If we're going to put illegal immigrants in a "tent city" prison w/ a temp of 145 degrees - shouldn't the CEOs that hired them be there too?
You need to know this. Inhumane conditions plague Sherriff Joe Arpaio’s AZ's “tent-city” prison. On Saturday – temperatures at the outdoor prison housing 1,400 non-violent inmates shot up to 145 degrees – the hottest recorded so far this year.
To beat the heat – prisoners were given 6–ounce cups filled with ice to which one prisoner said, “They’re doing this for the media attention. This cup isn’t going to do anything.” The media was indeed on hand to ask Sheriff Joe about the conditions that day – conditions that were causing inmates' shoes to melt.
If we really think that the best response to the undocumented immigrant problem in this nation is to create giant sauna-like jails, then let's at least put into those jails the CEOs who hire undocumented workers, thus drawing more and more of them into our country, and the Republican politicians who supported Reagan's 1986 amnesty and subsequent suspension of laws that allowed prosecution of CEOs for hiring undocumented workers.
Comments
Thanks JLC!
Regarding your "interesting call" today from the guy who claimed that the "solution" was smaller/no government. I have had this debate many times and usually end it like this:
No valid/worthwhile game can be played w/o rules. If we look at "business" as a game then there has to be rules and someone to create and then regulate/monitor those rules. The rules, and the regulation of those rules, are made by government which is to be representative of the evenly and equally distributed will of the people and must NOT to be prejudiced by artificial participants in the game -- like corporations.
Remote Viewing Logged from TH Community Blog
Not trying to go too far off-subject, though it does pertain when you think about it.
My husband says Thom says he always reads his blog, and this is ever so important:
"L.A. NOW Southern California -- this just in Paris Hilton stalker arrested again July 4, 2011 | 8:55 pm"
Firstly it pertains, because Paris Hilton, Carlyle Marriott Fairfield, and Ramada Inns and Casinos are the same entity, and a "tent city" springs from a CT entity (CT either Corporation Trust or Company Town, syn.)
In my poem Submitted by leighmf on 25. June 2011 - 6:10 Oh, Omaha! I will cut right to the pertinent verse
"Ghastly, ghostly, ghouls and Walker,
Peter Falk, Whitey a Talker.
A Hollywood Star
will get a stalker."
Which of course is extra true by the fact that Paris had the stalker arrested, rather than him getting her. Unfortunately, In Katherine Kryder's case, G.H. Walker's stalker got her.
It was the week of Whitey Bulger and Whiteco behind the Billboard Junkets. These Lincoln Rhymes with Scene of the Crimes have been especially forthcoming since I was prescribed Linclonapin, sort of a Federal Reserve/Eli Lilly tranquilizer. I struggled to write the line "A Hollywood Star will get a Stalker" because I was torn between its phonetic triteness, and the anxiety state which said, "you better write this down now and get a date on it."
I watched a really interesting video that was produced by Prepare NY, an organization that is encouraging conversation about these types of issues in preparation for the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It's called We the People and you can see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9apMRjugSA. It asked the question, are Americans afraid of immigrants? Isn't ironic that we have this tradition of fear here, when our country is supposedly founded on immigration and freedom from oppression?
If they had dogs or cats in heat like that the public out cry would be overwhelming. Modern day Illegal immigrants are used against the American working class just like immigrants in the past and freed slaves, history shows those who are willing to look. The ruling class in America is willing to use any tactic to keep society fractured and resentful of eachother. The reason these human beings are treated so poorly is because they've been dehumanized. This situation exist because of the ruling class in America wanted cheap labor to fill their fields, meat packing plants, and other jobs they can get away with using a unprotected work force.
Like waiters, hotel maids and dishwashers.
I have to agree with the last comment about dehumanization of the population here is AZ. I have been here all my life and have seen many changes in this arena. This has been going on since the states inception into statehood. As a matter of fact my family nor I would be here if it wasn't for wealthy americans looking for cheap labor. As far as our so called Sheriff.... he is a complete moron! He is not only endangering the lives of his prisoners but he is also putting his officers at risk. Can you imagine having to stand there in full guard uniform in the same 140 degree heat as the prisoners? And God forbid if a group of officers should say anything... Joe will send his informants out to find who in not conforming and they will be gone! I agree overcrowding is a problem and the tent city can deal with the overflow but only in months that are cool enough as not to endanger human life.... But Joe doesn't seem to give a shit about anything but his media machine.
And No Thom we shouldn't demand that business owners be held in that tent city (In downtown Phoenix not Tucson) We should demand that that tent city be put out of commission during the hottest times of the year.
Fijate bien-todos somos seres humanos.Siento muy agradecido que el gobierno de Mexico me lo doy la opportunidad de vivir y trabajar ahi por 2.5 anos.Yo soy Canadiense pero tengo confianza en mi conocimeinto de Espanol.We are all immigrants to the indigineous people of the New World.No one is pure anything-I am Cdn., Belgian, Scottish, Normand French and Dutch, perhaps some German and Scandinavian.Should I have to go back to where I came from-Scotland OK but I am French in name only.I only feel comfortable in the English and Spanish worlds.Karl Marx said workers of the world unite-not beat up on foreigners and scapegoat them.I am also grateful to the governments of Germany and China for letting me live and work there too.The whole world is becoming more cosmopolitan.
We should have an agreement with the Mexican government to take them to the border where they would be picked up by Mexican authorities. Why don't we? That being said, I have worked with these people all of my life. Most of them are decent, fun, hardworking individuals. As someone who chose the hospitality industry as my work, I know that this situation has cost me any leverage at requesting a wage that keeps up with inflation, but I cannot blame any group of people who are simply trying to survive. I don't think people (on this side of the border) realize that Northern Mexico use to be successfully agricultural until we stole their water by damming the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers. Now they are a dust bowl. An excellent thing to do would be to build them the largest desalinization plants ever built using tidal energy and thermal vent energy on both coasts. Fund the building of an aquaduct system (put a lot of people to work), and give them a shot at repairing the damage we've done. Northern Mexico would be so pretty, the direction of the flow of immigration would reverse. It's the moral thing to do and I like the irony.
Ok now, I just think you're being entirely too hard on those poor CEO's and on Sheriff Joe, because I'm sure that if they give it a thought or two, they'll realize that more than anything in the world, they want to invite those illegal immigrants to move in with them, into their gated communities so they can lend them their BMWs. Or, another solution would be to deport Sheriff Joe and the people who hire illegals; send them to Mexico and the other third world countries that they have turned into third world countries with their inhuman foreign policies, misdirected foreign aid, ridiculous drug laws, and so on. Maybe a few years of having to walk five miles to get drinking water will put the milk of human kindness into them. And maybe eating a few teaspoons of rice and beans a day will make them appreciate the desperation of the illegals. Every single one of those hypocritical, cynical, mean-hearted idiots who wants illegals treated badly, would do exactly the same thing in their shoes. In fact, if the wealthy republicans were in those illegals' shoes, they would be killing people to get better shoes.
Speaking of prisoners and law enforcement, how is it that U.S. Constitutional rights are now, suddenly, not applicable to foreigners when they are under action by U.S. authorities? How is it less important that foreigners are not wrongly convicted and punished?
People like Katherine Herridge of Fox News would deny accused terrorists a fair trial because "they are not like us". Do, then, only people who we like personally deserve any due process? Is it only important that people we like personally are not wrongly convicted? Then we might as well dispense with any fair method of establishing guilt or innocence and just imprison or kill everyone we don't like. I susect that that is the kind of system of "justice" that Republicans ultimately want.
These are the "rights of the accused" we are talking about. The rights of the accused exist to PROTECT THE INNOCENT not to priveledge the guilty. Dispensing with those rights is a major step in laying the foundation for a police state.
The real issue is that rather than deporting them -- which is what used to be done -- they are housed by private for-profit prisons for months waiting to be deported so that these politically connected and favored prison companies get paid to house them before the government deports them. That's what privatization of the public sector really means. This is what small government really results, only its not really small at all, because we are paying more money housing them in private prisons. Outsourcing government functions to private companies results in this type of expensive inefficiency.
Thom, Re "Obama to stand up & start punching.
Don't think it's going to happen...
Obama Has Finally Become Dick Cheney
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/obama-has-finally-be...
You'd think that President Obama would take a different view. After all, he might not be in the White House today if the Bush Administration would've succeeded in keeping all its secrets: the torture, the detainee deaths, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the spying on Americans, the faulty pre-war intelligence in Iraq, and all the rest. One would expect Obama of all people to see the value in Risen's reporting - the real ways in which he has helped to preserve civil liberties, American freedom, and accountability in government - and to weigh that against the national security implications of reporting in 2006 on a bungled CIA effort that happened way back in the year 2000.
Instead, a president who once championed whistle-blowers has adopted Cheney's view, and as Glenn Greenwald puts it, "the Obama administration appears on the verge of fulfilling Dick Cheney's nefarious wish beyond what even Cheney could achieve." All this while failing to prosecute the much more serious Bush era illegal acts that Risen has uncovered in his reporting.
Re: The lady who is so disgusted with Obama but will vote for him anyway, because she doesn't want a republican in his place.
And you wonder why Obama doesn't listen to you? Why should he? He knows you believe you have no where else to go.
What a wonderful idea.
Really THOM, Actually Sheriff Joe is my hero as he is dealing the situation at hand. First of all, these people who are enjoying tent city, should have thought longer and harder before they did what they did that got there, living off the state. The Republican party continues to run around in circles looking for theeee canidate that can beat Obama. They really have a canidate, AZ Governor Jan Brewer is the only one who is dealing with the serious problems the illegal immigration has caused in her state and dealing with the budget problems by heaven forbid, raised taxes to cover the free spending practices before she came into office. When we get all local law enforcement agencies at all levels to arrest and deport the illegals that are taking away good paying jobs which have lowered the pay scale and taken away benefits the employers of these people are allowed to do.
Look at Temp agencies if you want to find out who's hiring illegals.
Here in Illinois, temp agencies have two sets of employees, Temp and Temp to hire.
The Temp won't pass any kind of background check, and as a rule speak little or no english.
The temp agency asks if you need temp or temp to hire . This is code to see if you need someone with a valid ID. In our case we only use temp to hire, and aboue 25% of these individuals (who initially passed a SSN check) get flagged around day 60 when their recently purchased identity shows up as being used for work in 3 states t the same time.
You are wrong on immigration issues, which should be surprising, since you purport to be concerned about middle class and working poor Americans, but is not, since support of illegal aliens appears to be a point of religious fervor with "progressives", as the supply side monetarism and "free trade" of Reaganomics is with conservatives. Immigration is an issue of economics and union busting.
As to enforcement against employers, The Center For American Progress rails against E-Verify on the ground that there might be a greater than .08% error rate in the program. Two to four percent error in E-Verify would be a small price to pay for at least minimal enforcement of the laws against hiring illegals that were part of the shell game of the 1986 Reagan amnesty. Are you willing to support a national I.D. card which would prevent employers from being able to claim excusable ignorance of the immigration status of their employees?
Also, there was a serious problem of illegal immigration before the Reagan amnesty, which was a bait and switch to alleviate public pressure. In the ’80's, approximately 3,000 illegal alien women per month presented themselves to L.A. County General alone for childbirth at taxpayer expense. I once took the depositions of several of them in an insurance fraud scam. They had it calculated to the penny re how to live on the Aid To Dependent Children payments.
We should be declaring a moratorium on all immigration, including family reunification, H1b visas, and asylum (which is rampant with fraud and non-appearance at hearing dates), while we have approximately 20,000,000 Americans unemployed or underemployed, at least five applicants for every job, and new Silicon Valley entrepreneurs contracting work out to India and China rather than hiring Americans. Do not try to hide behind the cant that the illegals just do work Americans will not do. Drive by any construction site in California and see who is doing the work that used to be done by trade union carpenters, plumbers, roofers, floor layers, plasterers, electricians, construction laborers and hod carriers, as an example of how illegal labor has been used to destroy the trade unions. American workers are still being required to train the H1b immigrants who are replacing them at greatly reduced salaries. I am surprised at the cowed nature of our work force. When will they become outraged and react?
If you really care about Americans and solving the problems of the lack of jobs, the shrinking of the middle class and the siphoning up of all of the wealth produced in this society by the top 5% and mostly by the top 1%, you must not only attack the trade policies followed since WWII and the export of industries, jobs and money which have resulted from them (this did not start with Reagan, although I understand why you want to castigate that national disaster), and the tax policies of Reagan, Bush and Obama which have contributed so much to the financial mess, but must also recognize that immigration, especially illegal immigration, constitutes a virtually inexhaustible supply of scab labor to break unions and pull down wages, the holy grail of employers since Colonial times.
Further, how about an excise on all payroll for outsourced work equal to 150% of the U.S. wage pre-outsourcing? If that requires bailing out of GATT and the WTO, good riddance. Also, as a minimum, tax all persons and entities having income from within and from outside of the U.S. on a unified enterprise basis similar to that used by California for multi-state income. The idea used to be to tax income of Americans from all sources, with a credit given for foreign taxes paid. If the companies re-domesticate to a foreign jurisdiction, tax them on the unified enterprise basis to assure that they pay on every penny derived from the U.S. Put tariffs on the products they bring into the U.S.
I would be interested in your responses, but I suspect that sending this to you will be like dropping a stone down a deep well.
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Thom - - it sounds like you could have written the script to the video.