The predictable and understandable backlash from Latinos is quickly emerging:
Adam Bustos, a third-generation Mexican-American, has voted Republican since Ronald Reagan ran for president. But he has been reconsidering his party affiliation since Arizona State Gov. Jan Brewer signed the nation’s toughest immigration law last month.
“I’ve been thinking I might leave the party,” said Mr. Bustos, a 58-year-old Arizona native. “A lot of my Latino Republican friends have been talking about it after this law.”
But the Republicans don’t have to fret too much. The Democrats, with their usual perspicacity and impeccable sense of political timing, have decided to chase teabaggers and do the GOP’s work for them:
The Democrats’ legislative “framework” includes a slew of new immigration enforcement measures aimed at U.S. borders and workplaces. It would further expand the 20,000-member Border Patrol; triple fines against U.S. employers that hire illegal immigrants; and, most controversially, require all American workers — citizens and non-citizens alike — to get new Social Security cards linked to their fingerprints to ease work eligibility checks.
The plan’s emphasis on “securing the border first” before taking steps to allow many of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States to pay fines and apply for legal status was plainly a gesture to Republicans. Even so, no Republican is supporting it, not even Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has been working with Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in bipartisan talks over the issue for months.
The Democrats’ shift underscores how, in the struggle between enforcement advocates and legalization backers, the former seem to be gaining, experts said.
Ideas that were hotly contested in ill-fated Senate debates in 2006 and 2007 seem now to be taken for granted, said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “You’ve seen a lot of movement, and in partisan terms mostly movement on the Democratic side toward Republican positions,” he said.
Even the conservadem corporatists have no good reason to do this. They can serve their Galtish masters freely by demanding comprehensive reform that ensures undocumented workers are treated humanely. And any Democrats who likes to think he or she has a conscience can certainly hold the line. There is only one reason to do this and it’s purely political and it’s even wrong on that basis: if the Democrats actually think they are going to be able to compete for the nativist/racist vote with this kind of thing they are very sadly mistaken. The teabaggers aren’t ever going to vote for the party with the Kenyan Muslim president and the San Francisco feminazi speaker of the House.
On the other hand, they might have been able to make a case to Republican Latinos that their interests are better served by a party that doesn’t think it’s a good idea to stop every dark skinned person on the street to determine whether or not they are Real Americans. Unfortunately, Democrats are running like rats deserting a sinking ship on this issue, so the fastest growing demographic in the country doesn’t have any obvious place to go. Well played.
Update: Did I say that Democrats had bad timing?
New Jersey Would Gain $2 Billion From Offshore Drilling From Chris Prandoni on Friday, April 30, 2010 9:30 AM
“All of the benefits associated with offshore drilling, increased economic output, well-paying jobs, new tax revenue, remain locked up in America’s oil reserves. Although a majority of Americans support offshore development, the Obama administration has put forth a plan that inhibits New Jersey’s economic recovery and ability to grow over the coming years,” said Grover Norquist, President Americans for Tax Reform.
May is a big month for primaries and this week is the kick-off with two tomorrow, one in North Carolina and one in Ohio. (Blue America has endorsed Elaine Marshall in the first and Jennifer Brunner in the second.)
North Carolina is likely to result in a runoff, although Elaine Marshall, despite Menendez’s attempt to decide this race for North Carolina voters, is ahead. National Democrats have starved Jennifer Brunner’s campaign of cash. She’s getting huge grassroots support, but Menendez has managed to shut off all institutional money from her campaign, making it very difficult to get out her inspiring message. In North Carolina grassroots organizations like DFA and local bloggers like Pam Spaulding have endorsed Marshall. Meanwhile the clueless and divisive Menendez couldn’t be doing a better job at re-electing Burr if he were on the GOP payroll. Last Sunday, despite the noises from Inside the Beltway, the Charlotte Observer also endorsed Marshall...
The Ohio blogosphere has largely gotten behind Jennifer Brunner both because she is more progressive on the issues and because she is far more electable in a general. And women’s organizations feel very strongly about this race and about the DSCC’s very strange positioning.
Here’s Brunner:
Howie also issued a last call for our Blue America May primary contest
Blue America is running a kind of contest around the five May Senate primaries by which we’re giving away an RIAA-certfied multi-platinum Barenaked Ladies award disc to the campaign that gets the most votes on this page, a vote being defined as a campaign contribution of at least one dollar. Front-runners have been Jack Conway of Kentucky and Bill Halter of Arkansas. The contest ends at midnight today, so there’s still an opportunity to vote. Please do.
…I’d like to end with the rhetorical question of whether, given the extent to which the US rightwing movement relies on the deliberate promotion of ignorance, anyone, regardless of their philosophical views on conservatism, libertarianism and so on, can associate with this movement and maintain any intellectual integrity.
No.
The converse question for the left, is whether there is any benefit in engaging intellectually with anyone who is, in the end, promoting ignorance and dishonesty by virtue of their affiliations.
May 2, 2010 “At its current leak rate of 5,000 barrels of oil per day, the spill could surpass the size of the 1969 Santa Barbara spill by next week. If the leak cannot be contained, it could exceed the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska by mid June.” Paul Harrison, Environmental Defense Fund
Three scenarios lie ahead. They rank as bad, worse, and ugliest (the latter being catastrophic and unprecedented). There is no “good” here.
The Bad.
Containment chambers are put in place and they catch the outflow from the three ruptures that are currently pouring 200,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf every day. If this works, it will take until June to complete. The chambers are 30-foot-high steel configurations that must be placed on the ocean floor at a depth of one mile. This has never been done before. If early containment is successful, the damages from this accident will be in the tens of billions. The cleanup will take years. The economic impact will be in the five states that have frontal coastline on the Gulf of Mexico: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
The Worse.
The containment attempts fail and oil spews for months, until a new well can successfully be drilled to a depth of 13000 feet below the 5000-foot-deep ocean floor, and then concrete and mud are injected into the existing ruptured well until it is successfully closed and sealed. Work on this approach is already commencing. Timeframe for success is at least three months. Note the new well will have to come within about 20 feet of the existing point where the original well enters the reservoir at a distance of 3.5 miles from the surface drilling rig. Damages by this time may be measured in the hundreds of billions. Cleanup will take many, many years. Tourism, fishing, all related industries may be fundamentally changed for as much as a generation. Spread to Mexico and other Gulf geography is possible.
The Ugliest.
This spew stoppage takes longer to reach a full closure; the subsequent cleanup may take a decade. The Gulf becomes a damaged sea for a generation. The oil slick leaks beyond the western Florida coast, enters the Gulfstream and reaches the eastern coast of the United States and beyond. Use your imagination for the rest of the damage. Monetary cost is now measured in the many hundreds of billions of dollars.
Some thoughts about markets and impacts.
Usually, the first estimates in any crises are too low. That is true here. 1000 barrels a day is now 5000, and some estimates of spillage are trending higher. No one knows exactly. The containment and boom mechanism is subject to weather cooperation as we can see this weekend. Soon we are entering the hurricane season. The thoughts of a storm stirring up the Gulf, hampering any cleanup or remediation drilling effort and creating a huge 10,000 square mile black stew is frightening to every professional in the business.
This will be a financial calamity for many firms, not just BP and its partners and service providers. Their liabilities are immense and must not be underestimated. The first estimate of $12.5 billion is only a starter.
Thousands of small and independent businesses as well as larger public companies in tourism are hurt here. This is not just about the source of half the nation’s shrimp. That is already a casualty. It’s also about the bank loans for the $200,000 shrimp boat and the house the boat owner and/or his employees live in and the fact that this shock piles on a fragile financial system that is trying to recover from a three-year financial crisis. Case study, my fishing guide in the Everglades splits his time between Florida and Louisiana. His May bookings in LA have cancelled. His colleagues lost theirs and their lodge will be empty. They are busy trying to find work in the clean up. For him, his wife and eleven year old daughter, his $600 a day guide fees just went “poof”. When I asked him if he thought he had a legal claim on BP, he said he hadn’t thought about it yet but it gave him pause. As we suggested above, the $12.5 billion loss estimate is only a starter.
Federal deficit spending will certainly rise by tens, and maybe hundreds, of billions as emergency appropriations are directed at larger and larger efforts to clean up this mess. At the same time, federal and state revenues tied to Gulf-region businesses will fall. My colleague John Mousseau will be discussing the impact on state and local government debt in a separate research commentary.
We expect that the Federal Reserve will extend the timeframe that we have come to know as the “extended period” in the making of its monetary policy. We do not expect the Fed to raise interest rates at all for the rest of this year, and maybe well into next year. We expect to see the deterioration of the economic statistics for the US to reveal the onset of this oil-slick crisis in May, and the negative impact will intensify during the summer months. A “double-dip” recession probably has been made more likely by this tragedy.
We are at the highest level of cash in our US stock accounts that we have seen in over a year and a half. We expect a market correction will present entry points at lower stock prices. We have exited the financial sectors, including the insurance ETF. We now worry about the banks that are exposed. We do not own the major oil stocks now. Some of them face enormous liability payments.
There is a silver lining, although the fellow who wrote this doesn’t see it that way:
In addition, the offshore-drilling energy sector will face much-increased and more costly regulation. Deepwater and all offshore drilling in the US has been set back for a generation, just as Three Mile Island set back nuclear power development for decades. No politician can win an election now with a permissive view on drilling. Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill” now condemns her to political marginalization. Off shore drilling has lurched to the top of the political agenda in this November’s election cycle.
The funny thing is that they weren’t winning elections with a permissive view on drilling before this. It’s just that every 20 years or so, the president proclaims that some genius has invented technology that makes oil unspillable, opens up drilling somewhere and then a huge accident happens. In 1969 it was Santa Barbara, 1989 it was Valdez and now this. And in between accidents everyone forgets and decides that driving anything less than a behemoth gashog is unAmerican.
So my financial advice is to wait a couple of weeks and then buy BP. If history is any guide it’s going to make a very smart comeback in no time.
Ron Kirkland, George Flinn and Randy Smith criticized President Obama for trying to lift the ban, arguing that it would add “unnecessary” stress the military. Then, Kirkland re-called how gay servicemembers were treated during his time in the military:
Kirkland, a Vietnam veteran, said of his time in the military: “I can tell you if there were any homosexuals in that group, they were taken care of in ways I can’t describe to you.” Smith, who served in the first Iraqi war, added: “I definitely wouldn’t want to share a shower with a homosexual. We took care of that kind of stuff, just like (Kirkland) said.”
It sounds to me like this sadistic creep wishes someone would “take care of him” like he “took care of” others.
When asked about his comments later, he said he was just joking and that he was really worried that a “bad element” was going to come into the military if don’t ask don’t tell is lifted which will make the poor gays very vulnerable.
Did I mention that both of the men who said this crap aren’t old Birchers remembering their glory days in WWII? They’re running for congress. And they made these remarks to the allegedly socially tolerant tea party.
From what I saw of the highlights today, last night was a low point. But I can’t let the event pass without mentioning that the google search that most often leads to my blog is for this post about the White House Correspondents dinner in 2005. If you click through you’ll understand why.
I wonder if anyone other than I flashed on the Rachel Maddow documentary about Tim McVeigh and Oklahoma City the other night when they read about this bomb? Obviously this couldn’t have done the same kind of damage, but the thing about smoke filling up the cab is right out of McVeigh’s rather unbelievable story of what happened when he drove up to the Murrah Federal Building with his truck full of fertilizer and explosives. It’s probably a total coincidence, but the first thing I thought of when I heard it described was that strange story.
Media Matters caught David Gregory doing his job and correcting the oleaginous phony Mike Pence on immigration reform:
He’s right, of course. The Republicans did block immigration reform during the Bush years. The question now is whether there is one Republican Senator who will break a filibuster. From what I gather, they have been counting on Huckleberry to convince a couple of Senators to come over with him which is like counting on Ahmadinejad bringing along Hezbollah to recognize Israel’s right to exist. It would require an earth shattering change of personal character and strategy on both their parts. It’s possible, but probably not the most practical plan. In fact, it’s so impracticaly, you can only assume it is designed to fail.
So, the problem is still Republicans, obviously. But it’s also pretty obvious that it’s Democrats too. I don’t know how many votes they have today for immigration reform in either house, but if this is any indication, they are losing them rather than gaining them. I doubt very seriously that they have 59 in the Senate and who knows what they have in the House. The ground has shifted because of inaction and economic distress and it’s very likely that there have been a lot of Democratic defections since the last go. And I’d guess they would have a hard time getting more than a handful of Republicans, even those who desperately need Latino votes. The whole political class is running scared of the angry right, as usual.
The irony of all of this is that this issue has actually been solving itself the last couple of years:
The estimated 12 million immigrants believed to be living in the country illegally have by no means disappeared from the American work force. In the past decade, the population skyrocketed 40 percent. They now fill about 5 percent of American jobs.
However, the dramatic year-after-year increases in the population have stalled. The Pew Hispanic Center, which regularly estimates the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., concluded in its most recent report last April that the growth in their population began slowing in 2006, a full year before the recession hit.
Roughly 300,000 fewer immigrants came to the country each year between 2005 and 2008, an almost 40 percent drop annually, according to the center.
As the recession deepened in 2009 and into 2010, the numbers likely continued to decline, said Jeff Passel, a senior demographer with the center, which is preparing an update of their report.
Some immigrants say their decision to leave or stay away is much more subtle than fear of detection or the lack of jobs. They feel a broader disillusionment with a country that was once more welcoming — or at least grudgingly tolerant — during good times, but has abandoned them as the economy soured.
“We’re sold this idea of the ‘American Dream’,” said Gustavo, a 46-year-old undocumented construction worker who says he’s watched fellow illegal workers return home, discouraged by the lack of jobs. “But when we arrive, we realize it doesn’t exist.”
The American Dream has been patented for use only by Real Americans, I’m afraid. But immigrants shouldn’t feel slighted. According to the right wing anyone who doesn’t vote Republican is “foreign” too.
Arizona’s problems, whatever they are, can’t be chalked up to illegal immigration. The numbers are going down there just like everyplace else. What they do have is some high profile crimes due to the dumbass drug and gun policies. But even that isn’t born out as a crime wave:
FBI Uniform Crime Reports and statistics provided by police agencies, in fact, show that the crime rates in Nogales, Douglas, Yuma and other Arizona border towns have remained essentially flat for the past decade, even as drug-related violence has spiraled out of control on the other side of the international line. Statewide, rates of violent crime also are down.
While smugglers have become more aggressive in their encounters with authorities, as evidenced by the shooting of a Pinal County deputy on Friday, allegedly by illegal-immigrant drug runners, they do not routinely target residents of border towns.
In 2000, there were 23 rapes, robberies and murders in Nogales, Ariz. Last year, despite nearly a decade of population growth, there were 19 such crimes. Aggravated assaults dropped by one-third. No one has been murdered in two years.
Bermudez said people unfamiliar with the border may be confused because Nogales, Sonora, has become notorious for kidnappings, shootouts and beheadings. With 500 Border Patrol agents and countless other law officers swarming the Arizona side, he said, smugglers pass through as quickly and furtively as possible.
“Everywhere you turn, there’s some kind of law enforcement looking at you,” Bermudez said. “Per capita, we probably have the highest amount of any city in the United States.”
In Yuma, police spokesman Sgt. Clint Norred said he cannot recall any significant cartel violence in the past several years. Departmental crime records show the amount of bloodshed has remained stable despite a substantial population increase.
So where’s this new anti-immigrant fervor coming from?
Since the murder of Cochise County rancher Robert Krentz by a suspected illegal immigrant in March, politicians and the national press have fanned a perception that the border is inundated with bloodshed and that it’s escalating.
In a speech on the Senate floor last week, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that the failure to secure that border between Arizona and Mexico “has led to violence – the worst I have ever seen.”
He reiterated that Saturday after speaking at the West Valley Military Family Day event in Glendale, saying the concern that drug violence could spill across the border remains intense because Mexico’s political situation is volatile.
“The violence is on the increase,” McCain told The Arizona Republic. “The president of Mexico has said that it’s a struggle for the existence of the government of Mexico.”
Congressional members, including Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and John Shadegg, R-Ariz., sent President Barack Obama a letter asking that National Guard soldiers be sent to the border because “violence in the vicinity of the U.S. Mexico border continues to increase at an alarming rate.”
And last month, as she signed Arizona’s tough new law cracking down on illegal immigrants, Gov. Jan Brewer also called for National Guard troops. The law makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires authorities to check documents of people they reasonably suspect to be illegal. Brewer said she signed it to solve what she said is an Arizona “crisis” caused by “border-related violence and crime due to illegal immigration.”
Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff of Pima County, said there always has been crime associated with smuggling in southern Arizona, but today’s rhetoric does not seem to jibe with reality.
“This is a media-created event,” Dupnik said. “I hear politicians on TV saying the border has gotten worse. Well, the fact of the matter is that the border has never been more secure.”
Well sure. This is the way right wing populism always works. The Big Money Boyz screw the little guy and the little guy, feeling impotent, takes it out on the even littler guy, usually an African American or recent immigrant. And then a bunch of politicians exploit it for their own gain. Welcome to America whenever things aren’t going well.
Treating anyone who looks like they might be Latino like a criminal isn’t going to assuage anyone’s fears and frustrations, however. In fact, it’s going to make it worse because the entire Hispanic community — citizens and non-citizens alike — can no longer trust the authorities and are far less likely to cooperate in investigations, which makes everyone less safe. And because of that one of the sad results of of this whole mess is that it is now going to be open season on Latinos, with the predator types assured that their victims won’t feel comfortable going to the police. Everybody loses but the assholes.
*Note: click through to the McClatchy article to see a video of a truly decent man talking about illegal immigration. He’s what I would call an old-school American straight arrow. There are more of them than we think. They just don’t prance around in costumes screaming about birth certificates and pretending to be patriots.
I’ll be doing my regular monthly discussion thing at Virtually Speaking this evening at 5pm PDT and 8pmEDT with blogospheric commenter extraordinaire Stuart Zechman. You can listen on blogtalk radio as well.
This is turning out to be a very fun experiment with a free flowing one hour talk, featuring a rotating list of interesting bloggers, activists and others. You may find it an interesting alternative to the usual fatuous gasbags. (I know I am often a fatuous gasbag myself, but none of us are usual, I guarantee it.)
If you click the links you’ll see that there is a ton of Virtually Speaking activity featuring very impressive guests on important topics. It’s developed into a serious alternative media and is a valuable blogospheric resource.
There is such a plethora of conspiracy thinking going on these days from all directions that I’m dizzy with it. Nothing is an accident, there are no coincidences, no circumstance is as it seems and vast numbers of people are all involved in arcane conspiracies — except us ordinary schmucks. I’m guess this is the result of about 40 years of very rapid social change, the new gilded economy and the usual millennial madness. (Or it’s all true and Armageddon actually is upon us.) Either way, of all the conspiracy theories I’ve heard recently from any place on the political spectrum (and this includes Beck) this one takes the cake:
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I didn’t hear this myself, but I have been informed that President Obama is sending SWAT teams to the Gulf oil rigs. SWAT teams? I’m waiting on audio sound bite confirmation of this, but why in the world would you send SWAT teams to Gulf oil rigs? Oh, I know! Obama probably thinks the tea party blew up the rig. That’s what it is. (laughing) Yes. Of course the tea party did it! (laughing) Seriously, you know, this rig… We had this call from a guy out there who said nobody’s talking about whether this was an act of sabotage because I guess they can’t prove it, but they’re going to send SWAT teams down there? He was going to send a SWAT team to the rig that blew up or are you going to send a SWAT team to other rigs? What’s going on here? Remember, this rig blew April 21st, which is one day prior to “Erf” Day. I have a story here from Reuters, September 24th, 2008 (shuffling paper) right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers: “Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmental crusader Al Gore urged young people on Wednesday to engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon.” So you got the guru here urging civil disobedience, you got the regime sending SWAT teams down there to all the rigs in the Gulf. They’re sending SWAT teams to all the rigs in the Gulf! Whoa ho-ho-ho. So obviously Obama thinks the tea partiers are expert scuba divers as well or maybe they have their own fleet of underwater submarines that can go deep enough to go undetected, set explosives, and hightail it back to the protests in Ohio, or wherever they (laughing) happen to be. So 15 years of no global warming. “That’s just anecdotal! It doesn’t disapprove anything! It doesn’t disapprove that there’s a man-made threat going on.” But one oil spill — one oil spill which might have been intentional — is enough to prove that offshore oil drilling is unsafe and should never be done. This is the logic we’re forced to live with. There hasn’t been any warming in 15 years, that doesn’t mean anything. Those e-mails were hoaxed! The readings at the climate unit in East Anglia, they were all made up. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is who leaked those e-mails. What the e-mails said doesn’t matter.” But those guys made it all up, and they wouldn’t produce the data that led to their conclusions. They say they lost it. “Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter at all!” But it hasn’t warmed in 15 years. “It doesn’t matter.” But I just saw a story you guys say you’re looking for the “lost” heat. “Doesn’t matter.” One oil rig blows up, and it proves we can’t dig, drill, find more oil. RUSH: Now, here’s the regime kicking into action here on the Gulf oil well or the rig explosion, President Obama mere moments ago in the Rose Garden before presenting the teacher of the year award. OBAMA: I do want to speak briefly to the American people about the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier today DHS Secretary Napolitano announced that this incident is of national significance and the Department of Interior has announced that they will be sending SWAT teams to the Gulf to inspect all platforms and rigs and I have ordered the secretaries of interior and Homeland Security as well as administrator Lisa Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency to visit the site on Friday to ensure that BP and the entire US government is doing everything possible not just to respond to this incident but also to determine its cause. RUSH: Wow. All right, so SWAT teams, we’re sending big sis down there, Janet Napolitano, to look at all the valves and stuff, make sure they’re properly greased. He-he-he-he. Ahem. And Lisa Jackson is doing the same thing. So obviously the regime is open to the idea that this is not an accident. The regime is open to the possibility that this could well have been on purpose. Don’t forget, the original Earth Day, 40 years ago, was inspired by the river in Cleveland catching fire. Forty years later, the day before Earth Day this year, the Gulf is on fire. Coincidence? Jury’s still out. The regime is on the case, soon to tell us what happened.
[…]
RUSH: I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig. Since they’re sending SWAT teams down there now this changes the whole perspective of this. Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.
That’s not some looney teabagger from Nowheresville. That’s the man whose ring every Republican in government is required to kiss.
And when you think about it, the fact that this lunatic became thoroughly mainstream should have alerted us that The End was nigh years ago.
