Trump's Injustice Department
PLUS: The Cato Institute likes immigrants, Mike Vrabel and society's attitudes toward women, and let's pick a Summer Bookies theme.
Hello! It’s Wednesday, April 22, Earth Day. There are lots of ways you can mark this 56-year-old celebration: Plant a tree, pick up litter at a beach or park, start a compost pile, create a nature scavenger hunt for your kids. Oh, and vote blue. Not to depress you, but here’s a good piece by The Contrarian on Trump’s environmental destruction.
The sun rose in Boston at 5:52 a.m. and will set at 7:33 p.m. for 13 hours and 41 minutes of sunlight. The waxing moon is 36% full.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac has growing guides for dozens of vegetables, herbs, fruit, flowers, shrubs, trees, vines, and houseplants. So I eagerly scrolled down to mari….mari…marigolds! That’s the ticket!
😎 What’s it like outside? Light rain is moving out and it’s supposed to warm up, with pretty clear skies and temps in the high 50s through the weekend.
⚽️ Hey, sport: Both The Athletic and the LA Times are reporting that ticket sales are lagging for the World Cup opener on June 12 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., featuring the US vs. Paraguay. Maybe because you have to take out a loan to afford a ticket?
The Bruins and Celtics are both 1-1 after two games in their respective playoffs. The last-place, 9-14 Red Sox started an important early-season stretch of games vs. three AL East opponents by getting shut out by the first-place, 14-9 Yankees. Interesting symmetry there. Next up are road games against the Orioles and Blue Jays.
⚖️ Trump’s Injustice Department
The Justice Department’s decision to go after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is about as corrupt as it gets in Trump’s weaponization of federal law enforcement for his personal agenda of revenge.
Acting AG Todd Blanche, desperately seeking a permanent appointment, and FBI Director Kash Patel, awash in allegations that he gets bombed more than Iran, convinced a grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama — where the center is headquartered — to indict the nonprofit civil rights organization for fraud and money laundering.
Some background: The SPLC was started in 1971 as a civil rights law firm and got attention in the 1980s when it filed civil lawsuits seeking money from the Ku Klux Klan for victims of Klan violence. It was so successful that it bankrupted several Klan chapters, devastating their ability to operate.
The organization eventually expanded its work to take on segregation and discrimination, lousy prison conditions, discrimination based on sexual orientation, immigration enforcement, and more.
The SPLC was not perfect. Over the years it sometimes labeled individuals and organizations as extremists, hate groups, white supremacists, etc. who claimed they were not. SPLC withdrew some names and apologized, but defended and won other cases.
At issue in the Justice lawsuit is an SPLC informant program started after the KKK firebombed SPLC headquarters in 1983. The goal was to infiltrate hate groups to find out what they were planning, particularly violent activities, to protect not only its own staff, but other groups that are the target of various hate groups. SPLC shared information they gathered with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI.
Some of the groups the informants were able to join included the neo-Nazi National Alliance, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Movement, groups affiliated with the Aryan Nations, and others.
"There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives," SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said.
So what is this lawsuit about?
Well, conservatives have never liked the fact that SPLC targets far-right groups, no matter how heinous. Remember the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when marchers chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” counter-protesters showed up, and Trump said later that there were “good people on both sides.” And, of course, he pardoned about 1,600 Jan. 6 insurrectionists, including members of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, far-right, neo-fascist, violent militant groups.
Instead of pursuing these violent hate groups, DOJ has started attacking and trying to indict people Trump doesn’t like: NY AG Letitia James, former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI director James Comey, US Senator Adam Schiff, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, US Senator Mark Kelly and those other lawmakers who made that “you don’t have to obey illegal orders” video for service members … the list goes on and on. Here’s a helpful tracker.
But the SPLC’s biggest crime apparently came last May when it issued a report calling Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point organization a “hard-right” group whose primary strategy is “sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and civil rights activists.”
Conservatives didn’t like that. Time for revenge.
In the indictment, DOJ is claiming the SPLC committed fraud because the organization didn’t tell its donors that it was using their money for their secret informant program. I guess they don’t know what the word “secret” means.
The DOJ also faults the SPLC for setting up shell companies to pay the informants, apparently preferring that those payments be shown as coming from the SPLC. That sounds safe. I guess when the FBI used informants to infiltrate the Mob, they handed them paychecks that said, “From the FBI to our best Mafia informants.”
Finally, those bright lights at Justice claim that the SPLC paid the informants simply as a way to funnel money to the hate groups. I got nothin’ here.
We’ll see how this plays out, but it seems like another desperate attack by the guy who actually should be behind bars.
📈 The Cato Institute: Immigrants are good for the country
I don’t think this white paper by the libertarian think tank got enough attention when it was released in February. The authors looked at 30 years’ worth of data, starting in 1994 when this sort of information started being compiled, and ending in 2023. They wanted to assess whether immigrants really are sucking us dry, as people like Stephen Miller claim.
Their major conclusion: Immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in services from every level of government. And because of that net contribution, they have kept the country’s debt twice as low as it would have been without them, averting a fiscal crisis.
Some specifics:
Every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants paid nearly $10.6 trillion more in federal, state, and local taxes than they drew in total government spending.
Immigrants saved $14.5 trillion in debt over this 30-year period.
Immigrants cut US budget deficits by about a third from 1994 to 2023, and fiscal savings grew to $878 billion in 2023.
Even including the second generation, who are mostly still children who will become taxpayers soon, the fiscal effect of immigration was positive every year.
Immigrants in all categories of educational attainment, including high school dropouts, lowered the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product (GDP) during the 30-year period.
Without the contributions of immigrants, public debt at all levels would already be above 200 percent of US GDP — nearly twice the 2023 level and a threshold some analysts believe would trigger a debt crisis.
Here’s a cool chart from the report:
You can read the full report here. More ammunition for that argument with your Trumper uncle.
💔 Mike Vrabel, accountability, and society’s attitude toward women
Given that he used words like “difficult conversations” and “negatively affect the team” and “distraction” and “humility and focus” during his press conference yesterday, it appears that Patriots coach Mike Vrabel did do something inappropriate with now-resigned sportswriter Dianna Russini at that boutique resort in Sedona, Ariz., in late March. And even before he left the podium, the bros were rushing to proclaim that it’s a matter between Vrabel and his wife and Vrabel and the team and is none of our business.
Excuse me?
The guy is a prominent public figure who has shown himself to be a liar and a cheat who had no problem betraying, disrespecting, and humiliating his wife. That says a lot about his character, his integrity, his judgment, and his attitude toward women, no matter how many times he lets Karen Guregian of MassLive ask the first question at press conferences. If his wife chooses to stay with him, that’s her decision.
But his word salad yesterday contained no apology, no responsibility, no accountability. Fans are right to question his moral compass, his trustworthiness, his inability to honor a sacred commitment.
The lack of outrage and the rush to move on says everything about this culture and its attitude toward women. We deserve better.
📰 Some interesting stuff to read
(Gift links)
New York Times: Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know.
Boston Globe: Everything you know about the Boston Tea Party is wrong
Washington Post: 5 tips for when you’re wide awake at 3 a.m.
📚 Finally …
The Summer Bookies are almost upon us — your recommendations for good books to read — and I’d like to hear from you about what theme we should have this year. Past Bookies themes have included classic novels, biographies and autobiographies, humor, travel, war, justice or injustice, women, YA, animals. You can find those lists in the right column of the Fast Forward homepage here.
Don’t send book suggestions yet! Wait until we settle on a theme.
Either post your theme idea as a comment using the button below, or email it to thfastforward@gmail.com.
Hang in there, my friends. See you next week.
As recommended before I really support the magic realism entry. Well written and serious books with alternate views of life have always made a difference in my life.
Dear Teresa,
Pure escapism. We need it in our lives right now. Science fiction, fantasy, romance--broad category but somewhere we can rest for a while.
Patti