NYT article on Immigration touches on a much bigger problem.
The New York Times today has a horrifying, yet unsurprising, article about Trump discussing immigration issues in the most racist terms: “Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.” AND “Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.”
This was the stuff before that independently would cause a scandal, exact a price, threaten a presidency. I am sure that the above will at the very least consume a good deal of ink and air-time.
But I wanted to write about something else that I noticed in the reporting: the belligerent Republican disregard of evidence and expertise . . . and even argument itself. From the same article:
When he got word that the Office of Refugee Resettlement had drafted a 55-page report showing that refugees were a net positive to the economy, Mr. Miller swiftly intervened, requesting a meeting to discuss it. The study never made it to the White House; it was shelved in favor of a three-page list of all the federal assistance programs that refugees used.
Initially, what the hell does it mean that the study “never made it to the White House”? Mr. Miller is a White House aide and policy advisor. Another (correct) way to rephrase the sentence “it was shelved in favor of .. .”, would be to say “the White House shelved the 55 page report in favor of . . .”
But — aside from that — is this not the defining difference between Republicans and Democrats? (I know it is for me (with many other reasons.)) When the heck are Democrats, ever, suppressing, burying, squashing or killing independent studies designed to address policy issues?
When do Democrats ever do what is so blithely ascribed to Republicans here? And what we all know is, in fact, a pattern of misconduct by Republicans?
I would actually love to hear the challenge, to temper my views — do Democrats, on any issue, try to suppress data and expertise?
When you cut through everything, this is the thing that makes me shake my head concerning my Republican friends. How do you willingly sign on to a movement that manages, and censors, what information you hear?
