I have been discussing the likely confrontation between the Trump Administration and various “sanctuary cities” which have pledged not to cooperate with federal authorities in the deportation of illegal immigrants. I believe that cities like New York City will face a rude awakening when they calculate just how much they received in federal grants that could be withheld by Attorney General Jeff Sessions or the Administration. Now that scenario is playing out in Texas where Gov. Greg Abbott is threatening to cut funding for Travis County after Sheriff Sally Hernandez announced the county would be scaling back its cooperation with federal immigration. Hernandez could trigger a perfect storm of having both state and federal fundings cut back in a county that is deeply dependent on such funding.
Starting Feb. 1, sheriff’s officials will begin honoring so-called immigration holds or “detainers” placed by federal authorities only when a suspect is booked for capital murder, aggravated sexual assault and “continuous smuggling of persons.” That is an oddly short and arbitrary list. What about other forms of assault and battery? How about gun smuggling or racketeering or major drug charges? It is also not clear why one has to be “continuous” in the business of smuggling people or how one defines “continuous.”
Hernandez will require that the feds get a court order or arrest warrant signed by a judge for the jail to continue housing a person whose immigration status is in question. She insists that “The public must be confident that local law enforcement is focused on local public safety, not on federal immigration enforcement. Our jail cannot be perceived as a holding tank for ICE or that Travis County deputies are ICE officers,” Hernandez said.
Now here’s the question. What if Sessions insists that the public may want the federal government to focus on federal crimes and cut all local and state funding in the criminal justice area? How about federal assistance in turning over federal prisoners with detainers for state crimes? The feds could adopt the view that they are not their problem and release them. This could be a dangerous game of chicken with the public most at risk from the release of some of these prisoners with violent history that are not covered by the relatively short list released by Hernandez.
The county may not have to wait for a decision from the feds. Abbott has said the state is likely to move by cutting off funding. That would mean the loss of $1.8 million in grants, which is hardly crippling for an office with $169 million budget, but it is also not chump change at around one percent. The federal hit could be greater. More importantly, if Hernandez is going to obstruct federal enforcement, she may find less cooperation in a host of other areas.
The coming weeks will see if these confrontations are going to worsen but the politics are not promising for compromise. That would result in the type of confrontation between federal and state authorities that we have not seen on such a large scale. There are over three dozen such cities. It could lead to some interesting constitutional challenges over conditions tied to federal funding. In 1987 in South Dakota v. Dole, the Supreme Court upheld federal conditions that withheld highway funding from cities that did not enforce the federal drinking age. However, the Court noted that the amount was not so high as to be coercive in the denial of state authority over this area. Ironically, these largely liberal cities may rely the most on a ruling against the Obama Administration. In 2012, the Court found such coercion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, when the Court struck down a provision of the Affordable Care Act that would have blocked federal Medicaid funding to states that did not adopt a Medicaid expansion.
The result could be a major reconsideration of what constitutes coercion from federal conditions. I have never been a fan of federal conditional spending. I have a hard time with the notion of the federal government taking more in taxes than its needs only to send the money back to the states with conditions on how they handle traditional areas of local and state authority. Having said that, the Court has allowed such conditions and these cities may have to make a choice between defying the federal government or accepting hundreds of millions in federal support for the criminal justice system.
What do you think?
62% of Americans support severe sanctions as described by mespo in his 10:50a comment. Only 30% of Americans support sanctuary cities. I hope Dems push this issue. They will lose the next 3 election cycles if they do. Without Fed money those Dem machines in big cities will implode. “Go ahead, make my day” comes to mind.
Immigration without assimilation is invasion. FFS.
Also, there are approximately 323 languages spoken in the U.S. How many do you want used on voting ballots, driver license applications, etc.?
Can you name them? Approximately? And while we are at it to which U.S. are you referrng. There are three just in this hemispphere.
Bad spelling on my part. There are three in this hemisphere alone and adding (A.) will not help there are still three choices for referral. .
Michael – I think there are only two now. Mexico is no longer the United States of Mexico, just Mexico.
Do I need to name them in order for you to get my point? And are you insisting that we spell out United States of America in our comments in order to protect you from confusion?
If either of the above are “yes”, then you need more assistance than I care to offer. FFS.
The Governor is responsible for th entire state not just the whim(p)s of a few odd corners. Houston? Dropped to second highest murder rate in the country after Chicago. This Sheriff is obviously a candidate for a pink beanie. Did I cover all the bases and basics. Oh yes. Houston’s reason to exist is to convert oil to fuel products and now we find out their biggest customers is oil drilled and pumped in other countries, brought in and refined and sent to other countries. I’d like to see a border wall tax on that practice. What else? They are famous for lap dancing.
This action by the sheriff was more about personal politics than practical or cost measurements. The feds pay for the incarceration of the ICE holds and pick them up regularly. From a law enforcement perspective if the hold is a problem child in the community deportation is welcomed by any agency since it belays or gets rid of the problem.
I believe one will find few law enforcement officers who would prefer to see a gang-banger or criminal alien remain in their community when the ability to boot them out of town for free is available. It doesn’t have to be a high level felony to garner that sentiment.
Dallas and Houston are also sanctuary cities.
Gov. Abbott vs Austin…. Look for the marches to get even larger in Travis County. Abbott knows if he gets too harsh tech companies will threaten to pull out of the state and he will have another NC on his hands. Have no knowledge how punitive Sessions will prove to be but if one looks at his record he might very well prove to be very much so.
actually some of us would be glad to see them go. Austin was not set up to be this big.
What happened to the conservative idea that the government closest to the people governs best?
Immigration policy has never been conducted by local governments, even in 1789.
It’s not a conservative idea it’s a founding fathers idea but the left abandoned it about a hundred years ago.
What happened to the conservative idea that the government closest to the people governs best?
This is all part and parcel of the insanity of sending money to the federal government to have it then parceled out out to local governments for local spending. It engenders wasteful spending as Washington insiders decide priorities for remote locales and, worse, it provides the federal government with an unconstitutional level of control over states.
It also corrupts government as voters elect federal legislators based on how much of the federal pork barrel those candidates promise they can bring back from Washington for the benefit of their constituents. Nine voters out of ten will tell you that reelection an incumbent is necessary beacuse a “new guy” would not be able to bring back as much pork as would someone who “knows how things work.”
There is a deeper unspoken issue here. The 12 million + ILLEGAL Hispanic aliens and their friends and family living in these United States are the face of a culture war. Many Americans see them as invaders who are unable, or are unwilling to learn English and become Americans. They are often viewed as having their 1st loyalty to nations south of our border rather than the United States. Our government aids in this image by allowing dual citizenship / and forcing us to accommodate Spanish in our schools, and refusing to make English the OFFICIAL language of the nation. It makes matters worse when a sheriff named “Hernandez” openly says she will not enforce federal laws on immigration. So I ask ,sheriff, where is your loyalty is it to your husband / family /or these United States?
Very few see illegal immigrants as “invaders.” I find them hardworking and friendly folks looking to better themselves — a typical economic migrant. Those who want immigration enforcement simply want the rule of law to hold sway of the rule of sentimentality. Compassion can be a tyrant as much as greed.
Very few see illegal immigrants as “invaders.” I find them hardworking and friendly folks looking to better themselves — a typical economic migrant.
Your imagination is one thing, social reality is another. See Heather McDonald on illegal alien crime, for starters.
Even Heather doesn’t contend the majority are criminals.
Define ‘very few.’ A few is something like two or three next comes several meaning four to seven. If your point is only backed up by a very few which means two not three you do not have more than a few legs to stand on. meaning two. It is all right to have an opinion …meaning one but who is the other one that makes up your ‘very few? I’ll let you get away with several three to seven so now we have one add ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and two more that would be who? WaPo and NYT? or did you want to add SNL? In that case you can’t use several without subtracting your self or stating Several and I.
You may NOT use the PC fictionary as a source. It is unacceptable.
Very few probably corresponds neatly with the white nativist crowd. Less than one percent of the population if memory serves.
your memory doesn’t serve but as it happens I probably agree more than you with the first lines and consider them to be Vecinos Distant No Mas and dislike them being taken advantage of by the backers of the sociaist corporatirsts and statists. I just leave out the BS. The number have dropped EXCEPT for percentage of criminals since jobs in the USA have all but disappeared.
So who were your other five people?
Ok, I’ll put you in the Nativist American crowd then. Now there’s seven of you guys.
There was enough of us to win on Nov 8th. In case you didn’t notice
Don’t put me in with your crowd, thank you very much.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/trump-bans-government-scientists-from-sharing-their-work-with-the-taxpayers-who-funded-it/
That’s a common practice to avoid inconsistent or conflicting release of information.
And besides if an opponent nation or entity needs the technology just ask the next left wing President. No risk and comes with a training team.
So what? If the criminality of that population exceeds the native population, that’s one reason (among a number of others) that illegal immigration is injurious.
The “what” as someone of your intellect surely knows is that your rebuttal to my remark was that somehow Heather suggests all immigrants are criminals. She doesn’t which makes you wrong and leaves my allegation about their good will and work ethic still standing. (In fact, that is what polling suggests most Americans believe according to Pew). Rather, Heather suggests that illegals make up a significant segment of crime in LA. No argument from me about that manifest fact. Being erudite as you are doesn’t make your omniscient especially when your shots come from the hip.
Neither I suggested that nor did she. Your imagination.
All illegal immigrants are in violation of the law and should be punished for that ‘ere their deportation (a matter distinct from their propensity to commit crimes and drive drunk).
You clearly implied that my statement (which you cited) that most illegal immigrants were not considered invaders and were friendly, hard working folks as is typical of economic migrants was rebutted by Heather McDonald’s work on gang violence in LA. McDonald found a high correlation between illegal immigration status and local criminality with an even higher correlation among second and third generation illegal immigrants. She never contended that most migrants were criminals as your flippant reply suggests to anyone acquainted with the English language. . Sorry, but you don’t slip off the intellectual hook of your lame reply just because you have a great thesaurus.
That portion doesn’t excuse your wildly insufficient estimates due to an insufficient language skills.
Huh? Oh I see your a follower of Kant, Hegel etc.
No, more a Hobbesian.
I didn’t realize you were that far behind the times but it explains a lot. Come to think of it strike Kant. Far too complex. So then how do you know you exist? And if yiou don’t exist why should I listen to a nonentity?
I know full that I exist because you validate it with every comment and like Descartes, “I think therefore I am.” Now, your existence is a little murky.
Can you prove Descarte had the ability to think?
mespo – I think therefore I am, not I think clearly, therefore I am. 🙂
True dat, obviously.
By the way, if you think Hobbes is behind the times, you don’t have the internet or don’t understand the “state of nature.” Either works.
Try the 1900’s All that rehashed Plato stuff has lonb been set aside
Admit it. You never read either did you?
Boietius? What was his real name and Occam? What is the difference between the modern version of the The Razor and the original version. What philosophy does Lykoff follow?
Didn’t think so. Thanks.
Duffer. You Kant make a silk purse out of a Hegelian ear.
Plato is not exactly light reading. 😉
Much more so than his successor but then Plato went at it subjectively with built in ‘outs’ whereas his successor stuck to the facts for the most part. Plato however did in the end state that his system wouldn’t work and stated why a point that his followers from Augustine, Aquinas Hobbes, Hegel, Kant, skipped. Kant was by far the most tedious and the funny part is that all his pronouncements were or should have been false on there face to any sort of rational examination. That point was missed
Had the previous wave not been separated by their own inconsistanies they would have arrived at a proper concusion (which took until the 1960’s) and saved the world a lot of trouble and strife.
You may have noticed that the application of the Plato etc.line ended up as it should have while the other partially triumphed. Partially because the Lykoff/Soros group grope stil lhas it’s followers and they will eventually get back in the collective and present anothere solid front of sorts. those who have a true axe to legitimately grind are better off as far away as they can get they truthfully deserve a better outcome.
The Fat Lady has yet to warm up for the next performance but the music should be glorious and speaking of which i now have on order all the Evancho CD’s.
Michael Aarethun – I am a follower of Aristotle and the Stoics. Still think that would make a great name for a band. 😉
Too many contradictions for me. Reality is real, A is A and Objectivism wins every time providing it’s applied with conscious reasoning and that includes ideas, creative thinking and spontaneous art. i can’t deal with over the rainbow land no matter how it’s defined. But I like the band name. Kant would work for a trio of drum, guitar and bass all playing off of different sheets of music.
Thanks, that’s what I’ve been trying to say for years… just never able to put it so succinctly.
You had the heart of the lion and let me have the roar as Churchill might say.
mespo
you say “” I find them hardworking and friendly folks looking to better themselves ” Obama often said the same thing. I wish he said the same nice words about American Blacks instead of describing us as” uneducated, mistreated, and victims. As for the “invaders” comment, Mexico is doing with babies and ” uneducated, mistreated, victims, what it could never do with bullets and bayonets conquering America. I see No duty legal or moral duty to accommodate the language of people who come to us in poverty asking for help . . . be they here legally or otherwise. Never in the history of our nation have our schools been “forced” to teach kids in a language other than English So I ask you are the currant crop of immigrants inferior to their predecessors or simply unwilling to learn the one thing that binds us together. . . . English
solvermn, re: ” Never in the history of our nation have our schools been “forced” to teach kids in a language other than English”
I agree, the accommodation of Spanish/English has always irritated me. And it does a disservice to kids who grow up in this country and barely have a grasp of English.
For all the members of the Know Nothing Party, Spanish was the language of Texas well before an English speaker ever set foot in the state.
It ain’t the 1830’s no more.
And, FWIW, before a Spanish speaker ever set foot in the state of Texas, the language was Commanche, and dozens of other native tongues. Which makes me wonder what point you are trying to make.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Actually, in 1835, anglophones outnumbered hispanophones in Texas by a margin of more than 3 to 1.
People often use a similar excuse for CA. Prior to it being part of the US, it belonged to Mexico for all of 30 years, and before that it was a Spanish colony, and before that it was fought over by a variety of Native American tribes. In fact, there were several tribes of Native Americans who lived (and eventually all died out) in very harsh desert climates because they were violently driven out by more successful, prosperous, warlike tribes.
So, technically, the language of CA should really be Apache, Chumash, Athapaskan, Penutian, and Takic Uto-Aztecan, among a variety of others. And each of those tribes held their land for a heck of a lot longer than Mexico’s 30 years.
To combat the balkanization of the country, and improve communication, we have one single national language. It is of course advantageous to teach other languages in schools and at home, and families can and should pass down the languages of their heritage. But it is important that we have a unifying language that everyone learns to understand. I have lived and traveled to other countries. Enabling someone to not learn the language will have far reaching limitations on their ease of getting around or succeeding.
In support my main girl friends name translated to English is Dangerous Woman She’s half Apache and half mestizo. When she speaks I pay attention!!! We both refuse to use Spanish north of the border and refuse to use English south of the border. After that I’m at a distinct disadvantage.
The main reason in the USA for not learning a foreign language such as English, Spanish or other is one word ‘lazy.’ There is no official language in USA other than the printing of public documents. By 2050 it will be the second most used language in the USA as well as USM. One would have to add Canadians to stay in the lead where English is concerned. EXCEPT for the problem of subtracting California, Quebec, and New York.
True dat
The answer is found in an examination of reality. English which has never been made the official language of the country except for the required printing of public documents is the dominant language and also the dominant language of the world. Spanish is the dominant language of the Western Hemisphere followed by English and Brazilian Portuguese. Demographics projections show Latinos becoming a larger group than Euros as soon as 2030 and no later than 2050.
It is a disservice to not teach or require English to non-English speaking immigrants and the opposite is true when going south. of the border. No Spanish is a big disadvantage.
How hard is it to cause a change without requiring a change. Oregon’s Bottle Law is an example. 5 cents deposit kept a lot of broken glass off the highways. Mandatory garbage separation helped spur that effort.
So…suppose the government at the federal level said, “we aren’t going to hire anyone for any civil or military jobs that are not bi-lingual and English IS a requirement.” Couple that with the sign up for the draft and be eligible for a government job etc.
Schools would be forced by the public to offer one or two foreign languages and guess which one is the easiest to learn. Immigrants from East Europe or Asia speak their home language and usually two more one is either English or Russian with some also speaking German and or French.
The fuddy duddies who are happy with only English should also be offered English language training judging from the lack of skills evidenced. Just today one of the Clinton News Network reporters…or was it WaPo said the election was several weeks ago. Several is four to seven. The election was 10 weeks ago. Yet they are supposed to be literate.
Still the lazy can stray stupid no probloem just no government jobs without two languages one of which must be English.
Follow up. Schools don’t offer that training pull their government funding.
It’s not a hard problem to solve.
The result is the probable outcome is English and Spanish AND all the documetns still in English AND our children grow up capable of dealing with the entire hemisphere. Can’t do that in Africa or Asia or Europe where they have a new language every ten kilometers.
It’s not just immigrants who are short changed it’s home grown young people as well.
.
The reason is to keep them enslaved using language as a barrier. and lazy incompetent educators.
Actually, I find them anxious to learn English. Imagine trying to function at banks and schools without English. We have classes at our church that are filled. And many migrants require their kids to speak it. This sentiment doesn’t exonerate them but to suggest most are refusing to change doesn’t mesh with my observation.
Mespo, overall I agree that most economic migrants are just that: hardworking and friendly. Whether or not most people agree is up for debate. I think it depends on where people live. In SC that was the case, but when I moved to Vegas there was definitely a culture war going on – some of those Mexicans were downright hostile to white folk.
Wonder why?
I have heard places like Nevada and New Mexico do have a problem in that regard. If so, I’m open to reconsider my views.
I tend to agree with you. As a group, we are kicking out better people than some of the Americans we have here. But I think that also depends on what percentage of them are in your locality. Kind of like blacks. If there are a few in your school, there is no real problem. But let the population grow to 8% or 10% up, and things go to heck.
My GUESS is, that in California, the Mexicans can be a tremendous detriment to the state, and comprise a large part of the criminal class. Whereas, if there are a few Mexican families around a small city, then they get along fine with the people there.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Hey Squeeky
You should go volunteer to help Trump improve the inner city in Chicago. You could agree to move into an all black neighborhood. Once they find out that someone with your views has moved in, I’m certain that they will say “there goes the neighborhood ” and find a better place to live.
Not me. If I want to see a jungle, I will go visit Kenya, or someplace where you can see elephants and lions and get cheap booze. Plus, Kenya is a lot safer than Chicago vis a vis the murder rate. Kenya’s is like 6.7 per 100,000 and Chicago’s is like 20 to 100, depending on the neighborhood.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Cheap booze? In Kenya? What am I missing?
Good comment. I say : Too many immigrants and not enough snuff.
And the kicker in the federal regulations concerning denial of law enforcement grants is that not only do you receive no funding in FY2017 but you have to pay back all the money you received while you were a so-called “sanctuary city (SC)” if you’re one of the already designated SCs as compiled by the DOJ. Now, we’re not taking a paltry few million here but billions in already received money. Let’s see how much you’re willing to pay for principle now my good city fathers (mothers?) in Chicago and LA for defying the federales. Maybe you’ll get a payment plan. Supremacy really does mean supreme.
“I have a hard time with the notion of the federal government taking more in taxes than its needs only to send the money back to the states with conditions on how they handle traditional areas of local and state authority.”
Not since Ronald Reagan has the source of government spending been predominantly taxation. That’s when Congress made it legal for foreign investors to buy US securities, and ever since, the source of government spending has come less from taxation, more from borrowing. So, in cases such as for sanctuary cities, the government is excluding benefit of the US Treasury’s borrowing power to state and local authority. The federal government hardly taxes enough to meet its spending in Texas, much less in Travis County.
Without the federal government’s vast ability to borrow, we’d be just another failed South American nation where inflation has made every millionaire a broke millionaire.
Not since Ronald Reagan has the source of government spending been predominantly taxation.
Whoever is instructing you on public finance has been lying to you. Usually, tax revenue accounts for north of 80% of federal spending.
When you compare deficit spending since Reagan to actual tax collections, you can’t get to 50 trillion in unfunded debt without spending far, far more than 120% of what the federal government has taken in by taxation.
Not including unfunded debt in spending is like not counting your home mortgage when you fill out your net worth statement. But of course the borrow-and-spend politicians don’t see actual reality this way.
When you compare deficit spending since Reagan to actual tax collections, you can’t get to 50 trillion in unfunded debt without spending far, far more than 120% of what the federal government has taken in by taxation.
There is no $50 tn in ‘unfunded debt’. There is $20 tn in federal debt, large blocs of which are held by the Federal Reserve and the Social Security Administration.
Federal revenues and outlays by year are readily available data. Not much excuse for you talking rot in this way.
You are downgrading yourself to personal attacking now because you do not have facts to back up what you are even saying. If you did have facts, you’d maintain a civilized conversation, not stoop to the behavior of a libtard who can’t have his way.
Why can’t the Sheriff have the county jack up, exponentially, the rate they charge the feds to hold the ICE detainees?
They charge the feds for holding detainees on federal charges?
Steve Groen – there is no free lunch, even in jail.
Roscoe – you make a good point, however I think these are usually long-term contracts.
That is a legitimate question. And the cost of illegals in schools to the school systems and in medical facilities to the medical system and in courts to the court system. Where to get the money from? The home country as an addition to existing tariffs.
Intergovernmental transfers should be unconditional with odd exceptions (e.g. disaster relief, funds for Interstate maintenance).
Federal law should permit the prosecution of this woman for seeking to frustrate federal law enforcement.
http://www.dcclothesline.com/2017/01/23/please-sign-petition-to-keep-satan-statue-out-of-arkansas-state-capitol/
I think taking away funding already being provided to gain compliance with a new federal law from a few holdouts is coercive because the state or local government has relied on that funding. I don’t know that providing a new and conditional funding program to gain compliance is.
“[T]otal allegiance to the United States of America.” – Trump, the guy who now likes the CIA, when just a few short weeks ago . . .
trump and his band of haters will usher in a real version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. As Gov. Abbott, a clueless moron in his own right. Recall he had the TX national Guard and TX citizens on alert for military exercises Jade Helm 15 where these nimrods were worried about a military invasion of TX!. Yet these people are now in control. I have never seen so many people so afraid of anything that isn’t lily white and carrying a bible. The trumpsters have no answers but bigger jails, larger militarized police forces and expedited death sentences to cure all of the nation’s troubles.
As noted today by Paul Krugman: Two-thirds of Trump voters believe, falsely, that the unemployment rate rose under Obama. (Three-quarters believe George Soros is paying people to protest Mr. Trump.) Only 17 percent of self-identified Republicans are aware that the number of uninsured is at a historic low. Most people thought crime was rising even when it was falling.
The tyranny of the blockhead minority will not lead to any improvements but it will lead to more hate, distrust and damage to democracy, especially with trumpsters and their ‘alternative facts’. Goebbels would be proud of the trump efforts so far and elated at the minorities craving for more Big Lies as they sit idly by watching mindless TV and waiting for the next episode of American Carnage starring donald trump and kellyann conway……
Wow Lloyd:
You are a sour puss.
I think that you could teach the Trump folk some lessons on hating.
What! He’s not a Pinko too?
As noted today by Paul Krugman: Two-thirds of Trump voters believe, falsely, that the unemployment rate rose under Obama.
The number of employed people fell from 146 million to 139 million.
You grossly overestimate your own perspicacity.
Our bankster was referring to the Unemployment Rate, which fell under Obama, as he said. Total employment also fell, as you said. The difference is that many people unable to find a job just sat down and stopped looking. And, as Trump says, the reason for that is that the jobs just weren’t there. I might note that Krugman, in spite of his accolades, long ago gave up being a real economist in favor of being a Democratic party advocate.
Did the rate fall? The formula is the estimated work force minus 10% equals a new 100% So 100 becomes 90 and then apply the new employment figures lowering the 90 by those who have dropped off the end after their unemplyment runs out.. 90 becomes 80 and 5% of that is four 4 four. OR a rate in the low eighties. Figures can lie and liars can figure.
That formula stated in the mid nineties but used to be subtract five percent since the end of WWII when the entire work force was counted.
Lloyd, You are one of the few Goldman banksters Trump did not hire. 🙂
You, sir, are a moron!
Semantic nonsense. If a federal matter is happening within a locality, it is a ‘local’ matter, too. This is all going to be very interesting.
PS – obviously not in the literal sense of legality, but still. I think a lot of sanctuary cities (one of which I was raised in) have been operating under the delusion of prosperity due precisely to that federal assistance, a factor most are probably unaware of, and the extent to which they have relied onnit may be a shock to some. I can’t help but feel that some of the insanity we are seeing is simply a reaction to bubbles bursting in many cases.
If the county is stripped of state and federal grant monies, the tax payers will have to pick up the tab. The question is, do they want to? CA is willing to have enormous gas taxes compared to Arizona, just so they can pay for the train to nowhere (or maybe it is Julian now). This is all additional tax burden the citizens of CA have agreed to take on.
The opposite is if the local area is capable of self government and remembers HOW the federal government would not be needed and could lessen the tax burden leaving more for the local government and not incidentally it’s citizens. .It’s Citizens as in legally entitled to…
Time to wake up America.
A new dawn has been ushered in
where law and order will be respected.
Law and order will be respected only if people choose to respect it. I suspect there will be less respect of law and order than you demand. By the way, just what specifically does law and order mean. There are occasions when law and order demand resistance, such as the Jim Crow laws of the 1950s and 1960s and the resistance movement known as the Civil Rights Movement. Law and order should not be respected simply because it is the law. No one has an obligation to respect and accept any law(s) the purpose of which is/are to infringe or deny their rights.
“No one has an obligation to respect and accept any law …”
you got a citation for that?
There aren’t any unless you listened in to Che’ Guevara during one of his rants.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/martinluth124932.html
Hi Bettykath – I greatly admired those who worked on the Underground Railroad. They broke the law, willing to face the consequences, because the law is unjust. Harriet Tubman saved a record number of people, and is the only Conductor that I know of who never lost a single passenger.
Are you saying that all of our federal immigration laws are similarly as unjust as those permitting slavery or the Sam Crow racist laws that dear MLK later fought? That anyone who wants to should be able to walk across our border and become citizens? Like the Lost Zatos, who just recently cooked alive hundreds of men, women, and children in makeshift ovens along our borders? Or the cartel that hung a journalist up on meat hooks and eviscerated her, leaving her to die with her entrails hanging out? Because illegal immigrants do not go through a background check. Or, if we just limit ourselves to those who are not violent criminals…there are millions of us, and billions of people living in other countries around the world, the majority of which would love to come here. Shall we just throw open the borders then? Increase our population by thousands of percent in a single year and support them all? Forget the environment, or open space, or national parks. We’ll really need the room. And of course all farms will have to be shut down. We’ll need the room.
Our law either applies to everyone or no one. Anyone who subverts our immigration laws because they believe that any hindrance to open immigration is unjust should also accept that there are legal consequences for their actions.
You’re asking Bettykath to make sense and think two-moves ahead. This she does not do. She’s Orwell’s Julia. She knows when to cheer and when to boo and that’s all she needs to know.
That would put you and Harriett Tubman squarely on the side of the anti-slavery Republicans and their suipporters and firmly against the the pro slavery faction AKA Northern and Southern Democrats. with their Black Laws and later on Jim Crow Laws. It would not put you and Harriet Tubman on the side of the actual lawbreakers which at the time were Northern and Southern Democrats. Just to keep things in correct focus.
I’m afraid that’s not an actual source of law. At any rate, Dr. King’s hypothetical individual must “willingly accept the penalty,” which suggests to me that he understood a general obligation to comply with law. the scientific skeptic appears to suggest that individuals are free to decide which laws they will obey or to decide on their own how extensive their rights are. He may be a good scientist, but he has a muddled understanding of how the law works.
You might start with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with emphasis on ‘accepting’ the social contract’ of citizenship. Just as a start point. Contrast that with the draft laws and any number of opposites such as Money as Free Speech.
When it comes to Criminal Aliens this isn’t Walden and you are no Thoreau. The other place such as notion is easily found is in the writings of Plato, Kant, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and let us not forget Benito and Adolf. where the opposite viewpoinit is supported..
ScientificSkeptic
I Want to keep this in perspective. seamusp7c is talking about a sheriff who openly says she will choose what laws her dept will enforce. indirectly both you and seamusp7c are talking about Illegal aliens living among us without fear of the law; in part because government officials from local office (Sheriff Sally Hernandez) to national office (Obama) have made them think they have a “Right ” to be here by seeking to reward their trespass with citizenship. and selectively enforcing deportation laws. the sheriff would have been better off had she she said she will seek repeal of a law she finds unfair and would only do the minimum required for enforcement. If you want to choose what laws you will enforce then there should be no protest over loss of funding from state and federal officials who pass the laws you choose not enforce
For some reason Frederic Bastiat doesn’t seem to resonate in this blog. Although this is a “legal’ blog, Bastiat’s “The Law” seems to carry no relevance here and I’m not sure why. Is it because he was French, or that his philosophy on the law and rights were written in the middle of the 19th century? So many of the issues we discuss are addressed in his philosophy. They are relevant then, they are relevant today and will be relevant tomorrow.
“It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.
In the first place, it erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.
No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.
The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.”
That is what is says in my copies too. But then we are so unused to the law being followed especially by government one tends to forget little problems like that. That would be the result of supporting those who ignored the law and supported foreign philosophies that promote such unacceptable habits. Such as the lamestream media and the RINO to DINO government faction AKA Government Party..
No one has an obligation to respect and accept any law(s) the purpose of which is/are to infringe or deny their rights.
Of course, that begs the question as to just what their rights are. (Hint, prior to about 1946, you generally did not have a legal right to insist someone sell you their house, hire you, promote you, or serve you as a customer; there’s a reason for that sort of non-entitlement).