Sociopath to citizenship

Occasionally a Republican can come to an epiphany when something they have adamantly opposed becomes personal. A senator or a congressman who has voted against stem cell research suddenly has a change of heart when a beloved grandchild comes down with a deadly disease, or if their own child comes out to them, their resistance to gay-friendly legislation suddenly softens.

Ted Cruz's own family history should make him amenable to immigration legislation, but apparently he prefers to climb the ladder of success and then saw off the rungs as he goes. When his father arrived in Austin in 1957 -- a teenage immigrant from Cuba bound for the University of Texas -- he spoke no English and had $100 sewn into his underwear. He worked his way through school as a dishwasher making 50 cents an hour. His mother -- of Irish-Italian descent and who grew up in Delaware, the first person in her family ever to attend college -- earned a math degree at Rice in the 1950s, working summers at Foley’s and Shell.

It's telling that a person could come from that background -- the panoply of the immigrant history of America -- and fail to notice the hurdles and obstacles that exist for others today who wish the same path for their children (never mind themselves).

1) The vast difference between Cuban immigration policy and that of all other Latinos;
2) Being able to work one's way through college on a 50 cents-an-hour job;
3) Achieving the classic American success story: Parents arrive with little money, one unable to speak the language, and still rise into the middle class, with a college degree and good jobs along the way.

These things were all possible in the America of Ted Cruz's parents because...

1) College used to be affordable for low income students;
2) The United States welcomed his father and gave him opportunity that did not exist to other brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking immigrants;
3) His father never had to hide in the shadows, fearful of deportation.

Ted Cruz got a good work ethic from his parents, earned a lofty education and also received dozens of opportunities not accorded others. Oh yeah, somewhere along the way he lost his soul. Or maybe he just sold it.

One thing is for certain: Ted Cruz was born without empathy. That is the hallmark of today's conservative: the more inhumane to others you can be, the brighter your prospects in the GOP.

Update: Why does this news come as no surprise to me?

In a report Thursday on NPR about how Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) father shaped his vision on immigration, his father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, an immigrant from Cuba, said that while he “came to this country legally,” he basically bribed an official to get to the United States.

“A friend of the family -- a lawyer friend of my father basically bribed a Batista official to stamp my passport with an exit permit,” the elder Cruz said.

This is not the way most Cubans emigrated to the United States in the '60's. One Cuban I knew very well, in fact, told a much braver story of leaving the country.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is dismayed but not surprised by the hard right turn of the special session as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff wants to know where are all the jobs that Rick Perry is supposedly poaching from other states.

The cruel conditions that are allowed to persist in Texas, while it’s proclaimed to be a miracle economy, are deplorable. That's why WCNews at Eye on Williamson says the Texas budget comes up short.

There were some fireworks at last week's redistricting hearing in Houston, but a few of them turned out to be just sparklers. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs provides the details.

Judge Edith Jones is a piece of work. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chimse hopes that the judges reviewing the complaints against her force an impeachment.

Over at TexasKaos, lightseeker explores the invisible abomination: Texas and the indigent mentally ill.. Give it a read, it's time more people knew about this!

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Swamplot and Glasstire eulogize Houston "pop-up" sculptor Lee Littlefield.

Scott Braddock tells the tragic tale of the bill that would have helped prevent worker misclassification, a/k/a payroll fraud, had it not suffered the usual fate of well-intentioned reform bills in the Legislature.

Nonsequiteuse marvels at a recent example of trivializing violence in the media.

Better Texas reminds us that the fight to expand health care access to all of Texas will continue after the Legislature finally leaves.

BOR notes how far out of touch with public opinion on immigration reform the two US Senators from Texas are.

Colin Strother and Texas Leftist are firmly on board the Sebastien De La Cruz bandwagon.

Texpatriate publishes its own Best and Worst Legislators list.

Texas Vox bemoans the veto of the omnibus ethics bill.

Juanita is spitting mad at the veto of the Lilly Ledbetter bill.

Egberto Willies talks to Rep. Senfronia Thompson, the author of the Ledbetter bill, about Perry's veto. She vows to bring the bill back next session.

Sunday Funnies

Headline, money graf (and some opinion and perhaps a conversation-starter)

-- Grand Bargaineers still want entitlement cuts:

The underlying issue here has nothing to do with deficits and debt and everything to do with the extent of government fiscal transfers to the elderly. There is a view, driven by a mixture of motives, that it is simply wrong and irresponsible for the government to be devoting a large and growing share of the economy to bolstering the living standards of old retired people. For whatever reason, the people who want legislative action to reduce the living standards of senior citizens prefer not to frame it that way. But their view is that a government guarantee of high living standards for senior citizens reduces the savings rate and reduces labor force participation and that this trend in public policy should be halted.

If that analysis is morally and economically correct, then it remains correct regardless of interest rates or 10-year budget projections. And it would be helpful to the world to debate it plainly.  

Medicare and Social Security were instituted in large part because so many seniors were living in poverty.  Many no longer do, but there is a younger generation saddled with enormous student debt and bleak prospects for middle class employment. With a Congress that increasingly caters to the 1%, it's no wonder the conversation in DC is all about tax cuts and never about jobs.

This intractable societal issue is only worsening. I say this as an aging boomer somewhere around the age to get screwed royally as part of any kind of 'reform'.

-- The conversation we should be having about our private data...

The NSA data-gathering "scandal" is being used a proxy for all sorts of other political fights, from Obama Sucks to ending the War on Terror to smearing whistleblowers. But the real scandal is how completely unregulated data gathering is generally. In truth, the NSA didn't go snooping around in the computers of private individuals to obtain metadata. They simply asked for it from the corporations who are gathering it in the first place. Corporations who had less choice in delivering it than you did in providing it. There are little to no regulations on "terms of service" agreements or in what you can be asked to disclose about yourself. The technological revolution in information gathering is changing the nature of what privacy means and who has a rightful claim to it. But the proxy political fight over the NSA is obscuring the real conversation we ought to be having.

Because surely, someone, anyone, needs to be asking about these reams of data and how they are being used. Or why certain data needs to be kept in the first place. For what purpose is AT&T collecting data on my daily movements? Why is my local grocer keeping track of my buying habits? What is really happening when I haven't moved or touched my phone in day or two, yet there it is sending and receiving streams and streams of I-don't-know-what. We need a modern conversation about life in the modern world and what the boundaries are. With respect to privacy, we should be talking about what privacy means in a world where everyone, or just about everyone, is walking around with listening and watching devices. Everyone can spy on everyone else. It is literally to the point of seeing videos published of people secretly recorded having sexual relations in their own homes, making a private moment a global event.

What Facebook is making us all "share" is, in many cases, not at all what we actually want to share. But they don't care. Not even if stockholders complain. Because on FB, you're not the customer... you're the merchandise. And why would any merchant care about what his inventory is worried about?

Sheep to the slaughter.

-- Why Democrats don't trust Republicans on immigration:

Senate Republicans don't believe President Obama will enforce the bill's border-security provisions--and they don't want to let millions of illegal immigrants begin working their way toward citizenship until they see the president is serious about locking down the borders. That's why they want those immigrants' eligibility for citizenship to be contingent, or “triggered,” on the U.S. Border Patrol meeting benchmarks.

But Democrats don't think Republicans will play fair when it comes to such a trigger. They fear Republicans will hold out for a trigger and then vote against the bill anyway. Or set benchmarks for a trigger that can't be reached. Or establish a trigger but then deny the Border Patrol the funding it needs to meet the benchmarks.

“The lack of trust is real,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican in the middle of the trigger back-and-forth. He is a member of the Senate “gang” who sympathizes with Democrats’ desires to legalize the undocumented population but also with Republicans’ concerns that border security will never be taken seriously.

And everyone, Graham said, is worrying about their leverage.

Enter Sen. John Cornyn ...

Cornyn's 'poison pill' amendment was gutted like a fish yesterday, and he threw a temper tantrum about it.

-- Two legal eagles in hot water: Judge Edith Jones, and Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg.

Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court formally ordered on Wednesday that a rare public judicial misconduct complaint against 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Edith Jones be reviewed by officials in a different circuit — one based in the nation's capital.

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It is only one of a handful of times in U.S. history that a federal circuit judge has been the subject of a public judicial misconduct complaint and a formal disciplinary review. Normally such matters are secret under federal law.

Gov. Rick Perry has indicated that he’s willing to veto the $7.5 million two-year budget to the Travis County Public Integrity Unit because of the district attorney’s DWI conviction. He wants DA Rosemary Lehmberg to step down, according to this report in the Austin American-Statesman.

Lehmberg pleaded guilty without putting up a defense, served jail time and is planning to return to her office this week after voluntarily submitting herself to a therapeutic program.

Her blood alcohol level at the time of her April arrest was three times the legal limit.

Both women are in tremendous messes entirely of their own making, and both should take the dignified route out of office.