News Items

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
[and work cheaply with no benefits]
Emma Lazarus (1849 - 1887), poet

Illegal immigrants. I watched the news yesterday of the peaceful demonstrations and was a bit surprised to hear several of the protestors say they have rights. As illegal immigrants, they don’t have the rights of U.S. citizens. However, the blind eye politicians have turned to allow workers who are willing to toil for less has now come home to haunt them. Republicans who chant about a free market have allowed the market place to be skewed with cheap labor to keep wages artificially low, have once again be caught cheating to fill their pockets with gold.

A free market is the Republican mantra, but they allowed the market place to keep artificially low wages by allowing businesses to exploit cheap labor. Then they try to scare us with threats of high-priced fruits and other goods. Let the prices rise and then you’ll see a truly free market place as those items will no longer be purchased. Maybe then, some of the lands used for farming will be saved from more housing tracts and thus no longer helping the big corporate farms to consolidate even more power.

This country has been helping major businesses and the rich at the expense of the poor and now the tab is coming due. I see no choice but to create a plan that allows workers to become citizens. After such an amnesty program, it would then make sense to either tighten labor laws by going after businesses, not the workers.

Political News. Having written Toner Mishap for a year, I really delved into the political news and I discovered that both parties are truly similar, except W who is so ignorant and self-serving that his gang will be off the charts in historical context as the worse president this country has ever appointed and then elected. He is a nightmare.

Also, making my skin crawl is Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. He truly blows with the fat cat wind. He’ll offer a plan and then when its rejected by the White House or corporate influencers, he will change his mind.

Thus after a year of daily blogging that ended last October, and trying to keep up the blog now, I have far less enthusiasm for writing about the political nonsense that serves to do nothing except obscure the fact nothing gets done in Washington, unless it puts money into the pockets of corporate barons. So I will just write as the mood strikes.