When you hear that our President wants to build a big border wall but still relies on foreign guest workers, I guess it's easy to nod your head and move on, but read David L. Wilson's article about the matter at TruthOut anyway, because it's very good -- among so, so many other things, you'll learn that some folks want to allow guest workers to come here year-round, which would destroy the only convincing argument for using guest workers in the first place, that their work is "seasonal." And it's not that convincing an argument, either -- school teachers' work is "seasonal," but we haven't exactly done irreparable harm to our civilization by giving them permanent employment.
Ho hum, CFPB acting director Mick Mulvaney slashed fines for at least three out of five civil settlements against financial predators. Remember, of course, that oftentimes these fines don't go into our government's pocket but into the pockets of people who have been wronged by financial institutions, so the reduced fines don't just injure law and order, they injure civilization -- after all, we don't just punish wrongdoers, but we also make them make things right with the people they wronged. By the time you read about all the whining wrongdoers do about being poor, you'll start to think Mick Mulvaney is actually trying to become the biggest asshole in this Administration. Which is a high bar to clear.
Jessica Huseman and Blake Paterson at ProPublica and the Kansas City Star tell the story of how Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (now running for Governor) used failed anti-immigration ordinances in several small towns across America to make himself quite a pile of money. One bamboozled local official compared him to Harold Hill from The Music Man (which surely makes Mr. Hill spin in his fictional grave), going from town to town saying he could get anti-immigration ordinances passed and beat the ACLU in court when they inevitably sued; he left a trail of defeated and/or gutted ordinances in his wake, but not before extracting quite the hefty fees from the towns. In other words, he transmuted failure into millions of dollars. No wonder our President loves him! (As an aside, maybe Sen. Casey should pay attention to how his 2018 Senate opponent helped bankrupt the city of Hazleton with Mr. Kobach's help.)
Our Justice Department is investigating whether five big pharma/medical device corporations knew that the free medicine and supplies they gave to the Iraqi government back in 2004 would wind up funding terrorist activities that killed Americans there. The defendants' response? That our government "expressly encouraged" those freebies -- and that might be enough to get them off, which sure will warm the hearts of the families of dead soldiers who filed the suit to begin with. Add that to the list of things that would never have happened if Tha Bush Mobb didn't bully America into Iraq. You know that list? The one that starts off with "ISIS"?
Good news, everyone! The Michigan Supreme Court allows a redistricting initiative to appear on this November's ballot. Well, that's what Republicans get for bragging about how thoroughly they've gerrymandered Congressional districts! The other side's argument -- that something this far-ranging should really be decided in a constitutional convention -- will seem odd to you if you've noticed that a lot of constitutional amendments get passed without one. Now let's just hope the legislature doesn't decide to gut it in a lame-duck session, as they did when Michigan voters repealed their "emergency manager" law in 2012.
Finally, our President's daughter says that her father's "zero tolerance" policy that separated parents and children at the border was a "low point" for her. Why, I bet it was a "low point" for those parents and children who got separated, too! Not that she'd have done anything differently, since the issue is "incredibly complex" and "incredibly complicated" and (as the lawless always say!) "we are a country of laws," and, perhaps worst of all, that we shouldn't be "incentivizing" bad "behavior" by, you know, treating people humanely. That's how evil people get good people to go along with bad ideas! But the issue of immigration is actually not "incredibly complicated" -- rich jerks like her father want to be racist and pay foreign workers in dung pellets at the same time, and if we stop "incentivizing" that "behavior," we will go a very long way toward resolving the issue.
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