The Predatory Rich

Dear Friends,

I am reading The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  It is a great book about Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.  If you like American history, you will really like this book.

The book discusses an early piece written about Roosevelt by a journalist named Ray Baker who was given a significant amount of time with Roosevelt before he was thinking about running for President but after he was made famous by his Rough Riders activities.  The section discussing Baker's research reads in part:  "Roosevelt expressed his growing disgust for the predatory rich, 'the mere money-getting American, insensible to every day duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune.' ... The finished article profiled 'a magnificent example of the American citizen of social position, means, and culture devoting himself to public affairs.' In every phase of Roosevelt's life, Baker detected a 'rugged, old-fashioned sense of duty,' the legacy of a civic-minded father".

Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican.  I cannot imagine that there is a single Republican today that would say what Roosevelt said about mere money-getting or could be described in the terms that Baker used to describe Roosevelt.  That lack of concern for the overall good is ruining our country.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Discrimination Based on Religion

Dear Friends,

The Hobby Lobby case has apparently made it clear to religious people who want to discriminate against those that do not hold their religious beliefs that the door is wide open to go well beyond contraception.  Apparently the day after the Hobby Lobby decision was made public, a group of religious friends of the Administration sent a letter to President Obama urging him to amend "his long-promised executive order that would bar discrimination against gay men and lesbians by companies that do government work" to include a robust religious exemption based on religious attitudes against homosexuality.  The quote is from a great article in The New York Times this morning here.  President Obama should sign the executive order as it is without an exemption and let the religious bigots take it to the Supreme Court.  

You can imagine the list of demands for exemptions.  A religious belief that marriage is between a man and a woman will lead to an exemption permitting a company to deny family health care insurance to same sex couples or permitting the company to discriminate in hiring and firing on that basis.  Soon we will be back to the religious belief that only permits marriages of a man and a woman of the same race, remember all the anti-miscegenation statutes.  The list will be endless.  Since the Supreme Court (if they have any intellectual honesty which I doubt) will go along with all of them, at least in its current configuration.  The only way to stop this ridiculous trend is to expose these religious bigots as the bigots they are.  People who in the name of religious freedom force their religious beliefs on others and deny them their rights.

Speak out!! Religious intolerance is not the same as religious freedom.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

President Obama and Immigration

Dear Friends,

President Obama's approach to immigration seems to me to be schizophrenic.  He has continued to deport more people than any prior President, and he continues to seek support from Republicans for his efforts to defend our borders and keep the "others" out.  At the same time he seems he really cares for individuals, e.g. the Dream Act.  As with most things today, I do not know what President Obama really feels about any issue.  He continues to do things that the Republicans should like and to do things that show complete disdain for his political base.

His latest request to Congress for $3.7 billion to address the huge increase in minors illegally entering the country demonstrates President Obama's lack of a rational approach to the immigration problem.  There are apparently 52,000 minors currently being detained and processed (for the most part to be sent home) and President Obama wants $3.7 billion to address this crisis.  I did the math and that is over $70,000 per minor.  Of course his proposal includes all kinds of border protection expenditures.  I suppose he included those to get Republican support.  He should have known that if he proposed it, the Republicans will be against it.  When will he learn. The Republicans are not against spending money to keep the "others" out or to deport them, but they do not want to let President Obama do it.

There is apparently nothing in President Obama's proposal to address the reason why so many minors are being sent unaccompanied by their parents on an incredibly dangerous 1,000+ mile journey to the United States.  These parents love their children just as all parents do, so the only reason they are subjecting their children to such danger is that it is the lesser of two evils since the conditions and environment in which the children are living is even more dangerous and in which there is not future for the children.

So both the Republicans and President Obama seem willing to let the children risk their lives to get here so long as we either stop them before they cross the border preferably with some kind of armed intervention or send them right back as soon as they get here.  If we spent a fraction of what the Republicans and President Obama are willing to spend on wars, the military and closing our borders on humanitarian aid and other efforts to make living conditions better for these families, we would not have the crisis that we have today.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal