I hate to get mixed up in this but I don’t think that’s what the original poster meant re: ‘enforcing the law.’ It’s not that immigration ban. It is, I believe, about sanctuary cities which, as far as I can make out, are there to help people break federal immigration law, right?
I mean, sorry, this is one part of American internal politics that I simply do not understand: if I arrived at JFK International and tried to run past the passport/immigration/&c control line I would be shot. Repeatedly. And even if I managed to get past, surely people would hunt me down, yes? But if I was Mexican and sneaked past the border then… wouldn’t I have broken the same laws? Except now, there’s a powerful political lobby that wants me to stay except that selfsame lobby when it was in power didn’t change the immigration laws to just allow people from Mexico (or people in general?) to walk across the border at their leisure?
It just seems to me that the dominant schools of political thought in America agree that immigration law should exist but should be either (a) fanatically enforced or (b) selectively enforced based on some criterion I cannot crack.
[[Full disclosure: I am completely pro-wall. It won’t do a blind bit of good (or ill) regarding immigration, so it is, in fact, a perfect Keynsian stimulus up there with paying people to dig holes and other people to fill them up. And, as a plus side, it appears to make a lot of people happy for some reason. Win-win, the way I see it.]]
[quote]If indeed it is better to give than receive, New York City and its suburbs can count their blessings by the billions of dollars. City residents and businesses paid about $4.1 billion more to Albany in taxes and fees than the state returned in spending for education, health care, transit and other services in 2009-10. For the nearby suburban counties (Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland and Westchester), it was $7.9 billion more in taxes than came back in spending, a new Rockefeller Institute study finds.[1]
Where did the extra $12 billion go? North and west, up the Hudson River and along the Thruway corridor to Upstate regions that have struggled economically for much of the last half-century.
In fiscal 2010, the Upstate region generated less than 28 percent of the state’s taxes and other non-federal revenues (including SUNY tuition, lottery and other gambling profits, motor vehicle fees and so on). By contrast, Upstate received a much larger share of state-funded expenditures, 42 percent.
Look Downstate, and the ratios reverse. New York City generated 45 percent of state revenues in 2010, but received 40 percent of spending. The gap is even larger for the four major suburban counties: a collective 24 percent of revenues paid to Albany, and 18 percent of expenditures received in return.
The state’s largest source of non-federal revenue, the personal income tax, is particularly concentrated Downstate. New York City and its suburbs represent 64 percent of state residents, but around 80 percent of the income tax.
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And his portrait hanging right now in the Oval Office, so That Man can look up at him and think wistfully of the time Jackson chopped down the cherry tree but flew a kite and discovered the Northwest Passage and everything came out right in the end.
J[quote=“LapsedPacifist, post:104, topic:93857”]
[[Full disclosure: I am completely pro-wall. It won’t do a blind bit of good (or ill) regarding immigration, so it is, in fact, a perfect Keynsian stimulus up there with paying people to dig holes and other people to fill them up. And, as a plus side, it appears to make a lot of people happy for some reason. Win-win, the way I see it.]]
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Except that it’s about the most stupid use of resources you could conceive. Why not build public transport? Remove lead piping? Renew bridges and highways? A monument to racism visible from space is just such a tremendous waste.
And if there was political will to do those things then, yay, let’s do them. But there isn’t. Obama couldn’t swing any of them and he started off with massive popularity and one hell of a mandate.
Politics, as they say, is the art of the possible, and the monument to racism visible from space is, apparently, something enough Americans can agree upon. It’d be better if you could agree on public transport or lead piping (incredibly important) but, as was fairly conclusively demonstrated, you can’t.
Either way it’s a pretty clear demonstration that “adhering to immigration law” isn’t a guiding principle behind Trump’s actions this week.
Fair enough, but the argument isn’t really about whether Trump’s a nice fellow or not. That argument has long since concluded with pretty much everyone on one side or another. The argument is about sanctuary cities and whether it is permissible to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities on the basis that they are engaged in a concerted effort to break federal law (or are they? I remain confused by this).
This is the point I reiterate that I am not American, English is a second language for me, and I don’t have the faintest clue what this refers to and what you are trying to communicate to me, if, indeed, you are trying to communicate…?
There is a difference between breaking Federal law and choosing not to enforce it. Basically “sanctuary cities” are places where local governments have decided they don’t need their local police and public school teachers and hospitals doing double duty as immigration enforcement officers.
Volkswagen (German version of Folk’s Wagon) the car company was originally a project of Nazi Germany, to create a cheap mass produced vehicle for the people.
