I wonder about a political landscape where Barry Goldwater and William Miller are cursed as liberals. We need folk to know that haters want to hurt folk in Maine, Washington & Kalamazoo. Recessivists dismantled the Republican Party in NY-23. Democrats are running crappy, lackluster candidates against an unindicted criminal thug in Jersey and a dude who thinks barefoot & pregnant is too difficult for women to handle in Virginia. No matter what happens, FOX will point to it as Obama's failure.
Oh yeah, request for action . . . Please call any and all folk you know who are registered to vote in States of Maine and/or Washington or Kalamazoo, MI, get them to vote TODAY! The races are going to be so close. . .
In regard to comments he made yesterday, Thom often seems to allow his prejudices to cloud his logic (I’ll refrain from putting that in quotes). Unlike him, I am familiar with Ruben Navarrette, who usually swings right of center (he once likened George Bush to George Washington) but to his credit he is sensitive to the racist hypocrisy aimed at Latinos. In regard to the Social Security, it was the GAO that came out with a report stating that undocumented workers would be responsible for 15 percent of any potential shortfall in the system at the current rate.
Unfortunately, Economics 101 has changed since Thom was in school (admittedly mainly for worse). Social Security payments are based on what a person contributes to the system, and the years worked beyond the "official" retirement age; I receive a statement every year from the Social Security office that tells me this. It is clearly the case that in the changing demographics in this country, "native" citizens are getting older and have fewer children, and are picking-up Social Security checks at a faster rate. It is the older work force that tends to be hit harder by unemployment, and they do not have much more time to contribute to the SS system in any case. Also, people tend to take out more money out of the SS system that they ultimately will put in. To say that undocumented workers who input more and receive nothing has no net positive impact is simply another Dobbsism that I thought Thom was above, but apparently is not.
Undocumented workers, I am forced to point out again, perform work that is in industries that either uncomfortable, unpopular, or are in competition with even lower-wage imports; when unemployment rates were at a “normal” level of around 4 percent, they were here because businesses did not have access to a sufficient labor pool not just to draw from, nor a willing one. The undocumented worker issue was just something for people looking for scapegoats. What has changed is that the economy has tanked due to policies that have nothing to do with undocumented workers. Thus it is not logical to assume that employers of these products or services will willingly raise compensation without cutting their labor force or simply going out of business, which will ultimately effect jobs on the periphery. The new Economics 101 preaches that in order for businesses to stay competitive, they have to cut labor costs (rather than their executives’).
I am familiar with what one company did at the airport. Several years ago they told the union representatives of the largest component of its work force to accept a greatly reduced “maximum” wage, which was not accepted, leading to the mass firing of this component. They were replaced by low-wage workers; none of these workers are “illegal” or undocumented, since all have to submit to FBI background checks. Although there is a high turnover, there seems to be no shortage of replacements. One of the contractors used to deliver alternative non-union labor hires almost exclusively eastern European and African immigrants; in fact a website for a supplier of these workers brags about how it can get these folks off the federal, town or city’s public assistance programs and into jobs at the airport.
Let’s be perfectly honest: if isn’t illegal immigrants, legal immigrants will be the “problem”—and blacks, and so on and so forth. And the hypocrisy doesn’t stop there; people in this country are addicted to “cheap,” not necessarily out of choice, of course. But on the other hand, paying people more does not necessarily mean they will buy more “cheap” domestically-made products that costs more than the imported products. Americans are generally so narcissistic (especially hypocritical Republicans) that economic “patriotism” may be preached, but is seldom practiced.