The Citizenship Question

Counting Citizens in the Census————————————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                The Constitution directs Congress to conduct a census every ten years to count the number of people living in the country. There weren’t very many when the Constitution was written, hence little need to distinguish then between citizens and just plain people so it was a distinction without much of a difference. As our country expanded and attracted more settlers to populate it and build its infrastructure, new states were added and Congress needed census data to determine, among other things, fair representation in the House of Representatives.

 

I worked as a field supervisor during the 2000 Census and am aware that there is sometimes an air of suspicion regarding censuses which in some countries had been used to tax or seize property and conscript men into military service so adding questions to the census forms is generally restricted to those necessary to gain needed information not otherwise readily available. But while the Constitution doesn’t specify what questions may be asked, neither does it say which ones may not be asked and questions regarding citizenship and even race and ethnicity have been included in the past. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can, in addition to counting people, collect statistics as “necessary and proper for the intelligent exercise of powers granted by the Constitution”.

 

There weren’t many government benefits and entitlements in those early days but today there are many, some available, at least for now, only to citizens. It is, therefore, not only sensible but “necessary and proper for the intelligent exercise of the powers granted by the Constitution” to know just how many are eligible to receive those benefits and what the potential cost might be.

 

Previous censuses have included questions on citizenship without causing much distress in either of the two major political parties. And, as recently as late last month, a Harvard University Center for American Political Studies/Harris Poll showed that two-thirds of all respondents, including even a majority of Democrats, think the census should be able to ask how many people living here are citizens. But Democrat leaders and open borders advocates contend that the citizenship question is intended to discriminate against Hispanics and is therefore racist, notwithstanding the fact that the question would be asked of everyone regardless of race or ethnicity.

 

The Department of Commerce this year proposed that the citizenship question be added, again, to the 2020 Census. Liberals promptly challenged, arguing that it could result in an undercount, since households containing an undocumented immigrant might be reluctant to respond at all. The Supreme Court took the matter up and Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, declared that the administration’s reason for including the question appeared contrived. Contrived or not, don’t Americans have a right, indeed a need, to know how many actual citizens are in the country and entitled to the benefits that, by law, only citizens are?

 

Democrat candidates for their party’s presidential nomination are proposing, among other freebies, free medical care to undocumented immigrants. Doesn’t it make sense to want to know how many people that would potentially cover and what the potential cost of this and other benefits, like free college tuition, that may be authorized, would be? Also, census data serve many purposes besides reapportioning representation in the House of Representatives including determining demographic trends, important in determining healthcare and other essential needs of, for example, different age groups. Don’t we want an accurate picture of what America looks like? But this issue is not about needs or common sense. It’s about politics. Democrat leaders, who once supported the need to have an accurate picture of who is in America, now object to the question. Are the reasons not obvious? First, it’s because undocumented immigrants are a rich source of potentially reliable votes. Secondly, it’s because the Trump Administration proposed it.

 

The Supreme Court left the door open to including the question in the 2020 census if the administration came up with a more compelling reason but time ran out and printing the census forms had to begin if the census was to be completed on time. However, the need remains for an accurate count of citizens and non-citizens living in America and President Trump will now seek to obtain such information by ordering federal agencies to provide pertinent information they may have in their files. Adding the citizenship question to the census would have been far easier, less intrusive and the information obtained less subject to controversial use since census data may not, by law, be shared with immigration authorities.

July 27, 2019

Age Discrimination

Reflections on Passing the Torch——————

A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

One of the lesser former candidates for the Democrat presidential nomination advised Joe Biden that it was time to pass the torch of leadership to younger leaders, presumably a category that would include himself, implying that Mr. Biden was too old for a leadership role. Mr. Biden is the most qualified, by experience at least, among the gabble of Democrat candidates contending for the nomination to run for the most powerful office in the world by virtue of his eight years as Vice-president, a heartbeat away from the presidency, and his lengthy service in the Senate. Herewith are some thoughts on that topic.

 

First of all, it is presumptuous of Rep. Eric Swalwell to imply that he is a leader or a judge of leadership or a worthy recipient of that torch, being virtually unknown outside his liberal California congressional district. Secondly, it is indicative of age discrimination to suggest that someone in his seventies is too old to serve in a leadership role. Thirdly, it is bad politics to offend such a large segment of reliable voters, senior citizens, whose votes each party will need to win. Forth, it implies that all the experience acquired in a lengthy lifetime and political career isn’t worth much. For chief executives, like commercial pilots, ship captains and other command positions responsible for human lives, experience is not just important, it’s the prime qualification (which is why I didn’t vote for Mr. Trump). There is no substitute for experience, especially in dealing with emergencies. Neither charisma, charm, eloquence nor youthful energy is enough.

 

Fresh ideas should always be welcome but young politicians are not their only source. They also need to be good ideas and throwing money at every problem is not always a good idea. Let’s examine some of the ideas put forth by some of the Democrat rising stars trying to gain attention by positioning themselves to the left of Bernie Sanders. For example, when asked during a debate to raise their hand if, in addition to free health care for all Americans, they would provide it to undocumented immigrants, they all did. Seriously? They would actually provide free healthcare to anyone who managed to sneak into the country? Our current major entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, are already unsustainable without major reforms that almost no politician is willing to support but they want to make free healthcare available to all the world’s huddled masses who can manage to enter the U.S. illegally? Is this a great country or what? Come one, come all. Your Uncle Sam will take care of you.

 

If there is a common trait that characterizes youthful liberal candidates and perhaps all millennials, it is the need for a cause and common enemies. Leading the list are Donald Trump, the “rich”, corporate America and fossil fuels. So obsessed are the young progressives over climate change that they pursue the war against carbon-based fuel with religious zeal. This in spite of the fact that fracking and the shale revolution has enabled America to become the world leader in producing clean fuels like natural gas. American research is producing even cleaner fuels. Fossil fuels have lifted millions around the world out of poverty and most of the world, including still-developing countries and the two most populous, China and India, will be dependent upon them for the foreseeable future. America accounts for only about 15% of global emissions. Even if our Green warriors were able to stop the use of fossil fuels in America, it would do little more than make them feel virtuous which is what, I suspect, motivates many of them anyway.

 

The younger generations will, indeed, inherit the world we leave them and so they should, of course, have a voice. They will also inherit the bill for some of the decisions we may empower them to make today. That bill will inevitably come due with interest. Many of the younger generation subscribe to the new economic theory that holds that as long as the economy keeps expanding enough, the debt doesn’t matter. That’s rather like saying that as long as we win at the casino, we will prosper. They will be in for a rude shock when we reach the point where the service on the enormous national debt we are racking up to pay for entitlements leaves nothing left for discretionary  programs like defense.

 

Continuing economic growth may indeed be essential to our survival as a great nation. Right now, we are enjoying unprecedented economic growth under a GOP administration, whether you like the current president or not. So which of these liberals running for the Democrat nomination would you be willing to trust with this booming economy?

July 13, 2019

Culture Wars on Campus

Captives of Political Correctness Clutter College Campuses———–

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

American universities are still the finest in the world, attracting students and scholars from around the globe. I value the opportunities that my undergraduate and graduate degrees have helped made possible. I recall most of my professors fondly and am grateful for the influence they have had upon me. All the more reason I deplore what is happening on campuses all over America today. College campuses were once places where ideas could be explored and debated. We learned to express our opinions and listen politely to others, some critical of ours. We learned to deal with the criticism and sometimes even benefit from it, not hide from it or fly into a rage over it. We learned to persuade, not demand and we were too busy studying and working part-time to demonstrate or protest over anything.

 

Today, many universities have speech and behavior codes so extreme that they define hate speech as virtually anything critical of progressive ideology. Students must be sheltered from such speech, oral or written, and be alerted by trigger warnings if they are at risk of even hearing any of it. How did centers of learning become centers of progressive ideology where conservative views are not only not welcome but not permitted? How could faculty and staff, supposedly the adults in charge, allow this to happen?

 

Oberlin College is the latest Institute of higher education to add to this national embarrassment. Its students demonstrated their immaturity recently by accusing a local bakery of racial profiling after a black shoplifter, who actually pleaded guilty to the charge and was seen kicking and punching a bakery employee on the ground who followed him out of the store, was found guilty. The college responded by supporting the students’ protest and boycotting the bakery which had no record of racial profiling. A jury later awarded the bakery $11 million from Oberlin and an additional $33 million in punitive damages.

 

Harvard University, which during its long and storied history has educated slaveholders, recently decided to withdraw a letter of acceptance to a survivor of the Parkland school shooting who reportedly graduated second in his class because of a reported racist post he made when he was a child and which he apologized for. Harvard has discriminated for years against applicants of Asian descent and, incredibly, still defends the practice.

 

The admissions scandal, whereby affluent parents pay, bribe and cheat to get their children into elite universities is still expanding. Conservative scholars and public officials are routinely disinvited from speaking or harassed and shouted down while trying to speak and even barred from the campus altogether when liberal students throw a temper tantrum. Students choose as commencement speakers, entertainers who seem incapable of expressing a serious thought, let alone useful advice to graduates. Administrative staffs are outnumbering faculty, deanships are added to deal with such non-academic matters as diversity and speech codes, adding greatly to the already hugely-inflated cost of a university education.

 

Academic majors in such soft areas as peace, gender and race studies offer relatively easy credits and degrees but little academic rigor and even less in the way of employment prospects. Public and many for profit universities have an abundance of students who aren’t prepared for college level studies, have little hope of graduating and end up with a job that didn’t require a college education in the first place, depriving a deserving and qualified student of a spot. Americans have been sold by liberal politicians on the absurd notion that everyone requires and is entitled to a college education, preferably at the taxpayers’ expense. If you think college is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.

 

All of this is a threat, not just to one of America’s most precious assets, the quality of its universities, but to the value of the degrees they so liberally award. It won’t be long before foreign students catch on to what’s happening and decide that American university degrees, already overpriced, aren’t worth it. Since they pay full tuition, this would be a financial disaster to our universities. Before you make that next donation to your alma mater or your children’s, satisfy yourself that it deserves it as a center of learning and not just a place where kids go to become young socialists and learn how to protest and demonstrate. Communicate your thoughts on the matter to the university president. While you’re at it mention that you believe every freshman should be required to take a course in debating.

July 5, 2019

C

The Politics of Envy and Class Division

Democrat Debates Deepen Divisions————————————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

Twenty of the two dozen declared democrat presidential hopefuls in quest of their party’s nomination finished the first round of debates in general agreement that Donald Trump was the worst president ever and that the best thing that any of them could do for the country was to deny him a second term. Beyond that, they mostly agreed on the need for more government spending and regulations, open borders, some version of socialized medicine, unrestricted right to abortions and ending the use of fossil fuels. Listening to them describing our nation’s shortcomings, one might think that we were in the throes of a depression rather than enjoying unprecedented prosperity, economic growth and record employment, including among minorities.

 

The politics of envy and class division were evident as the candidates demonstrated the party’s leftward lurch. The Wall Street Journal, in its lead editorial the day after the second debate, said that “(i)t isn’t clear why the Democrats have moved so far to the left.” I think it’s perfectly clear. It’s greed. The candidates are so desperate for power that they will promise anything to get votes, regardless of the cost, whether by income re-distribution, free college, free medical care for everyone including illegal immigrants and a free path to citizenship for them so that they can become reliable Democrat voters.

 

The surest way to end the current economic and employment growth in America will be to elect one of these candidates who are competing with one another to see who can offer voters the most free stuff. Democrats can’t seem to tolerate prosperity if they even suspect that the affluent somewhere are becoming more affluent. Take California, for instance. That most liberal of states is enjoying a $21B budget surplus, largely because of a tax increase on the wealthy. Watch how quickly the Democrats in Sacramento squander it as they spend ever more on public employee benefits and some of the worse schools in the country. For example, California already spends $3,600 more per pupil than Florida and 50% more than it did a decade ago. Yet, according to one study, only half as many California fourth graders are as proficient in reading as those in Florida and only 31% are proficient in math compared to a national average of 40%, which is bad enough.

 

The Golden State contains about half of the nation’s homeless and about half of its illegal immigrants. Its infrastructure is in disgraceful condition and its taxes are among the highest in the land. Housing is in short supply in the urban areas and it is unaffordable. Why would anyone in their right mind vote for a Democrat from California for president, including Sen. Kamala Harris or Rep. Eric Swalwell? And speaking of the latter, Mr. Swalwell demonstrated his immaturity and lack of good manners when he told former Vice-president Joe Biden, the most experienced of the candidates seeking the nomination to run for the highest office in the land, that it was time to pass the torch to younger leaders. Personally, I would have told Mr. Swalwell that I had no intention of passing the torch, least of all to someone as immature as he is, but if I ever did, I would probably tell him, in explicit language, what he could do with it. Mr. Biden was too polite to do so, of course, but Mr. Trump, I’m sure, wouldn’t hesitate for a minute.

 

South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour “so that even those without a college education can afford a middle class lifestyle.” Good luck with trying to do that on $15 an hour and support a family unless you’re planning to live on the street and eat a lot of ramen noodles. If he thinks it can be done, he should try it. He’ll find, as others have, that raising the minimum wage kills starter jobs in small businesses.

 

And speaking of college, those candidates favoring free college for everyone might take a lesson from Kalamazoo, Mich., which tried free tuition to all residents who wanted it, funded by wealthy benefactors. According to statistics compiled by the Upjohn Institute, the percentage of those high school graduates receiving free tuition earning a bachelor’s degree within six years increased substantially—for whites and high to upper income families with less need for free tuition—but only by 4% for lower income families and not at all for blacks. The graduation rate for whites was triple that of blacks, making it clear that there are causal factors other than affordability such as a high percentage of single- parent families and lack of a home environment that prioritizes higher education and helps prepare students for success in college. Many of those accepting the free tuition said they did so only because it was available, not because they particularly wanted to go to college.

 

College for all, a progressive mantra, is promoted by liberal politicians under the rational that everyone would have higher earning capacity. But if everyone had a college degree, why would it be worth more money? Not everyone needs a college education and resources expended on providing it to those who don’t need or want one would be far better spent on vocational training.

 

The campaign season is young and a lot can certainly change before it’s over. But the economy is booming and not just for the rich, contrary to the liberal pitch. As a prominent Democrat said not too long ago, “It’s the economy, stupid!” How many voters will be willing to trust that economy to a party drifting toward socialism?

June 30, 2019