Crisis at Republican Party of Virginia: Whitbeck puts staff on chopping block

The halls at the Republican Party of Virginia headquarters in Richmond will be emptier by the end of next week.

Republican 5th Congressional District Chairman Jon Berkley, gone (see RPV in Crisis: Due process and rule of law ignored in removal of 5th CD Chair Jon Berkley).

All under the direction of the new “I’ve-been-in-office-four-weeks” RPV State Chairman John Whitbeck aka “the unifier” who said he wanted to bring the factions together.

So RPV now boasts a state chairman and two staffers … and the 2015 elections are looming. The 2016 presidential election is 20 months away.

Norm Leahy wrote about Shaun “stepping down” at Bearing Drift (see Shaun steps down). Jenna Portnoy wrote about it at the Washington Post (see Va. GOP executive director to step down amid party infighting).

Some are blaming cash problems on Shaun (RPV had something like $252 on hand last week). In reality, Shaun has sacrificed financially for the party. The loss of donors accelerated after long-time volunteers were crushed out of the party along with U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and others who were huge fundraisers for the GOP (see Eric Cantor breakfast draws 1,700 to annual event).

Hold onto your seats. The interesting part is going to be the names Whitbeck comes up with for replacements. Stay tuned….

Good for John. Getting rid of Shaun Kenney is great and long overdue. Here is something I wrote last year calling for his resignation. John Whitbeck is off to a good start.

"Shaun Kenney wrote an ill-informed, intemperate article, entitled, Nativism vs. Conservatism, posted February 11, 2014 on the Bearing Drift website that portrayed a grotesque, fabricated strawman of the “nativist” who has “plagued the conservative movement long enough.” His solution: “Drive ‘em out.” Kenney is entitled to his personal opinion—as mistaken and unsubstantiated as it may be—but he is the wrong person to be Executive Director of the Republican Party of Virginia. His unwarranted attack on conservatives who believe in the Rule of Law is divisive and destructive. I call for his immediate resignation. The immigration issue has deeply divided the Republican Party and Kenney has added fuel to the fire. He is joining the likes of Karl Rove, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeb Bush et. al. by castigating members of his own party who are against amnesty as nativists, racists, and bigots. These criticisms just reinforce the Democrat branding of the GOP and alienate minorities who perceive that they are not welcome in the party. Moreover, being branded as a “racist” political party hurts the GOP in recruiting new members, regardless of race or ethnicity. America is not a racist country and no one wants to be associated with a racist organization.

Kenney professes to want to have a “conversation in earnest” that starts with the loaded questions, “Should the nativists be welcomed in the GOP? Do conservatives have a moral duty to drive them out of the party?” I presume Mr. Kenney will decide who is or is not a “nativist” subject to removal. So much for inclusiveness and a big tent. And then Kenney proceeds to spout a torrent of distortions and untruths. His first one is a whopper, i.e., “There are 12 million people in the United States today who want a better lives for themselves and their families, whose only crime was that they came to America to do it.”

The vast majority of the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in this country have, in addition to violating our sovereignty by entering illegally, committed multiple crimes, a number of them being felonies. They are working illegally, perpetrating ID theft, evading taxes, committing perjury on employment forms, stealing or creating Social Security numbers, driving illegally, etc. Examples of felonies include violation of False Personation of a U.S. Citizen (18 U.S.C. § 911), Fraud and False Statements (18 U.S.C. § 1001), and Social Security Fraud (42 U.S.C. § 408). Violations of these statutes can result in a fine and/or imprisonment up to five years.

In addition, there are crimes of violence, property crimes like vandalism, or other acts like gang activity, drug offenses, and drunk driving. Even John McCain estimated that there were two million criminal aliens who must be deported immediately. A March 2011 GAO study, Criminal Alien Statistics, found the following: The number of criminal aliens in federal prisons in fiscal year 2010 was about 55,000 [one fourth of the total population,] and the number of SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems and local jails was about 296,000 in fiscal year 2009 (the most recent data available)…Based on our random sample, GAO estimates that the criminal aliens had an average of 7 arrests, 65 percent were arrested at least once for an immigration offense, and about 50 percent were arrested at least once for a drug offense…About 40 percent of individuals convicted as a result of DOJ terrorism-related investigations were aliens… GAO estimates that costs to incarcerate criminal aliens in federal prisons and SCAAP reimbursements to states and localities ranged from about $1.5 billion to $1.6 billion annually from fiscal years 2005 through 2009.

The GAO report listed 25,064 arrests for homicide by criminal aliens. There have been estimates that over 50,000 Americans have been killed by criminal aliens since 9/11 2001. Criminal alien crime has affected millions of Americans who have been the real victims of the lawbreakers. Who speaks for them? Citizens have a right to expect their government to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities and protect them from what amounts to a foreign invasion.

The serious national security threats posed by illegal aliens involve terrorism and drugs. Former FBI Director Mueller testified before Congress in 2006 about Hezbollah operations on the Mexican border. In 2009 outgoing CIA head Michael Hayden stated that the threat of a narco-state in Mexico was one of the gravest dangers to American security, on a par with a nuclear-armed Iran. Four of the 9/11 terrorists were illegal aliens who overstayed their visas—the source of 40% of the 12 to 20 million illegal alien population.

There has been a confluence of interests between drugs, illegal immigration, and terrorism. The systems for moving terrorists illegally across the border have become increasingly sophisticated, with Mexican drug kingpins now playing a major facilitating role using the same routes and methods to bring in illegal aliens and drugs.

Kenney states, “The nativists have a very simple solution: apprehend all 12 million of them, boxcar them back to their point of origin, and drive them out as so many locusts.” The use of the word “boxcar” is an obvious attempt to equate the removal of illegal aliens to the transport of Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust. He leaves no doubt about that analogy when he writes,

“Checkpoints? Papers, papers please? Searches? NSA metadata? What civil liberties are we willing to surrender in order to perform all this D&E? Does the nativist opinion of a FEMA camp change if they turn into concentration camps for undocumented immigrants?”… A modern day version of Operation Wetback with jackboots and checkpoints designed to boxcar 8-20 million people back “their point of origin” (read: Mexico) is obtuse at best and horribly violent to our civil liberties at worse.”

Kenney’s vile attempt to compare the enforcement of our immigration laws against illegal aliens who chose to enter the US illegally to Jews being rounded up by the Nazis for extermination during the Holocaust is offensive on so many levels. Is the enforcement of our immigration laws the same as the Nazis requesting “papers?” Are illegal aliens victims like the Jews? And Kenny adopts the Orwellian language of Schumer-Gutierrez using “undocumented immigrants” instead of illegal aliens. They are neither undocumented nor immigrants. They are lawbreakers. The proponents of amnesty are wont to create the false choice between a blanket amnesty and mass deportation of 12 to 20 million illegal aliens. In reality, we have other choices and alternatives that don’t reward people who have broken our laws with the right to stay and work here and an eventual path to citizenship. The 12 to 20 million illegal aliens did not enter this country overnight and they will not leave overnight. Attrition through enforcement works. We have empirical data from Georgia, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Arizona proving that it does. Only Kenney’s mythical “nativist” supports mass deportation.

Kenny is quite exercised about the putative costs to the American taxpayer of a possible mass deportation citing “$6 billion just to house and feed 12 million immigrants.” Does Kenny have any inkling as to how much illegal aliens are actually costing the taxpayers now? Or how much an amnesty will cost?

The estimated annual costs of illegal immigration in Virginia for education, health care, and incarceration are $2 billion. Nationally, the costs are estimated to be close to $120 billion a year. The taxpayers of the Commonwealth and the US have been picking up the tab so that lawbreakers and their families can enjoy a “better life.” 77% of illegal alien headed households with children receive welfare benefits thru their American-born children, aka “anchor babies” who are US citizens thru birthright citizenship. There are 300,000 anchor babies born annually and they are entitled to all of the benefits accorded citizens including Medicaid and food stamps. Robert Rector and Jason Richwine of The Heritage Foundation estimated in their May 2013 report, The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer, that an amnesty would cost a staggering $6.3 trillion, which is the difference over the lifetime of the amnesty recipients of government benefits and services received ($9.4 trillion) minus taxes paid ($3.1 trillion.) These figures do not include the millions of family members who would be joining those receiving amnesty thru chain migration, i.e., family reunification.

Kenny states that, “Conservatives embrace the idea of more Americans coming into this country to work hard and prosper.” This statement reflects the monumental ignorance Kenny has about mass immigration, the disastrous impact it is having on the American worker and our social safety net, and the opinion of conservatives. We don’t have a labor shortage; we have a lack of jobs. A surplus of labor depresses wages, lowers labor participation rates, and forces more people on to welfare, all circumstances that obtain today. Milton Friedman said, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” We have both.

We have just had the two highest decades of legal immigration in our history with over 26 million legal permanent immigrants entering during the period 1990 to 2010. In 1970 one in 21 was foreign-born; today, it is one in 8, the highest in over 90 years; and within in decade it will be one in 7, the highest in our history. In 1970 we had 9.7 million foreign-born and by 2010 that number had quadrupled to 40 million. We bring in 1.1 million legal permanent immigrants a year—more than the rest of the world combined. 20% of the adult legal immigrants and 51% of the illegal aliens lack even a high school diploma. We are importing hundreds of thousands of unskilled and uneducated laborers annually who will compete with native born Americans who are also high school dropouts and unskilled. The results have been devastating.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, the standard unemployment rate (referred to as U-3) for native-born adults (18-65) who have not completed high school was 16.6 percent, while for those with only a high school education it was 8.5 percent. The broader U-6 measure of unemployment — which includes those who want to work, but have not looked recently, and those forced to work part-time — was 28.7 percent for native-born adults who have not completed high school and 16.5 percent for those with only a high school education. Minorities have fared even worse.

Kenney doesn’t state specifically how he would deal with the 12 million lawbreakers, but he does seem to support a solution that will allow them to say and work here, i.e., amnesty.

Invective filled, emotional screed that demonstrates a monumental ignorance about immigration, the defining issue of our time.

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