Time to bury Yucca Mountain

Suppose the Federal Government were to contract a leading Martian consultant to assist the United States in devising some means of disposing of its most toxic nuclear waste.  What might they conclude?

Our Martian consultant would first note that long term storage is really the only option to handle this material.   You can't burn it or otherwise change it; we're dealing with atomic isotopes here.  Our consultant might then decide that it is wisest to store this material:

•  in an out-of-the way, relatively unpopulated place
•  central to where the waste is being produced
•  not near a major population center, and 
• in a geological setting in which the material is likely to be undisturbed for a very long time. 

Doubtless, our Martian consultant would look at a map of nuclear reactor facilities to see where there material is coming from.  Here's one from Wikipedia in 2013.  The size of the dots is proportional to the amount of waste that would be produced:

Our consultant would likely conclude that any long term storage facility should be located in the eastern or central US.   The greatest risk of a nuclear discharge is when you are transporting the material to the plant so it makes sense to put is somewhere central to where it's coming from.

You're going to be moving a lot of stuff so you'd like it near some major transportation corridor along which it could be moved safely with other hazardous materials.   Our consultant might next look at a map of major railways and roads in America.  Here's another cool map from Wikipedia showing rail, highway and shipping corridors with the thickness of the lines proportional to the freight moved.  Highways in red, rail in brown and shipping in blue.

Our consultant might conclude that somewhere close to the Chicago - New York transportation corridor might be the best spot.

Next up, our Martian would look at population density.  Here's a look at population density by county in 2017 (vividmaps.com).

By this point our consultant might conclude that somewhere in the northern US (Dakotas, Wisconsin or Michigan) might be pretty good based on looking at all the maps we've seen so far.

Now our consultant would turn to the geological hazards associated with the site.   You don't want to be in an area with a lot of earthquakes (think San Francisco) or volcanic activity (think Yellowstone).  Earthquakes, volcanic activity and hot water (hydrothermal flows) associated with volcanic activity can breach your nice self-contained storage site and cause nuclear crap to leak out into the groundwater.  Finally, you'd like to put the storage site in  hard, unfractured, dry bedrock.  So where do you find such a place? 

Here's a USGS map of earthquake (seismicity) hazard for the US:

Looks like Texas, Florida and the northern states are the safest bet if you want to avoid the chance of an earthquake breaching your nuclear storage facility.  Here is another USGS derived map of volcanic hazards:

Our consultant would conclude the far west and west coast look like bad spots to site a nuclear storage facility.

Finally, our consultant would likely recommend that we put the storage facility in the toughest, most unfractured rocks we can find.  Generally, your best choice is older rocks.  They tend to have been formed at deeper depths and only been exposed through erosion over billions of years.  Deeper rocks, especially metamorphic and igneous rocks (think of your granite counter top) are good storage locations.  Geologists refer to the oldest rocks forming the core of North America as the Craton.  Here's a map (USGS / GSA):

While most of the really old, hard stable rocks are up in Canada, part of the craton dips down into the US, west of Lake Superior.  Finland is storing its high level nuclear waste in similar rocks at the only facility for final nuclear waste storage yet built anywhere in the world.

After considering all factors, I think our Martian consultant would likely recommend that the US put a long term nuclear storage facility in some shield rocks in Michigan or Wisconsin.  

For better or worse, the decision on where to store America's nuclear waste won't be made by a Martian consultant but by our fallible, pliable politicians, buttressed by thousands of detailed reports justifying a predetermined decision.

On the facts however, Yucca Mountain is bad for America and Nevada:

• The site is distant from most of the nuclear waste in the US - currently generated at power plants in the eastern US.   Siting a long term storage facility at Yucca Mountain creates unnecessary transportation and handling hazards.
• On a national scale, Yucca Mountain is not near major transportation corridors and this will create additional transportation hazards.
• Yucca Mountain is located near the most heavily populated area in Nevada.  Virtually all high level nuclear waste stored at the the site will come through Las Vegas.   
• Yucca Mountain is along the Walker Lane and in the Eastern Nevada Seismic Zone - areas of high earthquake hazard that should have disallowed the site from the get-go.
• There have been recent volcanic eruptions in the area of Yucca Mountain - as recent at 60,000 years ago which is a blink in geological time.   There are numerous hot springs in the area resulting from past and potentially future volcanic activity.  Hot spring activity directly associated with volcanic activity is acidic - a potential hazard to any storage facility.
• A breech in a facility at Yucca Mountain could potentially contaminate aquifers beneath Amargosa Valley.  Although not a population center now, it is close to Las Vegas and Pahrump - the fastest growing community in Nevada.  

 Most Nevadan's agree.  The Nevada Independent conducted the most recent poll on Yucca Mountain in 2017:

Voters were given the following information about the facility, including rotated statements of support and opposition to the facility:

“As you may know, there has been renewed discussion about government plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. I am going to read you what some people are saying about this, and then ask whether you favor or oppose putting a nuclear storage facility at Yucca Mountain. Supporters say that the Yucca Mountain program can help develop Nevada’s economy and create thousands of new jobs. Opponents say that transporting and storing nuclear waste is dangerous, and Nevada shouldn’t be our country’s nuclear waste dumping ground.”

After hearing supporting and opposing arguments, 58 percent of voters said they opposed opening the facility including 51 percent “strongly” opposed.  opening the facility, compared to 23 percent “strongly” in favor of opening it. Only a third of poll respondents favor storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, with 23% strongly favoring the plan.”   Female voters were more likely to oppose the site (23 to 68 percent) than men (44 to 48 percent). Voters regardless of party identification opposed the site, but those who identified as Republican had a slightly more positive view (44 to 50 percent) than Democrats (23 to 68 percent.).

Mellman Group CEO Mark Mellman said in an email that Republican support could be explained by the economic argument for opening the site.  “It is possible that the economic development argument does blunt opposition to some extent among Republicans,” he said.

Nevada has already made an out-sized contribution to America's nuclear industry at the test site.  Large areas are still contaminated from hundred of nuclear bomb tests during the 1950's.  We needn't feel bad about opposing Yucca Mountain.  It is clearly the wish of the majority of Nevadans that Yucca Mountain never get built.

I think we might want to insert a plank in the Alliance Party of Nevada platform opposing the development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility.

What do you think?

-- Mike Power

chair@nv.theallianceparty.com

Real Electoral College reform in Nevada

In May, Governor Sisolak, to his great credit, vetoed AB186, a bill to apportion all of Nevada's Electoral College votes to the winner of the National Popular Vote.  If this had passed, Nevada would have become a true fly-over state, waiting on election night to see who won the national popular vote, knowing that how we voted in Nevada wouldn't really count at all.   

Maybe now is the time to take a step forward and make sure Nevada's Electoral College votes really reflect the will of the people.  Under our current legislation (NRS Chapter 298), all 6 of Nevada's Electoral College votes have to be cast for the presidential candidate who wins a plurality of the votes cast in the election.  Winner take all.

So just a few votes in a tight election could throw Nevada one way or the other.   Complicating this are third party votes, which depending on how they break, might ensure that a candidate with only a small plurality (say down in the 30% range) gets Nevada's Electoral College votes in some future election.

Plurality voting has a long pedigree, dating back to Andrew Jackson and his being "robbed" of the 1824 election despite having won a plurality of the popular vote.   In the aftermath of that election, state legislatures moved to ensure plurality voting in the selection of Electoral College electors until it became the norm.   Currently, 48 of 50 States use plurality voting while Maine and Nebraska use the "Congressional district method".

If we truly want Nevada's Electoral College vote to reflect the will of Nevadans, perhaps we ought to look into the Congressional district method.  The Congressional district method allows the voters in each Congressional District to select their presidential candidate by plurality vote and apportions the two state electoral college candidates to the party with the plurality of votes in the state.  So if folks in Las Vegas want to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate and folks in Elko want to vote for the Republican presidential candidate, they each get an elector who will vote according to their choice for President in their Congressional District.  If you wanted to ensure that voters preferences were accurately reflected on a state-wide basis, you could apportion the two state electors by state popular vote.  If it were a rough tie between two candidates for example, they each would get one state electoral vote.   Had this system been employed on a national scale in 2016, President Trump would still have been elected but by 267 votes to 265 votes for Hillary Clinton (& with 6 votes for other candidates).  Instead he won by 334 votes to 227 with 7 votes for other candidates.

The two main political parties being what they are have fought to preserve the "winner take all" approach, each thinking they will steal the others lunch.   Neither seem to be really concerned that the Electoral College system accurately and truly reflect the wishes of the people of Nevada.

If put before the people of Nevada, it would be hard to argue against the Congressional district method.   It might ensure that our voice is clearly heard in future presidential elections.

-- Mike Power

What do you think?  Should this be a plank in Alliance Party of Nevada's platform?    My email is chair.nv@theallianceparty.com.    

Anyone up for another war?

You have to commend the President for walking back from the brink of war with Iran.  I especially found it refreshing that somebody looked at the body count in advance for a change.

America has a winning hand to play in containing Iran.   Sanctions have tightened the noose around the Iranian leadership, leading to widespread economic hardship and discontent.  Ayatollah Khamenei is a one-note singer, intent on confronting the Great Satan to fulfill an end-times Shiite apocaplytic vision.   He's in power thanks to the Revolutionary Guard - theo-kleptocrats who have been stirring up trouble from Yemen to the Straits of Hormuz.  The majority of ordinary Iranians do not support this and even the Iranian President admits he has no control over foreign policy anymore.  The religious rulers are sitting on a powder keg and their only strategy is to try and focus Iranians on an external enemy.   Their greatest fear is that the Iranian people get fed up and organized enough to take them on.  If the Iranian leadership got close to testing a bomb, the Israelis - perhaps with Saudi assistance - would address the issue on our behalf.   We don't need Iranian or any other Middle East oil - we're a net exporter now.  The rest of the world still needs oil shipped through the Straits of Hormuz however and might be willing to deploy some of their naval resources for a change if there are more attacks.   All we need do is sit tight and let this play out.    

We have an unfortunate history of shooting first and asking questions later, only to find that we had either deceived ourselves or been hoodwinked into launching or expanding a war.  Think Gulf of Tonkin or Weapons of Mass Destruction as recent examples.  There might be something like that going on in Iran at the moment.   It is very strange that two Japanese supertankers were attacked even as the Japanese Prime Minister was in Iran trying to broker some sort of a deal between  America and Iran.  Sure there were likely Iranian mines and an Iranian PT boat involved but is it possible that the right hand was trying to slap the left here?   Is the Iranian theocracy solidly behind this or could there be two factions fighting each other; one trying to ease the sanctions through diplomacy and another with a vested interest in keeping the Iranian people focused on war?   You can be sure that if a rogue faction launched this attack that the entire Iranian government would close ranks and cover this up to face down the Great Satan.  

So - no Americans have been killed and our vital interests aren't threatened.  What's the rush to launch?

It is really refreshing to hear voices speaking up forcefully about this, pointing out the price we will pay if we launch another war.  It is especially comforting to hear people considering the lives of our service personnel before raising the war flag.   Two in particular strike me as worth following.

Tulsi Gabbard is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.  She spent two tours in Iraq and is making the issue of staying out of foreign wars her campaign theme.  This clip describes where she comes from and why we need to think carefully of our troops and price they will pay before pressing the button:

The other voice of caution is Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who is credited with convincing the President to climb down over an armed response to the Iranian tanker attack.  His scathing denunciation of the war party in Washington last week pulls no punches:

We used to be fussy about declaring war and our founders wisely vested this power with Congress to ensure that it had the full support of the American people.  Not anymore; it's all in the hands of the President and some of his advisors are a bunch of bellicose back seat drivers pushing him to launch at the slightest provocation from enemies on their hit list.  It is to his credit that President Trump counted the cost before pressing the button and had the courage to face down the war party.

 -- Mike Power


 

The abortion issue

Time to open a great big can of worms and look at an issue which clearly polarizes many Americans and is back in the news in a big way.

The abortion issue is now front and center in our political discourse.  On the left, the Democratic Party has become the Pro-Choice party, with virtually no dissent among sitting members of Congress and party leaders.  The Republican Party has become the Pro-Life party with a bit more room for dissent among members of Congress and party leaders.  A recent Pew poll found that 76% of Democrats are in favor of abortion in all or most cases while 58% of Republicans hold this view.  The issue has always been a critical one for many Christian voters of most denominations with some observers asserting that it is the preeminent issue for Evangelical Christians and explains their steadfast support of President Trump.

Where do Americans stand?   Well - it looks like we're a bit mixed up.  When asked about whether they think abortion should be legal, a majority of Americans favor legal abortion in some or all cases (Pew 2018). 

Dig a little deeper and you find that this overall support for abortion deteriorates depends very much on the stage of pregnancy.  Gallup notes that currently while 35% of Americans oppose abortion in the first three months of pregnancy, this rises to 64% in the second three months of pregnancy and 81% in the final three months of pregnancy (Gallup 2018).  While in favor of abortion in principal, there appears to be a point beyond which the great majority of Americans feel abortion is not acceptable.

When asked whether they are Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, half of Americans fall in each camp with the Pro-Life gaining ground since the 1990's (Gallup 2018).

It is interesting to look at views on abortion by state as this reveals why each of the main political parties have staked out opposing positions on the issue.  Here's a map from the Washington Examiner:

 For the most part the east and west coast states are Pro-Choice and the interior states and the deep south (less Florida) are Pro-Life.   Furthermore, if you go to the source map, you'll see that views on the issue are vary greatly between states.   

How prevalent is abortion in America?  Well - this question can't be answered with great certainty.  The two leading sources of data are the Center for Disease Control and the Guttmacher Institute.  Each reports different numbers, using different methodology and sources.  A ball park estimate for 2017 blending the two was 878,000 abortions and a total of 3,856,000 live births for an effective abortion rate of 18.5%.  The Guttmacher Institute has a slightly lower estimate of around 15% and shows that over time the frequency of abortion is diminishing in America.

So, as a rough number, it appears that 1 in 6 pregnancies ends in abortion. 

Why are women choosing abortion?  Here is a table from a study by the Guttmacher Institute:

It seems that women are choosing abortion primarily in response to social and economic pressures, in some cases very serious. 

A factor which has changed Americans' attitudes towards abortion is the improvement in survival rates of premature babies.  Currently, survival rates (quoted by verywellfamily.com) look something like this:

Based on information from the Quint Boenker Preemie Survival Foundation and the March of Dimes, here is the likelihood of a survival for a baby born prematurely. It's important to note that these percentages are statistics and do not predict the survival of an individual baby.

Length of Pregnancy	Likelihood of Survival
23 weeks	17 percent
24 weeks	39 percent
25 weeks	50 percent
26 weeks	80 percent
27 weeks	90 percent
28 to 31 weeks	90 to 95 percent
32 to 33 weeks	95 percent
34+ weeks	Almost as likely as a full-term baby
Sources: March of Dimes, Quint Boenker Preemie Survival Foundation

Basically, children born late in the second trimester have a very good chance of survival with modern medical care.  This creates a queasy dichotomy.  In hospitals across the nation, fetuses in the second and third trimester are being aborted in one room while in an adjacent room fetuses of the same age are being born, cared for and growing into normal children.  If we think about it, this is at odds with our commitment to preserving "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for all Americans.  In view of this it is not strange to find 80% of Americans opposed to abortion in the third trimester.

Roe v. Wade - redux

With new judges appointed by the Trump Administration to the Supreme Court and a clear commitment on the part of the President to appoint judges with at least a skeptical view of Roe v. Wade, it is not surprising to abortion becoming a hot button issue again.   Legal scholars on both sides of the abortion issue recognize that the legal grounds for the original decision decriminalizing abortion were shaky.  These invoked penumbral rights not explicitly specified in the Constitution but deduced by the judges rendering the verdict.   They could easily be "un-deduced".   It seems likely that Roe v. Wade will stand for a while but will be chipped away at by challenges from the states and perhaps be reversed in 3 to 5 years.  In this event, it is distinctly possible that the Supreme Court may throw the issue back to the states to legislate individually.  

The coming fight

Against this backdrop, the Republicans and Democrats have polarized the issue in a pre-election year to firm up their bases.  The Democratic Party has become a monolithic Pro-Choice party in which no major candidate with Pro-Life views can be nominated.  The Republican Party has endorsed a somewhat vague Pro-Choice platform and consequently enjoys rock solid support among conservative Christian voters for whom abortion may be the most important issue in their political decisions.   President Trump's decision to appoint Supreme Court justices who seem inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade at some point has put this group of voters in his pocket.  Abortion has become an "I win - you lose" issue with each political party intent on shoving their views down the throats of the other. 

Is there a way forward?

To date, while we concentrate on building The Alliance Party, the party platform has been long on generalities and short on specifics.  This is a very wise move at this stage given the urgent, overriding necessity of just getting the party up and running in all 50 States.  Before we know it however, we will be face the glare of hostile media polarized as much as our political parties and we will need to have clear, workable positions on critical issues that provide solutions to our problems.  It is never too early to open a discussion because before we know it we are going to have to stake out positions on critical issues of concern to Americans.  There is likely no more contentious issue than abortion so why not tackle it now?
  
So - here are some ideas on developing a platform position on this issue.  To be very clear, these are just my personal ideas, offered to seed discussion and begin working towards a platform plank on abortion:

1. At some time between conception and natural birth, unborn children should be offered the protection of the Constitution. 
2. The point at which unborn children are afforded the full protection of the Constitution could be decided or ratified by the people of the United States in statewide referendums.  Placing this decision in the hands of the people will defuse the weaponized abortion politics which are afflicting our country.  In the interim, perhaps this point could be the time at which an unborn child could survive with medical assistance.  It appears the great majority of Americans already support this view and it would be readily defensible in the political world.   
3. Abortion should be permitted at any time to save the life of a mother or to prevent grievous harm coming to her when there is no other option to save the child.  We all have the right to defend ourselves.
4. As the abortion issue touches on deeply held views of personal freedom, conscience and religious beliefs, The Alliance Party should allow candidates to dissent from national or state platform positions on the abortion issue and not use their acceptance of the party position as a criteria to accept or reject a candidate.
5. Recognizing that social, cultural and economic forces work against women who bear children, the provision of care and support to pregnant mothers and mothers of infant children should be made a high priority for state health care services, particularly for women who lack financial or family support.       

Americans want a resolution of the abortion war but there won't be any coming soon if we leave it up to the two main parties.  It is in each of their vested interests to use abortion as a divisive issue to firm up their bases.   The Alliance Party can do the country a service by building a tent big enough to shelter Americans with different views on this issue who accept that we can forge compromise which is not capitulation.

-- Mike Power

What were they thinking?

On April 16, the Nevada Assembly passed Bill AB186 - an act directing Nevada Electoral College Electors to cast their votes for the candidate who won the national popular vote for President in the federal election. 

If passed by the Nevada Senate, Nevada would join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact being pushed by National Popular Vote Inc., a California-based 501(c)(4) non-profit corporation.  To date, 15 States with 189 Electoral College votes have joined this compact.  They're virtually all red states (Hawaii, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, DC, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Colorado and New Mexico).  The compact is supposed to take effect when states with an aggregate of at least 270 Electoral College votes have approved the legislation.

The bill passed 23 to 17 with some senior Democrats voicing concerns.  I can see why!

In future federal elections, Nevada's presidential vote would be worthless, automatically tied to whichever candidate wins the big coastal states.  State Democrats on big on voter registration & turnout; this bill is a surefire way to depress voter participation.  Why bother voting when it won't have any influence on the state outcome and you can just as easily sit at home and watch TV?  This scheme will also lead to a loss of influence in Washington.  As a small state, the current Electoral College system gives us an over-sized advantage and voice in federal affairs.  Tie our vote to the national popular vote and we become real fly-over country.  Federal candidates will spend their time, money and efforts in the larger states, knowing that with a scheme like this in place, the herd will follow.  And they sure won't be inclined to listen to us in the off season.

What is most depressing about this is that Nevada politicians would sell our birthright in order to cozy up to national party bigwigs who are choked about losing to Donald Trump.  Sore losers try to change the rules instead of playing a better game.  If this legislation gets through the Senate we will become a political suburb of California. 

State legislators owe their first duty to their state and their constituents.  The Assembly's sold us out.

-- Mike Power

The border crisis and political football

By all objective measures, there is a serious problem developing at the US - Mexico border.  A recent article by the New York Times lays out the current scope of the problem.

Currently over 100,000 people a month are jumping the southern border.  Unlike earlier migrations which were often from Mexico and driven by economic forces, the current wave of migrants are fleeing Central America and they are trying to escape mindless violence.  Governments in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are unable to maintain law and order, allowing gangs to effectively take over portions of their countries.  Turf wars between rival gangs and vestigial government authorities are wreaking havoc.  Business Insider ranks El Salvador as the most dangerous country to visit in the world; Guatemala and Honduras rank 6th and 5th.  El Salvador and Honduras now have the highest and second highest murder rates of 230 countries monitored by the UN.  Is it any surprise we now have a crisis on the southern border?

The Time article states that over 1,000,000 migrants tried to jump the border in the year ending last September.  The numbers have swelled since then.  The U.S. immigration system is now swamped with a backlog of over 800,000 pending cases.  The average time to process each case: 700 days.  With no capacity to detain these migrants, they are being released - unceremoniously dumped at the nearest bus station or the edge of town by the authorities after being notified they will be contacted later about their immigration status. 

 Driven to fury by the problem and what is perceived as opportunistic obstruction by the Democratic House, the administration drove the past Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen to resign.  A California court recently poured fuel on the flames by denying the administration the right to force migrants to wait in Mexico pending resolution of their claims. As noted in The Week:

But things truly cross over into the absurd with the recent decision of a California judge to block the Trump administration's effort to get most migrants to remain in Mexico until their asylum hearing. The U.S. is confronting a flood of migrants fleeing oppression, violence, and poverty in one country (usually Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador), crossing a massive intermediary country (Mexico) that no one claims is persecuting them, and yet a judge insists that it's a violation of the law to deny them entry.  That ruling is either an outrageous warping of the law, in which case it needs to be quickly overturned by a higher court, or it is a demonstration that the law itself needs to be changed to allow U.S. policymakers to determine who and how many get admitted to the country, and when. In the current situation of years-long backlogs and restrictions on detaining kids, it amounts to a wide-open door to anyone who shows up on the border with a child claiming asylum. To the extent that current law requires this fiasco, it needs to be scrapped and replaced.

An exasperated President Trump responded by threatening to send detained migrants to self-declared "sanctuary cities" where local authorities have refused to cooperate with ICE.   Within the administration, there appears to be a ying-and-yang battle between Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, his unofficial immigration czar.   There is no clear administration policy or plan beyond focusing on a hard line in dealing with the issue.

Until recently the Democrats have been sitting on the sidelines, condemning the measures taken by the administration but failing to propose any concrete program of their own.  In fact, as Politico reports, the Democrats appear to be seriously torn on the issue and unable to offer anything more than rhetoric and bills addressing peripheral issues such as the Dreamers. 

This might be changing.  It is interesting to note that 2020 Democratic Presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders recently opined on the issue of border security:

"If you open the borders, my God, there's a lot of poverty in this world, and you're going to have people from all over the world. And I don't think that's something that we can do at this point. Can't do it. So that is not my position.”

Whether Democrats like it or not, border security and immigration are going to be key issues in the next election with some pundits suggesting President Trump will make it a centerpiece campaign issue. Stand by for a battle royale on this issue with each side talking past each other to their bases.  Both parties have a part of the solution but with no willingness to cooperate to solve the problem, things may get a lot worse - especially for hundreds of thousands of migrants flooding into this country and the communities who have to receive and care for them.

Is there a solution?  Common sense suggests there is but it certainly won't be an easy one. The Alliance Party has laid out a pathway to reforming our immigration system:

As a nation of immigrants, we support legal immigration tied to the country’s economic needs and capacity to assimilate newcomers. We also support reasonable pathways to citizenship for those law-abiding persons in the country without legal residency status, and we support strong borders. We also believe in America’s unstinting moral obligation to help genuine asylum seekers. We affirm that part of the definition of self-government is the right of order to define who may and who may not become part of the nation.

This will likely involve:

• Deploying additional financial resources, personnel, appropriate technology and infrastructure to secure the border.
• Addressing the asylum crisis by changing legislation and regulations, and providing necessary personnel and resources, to quickly screen asylum applicants and assess their claims.  The right of asylum must be balanced with the duty of our government to control our borders for the general welfare of the country.
• Recognizing that the current migrant crisis has roots far south of the border, America should, as a matter of high priority, work with Central American governments and community groups to re-establish peace, law and order in these troubled neighbors.  
• Enacting legislation and regulations to provide a pathway to regularized immigration status and citizenship to law-abiding migrants who are already in the country.
• Developing an immigration system that selectively admits immigrants who have the skills, aptitude and demonstrated motivation to quickly become self-supporting and contributing members of  American society.  There are excellent examples world-wide of immigration systems which have broad public support because they improve the general welfare of the receiving countries.     

It's time to stop playing political football with border and immigration issues.  We need to forge an approach that reasserts control over America's borders, treats all migrants decently and fairly, and welcomes immigrants who will make a contribution to our country.  

-- Mike Power

   

Republicans against a return to the status quo

An interesting statement was recently signed by an influential group of Republican conservatives, fighting for the soul of the Republican Party.  They don't want a return to pre-Trump politics. Some of what they're advocating sounds very much like tenets of the Alliance Party.

An internal civil war broke out in the Republican Party when President Donald Trump effectively took it over during the 2016 campaign.  Many of the old guard are biding their time in the expectation the political landscape will return to normal when his term is up.  Others believe that the 2016 election was evidence of a real change in the political landscape.  The authors of the manifesto think this is the case and are advocating some radically un-Republican, centrist ideas:

 ... Our policy must accommodate the messy demands of authentic human attachments: family, faith, and the political community.

...In recent years, some have argued for immigration by saying that working-class Americans are less hard-working, less fertile, in some sense less worthy than potential immigrants. We oppose attempts to displace American citizens. Advancing the common good requires standing with, rather than abandoning, our countrymen. They are our fellow citizens, not interchangeable economic units. And as Americans we owe each other a distinct allegiance and must put each other first.
...We seek to revive the virtues of liberality and neighborliness that many people describe as “liberalism.” 

...We want a country that works for workers.

...The Republican Party has for too long held investors and “job creators” above workers and citizens, dismissing vast swaths of Americans as takers unworthy of its time. Trump’s victory, driven in part by his appeal to working-class voters, shows the potential of a political movement that heeds the cries of the working class as much as the demands of capital. Americans take more pride in their identity as workers than about their identity as consumers. Economic and welfare policy should prioritize work over consumption.

...We believe home matters..

...We embrace the new nationalism insofar as it stands against the utopian ideal of a borderless world that, in practice, leads to universal tyranny.

Their social values platform is naturally conservative but in many respects their economic and political ideas are definitely centrist.   

It seems that some people now appreciate that the real message of 2016 was that a large proportion of both Democratic and Republican voters are fed up with politics as usual.  They felt they had no voice and the result was a startling upset.  It could well happen again - in a way that might surprise both mainline parties.

-- Mike Power

THE ALLIANCE PARTY 

THE VOICE FOR REAL CHANGE