And so now... in spite of Popular Demand. I'm proud to reveal my New Initiative in political commentary and sophisticated rhetoric.
A Groundbreaking Exercise in Futility!
Soon To Be Ignored.
The One, Of Many…
Letters to our President.
First, some background.
I 've gotten on the White House emailing list and every few days they email a new press release. In the most part they are informative and interesting. I don't mind getting them, if I did I'm sure I could opt out. On occasion they invite commentary and actually solicit my opinion. I'm sorry to say I haven't replied to any of these invitations yet. But sometimes you get an idea that won't go away. Like, I wonder what sort of letter to the President might get his attention.
And
I wonder how many letters can I write before they ask me to stop?
Do they have the right to tell me to stop?
What about insulting or threatening?
I seem to remember hearing that threats to the President are against the law. I don't want to be accused of any wrong doing. I hope I'm writing well enough to be understood. But one never really knows.
And so in order to be more clear and transparent, I'm going to post these letters here in my google blog. I'll also send them via-USPS. And just to be sure somebody reads them I'll send them via email.
I think it's great to have all these delivery options and it also makes editing and "re-interpreting" my work a little more difficult.
I can imagine a person like Winston Smith toiling away in the Ministry of Truth, revising my words to fit some previously un-known thought crime, while my original writings vanish silently into the memory hole. I don't really believe anyone would care that much, but one never really knows…
I really don't want to find myself locked up in Cuba…. just because they "said so" (that's all the "due process" needed for your certain types of people).
Yes I'm slightly paranoid, I believe it's partly genetic. Some buried sequence in my DNA. I just have to live with it.
So much for the paranoid reasons of multiple distribution. The practical concerns dictate that I get these words to as many people as possible. So potentially I could reach the entire online community of millions. The practical result is more like 4 possibly 5 people.
(You, dear reader, are just one of a very select few.)
And now with absolutely no more fanfare I'm proud to post my very first Letter to the President.
March 1, 2015
Mr. Barack Obama
President
United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr President,
I support you in your efforts to keep families together. I see what you are attempting with emigration reform and the use of executive orders to bring fairness and reason to the problem of un-documented workers and their families.
Your opposition is playing on fear and bigotry. It wraps itself in the cloak of “Law and Order” only to gain popular support. They don’t offer solutions. Their course of non-action results in status quo, non-workable, non-solutions to documenting the un-documented. And still they continue to portray you as giving largesse to un-deserving criminals.
I’m sure you know all this. But the marketing of the problem and it’s solutions seems to lose focus as the opposition in Congress focuses on “Law and Order” and punishing (or at least not rewarding) those people who have made their home here in spite of not having their papers in order. I think you might tell the public that you are not the sort of leader who will advocate putting millions of un-documented workers on busses and trains and shipping them to places where they don’t really want to go. Your mandate implied that you will work with the best minds and leaders to find common ground solutions to the problems everyday people face. If you can work with Congress, that would be a plus but for the sake of your party and our nation I think putting your opposition on the spot is an effective technique.
After looking at the facts, I have found many miss-leading talking points by your opposition. It is a shame you don’t have the resources to spin their miss-characterizations into a public shaming of them. The media can and should be held accountable for what they say and HOW they say it. It didn’t take much time to see that you are not offering to give out federal benefits to the un-documented but this is a major fear your opposition plays on. They seem to take every opportunity to make outlandish claims just to energize the “conservative” base. I think your office needs to counter those claims but also call out people for opinions being reported as facts. It is not enough to assume the majority will see through the bigotry.
Typically headlines from the Washington Post and Fox News claimed that you were offering federal benefits to “illegal immigrants” reading the stories, revealed that you were not actually doing that. I realize the sensational need to get attention and thus the miss-leading headlines. But people jump to conclusions based on those headlines and then use those conclusions to continue polemic commentary and opinion pieces in a reactionary feedback loop which only serves their interests, and makes people more fearful and ignorant.
The same tactics which got my Uncle sentenced to 2 life terms in prison + twenty years. (Just in case he was able to die in prison and be re-incarnated and raised from a baby through his entire second life in prison, I suppose. But it still doesn’t make sense). It might be law, but then again it might be the way a law is used.
I understand you have some experience with interpreting Constitutional Law. Wouldn’t two life in prison terms seem excessive, even unusual to you? It is difficult to find anyone else who has received this sort of sentence for a similar crime. But once someone is characterized as a “drug smuggler” people stop listening. The prejudice of “criminals doing the time for doing a crime” is activated. Nothing to look at there, move along. I suppose there are Supreme Court rulings declaring that no amount of prison time can be judged as cruel. Even if one is convicted based only on hearsay testimony and testimony bought and paid for or coerced from “witnesses” who are trying to avoid punishment for their own crimes. Nothing unusual about that any more?
I do understand you have no shortage of problems to address. Immigration is certainly a serious problem. I commend you for taking an executive action aimed at helping those people who are here with less than proper legal status. I see your struggle with the opposition who have vowed to oppose every initiative you take. I also see a prison sentence so extreme that normal every day people don’t believe it.
I hope you heard Bill Maher ask you to free the federal Marijuana prisoners. I also support that executive order. I’m sure a silent majority would support it as well. As you might already know, it is the right thing to do. Keeping these people locked up for possessing, using, distributing or (in my Uncles case) just knowing people, does nothing to make our country or our people safer. It just wastes money on prisons. And it also makes people see a system which is demonstrably un-fair.
I could go on about why I support your Presidential Commutation powers. You are the last resort when things are beyond fixing through the established judicial procedures. I don’t see Congress as capable of fixing anything in this political environment. The power vested in the Executive branch and your office in particular is vital for our country to function as a fair and just democracy.
To sum up my comments to you, I congratulate you on your decisions to use your Executive Authority. I hope you will exercise that authority to correct as many wrongs as you see fit to address. Your detractors are never going to accept any action which you propose. They are determined to oppose you in principle on anything and everything. I will assume it is because of your affiliation to the Democratic party. They have entrenched constituencies and media outlets determined to miss-characterize you and your initiatives. But when you do things to help real people and work to solve the problems of our nation you earn the good will and gratitude of all Americans.
Sincerely yours,
Tom Walters
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