About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 9, 2020)
11A OPINION Sttnes gainesvilletimes.com Midweek Edition - September 9-10, 2020 Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. How Pence lost his way on immigration Imagine that memorable scene from “The Godfather II” with me playing Michael Corleone and Vice President Mike Pence cast as Fredo. I approach No. 2, hug him and whisper: “Mike, you broke my heart.” And for what? Ambition? A politician is led astray by his or her quest for a big ger title. There is no bigger cliche. What a waste. At the heart of the betrayal was a single issue: immigration. Of course, we’re not talking about just any run-of-the-mill issue. The immigration debate is thorny, divisive and highly charged. There are unlikely alliances, unpredictable obstacles and undercurrents of racism. What’s more, both parties lie to their constitu ents, pretending to pursue policies that they have no intention of pushing. Republicans talk as if they want to deport illegal workers even if it upends the business community that supports them, while Democrats trick Latinos into think ing they’d like to welcome more of them into the citizenry even if it upsets their core constituency of working-class white voters. The whole debate is one big con. Now, I think Pence conned me. One of the things that the immigration issue has going for it is that it reveals character, and shows others whether you have any to reveal. At the recent Republican National Conven tion, the issue made its way into Pence’s speech when he accepted the GOP nomination for vice president. “Joe Biden is for open borders; sanctuary cit ies; and free lawyers and health care for illegal immigrants,” Pence said Good luck arguing that case, Mike. On immi gration, Biden is a boring moderate. He doesn’t want an open border. In fact, he has often voted to fortify it. That includes his vote in favor of the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which authorized the construction of 700 miles of border fencing. Meanwhile, in his speech, Pence praised Presi dent Donald Trump for having “secured our south ern border and built nearly 300 miles of the wall.” Later, when Biden served as vice president, he sat silently by as President Obama devastated the immigrant community in the United States by deporting record numbers of people, separating families, caging children, and removing refugees without access to lawyers and other forms of due process. Pence’s fearmongering takes me back almost 15 years. That’s when I started writing about Pence, who was then a third-term congressman from Indiana. I interviewed him several times about his stab at immigration reform. In 2006, Pence was himself attacked by anti immigration hardliners. Then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner — who authored a bill that made it a crime to help an undocumented immigrant “remain in the United States” — dismissed Pence as having “all these bright ideas” that would never work. Then-Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. — who was at the time one of the most overtly nativist mem bers of Congress — accused Pence of pushing a “mini-amnesty.” It would be a crime to assist an illegal immi grant to “remain in the United States... knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such person is an alien who lacks lawful authority to reside in or remain in the United States.” All because Pence dared to come up with a comprehensive immigration reform bill that was as creative as it was controversial. At the core of the controversy was the thorny question of what to do with the millions of illegal immigrants in this country who prop up portions of the U.S. economy. Rather than simply try to deport them all, and watch most of them come back, Pence devised a way for those people to remain in the United States. The key was for the undocumented to humble themselves and acknowledge that they did something wrong by coming here illegally or overstaying a visa. If they did that, Pence reasoned, fair-minded conservatives would go along with the concept of allowing these people to stay put. Pence recruited as an ally then-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., and used her input to refine his idea. The Hutchison-Pence bill — which dropped in July 2006 — required illegal immigrants in the United States to briefly return to their home country and register for work visas with the eventual opportunity to become U.S. citizens. Back then, and for the next decade, whenever I was asked who my favorite politician was, Pence was always near the top of the list. That’s because I admire in elected officials three things that not many of them have: courage, character and a willingness to fight it out with members of one’s own tribe. Unfortunately, that was the Old Pence. That was the one who, as the governor of Indiana dur ing the 2016 Republican Primary, had nothing nice to say about Donald Trump and endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex. The New Pence had to turn himself inside out when he hitched his wagon to Trump, who rewarded the Hoosier by making him his second- in-command when he became president. Trust me. The Old Pence would not have liked the New Pence. Ruben Navarrette writes for The Washington Post Writers Group. RUBEN NAVARRETTE ruben@ rubennavarrette.com Not finding much good news in this big bummer of a year We are now into Septem ber of what has so far been a bummer of a year. My colleague, David Carroll, a Chattanooga TV anchor with whom I share the edito rial page in several papers, calls 2020 “ the Edsel of years.” I wish I had thought of that line. I hate it when TV anchors are funnier than I am. We have had to endure eight months of sheltering in place, social distancing, to mask or not to mask, boycotts, layoffs, government bailouts and computer-generated everything else except burning up buildings and tearing down statues. That has been human-generated. Can things go further into the dumper? With a presidential election roughly eight weeks away, the answer is self- evident. Having to watch two old white guys with bad hairdos going at each other while political pundits ponderously pontificate will likely drive me to binge- watch all the back episodes of “The Gong Show.” So, what do we have to look forward to? Certainly not the annual scrum between the scholar-athletes from the University of Georgia, the oldest state- chartered university in the nation, located in Athens, the Classic City of the South, and You-Know-Where Institute of Technology. Absent this momentous event, I will strive to be gracious. I promise not to bring up all the Rhodes Scholars we have that YKWIT doesn’t have. That seems to upset them worse than laying 52 points on their scholar-athletes in a recent scrum. Frankly, September doesn’t hold a lot of promise. How excited can you get over the fact this is National Blueberry Popsicle Month? I asked Junior E. Lee, general man ager of the Yarbrough World wide Media and Pest Control Company headquartered in Greater Garfield, Ga., if he had done any surveys on public attitudes regarding National Blue berry Popsicle Month. Given the way things are going these days, it wouldn’t surprise me that somebody has their nose out of joint over blueberries or pop- sicles, or both. Junior was late getting back to me. He told me he had been observing Fight Procrastination Day and had lost. He didn’t seem to be too upset about it. Between us, I have been having a bit of a problem with Junior’s attitude recently. While he is one of the most respected media analysts in the free world, he is also a pest control profes sional. That is something he likes to rag the snoots in the national media about. He can hang with the best of them on stuff like the U.S. trade deficit and what is going on in Belarus but loves to ask them how they would get rid of clover mites and then watch the blank looks on their faces. It was my fault that I had Junior E. Lee working on an assignment on June 6 and forgot all about that being National Pest Control Day, a salute to pest con trol professionals around the world. He wasn’t happy. Pest control professionals are proud people. Junior says pest control isn’t just a job, it is an essential service and had I heard anyone talk about defunding pest con trol professionals? I admitted I had not and told him National Pest Control Day would be duly observed next year. He seemed mollified and said he was head ing over to Aunt Flossie Felmer’s house to rummage around in her drawers, sup posedly looking for fire ants. He seems to be doing that a lot these days. With that out of the way, we are back to trying to figure out how to outlast 2020. I don’t see much ahead that excites me. In October, there is National Punk Day which is sure to be big in Portland and Seattle. And we need to keep an eye on Leif Erickson Day. Leif was the first European to set foot in North America. He was from Greenland where they eat seals and make dogs pull people around on sleds. I guarantee you that’s going to get his statue pulled down somewhere. There is National Take a Hike Day in November which will thrill those of you who have been suggesting for years I do just that and in December National Ding- a-Ling Day, a salute to those who believe everything they read on social media. I am afraid that is about all the good news I have as to what to expect for the rest of 2020, boys and girls. In the mean time, I suggest we hunker down, give each other a virtual hug and pray there is not another Edsel in our future. Dick Yarbrough is a North Georgia resident whose column publishes Wednesdays. Contact him at P.0. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA 31139; online at dickyarbrough.com; or on Facebook. DICK YARBROUGH dick@ dickyarbrough.com "The good news is you don't have COVID. The bad news is you have an ulcer from worrying about it." JIM POWELL I For The Times Public health s inextricable link to economy complicates Ga. s future Speaking last year to the Gwinnett Chamber, before COVID-19 and all that came with it, Gov. Brian Kemp said he wasn’t sure the state’s economy would hold up as well as it did for former Gov. Nathan Deal, but he had his fingers crossed. “There’s just things hap pening around the world that are a little frustrating. You can’t really control them,” Kemp said in words that have proved to be painfully prophetic. Georgia government — not just this governor but all his predecessors, and the departments they oversee — oper ates on an ethos of chin-up prosperity that may seem a little dissonant in a time when the economy of the world has been shaken. Even in times of belt tighten ing, prosperity is never farther than just around the corner. This was the spirit last week, when Kemp announced that Georgia has been chosen by a business magazine as “Top State for Doing Busi ness” for the seventh straight year. Since midyear 2019, he said, the state has attracted $7.4 billion in investments in some 350 projects. “It’s abundantly clear that Georgia remains the epicenter for job growth, economic development and investment because of strong conservative leader ship,” Kemp said. Whether you agree or not, it’s also abundantly clear that Georgia’s economy was hit hard in the early weeks of the pan demic, when unemployment claims quickly soared over a million, and has been slow to bounce back. WalletHub reports that Georgia ranks 50th in one measure of how quickly states are recovering, and 51st in another. At the beginning of this month, the Georgia Department of Labor reported that it had paid out more than $7 billion in unem ployment claims over the previous 24 weeks, more than the state paid in the last seven years combined. It was the early impact of the lock- down on the state that spurred Kemp to press for the early reopening of the economy. It is a little more mystifying why late into the summer, Kemp was still pursuing a pointless lawsuit against Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ mask mandate. One of the big lessons from this pan demic has been that public health and the economy have become inextricably entwined. The stubborn persistence of new coronavirus cases through the sum mer has slowed the economic recovery, and the biggest threat to the recovery is the possibility of a post-Labor Day surge in COVID-19 cases. Beyond that loom the long-term costs of coping with the virus, and the very real danger that the pandemic will still further widen the gap between that part of the state that is racing ahead and the part that is falling behind. In his excellent “Trouble in God’s Country” blog, Charlie Hayslett has dis covered stark evidence of how the Great Recession contributed to the decline of rural Georgia. In 2007, the year before the recession, there were 12 counties in the state where there were more people dying than being born. Last year there were 78, more than half the coun ties in the state. These are mostly rural counties, but they include such towns as Americus, Milledgeville and Rome. What’s the birth-to-death map going to look like next year, when the impact of the pandemic is tallied? Kemp reported last week that over the past year there has been a 30% increase in jobs created outside the Atlanta metro area, follow ing through on one of the biggest com mitments he made in his campaign for governor. There’s a lot more left to be done, obviously. Unfortunately, in late summer these already declining counties have been the setting for some of the nation’s worst COVID-19 hotspots. If a similar lens were focused on metro Atlanta, it would reveal a similar cleavage, worsened by the impact of the virus on the most vulnerable. This is one of the most worrisome, and potentially lasting, results of the troubles we are going through. Tom Baxter is a veteran Georgia journalist who writes for The Saporta Report. TOM BAXTER tom@saporta report.com (The Srtnes Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com General Manager Norman Baggs EDITORIAL BOARD Editor in Chief Shannon Casas
