Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Texas newspapers:
Corpus Christi Caller-Times. July 16, 2018.
Two stories in recent days of refugee mothers united with their children were happy. But they were not endings. Far from it.
The inhuman ordeal of separation has ended for them. But now they face a long and precarious bid for asylum with a high likelihood of failure and eventual deportation.
And - most importantly - they represent only two of an estimated 3,000 incidents of traumatic immigrant parent-and-child separations. Our government still has an estimated 2,600 children to reunite with their parents. Two heart-warming stories about reunification shouldn’t leave the impression that our government is on top of this crisis, or that any credit is due our government for bringing these mothers and children back together. We don’t thank arsonists for putting out their fires. The thanks belongs to the indefatigable parents and to a network of humanitarian volunteers.
Think of 3,000, or 2,600, not as a number, collectively, but as each child individually. Imagine the fear and misunderstanding of a toddler taken from his or her mother. Imagine, also, the anguish, desperation and confusion of a parent who may not be fluent in English or Spanish because he or she grew up conversing primarily in an indigenous native American language.
One of the two mothers from our happy-reunification stories faced the additional obstacle of illiteracy in her quest to find her child. This would have been a huge problem if an advocate hadn’t accompanied her in her search, which led her to her son in Corpus Christi.
Many among us don’t care to imagine any of this. Many Americans resent or fear immigrants. Many of them say the parents brought this ugly situation upon themselves and their children and that it serves them right. Not every lucky American-born citizen ponders where, but for the grace of God, he or she would go.
This describes our own president. When asked about how his administration would solve this crisis of his making, he responded: “Tell people not to come to our country illegally. That’s the solution.”
Trump’s response is as dishonest as it is devoid of humanity. Many came legally, and many of those who didn’t come legally were fleeing for their children’s and their own lives. People tend not to be sticklers for the rules when fleeing killers. Hundreds of distraught mothers wailing for their children are a poor match for Trump’s favorite immigration horror story about hordes of murderous, rapist, narcotics-smuggling, human-trafficking gang members.
This is a human rights emergency of Trump’s creation. Not only did he and his lieutenants choose separation of parents from children as a deliberately cruel cudgel for intimidating desperate Central and South Americans from seeking asylum, but they did it with no discernible plan for reuniting the children with their families. The result has been a hideous bureaucratic nightmare that exposes monumental, unforgivable insensitivity toward children.
That cruel indifference was evident in a statement by a government spokesman to John C. Moritz of the USA TODAY Network Austin Bureau, in defense of government policy:
“Asylum claims have skyrocketed across the board in recent years largely because migrants know they can exploit a broken system to enter the U.S., avoid removal, and remain in the country. Every means in accordance with current law is on the table to protect the integrity of our immigration system from those seeking to exploit it by bogging it down with meritless or fraudulent claims, and undermine lawful petitioners.”
Translation: They’re liars. Except some, he supposes, are good people.
The solution to the problem Trump created starts with treating people like they’re people, not like animals, as he called them recently. Start with that, and the solution to what looks now like an unsolvable problem will follow.
A large, recurring part of the problem - also Trump’s only credible alibi - has been Congress’ failure to reform our nation’s immigration laws. Trump has shown explicitly the worst that can happen when Congress fails to dictate solutions. He has brought urgency to Congress’ duty to end its seemingly endless delays and find veto-proof bipartisan solutions. “Do your job, Congress” would have been a much better response from Trump to that question. And it wouldn’t have been the first time he has said it.
At some point, we hope the same people who support Trump’s anti-immigrant approach to immigration will recognize that all of the separated children plus their immediate families probably amount to no more than the populations of neighboring Sinton and Taft, Texas, combined. This nation could absorb them without blinking. And with the current full employment that Trump claims to have caused, we could put all of them to work without taking jobs from native-born U.S. citizens.
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San Antonio Express-News. July 16, 2018.
Reducing carbon emissions is paramount if we are to mitigate climate change.
But so, too, is the need to reduce methane emissions. A recent study led by the Environmental Defense Fund and published in the journal “Science,” serves as a stark reminder of how much work remains on that front. The study found the U.S. oil and gas industry is emitting 13 million metric tons of methane each year from operations. That’s 60 percent more than estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Methane is a primary component of natural gas. It can trap heat at a significantly higher rate than carbon dioxide. While carbon dioxide will linger in the atmosphere for thousands of years, methane has a lifespan of about 20 years. That means curbing methane emissions could buy the world crucial time to address carbon emissions.
The EDF study concluded that the lost methane gas could serve 10 million homes and is worth about $2 billion. That would certainly go a long way toward covering the cost of reducing these emissions.
It’s been widely known that federal data for methane emissions has been flawed. A previous study in the journal, Environmental Science & Technology, found facilities collecting and gathering natural gas from well sites have been emitting methane at a much higher rate than the EPA has estimated. Scientists have observed industry data is often at odds with atmospheric measurements.
Natural gas has long been celebrated as a potential bridge from coal to cleaner energy. But higher known emission rates undermine that argument. If this country is serious about mitigating the effects of climate change, then that means being serious about reducing methane emissions.
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The Facts. July 17, 2018.
At the cost of $110,000, Angleton leaders have commissioned four out of five phases of a comprehensive study on employee salaries, with the possibility of chunking in another $40,000 next budget cycle for the final phase. That might sound like a hefty expense, but viewed in context with the city’s overall payroll of $10 million each year, it’s not much and the administration believes the findings will be well worth it.
Administrators and council members plan to use the study’s results - which won’t be completed for more than a year from now - to better attract and retain employees.
The firm, Gallagher Benefit Services, was hired to conduct the analysis, which among many other tasks will compare Angleton’s pay rates to similar public and private employers.
The city conducted a salary study several years ago. However, officials suspect Angleton already has fallen behind again since that time.
Angleton has experienced turnover in several top positions. Parks and Recreation Director Will Blackstock resigned in September and former Building Services Director Karen Barclay left in December after a tense negotiation with the city, according to previous Facts reports. Chief David Ashburn retired in April, and his replacement has not yet been hired.
Mayor Jason Perez said it’s important to ensure employees who do a good job are supported.
“We’re going to get it done, and we’re going to move forward,” Perez said. “Our employees, they make this city, they make us what we are. We need to take care of them.”
City Manager Scott Albert hopes the study will serve to help resolve some dissatisfaction that has been aired with the existing salary structure by connecting duties and responsibilities to ranges and providing employees with a blueprint for advancing their careers.
Angleton’s decision to re-examine its pay schedule and worker classifications as a means of remaining competitive could pay dividends if it finds what city leaders expect - that Angleton lags behind again as private-sector pay rates have jumped amid the area’s ongoing growth explosion.
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The Dallas Morning News. July 17, 2018.
One of the Obama administration’s greatest foreign-policy missteps was the failed “reset” button it attempted to hit with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. President Donald Trump’s meeting with Putin in Helsinki this week, and the calamitous press conference that followed, was far worse. Instead of a reset button, one might say Trump hit the self-destruct button.
What else could we say after first watching the president reject the assessment of his own intelligence agencies while standing next to Putin and then, under fire the following day, try to walk it all back by saying he has “full faith and support for America’s great intelligence agencies, always have”?
If the history of presidencies is written by the actions of key players at key moments, Helsinki will go down as a critical moment for this president.
High-profile meetings with Russians have often been key moments for presidencies. After all, Ronald Reagan is now widely seen as having demonstrated leadership by walking away from Mikhail Gorbachev and a possible arms agreement at Reykjavik in 1986. George W. Bush took a hit for his first meeting with Putin, but confronted the Russian leader numerous times, including at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 over his invasion of Georgia.
But what’s different this time is that Trump didn’t demonstrate a leadership vision, strength or a broader sense of purpose in his meeting with the former KGB agent turned strongman. He didn’t tangle with the Russia and lose. The American president showed an odd panache for discounting, in public, his own intelligence agencies and seemed intent on bolstering the very Russian leader he should’ve see as an adversary. Helsinki is where, for a moment, this presidency came apart.
The context here matters a great deal. The president arrived in Helsinki after a tumultuous run through Europe where he chided allies and likely eroded important relationships with the United Kingdom and the European Union.
He also arrived in Helsinki shortly after his own Justice Department indicted 12 Russian officials for conducting cyberattacks against the presidential nominee of a major American political party. Those indictments are part of a long-running investigation - conducted by Robert Mueller - into Russia’s interference in the American 2016 presidential election.
We’ve heard from the start of this presidency that Trump is simply thin-skinned about the Russian investigation, because he believes it to be a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the credibility of his election. He therefore has a habit of dismissing it as a “witch hunt.”
But at some point a long time ago, that ceased to be a meaningful explanation of the president’s actions. It certainly doesn’t explain his comments in Helsinki where he contradicted seven U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI and his own director of National Intelligence, about Russia’s interference.
“They said they think it’s Russia,” Trump said, standing at a podium next to the Russian president. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.” He also said Putin was “incredibly strong” in his denial.
We can be grateful that the president is now walking these comments back, but what he still isn’t doing is demonstrating he understands the larger leadership demand that he faces at this moment.
No one has shown collusion. But it’s long been undeniable that the Russians did interfere in our elections.
House Speaker Paul Ryan made this clear: “We just conducted a yearlong investigation into Russia’s interference in our elections. They did interfere in our elections. It’s really clear. There should be no doubt about that.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn was blunter, telling reporters, “I don’t think we should be taking a former KGB colonel’s word for what their intelligence apparatus is doing or not doing. I believe our intelligence community.”
No one should be more troubled by such interference than the president himself. What Americans were looking for from Trump at this summit was not a photo opp with another foreign leader. What many Americans were hoping for was a leadership moment, when the president confronted Putin over nefarious actions on the world stage - actions that go well beyond trying to undermine democracy in America. Many Americans were hoping the president would show he understands how to handle a foe.
Half of the reason why the president’s performance in Helsinki ignited a firestorm is that there is wide agreement that Russia is not a friend of the United States. We can negotiate with foes and even work with them, but only if we first honestly assess them for what they are.
Given the fact that the president is unwilling to do that, even with a backdrop of an ongoing investigation into Russian election interference, it’s now on Congress to show leadership on this issue. It can do that by passing legislation protecting Mueller’s investigation and ensuring he can’t be fired. Congress can also bolster existing sanctions and pass a resolution identifying Russia for the adversary it is.
Now that the president has backtracked on the worst part of his remarks, there will be pressure to let all of this wash away. That would be a mistake. The net result of Trump’s Helsinki run is that the United States looks weaker on the world’s stage and unsure of itself when dealing with Russian aggression.
Sen. John McCain, as part of a tough rebuke, concluded that “it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.” The real tragedy would be if we allowed that mistake to be the final word.
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Houston Chronicle. July 18, 2018.
Despite all the buzz concerning the Justice Department’s decision to reopen the case of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy kidnapped, tortured and shot by racists in Mississippi in 1955, there’s no reason to expect much to come of it.
First of all, Till’s murderers have been known for years. The two suspects confessed their guilt in a 1956 Look magazine article after being acquitted by an all-white jury. Having escaped double jeopardy, Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, lived freely until they both died.
Secondly, the new investigation only became known last week but began months ago, according to a report submitted to Congress in March. The lack of fanfare by the typically chest-thumping Trump administration in announcing the new investigation further suggests no dramatic revelations will result from it.
Till’s story is horrific. The Chicago youth was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, when Bryant’s wife, Carolyn, accused the teenager of whistling at her at a grocery store. Bryant and Milam decided to reiterate the power of the white race by abducting Till from his great uncle’s home, beating him, shooting him and using barbed wire to attach a cotton-gin fan to his neck before throwing the body into the Tallahatchie River.
Mamie Elizabeth Till Mobley held an open-casket funeral to bring national attention to her son’s murder. An estimated 50,000 mourners attended, and Jet magazine published graphic photos of Till’s corpse. But in little more than hour, an all-white, all-male jury set Milam and Bryant free.
The Justice Department reopened the Till case in 2004. By that time both Milam, in 1981, and Bryant, 1994, had died. Till’s body was exhumed and an autopsy performed, but a grand jury didn’t return any new charges. If there were other suspects, they are likely dead by now, too.
Still alive is Carolyn Bryant Donham, 83, who lives in North Carolina. Donham was interviewed by historian Timothy Tyson for his book published last year, “The Blood of Emmett Till.” Information in the book reportedly led the Justice Department to launch a new investigation. Donham admits in the book that Till didn’t make the sexual advances she claimed. But the statutes of limitation on perjury and other potential federal crimes in the case ran out decades ago.
Till’s mother died in 2003. He has other relatives who are thankful that yet another attempt at justice is being made, and U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat who represents the district where Till was buried, is glad to see the government following through on his request to investigate anew. But how much confidence can they have in Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose own civil rights record is checkered?
Sessions’ recent decision to separate young Hispanic children from parents who entered the United States illegally is on par with the racist comments he allegedly made that cost him a federal judgeship in 1986. Not even Howell Heflin, the senior U.S. senator from Session’s home state, Alabama, would vote for him at the time.
The Justice Department may have reopened the Till case, but with Sessions in charge no one should hold their breath expecting the new investigation to become much more than yet another dubious accomplishment President Trump will boast about.
Look at the big Oval Office ceremony Trump held in May to announce his pardon of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson, who in 1913 was convicted of transporting a white woman across state lines for an “immoral purpose,” served 10 months in prison. He died in 1946.
Tyson says his book may have prompted the new Till investigation, but he thinks it is a “completely hypocritical political show . I find it deep irony and appalling hypocrisy that Jeff Beauregard Sessions and Donald Trump would pretend to care about African-American children, about a black boy murdered in 1955.”
Plenty of children alive today could use their care and attention.
If they aren’t merely exploiting Till’s lynching to burnish their images, Trump and Sessions should take a bigger step to ensure equal justice for all in America by initiating a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s criminal justice system, with an emphasis on reducing the world’s largest prison population.
They should start by reading a Sentencing Project report that says 1 in 3 black men born in 2001 can expect to go to prison in their lifetimes. Let’s see the president announce an initiative to keep people out of prison, rather than waiting to pardon them decades after the fact.
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