Mediaboss Marketing

This op-ed by Trish Zornio appeared on Colorado Newsline on March 25, 2021.

This weeks article started out about Colorados response to the pandemic. It was quickly upended on Monday afternoon when less than 15 minutes from my house a massacre unfolded at the local King Soopers. By 2am, 10 of our neighbors were confirmed dead. It was the same store where my roommate had bought groceries a few days prior.

For the last 48 hours or so, my social media feeds have been heavy in sorrow, anger and despair. The feeling of hopelessness looms large, and text messages pour in to ask if Im OK. Most of the time I dont have the energy to explain why although Im safe, Im not all right. Its not just this event, or even that I knew one of the victims. Its that for my generation and the generations after me this already is our normal, and it has been for over 20 years.

I was in middle school when Columbine happened. I remember our teachers talking to us about what it meant, and what we would do if it happened at our school. Now that Im the teacher, students ask me what the escape plan is and its not just teens or young adults. When my nephew started the first grade, he once told me not to worry because now that he was taller he could climb out of the window faster. He was so casual about it, too, like he was talking about growing into the next pant size.

Youd think after growing up with domestic terrorism Id be used to it. Im not. Theres no getting used to the fear it stokes in communities, or the ripple of hurt it causes. It hits me hard every time. But what hurts the most is how little Congress has done to stop it, as if it doesnt matter at all.

Addressing gun violence is no doubt a multifaceted issue, but to suggest gun access isnt part of the problem is to stick ones head in the sand. However, instead of Congress acting, an extremist political right has blocked damn near every effort toward gun safety for decades. Theyve gone so far as to make it illegal for the government to even study the problem, or to enact full background checks. In many places, its now easier to buy a gun than it is to vote.

Today, these right-wing extremists have co-opted the Republican platform. In doing so, they are making a mockery of responsible gun owners. Long gone are the days of Republicans promoting safe storage, safety training and respect for a deadly weapon. Now, a flamboyant cast of disgruntled Trumpers have lined up to sensationalize and fetishize gun appeal as part of a larger, violent and frequently conspiratorial narrative and one of the ring leaders is right here in Colorado.

From lavishing firearms for campaign props to unsafe storage, Rep. Lauren Boebert has used her antics to flout just about every basic principle of gun safety there is. She has blatantly disregarded Capitol Police metal detectors, expressed her intent to (or did) break open carry laws in Washington, D.C., is speculated to have broken House rules by carrying her gun to the floor, added gunshots to campaign ads for bombastic effects, permitted an underage waitress to carry in her restaurant and more. Once, the first-time congresswoman even accepted a firearm as a gift in her official capacity, subjecting herself to extensive ethical and legal scrutiny.

For some, the vigor with which she claims to defend the Second Amendment is exactly the appeal. Yet her ammosexualized performances should rightfully terrify every responsible gun owner in America. By allowing violent extremists to flagrantly toss aside gun safety principles, Republicans have inadvertently accessorized firearms to a point which makes abundantly clear the absurd laxity of our current laws.

In fact, if extremists like Boebert continue to push against any gun safety regulations, Id suggest its precisely the right-wing gun nuts who will ultimately be the downfall of the Second Amendment. They will, in essence, have loved it to death.

Im hardly the first to note extremist escalations require constitutional overhaul. Consider, for example, the remarks by the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens who authored an op-ed for The New York Times titled, Repeal the Second Amendment.

In his essay, Stevens essentially argues that due to a case pushed by the National Rifle Association in 2008, the long-held narrow legal interpretation of the Second Amendment has already been compromised. He, and others, suggests the only way to repair this breach and achieve gun regulation is to repeal and replace it with a constitutional amendment.

If that sounds radical, remember that Stevens was a lifelong Republican. Which leads me to suggest that Democrats should claim Stevens argument to highlight how right-wing extremists have effectively destroyed the Second Amendment in the first place.

No one can undo the hurt from the past couple days or the last couple decades, for that matter. But we must act.

If I could, this time Id take aim at 2A.

Special to the Post

The Pagosa Daily Post welcomes submissions, photos, letters and videos from people who love Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Call 970-903-2673 or email pagosadailypost@gmail.com

See the article here:
OPINION: Loving the Second Amendment to Death - Pagosa Daily Post

On Monday, the House General Laws Committee is hearing House Bill 1068, to ensure Second Amendment rights remain protected during states of emergencies. Please contact committee members and ask them to SUPPORT HB 1068.

House Bill 1068 designates firearm businesses as essential and prohibits the state, government officials and agencies, or local governments from prohibiting, restricting, or reducing their operations during declared states of emergencies or disasters.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many anti-gun officials around the country, at both state and local levels of government, took the opportunity to unilaterally suspend Second Amendment rights by shutting down gun stores and ranges. Unfortunately, this coincided with many Americans trying to exercise their Second Amendment rights for the first time during that period of uncertainty, and resulted in them being unable to access arms, ammunition, or proper training. HB 1068 protects the exercise of a constitutional right from such politically motivated attacks and ensures that citizens have those rights when they need them most.

Again, please contact committee members and ask them to SUPPORT HB 1068.

View original post here:
Missouri: Committee Hearing Bill to Protect Second Amendment in Emergencies - NRA ILA

Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinBiden risks first major fight with progressives Biden sets off Capitol Hill scramble on spending, taxes White House moves to reshape role of US capitalism MORE (D-W.Va.) said on Thursday after visiting the U.S.-Mexico border that it is "past time" for Congress to address immigration reform, including a path to citizenship,and called the border surge a "crisis."

"It is beyond time, past time, to do immigration reform. Immigration reform should be a pathway to citizenship. People that have been here, they might have come here the wrong way but they came here for the right reason," Manchin said during a press conference.

"We have children that came here that have no other home but America.There should be a pathway for that, for our dreamers," he added.

Manchin and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) toured the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday, including taking a helicopter and boat tour with Customs and Border Protection. They also visited a Laredo, Texas, port of entry and met with migrant families.

Manchin, during the press conference,floated a 90-day moratorium on immigration, saying that he was "just throwing out different ideas."

"We've got a human crisis that I'm seeing here ... so if that means shutting everything down for 90 days of how we have people come into our country, sending that message that we're not going to be taking people into this country until we get our ability to make sure we're able to do it and do it right, is that going to put the pressure?" Manchin asked.

"Something has to be done and it has to be expedited. ... This problem is not going away. This problem will not cure itself, I can assure you, and they're coming in droves," he said.

Manchin also backed beefed up border security, more immigration judges and allowing for immigrants to apply for asylum back in their home countries rather than making an often dangerous journey to the United States.

"It would be safer. It would be much more humane. ... It's something that we should be doing," he said.

Manchin, part of a shrinking group of centrist senators, is at the center of the 50-50 Senate, where he has an outsized influence on nearly every policy debate. Cuellar noted near the start of the press conference that Manchin "plays a very important role."

The border trip comes as Biden has come under criticism from Republicans, and Democrats have shown signs of concern about asurge of unaccompanied children arriving along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The U.S. was in custody of at least 15,000 migrant children as of late last week, and the federal government has struggled to secure enough housing for all of them, particularly during the pandemic.

Manchin said that his characterization of the surge as a "crisis," wasn't criticism of Biden.

"When I call this a crisis, I'm not blaming the crisis on the present administration of President BidenJoe BidenThe Hill's Morning Report - GOP pounces on Biden's infrastructure plan Biden administration unveils network of community leaders to urge COVID-19 vaccinations Pompeo 'regrets' not making more progress with North Korea MORE, the former administration of PresidentTrump," he said. "This has been a human crisis for a long, long time."

Manchin added that he planned to return to Washington, D.C., and discuss his trip with both Biden and his colleagues.

Biden has proposed a sweeping, comprehensive immigration reform bill, though it's unlikely that could pass in the Senate where 10 GOP votes would be needed. A bipartisan group is also holding talks about a smaller bill that would address immigrants brought into the country illegally as children.

"This can happen," Manchin added about immigration legislation. "Common sense can prevail and that's what we're hopeful for."

See original here:
Manchin after border visit: 'Past time to do immigration reform' | TheHill - The Hill

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D.-Tex.) during a press conference in Washington, D.C., in November 2019.

Last week, President Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to take charge of the influx of immigrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico borderan issue that has long been a political lightning rod but has become especially contentious over the last several weeks.

At its core, immigration reform is a humanitarian issue. But its also a subject that has myriad consequences on American business and the entrepreneurial ecosystem: Immigrants make up roughly 15% of workers in the U.S., yet they are 80% more likely than U.S.-born workers to become entrepreneurs,according to a recent Wharton/National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper. Separate research shows that these immigrant-founded businesses drive more than $1 trillion in sales and employ some 8 million people in the U.S.

Even the Business Roundtablea collection of Americas top CEOshas advocated for the need for better immigration policies. A 2018 study by the BRT found that scaling back a program that encourages the employment of highly skilled immigrants would result in the loss of 443,000 jobs over the next decade, a number that includes some 25o,000 jobs held by American-born workers.

The voices of these CEOs are important, but some of the most effective advocates on behalf of a better approach to immigration, however, happen to be womenwomen who are over the age of 50. And so, as part of our regular segment on Morning Joe highlighting women over the age of 50 who are changing the world, Forbes and Know Your Value want to shine a light on the women who have raised their voices in support of immigration reform. They are:

Veronica Escobar, 51: A third-generation El Pasoan, Escobar was sworn in as her citys first female member of Congressand the first of two Latinas from Texas to serve in Congressin January 2019.

Shes moved quickly over her last two years in office, becoming the co-chair of Congress Womens Working Group on Immigration Reform and cofounding the Congressional Moms Task Force on Family Separation. Its an issue thats close to home: In 2017, the Trump Administration quietly used El Paso as a testing ground for the shameful family separation policy, which ripped thousands of children from their parents arms at our southern border, Escobar says.

In 2020, Escobar delivered the Spanish-language Democratic response to President Trumps State of the Union address and used part of her time to focus on immigration. More recently, shes concentrating on how she can use her positionas the representative of a border communityto reshape a system that has focused on border militarization. As she wrote in the New York Times last week: Im not asking for open borders. Im simply asking for open minds.

Cecilia Munoz, 58: The daughter of Bolivian immigrants, Munoz has dedicated her career to advocating on behalf of people like her parents. While an undergraduate at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Munoz tutored Hispanic inmates at the state prison near her school. When she was just 24 years old, she took a job with Catholic Charities in Chicagoand eventually asked her boss so many questions about how the organization was going to help immigrants get legal status under the 1986 immigration reform law that she was put in charge of the organizations legal program.

In 2000, Munoz was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant for her work around immigration and civil rights, and in 2009 joined the Obama Administration as the head of Intergovernmental Affairs. In 2012, she became the first Hispanic person to serve as the director of the White House Domestic Policy Counciland as such, received criticism for supporting Obamas deportation policy but was ultimately a crucial figure in helping DACA come to be.

Daca is not a permanent solution to our nations immigration problems. Far from it. We still need Congress to do its job and fix our immigration system, she wrote in 2018. Its a position she maintains to this day and one of the reasons Biden tapped her to serve on his transition team. The fundamental questions of American immigrationwho should be admitted legally, and who deserves protection when fleeing dangerare matters for Congress to answer, she wrote in The Atlantic this week.

Penny Pritzker, 61: Pritzker bridges the private and public sectors as a billionaire heir of the Pritzker familyand the founder and chairman of PSP Partners, a private investment firmand the former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, a position she held from 2013 until 2017. She is also the descendant of two immigrants who fled political oppression in czarist Russia in search of a better life in the United States, and so she sees immigration reform as a part of her familys history.

Her private sector experience means she both understands the business case for immigration reform and has a powerful voice in the matter. When she speaks, she grounds her advocacy in sound economic arguments.

Paradoxically, creating an environment in the name of security that makes foreigners less welcome and less likely to visit will make our country less prosperous and, eventually, less secure, she has said. We need to fix the legal visa process more broadly, use technology to further secure our borders and establish a pathway for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows. We should make smart changes to the H1B visa process to ensure that we still welcome highly talented people who create jobs here in America, while simultaneously protecting against anyone trying to game the system on the margins to undercut our domestic workforce.

Shifra Rubin, 71: Judge Shifra Rubin doesnt have a national profile like the other women on this list, and as such is the unsung herobut she represents what it means to be over 50, breaking boundaries and using her voice to speak for the voiceless.

Rubin was born in Israel and grew up on three different continents, acquiring fluency in six different languages along the way. She was a promising student but left college early, marrying and starting a family. By her mid-40s, Rubin was a single mother supporting her kids in a series of dead-end jobs, and she realized she wanted more for herself. At the age of 48, after pulling all-nighters to pass the LSAT, she enrolled in Rutgers Law School. Rubin attended school at night while working full time and caring for her family during the day.

After graduating in her early 50s, Rubin dedicated the next 14 years defending immigrant rights, representing asylum seekers and others facing deportation. In 2016, then Attorney General Loretta Lynchelected Rubin to serve as a judge on the Newark Immigration Court.

She is an anomaly in many ways, Rubins daughter, Noa Yachot, told Forbes. An immigrant herself, who became a federal judge, a judge whose background is in human rights, a late-career attorney who managed to reach the top of her field, anddespite a life of financial hardshipchose a career in public service.

Originally posted here:
The Women Over 50 Proving That Immigration Reform Is Needed For Business And Society - Forbes

The BDN Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom, and does not set policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or onbangordailynews.com.

Two groups of lawmakers took trips to the U.S-Mexico border last week. Their conclusions, like their trips, are vastly different, highlighting the difficulty of passing and enacting new laws to improve Americas broken immigration system.

A group of U.S. Senate Republicans traveled to a Border Patrol detention facility in Texas and to the border at the Rio Grande River. At a riverside press conference, some of the senators placed the blame for the crisis solely on President Joe Biden, largely blaming his halting construction of a border wall.

A few hundred miles away, Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives visited a detention center, run by the Department of Health and Human Services, where unaccompanied minors are being held. Members of that delegation emphasized that they want to ensure that migrant children are not mistreated and blamed the Trump administration for the problems at the border.

These two perspectives might be hard to bridge, but that is no excuse for Congress to continue to duck its responsibility to develop immigration policies that address both concerns for border security and for the humane treatment of migrants who are traveling to the U.S. border seeking to escape violence, poverty and natural disasters in their home countries.

Comprehensive immigration legislation has a poor history in the Capitol. The last most successful attempt at comprehensive reform, in 2013, failed when House Speaker John Boehner refused to bring a Senate-passed bill to the floor. That bill, which passed on a strong bipartisan 68-32 vote in the Senate, addressed many aspects of immigration including funding for border security, a shift toward work-based visas, a path toward citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and requirements for employers to verify the status of workers.

President Biden has sent an extensive immigration bill to Congress this year. It has already been panned by many Republican lawmakers, although House Republicans have offered a different plan.

In Texas last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley said there was no point in lawmakers talking about immigration reform while the border was open.

How can you pass an immigration bill when you have an open border? Grassley asked during a press conference at the Rio Grande River. If they want to accomplish anything on immigration and I want to help them it would be secure the border. You have to stop the bleeding before you can take care of the problem.

For the record, the border is not wide open. The border remains largely closed as Biden continues to use a public health authority that Trump invoked in March 2020 to allow for migrants apprehended at the border to be immediately expelled due to the pandemic, Politico reported earlier this month. The administration has made exceptions for unaccompanied children and some families arriving with small children.

Apprehensions have increased dramatically this year. The U.S. Border Patrol reported apprehending nearly 100,000 migrants in February. This comes after a precipitous drop in apprehensions from a recent high of nearly 133,000 in May 2019.

Thousands of unaccompanied children are being held at Customs and Border Patrol facilities along the border and another 10,500 children are in emergency facilities overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.

These situations highlight the need for significant and quick changes in immigration policy and practices.

Those changes should come from Congress.

It is extremely frustrating that this isnt a more bipartisan effort, Rep. Tony Gonzalez, a Republican from Texas, recently told The Hill. He added: It starts by coming together and having a conversation.

Right now theres two trains of thought either youre for border patrol and against immigration, or youre for immigration and against border patrol. Thats the wrong answer, said Gonzalez who was not on a weekend trip to the border.

We need to have both for a secure border as well as being compassionate and having a robust immigration system.

Gonzalezs model is precisely what Congress should do.

In the absence of congressional action, presidents have turned to executive orders to change immigration policies. This has caused a see-saw set of policies that change with each administration.

Former President Donald Trump used hundreds of executive actions to limit immigration to the United States and to divert billions of dollars in Pentagon funding to support construction on a border wall. Democrats criticized the former president for his use of executive orders to limit immigration and to target specific groups, such as Muslims. On the day he took office, Biden stopped the construction of border barriers through an executive order. Other orders he signed regarding immigration implement reviews and wont immediately change policy.

Those who object to Bidens immigration executive orders and support more funding for border security, and those who want a humane immigration system that also supports the millions of undocumented migrants who are living in the United States, must stop grandstanding and start working together.

Crafting workable, meaningful immigration policies that address current realities is difficult. It hasnt always made it across the finish line, but this has been done before. Congress can do it again.

Original post:
Editorial: Congress must take up comprehensive immigration reforms - Bangor Daily News