Where Did She Go Wrong?

A lousy campaign predicated on her insurmountability. I won't say "inevitability" because that word has connotations that I don't believe apply. I don't believe that HRC felt entitled. Her dogged fight seems to suggest otherwise. I do believe that she thought she was insurmountable because of the fundraising and powerbroking implications of the Clintons' position in the Party. That's a strategic assessment, not a Marie Antoinette grasp of entitlement.

A tack to the Right. It wasn't just on foreign affairs and defense policy. It was also on choice and gay rights issues. Clinton did not have the courage even to exert leadership on critical constitutional issues. Granted, the Democrats' legacy position should have been pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, and would have been far more risky to stake out than the Republicans' legacy "contra" views. But that doesn't excuse Democrats from stepping up. She didn't. Ever.

A stubborn refusal to come clean on a bad Iraq war vote. It really ticked me off that she would not admit to having erred on that decision. It ticked me off worse that she and the rest of the Democrats erred--allowed themselves to be railroaded by the Fear Factor. There, I think, was core character and judgmental weakness on her part and on the part of all who went that way. There simply was not suffient evidence.

A willingness to play racism. Linking Obama to Al Sharpton was a significant error not because it was stupid and racist, but because it lifted the lid and showed the inside of the can, worms and all. This was an utter capitulation to the worst power lust. It was Bill's capitulation, but it reflected on her.

A tin ear. She's had this reputation for many years -- the cookies comment comes to mind. The business about RFK's assassination belongs in this category, in my judgment. I don't believe for a minute that she meant what the Right suggests. I think she was thinking out loud, and what came up, came out. Public officials have to have a better filter than that.

A media network hostile to HRC from Day One. Matthews was there then and he was there now, along with Fox and the rest. The Clintons have attracted a level of hostility not seen since FDR. I've never understood why, when the GOP has given us so many more worthy options. Suffice to say that from Candy Crowley's bitchy innuendo to Chris's outright misogyny and Wolf Blitzer's predictable negative spin, she's had an up-hill climb that no other candidate has faced in this contest. Some substantial part of this hostility is pure sexism.

Bad Bill's legacy (Good Bill's legacy never showed up. We didn't hear much about reigned in spending, a balanced budget, a short, won war, and a long reign of peace. We did hear about Monica, about the ghost of Bill in the Hillary White House, and so on.

Voter sexism. Sure. How much is hard to say, but judging from the boyz in the mainstream media--and some of the girlz too--sexism is alive and well. Missteps and flaws that would have been overlooked in men have been magnified and hammered into our consciousnesses because they are part of Hillary. Not to mention gratuitously sexist and ageist volleys lobbed at her, visually and in words.

But of all the factors that sunk HRC, the most significant, the sine qua non, was that she faced a brilliant, once-in-a-generation competitor. Obama has the magic. In addition, his campaign was right on every point, from its fundraising to its delegate to its tonal strategy. Except for his occasional missteps --campaigning in South Carolina with a professional gay hater -- and despite the spectre of Jeremiah Wright, he has almost always appealed to what we are capable of being at our best. His careful inclusion of us, over against her "me, I, me" rhetoric enlisted us at a deeper level in deciding our future. It will create a deeper buy-in, as well.

AZ's GOP and The Constitution: Oil and Water?

Over at PolitickerAZ is the continuing report of a survey of AZ CD5 Republican primary candidates' views on burning issues of the day.

Now that I've read it, I realize once again that I can't look to Republicans like Susan Bitter Smith and Mark Anderson (or John McCain) to consult the founding documents for guidance on how a true American should resolve a controversial question like gay marriage.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights--and the blood shed to sanctify them--established our Republic. Only they define what it means to be an American. Therefore, patriotic Americans don’t just wear flags on their lapels. They swear allegiance to these founding principles, and solemnly promise to uphold, protect, and defend them.

The Declaration begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Constitution and Bill of Rights reaffirm these distinctively American principles.

There it is, in plain English. Every American knows from first grade that (1) it is self evident (2) that ALL of us have (3) God-given rights that (4) no one can sever from us for any reason. Although we can forfeit these rights by committing certain felony offenses, they cannot be arbitrarily taken away. This means that I have exactly the same right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness that any other American has, whether they agree or not.

If you are a patriotic American, you don’t just give this lip service. You are sworn to uphold my rights just as I am sworn to uphold yours. Further, if you are a patriotic American, you have sworn your allegiance to the conviction that your religion does not trump mine. You have sworn to uphold, protect, and defend my rights as if they were your own.

I have seen Democrats assert these values proudly, and I have also seen Democrats trample them. But in all my 60 years, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a single Republican assert these views in order to defend somebody else’s freedoms.

Surely I'm mistaken, but it certainly seems not. It’s been just the opposite. Republicans truly seem to have an in-the-grain antipathy to the concept that all of us have equal unalienable rights. Instead of affirming that, time and again they seek to limit it—-as in proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage--or undermine it altogether, as in specious “strict construction” and “judicial activism” arguments.

I’ve never understood this, and I want to know.

What is there in the Republican psychology or political philosophy that doesn’t accept, let alone revere, this primary affirmation that makes an American an American?

I’d like to hear Susan Bitter Smith and Mark Anderson and John McCain answer that.

I’d also like to hear them justify their stance on gay marriage with reference to their sworn allegiance to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution, and enumerate the specific, real, concrete, and irreversible harm my marriage in fact has done to them.

I don’t want to hear the rhetoric. I've so been there and done that. I want to see irrefutable proof of tangible harm.

Will they point to their interpretation of religion and say that it transcends the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Not if they are true American patriots. Will they insist that their social and psychological comfort ought to take precedence over my fundamental rights? Not if they are real American patriots.

If they dare make it, I'd like to hear their constitutional defense of their positions that I have no right to live my life in liberty, that they have the right to define whom I may marry, and that my definition of my personal happiness in this most profound of all relationships is not worth their notice. I’m waiting.

Surely it's time for us to hold all our candidates to their oath of office. If they can't even pass that scratch and sniff test, we need to be looking elsewhere.

Sheriff Joe: John Wayne's Mini-Me

That John-Wayne-Wannabe Arpaio wrote a piece in Latino Perspectives Magazine called "Illegal Immigration is Just That--Illegal." In this manifesto, mini-John turned the entire issue into About Joe, Bad Mayor, and the proverbial Group of Vocal Activists, of course.

His main claim is that he don't never selectively enforce the laws. Uh, BWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAA!

Someone near and dear to Pico read that and wrote this:

Sheriffs and DAs have selectively enforced laws since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Who does he think he's kidding?

Here's the deal: We Anglos invited, lured, advertised for, and sometimes bus in poor laborers to do mean, dirty work for cheap. EVERYBODY was just fine with that until the GOP suddenly started making "illegal" immigrants the new Willie Horton--Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo, Faux News, Lou Dobbs, Russell Pearce, and all the rest.

So I figure it has to do with the "Ownership Society"--something like, oh, I dunno, privatized prisons that are built by our tax dollars to give to wealthy cronies (like ball stadiums) and reimbursed by federal and state tax dollars on a per-prisoner basis. Duh. Like the fence, this sudden belated interest in "illegal" immigrants strikes me as just another Keep the GOP in Beemers for Life scheme paid for by you and me and the dumb shmucks who actually put these vultures in office.

It's amazing to watch sworn, self-touting heroes of capitalism throwing thousands of home-renting, house-buying, grocery-eating, goods-producing, clothes-wearing, tax-paying, Social Security contributing CONSUMERS AND THEIR FAMILIES right out of town voluntarily.

Almost as amazing as watching the home loan swindle-driven foreclosures rise, businesses slow down and close, and the school and infrastructure budgets plummet. Thanks. Great job, Brownie!

Hey, I'm one of the "We the people." Here's what *I* want: Raid Anglo neighborhoods and round up cocaine users, drug dealers, predatory swindling lenders, gas-guzzing air polluters, Mormon polygamists, corrupt legislators, office-abusing officials, high-rolling Johns, scofflaw drivers, and tax cheats with the same zest you apply to running after little, unarmed, powerless, poor brown people.

Yeah, THAT's going to happen.

Meanwhile, thank God we have a few decent people in office who can distinguish between racist re-election campaigns and the righteous prosecution of serious crime.

Morning Delight

Once in a while--an interminable while--I come across something that delights me. This morning, I came across two. I found both in one place, which makes the Presbyterian in me wonder if I'm cheating. (He doesn't miss an oppty to bitch.)

Go here for a wonderful rant and here if you love "un-popular"(!) music. Check out his Journal Wunelle, too.

Is that three?

Affordable Prescription Meds at Target

OK, I'm on a roll. In my second Practical Pauline post today, I want to alert you (again) to Target's fantastic prescription medication program.

Here's the deal.

Step 1: If you are taking a prescription medication, look it up online to get the name of the generic equivalent.

Step 2: Find the Target nearest you. Go to its pharmacy website. Download the PDF file of its covered generic medications.

If you locate your generic there, you're in luck!

Step 3: Contact your doctor and ask her or him to prescribe the generic equivalent in either the 1-month or 3-month supply, and request that s/he call in the prescription to Target. (Have the Target pharmacy phone number ready). Target offer a 1-month supply for $4, or a 3-month supply for a fantastic $10. What's not to love?

Even if your doctor wants to see you before changing your prescriptions, it's so worth it.

We just saved something like $2,000 a year. No kidding.

Gas Tips for Arizonans

Governor Janet has a new "gas tips" department on her website that includes lots of useful stuff. Thanks, Gov!

I recommend a visit.

I especially like the cheapest gas in your zipcode link and the trip fuel costs calculator. You enter the year, make, and model of your car, and your destination, and the calculator will give you the round-trip and one-way cost of your gas, to the penny, based on the average cost of gas in the Southwest
($3.82 thanks Bush)









Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it.

Oklahoma, No Way!

Consortium sez,

The Republican-dominated Oklahoma legislature is defining the frontier of xenophobic immigration laws, anti-Muslim bigotry, gay bashing and encouragement of gun-toting students – with Democratic legislators often too timid to resist.

Rep. Randy Terrill, Republican chairman of the Revenue and Taxation Committee, has emerged as a hero of the “protect our borders” crowd by authoring a law – known as HB1804 – that makes it a felony even to give an illegal immigrant a ride.

And that's just for starters!

Terrill is the poster boy for tyrannical excess. If he were in Iraq, his name would be Saddam Hussein, for the only thing between Terrill and public executions of gays, Muslims, and the very undocumented workers who've kept OK in the black for decades is a piece of paper. Republicans' increasingly violent projections, masked as righteous indignation, point to deep recesses of psychopathology that nothing, least of all reason, can penetrate.

Democrats had better find the spine to repudiate the GOP's 8-year frolic in sadism--legalized torture, GLBT witch hunts, midnight roundups, sanctioned harrassment, detention and brutalization, unprovoked invasion, wrack and ruin, and a million dead Iraqis--or OK will be our Brave New World.

That's not OK. There's nothing to be gained from silence and acquiescence except more terror, more death, more torture, more hate, more sadistic public policy. By which I mean that if you, yourself, are not working daily to return us to our defining principles (see Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights), then you are complicit. It's that simple. There are no good silent, intimidated Americans.

If you know any Democrats in the OK legislature, get on the phone and ram some backbone where the sun don't shine.

And then mind your own state house.

For the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion this Memorial Day

Here's to America's First Combat Paratroopers, the heroic 509th and all the selfless, brave, and honorable gentlemen who gave their lives and limbs and life-long inner peace to help defeat the Third Reich in North Africa and Italy. Here's all my love for my dad who lost an eye in North Africa. There was never a better man. Dad, I remember and I always will. I love you and I'm so proud of you.

Partisanship and Principle: There's a Difference

There’s lots of chatter about partisanship lately. Both Matthew Yglesias and Liberal Desert think it’s a good thing.

I don't.

Yglesias’ argument for partisanship hinges on his notion that “[s]trong clashes between coherent parties aren’t a sign that the country is flying apart—they mean we’re getting along better than we think.”

Could have fooled me. If being partisan had anything to do with coherent parties, maybe it would be a synonym for being principled. Unfortunately, partisanship doesn’t mean voting according to principle. In fact, it has a distinctly negative meaning, for good reason.

To Yglesias: It’s not clear to me that Republicans especially have anything even approaching party coherence—if that has anything to do with the traditional positions of Democrats and Republicans on government, spending, taxation, state’s rights, foreign affairs, regulation, business, welfare, civil rights, privacy, and the Constitution.

In fact, I can sum up what I see as raging Republican incoherence just by noting a couple of ideological contradictions among its three factions: traditional old-time small-government moderates, radical social reactionaries, and Darwinian corporatists. The latter two, for different reasons, are making hash of traditional Republican stands on foreign intervention, privacy, and spending, for instance. Item: Globalization, passionately supported by Republicans, is virulent foreign intervention. A foreign policy driven by the Rapture is foreign intervention. Domestic spying and consumer marketing built on mammoth databases of the minutest details of our lives are leading the Freepers, who went ballistic over Janet Reno, to very odd places. And state’s rights, a traditional Republican bedrock, are fine, apparently, except when they’re not fine, as in socially progressive stands that then trigger rash constitutional amendment frenzies. Sort of like democracy at home and abroad, which is also fine except when the people make the “wrong” choices.

Like Yglesias, Liberal Desert’s argument for partisanship turns on the assumption that it’s better than the alternative: “The next time a candidate denounces partisanship, consider the last time we had a bipartisan, across-the-board consensus, where politicians put party aside and did what they thought best for the entire country: We invaded Iraq.”

Well, yes, but we were deluded and lied to. To my way of thinking, being stampeded by lies and fear is not a good example of sound consensus decision making. I could be wrong about that, but I like to think a fairer example of bipartisanship is more along the lines of the recent Congressional approval of major increases in benefits for war veterans. There is a clear question of core party values here unobscured by lying about Saddam's WMD. To wit: Is it part of the government’s responsibility to repay war vets for their sacrifices through health care, education and housing subsidies, and the like, or is that just another bleeding heart, tax-and-spend liberal policy?

No partisan Republican would ever vote for increasing veterans’ benefits because it is a case of misuse of government. Just ask McCain and Bush.

Is partisanship a good thing? I guess it depends what you mean by “partisanship.” It certainly doesn’t mean hewing to a coherent political philosophy. That’s principled consistency, not partisanship.

Partisanship means mindlessly toeing the party line, acting in lockstep regardless of the merits. It is a knee-jerk, biased, and ultimately lightweight approach to the heavy responsibilities of governing, and it’s not a good thing, ever.

For instance, voting for (or against) the “patriot" acts without reading them first is partisan--an utterly irresponsible abdication. So, too, the Terri Schiavo vote. Both bills violated fundamental Republican principles, yet both were supported by Republicans almost to a person. That’s partisanship. Its consequences are extravagantly dangerous to our way of life.

A footnote: There’s a reason many of us can’t define partisanship. For amost eight years, the White House has intentionally confounded partisanship with voting on principle. Democrats’ opposition to Bush judicial nominees, Bush environmental policies, and Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are always described in Republican talking points as “partisanship.”

But that’s not accurate. No Democrat would support a nominee like Janice Rodgers Brown, or a plan to lower air quality standards, or placing America’s tax burden only on its wage earners. No Democrat would go along with these monuments to Republican ideology, on principle.

Oooooooo Ruh Roh!

Poor ticket sales, expected protests scuttle Bush-McCain fundraiser at Phoenix Convention Center

A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.

Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.

Another source said there were concerns about the media covering the event.

Eeeeeeuw. In his home state, even.

Think the Phoenicians know something 'bout they homeboy?

First they came for the Latinos. . .

It's cool to dismiss fears about encroaching fascism as "tinfoil-hat" stuff. It's maybe too cool.

There's been a little hooha over on Feathered Bastard about whether the Homeland Security Department's published "Endgame" plan amounts to anything. Stephen Lemons writes:

Despite the occasional references to the humane treatment of detainees, and a meek, brief discussion of alternatives to incarceration, the plan seems perfectly suited to the paranoid mental playgrounds of left-wing tinfoil-hat types. But the document itself is all too real. And even if the conspiracy theories it has spawned are straight from planet woo, this post-9/11 detention and removal strategy still has a creepy, Orwellian feel to it.

I have two problems with the "planet woo" dismissal. One, no evaluation, no assessment, no measure of anything takes place in a vacuum. What's as important as the thing itself is its context. And two, what if the woo theorists are wrong?

What the tin-hat lampooners miss is the context. It's not just about a published plan to round up "aliens" entitled "Endgame." It's about the context in which this document was written and will be implemented. Who wrote it? What is the political ideology of the Administration charged with implementing it? Have any other of its actions warranted constitutional or human rights concern? Are current arrests, deportations, and detentions happening under this plan being conducted acceptably, with due process and respect for constitutional rights and guarantees? Are there racist, national supremacist, corporatist and other troubling taints in this plan? What does the selection of particular words like "Endgame" suggest?

This Administration has earned enormous concern about its pronounced fascist tendencies, and I'm hardly the first to note them. Given its disdain for the balance of powers, its fondness for torture, its demonizing of political opponents as "traitors," its channeling of vast federal resources to benefit large corporate crony interests, its confounding of fundamentalist ideology with the State, its partisan and policy attacks on liberals, progressives, women, GLBT people, and people of color, its private, Christianist mercenary army, and its penchant for privatized prisons with zero accountability, no rational person would regard the "Endgame" document as anything but alarming.

Not to mention this, from the Massachusetts ACLU:". . . Endgame uses tactics similar to the ethnic cleansing we saw in the Balkans during the 1990s -- lightning raids, mass arrests, packed detention centers, and mass deportations. . . ."

Or this from ICE spokesman Vinnie Picard about "Endgame":

"I would characterize it by saying that we’re focusing our priorities not so much on dates but on other kinds of goals. . . Like reducing the percentage of foreign-born criminals in the state jails here in Arizona.

Well, I've sure noticed that, haven't you? So tell me, if that's been the focus, how come Governor Janet had to redirect Arpaio's enforcers to that very purpose? If that was the priority, how come Arpaio was going after mere undocumented workers in their beds?

No small discrepancy, that. It indicates either that Picard is badly misinformed, or that ICE and Arpaio are wildcatting, or that the stated priority really isn't the priority after all. Deeds speak louder than words.

So much more could be said, about individuals who've simply disappeared in detention, or been molested or beaten; about a baby snatched out of a parent's arms in a public mall; about Mexicans deported to Guatemala and vice versa, without money or passport or papers; about unexplained deaths in detention centers; about the use of taxpayer funds to build detention centers for the exclusive profit of private, well connected individuals; about the nasty revolving door between the boards of the privatized prison industry and public officials.

And so much more could be said about the language in that document. "Endgame"? Echoes of "Final Solution" are hard to miss. That doesn't make the plan inevitably analogous to gas chambers, but it sure suggests that the powers who wrote and approved it wanted us to be mindful that history does repeat itself. I, for one, don't like attempts to intimidate me, particularly from representatives sworn to uphold our Constitution and Bill of Rights. So I take it fairly seriously when they do try to intimidate me. I regard that as a real and significant warning that those in power are veering sharply off track.

Two, what if the tinfoil-hat lampooners are wrong and those of us who smell danger turn out to be right? It'll be too late then to say, "I told you so." As that's the case, I tend to look at ridiculing the cautious among us as both unwise and unhelpful. Remember Pastor Martin Niemoeller?

A massive network of privatized prisons and a frenzy of official terrorizing and abuse directed at the nation's Latinos--not undocumented workers exclusively, at all-- is a situation that every one of us is required to look at in light of the Constitution and history. We have a duty to be skeptical and to be outraged when we see these abuses of power, and a duty to stop them.

As to what they portend for the rest of us, it wouldn't be the first time that this nation has rounded up potential political enemies, would it? It wouldn't be the first time that a prominent, civilized western government has been murderously deranged, either.

Somewhere in our founding documents it says that Americans have the right and the duty to remove any government that acts unjustly.

As I was browsing the Internet looking for that citation, I stumbled across the obscure story of a Breton priest named Lamennais (1782-1854)whom the Catholic hierarchy chose to condemn not once but twice.

Lamennais expressed eloquently the concepts our own founding documents express. These, therefore, are the only principles that should govern any genuine patriot in this country now. Take a look. I'm hoping that seeing them expressed in a different form will give them new meaning, and maybe inspire us to remember where we come from.

On freedom of conscience:

"Those who persecute in the name of Jesus, who probe people’s consciences with the sword, who torture the body in order to convert the soul, who make tears flow rather than wipe them do not have the spirit of Jesus."

On liberty: "Liberty should be equal for all, or it is assured for no one."

On the rights of the governed:

"When people speak to you of those who have great power and say: ‘Behold your master!’ Don’t believe it. If those in authority are just, then they are your servants; if they are not, they are tyrants. Everyone is born equal: no one coming into this world carries with him the right to command."

Unfit to Print or Broadcast, Apparently

This gives new meaning to "all the news that's fit to print."

Truthout reports that on May 1, the day of international labor solidarity, 25,000 American longshoremen struck across California ports to protest continuing US involvement in Iraq.

Across 29 California ports, as many as 25,000 longshoremen - members of the firebrand International Longshore & Warehouse Union - refused to show up for work in protest of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Activity at the ports was significantly diminished on May 1 - the international day of labor solidarity. Labor historians interviewed by The Washington Independent were hard-pressed to remember the last anti-war labor strike of this magnitude.

The ILWU tied the war to the turbulence in the global economy to explain their action. "Big foreign corporations that control global shipping aren't loyal or accountable to any country," said Bob McEllrath, president of the union, in a prepared statement. "For them it's all about making money. But longshore workers are different. We're loyal to America, and we won't stand by while our country, our troops, and our economy are destroyed by a war that's bankrupting us to the tune of 3trillion dollars. It's time to stand up, and we're doing our part today."

Well, our national media picked right up on that, didn't they? Is it official yet? Do we have government-controlled media in the USA?

House Ethics Panel Suspends Renzi Probe

From the Washington Post this morning:

As expected, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct has decided to hold off on its investigation of indicted Rep. Rick Renzi (R) out of deference to the Justice Department's own probe of the Arizonan.

Renzi was indicted in February on 35 counts of money laundering, extortion and other offenses related to a federal land-swap scheme and his alleged embezzlement of money from his own company to fund his first House campaign. The ethics panel announced a week later that it was forming an investigative subcommittee to probe Renzi's actions.

But the committee is traditionally hesitant to interfere with federal investigations, and the investigative subcommittee "has voted to refrain at this time from attempting to interview or depose witnesses linked to the criminal proceedings" against Renzi after receiving "a communication" from Justice asking it to do so. The subcommittee will remain in existence and could start the probe up again in the future, but Renzi is not running for reelection and will be out of the ethics panel's jurisdiction by the end of the year.[Emphasis added throughout.]

Yeah, and don't hold your breath for the Justice Department investigation. It's an election year, and even if it weren't, as we know, this Justice Department doesn't do Republicans.

AZ GOP Strikes Again at State's Economic Base

Two bits of news today that might be of interest to our AZ state legislature.

One: A just-released April 2008 economic analysis shows a LOSS of $1.757 TRILLION in spending, a LOSS of $651.511 billion in output, and a LOSS of 8.1 million jobs nationwide if current hard-line Rightwing expulsion policies are pursued.

This is not news in Arizona, reeling from severe losses in both the construction and the agriculture sectors due to hard-line anti-immigrant policies championed by GOP leaders like Rep. Russell Pearce and his allies.

The study is titled "An Analysis of the Economic Impact of Undocumented Workers on Business Activity in the US with Estimate Effects by State and Industry." A PDF file can be downloaded from Americans for Immigration Reform.

Two, AP reports that AZ GOP Rep. John Kavanagh's bill to prevent day laborers from seeking jobs at public streets, sidewalks, and even certain private property made it through our state legislature:

Initial OK given to Senate bill on day laborers
Associated Press
May. 20, 2008 01:29 PM

A bill to prohibit day laborers from seeking work on public streets and sidewalks and private property under some circumstances is nearing the finish line at the Legislature but faces an uncertain fate after that.

The bill is sponsored by Rep. John Kavanagh. The Fountain Hills Republican says it applies both to day laborers and those who hire them.

The state Senate on Monday gave preliminary approval to the House-passed bill.

Kavanagh says the bill is intended to lessen the traffic disruptions caused by day laborers and, as a secondary benefit, help lessen the state's problems with illegal immigration.

What Kavanagh says and the truth seem to have nothing in common. His bill is an attack on documented and undocumented Latino day laborers--specifically those at the Macehualli Center and others that might develop like it. It also targets citizens and green-card holders from waiting in areas near home repair stores and garden centers looking for day jobs, and would affect immigrants, citizens, resident aliens, Latinos, Anglos, African Americans, and everybody else who does free-lance day labor.

I call it the "Keep Arizonans Unemployed Act, Part II," and can't tell you how much I look forward to Parts III and IV.

Obviously, Arizona's Republican lawmakers have decided to declare all-out war on the state's economy. Maybe it's retaliation for that Clinton vote in 2000?

AlterNet: Parallels Between Chile, Post 9-11 USA

Something we should probably read, soon. A New Documentary Draws Stark Parallels Between Chile Under Pinochet and the Post-9/11 "War on Terror"
By Sophia A. McClennen, AlterNet. Posted May 17, 2008

A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman is an indictment of torture and a powerful study of individual and collective memory.

Rush, Rush the Toilet Brush

From Media Matters today:

On the May 21 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh asserted that "one of the objectives of the feminazis over the last 20, 25 years has been to dominate the public education system so as to remove the competitive nature of boys. You know, there's a crisis of young man-boy education in the schools. And they did this on purpose, to eliminate male competition in the work force. This is part of feminazi grand plan."

OK, see, wouldn't we have had to do more than merely advocate for equal education opportunities for girls and women to "remove the competitive nature of boys"?

Like, maybe, capture them all and drain their testosterone one little gonad at a time? Or round up all the daddies and mommies and take the competition gene right out of their DNA?

Rush again broadcasts his weakness as a person and as a man. He's telling us that just the search for female equality so threatens him that he feels justified in surrendering his honor and integrity. In public, yet.

He's fine with lying right out loud, with demonizing people who disagree with him, and with distorting the public record. He's fine with misleading people who are less informed and weaker than he is. That makes him sociopathic and generally unfit for the company of decent people.

Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Bush, Lott, Tancredo, Bill Donohue, Hagee, Robertson, McCain--guys like that may as well brand giant "Is" in their foreheads, for Insecure. For, what they say is really very telling. Over and over they light up in neon the core flaw in men of the Bush Davidian Right. To feel secure, capable, and competent, they have to stand on top of somebody else. If it's not Iraq, women, or Latinos, well, there're always Black people. To wit:

Limbaugh then said, "They forgot affirmative action for black guys. And because of that, every bit of their plan has gone up in smoke now, because they -- if -- they had to come out in favor of affirmative action for black guys, and that's -- see, this is one of the things that really irritates the women. And there are women all over this country fit to be tied -- trust me on this. ... [L]iberals eventually are going to be devoured by their own policies. And it has happened here. Because [Sen.] Barack Obama is an affirmative action candidate." He concluded, "So, it's just -- they just forgot that one thing: affirmative action for black guys. And if they had remembered to oppose that, then they wouldn't face the situation they face today."

Mmmmmm, cute and coherent, too!

If these guys don't get clear of that gaping inferiority complex very soon, or we don't clear them out of the halls of power, they'll take us all down.

More on Agriprocessor and the Cowards' War on Immigrants

A comment a close friend of Pico's just posted on Daily Kos:

Unless we believe that terrorizing people is a good strategy for (a) misdemeanor offenders and (b) enhancing the world's political support for the USA, then we'd be well advised to drop this war on immigrants.

It's not the people we need to smack down. It's the deliberate use of immigration policy to provide greedy employers like Agriprocessor with a steady stream of undocumented workers who can be intimidated, cheated, and abused and who have NO recourse. For you anti-immigrants out there: If that's not the reason why our INS/ICE policies haven't changed in 50 years, pray do tell me what is. Follow the money.

Today it's the Guatemalans in meat packing companies. Before, it was Lithuanians, Poles, Vietnamese, and Mexicans. This is an age-old ladder that the industry has depended on since Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, about exploited people in Chicago's meat packing houses. That was like 1909. The most desperate and vulnerable take the worst, nastiest, and most dangerous jobs. Then they progress up the ladder to citizenship and are assimilated. See Leys' article in yesterday's Des Moines Register for more about that history.

Nativists offer us two choices: Either grow your own meat and produce, or ignore undocumented immigrants. That's because if you drive them away, either your chicken price will go through the roof or your chicken factory will move to Mexico, and won't that be great for Postville!

The rest of us offer a better solution: A new New Deal, no more exploited workers from anywhere, including home-grown, and an end to so-called "free trade" and globalization.

Either we all hang together for global worker rights and decent pay, benefits, and conditions, or we'll all hang together. It's not rocket science.

Mean loves stupid and stupid loves mean. It's axiomatic. When we stoop to this, we demean ourselves, our flag, our country, and our global honor.

This isn't what my WWII Paratrooper Captain dad lost his eye for. He'd be sickened by what we've let ourselves buy in the co-opted names of "patriotism" and "Christian," because only cowards resort to torture and terror.

How to Assist the Iowa Immigrant Detainees

If you, too, think that attacking poor people who work hard at the nation's dirtiest job is not the right way to deal with the decades-old corrupt immigration/employer dance of immigrant exploitation, please take a moment to visit this site.

Standing FIRM, part of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, provides information here for how you can provide desperately needed help to the 400 people whose lives were reversed this week in Postville, IA.

Pico thanks you.

CA Siting AZ's Power Lines?

This update from the LA Times via HeadwatersNews:

California utility asks FERC to step into power line dispute with Arizona
After Arizona regulators denied Southern California Edison's request to build a 230-mile power transmission line between Phoenix and Palm Springs, the utility company asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin the process to override Arizona's denial, and if FERC complies, it would be the first such decision under new legislation that established "national interest" energy corridors. Los Angeles Times; May 19

Gee, I'm really not sure I want CA and Con Ed dictating where my state puts power lines, and based on this Administration's handling of Federal energy issues (think Enron and old ladies), I'm darn I don't want the Fed handling it.

Although Con Ed says I shouldn't, I do feel threatened. If I'm wrong, will someone who knows a lot about this issue please inform me? TIA.

Rick Galeener's Chicken

Today on NOVA, I heard the usual outrage. Asked if an American would work a 12-hour day in a [dangerous, highly exploitative, blood-slick, bone-chilling, puke-inducing] meat packing plant for $6.25 an hour, the caller yelled, irate: “No! Americans won’t work for that! ‘Illegals’ are holding down the wages at these places!”

Whoever he was, he doesn’t know whether to wind his watch or run.

He could be any Anglo camped outside the Macehualli worker’s center at 25th St. and Bell Road. We may even have seen him pounding his flagpole, screaming curses through his bullhorn at the (obviously legal) immigrants waiting inside the chain link fence for somebody like us to give them a day job. He might have been Rick Galeener himself, that wrinkled, publicly urinating racist old rattlesnake who, probably, was the guy videotaping my license plate and my face as I got out to make arrangements with Sal Reza, beloved de facto leader of pro-migrant Phoenicians.

I wanted to say to him, “So Rick. You’re saying you “Christian patriots” do want to pay $15 a pound for raw, uncut chicken, right?”

Guys like Galeener can’t have it both ways. No undocumented, exploited immigrants, no $1.99/lb roasters. No $4.95 Church’s fried, either.

This is the bottom line that American racist-nativists happy to have cheap chicken as long as they don’t have to see who makes it aren’t willing to talk about. The self-limited choice, the sublimely short-sighted and settle-for-nothing choice they offer is this: Grow your own or tolerate “illegals.” Which will it be?

For those of us with considerably higher self esteem and a much more wholesome vision for tomorrow, there’s a way better way. We don’t advocate exploiting anybody. Read on.

American haven’t really thought through what it means to us to kick out undocumented workers, although here in Phoenix, watching the tax base erode and the For Sale signs sprout like stink weeds, we’re beginning to get a glimmer. We’re gradually catching on that no real “Christian patriot” capitalist worth his salt would run large numbers of hard-working good consumers out of town just pretty much for the hell of it.

I’m saying that Nativist America needs to rub one of its two brain cells against the other in hopes of igniting a spark of recognition.

Immigrant workers sustain this country’s economy. Its lowest-wage earners, they are the floor on which the rest of us stand. If they aren’t able to report for work, either we must or the businesses and the economy that depends on them will fall. Alternatively, the fact is, if the floor rises, so will everybody on it. That’s what Roosevelt understood, and so must we. Fast.

This is a window on the life of one meat packer in Sholom Rubashkin’s Agriprocessors, Inc., the meat processing plant in Postville, IA much in the news. This is about a 21-year -old Guatemalan woman named Emilsa Monzon Gutierrez, why she came here, how she got here, and what she does at Agriprocesors, Inc. It is provided by Tony Leys at the Des Moines Register:

Guatemala is still recovering from a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996. Average income there is only 12 percent of income in the United States, and 43 percent of the average income in neighboring Mexico. Income inequality is starker in Guatemala, with the richest 10 percent of people controlling 43 percent of the wealth, compared with 37 percent in Mexico and 30 percent in the United States.
That is why so many poor Guatemalans risk robbery, arrest and heat exhaustion to make the trek to the United States.

Emilsa Monzon Gutierrez, a Guatemalan immigrant who worked at the Postville plant, made the journey last winter.

Monzon is the daughter of a farmhand in rural Guatemala. She is a soft-spoken woman who wears braces and looks younger than her 21 years. She sat at a picnic table outside the Postville church on Friday and described her homeland and her life.
She said her hometown is a place of tiny wooden houses with metal roofs and dirt floors. Food costs are rising, she said, and jobs are scarce. Violence, which is tied to the drug trade, keeps getting worse.

Monzon's family borrowed money so she could try to make it to the United States. She took a bus for nearly a thousand miles from her hometown in southern Guatemala to the U.S. border. Most of the trip was through Mexico, where she saw people with nicer clothes and better houses than most Guatemalans she knew. The roads were in much better condition, she said, and more people had cars.

Despite being better off than Guatemala, Mexico is a poor place with few opportunities. So after reaching northern Mexico, Monzon walked across a desert border area with four other people and made it into the United States. Then she took buses for more than 1,300 miles to Postville, where she joined her brother. The total journey took 27 days.

12-hour shift, 30-minute break

Monzon said she had no trouble landing a job at Agriprocessors, where she worked from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., with a half hour break for lunch. She spent her nights in a cold, refrigerated room, always rushing to cut feathers off chickens and slap labels on them. She said the work was more grueling than she expected, but it was the only job available.

Yo, that fried chicken there. Want some fries with that?

According to Leys, Agriprocessor workers like Monzon make $6.25 to $7.50 an hour at jobs many of them borrowed thousands of dollars just to reach. When they are deported, they will lose their homes and farms in Guatemala that served as collateral, and the money they sent back home to stave off starvation for their families will be no more. What then?

The notion that these same workers will just turn around come back to Agriprocessors is a fantasy. They can’t afford to in any sense, and as word spreads across Central America about our terrorizing chicken-shit raids on the least of the least, nobody else will come, either. It may be desperate at home, but at least it’s not desperate and grotesque.

When they’re run out of Postville and Agriprocessor is forced to hire the locals, the price of chicken will hit the stars.

What Tancredo and Dobbs and Galeener and the rest don’t want to get into is that this and every other capitalist country has made a devil’s bargain to exploit anybody who’s vulnerable and has no leverage, in exchange for a decent, affordable standard of living for everyone else. Slaves, immigrants, refugees, poor people, women (what is it now? $.79 on the $1.00?) and old people, but especially poor immigrants: It’s a deal pretty much bred in the bone of capitalism itself, because capitalism is about profits, not about people.

So long as the people and the profits can peacefully co-exist—as they did during the country’s New Deal glory days—guys like Galeener can pretend that they're on the winning end. But when, as now, profit lust has slimed the country, gas is $4 a gallon and food prices are getting scary high, they can either question their priorities or blame the “illegals.”

Their choice is foolish. It’s like voting for a Republican if you're not Dick. It’s circling the wagons and firing.

No, Virginia. It’s not the “illegals” who are holding meat-processing and re-bar workers’ wages down. It’s Ronald Reagan and the rest of the GOP, then and since, who collaborated both to block sane immigration policies and to impose “free trade” and globalization on the rest of us. With the help of the Clintons and a whole bunch of craven, complicit, sell-out congressional Democrats.

Here's a clue. “Free trade” and NAFTA and its spawn amount to a wholesale declaration of war on American labor, domestic and imported. It started when the Idol of the Right broke the Air Traffic Controllers strike in 1980 and shot labor unions in the chest.

That wound has festered and grown these 28 years. Now the economy created by Roosevelt’s high-wage/pro-union policies—you know, the one that gave your parents cheap university degrees, two cars, fine houses for 6% fixed 30-year mortgages, and employer-paid health insurance and pensions, weekends, and overtime pay--has gone, gone away.

Because tell me: What, if not unions and government enforced workplace regulation, stands between exploitative bosses like heavy GOP contributor Sholom Rubashkin and Monzon and, well, Linda Green, Bobby Ray Lee, and Tyrone Washington? It isn’t corporate ethics and it isn't Bush's "free trade."

Galeener either doesn’t know this or he doesn’t see what it has to do with him. He also doesn’t know that “free trade” means no unions and no workers’ comp or minimum wage enforcement and no benefits and all the investment safeguards of Enron, just as it means no regulation of predatory mortgage lenders and a flood of people like Monzon across our borders, fleeing from the wreckage of carnivorous multinationals.

He doesn’t even get that the same low-wage/no regulation conditions that drove Monzon to the United States are being replicated here by George Bush’s low-wage, anti-union, pro-corporate, anti-middle-class, tax-only-wage-earners policies.

But he’s about to get a clue.

So, either he can recognize that his half of the boat rises with Monzon’s and stand with her for higher wages, good benefits, a path to citizenship, and decent working conditions, or he and she and all the rest of us can all fall together. That’s the deal, locally and globally.

The choice is not between continuing to exploit immigrants and other vulnerable people or being wrung out and hung out. It’s not between an unacceptable status quo + an unacceptable (exploitative) guest worker program.

It’s between global workplace fairness and decency, and profits redirected into research, innovation, clean production, and real value, or global decline for 99% of us and immeasurably obscene profits for the rest.

Yes, propers for Monzon will mean higher food prices for you and me, but with a global New Deal and priorities re-centered on people and the planet that sustains us, we can afford it. If you don’t believe me, quit drinking the Kool Aid.

It’s just a question of will.