Protect the Dreamers

Protect the Dreamers

No Hate Allowed Here

Immigration reform has been a hot button issue since people started travelling to new places. We are a nation of immigrants and those who settled here in the first instance would claim that all those who came after them and took their lands are here illegally. We white folks settled those claims in the Indian Wars of the 1800s by brute force and genocide, but never you mind that part of our history.

The current effort to rid our shores of brown skinned immigrants was announced with a smirk by Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions this week. President Trump made the call, but left it to Sessions to announce the decision and he did so gleefully.

Former president Obama tried without success to fix immigration in Congress, but the republican majority prevented a comprehensive fix. As a last resort, President Obama implemented DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, to tackle what appeared to be an easy part of the problem. He protected the Dreamers, kids who were brought to our shores by parents who entered this country without proper documents.

DACA made it possible for the Dreamers to remain under certain conditions. Almost 800,000 received DACA protected status because they met conditions that include registration, proof of entry while a minor with parents without documentation, educational attainment or military service and lack of a criminal record. They paid a hefty fee for the privilege to boot. As adults with a protected status, they are productive members of our communities.

The average DACA recipient is 26 years old and came here at the age of six. Ninety-one percent are gainfully employed. One hundred percent have no criminal record. They pay $500 to renew their status every two years. One, a Houston paramedic, died rescuing people in his flooded city after Hurricane Harvey.

With the stroke of a pen, the Trump/Sessions administration took away DACA protection for these neighbors of ours, subjecting them to easy incarceration and deportation, unless Congress acts to solve the problem by next March.

The GOP controlled Congress has not been able to pass a single piece of significant legislation yet. Internal divisions between ultra conservative members of the Freedom caucus and more moderate GOP pragmatists have prevented House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from advancing a budget, passing healthcare reform, or much of anything else. Tax code reform bills are next, along with funding the wall on our southern border, infrastructure repair and natural disaster relief measures. With all this on the congressional plate, and little GOP interest in talking with Democrats, comprehensive immigration reform or even protection for the Dreamers appears well beyond the horizon for consideration in this short period of time.

Make no mistake. This move is just another of the racially motivated actions by those currently in power to Make America White Again. Trump’s rhetoric and actions increasingly appeal to those white Anglo-Saxon evangelical racists who voted for him as he tries to shore up his political base against the rising tide of opposition from those in both parties and the Independent middle who fear further erosion of our democracy.

Former President Obama took the unusual step of weighing in on President Trump’s action and concluded his condemnation of it with the following:

“Ultimately, this is about basic decency. This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we’d want our own kids to be treated. It’s about who we are as a people – and who we want to be.

“What makes us American is not a question of what we look like, or where our names come from, or the way we pray. What makes us American is our fidelity to a set of ideals – that all of us are created equal; that all of us deserve the chance to make of our lives what we will; that all of us share an obligation to stand up, speak out, and secure our most cherished values for the next generation. That’s how America has traveled this far. That’s how, if we keep at it, we will ultimately reach that more perfect union.”

We must protect the Dreamers just like many Germans did when they hid the Jews from Hitler’s thugs. We must stand up for our neighbors, friends and co-workers who share in the American Dream. Hate, prejudice and discrimination must not be allowed to triumph.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired lawyer who serves as a guardian for minors, the elderly and disabled.

Reject White Nationalism

White Supremacy Prevents Democracy

White nationalists recently marched at night in Virginia holding flaming torches while chanting racially charged and support for Russia slogans. The historic reference to Klu Klux Clan nighttime, torchlight marches was not lost on anyone familiar with America’s racist history. 

One of the Virginia marchers’ objections was removal of Confederate war hero statues from public areas in several Southern states.  Others phoned death threats to the crane companies employed in New Orleans to take down Jefferson Davis’ statue. The crane operators had to work at night and wear masks while taking down the statuary for their own protection.

Let that sink in.

Trump’s thinly veiled campaign plea to white supremacists, “Make America Great Again,” followed by his open embrace of unabashed white nationalists Steve Bannon, Sen. Jeff Sessions and others has unleashed a wave of racially motivated violence and protests across the country starting during his campaign rallies and continuing into his presidency.  His appeal to those who hated Barack Obama for no other reasons than his mixed race heritage and temerity to have been the leader of the free world for eight years was clear.

Jeff Sessions’ appointment as Attorney General and much of their subsequent shared agenda continues to exacerbate white fear of darker skinned fellow Americans. White racists are being openly encouraged to lash out publicly against those perceived as different and inferior, even after being shamed in Facebook videos. Videos from Wal-Mart checkout lines, public beach confrontations and stand your ground shootings by fearful white citizens and even police officers are much too common.

Those who denigrate fellow citizens because of perceived superficial differences seem to be easy prey for weak-kneed politicians who happily whip up racial frenzy instead of thoughtfully addressing real problems facing all of America’s citizenry. Senseless calls to deport or imprison those with different skin tones, foreign sounding names, culturally different clothing choices or non-Christian religious practices further inflame white fears and baseless notions of white superiority.

Travel bans unconstitutionally aimed at those who believe in Islam and come from some Middle Eastern countries, but not others, evidence Trump’s discriminate hatred of Muslims without a shred of proof they pose a danger to the homeland. Federal trial and appellate courts rightfully look to Trump’s campaign promises as evidence of his illegal racial and religious motivations in proposing the bans. Many of his supporters use the bans as a license to harass and intimidate people who look “Muslim,” even though they may just as easily be Christians, Jews or Hindu.

This imaginary fear mongering has found its way into our public policy in many other disturbing ways. Cuts to urban public education, failure to pass much needed infrastructure funding, get tough on crime policy pronouncements, frenzy over gun rights, opposition to sensible firearm restrictions, restrictions on local political control, new voter suppression laws, gerrymandered political districts, attacks on reproductive choice, restrictions on public health policy, environmental regulation rollbacks and even foreign policy decisions all have roots in white nationalistic superiority beliefs.

America is already great, in large measure because we have historically overcome notions of white Anglo-Saxon Christian superiority in favor of inclusion and diversity. We are stronger and project a more vibrant and creative image to the world when we embrace and celebrate our differences. We are better when we are kinder to our neighbors and the rest of those who share in the riches our fragile planet can provide. Divide and conquer politics diminishes our greatness and weakens the American fabric, especially when motivated by racial animus.

Trump’s pathetic calls for an end to words that incite violence will continue to ring hollow until he purges the ranks of his political appointees of the white superior nationalists and reverses the policies he and they have implemented to forward their mutually shared agendas.

Those of us from white Anglo-Saxon backgrounds take for granted our privileged position in American society and political life. That needs to change in favor of actively embracing a more diverse and inclusive world-view if we are to survive as a democracy. Authoritarian imposition of white superiority will never succeed and is a sure path to the end of the American democratic experiment.

All of us need to take a hard look at the actions our government is taking and hold those who enact them accountable when racial or religious bias is shown to motivate changes. We must step up and demand that our representatives adopt race neutral policies and laws that do not favor any religion over another.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired lawyer and serves as a court appointed guardian for the elderly and disabled.

Trump's Con Continues

Trump’s Conflicts of Interest

When Private Deals Ignore Public Duty

We expect our elected officials will attend to their public duties not burdened with private obligations or interests that might interfere with the public’s best interests. We h expect our elected officials’ to disclose their private economic interests so we know that private concerns are not driving public decisions.

Many conservatives railed against Clinton’s private speeches to Wall Street firms, demanding transcripts so they would know what promises or assurances she might have made to secure the support those on the Street had provided. Some on the left wanted access to those same transcripts to be assured that her campaign promises to clean up Wall Street excesses were not contradicted in those private discussions.

Those same conservatives also complained loudly that large foreign and domestic donations to the Clinton Foundation bought access to government officials as part of the condemned “pay to play” politics that put private interests before the public’s best interests.

With Trump’s election, the conservative voices that condemned potential and real governmental conflicts of interest have gone strangely silent. They now implore us to rewrite the rules and forget the expectations so “change” can come to the dreaded Washington.

Let us not forget that the president-elect promised us his tax returns after he was elected. Have we seen them?

Would you like to know the foreign banks and governments to which Trump owes large sums of money as he writes off the interest he pays on their business loans? Would you like to know just how much of his claimed charitable contributions he wrote off against his income? Would you like to know where the Trump Foundation got its money and where it spent those donations? Would you like to know where all of his holdings are around the globe so we can measure his decisions involving the governments that host them? Would you like to know how much he paid in federal and state taxes, if any, for the last ten years?

These very telling connections have been revealed by every candidate for president in modern history long before the elections, except one, Donald Trump.

We know that Trump’s business is very large and generates significant income to him and his family. No president in modern history has come to the office with such far-flung economic interests and investments.

All of those who have preceded the president-elect have either sold off their business interests and investments and placed the resulting cash into government bonds or placed their assets in a “blind trust” administered by someone with no connections to or communication with the president. This prevents the president from making decisions, both domestic and foreign, which might have an impact upon his business holdings. This puts the public interest first, where it belongs.

Trump has declined to follow these traditions. He first claimed that a president cannot have any conflicts of interest just because he is the president. Then he said he would create a “blind trust” with his sons at the helm that would make no “deals” while he was in office. That did not fly far either, especially when they sat in on meetings between their father and business leaders.

Trump was scheduled to hold a press conference on December 15, 2016, to tell us how he would approach the obvious and massive conflicts he faces between his private business and investment empire and his public trust obligations. It was cancelled and put off to “sometime in January” so he and his lawyers can “figure it out.”

Clearly, the team did not want to face the firestorm before the Electoral College votes to make Trump the next president this coming Monday. After all he remains the Executive Producer of Celebrity Apprentice and that distraction will have to suffice.

Looming on the horizon are still other conflicts between the Trump Empire’s interests and the public’s trust. He remains the owner of several large facilities that lease space to federal government offices under leases that prohibit any government official from profiting from the leases. He owns stock in the company building the Dakota Access Pipe Line and already voiced approval of the line that has been the target of strong opposition to its operations by Native Tribes and their allies. Not to worry. His pick for Energy Secretary, former Texas Governor, Rick Perry, is a paid member of the DAPL Board of Directors. He’ll fix it. Trump’s business dealings with Russia are eclipsed only by those of the Exxon Oil CEO who he tapped to be the next Secretary of State amid a consensus finding by the government’s own intelligence agencies that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the cyber hacking of the election that swept Trump to power.

Trump loyalists, let me introduce you to the most conflicted President-elect this county has ever elected.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney and vice-chair of the Democratic Party of Washington County.

Stand with Standing Rock

What government authorities are doing to Native American land, culture and sacred sites in North Dakota is fundamentally wrong. President Obama's wait and see response is too little and too late. If the current conflict continues to escalate, it is just a matter of time until someone dies and we face another Wounded Knee.