“Nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign born.”

27 JAN 18 - His 9th executive order on immigration.
Previous orders have been overturned by the courts.

On January 16, President Trump tweeted that “nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign born.” That part is true but misleading; a half-truth, perhaps.

DoJ and DHS reported for the 15 years between 9/11/2001, and 12/31/2016, 549 people were convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts, and 402 of them were foreign born.  Nearly 3 in 4. 

There's a problem, though.   There are approximately 41 million foreign-born people living in the United States.  Those 402 out of the 41 million are a miniscule proportion - less than 0.0000001 percent.  If an individual is foreign-born, the likelihood that the person has or will engage in terrorism-related activities is nearly zero.

It's perhaps easy to cherry-pick the stats you need to support a particular position.

Those foreign born individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges since 9/11, those are convictions, not deaths.  (Deaths by terrorists on U.S. soil were 61 for post-9/11 through 2014.  The count includes both foreign-born and domestic perpetrators.)

White nationalists and right-wing extremists killed 5 times that number, but they're not 'terrorists'.  Extremists, yes; terrorists, no; but they killed five times as many as the terrorists did.  There's little difference among extremists.  

So, what about all those refugees?

When it comes to terrorist acts by refugees, the numbers are unequivocal. In the four decades between 1975 and 2015, only 20 individuals who arrived in the U.S. as refugees either attempted or carried out a terrorist attack - resulting in three deaths. All three of those killings were by anti-Castro refugees back in the '70s.

Not a single death has resulted from terrorist activity by a Muslim refugee.  Not one.
(No person accepted to the United States as a refugee, Syrian or otherwise, has been implicated in a fatal terrorist attack since the Refugee Act of 1980.-- CATO Institute)

Conversation in the public arena, particularly regarding refugees, those millions displaced from their homes and livelihood, has been uninformed and unreasonable.  The hatred and mistrust generated within our own culture are immense as even legal residents are now treated prejudicially.

Citing that “3 in 4” terrorists are foreign born falsely suggests that excluding the foreign born would substantially reduce a large threat to this country.  Unequivocally, that is a false representation.  And at what cost?  How many of the 41 million lives of immigrants and refugees should we disrupt and ruin to further reduce an already minuscule threat? Let’s not use statistical lies to destroy lives.

While I'm inclined to agree with this administration on a number of issues, this isn't one of them.  The correct focus is vetting before entry and deportation of criminals, of course, and the processes are being reviewed and improved.  Meanwhile, the political rhetoric against the foreign born has been destructive and culturally destabilizing.  In all, the harm has far exceeded whatever good that may have been accomplished.

_________________

References: (White House Report) (Ploitico: Terror Statistics) (UMD Study: American Deaths in Terrorist Attacks) (Business Insider: How likely are foreign terrorists to kill Americans?) (CATO Institute, Policy Analysis No. 978)

Discussion: (Snopes: Who is More of a Threat: Far-Right or Muslim Extremists?) (POLITIFACT, A look at the data on domestic terrorism and who’s behind it)

Perhaps it's time

"Three and a half million years separate the individual who left these footprints in the sands of Africa from the one who left them on the moon.  A mere blink in the eye of evolution.  Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever-increasing population.  In spite of disasters when civilisations have over-reached themselves, that process has continued, indeed accelerated, even today.  Now mankind is looking for food, not just on this planet but on others.  Perhaps the time has now come to put that process into reverse.  Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment."  2002 Sir David Attenborough 

Population control is now being considered.  Is that reasonable?
Quotations below are also from Sir David Attenborough in recent years.

"I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things.  If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [...]  If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it."  2005

"In the past, we didn't understand the effect of our actions. Unknowingly, we sowed the wind and now, literally, we are reaping the whirlwind. But we no longer have that excuse: now we do recognise the consequences of our behaviour. Now surely, we must act to reform it — individually and collectively, nationally and internationally — or we doom future generations to catastrophe."  2006

"The growth in human numbers is frightening. I've seen wildlife under mounting human pressure all over the world, and it's not just from human economy or technology. Behind every threat is the frightening explosion in human numbers. I've never seen a problem that wouldn't be easier to solve with fewer people – or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more."  2009

“We cannot continue to deny the problem. People have pushed aside the question of population sustainability and not considered it because it is too awkward, embarrassing and difficult. But we have to talk about it."  2012

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.”  2013

Among the issues our children will face, population growth today exceeds support capacity, particularly food production and fresh water supply.  

World population has grown from 1.5 billion to 7.5 billion (quintupled) in my mother's lifetime.

It's been suggested that most of the world's problems would be solved if the population were cut in half, something that may be the inevitable result of current growth.   Most prophetic descriptions of the end-times suggest such collapse.  Economists, the UN, and others are beginning to agree.  Thoughts?

_____________________________

See The Tipover Point

With extreme prejudice ...

Look.  Where might we find the most dangerous extremists?

There are extremists among us who account for hundreds of assaults and hundreds of murders each year.

Although murder by extremists represents only a tiny fraction of the overall murder rate in the U.S., “because of their nature they can have outsized impact, affecting entire communities — or even an entire country — in ways many deaths may not.”

~ Murder and Extremism in the United States 2017

From 2008 through 2017, right-wing extremists killed 274 people. That’s 71 percent of the 387 murders committed by extremists over the past 10 years. 

“Americans do not have the luxury to ignore any extremist threat, including threats posed by white supremacists who are weaponizing social media and are more likely to take their actions into the streets,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO, said in a statement. “Their actions fuel controversy and conflict and their racist rhetoric and hateful ideas can inspire violence.”

05/2017  Right-wing extremist Jeremy Christian killed two men on a train in Portland.  They were trying to stop him from harassing two teenage girls, one of whom was black and one of whom wore hijab.

The same month, Maryland student Sean Urbanski fatally stabbed Richard Collins, an African-American student at Bowie State University.  Urbanski belonged to the Alt-Reich Nation group on Facebook.  His computer contained evidence of his extreme racism.  

12/2017  In Virginia, 17-year-old Nicholas Giampa killed his girlfriend’s parents after they had convinced her to break up with him because of his racist beliefs.  He was involved in the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group.

 

08/2017  Right-wing extremism briefly gained national attention when more than a thousand white supremacists held a large rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The assorted racists and fascists, perhaps emboldened by President Trump’s election, didn't hesitate to show their faces and become violent. 

At the end of the rally, James Fields, a member of a far-right extremist group, drove his car into a crowd of protesters, injuring nineteen and killing one.

Afterwards, unfortunately, the president stated there were “very fine people on both sides” of the demonstration.

ISIS inspired extremists are a concern, of course.  Outliers like the Vegas shooter are a concern as well.  White supremacists and right-wing extremists, however, top the list today.  We must recognize extremism in every context and deal with it appropriately.  

Preferring one value over another is appropriate if done knowledgeably and reasonably. 
Outside that boundary, there is extraordinary wickedness.
Without exception, extreme positions are based on partial truths.

Do we understand that extremism isn't necessarily an issue of race?  Extremists might justify their behavior by differences of religion, race, ideology, or political perspective; it's them against everybody that doesn't agree with them.

Biased thinking spans a spectrum from reasonable out to extremes in every direction, and we may not even be aware of our own position.  If we find ourselves leaning this way or that, do we do so rationally or irrationally?   We perhaps should consider our answer carefully, for there are none morally right, justifiable, or virtuous, or so we're told.

Don't talk about it.

Hoping to be broadly informed by all sides of the discussion on inequality, I ran across this article by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group.

Their advice, redirect the conversation and talk about something else.

According to their article, Americans don't care about income inequality and inadequate wages.  They did an online survey of less than a thousand folks to generate numbers they could use while ignoring the obvious problem that folks most affected by the gap don't do online surveys.

Both ends of the political spectrum have their biased representatives, of course, all competing for our loyalty and attention.

An interesting question, why would an entire media source be obviously biased, and why would their journalism be other than objective?  Who made the decision about how to interpret the available facts?  One perhaps relevant analysis:  The Propaganda Model and Sociology: Understanding the Media and Society

It's always difficult to deal with difficult issues and difficult people at the same time.  An open discussion with broad inquiry is perhaps needed if we're going to understand cause and impact on folks as well as options for beneficial change.

Happy New Tax Year

People are going to be “very, very happy” with "the largest tax cut  in the history of our country.” “They're going to get tremendous, tremendous tax cuts and tax relief and that's what this country needs.”

For most, the tax reduction is no help at all.  

• For the bottom quintile, they'll get an extra $5/month, enough for two gallons of gas.
• For the middle quintile, it's about $77/month.  Enough for a family dinner out perhaps, but not enough for their health insurance or their kid's college.
• Top quintile folks will see and additional $7000 per year, and top 1% will get about $51,000 per year in additional after-tax income.

I imagine the rich folks will enjoy that $51,000 bonus, but I don't think they need it.

What would really be helpful ... reasonable wages, healthcare, education, mobility, opportunity ... for everyone.

Income increases have gone to the top, while costs of survival have increased and left half of our workforce behind.

I'm open to another interpretation of this tax reform, but similar policies in the past have had the same outcomes.

• Since the 80's, education costs have increased 600%
• Medical costs have increased 250%
• and wages have been stagnant for the middle and lower economic segments.

Corporate tax restructuring is indeed necessary to keep U.S. businesses on a reasonable footing in the international marketplace. 

Individual tax rates are already low compared to other developed nations. Tax relief for the wealthy is not what's needed, but rather perhaps  restraint of predatory finance (Wall Street and the Banks) and abusive wage practices (Walmart, et al, and fast food sellers).  Marketplace practices by pharmaceutical providers have been particularly harmful.

Reducing taxes for the wealthy is a political play, not a needed or helpful economic adjustment.  The latest congressional analysis predicts the plan will add one trillion to the deficit in the next decade.

What we'd like to see,
  a flourishing education system,
    an upwardly mobile workforce,
      an improving healthcare system,
        a thriving culture,
          and emerging social understanding, wisdom ...

Over the last forty years, we've watched inequality and poverty increase, indebtedness increase (to the benefit of the financial industry), and mobility decline ....
Our national identity is fractured,  and we're told yet again, it's just wonderful how well we're served.

Curious if there might be a higher standard for both citizens and nations?
___________________________________________________________

Things to watch in the coming years:
Where does the wealth go ... to the top or shared reasonably?
Quality of education on an international scale ...
Quality of healthcare on an international scale ...
Middle-class and the American dream ... nearer or farther away.
And who gets left behind?  Years ago, we worked hard to make sure our children, at least, were equipped for life and growth, but the issue became political rather than human, didn't it.

And, what are our national goals?

The man comes around ...

"And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying,
'Come and see.' and I saw, and behold a white horse"

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down
When the man comes around

The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup
Or disappear into the potter's ground?
When the man comes around

Hear the trumpets hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin'
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum
Voices callin', voices cryin'
Some are born and some are dyin'
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks

Till armageddon no shalam, no shalom
Then the father hen will call his chickens home
The wise man will bow down before the throne
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around

Whoever is unjust let him be unjust still
Whoever is righteous let him be righteous still
Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still
Listen to the words long written down
When the man comes around

Hear the trumpets hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singin'
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum
Voices callin', voices cryin'
Some are born and some are dyin'
It's alpha and omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn trees
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks
In measured hundredweight and penny pound
When the man comes around

"And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked, and behold a pale horse
And his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him"

Johnny Cash wrote and performed this, among the last of his works before he died.  It's taken partly from Revelations Chapter 22.  
The apostle John had a particularly difficult time describing what he'd seen and heard, but what was clear through it all ... there is a divide, and somehow, we choose deliberately.
As the Christmas season draws to a close, it's worth remembering, there's more to a story than just the beginning.