Putting shame where it belongs

After ordering AG Jeff Sessions to tear children from their parents, President Trump claimed the Democrats are making him do it.

On Friday morning, President Trump doubled-down on his claim, saying, “Democrats forced that law on the nation.”

Unfortunately, it isn’t true. You’re pushed into lying when you’re driven by ideology and when facts and reason don’t support you.

Facts and reason certainly don’t support the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies. 

And its greatest victims are the traumatized children imprisoned in facilities run by defense contractors suddenly enjoying a booming business.

This week, lawmakers and members of the media toured facilities where children are warehoused, crying inconsolably, not knowing where their parents are or if they would ever see them again.

In Seattle, at a facilty where kids as young as 12 months old are kept separate from their parents, mothers wailed helplessly as their children screamed in an adjacent room. None of them were permitted to say goodbye or explain what was happening to them.

We are suffering from a dearth of moral leadership with the grit to stand up for children. Earlier this week, Harrisburg was busy bracing for a bombshell grand jury report on six of the commonwealth’s eight Catholic dioceses and their handling of the raping of children.

“As public officials,” PA State Rep Tom Murt said, “if we don’t take action, then shame belongs to us — for knowing what the right thing is and not doing it.”

Republican Representatives Murt and Bernie O’Neill were the only two Southeast House members of their party courageous enough to stand with victims at a rally in the capitol, answering Rep. Mark Rozzi’s call to abolish the statute of limitations in sex abuse cases that have until now protected the church.

As the law exists now, the authorities were barred from filing criminal charges once the victims who were raped as children turned 50 and prevented those victims from suing their assailants once they turned 30. Rep. Rozzi is urging a vote on his bill that would rectify these longstanding injustices.

Two years ago, a similar effort was killed in the PA Senate under intense pressure from the insurance lobby looking to protect their bottom line and their contracts with the dioceses. But in the #metoo era, business as usual, that is, turning a blind eye to sexual assault and failing to hold those responsible to account, is mercifully no longer acceptable. 

The same tenor of callous disinterest of victimized children can be found in the perpetual thievery of opportunities from PA students. The egregious under- and inequitable funding of PA schools has reached fever pitch in recent years as House and Senate leadership shameless and inherently dishonest claim that children don’t have a constitutional right to adequate education.

The rationale behind such an abhorrent position is Grover Norquist’s reckless anti-tax pledge, the perverse Shibboleth for Republican candidates that undermines the duties of legislators.

If it isn’t plain to see who benefits from the dogged defense of these ideologies, we can surely see that it’s children who are paying the price for them. And they’ll continue to pay for them until legislators are dissuaded from placing ideology above children.