America must return to being the welcoming, caring nation we always have been proud to be. This is not solely a moral imperative, though morals are part of it. It also is a financial and economic imperative.
Two features of America have contributed to our national greatness.
Our population has grown
We have given our people the opportunity to improve their lives.
The American dream is the belief that you can come here, be welcomed, and if you work hard, you can make a good life. We have been proud to be the world’s “shining city upon a hill.”
President Ronald Reagan defined his vision of “the shining city upon a hill.”
“In my mind it is a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kindsliving in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”
Of late, we have not been that shining city upon a hill. Our doors have not been open, even to those who are citizens.
We have shut out from society, too many of our neediest. We have built walls within and without. We have closed the doors of opportunity to immigrants, people of color, women, unmarried mothers, children without parents, non-Christians, and the poor.
Three of those groups, unmarried mothers, children without parents, and immigrants have not received the empathy and compassion an “America the beautiful” should (and could) provide.
In that sense, we have descended to a mean-spirited, selfish cold city behind a harsh wall, and America has not benefitted.
We have lost the services, the brainpower and the physical labor of the marginalized groups. We also have lost much of their consuming ability which also would have lifted our economy.
We have been, at best, uncaring about the plight of those groups, and at worst, deliberately cruel. In doing so, we have hurt ourselves. We have cut off our right hand to service the left.
Today, over 40 percent of children are born to single mothers. This trend is troubling, considering that children are, on average, at risk for poorer outcomes when raised outside a married-parent home.
Nonmarital childbearing, once rare in the United States, has become commonplace. This is the case among low- and moderately educated women and across racial lines.
While nonmarital childbearing among highly educated women is still rare, it has nonetheless increased over time, particularly among younger women giving birth for the first time.
Although nonmarital births were already common among Hispanic and black women in earlier decades, today, they are the majority or vast majority of all births.
Among white women and women of other races, nonmarital births were once the exception, but now they are quite typical.
Because of marriage’s decline, far fewer children today reap the benefits of a married-parent family than in past decades.
This is particularly the case among minority children and those from less-educated households.
At the very least, nonmarital childbearing—and the forces behind its rise—should be of great concern when considering the well-being of children.
According to The Hill, the share of American families with children living with a single parent has tripled since 1965. Approximately 75 percent are headed by a mother only.
In 2020 nearly 19 million children, amounting to 25 percent of all children in the U.S., were living in single-parent households.
That percentage is nearly three times the level in 1960 of 9 percent.
Should the government be concerned about, and do something about, the dramatic increase in children born to or living with unmarried parents?
Marriage is not nature’s construct. It is a legal, not a biological creation. It was invented by humans and is followed by most, but not all, humans.
While nature does not frown on unmarried couples living together and having babies, most of society’s laws do. Laws treat married couples differently from unmarried couples, both financially and socially.
Being an unmarried mother requires two full-time jobs, that of raising children in a nurturing household, and that of breadwinner to support the household.
From Psychology Today Magazine: According to the U.S. Census, single moms are one of the most disadvantaged groups—with nearly 30 percent living in poverty.
Many of these single moms cannot provide for their families as they often have lower-paying jobs.
Poverty impacts both sides of the economic equation, productivity, and consumption. Because single mothers have a greater tendency to live day-to-day financially, they produce less and buy less, so they contribute less to the economy.
The government cannot, and should not, even try to change people’s personal desires. Instead, it should support the single parents to help them become more productive.
Childcare and transportation aid, job training, food and rent support would help single parents be more productive for themselves and for America.
In December, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the nation’s population rose by only 0.5 percent between 2018 and 2019, the slowest growth rate in 100 years since an influenza epidemic contributed to a decline in the number of Americans in 1918.
This would be the lowest since the government started taking population counts around 1790 — even lower than the Great Depression.
Two factors are primarily responsible for this slowdown.
The country’s “natural increase” (births minus deaths) is declining steadily as people wait longer to have children.
The annual number of immigrants to the United States has dropped by almost half since President Trump took office, partly due to policies like turning away refugees.
By contrast, Canada recorded a population growth of 1.4 percent from 2018 to 2019, almost all attributable to an increase in the number of immigrants admitted to that country.
A population slowdown may not sound bad in this climate change era as we try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other causes of injury to our environment.
Unfortunately, a sustained population loss would be incompatible with economic growth.
Fewer people would mean a decline in business activity, imminent labor shortages, and a worsening age imbalance that would leave more senior citizens without enough caregivers.
The United States should pursue a healthy birth rate and a welcoming attitude toward newcomers to maintain population growth.
And this:
Congress hasn’t passed a meaningful overhaul to the nation’s immigration system since 1986,even though everyone—representatives of both parties in Washington, successive Presidential Administrations, federal and local agencies, and activists on all sides of the issue—agrees that it has long been unworkable.
And yet, as Dexter Filkins writes in his sobering and richly detailed report from the southern border, the outline of a political solution is unmistakable. “In principle, a legislative compromise on immigration is not difficult to imagine: tougher security on the border, a Republican priority, in exchange for expanded legal immigration, a Democratic priority,” he writes.
“But the prospect of a deal has dissolved in the mutual hostility that typifies congressional politics.”
Also known as Trumpian, name-calling, insulting, lying, dishonest, bigoted politics.
In the absence of meaningful reform, the burden of a disjointed and often unjust set of laws has fallen on the people ensnared in the system: migrants who take immense physical and financial risks to cross the border, overburdened law-enforcement agents pulled in several different directions, and communities that struggle to welcome new members with little outside guidance or support.
It’s a picture of a problem more complex than anyone seems willing to admit.
Add the difficulty of compromise with a party that believes supporting an outright criminal is the path to election success, and the solution is hidden by myths.
Myth: Immigrants are takers who do not pay taxes.(The Fact: Undocumented immigrants significantly contribute to the U.S. tax system by paying sales, income, and property taxes.
In 2021 alone, these households contributed $30.8 billion in total taxes, including $18.6 billion in federal income taxes and $12.2 billion in state and local taxes. Yet, they are not eligible for Social Security benefits or the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) though they pay taxes to these and other programs, like Medicare and Medicaid. Immigrants contribute more in tax revenue than they take in government benefits.)
So, what are we afraid of? Why are we building walls? Why is the citizenship approval process so Byzantine and slow? Why are we talking about deporting “Dreamers” or having “tougher security” on our borders?
Why has immigration become one of the biggest issues facing America when we need the people?
Answer: Right-wing bigotry and hatred stoke the fear that punishes us all.
Summary
Each year, ever more children are born to unmarried women. The typical father/mother family structure is becoming less the rule.
Additionally, we are having insufficient births to replace deaths.
Our code of laws and mores needs to be rewritten to accommodate these trends — tax laws, social benefit laws, immigration laws.
Immigrants are unlikely to be criminals, do not take jobs from citizens, pay more taxes than they receive in benefits, seldom bring drugs into America, and help overcome America’s falling birthrate.
In short, immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, and unwed mothers can greatly benefit America if given assistance by the federal government.
The alternatives — direct punishment or by ignoring their plight — not only is immoral but counter-productive for the nation. We need these people to be brought into the fold.
Bottom line: America’s economy needs a growing supply of educated workers and consumers. Immigrants, and single parents, and their children should be aided, not discouraged.
Having learned nothing by paying $800,000,000 for lying, Fox News and its puppets, Hannity, Ingraham et al continue to defend the lies of a traitor.
One wonders, when these people go home at night, what they tell their spouses and children about what they do. Is it, “I’m paid to be an actor. It’s just my way of making money. I don’t have to believe this stuff. No one does.”
Here are words and pictures from Donald J. Trump:
The protection of classified information Soldiers risked their lives to protect this
If you care about facts and evidence, and have not already been brainwashed by professional liars, thiswill interest you.
If you’re worried about a rogue GOP Supreme Court Justice, who has taken hundreds of thousands in bribes — perhaps millions — and is married to an ardent, white-supremacist election-denier, but unbelievably claims he never discusses it with her, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
If you are concerned about GOP election deniers trying to foist a lying, criminal traitor on America to be the President of the United States, again, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
If you were shocked to see the President of the United States encourage a mob to overturn America’s election by brute force while he did nothing to stop it, and then you read that an entire political party denies it all ever happened — you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Here is the latest Republican Party’s plan to destroy American democracy. And I’m not exaggerating.
In Moore v. Harper, the Court will finally resolve whether there is a doctrine of constitutional interpretation known as the “independent state legislature.”
If the Court concludes that there is such a doctrine, it will confer on state legislatures plenary, exclusive, and judicially unreviewable power both to redraw congressional districts for federal elections and to appoint state electors who quadrennially cast the votes for president and vice president on behalf of the voters of the states.
It would mean that the partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts by state legislatures would not be reviewable by the state courts—including the states’ highest court—under their state constitutions.
The independent-state-legislature theory gained traction as the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
In the Supreme Court, allies of the former president argued that the theory, as applied to the elector’s clause, enabled the state legislatures to appoint electors who would cast their votes for the former president, even though the lawfully certified electors were bound by state law to cast their votes for Joe Biden because he won the popular vote in those states.
Anti-abortion happens when a right-wing dominated, Catholic-dominated Supreme Court doesn’t care whether your religion accepts abortion. It’s only their religion that counts.
A dictatorship happens when a white-supremacist SCOTUS doesn’t care that extreme gerrymandering destroys the voting rights of people of color. If their vote can be destroyed, so can yours.
That as many as six right-wing justices on the Supreme Court have flirted with theindependent-state-legislature theory over the past 20 years is baffling.
There literally is no support in the Constitution, the pre-ratification debates, or the history from the time of our nation’s founding or the Constitution’s framing for a theory of an independent state legislature that would foreclose state judicial review of state legislatures’ redistricting decisions.
It’s not baffling at all. Remember, these are “impartial” right-wing justices who lean over backward to give right-wing theories serious consideration, no matter how wild-eyed they may be.
Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence that the Constitution contemplates and provides for such judicial review.
Remember that in many of its other rulings, notably about guns, the right-wing court looks to history, especially distant history, for its decision that everyone should be allowed to own, carry, and shoot a gun if the state legislature so deems it.
No history supports the independent state legislature theory.
Their textual argument is that the total disempowerment of state courts necessarily follows from the fact that the elections clause empowers the state legislatures to prescribe the “manner” of holding congressional elections.
But there is neither more nor less significance to the fact that the Constitution assigns this quintessential legislative power to the state legislatures than that the Constitution assigns federal lawmaking to Congress rather than to the executive or the judiciary.
And yet, the Constitution provides for judicial review of the actions of both.
Considering the makeup of this Court, it would not be unbelievable for states dominated by Republicans to ignore national elections and simply send Trump-oriented electors to put him, or some other Republicans, in office.
When taken to its logical conclusion, the independent-state legislature nullifies the Constitution, a step that is not beyond the rabid right-wingers wearing black robes.
But then, if the Court, with a straight face, can claim the words, “A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,” have absolutely no meaning at all, it can claim anything.
Proponents of the independent-state-legislature theory argue that because the elections clause does not assign this legislative role to the state governors and courts, the burden is on those who argue against the theory to come forward with compelling evidence that the Framers intended state courts to review state-legislative election laws.
But that’s to reverse the burden of proof.
Because there is no evident support at all for the theory, the burden instead is on those who argue for the theory to come forward with compelling evidence from the text, structure, or design of the Constitution or from the history at the time of the framing or founding, that confirms that the Constitution conferred on the state legislatures judicially unreviewable authority to redraw congressional districts.
The proponents of the theory have not carried this heavy burden to date, and they cannot possibly carry this burden in Moore v. Harper.
The fact that a Republican SCOTUS is taking this far-out idea seriously enough even to consider it worries me.
The right-wing segment of the Court, having already decided it is perfectly fine for a right-wing Justice to be bribed and have a biased family interest in a decision but not to recuse himself — those guys now itch to rewrite the Constitution.
If this decision goes the wrong way, we will experience a form of fascism that will rival Germany’s. And no, I am not exaggerating.
You may be a conservative. I once was myself until the GOP went nuts. But are you really willing to turn over the results of national elections away from voters and to a bunch of MAGAs?
We just finished the latest in over 100 episodes of “Debt Limit BS or How Government Lies Convince You to Accept Fewer Benefits While the Rich Get More.”
Being bribed by the rich, Congress does all it can get away with to widen the income/wealth/power gap between you and the rich.
One method is to tell you that federal government spending is “unsustainable,” or “out of control,” or is not “prudent,” or that the so-called federal debt is a “ticking time bomb.“
Never mind that they have been telling you the same lie for more than 80 years. While Federal Spending has increased the debt that isn’t a debt from $50 billion to $30 trillion, the nation still stands.
They lie because they are bribed and because they assume you know no better, so they can get away with it.
We all should contact our Congress people and the media and challenge them to answer a very simple question. Perhaps that will be a step toward narrowing the gap between you and the rich and give you the benefits you deserve and the government easily can afford.
If you’re tired of the BS, give this a try.
Oh, by the way, do you remember the Gephart Rule?
In 1979, noting the potential problems of hitting a default, Dick Gephardt imposed the “Gephardt Rule,” a parliamentary rule that deemed the debt ceiling raised when a budget was passed.
This resolved the contradiction in voting for appropriations but not voting to fund them. The rule stood until it was repealed by Congress in 1995.
Get it? When Congress voted for an appropriation, it also voted to fund them.
So, if Congress said, “We authorize spending a billion dollars on a dam,” that meant a billion dollars immediately became available to build a dam.
Makes sense to any normal person. Apparently, though, it was too logical for Congress.
In 1995, Congress said, “When we authorize spending a billion dollars to build a dam, we really don’t authorize paying a billion dollars to build the dam.”
And if that makes sense to you, you should run for Congress. Since that convulsion of childish illogic, Congress has plagued the nation with repeated debt limit crises.
Contact your Congress people and the media. If you don’t, then don’t complain about cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps, and other benefits.
As long as you don’t complain, they will keep cutting.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
