Middle Class Part 25: Hard-Working Illegal Immigrants, SSNs, Car Insurance, Tax Credits and Bankruptcy

Two things before I continue with the more negative aspects of relatively unchecked illegal immigration, and its affects, on the middle class (trust me I’ll get there; those who are proponents of instant gratification should go buy some half-priced easter candy; those who favor any kind of gratification stopped dealing with me years ago):

“Immigration Crackdown Hits Fence Builder”: This was a KSTP story and can be found at http://kstp.com/article/stories/S311459.shtml. The news contained in this article was less surprising, though still as enlightening as news that would have reported of an inter-insectual (hey, hey, hey!- I said “insectual”- everyone knows that walking sticks are the eunuchs of the insect community) relationship between a lightning bug and a walking stick. Perhaps this news will calm some of the more racist individuals who are violently against all illegals. The article concerns one Mel Kay, a Caucasian fence builder, whose humble beginnings (farming almonds, picking fruit, working at a lumber yard after quitting school at 16, being stiffed by his bosses on payday, leaving his home state, such as it was, to open a saw mill which failed, severing a finger and hand, etc). Kay didn’t face the types of things that Will Smith’s character suffered in “The Pursuit of Happyness” (see part 2), but I would wager that Smith’s character dealt with more apathy and more of a sense of powerlessness than has Kay. And while Smith’s travails are fictititious, there is no denying that the representation of real events, suffered by millions of all nationalities throughout time, was at the heart of the story. Not making a value judgment on who has suffered more, just that they both have dealt with hardships.

From the KSTP story, we learn these broad and specific pieces of information:
Broad info.:
1) 2.7 million illegals took advantage of the Ronald Reagan approved 1986 amnesty bill;

2) installing fences in Southern California’s desert heat and rocky soil, raising 60 pounds over one’s head, and moving wheelbarrows of dirt are not easy tasks;

3) “7 million illegal immigrants are part of America’s work force”;

4) “Prosecutors refuse cases because it is extremely difficult to prove businesses are complicit” in their lawful disregard for illegal immigrant hiring and employment practices;

5) “It is a crime only if 10 workers are knowingly hired,” or if ten illegals are driving a van into a bus, or defecting from an international soccer team- (http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=3291411) That link provides the story of seven under-23 Cuban soccer players leaving their team March 12th, 2008). I digress. Somewhere, there are seven illegals kicking a ball through the streets of Tampa and not one law enforcement patrol officer has bothered to phone it in because there aren’t 10 of them. Brilliant!

6) “Only 37,000 of an estimated 7.5 million eligible employers have enrolled” in a voluntary federal program to electronically verify a job applicant’s immigration status, “which the White House wanted to make mandatory under a proposed immigration overhaul that failed last year.” (2007)

Specific info.:
7) Kay believed that in lieu of hiring legal citizens, he would much rather manage Mexican employees, who he says “were more trustworthy and more apt to stay long term.” (this point could just as easily be included in the general points above considering the expanse of merit often attributed to Mexican workers);

8) 75% of Kay’s workers were Hispanic;

9) Kay compensated his illegal workers as they should have been compensated- fairly. They started at $35k a year and could jump to $60k after three years. Full-time workers received health and life insurance, sick leave and vacation benefits;

10) 1/3 of Kay’s workers were illegal immigrants;

11) Kay’s former company was raided in 1999 and 2004 and a few of the illegal immigrants he was caught employing in 1999 were rehired in 2004. (This was the key contention with the federal investigators, that he would have such a willful disregard for the law- re-hiring illegals he was already reprimanded for employing);

12) Government contracts accounted for about 30 percent of his company’s revenue (I wonder if Kay’s company was the single bidder for that work- see part 9);

13) Post-Sept. 11, 2001- 48 of 182 workers at Kay’s largest branch were illegal;

14) 368 workers had Social Security numbers that did not match their names;

15) Kay’s immigration attorney insisted he stop relying on employee referrals to fill jobs and adopted the more traditional, but less effective, (at least for someone in the die-hard field of construction work- given the demands listed in #1 above) of posting help wanted signs, and seeking potential employees at job fairs, halfway houses, probation departments, unemployment offices and community colleges;

16) Kay was confined to his home for six months with permission only to go to the office, because the judge decided he was hardly the epitome of the greedy corporate elitist or business manager who abuses the illegal immigration system, who pay illegals half-wages, who farm out their ethics with the defense- that everyone else is doing it. Kay was forced to fire 200 illegal immigrants, but paid them each two weeks’ severance, though not legally obligated to do so; That is the reason the justice system was so lenient on him, and rightfully so. The immigrants, in several cases, in the course of their employment with Kay, built a few fences constructed to keep those like them (illegals) out of the country. Kay could have wound up in a prison for which his employees constructed the fence, should the judges have been more strict on Kay, a recidivist, with a fine heart. Those taking a hard line, wanting to ship out all of the illegal immigrants who are here- will be the ones who will be working in the desert heat of Southern California, grinding shovel into the rocky terrain, routinely hauling 60 pounds of material over their heads, and directing wheelbarrows full of earth to destinations not all that close in proximity to their spaces of origin? . . . didn’t think so;

17) Kay eventually began, after being forced, to hire employees in the traditional manner, referred to in #15 above, but who didn’t have the conviction and work ethic described in #7; it did not work out quite as well. To the good: he wasn’t found guilty of a crime, to the bad: his business, especially given the slowed construction market, hasn’t faired as well as formerly;

18) Kay insists “ ‘there are thousands of companies like me in Southern California’ ” and rightly insists that the government doesn’t have the “manpower” to “bust ‘em.” Few could argue with that. As we'll see, the possibly complicit nature of governmental non-interference, and the lack of communication between government organizations, whose primary duties seem centered around the idea of preventing illegal immigration, precludes the notion that they don't have enough manpower;

19) A group supervisor for U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who had directed the raid on Kay, was dissatisfied with the result of the case, but it seems that Kay actually rewarded the illegal immigrants under his employ fairly, that he appreciated their efforts, devotion and abilities. Kay is rare, in that many employers simply use up the illegals forced to work twice as hard in unenviable conditions to receive a wage that is far below fair market value for the services they provide. People should remember this prior to chastising illegals, who may very well spend their entire life working harder at a job than a child coddled into elitisim, and contribute more to this country’s welfare and economic viability than their descendants would ever dream. For the record: Kay is an exception to the greedy cliche business owner that uses illegals without fairly compensating them and is in the right; I can't say that for the overwhelming majority of other business owners. However, I do not see that we need tens of millions of illegals in this country. I'll provide my ideas for potential solutions to the problem of illegal immigration, and immigration generally, in part 27.

New arrivals: All that said, and I continue to be skeptical about the idea that we need over 20+ million illegals to support the economy, to build fences, etc. The Pew Hispanic Center report estimates that 850,000* illegal immigrants have arrived in the United States each year since 2000. Pew . . . that does stink. (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8G6U2ko8&show_article=1. I included the same link last time; within that link is a link to the Pew Hispanic Center site). Also contained in the preceding link- Mexicans comprise 56% of illegal immigrants, while another “22 percent come from other Latin American countries, mainly in Central America.” So, if it seems my frustration on the topic of illegal immigrants is directed at the nomads south of the border- well, the fact that Latinos comprise 78% of the illegal immigrant population is why. Illegal immigrants in the U.S. “account for about one in every 20 workers.” (from the breitbart.com article)

Middle class disinformation: Check out http://www.thecornerofficeblog.com/2008/02/18/are-things-really-all-that-bad/ for a Drew Carey delivered video about just how well the middle class has it, economically speaking. The piece consists of multi-millionaire comedian Carey, who has at least one television show in syndication, narrating sub-factual information. It includes an economist that wants us to evaluate our time and how much we work as it equates to earned money we could expect to spend on cars, homes, etc. The video tells that in real dollars, we have to work less and get more than we did almost 40 years ago, and even 80 years ago. Everything is more affordable (jeans, cars, cell phones) if the standard comparison is that we used to have to work 2,000 hours for a cell phone in the late 80s whereas now we only have to work 5 hours, or something of the sort. I really cannot watch the video again.

Preponderance of the evidence: His argument can be defeated quite quickly. I am soon to receive a cost of living increase of maybe 2.5%. After putting money away for food, education, gas, mortgage, heating bills, classes so that my son can learn how to swim and so that my daughter learns to be a social being- because fortunately we don’t have the expense of day care . . . what will be left? Pray, tell me which of those things I should do without. Keep in mind, I do not charge things on credit that I can’t afford to pay off when the bill comes, excepting a new furnace or an auto loan. Try to have two children with an unreliable vehicle during a Minnesota winter- you need a car that will start and run. Economists- tricky little bastards. I wish I could treat them the way potato peels treat a weak garbage disposal—poorly. The piece that Carey narrates is filled with hunyucks discussing how many motorcycles they own, how big a boat they have, while cleaning their boats or preparing their gear for the day trip through the waters of their local lake. These people did not look like the type to prepare the funding for their children’s college education. In these people’s minds is where synapses go to die. My point is not what you might be able to obtain now, but what your children won’t have in the future- oh, like an education, or a home, or money to spend on my potential grandchildren who might be born prematurely, and whose father’s (my son’s) insurance might not foot the bill for an apparatus that might assist with their ability to breathe. An economist is someone whose biggest concern in life is probably fretting over the loss of their vacation tan after they have returned from the Bahamas.

Last time- (the stealing of Social Security Numbers): I wrote that there was only one thing more offensive in the “Immigrants Stealing U.S. Social Security Numbers for Jobs, not Profits” article than the Princeton professor of sociology stating that migrant workers were paying a subsidy of the taxes that Americans would have to pay if illegals were not here. That one thing is that “Illegals are filing for bankruptcy, using someone else’s [social security] number.” As the Sicilian over-thinker from “The Princess Bride” might say- “Inconceivable!” See Martin Lukac’s http://ezinearticles.com/?2005s-Bankruptcy-Laws-Make-Filing-More-Difficult&id=156318 “2005's Bankruptcy Laws Make Filing More Difficult.” He writes- “Those with serious medical conditions, active military and low-income veterans may be able to receive special treatment under the new income test.” They may. Nader, in “The Good Fight,” wrote, “The two major cases of personal bankruptcy are medical expenses and job loss.” (pg. 73) Sure, those sound like abuses of the bankruptcy law. People with massive medical bill debt are financially monitored more closely than the corporations that lobbied for the bankruptcy laws to be strengthened. The government complied with the desires of the rich, offering protections for the strong (financial industries) by regulating the weak (the poor and sickly). Republican hypocrites. Republicans hate regulations of the free-trade industry, but do not fear a middle class backlash of bankruptcy regulations from someone too busy to revolt who is caring for their son’s injuries after he was shot by a hood on the streets of St. Louis.

Domestic Abuse: Again, pull out of Iraq and stop spending $3.5 trillion on the Afghan and Iraq wars (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21766479/) and that way you won’t be so hard-pressed for campaign finance money from the corporate elite. Now, that is what I call domestic abuse- the abusing of people at home, for what- insecure footing abroad? If people filing for bankruptcy have a lot of unnecessary debt on vehicles, homes, televisions, jewelry and other goods then punish them for their shortsightedness. However, I hardly think that the federal government, given the conflict of interest of wanting to pacify the credit card companies, is the best judge in that situation. An illegal immigrant can file for bankruptcy using someone else’s social security number and is likely more successful at doing so than a corn farmer whose second daughter contracts multiple sclerosis and has to spend tens of thousands of dollars on equipment, wheelchairs, medications and outpatient visits to the medical clinic. Makes about as much sense as an eggplant accusing the grocer of racism because the black vegetable was not displayed handsomely. I have been exhausting my use of members of the animal kingdom as hyperbolic examples and decided to begin to assign maladies to members of the vegetable community.

Dobbs on bankruptcy: see Dobbs’ War on the Middle Class, pages 59-60: “personal bankruptcy filings actually fell in 2004,” a “Harvard University study showed, nearly 50 percent of bankruptcy filings in the United States are the result of illness and the enormous bills associated with treatment. This, despite the fact that the majority of filers had insurance coverage. I will never agree with the philosophy of an agency in power punishing only those it can find, which is what happens when they strip a struggling family of their assets and let illegals flow in to assume social security numbers and reap the reward of governmental laziness, government’s complicity with business (for seeking cheaper wage-laborers to pack meat, clean hotel rooms, etc.), and political civil war gridlock (the democrats v. the republicans).

Evidence #1: website- http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/04/news /id.php?page=2;**
date: September 7, 2006;
article name: “Immigrants Stealing U.S. Social Security Numbers for Jobs, Not Profits”
author: John Leland;
Quotes: “In 2000, using data from the Social Security Administration, the Utah attorney general’s office found that the Social Security numbers of 132,000 people in the state were being used by other people, far more than the state could prosecute.” If they did prosecute, imagine the taxpayer money that would have been earmarked for such a prosecution.

The assistant attorney general of Utah said: “ ‘I’ve had families denied public assistance for their children or disability payments because records show somebody is working in their Social Security number.’ ”

Simple solutions: One last thing from John Leland’s International Herald Tribune article- there is a call for “better cooperation among the Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, and Department of Homeland Security to prosecute workers who use false Social Security numbers and companies that hire them.” Naaaah. Consider Sam Kinnison. In one of Kinnison’s routines from the early to mid 80’s, during the organization of many musical concerts in the U.S.A. for Africa phase of our country’s altruistic history, appeared a rant about the Ethiopians and their inability to find, grow, gather, or otherwise obtain a more prevalent food source. At any rate, Kinnison ranted for a few minutes and broke out one of his classic yells- “IT’S SAAAAAAAND! GO WHERE THE FOOD IS!” Simplistic sure, but funny. The solution to many problems is obvious, the extenuating circumstances are sometimes just excuses, not justifications for not doing something that makes too much sense (see the forthcoming post on state secession), like forcing a golden retriever to become a Scientologist. Those dogs will go for anything. It would be comforting to know that it has at least occurred to the various government agencies that working together to stop illegal activities might be beneficial to the public that pays for such services. See the federal budget information I covered in part 5 if there is a question about whether we pay to expect certain things from our government. A couple of the links I have provided this time, refer to the lack of governmental agency communication, as it concerns the issue of immigration, among other issues, as a problem. Yep, and a cowboy or horse-trader who is allergic to stallions and nags might also be an issue.

U.S. Immigration Support website offers several pieces of information relative to illegal immigration:
Go to: http://www.usimmigrationsupport.org/ (and simply add /illegalimmigrant_driverslicense.html, /illegal immigration.html, /border_security.html,*** or vis_h2b.html) to discover interesting pieces of information. Shocking I know, but some illegal immigrants who want to acquire a driver’s license actually want to drive a car. Well, what are the odds that if they obtained a fake ID, or a fake driver’s license, or hell, a real one for that matter, that they are driving cars around the country, that they obtained a loan for by using some three-year-old’s social security number . . . what are the odds that they, that they, . . . are driving with insurance? Moreover, what are the odds that they might actually drive into a car owned by a democrat whose place in heaven is assured them by not seeking compensatory damages? Maybe that illegal drove a van into a bus that was only transporting republican children to school. I do not want a liberal telling me who can come into my country. I can make those decisions for myself. And what if an illegal, or even a legal immigrant, who is legally licensed and fully insured, is involved in, or witnesses, an accident or a crime, etc. and could provide information to law enforcement, but they don’t speak English. Imagine that the illegal does not want to get involved, or cannot tell law enforcement their side of the story, to help the victim, or the parent whose child lies writhing in pain in their arms, bleeding to death. See, this illegal has not bothered to pursue the learning of the English language, which was a qualification for their future residency in the United States and fears deportation should they get involved. If illegals are paid roughly ¾ to ½ of what Americans are paid for doing the same work, what are the odds that they can afford a car, and if they can, there is no reason to believe they can afford insurance. Is there any doubt that someone who breaks the law to come here, and drives a car without a license, would pay for liability insurance? If my Dove truffle eggs overheard me telling my wife that I loved them, they would still wonder at their odds of making it out of March without being consumed. Somehow, we are more gullible than chocolate.

Dobbs on “free” trade as it equates to illegal immigration: “under WTO [World Trade Organization] rules, the United States is required to offer sixty-five thousand H-1B work visas each year. If for any reason, we don’t, other countries can demand international arbitration, and the United States can be penalized and fined for not allowing enough foreign workers into the country. This would seem to usurp Congress’s power over immigration policy.” (pgs. 104-105) Funny, given the number of things for which the average U.S. citizen would like congress’ powers usurped, forcing their hands to stop meddling when it comes to the issue of immigration policy would not be one of them.

Awarded contracts: Also from Dobbs is this—simply hilarious: “The Department of Homeland Security awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to U.S.-based VF Solutions to produce uniforms for U.S. border patrol officers. That company, in turn, subcontracted the work out to Mexico. . . . The people who are guarding our border against illegal aliens are wearing uniforms made in the country they’re watching. But the terms of the contract with VF allow the work to be done in Mexico as a cost-saving measure.” Peter Boyle, who played the father on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond would simply have this to say: “Holy Crap.” Dobbs later wonders what might be next- the “Outsourcing of border patrol jobs?”

Immigrant crime I: from Dobbs: “Immigration judges responded by pointing to the increase in illegal aliens crossing into the United States and the corresponding spike in their caseloads. The nation’s 215 immigration judges handled 254,000 cases and other matters in 2000. In 2005, that number was up 27 percent, to 350,000 cases.” That coupled with the knowledge that some 850,000+ illegals are crossing the border each year makes the phrase ‘job security’ one of the most applicable uses of the phrase since a giraffe was hired as its spokes-animal by a neck-brace company seeking to appeal to the African even-toed ungulate mammal consumer.

Immigrant crime II: Those that think all immigrants, of any kind- legal or illegal, are law abiding citizens- “Immigrant Prostitutes: Victims or Criminals? Crackdown on Illicit Sex Rings Highlights Complex Legal Issues,” by Theresa Vargas of the Washington Post. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23514365/) The story chronicles the brothel activity of well-organized circuits of Latino community prostitution all over the East Coast. We have crime rings with greater histories that are more evolved conducted by Americans whose ancestors have been here for hundreds of years, but my point is that- why would we want to allow more crime into a nation when we can’t control the criminals already here? Not wanting to be an alarmist, which will reduce the conservatives' right to pigeon-hole me, I actually think prostitution should be legal. I just don't think you can be say . . . a New York governor and pull it off- i.e. Eliot Spitzer. But, politicians have been prostituting themselves for thousands of years, so who am I to judge.

The truth is out there: -But everyone is not adept at recognizing it- like classmates who need name tags at twenty year reunions. From an April 5, 2005 Truthout article written by Eduardo Porter (http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/37/10128): one immigrant has done “backbreaking work, harvesting asparagus, pruning grapevines and picking the ripe fruit . . . often working as much as 70 hours a week, [he] contributes more than most Americans to the solvency of the nation’s public retirement system.” I don’t know about that. Some other “truths” that Porter contributes:

1) 7+ million illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. provide the Social Security Administration (SSA)with $7 billion a year. (When amnesty is granted and former illegals begin to get elected to public office- remember, Latinos are the nation’s largest growing demographic- those who paid into Welfare, Medicare and Social Security will most assuredly be granted benefits because liberals of all ages will have been psycholigically indoctrinated into thinking like political eunechs when the topics are racism, government subsidized entitlement programs and immigration. Also, the Truthout article refers to the illegal immigrant’s expectations concerning social security payments they would hope to be delivered after decades of paying in. Funny, they feel more entitled to them than I do and I have been paying in for- huh, two decades);

2) The Social Security money illegals contributed was about 10% of the 2004 total (fairly substantial);

3) Most illegals pay taxes. The IRS would not allow them not to. “Since 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act set penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, most such workers have been forced to buy fake ID’s to get a job.” They must have a social security number in order to obtain a job. An employer can choose to accept it and not question its legitimacy, but they have to have one. The IRS and SSA will track an employer’s workers to see if they have a valid ID. Those unlucky enough to be raided, like Mel Kay from above, are employing illegals that are likely paying taxes. If they weren’t, the government would, from their perspective, have more cause for complaint. Are there illegals not paying any taxes at all? Sure;

4) Another Mastercard commercial could go like this- fake ID package including green card and social security card- $150; paying into an ever-expanding earnings file homeland security agencies are too complicit with the IRS to crack down on- $2,400 (in taxable income); . . . gaining passage on a ship, piloted by a professional smuggler in the event that a wall is ever constructed along the southern border- $4,000;**** . . . crashing into a bus full of children, killing four when you have neither a valid driver’s license, the ability to apoligize in English, automobile insurance, or the right documentation letting legal authorities determine your residency, or your name . . . priceless. But should you be an illegal, you probably have been approved a credit limit of at least $10k, may have maxed out that limit, and are now in the process of filing for bankruptcy while the bus you crashed into injuring an innocent girl who has to spend the rest of her days on life support for which the insurance company underpays. Further, the government may not allow you to file for bankruptcy caused by the medical bill financial burden under the more stringent 2005 bankruptcy laws. (“America, what a country,” was most famously uttered by Yakov Smirnoff, another immigrant. This phrase was uttered by millions of Americans in the 80s without their realizing that the connotation had as much to do with the simplistic fortune of ironically sad possibilities as with freedoms one might come to expect if they are American residents);

5) The SSA places W-2 earnings reports, connected with “fictitious - Social Security numbers in an ‘earnings suspense file’ in the hope that someday it would figure out whom they belonged to.” Are they waiting on a leprechaun to go and do that work for them? Well, he is depressed and drunken after having his holiday (St. Patrick’s Day) cancelled by the pope;

6) The SSA released figures in 2002 that indicated “nine million W-2s with incorrect Social Security numbers landed in the suspense file, which accounted for $56 billion in earnings, or about 1.5 percent of total reported wages.” (Incidentally, 2002 was the last year such figures were released. No chance the federal government wouldn’t want us to know just how poorly it is keeping track of incorrect social security numbers = number of illegal immigrants?);

7) Some social security chief actuary assumes that about 3/4s of illegals pay payroll taxes;

8) If illegals expect to draw on social security, the funding hole would be 10 percent less solvent than it is now;

9) One immigrant tying vines in a vineyard “has no idea what the money being withheld from his paycheck is for. ‘I haven’t asked,’ ” he said. Not very alarming. We don’t really know what the government does with our withheld tax money either and we have asked. With a 2008 federal budget of $2.9 trillion- the federal government might lie or misrepresent where plenty of that money might go, or, as I have indicated, waste it in a manner unbefitting the effort by the citizens who worked to provide it to the government (see part 9).

Center for Immigration Studies: See http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back1202.html, written by Marti Dinerstein, October 2002, (the same year that the SSA stopped providing the public with earnings suspense file numbers). Too many pieces of information are contained in the article to comment on all of them, but it is well worth reading. My primary area of concern is in the overall topic of the middle class economic subjection by the corporate elitists and diminishing role in the country to the wealthy backed by republicans and the poor entitlement recipients backed largely by the democrats. With that in mind: “the SSA has no legal authority to levy fines and penalties against either employees who fraudulently obtain a SSN or against employers who repeatedly submit large numbers of wage reports with incorrect SSNs. They must rely on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to do so, and audits have revealed this rarely happens.” The IRS is likely just a puppet organization that does the bidding of the federal government at large. There is a war to finance, air force one militaristic helicopters to build, people abusing the Medicare system to enable. So, neither the IRS nor the SSA can levy fines or administer penalties and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), seem handcuffed by the federal and state legislative branches that won’t pass any immigration bills. I have often found that the best way to win at anything, even when in the midst of playing cops and robbers with a cute neighbor girl back in my youth, is to completely handcuff yourself. Seems they find vulnerability very endearing. Social injustice, hasn't been this crazy and extreme since I was told not to bring Hungry Hungry Hippos to my grandmother’s house on christmas day in the late 70s.

ITIN is F.U.B.A.R. (ITIN addressed in the cis.org document): The Treasury Department’s IRS division is providing illegals with U.S. government-issued identity numbers in lieu of social security numbers. The Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) was not “implemented in accordance with Internal Revenue Code Regulations;”***** “Many immigrant groups are successfully advocating for the use of identity documents other than a SSN in order to obtain driver’s licenses and consumer benefits.” What, like coupons to get the oil changed on the car they may drive illegally to the emergency room? More- “The Mexican government is pushing the ITIN as an acceptable alternative and, apparently, the IRS has raised no objection,” and “It is difficult to understand why the IRS, the only agency that is knowingly offering an official government ID to illegal aliens, has escaped scrutiny.” It is?

Economic sense: Some people might think that if illegals are paying taxes, their presence here makes financial sense. Meaning, if immigrants are paying taxes to the local, state and federal government, Uncle Sam will not need as much from the middle class. Don’t count on it: “It is believed that the vast majority of illegal residents who file a tax return using an ITIN get full or partial tax refunds because of the low level of their earnings.” Some illegals do receive the “Earned Income Credit, intended to supplement the income of the working poor. Thus, ironically, by issuing ITINs the IRS may actually be reducing the tax revenue received from illegal aliens.” Ironically . . . America, what a country. If they can’t track of illegals once they’re here, can’t get them out, don’t know how many are here, can’t pass a bill to build a wall, can't get land owners in Texas to forego their property rights in order to build the wall and won’t issue reports indicating just how large the earnings suspense file has grown since 2002. . . How in the world would one think that they can track how much money is going back to them in Earned Income Credit money?

“The USA Patriot Act of 2001, passed overwhelmingly by Congress in response to the terrorist attacks on America, explicitly calls for greater information sharing among government agencies, law enforcement and the intelligence community.” Apparently, the supposed expectation of information sharing consists of all of the government agencies telling each other what not to do with the illegals.

Other sources for dismay: http://www.msnbc.com/id/23663338, http://www.fairus.org/site/pageserver?pagename=media_oped_32508.
See the Associated Press article concerning the 2010 U.S. Census- “Technology Glitches Could Cost Billions, Affect Accuracy”- http://www.startribune.com/nation/17001926.html. So, we will not only never know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop, but also not be made aware of how many illegals may be residing in this country for the purposes of apportionment of congressional seats and the allocation of $300 billion a year in federal and state funding. Oh, getting a handle on how many illegals are coming into the U.S. each year (850,000 to 1.1 million or more) will have an affect on how much money is thrown at issues such as health care, transportation, crime, education, etc. Has that occurred to anyone?

* FAIR- Federation for American Immigration Reform puts this year’s total at 1.1 million- (http://www.fairus.org/site/pageserver?pagename=media_oped_32508)

** The same http://www.iht.com/ article as last time.

*** From this particular article, we also learn that there are 314 ports of entry and that the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended 16 million illegal immigrants since 1994. Agents confiscated more than 1.2 million pounds of marijuana and over 12,000 pounds of cocaine in the 2005 fiscal year, which was estimated at nearly $1.5 billion.

**** See the Associated Press article of March 13, 2008- “Moves on Land may Push Migrants into Pacific” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23619518).

***** From a footnote in the Center for Immigration Studies article. Footnote #4.

Middle Class Part 24: Immigration's Affect on the United States continued- (Driver's Licenses, Identity Theft, Voting and Holy Moses)

More things that are difficult to prove:

Cancer linked to late night work: “It is a surprising step validating a concept once considered wacky. And it is based on research that finds higher rates of breast and prostate cancer among women and men whose work day starts after dark.” Overnight work is considered by the study to be taxing on the body’s biological clock. The lighting at night, a compromised immune system weakened by natural fatigue and other factors may play a role. See- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,313727,00.html.

Biological anthropologists can, by testing teeth from corpses buried for 1800 years, show how closely they lived to the equator in their youth by gathering deposit samples and drilling into teeth to gather cross-section scientific data. By doing this, scientists can determine what a people’s primary diet consisted of, and with that, what their likely country of origin might have been. The jury is still out on whether the Caledonian corpses I saw exhumed and examined by biological anthropolgists on a History Channel program voted in their Indigenous Peoples of Scotland primary elections (see below). We can successfully determine much of the preceding through a battery of tests, but cannot see in what ways not having an improved immigration policy would be beneficial to the hundreds of millions of people already here. Has any famous person ever said or written this line? - It seems that the past is easier to predict than the future. Or not . . .

This news from an Israeli teacher recently: Moses was high on Mount Sinai, but was also arguably psychologically high “on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments,” and also perhaps when he saw the burning bush. No word yet on whether he was tripping when he parted the red sea. The information can be found at: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080304120710.ad7gm7i6&show_article=1

“Pharmaceuticals Lurking in U.S. Drinking Water”: This is the title of an Associated Press article to be found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23503485, written by Jeff Doon, Martha Mendoza, and Justin Pritchard, March 10, 2008. If, prior to the parting of the Red Sea, Moses would have imbibed a portion of the water and it contained the “antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones” that “have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans” the task of parting such a massive body of water wouldn’t have been such a Herculean task. Attention hog. Course, had he and his Israelite followers drank from a body of water containing the above referred to pharmaceuticals, they probably would not have felt up to continuing to flee Egypt. “Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.” Likely, those citizens/voters who would otherwise have an aneurysm due to the continued lack of an immigration policy would probably benefit the democrats if they were kept as thirsty as possible. This news is the microcosm to the macrocosm of global warming; “researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals,” just as fossil fuels, may or may not be contributing to a higher overall average temperature in certain parts of the globe, the reported rising of oceanic waters and the melting of polar ice caps, among other signs. Also included in the water supply of one state or another according to the report- “heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.” I wonder if drug companies have anything to do with this, or if it is just the trace amounts naturally poured back into the soil and reservoirs by humans who took the drugs as administered medicines, as the article suggests, and evacuated them back into the natural circle of life.

FYI: Wikipedia provides a source who has found that 64% of people believe the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea by Moses is literally true. I bet there are a decent number of conservatives who are among that 64%. And, plenty of that 64% are conservatives who aren’t buying the notion of global warming. Hm, perhaps the future effects will be more easily proven than past events.

As the tagline that followed the opening credits for the X-Files television program that concluded in 2002 contended- “The Truth is Out There.” Course, so are plenty of the scientists, the political scientists, iconic religious personalities and even the author of all of these columns.

As I have more than hinted, providing enough proof consistently and permanently in order to convince all types of people of your viewpoint is a tall order. I became convinced that I need to take out the vacuum cleaner more often after witnessing with what excitement my two ankle-biters approached the suction device, which makes an apparently attractive noise, compelling toddlers to approach it in awe, given the novelty of its appearance. They were fascinated by the sound, the construction, the maneuverability and the raw sucking power. I could draw a comparison to the federal and state governments and their sucking ability, and a vacuum, but that would be too easy, much easier than convincing either of my kids that clipping their toenails is a good idea. Maybe the easter bunny will bring a taser or straight jacket to assist in this struggle in the near future, during the lent season, a religious celebration, derived from a religion (chrisitanity) a major figure of which was Moses.

License to drive . . . me nuts!: I know I already used this one last time out, but it works too well to abandon with just one use, like a wallaby whore whose level of engagement in the fine art of appealing to the coyote clan at the zoo is just 16%. (Ahem, a coyote is another name for a person who assists an illegal immigrant in the enterprise of illegally crossing the border. Yep- America = zoo, Americans are the wallaby whores. This metaphor pretty much wrote itself.* Also see http://www.usimmigrationsupport.org/illegal_immigration.html for an inside take on illegal immigration. The final paragraph addresses the concern about young female illegal immigrants who are tricked into prostitution. You just cannot abandon a good introductory phrase when it can precede this: “19 people who engineered 9/11 had among them a collection of 63 driver's licenses . . . you don't need a driver's license to slash a pilot's throat. But you do need a driver's license, or a passport, to board the plane in the first place.” Not for long, because a minority will be offended for having been asked to follow the same rules as everyone else. I mentioned in part 22 about being surprised that terrorists haven’t engaged the services of illegal immigrants, but there are probably so many other holes in the Swiss cheese-like security checks in entrance points all over the country that they don’t need to choose that avenue quite yet. See William F. Buckley’s article http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/11/03/illegalizing_illegals from November 3, 2007. Handing over driver’s licenses to illegal aliens would be as idiotic as attempting to sue a half dozen casinos because the casinos did not recognize one of their patrons had a compulsive gambling problem. What’s that you say? Arelia Margarita Taveras?
http://www.nj.com/southjersey/index.ssf/2008/03/woman_who_gambles_away_a_milli.html.
Get out the vote: Let us add this up- politicians testified on Capital Hill on March 6, 2007, according to the Washington Times, that illegal aliens are potentially “eroding the integrity of U.S. elections, and will continue to do so without voting laws.” One politician said, “illegal aliens in many states can easily acquire driver’s licenses, making it easy for them to register to vote, especially states with ‘motor-voter’ laws.” (See- http://www.mngop.com/sd42/vote_fraud.html#061029, “Illegal Aliens Seen Eroding Vote,” by Sean Lengell). The story also shockingly reveals that “several Democrats said the intimidation of immigrant voters—not the voting of illegal aliens—is the biggest election-reform priority.” Riiiiiight, and when a divorced prairie dog says he lost his nuts in the settlement he is referring to the cashews he foraged for while living in the lands he helped colonize in South Dakota. Most democrats are clueless on the topic of immigration. To date, driver’s licenses are not required to show proof of citizenship, or to allow voting rights, and as the above story reveals, licenses are so easy to fake- there would be no point to connecting one’s right to drive to their right to vote. Even so, some people have still broken out of prison, though there are bars, armed guards, dogs, vast bodies of water separating them from civilization, watch towers, search lights, bed checks, millions of tons of concrete, barbed wire, twenty-five foot wall fences, and their bitches in prison, so that the conjugal visits they don’t receive don’t hurt them from a physical or psychological Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs standpoint. The passage of a law necessitating that each potential voter show their driver’s license would at least make it a bit more difficult for illegal voters. Democrats and republicans fighting over the amnesty clause in any proposed immigration bill is exactly like a parent mentioning dessert to a child (the immigrant) repositioning the peas on their dinner plate in an effort to make it look like some inroad into consuming the vegetable has been made. The child will whine constantly until you give them what they want and/or they will act like complete imbeciles, not learn how to properly ask for things in English, take things that aren’t theirs, blame others for their wrongdoing, and attempt to impose their childish culture of complaints on parents who give in because they can’t stand it anymore. Giving in consistently is called enabling. Plenty of parents and democrats never took enough psychology courses in college to realize this.

“In 1996, more than 740 noncitizens voted in a controversial California congressional race. Similarly, in 2005 the Utah legislative auditor said more than 58,000 illegal immigrants had Utah driver’s licenses and that almost 400 of them used their licenses to register to vote,” Writes Times Writer’s Group contributor Barbara Banaian. So clearly, maintaining that a viewed driver’s license by a precinct’s election volunteer should be one’s ticket to vote is not enough. Besides, I have voted, those who volunteer at election precincts are more like Barney Fife than Joe Friday, and I would not count on their judgment or authority to prohibit voter fraud.

Check this out: If we cannot keep American citizens from election fraud, then how in the world will we keep immigrants from following suit. See the November 2, 2006 article by Jared Jordal, “Watch for DFL Election Fraud,” contained in the same http://www.mngop.com/ voter fraud site I included immediately below. A man set up shop outside of a Minnetonka, MN polling site on election day 2006 with a table fitted with a “MoveOn.org” banner. He also had a “thermos of hot cider and a sleeve of Styrofoam cups.” An election volunteer inside, when informed of this intrusion, was not fully aware of the nuances surrounding the ‘100-foot rule,’ (that demonstrations or displays of partisanship are not permitted within 100 feet of a polling area). Are we unable to envision tactics at least as sinister performed a decade down the road by immigrants who may be made citizens by then with a federal amnesty bill? See the YouTube video from last time. Whether MoveOn.org is a liberal, conservative or Independent activist website is not the issue. Campaigning for anything or anyone within 100 feet of a polling site is illegal, even if the only species likely to be influenced by such activity is a cicada larvae that recently buried itself in the maple tree sapling it won’t unhinge itself from the roots of for 17 years.

Predictable democrats: Not surprisingly, democrats, at least some that tend to vote for transportation tax increases, (per the 2008 MN Transportation Bill that was pushed through in February 2008 to the disgust of the voters) have a problem with requiring an ID to vote, as only three supported such a measure. (http://www.mngop.com/sd42/vote_fraud.html.)** I wonder why democrats would vote against such a move that might make voter fraud of any kind, a bit more difficult. It couldn’t be because democrats stand to benefit by having immigrants vote for them in elections . . . “Hispanics Turning Back to Democrats for 2008,” by Susan Page of USA Today, from June 27, 2007- (http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2007-06-27-hispanics-dems-cover_n.htm). The article tells of the “40% of the voters in the nation’s largest and fastest-growing minority group backed Bush, double the share of Hispanics who had supported Republican Bob Dole eight years earlier.” The fact that immigrants would favor and enlist the aid of a democrat in their battle to subvert the law is not that surprising. Last column, I provided the link to the Associated Press article concerning McCain’s concern about the republican party’s apparent alienation of illegal immigrants because of many of the republican’s harsh words and lack of interest in placating immigrants. To wit- “One big factor behind the flight from the GOP: a heated debate over immigration in which congressional Republicans’ remarks on illegal immigrants have offended many Hispanic voters.” Most republicans are against amnesty and most democrats are for it. A “USA Today/Gallup Poll indicates that Hispanics, by nearly 3 to 1, say they’re Democrats or lean that way.” Hispanics are the demographic group that most strongly favors Hillary Clinton in “Nevada, Florida, California and other states with large Hispanic populations.” Therefore, we can clearly blame democrats for the fact that our country is being overrun. Does anyone even know how many immigrants we need to pick lettuce or strawberries, flip burgers at McDonalds, sex chickens, process meat, or clean hotel rooms, etc? Maybe we should figure that out?

Further, predicting the democrats the winners: http://www.immigrationforum.org/documents/TheDebate/CivicParticipation/2006VoteAnalysis.pdf tells of the likelihood of Hispanics choosing democrats over republicans based on about any poll question anyone could devise. Latinos are voting for republicans in fewer and fewer numbers in each subsequent election from 2000 to date (including the mid-term elections which saw the complete ouster of the republicans from the house of representatives, perhaps because of reasons I have already identified). Soon enough republicans will be forced to back an amnesty bill or continue to lose the largest growing voting demographic to the democrats by wider and wider margins each election. We are being overrun- there is no other way to put it. The article states, “By election day, [2006] the tone of the immigration debate conducted during the summer prior to the election had reinforced Latino’s motivation to vote and it influenced their choice of candidates.” The tone consisted of the 109th Congress too often [choosing] partisan paralysis over governance through compromise.” Again, the democrats were largely in favor of allowing amnesty and the republicans largely against it. Who might the immigrants vote for, the democrats attempting to keep them here or the republicans who want to throw them out?

Votes of the dead: The steward of the mngop site tends to believe that “you could be using the name of a dead person, and never be asked to show ID to vote.” Such a concern is not that far-fetched. Scroll further down in the text in the .mngop.com link and this story title will be found- “Valley’s Dead Cast Their Votes” with a subtitle that reads- “Statewide Database of Registered Voters has Potential for Errors and Fraud” by John Ferro, Poughkeepsie Journal. This newspaper, the oldest in New York state, offered text that read like this on Sunday, October 29, 2006: “The new statewide database of registered voters contains as many as 77,000 dead people on its rolls, and as many as 2,600 of them have cast votes from the grave.”

“Bring out your dead”: . . . is a line from Monty Python. Immigrants and dust mites everywhere probably think that Monty Python is a snake species, or a snake that strips for money (think of the 1997 British film- “The Full Monty”). I know, I should not be so informal and elusive with the language. But I just learned on “ Design on a Dime” a show on HGTV, that it is ok to mix metallic finishes . . . so I feel brave in writing things that no one will understand. In re-reading the “Valley’s Dead” article again, I have found that Mr. John Ferro would make a good fiction writer, as his article is not dissimilar to Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls” a story about a stranger who visits a small town to acquire the property that the middle class is still paying taxes on- their deceased serfs (i.e. Dead Souls). Ferro’s headline contained the word “potential” and much of the text sets up a theory that if the voter rolls are not crosschecked against the list of the deceased from the recent past then plenty of dead people may in fact continue to vote if an immigrant, or anyone for that matter, “borrowed” a dead person’s social security number. Impossible you say- no one would ever attempt to acquire a social security number from a dead person for the purposes of voting. A woman willingly remained on a toilet for so long (two years) that she remained affixed to it until hospital employees removed it; a lemur species can hear insect movements 12 feet below ground. Certain pieces of information are difficult to believe. Gogol’s Chichikov wanted to amass a sizeable portion of property/dead souls though he would be taxed on them, given the infrequent censuses taken during that time in Russia, so that he could appear as an up-and-coming man about town, someone to be held in high esteem by the townspeople, given his owned property. Ferro supposes that because people have died and their names remain on the voting ledgers, the possibility exists for them to cast votes, though they are dead.***

“I wanna be rich”: So, if the notion of anyone stealing the social security number of a dead person so that they could illegally cast a vote strikes you as fictitous then how about an immigrant “borrowing” the social security number of a living child? The article- “Immigrants Stealing U.S. Social Security Numbers for Jobs, Not Profits,” by John Leland (September 7, 2006 http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/04/news/id.php) tells just such a story. One young girl’s social security number, issued by the U.S. government, was on their files for two credit cards and two auto loans. Identity theft for the purposes of bilking a person of their financial resources, and severely damaging the victim’s credit rating is one thing, but stealing a child’s identity to acquire a job is at least as bad. I found this sentence amusing: “ ‘It’s clear that it is a different intent or purpose [getting a job] than trying to get someone’s MasterCard and charge it up.’ ” Jose Tinoco had “two credit cards and two auto loans, with an outstanding balance of more than $25,000.” I wonder what charging up a credit card means in her world. In addition, how does an illegal immigrant, who had to steal a social security number, get approved for two car loans for a total of $25,000? No wonder they keep coming- we are not bright enough to keep them out, get them out, or stop them from being criminals once here. I mentioned at the very beginning of this blog topic, in May of 2007, that the issue that would bring down this country is less about race than it is about money. Soon enough, hundreds of millions of illegals will be made legal, and will be involved in the rat race of wishing to acquire more and desiring to work less- just like so many Americans. Soon enough- current illegal immigrants, or their direct descendents will be allies of middle class Americans and not enemies. The illegals will realize that you have to be filthy rich elitists or politicians to control the country. Exactly how big a hit was the Mexican version of the Calloway song that heads this paragraph?

The story of the stealing of social security numbers for jobs also relates the following:
1) “one of the most common forms in the United States involves illegal immigrants using fraudulent Social Security numbers to conduct their daily lives.” And we shouldn’t build walls, spend billions on surveillance equipment, employ thousands of border patrol agents, or deport illegals for misdemeanors, or deport them period?

2) The practice of Social Security number theft “provides the backbone of some low-wage businesses and a boon to the Social Security trust fund.” Social Security is something we continue to hear we will never draw from, and that by the time we might expect to, the democrats will have house and senate bills coursing through congress demanding that immigrants receive full social security benefits- so how does their paying into it benefit Americans when there are 12-20+ illegals, and 850,000 illegals coming every year since 2000? http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=d8g6u2ko8&show_article=1. I have retirement accounts, so knowing that illegals contribute to social security is not all that comforting to me, when one considers the drain that that many more people will have on the country. (See part 25 coming up.)

3) The father of the little girl from the iht.com article above is reported to have asked his wife: “ ‘Don’t you feel bad, you’ve ruined this guy’s life?’ ” Three words- dem-o-crat.

4) “During the 1990s, such mismatches accounted for about $20 billion in Social Security taxes paid.” The IRS and the remainder of the federal government do not care. Why would they? They have single-bid military defense contractors to pay off (see part 9). You cannot possibly think that all money which is paid into the social security general fund will cause the government to relax its stance on taxation.

5) “The Federal Trade Commission, which estimates that 10 million Americans have their identities stolen each year, does not distinguish between people who steal Social Security numbers so they can work and those who are out to steal money.” Perhaps they should. Just a thought. Nader proposes that the federal government should track white collar crime financial losses as well as violent or street crime, and along the same line- we should be tracking identity theft from multiple angles. But I don't imagine the government will do so- to quote Wayne Campbell- "and monkeys might fly out of my butt;" perhaps a lemur or two among them.

6) “Illegal immigrants make up nearly one of every 20 workers in the United States, according to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center, and most are working under fraudulent Social Security numbers, which can be bought in any immigrant community or in Mexico.” And, you think those that are selling the numbers are diligently differentiating between three year old girls and someone’s grandmother who died four years ago?

7) Mrs. Lybbert, the mother of the young girl from the story “estimated that for four or five months she spent 30 hours or more a week making telephone calls, feeling passed from one agency or voice-mail system to another.” I’ve had to contend with fraudulent credit card charges, twice had to get new numbers, spent months before and after a trip to Europe trying to reverse the charges on two separate three way calls involving me, my credit card company, and the travel agency which accepted my number under another person’s name.

8) “a Government Accountability Office study found that employers with the most mismatches [of Social Security number to illegal immigrant] were concentrated in industries that hire a lot of illegal immigrants, including agriculture, construction and food services.” Reaaaaaaally? My 18-month-old daughter could have told you that and she is busy learning how to ask for more spaghettios and trying to avoid falling off the couch she just taught herself to scale.

9) There is only one thing more offensive in this story than this next item and that one is best left to the context of illegal immigration’s affect on the health industry. So, the second worst piece of information in the identity theft story is, a Princeton professor of sociology who studies Mexican migration saying about the taxes that illegal immigrants pay to the government: “ ‘It’s basically a subsidy from migrant workers to the aggregate of American taxpayers.’ ” Does this guy think that an American’s taxes will go down because the federal government has come to count on illegal immigrant tax money? Not when most members of congress decided to vote down extending the Bush tax cuts, that never really benefited the middle class much to begin with- http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2008/03/14/1365301-budget-would-torpedo-bushs-tax-cuts (Andrew Taylor, Associated Press, March 14, 2008). The feds will just find some Air Force bus to waste our money on, or spend hundreds of millions on swimming pools in Iraq (see part 9), or more on “a fleet of state-of-the-art Marine One helicopters, see Peter Baker’s WashingtonPost.com article, March 16, 2008 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23665969) or continue to give Medicare money to an unmarried twenty-year-old pregnant with her third child from three different fathers, still claiming she has back trouble from a car accident she may have been involved in with an illegal who didn’t have any insurance, who perhaps enjoys driving vans into buses. But I digress.

*A coyote is also a famous anthropomorphic member of the trickster genre of southwestern literature and stories- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster- "who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and norms of behaviour." This is mindful of what a coyote (i.e. smuggler of immigrants) is doing by assisting illegals in breaking United States' law. My analogy really has come full circle. Now, if I could just find a way to work in a rhyming couplet (peyote, coyote) about illegals and their suspected involvement with a guy named Moses . . . I would really have something.

** Many many interesting pieces of information relative to voter fraud, immigrant-voting fraud, and the democrats who stand to benefit politically by remaining stubbornly prostrate on the issue, are contained in this link. I cannot imagine that all precincts in each state in the country are as diligent about tracking the votes of potentially deceased citizens as some of the summaries of tracking failures described in the link. Just as state laws override the overall welfare of a country of citizens as it concerns immigration policy proper, I cannot imagine that each state, county, or precinct performs like-minded double-checks to ensure that our election results have not been compromised. In addition, if a movement of racists is set upon keeping immigrants from voting, when they have the right to, then perhaps we should check the identification and residential status of the peerless. I have found that there are a certain percentage of people who fight so diligently for a cause, whose vices may run in concert with their virtues. Consider Eliot Spitzer, governor of New York, who fought corruption, and who was known as Mr. Clean, before recently being linked in a prostitution ring. A man’s guilty conscience finds an avenue of action that limits his ability to punish himself. He instead pursues the justice his own conscience wants him to embrace, but he spends his putative zeal on others whose actions reflect his own impropriety.

*** Ferro does write that “records of votes by the dead are the result of bookkeeping errors and do not result in the casting of extra ballots.” Ferro even quotes the chief information officer for the state Board of Elections who emailed to Ferro “ ‘Of course we are concerned about people voting if they are dead.’ ” Perhaps we can get a biological scientist to exhume the bodies of the dead, and drill into their teeth to find out if they really are dead or somehow can determine if the exhumed corpse has voted since its burial. Or better yet, perhaps that lemur species, which can hear insect movement twelve feet underground, can partner with the biological scientists and be trained to inform them if there has been corpse vitality so that we might avoid many unnecessary exhumations. Such is the nature of politics and government in this country- that the likelihood of a lemur assisted exhumation is greater than the IRS, and the other more able-bodied federal government agencies, finding,**** massive numbers of illegals who are in every definition of the word- “costing” Americans. That is some kind of monkey business.

**** Not often will you find a footnote to a footnote, but here goes. I believe that “finding” illegals isn’t quite the problem, as the story connected with this link can attest: http://kstp.com/article/stories/S81354.shtml. The story’s title- “Illegal Immigrants Being Caught and Released” tells of the state trooper endorsed apathy concerning the issue of law enforcement’s ability to catch immigrants. Unless law enforcement officers catch “at least 10 illegal immigrants at a time to peak the interest of the federal authorities,” there just is not going to be a lot of do-gooder zeal. It seems- “two men were pulled over for speeding and admit to the state trooper they are here illegally. The trooper radios federal authorities—who refuse to take the men into custody.” Did the illegals have insurance, were they on their way to the emergency room, were they holding a lemur captive who had been reading up on biblical lore, at night, contracting cancer, looking for liturgical loopholes that might clear Moses from all psychadelic indulgences?

Middle Class Part 23: Immigration Policy, The Sub-Topic's Continued Affect on the United States

Watch this video (see #4 from last time): www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEOeGBv1340. This is a Care Bears episode compared to the movie “Passion of the Christ” from a violence standpoint, but it is appalling, when you consider the first amendment tenets of free speech and free assembly. The video consists of Mexican immigrants, whether legal or illegal, protesting against white and black citizens who marched to the Los Angeles City Hall exactly one year to the day, on March 25, 2007, that the illegal immigrants held their protest marches through streets all over the country. It is highly unlikely that the illegals who marched in 2006 had to contend with the same amount of vitriol, or with as great a number of protestors. The immigrants in the video above held megaphones, attempted to burn American flags, held the flag upside down in a sign of disrespect, and attempted to shout down those marching. The legal citizens of this country were protected and ushered to city hall flanked by hundreds of police officers in place to guard against a riot. I wonder who, as taxpayers, was on the hook for paying for the additional security used that day.

They're coming: People think that this is just a concern of big cities that are being overrun and can lovingly take their children to dance class in Portsmouth, New Hampshire or enjoy their habitual over-priced cup of latte in Seattle, Washington. The threat of this country being overrun is very real, and a dope like me simply writing about it is insufficient as an indictment on the government. The link I provide above is only part 5; just imagine how empowered the immigrants will be after ten more years of uninterrupted deployment into our country.

An economy of words: I have written many words over the course of 22 posts on this overall topic, and was bound to use some words with which not everyone is instantly familiar. The subject matter demands many words. I do not consider Ruskin's approach possible when one grants that his topics were not as comprehensive, nor as era defining as this overall topic: “For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.”- John Ruskin (A Joy For Ever). The subject more worthy of an excess of words- the economic subjection of an entire class of people authored by their country’s own liberal and conservative politicians, or topics about architecture, modern painters, art criticism, storm clouds, and mountain flowers? Those Victorians were so pretentious. Ruskin was so high-minded he was probably proud of his own gag reflex.

Disclaimer: A couple of the articles or websites I use to further reveal my concerns about immigration’s affect on the middle class are of a more questionable character. I do not doubt the genuine temper of the frustration expressed, but rather, cannot completely verify the veracity of the events as portrayed. Nearly all of the other references I have included throughout this rather protracted governmental and political tirade have seemed verifiable, respectable, or otherwise accredited. When they have seemed incomplete, or nonsensical, I have included comments questioning the credibility of the source, the messenger, or the message itself. Suffice to say, the problem of immigration is taxing this country on many levels and in many ways. I began to look at the reasons why immigration is such a difficult issue for the economic middle class, and the country as a whole last time. Here we go again.

More information relative to an Independent’s desire for more comprehensive, swift, and realistically enforceable immigration control:

1) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1896366/posts (for #s 1-3 below)- Open Borders Senators Plan End-Run Dream Act Amnesty tells of the grass roots fight of an anti-immigration group that is attempting to out maneuver a pro-immigration group. Amendment 2237 (otherwise known as The Dream Act) to the Defense Authorization bill which proposes to give millions of illegals amnesty. (All kinds of information contained in the piece, but I just can’t quote all of them);

2) the freerepublic.com piece contains 26 talking points that the anti-immigration group wants people to be made aware of that they deem as negatives to the average U.S. citizen. Unfortunately, many of the talking points under this heading- “Talking Points to Prevent Attaching Provisions of the SKIL Act” are due to the lack of interest plenty of whites or blacks currently residing in this country have for the idea of keeping a full time job. (So, when someone who complains about the economy, immigration, taxation, the prices of necessary cost items, etc. is labeled reactionary and that all will be taken care of, maybe by some caped crusader type, perhaps by the name of Super Delegate. Given the amount of information I have compiled and provided, I would say, those who do not complain are probably causing the problem);

3) (mindful of #3 from last time)- the most telling talking point to me is the first one- “Increase the annual cap for ‘temporary’ nonimmigrant visas from 65k to 115k. But that’s just the first year (after that, if the cap is met in any year, it can be further increased by 20 percent for the next year with a ceiling of 180,000 per year.” That is why I would be so concerned about point #3 I made last time, that the federal government can redefine the word illegal just by allowing amnesty, or by adjusting the numbers on any one of the different types of visas they already allow, which are adequately outlined in the link directly above. Constantly having to qualify the difference between legal and illegal immigration, in order to be careful so as not to offend the liberals or the illegals, is wasted time and effort. Both of them offend us constantly, the liberals with their caterwauling and the illegals with their very presence (in PLENTY of instances). Those against illegal immigration better decide to find the number of immigrants more objectionable than how the people or the government refers to them, or we are quite a bit further on our road to hell than we might otherwise think. If only 8,000 crossed the border each year and only 1% of them committed crimes or 5,000 competed with Americans for wages I don't believe Americans would so disparage their contributions. Do not so marry the word 'illegal' to the word 'immigrant,' because two components so often wed are difficult to combat, or when the divorce is made legalathom with logic when separated. Hell, some companies are producing flameless candles. When will wordless blogs be made available? You wish.

Redefinition: As I believe I have proven, the federal government is run by a number of politicians who might have what many would call, questionable motives (see the laundry list I provided in part 21 concerning Citigroup’s involvement with politicians). Changing the fact that plenty of illegals could instantly be reclassified as legal is not outside of their scope of powers. Considering what politicians can do to subject the major tenets of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to the various state constitutions, (see part 20) take lobbyist or special interest money and say they don’t, (all of them), steal verbiage directly from someone else’s speeches and brush it off (Obama), or waffle on any issue so that they can play favorites to two diametrically opposed constituencies (all politicians, but specifically Hillary Clinton on the very issue of illegal immigrants being allowed the right to obtain driver’s licenses). Re-qualifying the phrase- “illegal immigration” by adjusting what people consider to be legal from a political definition standpoint may pacify a jellyfish going through renal failure, for it is too busy trying not to intake liquids, as it is swimming in the ocean, but won’t calm a conscientious objector. (Jellyfish don't have kidneys you say- just work with me. I have been operating under the assumption that Americans actually have rights since early May of 2007- so we may both be wrong.) The link I provide in #1 above details the rubber stamping of temporary or seasonal workers, employers paying immigrants wages irrespective of what type of Visa has permitted them into the country, expedites the processing of millions of immigrant applicants, (prospectively and allegedly without background checks), allows illegals to receive in-state tuition rates at public universities and makes illegals eligible for federal student and federal work-study loans all at taxpayer expense, while PLENTY of United States citizens may not be able to receive the same benefits.

Kidding Ourselves, see #3 from last time: A December 6, 2007 Time.com article written by Michael Kinsley- “Kidding Ourselves about Immigration,” attempts to qualify of our objections (http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1692059,00.html). I anticipated this type of argument many years ago and responded to Kinsley online. He writes: “let’s not kid ourselves that all we care about is obeying the law and all we are asking illegals to do is go home and get in line like everybody else . . . we are basically telling people to go home and not come back.” The pre-ellipsis part of that quotation is accurate, but the second is not. If anyone completely discounts what many of the illegals have done for this country, they are weak-minded and those that are realistic about their contributions should need and want some, but not all, of them to come back. Kinsley’s major point is that we object to their presence whether they are considered legal or illegal and offers to test a theory- to increase legal immigration (which still doesn't address the problem of the millions coming here in a non-legal manner). My point is that if we draw a line in the sand, which is symbolic of our ardor and disgust, and shout at the top of our lungs that we have had enough, focusing on the illegality of the immigrants here now, our leading objection will have been removed if the politicians make them legal. Americans should focus their attention on the total number of immigrants needed to keep this country running as smoothly as possible, however they are defined. Some middle class, and some poor have obviously been adversely affected by the presence of excessive numbers of newcomers. A man who feels so violated should not be made to, or be expected to abridge his words. Further, if the politician's continued arrogance goes unchecked and the immigrant's continued progress goes unhindered, there will be nothing left but reasons for action. People work too hard and obtain such reasonable economic expectations based upon their history of labor to have the path to their deserved prosperity so obstructed. No one should be advocating action that lies outside of the law, but in times of desperation, people have chosen to act unlawfully with the best of justifications. May all guests be made aware of the seemingly apathetic and amiable, but overwrought host; the immigrant may be at some point the fly in the room full of hosts tired of reading their magazines.

Redefinition II: I have worked at a legal publishing company and have seen a lot of legislation come through. Sometimes the most significant action some bills propose is the alteration of one word for another, done for the sake of modernizing the law, making it consistent with other more important legislation, or political correctness. Consider the word retarded . . . which became handicapped . . . which became disabled. What is next- bone-weary leading onto sapped? Now, the various state governments making these changes aren’t really altering the definitions of the words, they are altering the connotations of those words as it pertains to referencing a person’s overall psychological or physical abilities. The nature of any living language has been, and always will be, fluid. New words are added to dictionaries every year and some definitions change because of how people use the words (the connotation alters or adds to part of the definition). So, illegal alien became illegal immigrant (which allows present day immigrants to draw the connection to the people’s that came to inhabit this nation in the early 20th century who were of European ancestry, who abided by the laws and customs of the land- who assimilated). Immigrants are using the connotations that surround the word ‘immigration’ to their advantage. Supported by the fondness and genealogy many Americans can credit to past periods of excessive immigration, liberals are arguing on their behalf using that exact reasoning. Therefore, liberals are coming to favor the words- undocumented workers. Give me a break. Garbage men are refuse-management technicians; a serval with psoriasis is a dermatologically-challenged non-bantam bespeckled feline. I contend, tweaking the normal political correctness dictionary with a more cynical interpretation that immigrants are legal-bypass insurrectionists.

Government immigration failures: Even when the government has passed legislation to improve the situation at the southern border of the United States, we get this news: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23382776%20%20which%20addresses#6 from last time. The story: “ ‘Virtual Fence’ Along Border to be Delayed” (WashingtonPost.com, February 28, 2008). Boeing, the company awarded the contract to work on Project 28, which would have been a “28-mile pilot project south of Tucson” chose the wrong type of tower-mounted sensors and surveillance gear, according to the Department of Homeland Security, who were doing what while Boeing made such decisions? Apparently the “initial deployment of the Secure Border Initiative network, did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol.” The article goes on to explain why, but that particular why is not important. The ‘why’ that matters is- why weren’t state department officials in attendance as proactive liaisons monitoring Boeing’s progress on a matter of such importance to the country’s national security, keeping our country’s southern border from being continually infiltrated? The Bush administration’s push to “speed the project during last year’s immigration debate led Boeing to deploy equipment without enough testing or consultation.” That information coupled with the idea that border patrol agents were not involved in any of the planning, are huge governmental mistakes. I have often found it makes the most sense not to consult the people who actually know about the business at hand, from computer applications a programmer will never use in a productive environment, to a surveilliance system which might keep those out of our country who threaten our way of life. Granted, this initiative was billed as the “most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history,” according to president Bush. The article also mentions that given this setback, the required redesign that would use more reliable surveillance equipment would not be completed until about 2011. There are plenty of other particulars indicated in the article about how many miles of fence were to have been built, by what date, and for how much, but what is the difference . . . by the time they complete the damn fence there will be so many Latin Americans in our country we may as well move to theirs.

Allowances, #4 from last time: If we are constantly proposing bills which would grant 12+ million people amnesty, the type of amnesty that allows the rest of the illegals here already to bring their entire families in, credit them for having paid into social security when they were illegal, allow them licenses while they are illegal, allow them to vote when they are illegal, allow those that are legal to undermine the economic and political will of actual Americans by supporting those that are illegal, and allow illegals, and legals for that matter, to continue to feel empowered by the types, frequency, and fervency of their adopted offended natures, with them thinking they are the afflicted, then we are in a world of hurt.* Certain members of mankind, have learned what members of the animal community instinctively have demonstrated for millions of years. When you are weak, act as if you were strong. Attempt to represent your physical form as being larger than it is, and attack so that you will not have to defend.

McCain on immigration: McCain, during a republican party primary debate “warned that harsh immigration views voiced by some Republicans have driven Hispanics away from the party . . . he supported changing immigration laws and creating a path for citizenship for illegal immigrants.” That approach Mr. McCain, is a harsh immigration view. Until you determine how many immigrants we NEED here, I might suggest not driving non-immigrants away from your party. The Associated Press article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22173520/ from December 9, 2007, also reveals, “Republicans have had trouble courting (emphasis mine) Hispanics, who have become an increasingly significant source of votes.” Consider that- politically powerful. Repeatedly on cable news programs, pundits and hosts address the immigrant voting bloc to which candidates must continue to appeal. Another sentence from the article: “The Republican presidential candidates sought to embrace Hispanics in a Spanish language debate Sunday, striving to mark common ground with a growing (emphasis mine) voter bloc while softening the anti-illegal immigration rhetoric that has marked their past encounters.” Yes, massage the immigrant’s collective ego; why limit your specialization to merely lying to millions of white and black people. There is a new brand of credulous people waiting to lap up your double-speak pontification.

Clinton on immigration: "Clinton, after being questioned about a plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, Mrs. Clinton at first seemed to defend it, then suggested she was against it, until finally, pressed for a direct answer, she accused the moderator, Tim Russert, of playing ‘gotcha.’ ” You are damn right Mrs. Clinton, we like to pretend that the politicians we are duped into voting for are only speaking out of one side of their ass. Members of the African-American community, who consider the snitch, rather than the pedophile, the bigger criminal, have that in common with some politicians choosing that style of dysfunctional accusation management technique- to put a liberal appelation on the endeavor- I would simply call it- bullshit management (see the Executive Decision paragraph below). In short, do not act the part of Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men- we can handle the truth, providing you Mrs. Clinton, know what it is. See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21571943. In the New York Times article of November 1, 2007 written by Marc Santora, all three of the major democratic presidential nominees at the time (Clinton, Edwards and Obama) were in favor of some form of allowing illegal immigrants a license to drive an automobile. Democrats are not only charged with picking their poison, but also in picking ours. Democrats must be immune to the type of poison or have the antidote. The antidote is $$ which tends to insulate you from all kinds of problems including someone taking your job, because it will be at least 40 years before we have a former illegal immigrant running for president. My guess is that illegal immigrants have about as much respect for our Constitution as they do for us, that is, if they even know what our Constitution is all about. Judging from the YouTube link I included in the first paragraph above, they haven't been made aware of the first amendment.

Obama on immigration: Obama has actually said that illegals would not be likely to drive in New York, but he is in favor of allowing illegals driver’s licenses. The implication is, given the population of the city of N.Y. a lot of people don’t drive who might have licenses; it is expensive to own a car, to pay for insurance, gas, and besides, when you are likely to travel four blocks in half an hour given the traffic, what is the point. So, what would they need licenses for- to vote? Thinking that immigrants would need licenses to drive would be foolhardy. Have I gotten to the part about the thing with the stuff who drove a van into a bus and killed four children? I thought so. People on weighty issues such as immigration, abortion, and capital punishment are incredibly shortsighted. They always think allowing immigration or not allowing capital punishment is the right thing to do. However, if their innocent little girl were riding that bus, or murdered in a state that does not allow lethal injection, they would perhaps spend some of the empathy they keep in reserve. Concerning California Latinos, which comprise 1 in 5 voters: “Granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants . . . It’s a huge issue for Latinos, who want them. It’s also a huge issue for the general electorate, which most vehemently does not . . . driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants helped undo former Gov. Gray Davis.” (“Obama Takes Big Risk on Driver’s License Issue,” Carolyn Lochhead, January 28, 2008, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/28/mnh1ul57q.dtl).

License to drive . . . me nuts!: Turns out I didn’t know the half of it until I searched for the MN house proposal (House File 1899 from 2007) I recalled while thinking of yet another in a long string of state or federal legislation which would give illegal immigrants rights they shouldn’t have; shocking, a democrat proposed, and democrats widely supported it. House File 1899 would have given non-citizens the right to vote in local elections. It seems a license, or picture ID is required for the following- applying for social security, becoming a Medicare, Medicaid, or food stamp recipient, boarding airplanes, getting student loans, renting movies, cashing checks, and registering at school. And I thought licenses would allow them to destroy this country in one way- by voting in a public election. Look at the options they have of how to make our country bend to their will. It seems that being overly concerned about an illegal’s right to drive once equipped with a license is not our biggest problem when you consider how much of a drain on any state’s economy social aid programs like Medicare, Medicaid and food stamp allocations actually are. I gave numbers on the former two in part 5- $721 billion from the 2007 federal budget goes to social aid programs. You don't imagine any illegals are recipients of food stamps or Medicare? Nah. See http://www.mngop.com/sd42/vote_fraud.html. I’ll get to a little more of this next time.

Proposed Legislation: There are so many rotten, smelly onionous layers to the debate about immigration it makes me ill. I propose a law that mandates anyone who speaks out on behalf of illegal immigration that desires for them to have driver’s licenses, a vote, back social security contributions, or welfare benefits to have a skin graft using a flap of skin from their rump and have it placed over their lips. Those with such delusional qualities should be muted, to the benefit of a country that economically, socially, and environmentally cannot support the carte blanche approach to allowing any and all illegals into the country. If they continue to desire to propose legislation that is so unconscionably pro-immigrant in written form, following said skin graft procedure, proposition two would allow for our right to tie their fingers together so that they can neither manipulate a pen nor use sign language to communicate their desires. Enacting the Skin Graft Bill would be no more a violation of anyone’s first amendment rights than say- being a senator of Oklahoma and desiring that a state law, which he claims is hurting the state economically, be repealed. One provision of the law the not OK republican senator wants repealed “provides penalties for harboring and transporting illegal immigrants.” The senator “said that provision is causing hardship for property and business owners and concern among churches and charity groups that provide services to undocumented workers.”

Oklahoma is not OK: Below that story, to be found at: http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/thread.aspx?threadid=488091, (Associated Press, December 4, 2007) are some responses from what would appear to be Oklahoma voters who are disgusted with their senator’s take on immigration, especially as harboring and transporting of illegal immigrants is a federal crime under Federal Immigration and Nationality Act Section 8 USC 1324. One respondent in the chain of this story mentioned that he or she had googled the senator and found that “he owns a construction business!!!” I am satisfied with the number of exclamation marks used and decided not to capitalize the quoted words as the respondent had. See below concerning a much desired House Resolution 895, concerning a more formal, and empowered process of congressional ethics investigations. Everyone knows what the words- conflict of interest mean-right? See, because there are PLENTY of immigrants in the CONSTRUCTION BUSINESS.

Federal Law: The largest component of that story is that the OK senator desires to have his state law override the federal law, unless he is unaware of the latter. I write again, the threat of secession is pretty minimal. The federal government needs to step in and override a state’s rights to subject the will of any particular state’s American people to the selfish and ethically-challenged aims of the politicians whom they unwittingly elected to represent them. This would not require a tax increase, which should calm republicans, because as we know, republicans have never authored a bill proposing to raise taxes. How about another example? OK- see next paragraph. (Trust me, I’ll get to the freedom of speech and secession issues in due time . . . think of it as foreshadowing. Reading my offerings must be a bit like foreplay with a porcupine- very time consuming, very difficult and painful, but worth it after you’ve finished and survived, provided you didn’t get stuck.)

Executive Decision, see #8 from last time: Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty signed an executive order on January 7, 2008 that gives some state agents a role in enforcing immigration law and requires the state to review millions of driver’s license photos for possible fraud.” Excellent! Other equally important ordinances were included in the E.O. He described his ideas as “ ‘reasonable steps to help combat illegal immigration.’ ” Immediately, according to the story “Pawlenty Revives Push against Illegal Immigration” (http://www.am1500.com/categoryfolders/pstories/s305491.shtml) democrats were instantly critical of the move. One democrat said “ ‘He’s doing it again in 2008 . . . This is an election cycle and I am very disappointed that our governor has chosen to use this issue as a political issue to advance his political agenda.’ ” There is always an election cycle. Candidates have been debating for the presidential election since the summer of 2007, at least, and the general election will not be held until November 4, 2008. I can see her point. On the one hand- we have the very offensive political maneuver of a governor acting with the consent of the governed, as the overwhelming majority of people in the state and country would back Pawlenty’s move, and on the other hand- we have the much more important, often overlooked political platform agenda of . . . timing. Madame democrat- get out of the way, or we should have every right, under the swiftly advancing Skin Graft Bill to soon enough begin to call you- Butt Lips.

Pawlenty, with a republican controlled house after four years in office could not get an immigration bill through, and he stands little chance of doing so now that Minnesota democratic immigration reparationalists hold the majority in the house. Democrats are probably still empathetic to Mexicans because of the lands we took following the U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War in 1848. A scarecrow in traction in a love affair with an overweight beaver with a yeast infection in its cankle is less fawning than are the democrats over the illegal immigrants.

De-bunked hysteria: I have been accused of not being grounded and of rushing to each economic, political or social issue I have addressed with an overriding sense of hysteria, hoping to find the worst and in fact finding it. You cannot dismiss the affections of a platypus with hyperglycemia and always welcome those of a Zebra equipped with a tourniquet around its neck is what they must be saying. I was forwarded an email from someone that addressed the now debunked assertion that there was somehow a bill coursing through congress that would pay illegal immigrants social security. Perhaps the source was this: http://sweetness-light.com/archive/senate-gives-illegals-aliens-social-security or something of the sort, and the refutation comes from this, or something very like it, from the more reliable factcheck.org: http://www.factcheck.org/article447.html. The former boasts the headline “Senate Bill Will Give Illegal Aliens Social Security.” What is more troubling is the picture of two streets meeting in an unidentified metropolis filled with people, which I suppose is a city filled with immigrants (see the picture following the title, contained in the first link). The title of the latter link is- “Republican Campaign Theme Debunked: Social Security for Illegal Immigrants.” People, if we follow all the bait that hysterical nut-bags put out there then we are no better than those who overuse the word- ‘racist.’ A caterpillar with leukemia set to wrap itself in a cocoon feels less empowered than that brand of wreck and the caterpillar is about to become the highly-prized, more naturally appreciated for its brilliant colors- butterfly. Still, a motion which would pay former illegals back social security benefits must not seem so wrong to an out of touch politician. Immigrants can turn to liberals for all of their partner in crime needs. The truth is that the bill, which passed the senate 62-36 in May of 2006, would allow immigrants to receive back social security benefits IF it were approved. The fact that it was even proposed is more slavishly, contemptibly predictable than this one guy in the office fond of sweater vests who I could tell you by looking at him thinks he is a big deal because he matriculated at both St. Thomas and William Mitchell College of law. I think you have to graduate looking like a prick or they won't give you a diploma, just as you must abandon reason to be a registered democrat.

The Specter, see #8 from last time: That bill, the Arlen Specter bill, which passed the senate, but never passed the house, would give the estimated 11-12 million illegals a path to citizenship as long as they pay a fine, back taxes, and meet such requirements as learning English. The email sent to me would lead one to believe that president Bush had a bill which passed both legislative bodies and was set to either sign or veto it, based on the thousands of signatures the email claimed to deliver. It is disheartening to know that a ghastly bill of that type was such a presence and could pass through either legislative body. The reality is no chimera, would break our spirit, and alter our countenance. But, proposals very like that have been hovering over congress, as almost ghost-like apparitions, for the past couple years. At least four bills have been proposed or sponsored since 2005. Specter should stick to meekly investigating the NFL commissioner’s right to throw away tapes, which proved that the New England Patriots were illegally taping signals given by opposing defensive coaches. He brought no weight to that endeavor, apparently, he was tapped out after proposing and getting to the floor for a successful senate vote, an immigration bill that proposes to reward tens of millions of law-breakers with rights granted to those who have paid all their lives into a social aid program. Thing is, it may be a moot point- I do not see anyone actually getting these benefits. However, if democrats controlled the country, my guess is that they would justify all immigrants to receive full benefits and that actual Americans would get none. Very, very haunting, spooky democratic doppelgangers. (I love thesaurus.com.)

PS 1: I received the email the fourth week of February 2008 and all of the Google hits returned germane to the Specter bill in question concerned datelines from 2006. Way to be proactive, no wonder we are losing. The second link from the De-bunked hysteria paragraph above is actually mentioned in the October 10, 2006 factcheck.org site. We seem unable to organize on this issue, almost as if we are speaking different languages, like in the Tower of Babel story from the bible, (which I brought up in part 12). At least the immigrants haven’t been able to change our language . . . not yet. After the amnesty bill is passed, how long will it be before there are co-national official languages?

PS 2: This post-script has nothing to do with a video gaming system. The factcheck.org link above reads: “Mexico said it would complain to Washington about plans to build security fences and deploy the Guard. ‘There are 12 million Mexicans on the other side, 12 million people who live every day in anguish about the need for a reform to let them live peacefully,’ ” Derbez said. I do not know how peacefully they are living here, or how peacefully we are living with them here. I would love to send Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez the link to the You Tube video I included above while having military personnel perform the little known, but acceptable form of torture upon him- perhaps the Mexican reason installation technique. This is a technique which delivers intelligence into the minds of otherwise ignorant Mexicans. Derbez is the type of scoundrel who would whine to a municipality that his neighbor should not be allowed to put up a fence in his own yard to keep Derbez’s mastiffs from constantly defecating in it.

Ethic and Ethnic: I now receive a number of emails advocating activism in politics because I financially contributed to Common Cause a couple months ago. One such email I received contained this text- “The House is scheduled to vote this week on a resolution (H.Res. 895) that will institute, for the first time in history, an independent Office of Congressional Ethics with the power to file and investigate ethics complaints. The independent panel’s reports will be made public, and new timelines and reporting requirements will stop the Ethics Committee from burying complaints for years without action.” At least it is a start. I don't know that a vote on whether or not an Ethics Committee is granted powers to pursue the very politicians that might vote it down is a wise choice. Perhaps the people should be voting on the measure . . . they have more to lose. The only people currently allowed to file an ethics complaint against a member of congress is another member of congress. I would rather trust the objectivity of a Packer fan asked to measure the career achievements of the recently retired Brett Favre, to assign him a place in the list of the greatest quarterbacks in league history than leave for a vote the installment of a Congressional Ethics Office to the congressmen and women who would stand to get cited subsequent to its adoption. More than half of 2008 voters would need to vote yes on the Take Action Minnesota proposed amendment which would allow non-citizens the right to vote in local elections, for it to become part of the state's constitution. Illegal immigrants would not be permitted to vote under the measure.

“Of all the mischiefs, none is so afflicting and fatal to every honest hope as the corruption of the legislature.” – Thomas Jefferson

The public is overwhelmingly in favor of an aggressive immigration bill which would enforce the southern border. Perhaps there should also be an Ethnic Committee to ferret out of office those politicians who continue to subject the will of Americans to the (Latin Americans) whose ethnicity is better explored, revealed, and practiced South of the border.***

* I will demonstrate the veracity of each of these charges by the end of this sub-topic.

** People may not know how drunkenly subjective people from Green Bay can be. (PS. Favre is no better than eighth and no worse than twelfth all time among quarterbacks. Tell me he is better than Unitas, Elway, Bradshaw, Montana, Marino, Peyton Manning, or Brady).

*** And I only mean those that it is determined are not needed in this country, not all legal or illegals who are currently in the United States.

Head to: saveourstate.org for more information.