Spero News

Star Parker explains why Democrats are hypocrites about illegal immigration: No one can accuse Donald Trump of not being able to grab attention.

He lobbed his latest political hand gr***de, announcing that he is considering shipping off illegals who have been arriving in droves at the U.S.-Mexico border to sanctuary cities.

These are municipalities with ordinances directing local authorizes to not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement being carried out by Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

States, cities and localities that have assumed sanctuary status are invariably Democratic and liberal strongholds.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, among the burgeoning list of Democratic presidential hopefuls for 2020, said on "Meet the Press" that he welcomes the proposal. Washington is home to a long list of sanctuary cities including Seattle and Spokane.

"We relish it," he said. "We're built as a state of immigrants. We've welcomed refugees."

Seattle mayor Jenny A. Durkan expressed similar sentiments in a Washington Post op-ed: "We will not allow a president who continues to threaten our shared values of inclusion, opportunity, and diversity to jeopardize the health and safety of our communities."

This is interesting to me, having just left Seattle after a several-day visit there on a speaking engagement.

My experience was just the opposite of the glowing, warm and inclusive community of opportunity conveyed by the governor and the mayor.

The most intense experience one gets in downtown Seattle is the massive, grotesque problem of homelessness.

The omnipresence of homeless individuals in Seattle's central district is overwhelming. And one cannot escape a feeling of incongruity by the proximity of these homeless to fancy downtown restaurants.

Forbes Magazine reports the Seattle/King County area has the nation's third largest homeless population, after New York City and Los Angeles.

According to a recent article in the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, Seattle spends more than $1 billion annually struggling with its homeless problem, "nearly $100,000 for every homeless man, woman, and child in King County ..."


And yet, the article continues, "the crisis seems only to have deepened, with more addiction, more crime, and more tent encampments in residential neighborhoods. By any measure, the city's efforts are not working."

The author, Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the Seattle-based Center for Wealth, Poverty & Morality at the Discovery Institute, surveys what he calls the "ideological power centers" driving the discussions in Seattle about how to deal with their homeless.

Not surprisingly, they are all on the left, and, of course, one socialist city councilwoman explains it as "how deeply dysfunctional capitalism is." Seattle-based corporations such as Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks and Boeing, in her analysis, "drive up housing prices, and push the working class toward poverty and despair — and, too often, onto the streets." ...read more

Star Parker: Why Democrats have to lie about immigration We should appreciate that along with the disintegration of our core social institutions such as family and community is the unraveling of our country itself.

Jason Riley explains why Trump's supporters do not mind deal-making with Democrats, despite what Ann Coulter thinks. Do you agree? In economics, the law of diminishing returns describes the shrinking benefits associated with additional capital expenditures. Beyond some point, the disadvantages of increasing your investment start to outweigh the advantages. Alas, there is a political corollary to this concept that the White House has been ignoring but maybe shouldn’t.

We all agree that illegal immigration was the defining issue of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. At rally after rally, he promised his supporters that he would construct a “beautiful” wall along the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. Mr. Trump is convinced that his hard-line stance is a big reason he won, and there’s a case to be made that immigration played a larger role in 2016 than in any presidential race in recent memory.

For decades, conventional wisdom held that immigration restrictionism was a political loser. People might like to complain about the undocumented population, but exit polling showed that they ultimately voted on other issues. This included Republicans, who repeatedly rewarded pro-immigration candidates in national elections. Ronald Reagan spoke dismissively of “the illegal alien fuss” and wanted to “make the border something other than a locale for a 9-foot fence.” He quipped that Hispanics are “Republicans who don’t know it yet.”

George W. Bush—first as governor of Texas and later as president—channeled Reagan’s big-tent Republicanism and worked to portray the GOP as racially and ethnically inclusive. In 2004 he won more than 40% of the Hispanic vote en route to a second term. Even GOP presidential hopefuls since who were nominated but lost, such as John McCain and Mitt Romney, were well to the left of Mr. Trump on how to handle immigration and border security.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, has attempted to make illegal immigration a wedge issue on par with abortion and guns. Some of his supporters care about little else, and the president has gone to great lengths to ensure that their concerns are heard. Putting aside the merits of placing additional physical barricades on the border, the question now facing the administration as another government shutdown looms is whether the political capital being invested in this issue is still producing positive returns for the president. Or has his wall rhetoric become counterproductive?

The first signs of trouble for the White House were the midterm elections. Mr. Trump made border security a dominant theme, yet Republicans lost 40 seats and control of the House. Last November, public opposition to a new border wall stood at 59%, according to a CBS News poll. Today, it’s 60%, according to a Gallup survey released earlier this month. Given how hard the president has worked over the past two months to make the case for a wall, it’s remarkable how few minds he has changed. ...read more

Jason Riley: Why Trump's supporters understand deal-making, no matter what Ann Coulter thinks In economics, the law of diminishing returns describes the shrinking benefits associated with additional capital expenditures. Beyond some point, the ...