Madden Mischief

Sometimes I get a kick out of our past secretary of labor under former president Bill Clinton, Robert Reich.  But most of the time these days I’d like to give him a swift kick in the you know what compartment.

Sometimes the nonsense he spreads in his column is more frightening than enlightening, not to mention potentially incendiary as he obviously has a following who believes wholeheartedly in what he or someone he admires has to say. 

Take the story by a German who goes by the name of Neal McQueen which Reich promulgated recently in his column comparing ICE to Hitler’s Brown Shirts.  Another McQueen, Steve, must be having fits on his motorcycle in heaven seeing his last name tied to chilling parallels between ICE and Hitler’s Brown Shirts.  It’s a sweeping denunciation of ICE you’d expect from The Third Reich itself now coming from what sounds like the Fourth. 

According to the story Reich ran in his column with the German “documentarian” McQueen’s permission, there were two documents 92 years apart, but each authorizing rapid expansion of forces empowered to use coercion against designated populations.

While the contexts were so different as one involved Nazis, the other ICE, the article contends that their mechanisms were similar, citing their respective hiring surges, compressed training and weakened oversight, each following a recognizable and today allegedly a familiar pattern. Only if ICE were in Nazi Germany at that time, they’d not be joining but arresting Hitler’s Brown Shirts.

Even though he’s an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator, it’s hard sometime to believe Robert Bernard Reich in 2008 was named by Time magazine as one of the Ten Most Effective Cabinet Members of the Century and that same year The Wall Street Journal placed him sixth on its list of Most Influential Business Thinkers.  

Reich worked in the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and served as secretary of labor in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. He was also a member of President Barack Obama‘s economic transition advisory board.

Reich’s rough background

Reich was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of a Jewish couple, who owned a women’s clothing store.  As a teenager, he was diagnosed with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, also known as Fairbank’s disease, a genetic disorder resulting in short stature and other symptoms. This condition reportedly made Reich a target for bullies, resulting in his seeking protection from older boys; one of them Michael Schwerner, who was one of the three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964 for registering African-American voters.

It’s said to have made an indelible impression on Reich who has been reported as citing this event as an inspiration to “fight the bullies, to protect the powerless, to make sure that the people without a voice have a voice.”  But could this inspiration have driven him off a cliff of reasonableness and objectivity?   There are signs it occasionally has and one of them is his comparing Trump’s ICE to Hitler’s Brown Shirts.  Ugh!

Hitler wanted to take over the world and kill all sects he hated especially Jews and wound up killing six million Jewish men, women and children in a horrific event known as the Holocaust.   

Trump just wants Greenland before the Russians and Chinese take it for themselves perhaps to use as a launching pad from which to fire rockets at you know who—little ole US!

ICE is only after people who are here in the U.S. illegally, especially criminals, bad actors and renegades whose dispositions are to rob, rape and harm anyone who crosses their crooked paths.

To compare ICE to Nazis is not only unfair but grossly inaccurate and just stirs up rioters and dissenters who then feel it’s right to commit acts of violence against those serving in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) missions to protect America from cross-border crime and illegal immigration threatening national security and public safety.

Are police, military and ICE always proper in carrying out their roles?  The answer: usually, but not always.  No matter how properly conducted, there are some mistakes in every operation.

Personally, I think that ICE agent made a horrible mistake in having fatally shot Renee Good that tumultuous day in Minnesota.  Probably he wishes now he hadn’t acted so spontaneously perhaps thinking that car was heading for him. I’ll pray for her and him, but was ICE wrong in being in Minnesota?  Wasn’t it there doing what it was created to do?  No!  It’s just that its agents need to be more careful and respectful in carrying out a mission.  And protestors, not to mention the mayor and governor there, also need to be careful and less defiant.  Instead of agitating, everyone needs to help calm the waters, not light more fires. 

Tom Madden doesn’t always agree with President Trump’s acts and occasional bravado, but he believes Trump is right to crack down on what was once so rampant–illegal immigration.  Madden endorses ridding our country of criminals and lunatics entering illegally.  Besides his MaddenMischief blogs, Madden writes books and articles you’ll see popping up in publications across the country he so deeply cares about, having once served in the military of the National Guard.  Today he’s CEO of TransMedia Group, an illustrious PR firm he started when he left NBC in NYC.