Let's Fix This Country
immigration

DACA Youths Betrayed, and With So Many Lies

Sep 16 2017

In a singularly cruel act that so befits this cold-hearted man, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, giving some 800,000 young people notice that they must leave the
country beginning six months from now unless Congress passes a law allowing them to stay.

Speaking at the Justice Department, Sessions made the announcement, fulfilling his cherished anti-immigrant dream by destroying that of the "dreamers", so called for the Dream Act, the bill that never made it through Congress that would have given the 800,000 mostly BREAKTHROUGH?: We report below that President Trump seems of two minds about DACA, having to go along with its rescinding but pained by its cruelty to young people. After dinner at the White House (Sept. 13), minority leaders of the Senate and House, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, came away saying they and Trump had reached not a deal but an agreement that would allow the Dreamers to stay, the quid pro quo being "massive" border security — the President's word — but not the wall. That's for later, he said.
    
young people the right to stay in the U.S. The president ducked making the announcement, handing it off to Sessions, who took on the job with relish and righteousness. His remarks betrayed a mind so fixated on his rigid interpretation of law that it bore no relevance to the 800,000:

"The nation must set and enforce a limit on how many immigrants we admit each year and that means all cannot be accepted...We cannot admit everyone who would like to come here. It's just that simple.”

Mr. Sessions, the so-called "dreamers" are not applying to be admitted. They're here. And they've been here for 10 years or more. The program requires its… Read More »

the presidency

A President for the Worst of Us

Aug 26 2017

Violence "on many sides, on many sides". He had looked up from the lectern and some viewed it as off-script, an ad lib. By suggesting there was an equivalence on both sides — neo-Nazis and white supremacist bigots on one side and those who had come to Charlottesville to protest against their toxic message — President Trump begin three days of disgracing the presidency with progressively worse arguments and stunning unawareness of what country he lives in.

He condemned "in the strongest possible terms this display of egregious hatred, bigotry and violence" without naming the groups or even which groups he was talking about, his primary concern being not to offend his white nationalist base.
The torchlight procession the night before the rally. An unmistakable echo of Nazi Germany

He was prompted by the press to say more, with one asking "do you want the support of these white nationalists", but he passed up the… Read More »

healthcare

Repeal Failed, So Will Trump Now Sabotage Obamacare?

That's what's been happening since day #1

Aug 24 2017

On his first full day in the White House, Donald Trump signed an executive order that effectively told all federal agencies to be lax in enforcing provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The order's vigorous instruction was to let things slide
“to the maximum extent permitted by law”. Much of this has been going on ever since, most of it hidden from view.

With the Obamacare sign-up period still in progress, the newly installed Trump administration immediately pulled advertising off the air that urged people to buy insurance. In mid-February, the Internal Revenue Service said it would not be… Read More »

It sure would help if you'd subscribe
We appreciate your visits, but for web legitimacy, we do need to verify a robust subscriber count. So why not sign on? We're informative. Entirely original writing. No ads. Yet we're free. And we don't bombard your inbox. Just an e-mail every 10 days or so when we have new articles. All we need is your e-mail address. Just click HERE
And if a subscriber, have you recommended us to friends? Let's grow this thing..

law and order

With Trump Agenda Stalled, the Justice Department Is Where the Action Is

Sep 7 2017

Each day we worriedly turn to the news to follow the president's latest Twitter outburst, but the one we should be watching is Jeff Sessions over at the Justice Department doing the most to execute the administration's agenda but going largely unnoticed. Badgered by President Trump in the hopes that he would quit to be replaced by someone who will subserviently fire Special

Counsel Robert Mueller, the attorney general has nevertheless stayed on his course of reversing what he would call the lenient Obama administration's policies with his own harsh vision of law and order.

Criminal justice practices in the U.S. have led to the highest per-capita incarceration rate in the world, exacting a toll on families and ruining lives with years-long sentences when so many are imprisoned for only minor drug offences. A strong movement had been building for reform that had won agreement from both conservatives and liberals in Congress. Legislators were on the verge of cutting mandatory… Read More »

giving

Why Always the Red Cross with Its Poor Track Record?

Sep 14 2017

When calamity strikes, it is ritual for every newscast to urge us to give generously to the American Red Cross. What about other charities? For them "there is a list on our website". Corporations pile into the media with ads urging the same. We just saw this appeal after Houston. We'll see it again when the still more terrifying Category Five Irma rips into Florida or the eastern seaboard. The Red Cross automatically gets top billing to the near exclusion of all other aid groups.

This goes on in spite of a very dicey record across the years which should have caused those news purveyors do their homework and instead promote others charities — local food banks in Houston, Corpus Chrisiti and Beaumont for example, or operations that will help remediate houses.

unaccountable

After Katrina in 2005, the Red Cross collected $1.2 billion, 70% of all the donations by Americans for hurricane relief. Contributing to this lopsided skew, FEMA released to the media a list containing the Red Cross — as if it needed further promotion — 19 faith-based charities, the sort favored by the Bush administration, and almost no other established relief organizations.

The huge, long-term undertaking of rebuilding houses and businesses for hundreds of thousands of displaced Americans was Job #1, yet the Red Cross grabbed most… Read More »

police state

Police Can Take Your Stuff Again

To get it back, it's on you to prove your innocence Sep 4 2017

For Jeff Sessions, who seems to have a heightened suspicion that ordinary citizens are breaking the law, their rights would seem to be an impediment to his law and order crusade, judging from his reinstatement of the program of
"civil asset forfeiture", a move that has drawn stunned criticism across the political spectrum. Hadn't Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, finally stepped in and at least gotten the government out of that practice in 2015?

Without any due process or even charges, civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement to confiscate property and money from anyone suspected of a crime, with the burden on the victim to prove innocence to recover the assets. The program was established as a powerful weapon against organized crime, relieving suspected crooks of their cars, boats, even houses — bought until proven otherwise with the proceeds from drug trafficking. But post 9/11, when the terrorism threat was added to policing, the Justice Department wanted to secure the assistance of local… Read More »

If you find LetsFixThisCountry interesting please spread the word