With the ongoing debate about our immigration policy and lack of enforcement of current immigration laws, one thing has been made painfully clear in all the rhetoric and hub-bub. It is all the Mexicans fault and if they would just go back to Mexico and quit jumping the border America would be alright. This is the current solution to the immigration problem being bandied about by the Republicans. Basically we need to build a giant wall like in Israel and shoot anybody that tries to cross it. It’s amazing but since 9/11 illegal immigrants have now all been branded with the terrorists iron, so now not only are they taking the jobs of hard working Americans they are also planning some subversive activities.
Before we begin to start lynching illegal migrant workers I think it would be a good idea to make sure they are guilty first. My concern is that immigration is a smoke screen being used by the Republicans to divert attention away from the real issues that are confronting our country. It is also a cloak for the more racist elements of our society that see the “darkening” of America and want to stop it. The Republicans ever ready to exploit a racially charged issue have jumped on the anti-immigrant bandwagon as they did with the civil rights movement. Today instead of supporting “states rights”, they are supporting “native-born” rights. As if any of them were truly native born, they only seem to support native born up until about the 1600’s.
We have been wrestling with immigration for years and yet now it has been elevated to a hot button topic. Do we need to fix and amend our immigration policies? Of course we do, but I don’t think it is wise to do so in such a charged atmosphere. It is precisely this type of charged atmosphere that led to the invasion of Iraq and we all know how well that strategy is working out. Immigration in America is a complex issue and despite the sound bite rhetoric being tossed around, it is a topic that will require input and analysis from a lot of different areas of expertise. There is no easy answer and locking down the borders is definitely not it, this will only cause hardship for all concerned. Instead of having a debate of how things “should be”, we need to understand the situation as “it is” and begin to initiate changes that our both just and humane.
What we are hearing from the Republican candidates is more pandering to the base about immigration. They have devised biometric ID cards for all immigrants and aliens, build a giant wall, and add 23,000 more border patrol agents. While these suggestions will fire up the Party base it adds nothing to the real conversation and solutions to our immigration policies. What we need is an honest national debate on what is possible and prudent versus what will stoke the fires of prejudice.
The Democrats have been silent on the issue for fear of alienating any crossover or independent minded voters. They have offered plenty of generalities but very little in the way of definitive answers. One thing they all seem to agree on is an improved process for legal immigration. What that process will look like no one is saying.
Immigration and border security are important issues in the minds of many Americans, but we must not allow it to be used to avert our attention from the bleeding of our national treasure for an endless war, the lack of health insurance for too many Americans, the loss of democracy and personal freedoms and the siphoning off of wealth for the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. If we don’t deal with these issues it won’t matter how many immigrants come into the country, because there won’t be a country to defend. The defenders of the status quo will always create these “hot button” issues to distract the American public from the issues that will make a real difference in our lives. Instead of focusing on these other issues we get abortion, gay marriage, and immigration, so while our money and country is being stolen from the inside we are worried about these phantom menaces from the outside. In the centuries since our country has been founded we have had few direct assaults from the outside and each time they have been responded to, so for us to conclude that foreigners are going to bring down America is paranoia and not supported by the facts.
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings but the Mexicans are not responsible for all the things that are wrong in America, for many years they have provided a positive contribution to our nation. For us to deny that contribution or to minimize it would be wrong and unfair to all those immigrants who have come here and worked hard to help build and maintain America. It is always easy to blame some group or another for the problems besetting our country, from the beginning there have always been some group to blame. Whether that group is the Irish, the Germans, the Polish, the Chinese, the Italians, or the Blacks the wealthy class has always relied on the natural prejudice and fears of some to sidetrack scrutiny rightly intended for them and their shell game policies.
The immigration controversy revolves around questions of national identity, security in a post-Sept.-11 world and the workings of a $12 trillion economy. Illegal immigrants are essential workers on American farms, in hotels and restaurants and on construction sites. An estimated 7.2 million illegals provide much of the unskilled muscle that the USA's Information Age economy requires: 36% of insulation workers, 29% of farm hands and 27% of butchers.
That's nothing new. Historically, the contributions of the Irish, Germans, Italians, Mexicans and other groups to the American edifice are essential elements of the national belief system. Immigrants labored, often under harsh conditions, in New England paper mills, Midwestern steel plants and along the transcontinental railroads.[1]
Yeah, what the hell who needs them, we’ll let Lou Dobbs and all those other Republicans pick next year’s fruit harvest.
[1] http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2006-04-10-immigrants-economic-impact_x.htm
Friday, November 23, 2007
It’s All the Mexicans Fault
Monday, November 19, 2007
Wal-Mart – Pariah to Pleasantville
This is for all of those people who constantly write to me or write comments to my essays that no one can make a difference. Who would have thought that the biggest corporate pariah could be moved? I know I didn’t, even those who were on the front lines of this thing had given up. It seems that Wal-Mart is moving away from its previous stance concerning health insurance for its employees, to a more nuanced approach. Wal-Mart was notorious among major employers for its lack of a comprehensive health insurance plan to cover its employees at a price they could afford. It looked like Wal-Mart could deliver the lowest prices on everything except health insurance premiums for its employees.
The company, according to data available for the first time, is offering better coverage to a greater number of workers. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, provides insurance to 100,000 more workers than it did just three years ago — and it is now easier for many to sign up for health care at Wal-Mart than at its rival, Target, whose reputation glows in comparison.
Wal-Mart has hardly become a standard-bearer for corporate America: it still insures fewer than half its 1.4 million employees in the United States.[1]
Because of the pressure and the damage to its corporate brand especially among state legislatures, many of whom were preparing or had passed legislation to force Wal-Mart to upgrade its insurance plans, Wal-Mart has found it now to be in its best corporate interest to begin the process of implementing a more affordable and less onerous plan.
What would cause a behemoth like Wal-Mart to retreat from its long standing policies? It was the constant pressure of those thought insignificant by the pundits, the media, and by the politicians. The thing about the power of the people is that it is not the fastest way to do things, nor is it the easiest. The first thing that happens is that you will be ignored and marginalized by the corporate media and the special interest politicians. The word must never get out that people power changes anything or that it works. They must continue the great myth that individuals cannot make changes, but time and again throughout history that has been proven to be false. People can make a difference, if they are willing to not give up in the face of innumerable odds.
The change at Wal-Mart will never be presented for what it truly represents. What it represents is a lesson to all of us who want to change this country. The lesson is, it won’t happen overnight and it won’t be easy. It means that we have to continue the pressure year end and year out, not succumbing to the temptation to give in. The belief that no one cares and we can’t change anything. It has taken almost a decade to change the corporate mentality at Wal-Mart, however if more people had taken up the mantle it would probably have succeeded sooner.
We must not be fooled into thinking that Wal-Mart developed some compassion and decided to implement these changes for the sake of its employees. Remember these were the same people who were willing to allow their employees to swell the state rolls of Medicaid just so they wouldn’t have to provide them insurance. No, this change was due to the people who continued to highlight the injustice of a company making 11 billion dollars annually in profits and yet cannot afford to provide affordable health insurance to its employees.
The company’s turnabout demonstrates the power of public pressure to change even the biggest corporations like Wal-Mart, which has based its business strategy on low costs at all costs.
What Wal-Mart discovered is that the chorus of critics it had long ignored or blithely rebutted had a point. “We were spending a lot of energy, and we weren’t making any headway,” said H. Lee Scott Jr., the company’s chief executive, who once traveled the country defending the retailer’s practices. “Retrospectively now I say, yes, that plan needed to be improved.”[2]
Make no mistake about it; this is a victory as much as the Orange Revolution was a victory for the Ukraine. We now have to build on this victory and continue to highlight and mobilize public opinion to address the many other issues that confront this nation. The injustice of higher corporate profits and lower wages, the injustice of a criminal justice system that has more people locked up than other nation in the world, and the injustice of a nation where we are still not judged based on character. The fight is long and hard, but if we endure we can move mountains…
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/business/13walmart.html?pagewanted=1&hp&adxnnlx=1194984041-%20p4bFvh82AsCi6n7vWCHYg
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/business/13walmart.html?hp
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Big Tobacco vs. Kids
Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, said, “Today’s debate comes down to this: Do you favor big tobacco or children?”[1]
This quote was in reference to the Children’s Health Care Bill recently passed by the House. This is what I don’t like about politicians, Republican or Democrat, here they have an opportunity to do something worthwhile and beneficial for many of the nation’s children and to redirect our priorities and they do it how? As usual by raising taxes, I don’t have a problem with paying taxes. I believe that in order for our society to provide a safety net and to provide vital services we have to pay taxes. The problem I have is that right now we pay enough taxes, having the money is not the problem in Washington. The problem in Washington is how those tax dollars are allocated. So rather than moving some of that money from the bottomless military budget, the corporate subsidies, or any other program that would actually signal a change, they just raise more taxes.
Now of course because they are taxing the evil tobacco companies it should be done without much resistance. The tobacco companies are an easy target and are always good as a whipping boy for politicians, but this belies the problem. The problem is how the money is being raised, not from whom. The taxes you levy against tobacco will not be paid by the tobacco companies; it will be paid by consumers. Since most poor people are under stress, guess who smokes more? So you are taxing the poor to pay for health care for the poor?
By a vote of 225 to 204, the bill passed, with support from 220 Democrats and 5 Republicans. Ten Democrats joined 194 Republicans in voting against it. The bill would provide coverage for more than four million uninsured children in low-income families, prevent cuts in doctors’ Medicare payments scheduled for Jan. 1 and raise the federal cigarette tax 45 cents a pack, to 84 cents.[2]
There is such a lack of courage in Washington today. If I thought there was a snowballs chance that big tobacco would have to pay the increase I would be all over it, but the truth is they won’t and these guys know it. In this way they can look tough on corporations and yet not be doing anything. Everybody knows people are going to smoke regardless, it is an addiction. Raising the cost of it is only putting a hardship on the consumers, not the tobacco industry. But isn’t it a good thing, it will make people quit smoking? No, it is a bad thing just like all the other laws that infringe on our right to choose. I don’t use seatbelts and I shouldn’t have to, if I want to drive that way it is my choice. As long as my choices do not infringe on the rights of others, so be it.
When it was created in 1997, the children’s program focused on families with incomes less than twice the poverty level. But many states have obtained federal waivers to cover children with somewhat higher family incomes, because those families cannot afford private insurance.
More than eight million of the 43 million Medicare beneficiaries are in plans offered by companies like Humana and United Health. Since December 2005, enrollment in private plans has shot up 40 percent.
On average, the Congressional Budget Office says, Medicare pays the private plans 12 percent more than it would cost to cover the same people under the traditional Medicare program. The House bill would eliminate the differential, saving $50 billion over the next five years and $157 billion from 2008 to 2017.[3]
Here are the good parts, it will expand the coverage for children and it will stop the over payments that the privatization of Medicare that Bush and his cronies tried to expand. Its funny how with all the talk of private insurers being more efficient and cost effective, that it costs more to use a private insurer than Medicare. This is a case of more “sound bite” logic that doesn’t pass the smell test. The reason we want to privatize is not for efficiency or savings, it is to give more of our tax dollars to the corporate whores who patrol Capitol Hill. What happened to free enterprise and capitalism? These are the same guys who berate the developing countries for not allowing free enterprise and they get more government handouts than anyone. Sometimes the hypocrisy with these guys gets to the point of the absurd.
Yes, let’s give health insurance to more Americans especially children, but let’s do it with the funds we already have. You’re telling me we can give billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest, but we can’t find any money for health insurance for our kids? No Mr. McDermott the question isn’t big tobacco or children, the real question is tax cuts and corporate welfare or children? Stop picking on the little guys and go after the people you were elected to watch over.
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