Why Obama Doesn't Have a Clue

[percysunshine]

So if Obama claims he is a B+ President, guess what his college grades were and why they have never been divulged.

This isn't rocket science.

 

[sealybobo]

Want to solve the problem? Ask the GOP to pass a law that puts illegal employers in prison when we catch them hiring illegals.

You will see in one month 13 million illegals will go home. No jobs, no stay.

We don't have an illegal immigrant problem. We have an illegal employer problem.

America has two signs on the border. A small one that says stay out and a big one that says HELP WANTED!

Tell the repubs!! Oh the drama.

Both parties are dirty up their armpits.

But you dont have the guts to even look.

If the GOP did pass such a law, it would only sit in the pile with all the other bills on Harry Reid's desk.

Some of my favorite parts:

Between the Reagan years - when there were only around 1 to 2 million illegal aliens in our workforce - and today 14 million, we've gone from about 25 percent of our private workforce being unionized to around seven percent. Much of this is the direct result - as Csar Chvez predicted - of illegal immigrants competing directly with unionized and legal labor.

Working Americans have always known this simple equation: More workers, lower wages. Fewer workers, higher wages.

...Driving down the wages of any nation's middle class. It's the most cynical, self-serving, greedy, and sociopathic behavior you'll see from our "conservatives."

But if illegal immigrants won't pick our produce or bus our tables won't our prices go up? (The most recent mass-emailed conservative variation of this argument, targeting paranoid middle-class Americans says: "Do you want to pay an extra $10,000 for your next house?") The answer is simple: Yes.

But wages would also go up, and even faster than housing or food prices. And CEO salaries, and corporate profits, might moderate back to the levels they were during the "golden age of the American middle class" between the 1940s and Reagan's declaration of war on the middle class in the 1980s.

It's frankly astonishing to hear "progressives" reciting corporatist/racist/conservative talking points, recycled through "conservative Democratic" politicians trying to pander to the relatively small percentage of recently-legal immigrants who are trying to get their relatives into this country by means of Bush's proposed guest worker program or the many variations thereof being proposed.

This is, after all, the middle-class "American Dream." And how much better this hemisphere would be if Central and South Americans were motivated to stay in their own nations (because no employer in the US would dare hire them) and fight there for a Mexican Dream and a Salvadoran Dream and a Guatemalan Dream (and so on).

This is the historic Progressive vision for all of the Americas...

 

[Ernie S.]

Again: Who is in charge of enforcing immigration laws now?

 

[sealybobo]

Laws are on the books already and who's in charge of enforcing them?

This was written in 2006 when the GOP controlled all three branches of government:

Reclaiming the Issues: "It's an Illegal Employer Problem"

Really? Common Dreams?

What do you have a problem with here?

The fact is that we had an open border with Mexico for several centuries, and "illegal immigration" was never a serious problem. Before Reagan's presidency, an estimated million or so people a year came into the US from Mexico - and the same number, more or less, left the US for Mexico at the end of the agricultural harvest season. Very few stayed, because there weren't jobs for them.

Non-citizens didn't have access to the non-agricultural US job market, in large part because of the power of US labor unions (before Reagan 25% of the workforce was unionized; today the private workforce is about 7% unionized).

But Reagan put an end to that. His 1986 amnesty program, combined with his aggressive war on organized labor (begun in 1981), in effect told both employers and non-citizens that there would be few penalties and many rewards to increasing the US labor pool (and thus driving down wages) with undocumented immigrants. A million people a year continued to come across our southern border, but they stopped returning to Latin America every fall because instead of seasonal work they were able to find permanent jobs.

The magnet drawing them? Illegal Employers.

Yet in the American media, Illegal Employers are almost never mentioned.

Lou Dobbs, the most visible media champion of this issue, always starts his discussion of the issue with a basic syllogism - 1. Our border is porous. 2. People are coming across our porous border and diluting our labor markets, driving down US wages. 3. Therefore we must make the border less porous. He never talks about illegal employers.

"Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to 4 in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000

Only the CNN poll asked the question: "Would you favor increasing penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants?" Two-thirds of Americans, of all party affiliations, said, "Yes," but it went virtually unreported in mainstream media coverage.

Politically, it's not a civil rights issue, it's a jobs issue, as working Americans keep telling pollsters over and over again.

 

[Ernie S.]

Are you capable of answering a direct question?

 

[sealybobo]

Again: Who is in charge of enforcing immigration laws now?

This is another example of how Republicans don't know facts and ignore history.

Here was the Democratic position back in 2006 when the GOP controlled all three branches of government. It was labor/unions that complained about illegals and now you want to ask why Obama hasn't done anything about it? You handed him about 20 fires and he has put almost all of them out. Now you expected him to also solve the illegal employer problem in less than 4 years? You expect so much from Obama but got so little from Bush and still voted for Bush in 2004.

[Bob Schieffer] Senator, do you really think the solution to the illegal immigration problem in America is to offer amnesty instead of building a fence?

[Senator Stabenow] Bob, I think you've been drinking some of Karl Rove's Kool-Aid. Illegal immigrants aren't the cause of undocumented workers driving down wages in this country. It's caused by Illegal Employers. We need to do something about these corporate criminals.

[Bob Schieffer (baffled)] Illegal employers? But what about the illegal aliens?

[Senator Stabenow] Bob, the aliens wouldn't be here if they didn't think they could get a job. To truly protect the pay standards of workers here in the United States we need to crack down on the Illegal Employers. They're the magnets that are drawing people in from all over the world, many of whom come in as tourists and then overstay because they get illegal jobs. And these Illegal Employers are breaking the law - both immigration laws and IRS laws. I suggest that we need to tighten up these laws against Illegal Employers, adding huge fines for first offenses, jail time for CEOs for second offenses, and the corporate death penalty - dissolve their charters to operate - for repeat offenders.

[Bob Schieffer (stammering)] The, the, er, did you say "corporate death penalty"? You mean against companies?

[Senator Stabenow] Better companies die than human beings. These Illegal Employers, in their quest for ever-cheaper labor, are drawing people to cross our borders in ways that cause many people to die in the deserts of the southwest. These people were executed, for all practical purposes, by the policies of a few greedy and lawbreaking American companies. When companies are repeat offenders, they should be dissolved, their assets sold to reimburse their shareholders, and let other, more ethical companies pick up the slack. We used to do this all the time in America when companies behaved badly. Up until the 1880s, an average of around 2000 companies a year got the corporate death sentence in the US.

[Bob Schieffer (bug-eyed)] But what about the illegal immigration problem?

[Senator Stabenow (patting Schieffer's hand)] It's okay, Bob. You shouldn't listen so much to those Republicans. There isn't really much of an illegal immigration problem - it's an Illegal Employer problem. When we clear up the Illegal Employer problem in this country, we'll be back like we were before Reagan started allowing employers to behave illegally. When non-citizens can't get a job, most of them will go home, as they always have in the past. We don't need a fence, we don't need amnesty, we don't need mass roundups or deportations, and we for sure don't need guest workers. We have as many unemployed citizens in this nation as there are illegal immigrants - in my state of Michigan, for example, Flint and Detroit have massive unemployment since Reagan and his corporate cronies declared war on working people. When we get rid of Illegal Employers, that's one step in helping the job market tighten up so that legal employers will have to pay a living wage to attract legal citizens to work. That and rational labor and trade policies, and we can begin to restore our middle class and put our cities back together.

[Bob Schieffer (nodding)] It makes sense, Senator. An "Illegal Employer problem." Who would have thought of that?

[Senator Stabenow (smiling)] Well, Bob, the Republicans thought about it, back in the 1980s. But they thought it was a good idea. Which is why we have this mess today. Get rid of the Illegal Employers - toss a few CEOs into jail and shut down the outlaw companies - and the rest of this part of the problem will be easy and inexpensive to fix...

 

[Full-Auto]

Want to solve the problem? Ask the GOP to pass a law that puts illegal employers in prison when we catch them hiring illegals.

You will see in one month 13 million illegals will go home. No jobs, no stay.

We don't have an illegal immigrant problem. We have an illegal employer problem.

America has two signs on the border. A small one that says stay out and a big one that says HELP WANTED!

Tell the repubs!! Oh the drama.

Both parties are dirty up their armpits.

But you dont have the guts to even look.

If the GOP did pass such a law, it would only sit in the pile with all the other bills on Harry Reid's desk.

Excellent point BTW

 

[sealybobo]

Are you capable of answering a direct question?

Sorry Obama hasn't cleaned up every mess the GOP created. It took them 30 years to ruin the American economy.

In 3 years he won the two wars you started and fixed the economy you broke and got healthcare reform passed.

Maybe with control of both houses Obama can get it done in his second term.

 

[Full-Auto]

Are you capable of answering a direct question?

Sorry Obama hasn't cleaned up every mess the GOP created. It took them 30 years to ruin the American economy.

In 3 years he won the two wars you started and fixed the economy you broke and got healthcare reform passed.

Maybe with control of both houses Obama can get it done in his second term.

Now you are just talking out of your ass.

Is that your only trick?

 

[gallantwarrior]

Pubcrappe- pass the Schumer/Graham bill- Forget harassing hispanics or an un-American Berlin Wall, both useless tricks for the dupes. PUBS love cheap labor duh.

NOT clueless in the least, dittoheads.

Hey stupid....

It was the democrats that threatened employers with criminal action if they fired any illegals.

Want to solve the problem? Ask the GOP to pass a law that puts illegal employers in prison when we catch them hiring illegals.

You will see in one month 13 million illegals will go home. No jobs, no stay.

We don't have an illegal immigrant problem. We have an illegal employer problem.

America has two signs on the border. A small one that says stay out and a big one that says HELP WANTED!

Actually, it's both the illegals flooding this country AND employers willing to cheat their fellow Americans out of jobs, both subsidized, condoned, and encouraged by a political class that sees the illegals as easy votes and the employers as piggy banks and laundromats for campaign funding.

 

[jillian]

Hey stupid....

It was the democrats that threatened employers with criminal action if they fired any illegals.

Want to solve the problem? Ask the GOP to pass a law that puts illegal employers in prison when we catch them hiring illegals.

You will see in one month 13 million illegals will go home. No jobs, no stay.

We don't have an illegal immigrant problem. We have an illegal employer problem.

America has two signs on the border. A small one that says stay out and a big one that says HELP WANTED!

Actually, it's both the illegals flooding this country AND employers willing to cheat their fellow Americans out of jobs, both subsidized, condoned, and encouraged by a political class that sees the illegals as easy votes and the employers as piggy banks and laundromats for campaign funding.

illegals don't vote, genius.

 

[Ernie S.]

Again: Who is in charge of enforcing immigration laws now?

This is another example of how Republicans don't know facts and ignore history.

Here was the Democratic position back in 2006 when the GOP controlled all three branches of government. It was labor/unions that complained about illegals and now you want to ask why Obama hasn't done anything about it? You handed him about 20 fires and he has put almost all of them out. Now you expected him to also solve the illegal employer problem in less than 4 years? You expect so much from Obama but got so little from Bush and still voted for Bush in 2004.

[Bob Schieffer] Senator, do you really think the solution to the illegal immigration problem in America is to offer amnesty instead of building a fence?

[Senator Stabenow] Bob, I think you've been drinking some of Karl Rove's Kool-Aid. Illegal immigrants aren't the cause of undocumented workers driving down wages in this country. It's caused by Illegal Employers. We need to do something about these corporate criminals.

[Bob Schieffer (baffled)] Illegal employers? But what about the illegal aliens?

[Senator Stabenow] Bob, the aliens wouldn't be here if they didn't think they could get a job. To truly protect the pay standards of workers here in the United States we need to crack down on the Illegal Employers. They're the magnets that are drawing people in from all over the world, many of whom come in as tourists and then overstay because they get illegal jobs. And these Illegal Employers are breaking the law - both immigration laws and IRS laws. I suggest that we need to tighten up these laws against Illegal Employers, adding huge fines for first offenses, jail time for CEOs for second offenses, and the corporate death penalty - dissolve their charters to operate - for repeat offenders.

[Bob Schieffer (stammering)] The, the, er, did you say "corporate death penalty"? You mean against companies?

[Senator Stabenow] Better companies die than human beings. These Illegal Employers, in their quest for ever-cheaper labor, are drawing people to cross our borders in ways that cause many people to die in the deserts of the southwest. These people were executed, for all practical purposes, by the policies of a few greedy and lawbreaking American companies. When companies are repeat offenders, they should be dissolved, their assets sold to reimburse their shareholders, and let other, more ethical companies pick up the slack. We used to do this all the time in America when companies behaved badly. Up until the 1880s, an average of around 2000 companies a year got the corporate death sentence in the US.

[Bob Schieffer (bug-eyed)] But what about the illegal immigration problem?

[Senator Stabenow (patting Schieffer's hand)] It's okay, Bob. You shouldn't listen so much to those Republicans. There isn't really much of an illegal immigration problem - it's an Illegal Employer problem. When we clear up the Illegal Employer problem in this country, we'll be back like we were before Reagan started allowing employers to behave illegally. When non-citizens can't get a job, most of them will go home, as they always have in the past. We don't need a fence, we don't need amnesty, we don't need mass roundups or deportations, and we for sure don't need guest workers. We have as many unemployed citizens in this nation as there are illegal immigrants - in my state of Michigan, for example, Flint and Detroit have massive unemployment since Reagan and his corporate cronies declared war on working people. When we get rid of Illegal Employers, that's one step in helping the job market tighten up so that legal employers will have to pay a living wage to attract legal citizens to work. That and rational labor and trade policies, and we can begin to restore our middle class and put our cities back together.

[Bob Schieffer (nodding)] It makes sense, Senator. An "Illegal Employer problem." Who would have thought of that?

[Senator Stabenow (smiling)] Well, Bob, the Republicans thought about it, back in the 1980s. But they thought it was a good idea. Which is why we have this mess today. Get rid of the Illegal Employers - toss a few CEOs into jail and shut down the outlaw companies - and the rest of this part of the problem will be easy and inexpensive to fix...

Then I guess the answer is no. You are nor capable of answering a direct question. Thank you.

 

[gallantwarrior]

Want to solve the problem? Ask the GOP to pass a law that puts illegal employers in prison when we catch them hiring illegals.

You will see in one month 13 million illegals will go home. No jobs, no stay.

We don't have an illegal immigrant problem. We have an illegal employer problem.

America has two signs on the border. A small one that says stay out and a big one that says HELP WANTED!

Actually, it's both the illegals flooding this country AND employers willing to cheat their fellow Americans out of jobs, both subsidized, condoned, and encouraged by a political class that sees the illegals as easy votes and the employers as piggy banks and laundromats for campaign funding.

illegals don't vote, genius.

I'll refrain from stooping to your level at this point...I didn't say they voted, I said they were viewed as easy votes, cheaply bought by corrupt politicians.

 

[rdean]

What Republicans think when you say the word "engineer".

Not all engineers are the same. In fact, the majority of engineers I've met are either Democrats or "foreign born". Republicans don't do well with "creativity".

For instance, if a company wants to hire an "optics" engineer, what does that mean exactly? Are all "optics" engineers the same? How many kinds of "optics" engineers are there?

Right wingers just have to get used to it. When you down science and turn your back on education, you take yourself out of the job market. Unless your goal is to work at Staples getting minimum wage with no insurance. Even then, you have to brush your hair and wear clean, new clothes. And it helps if you have teeth.

 

[francoHFW]

Voters who don't vote? Ay caramba! LOL

 

[Ernie S.]

Are you capable of answering a direct question?

Sorry Obama hasn't cleaned up every mess the GOP created. It took them 30 years to ruin the American economy.

In 3 years he won the two wars you started and fixed the economy you broke and got healthcare reform passed.

Maybe with control of both houses Obama can get it done in his second term.

He had complete control for 2 f'ing years and all we got was a fucked up health care plan. Do you really think he is worth another 4 years?

 

[Ernie S.]

What Republicans think when you say the word "engineer".

Not all engineers are the same. In fact, the majority of engineers I've met are either Democrats or "foreign born". Republicans don't do well with "creativity".

For instance, if a company wants to hire an "optics" engineer, what does that mean exactly? Are all "optics" engineers the same? How many kinds of "optics" engineers are there?

Right wingers just have to get used to it. When you down science and turn your back on education, you take yourself out of the job market. Unless your goal is to work at Staples getting minimum wage with no insurance. Even then, you have to brush your hair and wear clean, new clothes. And it helps if you have teeth.

I'm an engineer and from what I've seen probably 60% of ME's are Conservatives.