Letter to Congressman Chris Gibson Re Immigration Reform

Mike Marnell forwarded Betsy McCaughey's video about the gang of eight's immigration reform proposal. 

PO Box 130

West Shokan, NY 12494

June 22, 2013

The Honorable Chris Gibson

1708 Longworth HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Congressman Gibson:

The proposed immigration law being put forward by the gang of eight is flawed and should be scotched.  Betsy McCaughey makes several points.  First, community organizations should have no role in the processing of citizenship applications, including those of immigrants seeking asylum.  Community organizations are partisan.  Marco Rubio and John McCain are committing direct partisan suicide by supporting this bill; I was skeptical of Mr. Rubio's conservative credentials before, and they have been discredited now.  

Second, the bill's proposed US Citizenship Foundation is a Trojan horse. It is outrageous that potentially partisan groups like this are being proposed to receive government funding.  Community organizations are fine as long as they are privately funded. They should not receive sanctions of law.  

Third, the Office of Civil Rights should not be involved in border security and enforcement.   

The America I once knew and that you defended is gone.  This is no longer the land of the free.  A government that regulates what you eat, forces you buy insurance, and, like this bill, uses soviets or community organizations to perform government functions is not the government of a free people.   Washington has failed America.  America's can no longer be called a great government.   

Have you thought about transforming the federal government into a defense-and-tariff treaty and downloading all other federal responsibilities to the states?   In its current form, from the Fed's garish monetary policy to social security to immigration regulation to the crackpot environmental proposals being put forth to federal gun control, the federal government is a failure.  I see massive net losses to the public from Washington. The federal government's only useful responsibilities are defense and tariff coordination. 

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Marco Rubio, the Obama Stimulus and the Bush Bailout

Gary Fineout is a journalist who works in Florida. In October he blogged about the conservative senatorial candidate Marco Rubio's stand on the Obama stimulus. He wrote:

"Rubio has been highly critical of the $787 billion stimulus package for months, repeating that government spending can't create prosperity. In his latest pitch to donors, Rubio's campaign states that Crist's 'enthusiastic support for a big government spending policy' has failed to halt the rise in unemployment while adding to the deficit."

However, it is important to recognize that although the stimulus package was a nonsensical blunder, a much bigger subsidy has been bestowed upon Wall Street. That includes the Bush/Obama/McCain-supported bailout of Wall Street as well as considerable hidden subsidies to the street via the Federal Reserve Bank. Some experts estimate that the actual subsidies to the street have been as high as $14 trillion, 14 times what Obama said in his state of the union address.

There are various kinds of Republicans. One way of classifying them is big versus small government supporters. Small government supporters oppose the Wall Street subsidies. Big government supporters support the Bush/Paulson bailout. It is a sign of the failure of the majority of rank-and-file, small government Republicans that they have allowed big government types to dominate their party nationally.

Marco Rubio claims to be a small government type and so representative of the Tea Party. But did he support or oppose the Paulson bailout, which is the chief reason Obama was elected with such heavy support from the street and the mass media it finances?

In a Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times article Adam C. Smith and Alex Leary quote National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer:

"He was a big disappointment to us when he was the speaker...He talked the talk, but he didn't walk the walk."

The article adds:

"The 38-year-old campaigning as an authentic, from-the-gut conservative is the same person who spent tens of thousands of dollars to test political messages on focus groups, gave out big staff salaries and, like Crist, favored a $60 million subsidy for a new Florida Marlins stadium...The candidate Rubio rails against big-government spending and assures voters that as a senator he won't slip earmarks into the federal budget. As speaker, however, he didn't mind a state budget with $800,000 tucked away for artificial turf on Miami-Dade fields where he played flag football."

There is no reason to trust the Miami Herald any more than there is reason to trust Rubio or anyone else that MSNBC or other big media sources tout, as in the video below. But it is imperative that Republicans question Rubio as to his position, not on the partisan Obama "stimulus" issue, which Republicans have used as cover for the massive government spending bloat of the Bush era, but on the Bush/Paulson/Obama/McCain bailout of October 2008, which was a far more damaging, far reaching and larger subsidy.

If you favor small government, the bigger problem is the Fed subsidies, not the stimulus. Where does Rubio stand on this issue, which is orders of magnitude larger than the stimulus?

People need to ask Rubio this question. Then ask it again. And again.

Rubio Ousts Greer in Florida

Progressive Republican Jim Greer has stepped down as chair of the Florida Republican Party, according to Talking Points Memo.com. David Brooks in the New York Times mentioned Greer's replacement, Marc Rubio, as a potential leader of the Tea Party movement (along with former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson). I hesitate about the Brooks mention for obvious reasons. Anything associated with the Times is potentially cooptive. If I were Fidel Castro, I wouldn't be asking the Republican Liberty Caucus for advice, and we should be extremely wary of the Times's opinions.

TalkingPointsMemo.com writes:

"It's hard to overstate the importance of this resignation to the national GOP landscape.

"Florida is shaping up to be the epicenter of the intraparty GOP war in 2010, and the resignation of Greer suggests the battle is tilting toward the ultra-conservatives on the tea party side of the line. Ever since Crist entered the Senate race, Rubio backers have accused Greer of turning the state party into an arm of the Crist campaign. Crist and Greer are longtime political friends, and Greer made it clear from the get-go that he supported Crist over Rubio (he promised to run the party objectively, however.) Rubio backers began to attack him and call for his resignation. Now -- over Crist's objections -- they appear to have gotten their wish."