Nunes Pretends To Be 100% Portuguese But He Isn't... There's One Antecedent Named Robert Mueller

I once had a financial advisor, long ago, who told me he would vote for Cuomo to be president because he would be the first Italian-American president. He had no idea what Cuomo was about politically, just that he was of Italian heritage, like the financial advisor. It made me question his judgment and wonder if he was the right person for me to be working with. I remember once, as a small child, my grandmother making it clear to me that her loyalty to Israel was as strong as her loyalty to the U.S. I was horrified and it stuck with me-- viscerally-- for 6 decades.

More recently, I was disgusted with a primitive American politician-- who used to falsely claim he was Swedish-- bragging on TV how his German blood was "great stuff."



On Saturday, Megan Smolenyak, one of America's top genealogists took a look at Devin Nunes' family tree and gasped at Nunes' divided loyalties between Portugal and the U.S., asking Why Hasn’t Devin Nunes Assimilated Yet? I gather that would got her interested in Nunes was Jason Zengerle’s New York Times Magazine feature, How Devin Nunes Turned the House Intelligence Committee Inside Out, which didn't delve too much into genealogy, just Nunes' shady politics. But... "a healthy chunk of Zengerle’s exploration is devoted to the California congressman’s ties to Portugal and his curious efforts to establish American intelligence operations at Lajes Field on the Azorean island of Terceira, despite the notion being deemed impractical by many in the upper echelons of the U.S. government. Zengerle cites the frustration of those caught in the middle of Nunes’s agenda, like Jim Townsend, who served under President Obama as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Europe and NATO:

“Nunes created so much rancor over the issue that some American officials came to question his motives, and even his patriotism. “I was having a hard-enough time being beaten up by the Azoreans and the Portuguese, but it was even harder seeing a congressman being in cahoots with them,” Townsend says. “It was like, ‘Whose team are you on?’ ” A former Pentagon official suspects that during the Lajes negotiations, Nunes was making the Portuguese privy to things they should not have known. “We would have a conversation about some proprietary matters with Nunes,” this official says, “and then the next day, somehow, Portugal knew some of that.” It’s no secret that Nunes is of Portuguese --  more specifically, Azorean --  descent, so why should this grab my attention--  aside from the fact that it would be peculiar behavior for any congressional representative and that the President of Portugal namechecked Nunes in a chat with Trump even before his inauguration?

Well, because his ties to Portugal are not as direct as many think.

Perhaps due to his communications director incorrectly claiming that all four of Nunes’s grandparents were Portuguese immigrants, many accept this as fact so you’ll find this tidbit sprinkled in many pieces about Nunes. But it’s not true. Let’s start with some basics that are:

• One of his grandparents has no Portuguese ancestry. This portion of his family tree blew into California as a result of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s, and meanders back in time through Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, Virginia, etc.

• The remaining 75 percent of his heritage is indeed Azorean, but none of his grandparents were immigrants.

So if Nunes’s grandparents weren’t the immigrants, who were? It turns out it was a mix of his great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents.

For those keeping score, that’s a total of nine immigrant ancestors, but we should probably add a tenth with an asterisk. One of his great-grandmothers, Della Nevis, was American-born, but lost her citizenship when she married a foreigner thanks to the Expatriation Act of 1907 (the same happened to Representative Bob Goodlatte’s (R-Va.) grandmother). The moment Nevis was wed, she became a Portuguese citizen, even though she was living in California.

People have different ways of defining immigrant generations, so depending on your interpretation, Nunes is a combination of either third/fourth generation or fourth/fifth generation American. Now take a look at that last column in the table above. His Azorean ancestors all arrived in the States between 1870 and 1911--  roughly 100–150 years ago--  so not exactly yesterday.

In fact, the most recent arrivals in Nunes’s family were both of his great-grandfathers who arrived in Boston on April 4, 1911. Mind you, they were just buddies from Fajã dos Vimes at this point. It would be another 35 years before their future children would marry, making them in-laws, but they brought up the rear in terms of Nunes’s immigrant ancestors.

I get it. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit the Azores and am well acquainted with the nostalgic attachment many of us have to the countries of our families’ origins. My own family is similar to Nunes’s in the sense that most of my immigrant ancestors arrived between 1880 and 1913, with one pocket landing here earlier--  like his Dust Bowl branch--  and as a result, I have a soft spot for Ireland and Slovakia.

But there’s a big difference between having a fondness for an ancestral country and Nunes’s intense loyalty to Portugal that prompts him to repeatedly attempt to use his political clout for Portuguese benefit over strenuous and practical objections from a number of American military, congressional, and other governmental experts. If everyone in your family has been here for at least 107 years, if every branch of your entire family tree has been planted in America for a minimum of three generations, shouldn’t your allegiance be first and foremost to the United States?

Every time I write an immigration-related article, I get responses from pro-border wall people--  yes, Nunes supports the wall) who invariably make the same three claims: My ancestors came here legally, they learned English, and they assimilated. Those familiar with the history of immigration in America know that it was pretty darn hard to come here illegally before the 1920s, so please read this if you’re new to the topic, but let’s consider the latter two claims with regard to Nunes’s family.

He comes from an area of California that has long been home to many dairy farmers of Azorean descent. Like so many immigrant communities, they stayed tight-knit and provided support for one another. The same happened in my own family, with the Irish who came to build railroads and the Slavs who came to work in the coal mines. What differentiates Nunes’s community is that it still exists--  even generations after arrival.

One factor is the intensity of chain migration/family reunification. In Nunes’s case, the chart showing his nine immigrant ancestors is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. These nine include only direct line ancestors of Devin Nunes--  in other words, it doesn’t include collateral relatives who also came over, such as siblings, cousins, aunts or uncles. But none of these nine came here in a vacuum. Those two great-grandfathers who came together in 1911? Both of them were going to meet their respective brothers who were already in California.

Here’s another example showing Joaquin A. Silveira, who had been in America for some time, returning from a trip to the Azores with his father, mother, brother, sister, and his brother’s wife. By the standards of the proposed Securing America’s Future Act of 2018 (H.R.4760), none of these relatives would be eligible to join Joaquin in the United States. That would be unfortunate for Nunes, as Joaquin’s sister, Maria Inez Silveira, would become his great-grandmother.

It’s easy to understand why these families would stick closely together. They were regarded as outsiders, making existing connections that much more important. The concentration of Portuguese immigrants into the Tulare vicinity was so pronounced that a local accounting of deaths in 1920 specifies those of “American babies” and “Portuguese babies,” but no other ethnicities, even though an examination of the paper trail shows that there were a variety of immigrants in the area ranging from Japanese to Armenian.

One of Nunes’s grandfathers was born in Tulare in 1919 to Maria, the sister who had arrived with her whole family in 1908. These tight bonds were surely comforting, but likely made it harder for immigrants to assimilate. Here’s Maria again in 1930–22 years after arriving in America--  still unable to speak English.

Maria’s brother who brought her over left the fold and became the president of a bank in Oakland, but she stayed safely ensconced in her community, and so continued to speak Portuguese. And that community continued to grow in place over the generations , partly because Nunes hails from an impressively long-lived people with large extended and interlacing families. Born when his parents were only 16 and 20 years old, the abundance of octogenarians and nonagenarians among Nunes’s kinfolk meant that he had an astonishing five living great-grandparents to welcome him into the world, and just missed a sixth by one week. The cousin density in his district may well parallel that of Amish, Icelandic, Mormon, and other closely knit populations.

It also seems that becoming an American citizen was not a priority for Nunes’s family. Some of the nine immigrant relatives listed in the initial chart never went through the naturalization process, but here’s a summary of those who did. Collectively, they took an average of 30.8 years from their date of arrival to do so.

Even Della who surrendered her American nationality upon marrying took 18 years to address the situation. Her husband had skipped the chance for expedited citizenship--  which would have restored his wife’s citizenship as well--  by serving in World War I, but he wasn’t alone. All three of Nunes’s Azorean immigrant great-grandfathers had this opportunity, but passed on it. Instead, everyone waited a couple of additional decades until the approach of the next world war to take steps in this direction.

Divided Loyalties

Perhaps the self-contained nature of the community in which Nunes was raised helps explain why he displays such strong allegiance to the country that three-quarters of his ancestors arrived from 100–150 years ago, even if it doesn’t entirely excuse it. That Nunes is willing to put the priorities of any other country over those of the United States is worrisome, though it isn’t his divided loyalty with Portugal, specifically, that most alarms patriotic Americans. For those troubled by his baffling behavior during the present administration, I leave you with a promising omen I stumbled across in my research. Lurking among the non-Azorean branches of his family tree is a relative with an unexpected and reassuring name: Robert Mueller.

As we mentioned yesterday, Ivanka Trump is kicking off her plans to appeal to fat cat GOP donors with a stop in Fresno, a city split between 3 congressional districts, Nunes', Costa's and Valadao's. The median income of Costa's district is $36,190 and 1.4% of people there make over $200,000 annually. In Valadao's district the median income is $36,777 and 1.6% make over $200,000. But in Nunes' district there's a big spike. The media income is $50,389 and 4.1% of the people make over $200,000. That's enough for some local fundraising-- and it's why Ivanka and McCarthy are holding a fundraiser there. But you know who's not raising much money in Fresno or anywhere else in CA-22? According to McClatchy's Emily Cadei and Kate Irby, that would be Devin Nunes, who is actually advertising in the DC area!

He brings in plenty of dough from DC lobbyists and Trumpists in DC... but not much from his own district. "Through the end of March," they wrote," for the Fresno Bee, "the Fresno-area Republican has raised far more from D.C. and its neighboring states than he has from his own district, an analysis of campaign finance data finds."

Of the more than $1 million Nunes raised from individual donors, roughly $19,000, or 2 percent, came from people in his district, which includes chunks of Fresno and Tulare Counties. That's the smallest percentage of any the eight California Republicans in Congress who Democrats are targeting for defeat this fall. 
A third of Nunes' individual donations came from out-of-state, including more than $100,000 from Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

In addition, Nunes has raised more than $1 million from corporate PACs and other political committees, which are primarily based in Washington and its suburbs.

Nunes has come under fire back home from political opponents, Democratic ad campaigns and local officials for spending too much of his time attacking the special counsel investigation into President Donald Trump's presidential campaign's ties with Russia, and too little working on district priorities.

He's been repeatedly criticized for not holding town halls. He did hold water forums open to the public in 2016, according to public records, but questions were screened by staff. Those are the only recent public forums by Nunes in his district on record, though constituents have held town halls that he's refused to participate in.

He hasn't sponsored legislation-- besides a resolution to fix a language technicality in January-- submitted amendments or put out a press release in 2018. Of five posts to his blog in 2018, two are focused on what he deems liberal "fake news."

Nunes' escalating confrontation with the Justice Department has made him a fixture on cable news. Most recently, Nunes was in the middle of a controversy over a classified FBI briefing on Capitol Hill to discuss the role of an informant that Trump has accused of spying on his campaign.

The California Republican has been using those headlines in his fundraising appeals to D.C.-area donors-- the Huffington Post reported earlier this month that one Virginia resident received a fundraising appeal from Nunes boasting of his role in exposing " the real collusion between the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Clinton campaign.”


It also highlighted how Trump called the Republican congressman a "Great American Hero" in a February Tweet. Trump repeated his praise of Nunes on Monday, calling Nunes "a very courageous man," during an event at the CIA.

...A Democratic ad campaign called Fight Back California is pledging to spend $50,000 to $100,000 trying to hammer Nunes’ for his absence. The first shot by the campaign included three billboards that have been posted along a main highway in the district.


Together, the billboards ask: "Why is Devin Nunes hot on Russia while farmers get burned on a trade war with China? Congressman Nunes, how could you forget us?"

France's Socialists, Poised To Win The Presidential Election, Have An Alternative To Austerity

Unpopular European Austerity reactionaries

Saturday hundreds of thousands of Portuguese workers took to the streets of Lisbon to protest international capital's demand for a European Austerity Agenda, more and more frequently being seen as a German takeover. To meet German bailout terms, the conservative government there is raising taxes of workers and severely-- like in Mitt Romney-- cutting social programs.

Many were brandishing banners such as "The struggle continues" and "No to exploitation, no to inequality, no to impoverishment."

The CGTP union which called the march estimated 300,000 people took part, while police would not give any figures, in line with their usual practice.

"We are convinced that it is one of the biggest demonstrations in the last 30 years," said Armenio Carlos, general secretary of the CGTP, in a speech at the end of the protest in the landmark Praca do Comercio (Commerce Square).

He launched sharp attacks against the bailout conditions, calling them "a programme of aggression against workers and against the national interest."

"Austerity did not create wealth. The country needs the rope around its neck to be removed so that it can breathe, live and work," the unionist said, calling for a revision to the minimum wage of 485 euros gross.

"Net salary is at 432 euros, while the poverty line is at 434 euros, and that concerns currently ... 400,000 workers" in Portugal, he said.

He vowed that protests will continue in coming weeks, and that fresh demonstrations will be held across the country on February 29.

In exchange for a loan of 78 billion euros ($103 billion) from the EU and the IMF last May, Portugal agreed to sell public companies as well as implement labour reforms such as introducing shorter holidays.

However, many complain their lives have got worse.

"My purchasing power has fallen, young people are unemployed, companies are closing one after another. I don't see a way out," said a Lisbon retiree.

The situation is worse in Greece, where the country's social cohesion is being threatened as the elites agree to a German takeover detested by the Greek people. There, the just agreed upon Austerity agenda Germany dictated dramatically slashes wages, pensions and jobs in return for a bailout of the banksters and social parasites who have run up Greece's debts. Lucas Papademos, the puppet prime minister installed by Germany, threatened that unless his austerity program was accepted, a disorderly default is inevitable and it would "set the country on a disastrous adventure... It would create conditions of uncontrolled economic chaos and social explosion. The country would be drawn into a vortex of recession, instability, unemployment and protracted misery and this would sooner or later lead the country out of the euro." I wonder if the German's are handing out the same script to their puppet regimes in Italy and Spain as well. Yesterday, Athens on fire, the public order minister resigned-- and the German collaborators passed another Austerity budget, sparking full on rioting. (Photo of the coffee at Starbucks getting extra roasted.)

The government saw 43 deputies rebel in what may be an indication of the difficulties in ensuring politicians stick to the programme, which include a 22 percent cut in the minimum wage – a package critics say condemns the economy to an ever-deeper downward spiral.

Police said 150 shops were looted in the capital and 48 buildings set ablaze. Some 100 people – including 68 police – were wounded and 130 detained, a police official said on Monday.

There was also violence in cities across the country, including Thessaloniki and the islands of Corfu and Crete.

Athenians were shocked at the burnt buildings that included the neoclassical home to the Attikon cinema dating from 1870... Altogether 199 of the 300 lawmakers backed the controversial bill. The 43 who rebelled were immediately expelled by their parties, Pasok and New Democracy.

The French people, on the other hand, are signaling they're not ready to succumb without a fight and seem eager to kick out Austerity cheerleader Nicolas Sarkozy and replace him with Socialist François Hollande.

Giving an impassioned and polished attack on the speculation and profiteering that led to the economic crisis that has engulfed Europe, Hollande told the 20,000-strong crowd: "My enemy is the world of finance." Belatedly, French company directors, investment bankers and market movers are waking up to the growing popularity of a presidential candidate who promises to raise taxes on rich individuals and big business in order to boost growth.

With the first round of the French elections barely two months away, the polls suggest that Hollande is choosing the right adversaries. On the day he visited Dijon one survey suggested he would win a straight contest with President Nicolas Sarkozy, gaining as much as 60% of the vote.

For a politician habitually described as slightly bland, the transformation into a fêted "tribune of the people" must come as something of a shock. Up until this election campaign Hollande, 57, was known for his love of a joke, his portly mastery of the backroom politics of the Socialist party (PS), and his failed marriage to the former siren of French socialism, Ségolène Royale, who lost the presidential election of 2007.

...Hollande unveiled a 60-point programme for government. In recognition of the parlous state of French finances, there is a commitment to reduce the budget deficit to 3% (from well above 5%) by 2013. The list of austerity measures includes a freeze on public sector recruitment. But the route to sound accounts is principally by way of tax rises rather than cuts, and most of them are directed at the upper tiers of French society.

Pledges include raising the top rate of income tax to 45%, capping tax breaks for wealthy individuals at €10,000 (£8,375) and significantly hiking capital gains tax. The biggest companies in France will also be taxed at a higher rate, while smaller companies will pay less.

"Those who have benefited from crazy pay levels will have to make an effort," said Hollande at the document's launch. The revenue generated, says the PS, will be used to promote growth as well as cut the deficit. Hollande promises state-funded apprenticeships for the young, thousands of new teachers, a new public investment bank and new research and innovation programmes. Without growth, his aides insist, deficits will never be brought under control, as governments across Europe are discovering to their dismay.

Is social democracy in one country possible? Since the global banking crisis struck in 2008, centre-left governments in Britain, Spain and Greece have paid the price. The large majority of the 27 governments of the EU are now of the right and all have focused their energies on cutting spending and shrinking the state. Austerity has become the watchword of a continent. But not for the first time, the French may be about to go against the grain.

The language inside the modest Hollande campaign headquarters, five minutes' walk from the Eiffel Tower, has not been heard in a British election campaign for 30 years or more. Benoît Hamon, the PS spokesman, believes that Europe's social democratic parties "gave up too early" on the idea that governments should play a central role in regulating markets, finding people jobs and driving economic growth. "For years there has been this anomaly that in the globalised market it is the markets that govern in place of elected governments. Basta! Enough!

"We're being up front, saying: 'If you're a rich individual or a rich company, yes, you're going to pay more.' We're saying the same to the banks and we're telling them they won't pass the charges on to their clients."

Karine Berger, one of Hollande's most senior economic advisers and a parliamentary candidate for a rural seat in the Alps, rejects the idea that the wealth of the very top earners in France corresponds to benefits they bring to the wider society. "We believe that there are some people who play a more important role than others," she says, "But they are not the people earning stratospheric wages. They are the engineers, the scientists, the people building companies, not necessarily the top executives or the big traders."

What if the executives and traders threaten to up sticks and go elsewhere? Her reply is unequivocal.

"Look, we want to say to France: 'We want everyone on board, especially those people inventing the future.' And our government will be committed to sound finance and getting public debt under control. We are very serious about that. But for those people holding society to ransom, let them leave." She doesn't think they will... Berger admits that some of the big beasts of French business are beginning to warn that they could "make life difficult" for a Hollande presidency.

The French right is panic stricken and are beating up on Sarkozy to start a counterattack. Since he can't very well run on Austerity, which is hated all through the country, his plan is to demonize immigrants and welfare recipients and see if he can open up some wedges in French society. He has a 32% approval rating, something like Mitt Romney's. Angela Merkel has gone on French TV to demand Sarkozy get a second term, which isn't going over as well as the Sarkozy reelection team had hoped.

Portugal Pointing The Way Towards Drug Decriminalization For The U.S.?

The new issue of Time makes a good case for the decriminalization of drugs. After the Carnation Revolution (1974) finally brought about the fall of the right-wing dictatorship (Estado Novo) of António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal went from being a backward fascist hellhole to a modern and prosperous society. So modern in fact, that in 2001 Portugal "became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine."

Drug users get an offer of therapy instead of prison. It's voluntary for individuals and, for the state, therapy is far less expensive than incarceration.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

...[T]here is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal's, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.

And, as we've mentioned before, Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) have introduced marijuana decriminalization laws in the past, the latest in 2008-- with Jim McDermott (D-WA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Pete Stark (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), William Clay (D-MO) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), as co-sponsors. Here's Glenn on Reason.TV:



Here's a clip from the actual CATO conference, a much more extensive and thorough look at the problem-- and the solution:

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal (Cato Institute: Policy Forum)