politics – Page 6 – Hopeful Romantics

Buying Into the End of the World

People have been preaching the end of the world since there were…well…people. Over the centuries, you have everything to ruin your sleep from the dire predictions of Nostradamus to the guys with sandwich boards warning in ugly painted lettering of the impending Armageddon. We have had in the Cold War the ever present fear of nuclear annihilation. Now we have the fear of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

We also have the Mayan Calendar, which purportedly ends in December 2012. Many see this as Doomsday, the end of the world, the end date of a 5 thousand odd year cycle. A cottage industry has grown around the fact that the Mayan Calendar does not extend beyond December, 2012. It is the end of the world, see the movie, buy the cookies, wear the tee shirt.

Maybe the end of the Mayan Calendar has nothing to do with the end of the world. It may mean nothing more than they foresaw the end of political sanity as a bunch of mediocre candidates may be running for office. On more mundane levels, it may mean the Mayans were bored with their lives and found that one day ran into another there was no pressing need to chronicle their lives through time and space. So instead of extending their calender, it was a symbolic rejection of their future as that future only mimicked present and past–same crap on another day. Perhaps, after a long, spiritual consultation with their gods, where they sacrificed their last remaining virgins, Mayan priests saw in their future a world of MacDonald’s and Wal-Marts and figured the hell with the chronicles of history, not with Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin coming online to get it all wrong.

I don’t know. I don’t even pretend to think I know. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and that was no joke. The specter of apocalyptic reality did indeed hover for those 13 days. Couple that with the insipid high school air raid drills where behind the closed paper window shades we gathered in the hallways, no talking, no chewing gum, to accept our fate of collective incineration. Easier that way, as for those who survived the nuclear holocaust would only have one hallway from which to sweep up the ashes. But as the Cuban Missile Crisis was averted, we were left only with the only one residual epiphany, that doomsday renders high school even more irrelevant than we had originally supposed. At least that was the value I took away, that no funky, out of date textbook could ever hope to refute.

But now here we are. We have any number of doomsday predictions. Pick your pet scenario for impending disaster. There are certainly enough to go around. Global warning has its virtues, and of course the terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. Those Mayans again. Nostradamus. Although you haven’t heard much about him lately, at least not since the movie flopped. Talk about lack of star power and box office draw. If you go out on the limb, like Nostradamus, you have to be at least somewhat on target about doomsday to keep them coming back for more. A couple of flop predictions and those eponymous tee shirts are remaindered to to the bargain racks at Ross Stores, before you can say “Von Dutch.”

So now you have some entrepreneurial soul who is selling bunk beds in a converted bunker out in the Mojave Desert. AT&T had a bunch of those bunkers stationed around the country. They were designed to withstand a nuclear blast and keep the communications open through secure microwave technology. The bunkers are around 14,000 square feet, which is roughly about the tenth the size of your average Kroger or the size of a modest supermarket. Not real big. But then, back when these bunkers were built they were constructed so wires and diodes would remain intact and not people.

But here we are in a frenzied world with frenzied headlines and hysteria about one thing or another at every turn. It’s an odd world that way. One minute we are told to relish the Hallmark moment, and the next we are warned about the reality of impending doom. Yes, odd. Buy stocks and prepare for retirement in one life’s breath and in the other just kiss your ass goodbye. No wonder people are confused, frustrated, and not sure which way to turn. If it’s all over twenty minutes from now, why even bother going to the gym? It is almost as stupid as going to high school. Well…maybe not that stupid.

So here they are out in the Mojave Desert, selling sanctuary from the end of the world. It could be all yours for a mere $50,000 in cash. Blast proof doors and a bunk in a room with three other people. Yes, you will have one of the four bunks. Kind of like a youth hostel with freeze dried food that may be slightly worse than the culinary mystery you buy off a roach coach. Just you and two hundred other people in your 14,000 square foot collective space. Cozy.

You get to sleep in the same call as three other people. This means a cacophony of bad breath, stinky feet, snoring, and the occasional sneaky night fart. This is what you get for your fifty grand. Not the Ritz, and not the Four Seasons. Not even the Holiday Inn. Naw, not even the Motel Six where at least a wall separates you from the commotion next door. After awhile, it would stand to reason you would be hoping a hundred megaton bomb would relieve you of your last bad decision. Just throw back the blast proof doors and release yourself to the refreshing embrace of nuclear radiation.
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Okay, so maybe after some deep contemplation the $50,000 investment for a berth in the bunker does not seem like the world’s greatest investment. Maybe the end result seems more akin to being stuck on a tarmac for several decades while the apocalyptic pilot waits for the nuclear radiation to reach half life. Maybe, like me, you would rather be swimming with barracuda than cramped in a tight space with vacant humanity for any time longer than it takes to go from here to there. So it’s possible sitting in a jail cell with a lounge chair is not the best way to slip past the apocalypse. Maybe you are not that eager to survive, after all.

There is another factor. Nuclear war happens fast. Missiles travel at high speeds. By the time you know the show is in its final run, the missiles are launched and it is a long drive to the bunker that is outside Barstow, California. Even if you live in Barstow, it’s a tough drive. And if you live in Los Angeles or any of its suburbs, traffic is at a standstill twenty of its twenty four hours. So when they announce on talk radio that your life will be over twenty minutes from now, I would venture getting from wherever to some dirt road outside of Barstow ain’t as easy as, say, resolving the national debt. The little venture gives true meaning to getting there is half the fun.

So there you are, sitting up to here in bumper to bumper traffic, forty three miles from sanctuary, listening to dire warnings from talk radio that the end the world missile is being delivered toasty warm just moments from now, in a big insulated pizza box. You didn’t make it to your rat hole. You are dead, thinking to yourself, damn, instead of this bunker, I could have bought a Winnebago.

But for those who are a bit more upscale and choosier about their apocalyptic digs, someone out of Kansas may soon be offering underground survival condos for a mere $1.75 million apiece. There you may have your much desired exclusivity and languish in the comfort of your Lazy Boy, oblivious to the pounding of scorched hands from those less fortunate than you. Never think of them as the unfortunate, but view them as fertilizer for the future landscaping you plan once the radiation has diminished. Those fatty food diets they probably ate will play off big time as they replenish the ground.

The condo does have its drawbacks. Yes, you might survive, but it is a long way to commute to anywhere. You are in Kansas, after all, and being some wigged out survivalist in Kansas should be punishment all to itself. In the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust you can be pretty sure you won’t have decent reception on your flat screen TV.

Look, this is a variation on an old theme. People have tried this before and rather than go the collective or condo route, they dug bomb shelters into their backyards. The stocked them with weapons, food, clothing, batteries for emergency radios and flashlights. The shelters maybe weren’t blast proof but what Russian in his right mind was dropping a nuke on Maple Shade Lane in Levittown? So blast proof wasn’t the issue. You only had to survive the radiation, Grandpa’s senile reminiscing, and the fact that one nuclear family member may croak, causing you to live with the stench until the radiation outside reaches half life and you can venture out into that brave new world of devastation.

But…many did consider the bomb shelter a worthwhile investment. There was a technical name to these people, attributable to their ability to see into the future and after careful contemplation realize what action needed to be taken. A very precise and technical name. Schmucks. But then after awhile even the schmucks discovered it might not be the end of the world and started using the bomb shelter for more worthwhile purposes. Like turning it into a sewing room, or the kiddies recreational room, or since there were beds there for having undisturbed sex with the pool boy or maid. Practical application. We are Americans after all.

As for the end of the world being imminent…two very basic and visceral responses pop into mind. Not likely. And if that is wrong…then…so what? Yes, so what? People are idiots and they ended the world. They were too dumb to live and something else will come along to take our place. Maybe enlightened protozoa. Hard to say. Such is life. Such is death.

Besides, have you ever been to Barstow? Imminent death may be a lot better than sitting it out in Barstow.

Each to Its Own Disease

Everyone tries to declare how special they are. While various groups debate their differences, define their histories and otherwise demonstrate their significance on what is becoming a very small planet, there is one undeniable fact that lingers in the back of our brain. We are all going to die from something. We may die quickly and violently, or we may linger and suffer before we pass on. But the stark fact is sooner or later we are checking out of here.

It is almost funny that this is perhaps the one remaining single fact where there is little or no debate. We argue about everything else. We argue about the big stuff, and we argue about the little stuff. We argue about global warming. We debate the merits and deficiencies of race, gender, and sexual preferences. We argue about gravity and the age of the Earth. We can spend hours debating the morality of everything from where to buy the best pair of jeans to driving an SUV. We argue whether we Darwin evolved or were a product of a divine plan explained to us ever so precisely through umpteen religions and secular theories. We argue whether cow farts and bottled water will hurtle out planet to its impending doom.

We argue incessantly. Taking sides and shouting each other down has become a major industry. You can’t market complexity and nuance, because thoughts that are complex and nuanced are disturbing and prey on our insecurities. We are more secure with crackpot theories than we are with uncertainty. So we argue in absolutes, and even then we prefer to keep our absolutes simple. If they are not simple, you can’t buy the books, go to the lectures and otherwise listen to the pundits and politicians who cater to our particular set of beliefs. Simply put, if you can’t put your thoughts on a tee shirt, they probably ain’t worth remembering.

But then every once in awhile some actual facts escape from spin cycle and we are confronted with their statistical reality. These are not the speculative statistics or manipulated statistics, positioned just to validate our point of view. No. Instead these are the types of fact that are actually hard to argue with. The ugly truth as it is sometimes known. These are the simple numbers that lay reality at your feet like an abandoned child that nobody wants to nurture. These are facts that remain consistent regardless of the cause , blame or subjectivity. These are the facts that leave little wiggle room, that are distinctive in their certainty so that debating them appears more like futile buffoonery than rational argument.

Such facts? Not only are we going to die, but we are actually killing ourselves. Maybe it’s the lemming concept or the human version of the long march to the elephant graveyard. Maybe its gross denial mixed with complex mixtures of stupidity and ignorance. Maybe deep down we just don’t care. Maybe our compulsion toward self-indulgence is so great that nothing, especially common sense, will get in the way of our collective suicide.

I am not talking here about the macro levels, the easy stuff, nuclear war, global warning, and the death of the planet. I am not even speculating on the probability of the sun eventually burning to the cinder or a meteor clipping us when we least expect it. Even global starvation and massive pandemics are not on the table here. Being invaded and eaten, as Stephen Hawking recently predicted, by aliens from another planet; we can forget about that, too. I am talking about how through our lack of responsibility we are in fact taking responsibility for doing ourselves in.

You should know what you are on line levitra taking aforementioned drugs. That component along with an additional hormone manufactured in actual body cGMP cast any offering part in order to destroy the actual existence on the devastating enzymes PDE5 manufactured in the actual blood stream. cheap super viagra The condition throws them to the time super generic cialis when they can’t reachthe orgasm yet. Cures male impotence generic cialis for sale and erectile dysfunction. New studies report that nearly half the adult population in America has high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes. One in eight is playing the quinella, where they have at least two out of three of these diseases. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, 15% of us are walking around unaware we are afflicted with at least one of the three diseases. Which means to me, folks can pontificate authoritatively about everything from the rash on our ass to the Rapture and the End of Days, and yet still walk around having no idea they are seriously ill. We talk about lofty things like taking care of the planet and taking care of the poor, but yet we can’t seem to take care of ourselves.

What is even more interesting that certain diseases plague certain ethnic groups more than others. In America, African-Americans are prone to high blood pressure. Those of European descent find high cholesterol gets in their way, while Latinos suffer more from diabetes. Surely, there is some extension of these disease from one ethnic group to another, hands across the water so to speak. Also, there are other serious diseases that afflict different groups. I realize their are environmental concerns and individual or familial congenital defects. And then, in terms of health and fortune, it sometimes boils down to nothing more than the luck of the draw. But for our purposes we can stick with the article and just these three diseases.

While each ethnic group seems more in peril from a particular affliction, the causes for each of the diseases are pretty much the same. Mainly the causes revolve around smoking, a junk diet, obesity, and physical inactivity, better known as the sedentary lifestyle that makes the purchase of one of those fat mover electric scooters almost irresistible to some of the late night cable crowd. I would think no irony should be lost on the fact that our true common ground is our self-indulgence and bad health.

I have often found it just a tad specious that just about every ethnic group likes to brag about its past. Each ethnic group and nationality can go on for days about its glorious heritage and its contributions to civilization. There is no end to their performances and days of glory. Then. It is not that a disbelieve their claims. But often find myself searching for their particular relevance in the modern world. I wonder if all the casting back to the past serves as a distraction from the vagaries of our present times. I realize others will view a world through a different prism, but I tend toward the pragmatic and prefer to see how those past achievements can best be put to use in the modern day. How do we put them to use, and where does it leave us now?

From the looks of things, it leaves us obese with hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol. All represented in one form or another in the same collective rut. So in existential terms, regardless of specific achievements attributable to one group or another, we are all sitting here, living in denial and dying sooner than we should. If there is any consolation; it’s all pretty democratic. No matter what our ancestry, half of us are taking the decided inaction to let the quality of life slip out of our reach. We talk grandiose about saving the planet, but according to the recent study, we are having a tough time saving ourselves.

We talk about being sensitive to our surrounding, aware of the environment, our fellow creatures, and the challenges we are faced with. But yet in terms of our own well being, fifty percent of us can’t get out of our own way. We can’t hurdle our indulgences or come to terms with the realities of our own health concerns. Yeah, sure, we like to talk about it. We talk about the junk food, our carnivorous habits, and the polluted air we breathe. We even see the doctor. Yet here we are.

So I guess at the end of all this I am forced to wonder how are we doing to do all this planet saving when we can barely hurdle our personal afflictions? Is there any real logic to fending off hunger, water shortages, and global warming, while we continually ignore the factors causing our own demise? Here was are, ethnically speaking, all stuck with some kind of health burden and the best we can do is to skew the statistics to our own disadvantage. Maybe in the face of loftier ideals, the notion of the best example is the way we take care of ourselves.

Getting Real About Immigration Reform

Illegal Immigration is largely like the weather. To quote Mark Twain, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Of course that isn’t entirely true with regard to immigration as different states and even local municipalities have attempted to put into law statues that would in various ways limit the rights if undocumented workers. Or the more significant attempts, California some years back tried to enact Proposition 187, as a result of a populist petition attempting to limit or deny the quantity of public services the state could administer to illegal immigrants. This was knocked down by the courts as unconstitutional.

And then Arizona came up with its new statute, SB 1070. Among other things, the law makes it a state crime to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona. Another section of SB 1070 requires law enforcement authorities to make a reasonable attempt, when practical, to determine the immigration status of any person with whom they have lawful contact. This leaves open the question of whether it will lead to racial profiling and harassment of Hispanic U.S. citizens but are not carrying acceptable proof, such as a driver’s license. In response, the state officials in favor of the law deny it will lead to racial profiling. One legislator said they can determine whether someone is an illegal alien by the type of shoes he or she is wearing. Or something like that.

Subsequent to the passage of this bill, which was signed into law by Jan Brewer, the Arizona Governor, the immigration issue came once again to a boil. Many critics have condemned SB 1070 as draconian, racist, and unwieldy. Supporters maintain that inaction by the federal government on immigration issues has compelled the state to move forward. Supporters cite the troubling cost of illegal immigration to the state, especially in a bad economy. They claim this new law will be a means of combating the increased gang violence initiated by the Mexican Drug Cartels and associative street thugs.

Whether it is a draconian law filled with racist policy, or whether it was done out of frustration against federal inaction, one thing holds true–passions on both sides of the issue have been ignited. There have been demonstrations around the country, while the radio waves heat up with opinions from both sides.

Groups in support of the illegal immigrants drag out their facts and statistics, claiming that undocumented workers pump more money into the economy than they deplete. Those of the opposing view drag out their own set of statistics, citing the serious depletion of resources, how illegal workers are taking jobs away from eligible Americans, etc. And Congress, meanwhile, listens patiently, as it has done for over a decade, and then does nothing.

Michael Hiltzik, columnist at the Los Angeles Times, recently wrote a column asking both sides to cool it on the rhetoric. The article was entitled, “Turning Down the Temperature on Illegal Immigration.” It is a good article and describes how in this discussion most contributors lead with their passions and not with their heads. Hiltzik notes that–

“The two extremes of the immigration debate line up like this: One side says legalizing the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants will produce an economic boom — $1.5 trillion added to U.S. GDP over 10 years, says UCLA; $16 billion for California from legalizing undocumented adult Latinos alone, according to USC.

The other side maintains that illegal immigrants steal jobs from native-born Americans and contribute mightily to our huge state budget deficit. The cost of taxpayer-funded benefits for “illegals,” says Steve Poizner, who’s running for the GOP nomination for governor, has sent California over a cliff. (His latest TV commercial shows a car plunging into a ravine, which seems like a rather spendthrift way of making the point, for someone who’s all about economic responsibility.)”

Hiltzik then goes on to write that according to the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California, that in the short term legalizing most currently ineligible workers would have little or no effect on the labor market. He also goes on to write, that the job market open to illegal immigrants has less to do with legal workers and more with the usual circumstances of employment, meaning skill sets, education, etc. Such limitations being what they are, it is unlikely that the undocumented workers will move up in the labor scale. The report indicated that tax revenues were unlikely to surge if the ineligible workers were legalized. Nor would the better skilled labor force be particularly threatened by immigrants who lack the education and skill sets to threaten those jobs.

So in the essence, and in the short term, the PPIC study projects that legitimizing the presently illegitimate workers would create neither a major tax infusion nor threaten the jobs of eligible workers. Most illegal workers are already paying taxes and they would merely continue to do so. What it would do, it is predicted, is decrease exploitation of the illegal workers and encourage them to become more acculturated. It may stabilize their families and otherwise bring people into the light. There would be a cost to all this, of course.

Some will argue that the state and the country have already been inundated with illegal immigrants. Some complain that they should not be referred to as “illegal,” but the fact remains that as long as the laws are on the books, that is the term for people who enter the country illegally. Some claim all our people are immigrants. Others retort that their relatives came here legally, dutifully filed their papers, etc, and entered in compliance with American law. True. Maybe.

But then I have always wondered if it was only a fence or river and not an ocean between them and the American shoreline, how many would have done the same damn thing and come across illegally. How many of our European ancestors would have been wetbacks and not the bonafide entrants we brag about? I know also, as there were quotas and various laws on the books, that to bypass these limitations our European ancestors who came here in the late 19th and early 20th century lied on their documents. I found customs and immigration documents on several relatives.

I have relatives that to avoid quotas listed themselves as married, when they were in fact a brother and sister. Another female relative is listed in the immigration documents as an eight year old boy. Until the day she died, she lived in fear that she would be discovered. Odd. But true. I sincerely doubt that mine was the only family that lied about their status in order to be admitted through customs.

Both sides of the illegal immigration issues love to drag out statistics. They bandy about numbers and figures and vouch they are accurate. When it is only estimated that their are 12 million illegals living in the United States then money numbers, like the population count is at best an approximation. Since the nation is too large a space to consider for the moment, let’s just take California.

California has no shortage of undocumented workers, and certainly the state has pro and con felt the impact of their presence here. California, historically, has always confronted this issues in one form or another. The state in its past has utilized everything from the Bracero program that began in 1917 and was implemented on and off through 1964, to its ignominious Federal Reparation Act where in the 1930’s somewhere around two million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were shipped to Mexico. This act was first authorized by Herbert Hoover and it didn’t end until Franklin Roosevelt became President.

Mind you, this was in the middle of the Great Depression and for whatever reason the state was in no mood to discriminate between Mexican Nationals and American Citizens. The roundup was wholesale. It has been estimated that sixty percent were actually American citizens. I know of one woman whose mother experienced this very fate. She has for decades urged her daughter to always carry identification for this very reason. But talk about drawing the short straw and being forced to start over; this is about it. Perhaps Arizona should take his piece of history into consideration before moving forward on its SB 1070.

On the other hand, California has benefited at different times from the Federal Bracero Program. In 1917 through 1921 it was legislated that Mexicans could come work in the farm fields. Then, after deporting them for a decade or so, the Bracero program was reinstated. Between 1942 and 1964, again when the U.S. was off fighting wars and short of labor, some four million Mexican laborers were admitted to do farm work. During those years much of the border was even more porous than it is today with travelers moving from one side to the other with relative impunity.

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Thing is, many braceros did not return, but stayed in America instead. For that period of decades, millions came over to work, and millions were later arrested and sent back. In 1952, seeing this as an increasingly serious problem, the government enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act. This made made harboring illegal aliens a felony punishable by a $2,000 fine and a prison term of five years, it also included the so-called Texas proviso. The Texas Proviso protected the farmers by assuring the employment of illegal aliens is not the same as harboring them. This way, there were no penalties assessed against US employers who knowingly hired illegal workers. So you can use and maybe abuse them. And once you were finished they were left to fend for themselves.

Since we are a nation that struggles mightily with both facts and history, suffice it to say that in general the legislation being put forth by Arizona today is rooted in the past. That is to say that this is not the first time a really bad idea has been cloaked in some weird extension of necessity to hide the general vulgarity of its true purpose of greed and discrimination. More than a few times nations have followed leaders that have in the name of national urgency and some other jingoistic refrains come down on one group or another for the financial gain of the few. While we are not among the worst of these examples, we certainly possess a few we would rather sweep back under the carpet.

While emotions run high on both sides of the issue, the fact remains that to a great extent the immigration question is a numbers game. Once upon a time it may have actually made fiscal sense to utilize the Bracero Program.You may not like the program for humanitarian reasons. But in terms of economics, it worked out. Bring them in, pay them on the cheap, and then send them home.

But anything like the Bracero Program is no longer feasible. And the current system, as it renders itself today, is little more than a de facto Bracero Program. Like I said, it is a numbers game. If an employer looking to pay someone cheap wages, say $10 and hour, and the cost of living in that city or state, including public and social services, and the burden on the infrastructure, is for argument’s sake, say $20 per hour, then clearly it is the public who is picking up the rest. The taxpayer is supplementing the employer for any overage in social and public services that exceeds the $10 an hour.

That is why the whole notion of cheap labor is delusional. When you pay people less than what it cost to live, the burden will fall somewhere. It will fall the taxpayer. While we subscribe to the illusion that we are obtaining cheap labor, we grouse at the fact that we are picking up the tab for social services. We don’t mind hiring illegal immigrants; we just don’t demand the employer pay them for their services. Because, let’s face it, the only reason an employer hires an illegal worker is because they don’t have to pay them what they would have to pay an eligible worker. Bottom line is that you will have to pay for labor in one form or another. Either through the wage itself or as a supplement to social services.

The employer pays the illegal worker bupkes and then passes the overage on to the taxpayer. The taxpayer whines about it, and supports stupid and draconian laws that clamp down on the poor soul who departed thousands of miles from poverty and debilitation in quest of making a living. This is who we pick on. This is who we vilify. It is so much easier than condemn the poor guy trying to make a buck than to go after the employers who are trying to pass their labor costs off to you. I won’t even go into the nannies and gardeners and the other domestic laborers who the Mommies and Daddies of the world don’t mind buying on the cheap to watch little Junior to to make sure the neighbors don’t leave ugly notes under your door about your lousy looking lawn.

The Federation for Immigration Reform estimates that the annual cost for Illegal Immigrants in the United States has been $36 billion. By the end of 2010, that figure is expected to increase to more than $60 Billion. By 2020, the estimate is over $100 Billion. Mind you, this is from a group whose acronym is FAIR, a group in favor of immigration reform. These are not estimates from some hate filled bunch of racists looking to make a point. And FAIR’s estimation considers only three major programs–educating the children in public and primary schools, medical services, and incarceration. These estimates do not take into account the increased burden on the infrastructure, nor the accelerated cost of both medical and auto insurance born by the legal citizen.

In California, there are an estimated three million immigrants. They are not all laborers, but spouses and children who are either unemployed or working part-time. FAIR’S estimated cost for the three aforementioned programs is something like $8.8 Billion. There are other estimates that list the cost at $10 Billion and even $14 Billion. But who is quibbling about a few billion here and there? No matter how you cut it, this is a lot of money. When the state shortfall is something like $24 Billion then this is a substantial portion of our debt. And it is climbing. Unless you suffer from same delusion of cheap labor, it is apparent the burden of illegal immigration is bankrupting the state.

I know some say that the illegal working community pays taxes and pumps a lot of its money into the economy. They claim that the money the illegal workers contribute in taxes and spend on goods and services is nearly equivalent to the services they receive. Oh, really. So…if you take $8.8 Billion and divide it by 3 million. The resultant estimated cost is about $3,000.00 for every man, woman, and child. Which means for an average family of five, the taxpayer would have to pay approximately $15, 000.00 just to break even with their share of the state budget supporting the undocumented community. Families comprised of undocumented workers, depending on the study, pay an average of $4,500 to $7,000 in annual federal taxes. So there appears to be a shortfall.

Before one starts thinking that this is an argument in support of the anti-immigration movement, it’s not. It’s just the facts, M’am. Or like I wrote earlier, a numbers game. The issue is then how to pick up the shortfall. The obvious means is three-fold. On one hand, do a better job of sealing the borders. It is absurd that a nation considered to be the most powerful in the world can’t keep a watch on its on borders. While we fight wars thousands of miles away, you would think we would allocate more than a few measly bucks to monitoring our borders.

But, most importantly, it is imperative we develop a pathway to citizenship. By keeping the illegal workers in the shadows, we will experience the result of a permanent underclass. All that jargon about starting out poor in American and rising up the ladder of success is negligible if we cannot find a means to acculturate undocumented workers. We can piss and moan all day about “how dare they enter this country illegally, ” but nevertheless, they are here. They are here because we wanted them. We needed them. We needed their cheap labor; we needed them to tend the lawns and watch the kids, do repeated tasks in factories, and build stuff that we self-righteously entitle “cost effective.” We wanted them, and now we got them. Apparently, we may have too many, especially in an economic downturn when much of the jobs have dried up. Some never to return again.

So, yes, do a better job of sealing the border and assure through a pathway to citizenship we do not suffer the embarrassment and cost of a permanent underclass. Look, some will always be poor, and even more will never have enough money. But then there are those, who like the immigrants before them, start out from meager circumstances and move forward. Several generations pass and the farmers, maids, and housekeeper, have kids who are doctors, lawyers, business people, and politicians. But that will not happen through repression. It will only happen if we create a plan, a rigorous but sensible plan. Do what you are supposed to do, and one day you and your children may have a bigger slice of the pie. Or not. But at least you have a shot at it.

Thirdly, don’t hold the worker trying to make a buck accountable for being the bad guy. That is way too easy. A simple target to vent frustrations. But the wrong target. Make the employers accountable. Best to pay it through wages than through supplemental taxes. A better wage makes for happier people, but it also triggers increased taxes. Yes, you may have to pay more for goods and services, but like I wrote earlier, all illusions to the contrary, you are going to pay for the social and public services one way or another. So stop complaining.

There have been increased crackdowns on employers hiring illegal workers. Businesses are fined, and in one recent case the employer was accused by the IRS of defrauding the government out of $16 million in back taxes that he didn’t pay for his undocumented workers. The company was fined and closed, and the head of the company was sentenced to ten years in prison. The case was recently upheld in the appeals court.

As the Co-Founder of Corra Group, I see a change in attitude among many employers. Most of the saner ones realize their days are numbered when it comes to hiring illegal workers. They face stiff fines and closure. Since we primarily conduct background checks for employment purposes we conduct Social Security Traces that verify that the social security number is real and that it appears to belong to the employment applicant. We are also designated agents through the Department of Homeland Security for the electronic E-Verify or I-9. As of the first of the year, any federal contractor or employer doing business with a company that is a federal contractor is by federal law mandated to run the E-Verify on their employees.

Ironically, there was one state that got out in front of this situation. In 2007 the state’s governor signed into law the first employee sanctions legislation. Each employer was mandated to conduct the I-9 on any employee in order to verify his eligibility to work in the United States. It was a tough law. The first time you were caught hiring undocumented workers, the authorities would close your business down for thirty days, as well as fine you. The next time they were caught, the employer faced increased fines, possible permanent business closure and loss of license. A tough law that went right to the heart of the matter. It was the type of law the President Obama found the most viable in relation to one aspect of immigration reform. The legislation was House Bill 2779. The governor who signed it into law was Janet Napolitano. The state was Arizona.

Go figure.

The Life and Death of the Working Class

Whatever happened to the working class? From appearances they are all around us, working in everything from the dozen manufacturing plants still remaining in the United States to the auto and truck mechanic bays and doughnut shops across this fair land of ours. There are carpenters, plumbers, electricians, truck drivers, butchers, bakers, cab drivers, bartenders, waiters, sewer workers, construction crews, landscapers, and even farmers and cowboys. But, amazingly, no one is working class, anymore.

At least no one ever cops to being working class. Not in this day and age. When was the last time you heard a politician discuss the plight of the working class? Television news pundits never refer as working class to the blue collar worker losing his job to some eight year old kid in China. Or to a robot, also from China. Even the working class doesn’t describe itself as working class. Today the working class regards itself as middle class. The Tea Baggers, many of whom are working class, hold up signs and make speeches about the potential demise of the middle class. The guy that delivers your paper every morning will lament how massive media consolidation has all but destroyed his position as a middle class earner. Despite the dirt and grime of their professions, the hard physical work and all the dangers involved, the coal miners and oil drillers consider themselves members of the middle class. The blue collar philosopher, Eric Hoffer, would today be described in the back of his books as the notable middle class longshoreman. Even the crack whore working in the grimmest parts of town will tell you now she isn’t working class, but middle class, and that her livelihood is threatened by urban renewal ramped up by the monied elite.

Blue collar workers describing themselves as middle class, to some extent, is nothing new. In Europe the working class considered themselves to be working class, and they wore that distinction with pride, no matter how dubious a category it may appear to a lot of us. Even here in the early and mid-century United States, the working class was comfortable calling itself the working class. Hell, labor unions were first formed around that very notion. The workers. The working class. They recognized they were plumbers or trades people and as such they were people who worked with their hands. They cut meat and splattered blood on their aprons, made bread and were covered with flour. They laid bricks and dug tunnels, worked in steel mills and manufactured tools and garments. They got dirty and were physically tired at the end of the day from doing all that physical work. They had their dreams and visions, but suffered few delusions as to where they stood in the face of the overall strata. Simply put, they were working class.

But come the sixties and when America was in transition, it was increasingly uncomfortable to wear the label working class. Being working class meant that you maybe were less than your potential and couldn’t buy all the stuff that was being offered to consumers in the post-war era of guns and butter. If you were working class, you might have doubts as to whether you were entitled to the finer things in life. Perhaps you weren’t meant for that wall-to-wall nylon carpeting, the station wagon, and the Amana over-and-under frostless freezer that was touted as the prize on every game show.

Owning a television was a whole different story. You knew, even if you were working class, that you could at least have a television, because that kept you distracted and brain dead, which nullified the chance of self-improvement and further dissension. You also needed that TV for the commercials, so you knew how much all new and improved lemon scented crap was out on the market, and which brand of crap you should buy.

I came from a neighborhood in transition. It was the rare time in American history where doctors and lawyers lived next door to plumbers, carpenters, construction workers, and the guy who owned a store. It was the era when ethnic groups emerged from the ghettoized neighborhoods at the urban core to the city fringes and city suburbs where developing neighborhood offered affordable housing and access to the business centers. For some, they moved into these neighborhoods with the intention of remaining there. For a good many others, it was a whistle stop, the starter house between the old world neighborhoods of the inner city and the new. This is where you firmed up your professional practice or got your business together, before moving into the suburbs where the single family ranch-style house, two car garage and shopping mall waited to greet you new found success.

But no matter, whether you were the steel work, plumber, or the fledgling young lawyer, the general perception was you were middle class. Forget about the junker car, the clothing bought from off-brand stores, the cheap food, and cramped living quarters. Forget the fact that many of the parents were only high school graduates if that, and a portion of their kids what never put their foot inside a college door. Forget all the parochialism, and rigid stricture of the immigrant and post-immigrant class. The perception was you were doing better then both the poor bastards who had been stuck in the old world, or the ones fortunate enough to make it here. They didn’t eat what they wanted, and they were lucky if they had a pair of shoes. You had two pairs of shows, your work shoes and dress shoes. You didn’t go hungry, and you had a car to drive and a place to drive it to. You weren’t among the poor wretches working in some cotton field or some old world factory, scuffling out a a buck. So you had to be middle class.

That’s what America was all about, wasn’t it? Being middle class. If you declared yourself middle class, you demonstrated you had arrived at least in some fashion. You were doing better than your ancestors. They, those poor working stiffs, would have envied you. And while you shunned some of the constraints of old world morality and bias, you embraced enough of the Calvinist sensibility of hard work and a lot of denial to register as one with the middle class. You wanted things, and in many practical cases you could actual buy them. Who among your ancestors in the Irish Famine or the dregs of Lower Slobovia, had ever heard of frozen produce or TV dinners? And here you were loaded with those wonderful Birds Eye boxes of frozen Green Giant deliciousness stored inside your all new Amana Freezer.

So now that no one was working class anymore, you had a nation of the middle class. That is with the exception of the rich or wealthy. And the poor. but the poor had nothing and weren’t going anywhere, so there was no real need to pay much attention to them, other than to cluck cluck about how pitiful it all is and call them poor no longer. Instead they are the underclass. Sounds better, anymore than middle class sounds better to blue collar workers than working class. Except the poor don’t really give a damn that they are now the underclass and not poor, as no word phrase shape shift half-assed magic is going to make them anything but poor. No dilemmas here.

An ultrasound should viagra from india online be the first step. As should be obvious, its all exceptionally straightforward and its difficult to happen here. generic levitra http://www.tonysplate.com/review_eatsmart_digital_nutrition_scale.php Many of you cheap viagra order tonysplate.com out there who are still unaware with this medicine. As an Affiliate Marketer, you effectively become cialis online from canada tonysplate.com the ‘middle man’, you help people online, to find products that they are looking for, so here’s a description on many of the forms of modeling. But enough of the poor. Nobody likes to talk about the poor, except Mother Theresa and the patrons of a charity dinner where a couple hundred cronies looking for a tax write off to appear noble honor a rich guy for his selflessness and generosity. And since Mother Theresa is dead, you won’t hear her going on and taking your time about the plight of the downtrodden and helpless.

So it’s the rich. Once upon a time the wealthy patrician class in this country, the people who ran things, didn’t call themselves the rich. In fact, in a vain effort to remain discreet, they didn’t call themselves anything at all. But then they didn’t have to. For one thing it was considered gauche and unacceptable. Crude. Everybody knew, anyway. Besides, if you start calling your self the wealthy class then some of the working class might want some of your money.

But then, as the emerging wealthy class, as opposed to the established, patrician wealthy class, the Kennedy’s and the Rockefeller’s and the like, began to make more money decorum went south for the season, and the neo-rich couldn’t resist flaunting their toys for all the world to see. The very concept of gauche and good taste put on its designer goodies and fled the MacMansion on a Gulfstream. Gross consumption was the word of the day, and those who had come by recent wealth were heralded in the cross media platforms as was heroes of the modern world. They were to be admired, envied…and copied.

So this meant that the real middle class and of course the upper middle class– as there had to be at least an attempted distinction between the middle-middle and the upper middle–went chasing after the formerly middle but emerging wealthy class. This meant the middle class wanted what the rich wanted, and the rich in this case were the oil barons, the bankers, real estate mavens, stock brokers, models, sports stars, and the twelve-year-old start up guys with a new kind of digital company. Of course, this group, traditionally, were not at the pinnacle of great taste and culture. But they had what they had, cretins or not, and the middle class wanted it, too. And since some of the middle class was also the working class, calling themselves the middle class, you had an unprecedented demand for what in marketing parlance is termed luxury items.

There is an inherent problem with luxury items. It is not always easy to determine what is truly a luxury item and what is not. Other than the price. Once upon a time the more discerning, the connoisseurs could discern the difference in quality from everything from food to furniture. They were educated in the nuance and distinction. They knew woods, fabric, drape, and workmanship. The ability to distinguish the good stuff from the mediocre was either self-learned or was part of the patrician package deal. Or, at the very least, there was some cultural flunky in access who could fill them in. How else were you going to be the ruling class and, no matter how discreetly, lord it over the masses if you didn’t know the difference between fine bone china and paper plates?

But that was a different world. In today’s world who has time to learn all this stuff? And even if you did, chances are in a cookie cutter world of mass consumption much of the luxury brands you are buying at premium prices are being knocked out by the same slave in the same factory in a village that ten years ago finally got running water.. So along comes branding. You don’t actually need to know what makes something worth more, what gives it special quality and craft, form and function. All you have to do is look at the label. If it costs a lot, then it’s quality. That’s it. As with romance, politics, human behavior, or the history of the Earth, let’s not meddle in complexities. Let’s instead carve it down to a few simple concepts that even the idiots in the cheap seats can understand.

So in the middle of all this, where in the hell is the working class? And, more so, in this world of only one constant, that of eternal confusion, how do you make the distinction between the working class and the middle class, even the upper middle class. The wealthy elite; that’s easy. Just look for the Gulfstream parked in he driveway. But it it is only an RV taking up space in the breezeway and clogging all the neighbor’s view is the family who owns it working class and prepped for the big weekends out at Lake Somewhere, or are they middle class with a penchant for the great theme park?

Tough call. What does make the difference between the working class and the middle class? Is it education? Breeding? Income? Is it where you buy your stuff? But then the same designer sweat socks you paid a fortune for on Monday are selling Friday in a big box store. So no go there. If we break it down to occupation, it is still pretty confusing. Typically, a plumber or landscaper is working class. But if he owns a company and has a fleet of fourteen trucks, and he raked it in big time in the housing boom, then maybe he is worth more than his station would indicate. Maybe he is a wealthy guy, not wealthy class wealthy but upper middle class. While, say the account executive or sales manager who should be middle or upper middle class has fallen on tough times in the economic downturn in an industry that is facing obsolescence is making the same salary as the manager of a Piggly Wiggly. If you go by salary, then maybe the troubled account executive is working class, or out of work entirely and desperately in search of a job. But I digress.

And what about the manager in the Piggly Wiggly? Is he working class or middle class? If he has his name labeled on his shirt, does it make a difference as to which class he is part of. We have to contemplate the station of the IT guy, the techno geek, wearing the torn Mickey Mouse Tee-Shirt he bought at someone’s yard sale in order to forget he is very much under the thumb of a multi-corporate structure, is he working class or middle class? As for the hooker, mentioned paragraphs ago. Where is she in the class structure? I guess as with any other commodity, it is a matter or pricing and volume.

So it would appear in the great socio-economic milieu that the working class is gone and forgotten. It is an archaic term, I suppose, in some ways. Everyone works, after all.