Immigration and Employment

"Don't Take That Tone with Me, young man!"   How often have you heard a parent say this to his child?  I resent the whole "Tone" of the Chris Matthews show today.  Chris has this way of being overly pragmatic- - and willing to sell out principles when the going gets tough.  He did it on the Iraq War in 2003, and he did it with the XL Canadian pipeline a few weeks ago, and now he's attacking Nancy Pelosi because Chris doesn't realize that 57 house democrats is NOT a majority of the democratic house.  Send Chris back to grade school where he can learn how to count.  I'm for "stand your ground" politics.  I guess I'm of the school of thought that "People who stand for Nothing will fall for Anything".  (Selah)  I'm for property rights and always have been.  I think the farmers in Nebraska don't want their private property rights trampled on.  But neither do I believe people in California should let some ecologist run them off their land because because of the latest rain storm there are puddles on your land and now it's a "protected wet land" or in the name of protecting some obscure species- - you can't develop your land.  I don't like homeowners associations either- - telling an owner what color he has to paint his house.  I find driving in the South County area stultifying because of all of the 'organization' and slavish conformity I see there.  Chris Matthews wants this slavish conformity to see with this President.  He's falling for this media hype how "The voters wanted the President to cooporate with congress", which is a line the President has gone along with even if it means selling out on principle.  The following two paragraphs were already written.  [splice] Right now Chris Matthews is discussing torture.  The democrats now are “Going left” and they are cynically saying that “These caucus leaders in such safe districts, they can say anything”.  As to Nancy Pelosi- - she is not “moving away from the President”; he is moving away from her.

Once in a while people have an Epiphany while listening to a speech and what I have to say now will be unsettling to a lot of my readers.  Yesterday in C-Span I wanted to see what was going on in the US Senate right NOW - - and I had a choice of Live or Memorex, and I chose “Live”.  Senator Sessions of Alabama was speaking in what has to be called an old fashioned filibuster- - because he went on forever and I didn’t stay to hear him finish.  He was speaking against the omnibus tax bill, so right off I thought “I need to listen to this guy because at least he’s on our side” if perhaps for different reason.  He was speaking on the controversial topic of immigration and jobs- - employment.  First of all let me say that I heard a few days ago that Legal immigration rates in this country were near Zero with a capital Z - - for over thirty years from about 1930 to 1960.  I didn’t know that.  So in West Side Story they sang “I want to come to America” but not in the past thirty years they didn’t.  As a percentage of the population, the percentage of foreign born among us shrank drastically from 1930 to 1960.  Pat Buchannon used to speak of “allowing the current population to assimilate” and at the time I regarded this statement is patently racist.  It’s not something a country did, so I thought, in the spirit of the Statue of Liberty of “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free”.  But none the less apparently it was reality that we slammed the door to LEGAL immigration for a good thirty years.  Other countries such as Germany don’t allow just anybody to saunter in and get a job like they lived there or something.  Thom Hartman often speaks of how hard it is to get a work permit in other nations- - and that no nation has as loose of immigration impediment as the does the United States.  But at some point in our history everything changed and in the mid sixties we flung the doors wide open and now as a percentage of the population, the foreign born among us constitute a huge and growing percentage.   Sessions said he was not a priori “anti immigrant” and he identifies with them and their economic woes, just as Victor Kiriacus identified with nephew Sonny and his financial problems with the club on the south side.  But would all of that “compassion and concern” translate into hard dollars Sonny was asking for?  No it wouldn’t.  Sometimes you have to save people from themselves and not be an “enabeler” as Dr Phil talks about.  Rumors get spread around by these mules or whatever- - people who arrange illegal passage to the United States.  And then the President has to step in and clarify that we will not accept all these children and their mothers.   With my Christian background I always assumed that it was immoral to turn anyone away who, for good reasons, sought entry into the United States.  In fact I assumed that if you weren’t “generous to a fault” then you weren’t fulfilling Christ’s commission.  I believed it was Christian to be generous even when it hurt you economicly to do so.  It’s kind of like supporting that dead beat relative that takes a dent out of your income every month.  And the bottom line is that immigration has a material impact on the employment and unemployment rates in this country.  All Pete Sessions is asking is that the laws on immigration be enforced.  Many would say that “children should not suffer for the faults of their parents”.  On the other hand these children would not BE in the country “except for the fault of their parents.  It’s one of these Leave it to Beaver type situations, or perhaps you’ve had an experience with your own father.  I have.  That is you got in trouble for doing something and you claim that you were a “victim of circumstance” and your father comes back and said “Well you shouldn’t have been doing that OTHER thing to begin with.  And maybe that other thing you felt led to do because still ANOTHER thing you were doing- - and so there is a chain of causality where one wrong decision- - forces OTHER “wrong decisions”.  Back in 2007 I used to argue immigration with Marcus Blackwell.  And I would say “All I’m saying is that we need to enforce the laws of the United States” and Marcus would attack me for being a racist against Latinos- - which really hurt me, because I didn’t consider that I had a racist bone in my body.  Now we have a situation none less than John Fugelsang pointed out that “If it comes to setting up a situation where the economy could collapse due to Wall Street irresponsibility being encouraged- - or a few children of immigrants being adversely impacted- - I’ll side with saving the US economy from ruin.  My ears perked up at his words.  And I’m being morally consistent because in both cases I’m encouraging moral responsibility- - and not shielding the guilty from the consequences of their own actions.  This Omnibus Bill is so BAD- - that frankly ANY excuse not to pass it is sufficient with me.  And this immigration problem looks like as good a place as any to put your foot doen and say “This will not stand”.  I think the President thought he had the morality to FORCE an issue.  I reckon forcing an issue is- - cramming something down someone’s throat because you feel the tide of public opinion is on your side.  There was a case last night on “Bones” where the content of this locker had to be thrown out as evidence because they claim it was illegally obtained.  Here is a case where I would have FORCED an issue, with the facts and public opinion on my side.  My view was “let’s just pile the totality of evidence up there- - and let ordinary people decide whether the defendant is or isn’t guilty as sin.   But in the case of the President he grossly underestimated the OUTRAGE of congress on this issue, and that the whole of congress considered this “The crossing of a red line in the sand”, and said so.

We spoke of the unemployment rate a minute ago.  I agree that illegals pay FICA withholding and haven’t been here long enough to benefit from payments.  If you have a large base of working people paying in- - this makes social security solvent for a longer time than it otherwise would be.  Personally I would raise the upper cut off limit from $115,000 and just double it to $230,000 or whatever AND I would raise the retirement age to seventy because of this demographic time bomb we are facing.  My Dad retired early and spent his past 28 ½ years in retirement.  Something about that length of time seems a little misplaced.  Not to borrow a phrase or anything but retirement nest eggs should be a safety net and not a hammock, to just sit around at leisure- - - for decade after decade.  Maybe it’s my Protestant work ethic or something kicking in here.  In Washington’s blog they have been including a whole raft of graphs on the economy centering on the past ten years and just how BAD the situation is.  Employment as a percentage of the working population is now way down in the sixties and dropping.   There was this multi colored line graph they had up- - and dig for it - - showing all sorts of indicators such as real estate applications (and by the way Real Estate sales have not rebounded)  and the employment percentage and other things- - and all of these lines are at near record lows indicating a failing economy.  By the way don’t count on shale or tar sands bailing us out- - because as prices at the pump continue to drop, and I regard this DROP as a permanent state of affair now because the markets, with the Soviet Union and the United States producing more petroleum products than ever- - - the market is fundamentally altered and OPEC is not in a position to do anything about it except at their own economic peril.  The stock market has dropped sharply in the past week, and my yellow flag is out there.  I’m saying to be very watchful and I’d be looking for the right time to get OUT of stocks now, way sooner than I had ever imagined.  I don’t want to be “faked out’ in some bear trap.  You know me better than that.  I told you ion mid October to stay IN the market, and I was right.  I STILL don’t think we have peaked.  Still I have been looking at the shape of the data- - the time is coming and sooner than this writer ever thought- - that you should pull all of your investments.  A bit part of my hesitancy to say “Sell” now is because no year ending in a FIVE in my lifetime has ever been a bad year.  That would mean 1955, 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995 or 2005.  That’s a pretty impressive string of fives boding bullishness.  Immigrants should be NOT be brought over here on work permits to ‘Do jobs Americans won’t do”.   I think even the KKK agrees with me on this, and Christianity certainly agrees with me on this.  The very idea of a caste society is anathema to everything Christianity stands for.  Keeping in mind that Protestant work ethic,  Americans should learn to trim their own shrubbery and change their own sheets.  The Republicans remain hypocritical on this issue and people like Thom Hartman will call them out on it every time.  Employers should NOT hire undocumented aliens.  I’m not going to go as far as Neil Savedra saying you should rat out your friends on this issue.  I value friendship too much- - and friendship is a Christian concept too.  But the Employers who hire these aliens need to be cracked down on, but the tea party right has become too internationalist and no longer qualify as what is referred to as an Economic Nationalist- - a term applied to Pat Buchannon.  I am also an economic nationalist and always have been and have always been against these trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, and SHAFTA.  They should all get thumbs down.  But we used to hear of “The New World Order”, which the tea party neo cons are held captive by these days.  I believe when it comes to trade matters and jobs, it’s our patriotic duty to put America first.  (Selah)

I would like to address questions you may have about "Time".   Does "Time as we know it" already exist or is it just some property of physics that should be studied but nobody is saying that "Time" has already occurred?   My point about "Longitudinal" time is that in theory it's completely predictable.  It's the "true course" or arguably the "natural course" of events, predictable with mathematical regularity- - but it doesn't Exist in advance.  I'm not going to offer up my view on this delema right now.  I wanted to touch on the matter of "Dark Matter", which is matter that seemingly posesses Mass, but is in "insensable to light".  That's almost a medical term meaning "It does not respond to light in any way".  It neither gives off light, nor does it absorb light, and our sole knowledge of it is through it's measured Mass.  Some of you are wondering about my position on Feng Chue strings.  How can they as it were "travel through hyper-space" or unformatted space and still be said to be "non spacial"?   And "Can feng chue strings ever have one or both "base points" like on a musical instrument- - - be NOT in the material world?  I don't know.  They CAN in theory be two base points in Different Universes.  Back in the spring of 1986 we spoke of "psychic portals".  Now what I'm saying that there are these psychic "trigger points' where some sort of "energy" (for lack of a better term) is released when you transverse one.  And to "transverse' a string- - obviously it has to have a position IN space and not OUT of space.  OK?  I would add that this "dark matter" and apparently "dark energy" that goes along with it- - accounts for the Majority of total mass in the Universe, and don't ask me how.  But what is it?  Is it the realm of somehow "cloaked' sensient beans and perhaps whole Civilizations?  I don't know.  You see?  I'm telling you things I don't know - - - yet.  As you know from reading our stuff, this is different from "Romulan cloaking" and I'm not going into that here.  But the question is how something can have mass- - as though they were part of our world- - yet NOT have the properties of absorbsion of light or the giving off of light- - that ordenary matter has?   It's a mystery.