Taking Jobs Americans Won't Do

A high school valedictorian is getting deported to Armenia, because his family fled to the US when he was two years old.

Apparently, the salutatorian didn't want the top job.

Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

Yesterday morning, I heard a fascinating interview of Lou Dobbs on KKFI, during which the Democracy Now staff confronted him with his own lies about immigration. Yesterday evening, I dealt with a commenter who produced three separate absolute, disprovable lies in the course of one thread. In short, I had two views into the alternative universe yesterday, where truth is a minor annoyance and new facts can be invented as needed.

Last night, I got mad. This morning, I'll get even.

One of the techniques used by Dobbs is to have some half-baked reference as a source for a lie. When he reports that 7,000 new cases of leprosy have been reported in the US during the last 3 years, he "relies" on a "study" by an insane person who makes stuff up. Well, why should the right wing have all the fun? Just for today, I'll be the insane person on the left that just makes stuff up. To use these "facts" in arguments, though, I recommend that you refer to me as "a respected researcher", "a distinguished historian", or "a highly-regarded scientist". I'm all those things, of course. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Here are a few facts for you to use to win arguments and impress people:

1. 78% of the world's wealth was created during the Clinton years, and the world's wealth has declined by 24% during the Bush Administration.

2. Half of all undocumented persons are medical researchers, working quietly and humbly in labs to invent cures for diabetes, heart disease, and gingivitus.

3. In a secret speech delivered to the US Chamber of Commerce on October 13, 2005, Dick Cheney stated, "The Missouri Plan is the single most important safeguard to keep people free from corporate dominance, and so we must destroy it."

4. 95.3% of the voters who approved the Chastain Plan actually thought they were voting in favor of a regional light rail plan.

5. A comprehensive study of thousands of adult men conducted jointly by the Mayo Clinic and Harvard University Medical School discovered that drinking homebrew is good for you, and what is commonly called a "beer belly" is, in reality, the body's storage system for wisdom and B vitamins.

If you need any facts for your arguments, just email me, and I will create them for you. It's so much easier this way.

Bad Sam, Good Sam, and Kids Hurt by Fear and Dogma

As written here back in July, SCHIP represents an instance where the Bush administration is going out of its way to harm children because of its dogmatic need to prevent government from offering solutions to people.

Now that he is actually wielding his pen as a sword to cut off access to health care for children, the right wing has been forced to try to reframe the debate into terms that are somehow less heartless. Sam Graves attempts to explain his blind support of all things Bush in this morning's paper, with a truly despicable attempt to blame his support of harming children on his (bogus) fear that some of the children helped might be "illegal immigrants". Mr. Graves, when your hysteria about brown people reaches the point that you cannot stomach the thought of their sick children getting necessary medical care, you've gone around the bend.

It takes a sick mind to deny millions of children health care because you don't want the brown ones to get it.

A less disturbing but more humorous argument being trotted out has the benefit of actually being Bush's true motivation. The REAL reason we can't allow SCHIP to work is that it works. If we help the children with a state-sponsored health care, people will see that "socialized medicine" is actually a sensible and workable approach.

Let's go back to Graves:

according to the Congressional Budget Office, the expansion of this government-run health-care initiative would likely mean that 2 million kids who already have private insurance would opt for their states’ government-run health-care program. In Missouri, that would involve a waiting period. That isn’t fixing a problem, it’s increasing government.

WHAT?!?! For years we've been told that single-payer health care is the worst thing in the world, but here's Sam Graves telling us that if we allow people who live in the shangri-la of medical insurance to cross over into the pit of despair that is government-sponsored health care, they will actually make that choice? It would appear that the medical establishment and their Republican hired hands have been lying to us all these years. Shocking!

(Hint to right-wing commenters about to poke a hole in my argument by pointing out that the state-sponsored health care is cheaper - here's a friendly caution to be careful with that argument - it could be a rhetorical trap . . .)

In the face of Sam Graves' embarrassingly weak defense of denying kids health care, it's good to know that Missourians have Sam Page, a genuine doctor with a thorough understanding of the health care system. Not surprisingly, he disagrees with Sam Graves, and sent me a press release that calls him on his heartlessness:

"It is shameful that our state's leaders are willing to sit silently while politicians in Washington deny access to health insurance for Missouri children," said Representative Sam Page.

Sam Page, physician and a Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor, is urging Missouri's U.S. Representatives who voted against the SCHIP expansion to change their votes in order to override the president's veto, but warns the state should not be reliant on national policy.

In Missouri, our citizens and especially our children are already losing healthcare coverage at a rate three times the national average. The SCHIP expansion that received strong bi-partisan support in congress would bring nearly $1 billion in new healthcare funding to Missouri.

"We cannot continue to allow our children to suffer from illnesses that could be prevented if families had affordable access to doctors," said Page. "In the Missouri House I fought against the Medicaid cuts in 2005 and I have worked on Healthcare Committees to restore those cuts. As your Lt. Governor, I would not sit silently while politicians destroyed a child's opportunity to lead a healthy life."

Sam Page supports allowing children the opportunity to lead a healthy life. Sam Graves does not. No amount of spin, no amount of brown people fear-mongering can explain away the contrast.

Undocumented Immigrants are OK When They're Working for Republicans

I got a tip from a trusted source that Matt Blunt's cronies are getting tax credits to help them employ undocumented immigrants.

On Friday, the Missouri Housing Development Commission held a meeting, and one of the issues on the agenda was whether to take tax credits away from corporations that have been employing undocumented immigrants. The four Democratic appointees voted to do so. Four republican appointees voted not to hold employers accountable. The deciding vote was in the hands of Ed "bunch of Mexicans" Martin, the racist representative of Matt Blunt, who was participating by phone.

What would he do?

Would he take a stand against employers who exploit undocumented immigrants?

Would he abandon his principles to support wealthy republicans?

What would he do?

. . .

He hung up.

That way, the vote tied at 4-4, the employer gets the tax credits, and he doesn't have to vote in favor of illegal immigration.

Republican hypocrisy and moral fortitude on display.

Immigration Solution

I'm a problem solver by nature, so I don't want to simply make fun of the white people who are proposing extreme measures to hunt down, punish and deport brown people. It would be beneath me to question their humanity or their own right to be in this country. Simply stated, I'm not going to point out that most of them are descendants of people who went through roughly the same level of approval before entering this country as any fence-jumper they can find on TV. I'm also not going to sink to the level of pointing out that the families of many of those brown people were here long before the borders were drawn by the uninvited white people.

Now, I see that some right-wingers want to take away the rights of "anchor babies" - children are born in this country, but have parents who have not jumped through all the hoops to obtain citizenship. Now, my work causes me to see a bunch of kids who probably fall into this category, and they are bright, beautiful children. Certainly as bright and beautiful as the children of any of the people I've seen complaining about immigrants.

So I got to thinking. Clearly, this is not a matter of race, because the anti-immigrationists are careful to tell me all the time that they are not racists. So, I suppose they're not, because they're Americans, and wouldn't lie. Also, this is clearly not about economic protectionism, because real Americans like competition, and trust in it to make the economic engine of our country run at maximum RPM. Finally, this is clearly not about inheriting a right to be here because of choices your parents made, because America is, above all, about democracy and a rejection of English notions of nobility and inherited titles.

Since we've reached a point where deporting children born here in America is sounding like a good idea to pundits and Republicans, I think we need to accept that idea and expand upon it. We're already quite comfortable with our government splitting up families over immigration issues - it happens all the time, and I defy you to find a trace of pity on a right-wingers face when the INS deports a father or mother. When I see all those bright, young "anchor babies", and compare them to some of their suburban and rural cohorts, I cannot help but think that a rational immigration policy would probably make some unexpected choices in which ones should be deemed "American".

I propose that we have a national citizenship exam for children at age 5, testing them on IQ, language skills, cultural competency and athletic ability. (The Bush administration has blazed the trail on this one with the over-the-top testing requirements in "No Child Left Behind".) We then decide who gets to stay and who gets deported. It's incredibly simple, really.

Of course, not everybody is at their best at age 5, so I propose that every 15 years, thereafter, we have a retest. This retest could include more categories than the test for 5 year-olds, and reflect more American values, such as appreciation of our Consitution and maybe a section on "Judeo-Christian values" (they're not actually described in the Constitution, but everyone knows they are the foundation of our country, right?). Willingness to join the military could be a bonus question. We deport the bottom 10%, and replace them with the top 10% of the applicant pool. That way, our country will be constantly improving, and those deported will ultimately be happier, anyhow, as they find countries where they fit in better.

I'm not one to toot my own horn, but let me state clearly that this is the absolute best solution to our immigration issues. This plan is focused on what is best for America. The only downside I can see is that it would split up families and communities, and cause people's lives to be disrupted, but we're already over that concern. We already do that, and most anti-immigrationists are enthusiastic about doing more of it! So, let's roll!

If you fail to see the brilliance of my proposal, I suspect you're going to have a tough time with your test . . .