red tie . pencils

 

american skin

penny for our thoughts

I don’t anticipate missing pennies the tiniest bit. Canada, for instance, has done just fine without. 

But Lincoln’s image on a coin? Yeh, I’ll miss that.

If we’re thinking about a new public coin, something with Lincoln on it strikes me as much better than the other idea I've heard recently ... if only because we know how Lincoln's story ends. 

this machine fights fascism, too

h/t Woody Guthrie 

 

this machine fights fascism

h/t Woody Guthrie

 

i'm the last to get this, right?

 

when America was great . garbage

when America was great . go fund yourself

red tie . oath

 

ain't done yet

I can't shake a couple of things that caught my eye this week.

I. There's this card floating around social media. 

It reminds me of the sort of message that used to show up on the office fax machine this one place I worked — sent from person to person across a not-too-shadowy network (because most folks didn't bother to scrub their own fax numbers before sending the message along).

Same thing happened in the early days of email ... fwd, fwd, fwd, fwd....

And then, social media.

This new one (new to me, anyway) starts with the words: "People don't realize what happens when the illegal population is gone."

The body of the card is a listicle about what happens "when the illegal population is gone" so *people* will stop not realizing "what happens when the illegal population is gone." I guess.

To be honest, I didn't think it passed the smell test. 

So I, you know, did my own research. 

Here's how that went, beginning with the claim (12 of them), followed by the fact check, and ending with a list of sources that explain *why* it turns out I was mostly right ... that it *doesn't* pass the smell test. 

1. Suddenly, Americans start getting raises. 

Fact check: False. Unauthorized workers aren't why many citizens aren't paid livable wages. [Remember: Sources at the end]

2. ER overcrowding ends.

Fact check: False. Unauthorized residents aren't the cause of crowded hospitals emergency departments.

3. Schools return to normal class sizes. 

Fact check: Here's one that's partly right, even though it's mostly wrong. 

In some school districts, in some schools, in some classes, the challenge of too few classrooms and too few teachers is further aggravated by the presence of children who live in households with more than the average number of children those schools have budgeted to teach; and some of those households are headed by unauthorized residents. If you live in one of those school districts, you may feel temporary discomfort. But, in general, the children of unauthorized residents are not the cause of overcrowded classrooms. The record of *that* problem is well-documented, and if you're a boomer, you were there at the dawn of that history — you were just too young to know it. 

4. Insurance bills drop annually.

Fact check: No, it does not. Whatever kind of insurance the card is talking about, this is nonsense.

5. Grocery prices level out because the welfare load isn't crushing the system anymore. 

Fact check: This is counterfactual.

6. DMV lines move; traffic lightens; neighborhoods calm down. 

Fact check: No, no, and no.

7. Crime stats shift in the right direction for the first time in decades.

Fact check: Nothing in the fact-based world supports this.

8. Organ transplant lists move faster.

Fact check: What . are . you . talking . about?

9. Teenagers get the jobs they used to get before cheap illegal labor replaced them.

Fact check: No. If you think teenagers (*regular* ones? I'm assuming?) are being underbid for summer and after-school jobs by unauthorized workers, I think you're paying attention to the wrong things (and, probably, the wrong people). 

10. Trade programs fill with American kids who can actually earn a living again.

Fact check: Untethered from the real world.

11. People start having families (again: *real* people?) because the cost of living isn't strangling them.

Fact check: Having come this far, I guess I see why you might feel that this is true; but to the extent that *people* are being strangled by the cost of living, unauthorized residents are not the cause. Nor are they the cause of low fertility among U.S.-born citizens.

12. You remove the illegal burden, and the country snaps back into shape almost overnight.

Fact check: No. That's magical thinking.

II. The other thing that caught my attention caught my attention because of the first thing.

It occurred to me that I'd read Abraham Lincoln's 1863 proclamation naming a General Day of Thanksgiving for the nation; but I'd never read Lincoln's 1864 proclamation. He didn't get to make another.

In the preamble to his 1864 proclamation, Lincoln declared: 

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions [emphasis mine]

Lincoln acknowledged that there were enemies abroad and enemies who are of our own house.

Same. With tears.

Lincoln celebrated the expansion of free people in the United States — by emancipation from enslavement and by immigration; and he connects the presence of those people with increasing prosperity for all.

Same. Aspirationally.

Including more people in what my friend, Rabbi Daniel Bogard, calls The Project of Us *is* the American way ... and we ain't done yet.

Sources

• https://cmsny.org/importance-of-immigrant-labor-to-us-economy/

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537119300831

• https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/7/28/mass-deportation-of-unauthorized-immigrants-fiscal-and-economic-effects

• https://econofact.org/how-tighter-curbs-on-immigration-impact-the-u-s-economy

• https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/

• https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116727/documents/HHRG-118-JU01-20240111-SD013.pdf 

• https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/why-we-should-care-undocumented/200804

• https://forumtogether.org/article/fact-sheet-undocumented-immigrants-and-federal-health-care-benefits/

• https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/7761.pdf

• https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/a-more-complete-picture-of-immigrations-impact-on-u-s-public-schools/2024/06

• https://www.brookings.edu/articles/are-immigrant-students-disproportionately-consuming-educational-resources/

• https://forumtogether.org/article/undocumented-immigrants-are-integral-to-our-nation/

• https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/about-immigration/undocumented-immigrants/

• https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/mobilizing-against-inequality/post/five-ways-undocumented-immigrants-are-powering-american-economy

• https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116727/documents/HHRG-118-JU01-20240111-SD011.pdf

• https://www.epi.org/publication/unauthorized-immigrants/

• https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/key-facts-on-health-care-use-and-costs-among-immigrants/

• https://emed.smhs.gwu.edu/news/legislating-fear-how-immigration-status-mandates-threaten-public-health

• https://news.mit.edu/2023/keeping-people-out-emergency-room-primary-care-0919

• https://brandynchurchill.com/wp-content/uploads/Churchill_et_al-2021-CEP.pdf

• https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/immigrants-cut-victimization-rates-boost-crime-reporting

• https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-118-thanksgiving-day-1864

calendar alert

It strikes me as … odd, I suppose … that Black Friday showed up as an automated calendar alert on my desktop today….

I don’t recall signing up for any of this.

Lincoln's Last Thanksgiving

Abraham Lincoln’s final proclamation of a national Day of Thanksgiving

October 20, 1864

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 20th day of October, A.D. 1864, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

Secretary of State.

Source

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-118-thanksgiving-day-1864