of employees in recent years. (Question: How many of those layoffs harm the employees who were fired through no fault of their own?)

We need a serious examination of what this country is going to do right now to help people made redundant by automation. Tomorrow will be too late. Today is too late, already, frankly, as we have the spectacle of billionaires running the country for their own benefit without a single sincere concern for the people who must pay for their abundance.

What? Latinos are anti-immigration? Who Knew!

I am mystified how Donald Trump can claim, "Latinos love me." I never would have suspected that. I have a few latino friends, admittedly if they are my friends that makes them somewhat unusual. But in fact, the latinos I know are angry at Obama for not giving more consideration to immigrants who have been arrested, hassled, and deported relentlessly on his watch. These latinos are not fans of Obama. I am mystified how Donald Trump can claim, "Latinos love me."

But the Republicans? After all, the only alternative to Sanders, Clinton, or God knows who else, is Trump, Walker, or Jeb! Working class folk--and nearly all latinos are working class--see right through Trump. He is exactly the same as every boss they ever had. Smiling, jokey. But don't ask him for a raise. Yes, he's a big pal to latinos, but all the illegals need to leave the country, right away.

For a latino, the problem is this: Those illegals, they're family members. On family I know has one daughter born in this country while the other daughter and mother could face deportation under a Trump administration. Is the mother, or her American husband, going to vote for Trump and risk having a loved one exiled, perhaps for years?

The problem for Trump and the others trying to please the xenophobic Republican base is that up to half the "undocumented" immigrants are related to American citizens. The citizens are not pleased that their relatives may be deported at a moment's notice. They love those people. They would hate to say good-bye.

Furthermore, the latinos who have been American citizens, in many cases for generations, feel a kinship with those "undocumented immigrants" who have just arrived. They speak the same language, share the same customs, and even look a lot alike. Are those American citizen latinos going to stand by and watch Trump persecute their friends and neighbors? I think not.

I suspect that Trump's immigration plan will not win him a single latino vote, no matter how much he claims he likes latinos and they love him.

Nope, there's no bubble in bonds

A big headline this week is that there is a bubble in bonds. This comes from the former head of the Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Greenspan, the man who presided over the tech stock bubble and the housing bubble and did nothing to prevent either of them. So his expertise in this area is questionable.

Greenspan's reason for announcing a bond-market bubble is also questionable. He says the return on investment for bonds is too low for the price of the bond itself. But the return rate on bonds is set by the government, which could raise the rate at any moment to whatever it likes, but refuses to do so because they are afraid of starting a recession. Likewise, investors in bonds are not concerned about the return on their investment. No, they are looking for a place to put their money where it will not decline in value.

China has just devalued its currency by 12% in 2 days. But all of its US bonds, held in dollars, have remained almost steady in value. So why is China investing in bonds? Because it's a good investment for them and they don't care what the return on investment is.

Hillary Clinton is "Most qualified, knowledgeable, and experienced"

Sounds like 3 different views of the same thing: Qualified because of training at elite schools, knowledgeable because of education at elite institutions, experienced by doing the elite jobs her qualifications and education got her.

What she really has is the illusion that corporations are good for America when they are doing them harm. She has a flawed education because she doesn't trust science when it says that fossil fuel burning is destroying the planet. She has the self-delusion that because she has had these elite advantages she is actually capable of providing leadership. She's proven before that she does not.