konane's Blog

Short film

A friend sent me this in email along with their explanation about ANSWER which was covered indepth in one of my previous blog entries.


"  In this short film El Uno De Mayo, filmmaker Stuart Browning casts a light on the left-wing totalitarian groups behind the May Day marches ostensibly aimed at "defending the rights of illegal aliens" in the US

 


...when the Stalinist androids of International "ANSWER" are the organizers of immigration marches, the mainstream media is "curiously" uninterested.

 

 


http://www.onthefencefilms.com/video/unodemayo/

 

(Allows for Windows Media or Quick Time.....)

 

VERY eye opening.  "

Entry #291

Protest signs you didn't see on the evening news

I don't like the signs mentioning blood and war.... gives me a real creepy feeling for US citizens to be threatened on their own soil.  Mad   

In the second link of gallery photos they're registering them to vote..... so sitting here in Georgia with our new voter law requiring a state issued photo ID I guess each state gets exactly what it has allowed its legislators to pass.


"Borders, What Borders?"

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005114.htm

 

There is also a link to a photo gallery of the May 1 illegals protests.

http://www.creativeflashes.com/Politics

Entry #290

"No Smog for the Fear Factory

Due to the amount of embedded links this article will not cut and past correctly for me ... who does not know HTML well enough to solve the problem. 

Very worthwhile article, very worth your time to read. 

Shows why the media is hanging its rating$$$$$$ and revenue$$$$$$ on 'greenhou$$$$e ga$$$$$es."


"No Smog for the Fear Factory
By Joel Schwartz
Source Tech Central Station Daily

"Ozone smog levels have plummeted during the last three years. Between 2003 and 2005, the fraction of the nation's ozone monitors violating the federal 8-hour ozone standard plunged from 43 percent down to a record-low 18 percent.[1] The last three years were the three lowest-ozone years on record. "............

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=050306F

Entry #289

"No Money, No Problem

Great article as are the overwhelming majority from this site.     


"No Money, No Problem
By Duane D. Freese
Source Tech Central Station Daily

"Everyone is looking for a solution to illegal immigration.

 

Big Labor fears immigrants will take away jobs from union workers. Big Environmentalism fears immigrants as they grow wealthier will increase their fossil fuel use, heating the globe. Big Nutrition fears immigrants will simply fuel themselves more, feeding the obesity epidemic

 

Many simply fear immigrants are undermining American values. After all, look what the great waves of European immigration did to Native American culture.

 

And worst of all, Republicans fear immigrants will vote for Democrats, while Democrats fear immigrants will become capitalists, get rich, and support Republicans.

 

It has become obvious to all these fearful folk that current protections against immigration don't work. When millions of illegal immigrants join rallies, smile for the cameras and declare "we've decided not to be invisible anymore," you begin to suspect that Homeland Security is oxymoronic.

 

So what to do? Grant those here five years amnesty! What a great ad for document forgers. Wall off our borders! How far out to sea? Provide a guest worker program! Look out for gate crashers. Punish employers who hire them! Right. The French have accomplished wonders by discouraging employers to hire new workers of any kind.

 

So, what really can be done about illegal immigration? Well, maybe we need to do what Time magazine said we should do about another problem -- global warming. The writers and editors there suggested at the end of their Global Warming Report: "Maybe we can begin by living a bit more like the average Chinese or Indian -- before they start living like us."

 

There you have it: The only way to turn the corner on energy use, and thus greenhouse gas emissions, at least in the short run, is to make us all poorer - a lot poorer.

 

Currently, after all, per capita income in the United States is $41,400. To live more like China and India, we will need to lower our energy usage, and thus incomes, down to their levels -- $1,300 and $650 per capita. Take it from Time - Poverty is the answer.

 

And as it turns out, it is the perfect answer to the problem of illegal immigration... and much, much more.

 

Think about it. Why have Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Colombians, Vietnamese, Thai, Sudanese, Ethiopians and others decided to break our laws by breaching our borders? Opportunity, of course. What does opportunity represent? The chance to make a better living for yourself -- to make more money; to trade muscle power for horsepower.

 

If we impoverish ourselves as a nation and individually, why would they want to come here? No money? No immigration problem.

 

The job security issues labor is concerned about? No one wants a job that doesn't pay. So, no one will want to take anyone's job. No money, no job security problem.

 

Our obesity problem would fade away as well. It takes money to buy food, or else you have to grow it and breed it yourself. Doing that burns calories. No money, no obesity problem.

 

What about gasoline price-gouging. You only need gasoline to drive cars, right? No money, no cars, no gasoline price-gouging.

 

The same goes for the housing bubble. No money, puff, the housing bubble disappears.

 

As for the rancorous relations between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. No money, no problems. No rich, no tax cuts for the rich; no rich, no taxes to spend. As a nation, we would all be in the same boat, so a lowering tide would sink all of us together. Hallelujah!

 

And as for our overseas relations? You don't see a lot of protestors in foreign lands burning the flags of Burundi and Bangladesh, do you? No money, no problem. Heck, we might even wangle some foreign aid -- as long as it left us poor.

 

Prescription drug benefits? Die young and you don't need it. Same for Social Security.

 

What all this will do for global warming, we don't know. If other countries don't join us in our race to the economic bottom, then they will produce the greenhouse gases Time claims are going to destroy the planet.

 

And, of course, they and no doubt tens of millions of other Americans might decide to leave here for greener economic fields abroad. But, hey, then we'd be other nations' illegal immigration problem. No money, their problem. Sweet revenge, eh?  "

 

Duane Freese is Deputy Editor of TCS Daily.  "

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=050306E
Entry #288

"We're here and we're not leaving."

Hmmmmm protestors at the Capital building in Atlanta are reported by the news to be chanting "We're here and we're not leaving." 

Certainly does NOT gve me the warm fuzzies no matter how they try to shove it.  Mad


Discover the Networks (dot org) gives background and funding information about many organizations steering politics today.  Excellent reference.

http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/default.asp 


International ANSWER         http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6147

  • Anti-war front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party
  • Founded after the 9/11 attacks to oppose the War on Terror
  • A major organizer of the massive anti-Iraq war rallies of 2002 and 2003
  • Opposes embargo against Communist Cuba
  • Supports convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal

 

International A.N.S.W.E.R. (often, simply ANSWER) is a front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party (WWP), which uses the anti-war movement as the vehicle by which it promotes Communist ideals and condemns American society, American foreign policy, and capitalism. "..................

 

 

 

 


"Uno de Mayo
By Lowell Ponte
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 1, 2006

"“We’re going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno” on May Day this Monday, labor organizer Jorge Rodriquez told the British wire service Reuters.

 

“We want full amnesty, full legalization for anybody who is here [illegally],” said Rodriquez, organizer for one of the unions of AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees of the AFL-CIO. “That is the message that is going to be played out across the country on May 1.”

 

Listen to the cynicism behind Rodriquez’s arrogant statement. Government workers who belong to AFSCME unions will not see their jobs taken or wages depressed by illegal aliens, as will poor and undereducated American citizens. On the contrary, illegal aliens will generate more government jobs – the one sector where unionization is growing – with their demand for more taxpayer-funded services (read: welfare).

 

By one estimate, every illegal alien household in America on average consumes at least $2,736 more in taxpayer-funded services than it pays in taxes each year. This adds a total burden that could exceed $27 billion on American citizen taxpayers.

 

Six decades have passed since the last large organized labor protest in the United States staged on May Day, the traditional date of the Soviet Union’s annual parade of its latest weapons through Moscow’s Red Square and holiday for its Euro-socialist fellow-travelers.

 

The radicals have insisted on May Day for “Day Without Immigrants” nationwide Hispanic rallies and “Buy Nothing Gringo business boycotts, as well as work and school walkouts, and planned disruptions of major American cities (including cities such as New York and Chicago that historically were never “Mexican” territory).

 

The radicals behind this protest chose May first, rather than Cinco de Mayo, for a reason – and their allies in the Democratic Party, the racist Hispanic reconquista movement, and the Mexican government are behind them all the way.

 

The most vocal of these radicals, who also set last month’s nationwide pro-amnesty immigration protests that blocked Los Angeles streets with half a million Mexican flag-waving marchers, are activists with International ANSWER, a front group for the avowedly Marxist Workers World Party.

 

Do not be surprised on Monday if ANSWER activists in one guise or another try to cause violent confrontations with police, property damage or other violence. A longstanding radical tactic, such confrontations are intended to produce overreactions that polarize an issue and force those involved to “choose sides.” Confrontations on May Day would be calculated to produce a public backlash and to push otherwise-culturally conservative Hispanics into the arms of the Left.

 

This prospect has troubled even fellow leftists. Some of these graying comrades worry the backlash would stiffen the spines of politicians of both major parties who until now have been more than willing and eager to grant amnesty to America’s 12 million or more illegal aliens, despite overwhelming public opinion against doing so.

 

“It’s no accident that those pushing hardest for the May 1 boycott,” wrote Marc Cooper of the far-Left Nation Magazine and host of its tax-exempt foundation’s Radio Nation, “…have never shown much concern for real-world results, preferring to act out their ideological impulses.”

 

May Day was chosen for this mass demonstration as a “conscious nod” to the class confrontation traditions of this day, wrote the Socialist Worker. This journal proudly describes itself as standing “in the tradition in the Marxist tradition, founded by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and continued by V.I. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky.”

 

May Day, traditionally a spring day of pagan fertility rites, May Poles, and sprinklings for the May Queen (as celebrated in a song by Led Zeppelin), was expropriated in the 1880s to become the holiday of European and North American labor radicals, socialists, and Marxists.

 

Democrats, who dominate the California legislature, voted last week along party lines to endorse May Day’s protests in resolutions describing the school, worker and buyer walkouts as the “Great American Boycott 2006.”

 

“American wouldn’t have been created without illegal action,” said State Senator Richard Alarcon and Democratic Senate Whip of the Los Angeles suburb Van Nuys. “They dumped a bunch of tea in Boston harbor, illegally.”

 

And where does Senator Alarcon fit on the ideological spectrum? His sister Evelina has been Vice Chair of the Communist Party USA and chair of the Southern California District of the Communist Party USA as well as a “state coordinator” for the United Farm Worker union. Senator Alarcon has been featured speaker at a banquet for the People’s Weekly World, the newspaper of the Communist Party USA.

 

In voicing his support for the May Day protests, Democratic State Senator Gil Cedillo of Los Angeles “likened the debate over immigrant rights to the fights over slavery, women’s suffrage, the internment of Japanese during World War II, and the Vietnam War.”

 

Senator Cedillo has relentless authored bills to provide valid California Driver Licenses to illegal aliens, a legal document for the undocumented. He refuses to acknowledge that Mexicans in the United States can use a Mexican driver’s license. Cedillo has rejected Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s request that any such California license carry a distinguishing mark so it could not be used as ID to register a voter or for other privileges requiring American citizenship.

 

As a student at the University of California Los Angeles in the 1970s, Cedillo was an activist in the racist Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, MEChA, dedicated to reclaiming the southwestern United States for Mexico.

 

The head of UCLA’s incendiary MEChA chapter in that era was Antonio Villaraigosa, later to become Speaker of the lower house of the California legislature, later Los Angeles City Councilman, and current Mayor of Los Angeles. As documented in this column, both Cedillo and Villaraigosa attended and became lawyers with the help of the People’s Law School, a factory for the manufacture of radical left-wing lawyers.

 

Another close Villaraigosa friend and ally has been Mario Obledo, co-founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), who was awarded the 1998 Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton.

“California is going to be a Hispanic state,” Mario Obledo has proclaimed, “and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave. They should go back to Europe.” (Does this refer to the Europe that includes Spain and the Spanish language?)

This kind of racist MEChA-like thinking has largely taken control of California’s Democratic Party, whose longtime chairman has been veteran politician Esteban “Art” Torres.

“Power is not given to you. You have to take it,” said Torres at a January 1995 Hispanic gathering to discuss non-compliance with ballot Proposition 187 at the University of California Riverside. “Remember, 187 is the last gasp of White America in California!” (For audio of Torres’ statement, check out this website.)

Proposition 187 would have denied taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens. It passed with the support of 60 percent of California voters, including 30 percent of Hispanics. Recalled Democratic Governor Gray Davis refused to defend it in court. A federal judge set most of its provisions aside, her entire declared legal rationale for doing so being that “it would hurt people.”

This same Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic Party, who thrilled at “the last gasp of White America in California,” has attacked Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for having spent many years on the advisory board of U.S. English. This organization advocates English as the common language for all Americans. (English is now also the world language of diplomacy, science and business, as Latin and French were in previous centuries.)

U.S. English “has used its English-first message,” charged Torres, “to hide a more racially divisive agenda.” But America’s shared language, English, is a bridge that ends division and opens opportunities to members of all races. By contrast, leftists such as Torres have tried by hook and crook to keep Hispanics chained inside a Spanish language ghetto.

 

Research studies have found that when Hispanics learn to speak English and move from the barrio into the larger society, they start voting Republican in roughly the same proportion as other Americans. If this continues to happen with America’s fastest-growing minority, it would mean demographic doom for the Democratic Party. No wonder its members in California want to deny opportunity and education to young Hispanics, as will happen during Monday May Day – when Hispanics will walk out of school and work.

 

More evidence of the left-wing divide-and-conquer effort to drive wedges that split Americans apart came this past week in what purported to be a Spanish language version of America’s National Anthem, the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

 

As this columnist has noted, it’s odd to have a National Anthem that would get you arrested for speaking its lyrics about “bombs bursting in air” at a public airport or school. But the remixed Spanish version changes our anthem’s lyrics to say such things as “These kids have no parents, cause all of these mean laws…let’s not start a war with all these hard workers; they can’t help where they were born.” These new lyrics pervert America’s anthem into doublespeak making morality appear immoral and illegality appear legal.

 

The man who conceived this distortion is British music producer Adam Kidron, who will market it on the album Somos Americanos, “We Are Americans.” One dollar of the album’s $10 price, he said, will go to the National Capital Immigration Coalition (NCIC) in Washington, D.C.

 

No leftist mainstream media reporter pressed Kidron on what this organization is. NCIC is a front group for the radical Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that twisted arms to install Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. A majority of SEIU members are government employees, so it shares the same cynical politics against working Americans and in favor of higher taxes and bigger government as AFSCME. It is one of America’s biggest and richest labor unions. SEIU also played a major role in organizing the massive illegal immigration rallies throughout the Southwest.

 

The president of the newly-formed NCIC is Jaime Contreras, who arrived from his native El Salvador in 1988 and worked his way up from an SEIU janitor’s union to become one of the leaders of SEIU. No wonder he has been featured on every left-wing media outlet from National Public Radio (NPR), to Pacifica Radio, to Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” These outlets know how to build up and promote their own, although few bother to tell their audience of Contreras’ union background or extremist connections.

 

Unlike many other unions, SEIU retains the old radical dream of concentrating all union power in a few hands able to shut down all of America at the snap of a union boss’s fingers. It has welcomed illegal immigrants as a source of new membership to save the dying labor movement. SEIU has promoted the use of mass walkouts and disruption of entire cities to intimidate and force itself on employers and politicians.

 

It should not surprise us that this new anti-American anthem in Spanish is being used not only to advance radicalism but also to help fund the activities of a radical labor union disguised as a neutral-sounding immigration coalition.

 

“I think the National Anthem ought to be sung in English,” said President George W. Bush (who grew up in Texas, speaking both English and Spanish). “And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to
sing the National Anthem in English.”

 

As we debate this issue, said President Bush, we should take care “not to lose our national soul.” Unlike other nations rooted in a single religion, race, culture, or history, the United States has gathered its people from throughout the world; Americans are held together by our ideals, our laws, our shared language English and our Manifest Destiny. The radicals behind Monday’s May Day demonstration advocate immigration that breaks our laws, rejects assimilation into America and insists on using Spanish as a language to keep it apart from the rest of America.

 

If illegal immigrants, most of whom are Mexican, in America want a day of protest, why not Cinco de Mayo, the Fifth of May, that arrives this coming Friday?

 

This is already a Mexican and Latino day of pride, the anniversary of Mexican forces in 1862 defeating a slightly larger French force in that first Battle of Puebla? In fact, during that battle, French troops were surprised to hear their opponents singing “La Marseillaise,” the revolutionary French national anthem, in Spanish.

 

Cinco de Mayo is already widely celebrated in the southwestern United States. But just as Hanukkah is celebrated more in the United States than in Israel, Cinco de Mayo is more of a holiday in the U.S. than in Mexico. Mexicans know that in the second Battle of Puebla in 1863, French troops crushed the Mexican army, days later occupied Mexico City, and continued to rule Mexico for the following four years.

 

The French Emperor Napoleon III dared to send troops to occupy Mexico only because the United States was preoccupied with its own War Between the States, a.k.a. our Civil War. When our war ended, we massed a huge American army on the Texas border with Mexico and informed the French Emperor that under the Monroe Doctrine we would not tolerate European control of Mexico.

 

Napoleon III beat a hasty retreat, leaving his installed “liberal” Hapsburg puppet “Emperor of Mexico” Maximilian I to be overthrown and executed by the locals in 1867. But drinking their beer each Cinco de Mayo, educated Mexicans bitterly remember that it was pressure from the United States that liberated their country from French colonial rule. The cultural residue of French influence in Mexico remains in many odd ways, e.g., the hired singers called Mariachis, whose name (despite frantic Mexican nationalist denials) was first used in 1852 and probably derives from the French word for marriage that arrived via the surreal 1838 French incursion known as “the Pastry War.”

 

France could also be blamed for Mexico’s loss of what is now the western United States. Napoleon I sold the U.S. the Louisiana Territory, which created a potential legal claim to a large, poorly-defined share of the wild West. Napoleon I also overthrew the government of Spain and put his own brother on the Spanish throne, which plunged Spain’s colonies such as Mexico into political chaos. The resulting uprisings in Mexico ousted Spain and installed a domestic revolutionary government that could not control the centrifugal forces that broke apart Spain’s old North American empire in Mexico (as well as South America with the uprisings of Simon Bolivar and Jose San Martin).

 

Many who stayed in the New World remained loyal to Spain. Mexico thus sent troops three times into California to suppress revolutionary Californios who did not want to be ruled by newly independent Mexico. The lands now part of the western United States were slipping free from Mexico’s tenuous, anti-democratic control even before America moved to secure them (preemptively, as it were, before Great Britain attempted to do so).

 

When American forces arrived in California in 1846, half the Californios greeted the Trailblazer John C. Fremont (in 1856 to become the first Republican presidential candidate) and his men as liberators freeing them from Mexican tyranny. President Abraham Lincoln returned to the Roman Catholic Church the Spanish missions that the greedy and corrupt Mexican government had expropriated.

 

Spain might have a weak historic claim to the southwestern United States. But post-revolutionary Mexico has virtually no legitimate claim whatsoever, contrary to the propaganda of racist groups such as MEChA. Since such groups speak of a mythical land they call Aztlan that they aim to restore, were the Aztecs ever here? Apparently not, except for rare raiding parties to attack tribes near today’s Mexican border in search of fresh victims for its pagan human sacrifices. What sane person would embrace such a flimsy territorial claim? And, as mentioned earlier, Monday’s May Day protests have targeted New York City and Chicago, both many hundreds of miles beyond any imaginable historic Mexican lands.

 

These protests will exploit innocent Hispanic children and fearful Hispanic adults to create hostility between Latinos and American citizens. This advances the anti-American radicals’ agenda, and that is why the radicals behind this protest selected May Day.

 

A backlash against the May Day protests is almost inevitable. In this, as Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle recognized, American citizens will see students who refuse to go to school, workers refusing to be reliable, and illegal aliens thumbing their noses at the law.

 

In the wake of such protests more than a month ago, the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute did polling in one state. The mass demonstrations made 17 percent of citizens more sympathetic to the immigrants’ cause, but they made 38 percent – more than twice as many – less sympathetic. The demands of these illegal aliens produced alienation.

 

…And Americans do not want to become an illegal aliens’ nation. As Quinnipiac’s assistant director Peter A. Brown observed, Americans are likely to respond negatively, not only to Monday’s protests but also to its deliberately having been set on May Day, a day associated with Communist nations. “The symbolism of [May Day’s] choice for the immigration economic boycott,” said Brown, “may not go down well in much of the country.” Moreover, wrote Brown, “American history is not one in which change has occurred in the streets. General strikes are not a U.S. tradition, as in many other countries in Latin America and Europe.”

 

The very nature of this style of mass protest, designed to show a group’s power by its ability to disrupt the lives and businesses of the rest of us, seems alien, threatening and un-American to most of us. We expect such things to be decided in the polling place, not on the streets.

 

Down on the border, meanwhile, the Minutemen have been constructing their own six-foot barbed wire fence 50 miles east of San Diego. They may be hoping that some illegals knock it down, thereby providing another polarizing issue for the other extreme of this debate. Even many leftists, from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Washington Post’s columnist Robert J. Samuelson, now agree a border fence is necessary.

 

And the pro-illegal immigrants protestors have painted themselves into a corner. By making May Day a “Day Without Immigrants,” they must either demonstrate major social and economic disruption or become an example that America can, indeed, live happily without its illegal immigrant workers. If they “go on strike” and nobody notices, their political and economic clout will evaporate.

 

But if they “go on strike” and cause massive social disruption, this will make millions of Americans afraid, angry, and unhappy at the actions of these foreign bullies. Either way, the politicians in this election year might suddenly realign on the side of those demanding a crackdown on illegals. President Bush, who grew up among Latinos and won 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, last Monday declared that the “massive deportation” of 12 million Latinos living in the United States is “unrealistic.” The Tonight Show’s liberal comic host Jay Leno, who lives with a wetted finger in the air to sense the shifting winds of public opinion, had a pointed rejoinder to the President. “We’re not able to send 12 million Mexicans out of our country?” said Leno. “Mexico did.”

 

To offset the economic impact of Monday’s boycott, radio talk show hosts across the nation have variously urged Americans to turn May Day into a “buycott,” spending as much as possible to erase any sign that a Hispanic boycott is effective.

 

One such radio host is Los Angeles radio station KFI’s Bill Handel. “Have you noticed,” he says, “that the politicians and activists talk about how important ‘immigrants’ are to American but never use the word ‘illegal’? What you won’t be shown on Monday,” said Handel last Friday, “is what illegals cost us in public services, in taxpayer dollars. That won’t be shown by the media.”

 

“Don’t want to pay $10 a head for lettuce?” say other opponents of illegal immigration. You already are in the form of overcrowded and dangerous public schools for your kids, hundreds of closed hospital emergency rooms where illegals broke the bank by demanding and getting free treatment, and in a thousand other burdens they impose on society that increase your taxes. This “cheap labor” already costs you a fortune and is on the verge of costing you your country.

 

South of the Border, meanwhile, the Mexican government is maintaining unconvincing official neutrality about Monday’s May Day boycott. It will be keeping its consulates and embassy open. Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez describes the boycott as “a strategy that is being defined by them [U.S. activists], not us.” But Mexican radicals in sympathy are staging a “Buy nothing Gringo” day to punish the Mexican owners of franchises such as McDonald’s. Approximately 40 percent of employed Mexicans in Mexico who do not work for government, work for American companies.

 

In Mexico, polls now show leftist candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador ahead for that nation’s July 2nd presidential election. This veteran of Mexico’s long-ruling revolutionary and corrupt PRI party cheers on illegals in the United States who send back $20 billion each year to relatives in Mexico, making them its most lucrative export. Obrador’s cultural advisor Elena Poniatowska openly advocates the reconquista, “reconquest,” of the United States. And he proposes to create a new electoral super-district which he calls the Sexta Circunscripcion for Mexican citizens. This Sixth Electoral District of Mexico would be the United States. Aztlan, anyone?

If Obrador becomes Mexico’s president, get ready for a very strange Fourth of July in the United States with lots of fireworks. "

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=22275

Entry #286

"The Right Way to Put Heat on Illegals

"The Right Way to Put Heat on Illegals

By Horace Cooper

Source Tech Central Station Daily 

"The debate over illegal immigration has managed to conflate two separate issues -- American immigrant citizenship status (and related requirements) on the one hand, and the economic consequences of having limited access to unskilled workers in the domestic labor pool. The two issues are not one and the same. Thus, resolving the complex choices associated with each will be easier when they are treated differently.

On the one hand, US immigrant citizenship policy as modified in 1986 by the Immigration Reform and Control Act -- which attempted to address seasonal temporary workers -- has been an abysmal failure. The act made it unlawful to knowingly hire an undocumented worker and provided for a one-year amnesty for illegal aliens who had already worked and lived in the U.S. since January 1982. Although at the time there were less than 3 million illegal aliens in the U.S., the grant of amnesty sent a signal to the world that the U.S. would no longer be serious about its border. Combined with a phasing out of employer sanctions, predictably the number of illegals has swelled nearly 4 times to more than 11 million people (many of whom assume that a new amnesty is waiting just around the corner).

 

Today it is vital that we adopt a policy that separates those aliens seeking permanent status from those only interested in temporary employment opportunities. Unfortunately, much of the present debate treats the groups as if they are one and the same. By failing to make this distinction, we risk going forward with an updated-but-incoherent program.

 

Economic Refugees, Labor Flexibility

 

First and foremost, policymakers must recognize that there are significant economic consequences to allowing geographical barriers to determine wages -- particularly in the context of low-skilled workers. Every American household pays an arbitrarily (and therefore wasteful) higher price for the goods and services that are provided when they are denied the benefit of competition simply because of where they live. Although often mentioned in the context of goods, the principle is no less true of labor costs. A rational temporary worker plan recognizes that we exist in a global economy that requires labor flexibility and allows honest workers interested in coming to America to provide for their families while respecting our laws.

 

Let's look at it from the low- or unskilled-laborer's perspective: Typically these workers are economic refugees plagued by the corrupt and chaotic economic regimes and attendant policies of Mexico or other countries in Latin America. The problems in these countries are not America's fault. Arguably, many of these workers would likely challenge their own governments if they didn't have America as a viable outlet. Nevertheless, it is in our economic interest to allow them to enter our labor force if not but to help maintain our own economic vitality.

 

To be sure, the presence of these workers has the effect of deflating salaries among unskilled or low-skilled laborers, but this consequence is offset by the benefit of increasing the standard of living for Americans which occurs because the lower priced goods and services they provide are made more readily available than they would be otherwise. Unless this process is only good when Wal-Mart does it, it should be recognized as an integral part of international competition.

 

And such facts are borne out in the numbers. According to the President's Council of Economic Advisers 2002 Economic Report, immigrants effectively raise the income of Americans by upwards of $12 billion a year. A rational temporary worker program would allow us to match foreign workers with American employers for wages that no American is willing to take, but does not require that we throw in citizenship as part of the deal.

 

Unfortunately the 1986 act had the unintended effect of turning seasonal illegals into long-term permanent lawbreakers by increasing the risks of crossing back and forth. Alternatively, a temporary legal status would alleviate much of the pressure for illegals to seek permanent status since they would be free to come and go across the border at will. Under the rules today they have the opposite incentive. Why, because the barriers to frequent entry are so high that once they come in (legally or otherwise) they have every incentive to make a permanent residence of America including resorting to having "anchor babies" (children born by illegal aliens in the U.S. that automatically become citizens). And by reducing the flow of illegal aliens, we can apply border enforcement resources more efficiently against those who present a threat to the country.

 

Ultimately, since the primary motivation for these workers is not citizenship, there should be no easy footpath to citizenship built into the program. Working in America is an economic opportunity of a lifetime -- in other words, getting the work permit is its own reward. With a temporary worker program, economic migrants would be given a chance to obtain wealth and related economic sustenance they can't get in their home country. Therefore, there is no need to offer citizenship as an added inducement.

 

Putting the Heat on Illegals

 

Once operational, those individuals here in America illegally will face a choice. Go to their home country and apply for the program or watch as others do exactly that while they miss out on the benefits of legal status. Employers will quickly demonstrate that they far more prefer a steady and reliable supply of legal unskilled workers (who have all passed background checks) to the outlaw labor force they rely on today. Ironically, it will be the illegal aliens who will feel the heat of competition most, because when the program is up and running and operating on a first-come-first-served basis, those that join in first will see the benefits sooner. (And by charging a fee for this, a temporary worker program could likely be used as a revenue source to pay for itself as well as provide additional border enforcement resources.)

 

Ideally rather than a fixed limit, the program would have a fluctuating fee level which would rise and fall depending on demand. Starting at around $1500 (the going rate for smugglers) and rising to say $10000 per applicant, potential workers and their employers could decide for themselves what the ultimate level should be. On the other hand with a floor of $8 billion and a ceiling of nearly $55 billion in revenue even if only half of the undocumented workers joined the program, the American taxpayer would easily come out ahead.

 

Additionally the plan should have two features. First like worker's comp programs all across the nation, it would require potential employers to be responsible for the social services used by these workers. Employers could provide health insurance if they chose. If not, whenever the temporary workers are provided assistance, hospitals and other government service providers would be allowed to seek reimbursement from the employers instead of sending the bill to the American taxpayer. A second feature would be that participants in the program would agree that their participation in the program in no way may be used to advance or assist them in seeking citizenship status.

 

And the program would have other benefits as well such as being attractive to fathers and older sons and single women who generally prefer to work seasonally or annually and then return to their home country. In a return to the practice prior to the act of 1986, participants in the new program would have little incentive to uproot their entire family or to have "anchor babies" in order to protect their ability to maintain their presence in the U.S.

 

Border Security

 

On the other hand, for those individuals uninterested in employment opportunity, the U.S. should signal a reinvigorated commitment to controlling border security and American citizenship. The U.S. has every right to restrict who it will invite to become an American and to set the terms. Indeed, any policy that rewards those who enter the country illegally is a poor one.

 

In fact, knowing who is crossing our borders has taken on a greater urgency -- particularly after 9/11. The U.S. should commit itself to a policy of returning every illegal alien caught crossing the border without exception (and rules like this could help provide incentives to other countries to help). New approaches such as interior repatriation for Mexican nationals (which transports illegals to interior portions of Mexico instead of simply escorting them back across the border) should be employed, and greater use of electronic surveillance at border sites should be undertaken.

 

The completely unworkable policy of "catch and release" should be ended within the next 15 months. Under this practice, if non-Mexican illegal aliens are apprehended they are released and told to return later for an immigration status hearing. As you might imagine, 75 percent of these persons simply fail to ever show up for their day in court. Also, the US should commit the resources to allow expedited hearings and new detention facilities so that once illegal aliens are caught by border patrol, they aren't allowed a chance to escape deportation, and instead are forced to actually appear in court. As illegal border crossings of economic migrants are reduced, interdiction of other drug smugglers and related criminals will be much easier to accomplish.

 

Ultimately, by separating immigrant citizenship policy from a temporary unskilled labor program, America will be living up to its own ideals -- keeping our borders open to legal travel and honest trade while securing them from exploitation by criminals, terrorists and drug traffickers. And by ensuring that citizenship is granted solely to those who understand and value the benefits of being an American, we'll protect our culture and the American way of life.

 

Horace Cooper is an assistant professor of law at George Mason University. "

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=050106B
Entry #285

"A Day Without Illegal Aliens Is a Boon to Taxpayers"

First I've seen about hard costs of illegal aliens to the US taxpayers.  What?


 

"A Day Without Illegal Aliens Is a Boon to Taxpayers"

by Rep. Tom Tancredo
Posted May 01, 2006

Source Human Events Online 

"Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.), chairman of the 97-member House Immigration Reform Caucus, released the following statement about Monday’s planned boycott by illegal immigrants.

A day without illegal aliens would be a boon to U.S. taxpayers who wouldn’t pay for the tremendous social service costs of persons not legally in our country. On May 1, illegal alien activists are threatening to shut down major cities in what has been called “The Great American Boycott” and, alternatively, “A Day Without an Immigrant.”
 
The activist protestors are trying to confuse the American public by lumping legal immigrants with illegal aliens. A day without legal immigrants would be a day without almost all Americans. A day without illegal aliens, on the other hand, would be a boon to the American taxpayer.
 
The net cost to the federal government in 2002 for public services provided to illegal aliens was $10.4 billion or $2,736 per household according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies. Estimates for 2005 put the amount at $11.7 billion or $3,080 per household.
 
Illegal Alien Costs By Social Service

  • Lost Revenue: The U.S. may be foregoing up to $35 billion in lost tax revenue because of the growing size of the underground labor market using illegal workers in the cash economy, according to a January, 2005 report by the Wall Street firm Bear Sterns.
     
  • Health Costs: Medicaid costs for illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children are $2.8 billion annually, according to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies. Approximately 70% of households headed by illegal aliens have at least one person without medical insurance, compared to 20% of all other households. The federal government spends $250 million each year reimbursing states for emergency medical services provided to illegal aliens, which is less than 10% of the true cost of those services.
     
  • Education Costs: The Center for Immigration Studies has shown that federal aid to K-12 public schools for the education of the children of illegal aliens is $1.4 billion annually, not including the cost of free school lunches. The total cost to state and local taxpayers for educating 3.5 million children of illegal aliens is estimated at $28.6 billion, according to a Federation for American Immigration Reform study.
     
  • Incarceration: Illegal aliens account for less than 5% of the U.S. adult population, but were 17% of the federal prison population in 2004, imposing a net cost of $1.8 billion in court and incarceration expenses.

Fortunately, Americans have seen through the protestors’ half-truths. A Rasmussen poll released last week showed widespread disfavor of recent immigration protests, with 26 percent holding a favorable opinion and 54 percent holding an unfavorable opinion.
 
Americans don’t respond well to illegal aliens who demand amnesty. As I’ve said before, that doesn’t play well in Peoria. Every time illegal aliens and their supporters take to the streets, it drives home the point to most Americans that illegal immigration is a problem in their home towns, and that we urgently need to get control of our borders.

 

Rep. Tancredo (R.-Colo.) is chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. "

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14430

Entry #284

"Mayor Won't Give Dead Marine's Money Back

When you think humanity has reached an all time low someone has to strip-mine even deeper.


"Mayor Won't Give Dead Marine's Money Back

 

Bostick Is Mayor Of Fort Lupton

Source The DenverChannel.com

"FORT LUPTON, Colo. -- The mother of a U.S. Marine was grieving for her dead son when she found that his savings account had been claimed by the director of the funeral home.

 

It was money that he had no right to and despite a court ruling, the funeral director refused to pay. What's even more puzzling is that he's not just any debtor, he's the mayor of the small town and a member of a City Council that has financial responsibility for the city's budget.

 

7NEWS also found that he has other debts as well, something his constituents may want to know.

 

Jason Sepulveda, a Marine, was training at Camp Lejune in North Carolina, preparing to go to Iraq, when in an evening off-base, he was killed in a car accident.

 

"My son died instantly and the other Marine died approximately two weeks after," said Elis Sepulveda, Jason's mother.

 

His parents, who spoke with him weekly, knew he had been saving his money for a long weekend when they would all be together.

 

"We were going on vacation for the Fourth of July to visit him," Sepulveda said. "I know he had been sacrificing because they don't get paid very much."

 

Jason's body was returned to Colorado for burial. Records show that the funeral was paid, in full, by the Marines. But after closing out her son's accounts, Jason's mother realized that the probate court had sent the proceeds of Jason's savings account to the funeral home, which is run by Jim Bostick.

 

"I called Mr. Bostick and I said, 'Well, the courts sent you my son's savings account.' He just kind of really blew me off a lot," Sepulveda said.

 

She said he didn't give her any receipts or bills and just kept the money." .....

 

Entry #283

"China Eyeing Cuba Offshore Oil

Typical leftist diversionary tactic .... chaos created by illegal aliens demanding amnesty as China moves in to seal a deal with Cuba to drill for oil 50 miles from US shores as leftist environmentalists put pressure on limp wristed politicians for the US to not explore or drill because of "environmental concerns," legal constraints.  Anything to wreck our economy so we can live like third world countires. 

Only makes sense to an Puke environmentalist.


"China Eyeing Cuba Offshore Oil

NewsMax.com

 

China and a host of other oil-hungry nations will be tapping into huge offshore oil deposits a mere 50 miles from the United States while this nation is forced to endure rising gas prices as a result of record high demand for oil fueled by such countries as China and India.  

According to Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, the U.S. energy sector has been "hamstrung" from seeking additional oil resources while at the same time allowing "the likes of China, Canada, Brazil, Spain, France and others to freely seek energy opportunities 50 miles off our coast without competition from state-of-the-art technologies and expertise of our own U.S. gas and oil industries."  

In a speech on the Senate floor, Craig said that a February 2005 U.S. Geological Survey report described "a possible deposit in the North Cuba Basin estimated at 4.6 billion barrels of oil, and possibly as much as 9.3 billion barrels." He then reminded his colleagues "that estimates for Alaska National Wildlife Refuge range from 4 billion to 10 billion barrels."  

So, he said, "The question must be asked: 'What is the U.S. doing while foreign companies and countries are exploring right off the U.S. coast in the North Cuba Basin, which is adjacent to the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf and contiguous with this country's Exclusive Economic Zone?'  Well, I can firmly tell my colleagues that we are doing absolutely nothing. Not one single U.S. company is exploring in these potentially beneficial waters that extend to within 50 miles off the coast of Florida. So, we sit here watching China exploit a valuable resource within eyesight of the U.S. coast. I say -- not on my watch."  

Craig added that he is "certain the American public would be shocked, as this country is trying to reduce our dependency on Middle East oil, that countries like China are realizing this energy resource."

 

China, which he said is the world's second-largest user of petroleum products "is using this area off our coast, and in Cuban national waters, as a strategic commodities reserve. It is doing this by acquiring exclusive rights in the emerging Cuban offshore oil sector -- thereby forever closing the door on those resources to the U.S. industry and drastically impacting our foreign policy in the region."  

According to the Bush administration's "National Security Strategy," China is "expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow lock up energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up."  

A shocking report aired on the Lou Dobbs show Thursday night revealed that Cuba has not only allowed China to drill but also to service an old Soviet refinery in Cuba while U.S. companies are locked out of the game. The Dobbs report also revealed that Venezuela's Castroite president, Hugo Chavez, has offered Chinese oil firms operating rights in his country.   

Craig wants to introduce legislation that will allow the United States to operate in these waters off our southern coast, adding that we cannot allow China to lock up a potentially lucrative oil supply for life in our own backyard. "

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/4/27/224539.shtml?s=ic   

 

Entry #281

'Green' Politicians Add to Gas Price Woes

And we have the same facts laid out for us again. 

Clintons' economic policies can be reviewed here top 4 paragraphs, the results of which we're living through now. 

http://alamo-girl.com/0341.htm 


 

'Green' Politicians Add to Gas Price Woes

By Steven Milloy

FoxNews.com

" Amid the race between politicians to capitalize on consumer anger at high gas prices, at least one member of Congress, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., expressed a much-needed perspective on the problem -- these same politicians own a share of the blame.

During an interview with Larry Kudlow earlier this week about rising gas prices, Rep. Blackburn observed, “If we're going to work toward [energy independence], we’re going to have to do some things differently. Now, I can tell you one of the things that I wish had been done differently is over the past 30 years, we have had environmental extremists driving energy policy in this country, saying no to everything.”

Certainly increased demand for oil from the growing Chinese and Indian economies and instability in the Middle East are major pressures on oil prices, but both Republicans and Democrats have added to these pressures by allowing the environmental movement to tie our energy policy in knots.

Bowing to environmentalist demands since the 1970s, Congress has blocked oil and gas drilling from areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (10.4 billion barrels of oil, according to the U.S. Geological Service) and the Outer Continental Shelf (86 billion barrels of oil, according to the Minerals Management Service).

As Cuba works out deals with Canadian, Spanish and Chinese companies to explore for oil as close as 50 miles to Key West, Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., – apparently trying to appease the League of Conservation Voters which has given him a 10 percent rating – dubbed a proposal by Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., to allow drilling 20 miles off the Florida coast as “crazy.”

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., also oppose OCS drilling thanks to oil spill hysteria whipped up by the Sierra Club.

Environmentalists helped pressure Congress in 1990 to require “reformulated” gasoline (RFG) supposedly to reduce the formation of ground-level ozone or smog. The RFG process requires use of additives such as ethanol or MTBE.

The RFG requirement raised the price of gasoline not only because of the cost of the additives but because different areas of the country require different blends of fuel to address different air quality circumstances. The 17 so-called “boutique” fuels used around the country make the national gasoline supply less fungible, which causes supply bottlenecks.

And for all this pain, there appears to be little gain from RFG. A 1999 report from the National Research Council reported that, “the net impact of RFG on ambient ozone concentrations...is a few percent. For this reason, it is difficult to quantify the specific contribution of the RFG program to the apparent downward trend in ozone.”

The final kick-in-the-teeth to consumers from the RFG program came last year when environmental groups like the Natural Resource Defense Council pressured Congress to not provide legal liability protection for MTBE makers, who will stop using the additive in gasoline on May 1. (MTBE from leaking underground storage tanks had been detected in groundwater around the country, raising the specter of lawsuits against MTBE manufacturers). Gas prices will soon jump again in many parts of the country as refiners try to avoid future MTBE-related legal liability by switching to the more expensive ethanol additive.

The policy missteps didn’t all occur in Congress.

In the 1990s, the environmentalist-friendly Clinton Administration made Environmental Protection Agency air quality standards much more stringent. Because states that fail to meet these standards stand to lose federal highway money, state governments now require gasoline refineries to install expensive air emissions equipment. The equipment is so expensive that it makes the expansion of existing refineries economically unattractive to investors – and you can forget about the construction and permitting of new refineries.

The problem here is that domestic refineries are operating at or near capacity -- limiting supply and putting more pressure on prices. A weather calamity like Hurricane Katrina can strike the weak link ­– Gulf Coast refineries – thereby limiting supply further and forcing the importation of more expensive gasoline to meet demand.

Not only are the alleged health and environmental benefits of these EPA regulations in doubt, but the EPA is getting ready to make the air quality standards even more stringent – virtually guaranteeing that expanding refinery capacity will proceed very slowly, if at all.

President Bush encouraged fuel conservation this week. That sounds reasonable and it may even be a temporary strategy for reducing gasoline demand and, therefore, prices. But conservation is not a viable long-term strategy for growing the economy. We’re going to need more energy in the future, not less.

Of all the proposals and ideas offered by politicians this week, only Rep. Blackburn’s questions Congress’ role in the problem. No other politician has even come close to hinting that Congress has allowed our national energy policy to be hijacked by environmentalists.

I’m all for environmental protection measures that do more good than harm. I’m also all for private research into alternative energy technologies that make economic sense and don’t require subsidies.

None of this, however, requires that politicians simply knuckle under to junk science-fueled environmental extremists. "

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193487,00.html

Entry #280

High Gas Prices ...............

Ann Coulter is recommended reading for anyone who has guts enough to look at the heart of a matter with all the frills cast aside. 

I very much like her no BS bottom line approach.  Big Grin


 

"It's hard out here for a pump

By Ann Coulter

Source World Net Daily

"I would be more interested in what the Democrats had to say about high gas prices if these were not the same people who refused to let us drill for oil in Alaska, imposed massive restrictions on building new refineries, and who shut down the development of nuclear power in this country decades ago.

But it's too much having to watch Democrats wail about the awful calamity to poor working families of having to pay high gas prices.

Imposing punitive taxation on gasoline to force people to ride bicycles has been one of the left's main policy goals for years.

For decades Democrats have been trying to raise the price of gasoline so that the working class will stop their infernal car-driving and start riding on buses where they belong, while liberals ride in Gulfstream jets.

The last time the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the presidency was in 1993. Immediately after trying to put gays in the military and socialize all health care, Clinton's next order of business was to propose an energy tax on all fuels, including a 26-cent tax on gas. I think the bill was called "putting people first in line at the bus station." This is the Democratic Party. That's their program.

Al Gore defended the gas tax, vowing that it was "absolutely not coming out" of the energy bill regardless of "how much trouble it causes the entire package."

And mind you, this was before we knew Gore was clinically insane. Back then we thought he was just a double-talking stuffed shirt who seemed kind of gay. The important thing was to force Americans to stop their infernal car-driving, no matter how much it cost.

Democrats in Congress promptly introduced an "energy bill" that would put an additional 25-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline to stop "global warming," an atmospheric phenomenon supposedly aggravated by frivolous human activities such as commerce, travel and food production.

Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley endorsed the proposal on "Charlie Rose," saying: "I'd have a five-cent increase every year for five years ... But that's not going to happen ... because we've got people who fret and worry that one- or two-tenths of a cent of a gasoline tax is going to cause some revolution at home." So in Tom Foley's universe, two-tenths of a cent is the same as a quarter – another testimonial to the American public educational system.

The Democrats' proposed gas tax did cause a revolution at home, and consequently the Democrats were able to sneak through only an additional 4.3-cent federal tax on gasoline. After tut-tutting the idea that voters would object if the Democrats attempted a huge gas tax increase, Speaker Tom Foley soon became former speaker, and indeed former Congressman Tom Foley.

Gary Hart, another whimsical demonstration of what Democrats think a president should be like, said at the time, "I certainly favor consumption taxes, particularly on energy." Then there's John Kerry, who favored a 50-cent increase in the gas tax in 1994. If he were a rap artist, Kerry's stage name would be "Fifty Cent a Gallon."

Last year, a couple of green "climatologists" at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were back at it in the journal Science, wheeling out their proposal for a 25-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline as an "insurance policy" against global warming.

Just two months ago, we were being confidently told – on the basis of a New York Times-CBS News poll, so it must be true – that "Americans might OK a gasoline tax hike if it reduced global warming or lessened U.S. dependence on foreign oil." (This poll was wedged in among the 29 polls claiming Americans think we're losing the war in Iraq.) Other results from the Times' "meaningless polls" section: Americans might "OK" a Dennis Kucinich presidency if it meant free ice cream every Tuesday.

How many times do Democrats have to tell us they want to raise the price of gas for the average American before the average American believes them? Is it more or less than the number of times Democrats tell us they want to surrender in the war on terrorism?

It's as if a switch goes off in people's brains telling them: The Democrats can't be saying they want to destroy the lives of people who drive cars because my father was a Democrat, and the Democrats can't be this stupid!

The Democrats' only objection to current gas prices is that the federal government's cut is a mere 18.4 cents a gallon. States like New York get another 44 cents per gallon in taxes. The Democratic brain processes the fact that "big oil companies" get nearly 9 cents a gallon and thinks: WE SHOULD HAVE ALL THAT MONEY!

When the free market does the exact thing liberals have been itching to do through taxation, they pretend to be appalled by high gas prices, hoping the public will forget that high gas prices are part of their agenda.  "

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49929

Entry #278

California -156 years ago!

California -156 years ago!

Do you know what happened this week back in 1850, in California?

California became a state.
The State had no electricity.
The State had no money.
Almost everyone spoke Spanish.
There were gun-fights in the streets.

So basically, it was just like California today  .....
except the women had real breasts and men didn't hold hands.       
Entry #277