Question of the Day

The Tea Party worked hard to purge racists from its ranks. So why it is acceptable for the left to include the Communist Party in their weekend "One Nation" rally? There was a time in this country when labor unions purged communists from their ranks.



BTW, Left Coast Rebel, Temple of Mut, and Shane Atwell have some great coverage contrasting the One Nation Rally with Glenn Beck's August event.

Compassion and Illegal Immigration

The left is always talking about compassion, but where is their compassion when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration? A few key points.

The Tea Party advocates enforcement at the border, which somehow makes us racist? But crossing the border is dangerous for illegal migrants for a number of reasons. Consider this:

The number of deaths among illegal immigrants crossing the Arizona desert from Mexico could reach a new monthly high, a county medical examiner said Friday. Since July 1, the bodies of 40 illegal immigrants have been taken to the office of Dr. Bruce Parks, the Pima County medical examiner. At that rate, Dr. Parks said, the deaths could top the single-month record of 68 in July 2005.

The summer heat and lack of water is killing people.

And what about the coyotes? From wikipedia:

It is often very difficult for the police to identify the suspects, because many groups might be involved. Authorities think that most of the more violent deaths were orchestrated by illegal immigrant smugglers, known as coyotes.

The coyotes (a term used to describe people who smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States for profit) are infamous for the way in which they treat their clients, who are also often deemed as "human cargo." Cases of rape and beatings by coyotes have been reported by illegal immigrants who were smuggled into the United States by coyotes. The number of times this has happened is hard to ascertain since many illegal immigrants fear they would be deported if they went to the police for help, and because the coyotes often threaten to hurt family members that are still in their native countries.

By selectively enforcing the border, the United States government policies are the primary cause of these tragedies.

What about the Obama administrations policy of "silent raids?" This is a policy where the administration reviews payroll records at plants and farms. From the New York Times:

The audits force businesses to fire every suspected illegal immigrant on the payroll— not just those who happened to be on duty at the time of a raid — and make it much harder to hire other unauthorized workers as replacements.

What would one expect from the most anti-business administration in living memory? Now, I know we could say that these businesses should not be hiring illegals. However, this policy hurts everyone. The businesses lose money, hurting the economy. The communities are saddled with increased costs to support the newly unemployed illegals, because no one is sent home.

“Even if discovered, illegal aliens are allowed to walk free and seek employment elsewhere” said Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “This lax approach is particularly troubling,” he said, “at a time when so many American citizens are struggling to find jobs.”

My key concern is that this is not real enforcement, because only employers get penalized, and we are still left with the burden of supporting the immigrants. From the same article:

Many immigrants purchased new false documents and went looking for jobs in more distant orchards, former Gebbers Farms workers said. But the word is out among growers in the region to avoid hiring immigrants from the company because ICE knows they are unauthorized.

“Many people are still crying because this is really hard,” said M. García, 41, a former Gebbers packing house worker who has been out of a job since January.

...

After the firings, Gebbers Farms advertised hundreds of jobs for orchard workers. But there were few takers in the state.

I added the last point, because we are going to have to get serious about a guest worker program once we secure the border.

So I ask those on the left, which is more humane? The current policy of selective border enforcement with internal employer sanctions or a policy of strict border enforcement that would preclude people from making the trek across the desert in the first place? The results of the Obama policy are clear: dead bodies in the desert, kidnappings in Phoenix, lost production in agriculture, illegal immigrants still wandering America. Compassion?

My Anti-Corporate Agenda

Coffee Party member OBRag called me out in the comments of my last post on that subject, asking where I got my anti-left wing sensibilities from (he said we were all in it together as paycheck slaves) and was seeking cooperation on an anti-corporate agenda. I have edited my response from the comments:

Thanks for commenting. You pose an interesting philosophical question as to where I get my anti-left wing sensibilities from, I may try a blog on that some day. With respect to corporations, they are neither inherently good nor evil, but opportunistic. The free market is the most effective disciplining force that keeps their behavior under control, even turning corporate behavior to a net positive. I think that many corporations today have become incredible forces for good in the world. American corporations help feed the world, and American corporations brought the PC and the internet to the world for two examples.

The most egregious corporate abuses occur when they team up with big government, see Kelo vs New London and its aftermath. In general, if someone is a wage slave, then they need to get new skills and find new work that will make them happy or go into business for themselves. We are not at the mercy of corporations in our employment any more than we are as consumers. With respect to the banks, they are subsidized under too big to fail, when many should have just gone bankrupt. There is deposit insurance to protect the little guy. It is the government intervention that encourages the risk taking that led to the financial collapse. The answer is to punish the stockholders with bankruptcy and the corporate executives with loss of their jobs.
As I have said before, if we want an anti-corporate agenda, then let's end the subsidies, bail outs and tax breaks that go to corporations. But that would mean vast simplification of the tax code not seen since Reagan and Rostenkowski worked out a deal. In general, it means we have to renounce government interference in the economy to achieve a true anti-corporate agenda. But politicians of both parties can't resist the temptation. This is where the Tea party comes in, we educate the public on the negative impact and demand a smaller more accountable government. I'm not talking laissez-faire but just minimally intrusive policies.

For example, on health care, wouldn't it have been good enough to just subsidize the lower income brackets to purchase health care and guarantee portability so that pre-existing conditions can be covered? No the left wanted vastly more government intervention than that; now we have goodies provided for all sorts of industry groups with a huge new bureaucracy to decide winners and losers in the industry, that will only cause more corporate cash to flow into elections. In my view, the left wing agenda just fed the very beast it purports to be trying to slay. Peter Senge talks about this in a different way in The Fifth Discipline, we create the very reality that causes the problem we are trying to deal with, because we fail to apply systems thinking to the problem. Big government turns out to be the cause of big business abuse not the cure.

The only sensible response is to have policies that encourage, not limit, competition, to temper corporate ills. It turns out that increased government spending and regulation both have the effect of shielding corporations from competition by erecting barriers to entry. Once again a minimalist approach to regulation, and a dedication to smaller government are necessary to achieve the outcomes the left says they desire. The alternative is full state ownership of the means of production, aka communism. I guess that also answers why I have anti-left sensibilities, it's about the freedom.

Keeping Tabs on the Nutroots Nation

Three quick items. I saw an article on HufPo, which I will not dignify with a link, that basically says the Tea Party is racist. The logic? Tea Party's are against the bank bailouts but also against banking reform, so we don't have any valid position. (That the allege reform might make matters worse, doesn't occur to this political Einstein.) Therefore only racism is left. Obviosusly. Plus Tea Party types didn't protest Bush doing the same things that Obama is now doing, therefore the only possible explanation is racism. The fact that there are many African-Americans in the movement overlooked. The fact that maybe we just hit the limit, the fact that Obama's deficits are multiples of Bush, with no end in sight? None of this occurs to the wingnuts.

There will be a Coffee Party right here in San Diego, at Lestat's Coffee House in the heart of North Park. Noon, Sat. March 13. You can sign up here. Note that the Coffee Party is supposedly all about the love and cooperation to solve our nation's problems (read pass Obamacare.) So I'm thinking, what if I sign up and show up with my Viva la Reagan Revolucion T? How much love do you thing I would get? What if lots of Tea Party types signed up? If I went, I would absolutely be on my best behavior, because I like the fact that people are caring about the political process. But I just predict intolerance from this movement. (BTW, there might be common ground for discussion, on the Coffee Party facebook page they linked to an article about how the Senate health care bill provides all sorts of loopholes for insurers to game the system. An opening discussion point might with a lefty type might go like this. "Hey I noticed how forcing more Americans to purchase health care is a big windfall for the insurance industry. We must oppose such a calamity.")

And in the category of "I should have known better," the Daily Kossacks have dropped any pretense that they are against Obamacare because it doesn't contain a public option and are in full throated cheerleading mode. I think this means we can't count on any principles from House Democrat lefties who might vote against a bill that in fact violates many of their stated principles.

P.S. While writing this post, I signed up for that coffee party. Don't know if I'll go, any advice?

So That's Why the Left's Agenda is Stalled

Broken windows at Fisher auto plant in Flint, MI,1937.

If nothing else good comes from drawing out the health care debate and Democrat Congresscritters tanking poll numbers, it is that the rest of the left's political agenda is pretty much in the toilet. But now the real reason their agenda has not gone anywhere has been revealed Harold Meyerson in the WaPo, an insufficiently violent and lawless mob movement to further the "progressive" agenda. I could not believe some of what I read in his article:

But if there's a common feature to the political landscapes in which Carter, Clinton and now Obama were compelled to work, it's the absence of a vibrant left movement. The America over which FDR presided was home to mass organizations of the unemployed; farmers' groups that blocked foreclosures, sometimes at gunpoint; general strikes that shut down entire cities, and militant new unions that seized factories. Both communists and democratic socialists were enough of a presence in America to help shape these movements, generating so much street heat in so many congressional districts that Democrats were compelled to look leftward as they crafted their response to the Depression.

So the cat's out of the bag, the left can't make significant progress without violent communist protests simmering in the streets. By contrast, notice how the libertarians and conservatives have already made huge strides with the very peaceful tea parties.

And consider this gem:

The right has had great success over the past year in building a movement that isn't really for anything but that has channeled anew the fears and loathings of millions of Americans.

Doesn't stand for anything? The Tea Party movement doesn't stand for anything except the preservation and restoration of freedom and liberty which has been under assault since Obama took office. It's the power of no. No, I don't want some bureaucrat regulating my doctor's visit. No, I don't want more of my take home pay to go to the government. No, I don't want to wreck the economy because of debatable scientific hypothesis. No, I don't want my grandchildren saddled with debt.

Who's Afraid of the Government Option in Health Care? I am.

Sometimes the lefties just makes things too easy for a lib/con blogger. But, first some background. The Obamacare proposal to nationalize health care by stealth has been effectively unmasked by Wall Street Journal, the American Medical Association, Roger Hedgecock, Rush Limbaugh, et al. It will work like this. The government will offer cut rate health insurance to those currently not covered by their employer. Further, they will assess a tax on employers who don't offer such insurance. But for most small businesses and maybe big ones, the tax will initially be cheaper to pay than the current cost of health insurance for their employees. As surely as supply follows demand, there will be a stampede away from employer funded health insurance to gummint funded health insurance. Next, the Congress will look at the huge budget hole created and jack up the tax on the employers. But when employers try to reinstate their own health insurance programs, it will be too late, either there won't be any insurers left or the law will prevent that option. (Hat tip to Roger Hedgecock for laying this out on his show.)

So now that the plan has been outed, Josh Greenman is defending the Obama plan by essentially saying "hey, what's the big deal, government provides services alongside the private sector in plenty of areas." And the shining examples he chooses? Public schools, the Postal Service, Amtrak, Social Security and the VA health system. Hooray, we're saved; the feds are going to run health care with their customary vaunted efficiency.

I won't even bother to respond; like I said, this is too easy. Recommend you click the links, especially Social Security.