For well over 100 years we’ve struggled with immigration. Beginning in the 1850s large numbers of citizens from China came to our shores, many to help construct the transcontinental railroad which was completed in 1869. But many Americans of European descent looked on these immigrants with suspicion and in 1882 President Chester A. Arthur (1829-1886) he signed the Chinese Exclusion Act. It made Chinese immigration nearly impossible. In fairness it also excluded “paupers, criminals, and lunatics.”

In 1924 the United States first began to restrict immigration by placing quotas on the number of people from each country can come here. I have no desire to wade into the complexities of our immigration system, but suffice it to say that more people want to come here than legally can.

And we continue to struggle to create a policy that respects our laws while at the same time recognizes that we are a nation of immigrants. Our pride for the Statue of Liberty shows this.

Our complicated history of “we are a nation of immigrants” vs. “we don’t trust people who don’t look like us” frames our frustration today.

And in the middle of this debate we find a group of young men and women we call “Dreamers.” They were brought to the United States as children. Their parents came here without going through the process of immigrating; simply put, they snuck in. But they did this because the process of legal immigration made legal entry essentially impossible.

However you feel about the adults, clearly their children cannot be held as lawbreakers. They came here and enrolled in school. By and large they did well and think of themselves as Americans; many speak only English and if deported they have no place to go.

In 2012 President Barack Obama ordered that they be protected and allowed to stay. As long as they came here before their 16th birthday, stayed in school, and did not break any laws, they could stay here and work legally. He called this order DACA or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

But here’s where it gets even more complicated: President Trump promised on the campaign trail to end the DACA program but also, on other occasions appeared to support the Dreamers.

He’s never been known for his consistency but here he’s playing with the lives of real people. Last week he announced he would decide tomorrow, September 5th.

As I write this, it appears he will delay ending it by six months in the hopes that Congress will create legislation that will protect the dreamers. I imagine this gives the dreamers no relief as Congress appears to show no more compassion or maturity than the President.

Simply put, protecting the Dreamers benefits them, but also benefits us. Their conviction rate is 0% and they are educated. In other words, they are exactly what we are looking for. We gain nothing by deporting them because their parents came here to make a better lives for them.

Last week we learned that President Trump pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Arpaio is certainly a colorful character. He was sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County from 1993 to 2017. While in office he became a fierce critic of the undocumented. He encouraged his officers to “profile” Latinos, arguing that checking their legal status protected the people of Maricopa county.

In 2011 the Department of Justice found that the Sheriff’s office created “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos.” In 2012 the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit. The next year a federal court found that Sheriff Arpaio violated the Constitutional rights of Latinos and created a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos. Sheriff Arpaio was ordered to stop profiling Latinos.

He didn’t. In 2016 the same court ordered Sheriff Arpaio be prosecuted for contempt of court. He was convicted last month and was awaiting sentencing.

That is, until last week when President Trump pardoned him. Mr. Trump has the power to do this. In Article II, Section 2 states that the President has “the Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences [sic] against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

No one argues the ability of Mr. Trump to do this, but we do argue his wisdom. Sheriff Arpaio clearly acted in contempt of federal court and since he was pardoned before sentencing he will forever avoid punishment for his contempt.

For his part, Mr. Trump fell on back on a word that he often uses and the rest of us find juvenile: “unfair.” He claimed that Mr. Arpaio was prosecuted for “doing his job.”

In our history we’ve seen other controversial pardons. In 1974 President Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon shortly after President Nixon’s resignation. Nixon resigned because he faced impeachment for his role in covering up the 1972 break in at the Watergate. Mr. Ford’s pardon created a great deal of anger (and many feel it cost him re-election in 1976) but he felt our nation would suffer greatly from a public trial of a former President. Frankly, I agreed with him then and agree with him now.

But the pardon of Mr. Arpaio carries none of the concern for our nation or our future. This pardon clearly signals that our current President uses his power not for patriotic reasons, but to settle scores. Mr. Arpaio’s fondness for Mr. Trump is well known.

Only 1166 days left until the next election.

In a previous post I suggested that Donald Trump is not a Republican but is instead a Fascist.

I don’t mean this as a judgement statement. Virtually all Republicans agree on the role of government. It should do fewer things and do them better. It should not spend (or collect) more money than it needs. It should trust that the free market knows what it’s doing and not interfere unless absolutely necessary. In other words they are optimistic about our future.

Fascists, on the other hand, care little for the Republican agenda. They are decidedly not optimistic about our future. They believe that we (and those we love) are in grave and immediate danger from people who are different from us. Even those who look like us (and most don’t) want what we have and will do anything to take it away from us.

Simply put, fascism is based on fear. And it’s based on a fear that they will steal what we have earned by hard work and give it to those people who have earned nothing.

Fascist leaders depend on their ability to continue to fan the flames of fear. Their leadership survives only if they continue to convince their supporters that I alone can fix it.

So here’s the problem: if you’re a fascist leader you need to continue to fan these fires. You can’t rest on your laurels because your only support depends on your followers’ belief that only you can protect them from immediate danger. Good news for your people means bad news for you.

In other words the fear of immediate danger matters more than anything else. It doesn’t matter if the leader ran on a platform to build a wall on our Southern border or provide affordable health care or lower taxes. For the fascist leader, only loyalty matters.

Additionally, a fascist leader needs to convince his followers to ignore evidence that does not advance his message. It doesn’t matter how he does it. He can claim that “they” conspire to lie to “us.” Or he can claim the banner of “fake news.” Or he can claim that only he can be believed. It’s a little like the guy whose wife catches him in the arms of his lover; he responds by telling her: “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”

By now you have to know that I’m describing President Trump. Believe your eyes.

Dear Mr. President:

I don’t know how else to say this: Your responses to the events in Charlottesville stun even those of us who already believe you to be a racist.

I’ll be the first to admit that we have a complicated history of race relations and slavery. I used to live in Manassas Virginia, site of the first major battle of the Civil War. The National Park Service manages the site of both battles (the first in 1861 and the second in 1862). There is a statue of Confederate General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson on the battlefield site.

And while the Civil War ended in 1865, even today we have citizens who believe the “South will rise again.” They’ve gone by many names: The Ku Klux Klan, White Supremacists, White Nationalists, etc. In 2008 and 2012 by popular and electoral votes we selected President Barack Obama as our 44th President. This so enraged your racist groups that they insisted that the United States belonged to White People. They felt that President Obama’s election betrayed who we were and what we stood for. You participated in this by advancing the false belief that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States and therefore wasn’t eligible to lead our nation. You abandoned this only when you saw an opportunity to attack Hillary Clinton by falsely accusing her of starting the birther movement.

When you began your Presidential run, these same racists embraced you and you have been loath to recognize their damage to our nation. Even after the horrific events in Charlottesville (including the deaths of Lt. H. Jay Cullen, Trooper Berke M. M. Bates, and Heather Heyer) you continue to insist that there was blame on both sides.

Your advisor Steve Bannon coined the term “alt right” as an umbrella term for these what nationalists groups. Your response? You made up the term “alt left” in a desperate attempt at creating a false equality.

Yeah, there isn’t. There are not, as you said, “very fine people on both sides.” There are no very fine people who advocate hate and violence toward people of color and Jews. And while we’re on the subject, when they chanted “Jews will not replace us!” they were talking about your daughter and son-in-law.

OK, cards on the table: I’ve never accused you of being courageous or willing to do the right thing even if it costs you. But your unwillingness to stand up to these racists amazes even me. I understand that support from thugs like David Duke and Richard Spencer make you feel better about yourself but it horrifies the rest of us. You’re already losing support from those who thought you would be good for business. Fortunately the alt right, while loud, is not large. Your decision to ignore the rest of us to fawn over then will only further diminish your popularity.

PS: You still haven’t called me.

This week’s news has been dominated by the escalating and dangerous rhetoric between President Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. It’s not been pretty.

We were at war with North Korea from 1950-1953; the war was concluded with a cease fire, not a surrender. Technically we are still at war.

In the 64 years since the cease fire North Korea has become more and more isolated from the rest of the world. At first they were closely allied with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. The dissolution of the USSR moved China into the only true ally of North Korea.

As with (let’s face it) all communist nations, North Korea faces horrific poverty. Several times they’ve refused to negotiate with the free world and accepted famine as a cost of maintaining their independence. We can’t know exactly how bad it was, but there is reason to believe that up to 2,000,000 North Korean citizens starved to death between 1993 and 1999.

Most of us have looked on this with a mixture of horror and anger. Those unlucky enough to have been born there did not deserve their fate and we recognize that their suffering resulted from the poor leadership of Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), his son Kim Jong Il (1941-2011), and his grandson Kim Jong Un (b.1983).

The Kims have always favored their fate above the people they lead, but things took a decisively bad turn in 2003 when North Korea announced it had nuclear weapons.

Presidents from Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) to Barack Obama have recognized that they needed to be the adult in the room. They’ve known that a little boy with a loaded gun needs to be taken seriously and they’ve looked for ways to ensure that whatever Kim led North Korea, he would be placated.

And by and large it’s worked. North Korea has rattled sabers, made threats, and generally frightened much of the rest of the world. But it hasn’t delivered on its threats.

But last November we elected another little boy. It’s generally understood that good leaders command respect while poor leaders crave affection. We’ve understood for 64 years that North Korean leaders have craved affirmation, but late last year we elected a President who does the same thing.

And while our little boy previously argued that we should negotiate with North Korea he has now decided to meet Kim’s juvenile rhetoric with juvenile rhetoric of his own.

Last Wednesday he threatened “fire and fury like the world has never seen” but didn’t explain what that meant. It’s a little like “You had better do what I want or else!” It’s never clear what “or else,” or for that matter what “fire and fury” really means.

And while Kim Jong Un’s threats make clear his targets (Guam), our little boy continues to make vague threats that nobody can interpret.

Many of us found his threats alarming and even his Secretary of State hoped to walk back his remarks.

Last December I wrote about my fear that our little boy would not be prepared for a complex international crisis. Nine months later I fear this crisis has landed.

I pray these little boys listen to the adults in the room, but I have no confidence they will.

Almost from the beginning of his campaign for President we’ve known that Donald Trump has, at best, a casual relationship with the truth. Web pages like Politifact and Snopes fact check what we hear to determine the difference between what’s true and what’s false. Politifact sorts stories in several categories, including the lowest one, “Pants on Fire”.

They’ve done heroic work even while being under attack. On September 28, 2016 conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh instructed his listeners to ignore fact checking organizations because they operate under the “guise of fairness.” I guess he sees no need for Mr. Trump to tell the truth.

This recently came into focus. On Monday, July 24th, Mr. Trump spoke to the annual Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia. By any measure his speech insulted the young men and their families who worked hard and saved money to attend. After promising not to talk about politics he then spoke about his greatness, complained about how he had been mistreated, and gossiped about someone he met decades ago.

When his speech faced justifiable criticism he claimed to have received a phone call from the “head” of the Boy Scouts who told him that his speech was the “greatest speech that was ever made to them.”

Except that call didn’t happen. A few days later his press secretary insisted that he didn’t lie. Instead Sarah Sanders insisted that this was a live conversation and not a phone conversation. And while a phone call can be traced, a conversation cannot. I think most of us believe this conversation never happened and he lied to make himself look better after an offensive speech.

Simply put, President Trump lies, and lies often. This goes back a long way. In 1991 he called People magazine claiming to be “John Miller” to give himself good publicity. After denying he made the call, he later admitted it.

In his ghost written book The Art of the Deal (no way I’m linking to this) he said this:

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

That may have made him a success as a real estate developer, but as President it makes him a liar. More than six months into the job I don’t think he understands that he is accountable for what he says. I don’t think he understands lying to boost his brand undercuts his credibility.

I understand that this bravado emboldens his base, but his base was dangerously small on election night and is shrinking. My fear is this: as his base declines he will respond by increasing his inflammatory rhetoric. Much like Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny his paranoia will only grow as fewer and fewer people find themselves willing to accept his narrative.

He may call what he does “truthful hyperbole” but the rest of us call it lying.

From the day President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in April of 2010, the Republicans in Congress started a drumbeat of promises to repeal it.

You can read an excellent timeline here. It was published in 2014 and chronicles only the first four years of their attempt.

Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate introduced bills to repeal the ACA. But by the next month they were already backpedaling; Tennessee Senator Bob Corker said this: “The fact is that’s [a repeal] not going to happen, OK?” There were parts of the ACA that everyone liked, (e.g. allowing children to remain on their parents’ policy until age 26 and preventing insurers from denying coverage for preexisting conditions).

The 2010 Congressional elections broke heavily Republican; they gained 63 seats in the House and 6 seats in the Senate. Republicans ran on a platform of repealing the ACA and they saw this victory as a mandate and vindication. Instead of looking for bipartisan ways to improve the ACA they elected to do nothing legislatively and instead keep beating the drum to repeal.

But as long as Barack Obama was President they could freely call for the ACA to be repealed, safe in the recognition that it wouldn’t happen and they wouldn’t be responsible for its consequences. As matter of fact, they passed a repeal bill that President Obama vetoed in January of 2016. At the time House Speaker Paul Ryan said this: “It’s no surprise that someone named Obama vetoed a bill repealing Obamacare. The idea that Obamacare is the law of the land for good is a myth. We have now shown that there is a clear path to repealing Obamacare without 60 votes in the Senate. So, next year, if we’re sending this bill to a Republican president, it will get signed into law.”

But on November 7, 2016 they found themselves in the spotlight. On that night the Republican party won the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Suddenly they found themselves in a position where they needed to deliver on a promise they never expected to have to keep: repeal (and replace) something the American people had grown to love.

Candidate Trump promised to repeal and replace and made it sound easy. But it never occurred to him (or any of his allies) that it wouldn’t be easy.

Simply put, while the Republicans spent seven years promising to repeal the ACA, the rest of the country spent those years recognizing its value. By late 2016 6,400,000 Americans knew their health wasn’t in danger because they purchased insurance through the ACA.

And it surprised nobody but President Trump that health care reform is complicated.

Meanwhile, the ACA kept growing in popularity. In June we learned that 41% of Americans supported it while only 38% didn’t (presumably 21% weren’t certain). On the same poll only 16% supported the plan the House passed in April. In fairness, President Trump weighed in and called the House plan mean.

All during this time both Congress and the White House steamed on, determined to keep this promise regardless of its damage. In early May the House passed the American Health Care Act by a vote of 217-213. They took this vote before hearing from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO); when their report did come out the CBO predicted 24,000,000 would lose their health insurance over the next 10 years. Several members voted for the AHCA knowing it would not pass the Senate.

The Senate indicated they weren’t going to vote on the AHCA and drew up their own version that they called the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). The CBO determined that only 22,000,000 people would lose coverage in the next 10 years.

Like the House, several moderate Republicans voiced concerns. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to pressure his members to vote for this bill by essentially saying “we need to get something done.” When it became clear that it couldn’t pass, they came up with “skinny repeal”. This also failed, but only by one vote.

Their actions are both dishonest and irresponsible. Moderate Republicans have been bullied into voting for legislation they don’t support by being told “we’ll fix it later.”

What they need to do now is the thing they’ve refused for the last 7 years: work with Democrats. Nobody believes the ACA was perfect on its first try but it’s far from doomed. They need to put the health of the nation ahead of their political ambitions.

President Trump ran (and won) on the platform that he wasn’t a politician. Nobody disputed that. Since moving into the White House he has surrounded himself with others who were equally naive about how government works.

In previous posts I’ve created a subcategory of the Trump Chronicles I’ve called “Amateur Hour.” Previous winners included Kellyanne Conway, President Trump, Stephen Miller, and Sean Spicer.

Next up is Sean Spicer’s successor, Anthony Scaramucci. He took the job promising to end leaks to the press (which reminds many of us of President Nixon’s attempt to stop leaks in his administration through the use of operatives that we know as plumbers).

Wednesday night Mr. Scarmucci called the journalist Ryan Lizza demanding to know how he (Mr. Lizza) knew about who attended a White House dinner. Of course Mr. Lizza refused to give his source.

Mr. Scarmucci then began a tirade, accusing (then) White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus of leaking the information.

He then falsely claimed that the public disclosure of his finances was a felony even though it was published by Politico after they made a public records request.

If that weren’t enough he then made increasingly vulgar attacks on Mr. Priebus and White House Strategist Steve Bannon. You can read about it here.

I’m not a politician but I recognize that any conversation I have with a journalist is “on the record” unless I ask that it be “off the record.” An “off the record” conversation is understood by both parties to be kept confidential. The reporter may use the information to continue to investigate but he can’t directly quote anything he is told.

I guess Mr. Scarmucci didn’t get the memo. When Mr. Lizza quoted him in an excellent article in The Atlantic, Mr. Scarmucci claimed he made a mistake in trusting a reporter and that it won’t happen again.

Only a rank amateur would speak to a reporter on the record and then complain that his words were quoted.

Tony, welcome to the club currently occupied by Kellyanne Conway, President Trump, Stephen Miller, and Sean Spicer. Fear not, the club will get bigger.

Dear Mr. President:

Yes, it’s been six months since you took the oath of office and gave an inaugural address that can only be called dark and dystopian.

I have to confess that six months later my fears for your presidency are vindicated, though I did have some initial hope. During the campaign you promised to be so presidential that we would be bored. I prayed that this campaign promise would be honored.

It didn’t take long to see that you lied about this too. On your second day in office you did something so disrespectful that it still takes my breath away. In case you don’t remember (or wish to claim it’s fake news) you appeared at the Central Intelligence Agency and stood in front of the Memorial Wall.

Perhaps you didn’t know this, but each of the 125 stars behind you commemorate a CIA employee who died in service to his country. But unlike most memorials to those who paid the ultimate price, there are no names with the stars. We know who some of them are but some died in circumstances that are still classified to ensure the safety of others who continue to serve us. This wall is a sacred place.

And not to put too fine a point on this, we don’t memorialize these 125 martyrs anywhere. We don’t remember them with streets, or parks, or schools. They don’t live on in memorial runs or hospital wings. Our only recognition of their sacrifice, and even their existence, lies in those 125 stars most of us will never see.

So did you honor their memory? Did you tell their families that while they may never know how their loved ones died, their country’s gratitude knows no bounds? Or did you instead use this opportunity to complain that “the press” cheated you by reporting that your inauguration was poorly attended?

Were this not sufficiently offensive, you later claimed to have been given a standing ovation. Really? So here’s the thing: when the President walks into a room everyone stands, and nobody sits until the President tells them to. You didn’t. Not only that, but you planted the room with your own people who were instructed to laugh and clap on cue. You were given an alleged standing ovation only because nobody was allowed to sit and your own people clapped.

I weep for those whose memory you disrespected.

But I hope you listen me now: it’s not too late. You still have 3 1/2 years left in your term (1208 days but who’s counting). Here’s what I suggest:

• Stop trying to make yourself look better by denying health care to the poor and the sick. The Affordable Care Act is, while necessary, not perfect. If you work with Democrats and make it better you can claim to have “fixed” it. We’ll give you that.
• Come clean about how you worked with Russia to win the election. Admittedly this won’t make you more popular, but full disclosure is your only way to take this off the front page of the daily news cycle. Much of the reason you’ve not been able to get much done lies in the fact that you’ve consistently cared more about your image than the nation you lead.
• Stop listening to those who are the most loyal and start listening to those who are the most intelligent. Those who bring you bad news aren’t currying favor, they’re looking out for your (and our) best interest. Be cautious about those who tell you want to hear and listen carefully to those who tell you what you need to hear.
• Admit that you have a hard job. This won’t be a hard sell but you ran on a platform of “I’m smart enough to make this job easy.” When you mused that nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated you looked stupid. Every President before you understood that they needed to learn how to do the job. It’s your turn to recognize that.

I’ll have more later. Call me.