From the Peoria Pundit:

Opinion: 21st century slavery in the United States

Glenn Beck can be a real doofus at times, but he is right on the money on the issue of illegal immigration:

The unspoken truth is that these businesses don’t hire illegal aliens because they can’t find American workers, they hire illegal aliens because they don’t want American workers. And it has nothing to do with wages.

Illegal aliens mean no workers’ comp claims, no age, race or sex discrimination lawsuits, no healthcare premiums, no unions, and no demands for raises, vacations or bigger offices. In fact, illegal immigrants are the perfect employees because they’re not employees at all; they’re corporate slaves.

Economist Dr. Thomas Sowell once said, “Blacks were not enslaved because they were black, but because they were available.” Can’t the exact same thing be said for illegal aliens? They’re available and we’re allowing them to be exploited in the name of cheap groceries.

Is the price of fruit really the standard we want to live up to as a country? Is that really who we’ve become?

I’m all for legal immigration. And I’m all in favor of increasing the amount of legal immigration, and making it easier.

But what we’ve allowed to happen here is an environment where good jobs are beign sent elsewhere by companies like our very own Caterpillar Inc., while low-paying jobs that can’t be exported are being taken over by the 21st century’s version of slave labor.

This cannot continue.

Usually I have nothing to say about Bill’s politics. I either agree with them, am neutral on the topic, or disagree, but not strongly enough to bother with it. Today falls under the latter category, but I do have a few things to say about the reasoning of the guy in the quoted snippet.

I disagree with the premise. The guy says “it has nothing to do with wages,” yet lists “no demands for raises” as a reason. It can’t be both. That’s what it comes down to: wages and healthcare. The rest is filler. I also think they’re missing something the corporations have in their favor: the leverage of non-citizenship. Unions? Lawsuits? Honestly, who are these people going to complain to without being deported?

I also think the notion that American workers are an unbearable burden to these companies is bogus. Sure, workers are both a liability and an asset. That’s the nature of employment. The problems listed here are not so frequent or excessive as to warrant this type of behavior from companies. I’ve worked at the same company for over two years and have not heard of a single instance where any of these was an issue, yet the company has nearly 2000 employees. The way the guy in the quoted article makes it sound, American employees are nothing but opportunists looking to make an easy million at a company’s expense, and if that’s the case, how do any companies who employ Americans remain in business?

I think the conclusion hits closer to the mark with its description of the kind of opportunism that leads to so-called corporate slavery. The thing is, certain individuals (read: wingnuts) tend to be mad at the wrong people for causing this. Illegal immigrants may be breaking our laws by being here without documentation, but it’s the corporations who are hiring them or shipping jobs overseas.

This begs the question: are illegal immigrants hurting us by being here, or are companies hurting us more by hiring them instead of Americans?

Yeah, I don’t disagree with the guy’s conclusion, but his reasons for getting there could use some work.

From PJStar.com:

What do child predators, wildfires, crops and shrimp have to do with U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Sorry, there’s no punchline to that setup. The answer is, of course, nothing. Which is why we’re not laughing at an attempt last week by certain congressional Democrats to tie a supplemental military funding bill to a bunch of unrelated matters.

In the Senate’s version of the war legislation these “domestic add-ons,” as they’re being called, included $50 million to track kiddie predators, $350 million to fight Western fires, $400 million in rural school assistance and $75 million to prop up commercial fisheries. Another add-on was a provision awarding extended work permits for hundreds of thousands of immigrant farm laborers.

The House’s version, meanwhile, had $5.8 billion for New Orleans’ levees. It also tacked on a measure to extend unemployment for Americans whose benefits have run out, and another to block the Bush administration’s attempt to cut Medicaid.

Look, our objection is not to these domestic priorities in and of themselves. Each one is an important issue worthy of due congressional consideration.

But they absolutely do not belong next to the $165 billion necessary to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the rest of President Bush’s term.

Indeed, riddling the war legislation with add-ons was a purely political move. For some Democrats, it was a dare to Bush — if he wants his war bucks, he’ll have to choke down a spoonful of unrelated spending, as he did last year to the tune of $17 billion. For some Republicans, it was an opportunity to support the war and bring home the bacon to constituents. GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, for instance, eagerly sent out a press release to Alabamans bragging about fishery assistance.

Tomfoolery like this is why Americans can’t stand politics. And it’s a disservice to the thousands of Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the fate of their funding gets hung up on Capitol Hill.

So bizarre are the political motivations involved and so entangled are the defense/domestic add-on measures that some fiscally conservative House Republicans actually helped anti-war House Democrats defeat the military funding.

Congress should let war spending — and child predator spending, and Medicaid spending, and school spending, etc. — stand or sink on their own merits.

The entire premise of this article is wrong, and if this is the depth of his or her understanding of rather common methods and processes, the author of this opinion piece should probably never write about Washington politics again. Ever.

Really, I wish every budget problem could be analyzed by devaluing it as a cheap political game. First off, if you think Congress never gets anything done now, could you imagine if they had to make a separate bill for each individual funding request, then debate and vote on each? No thanks. That’s what the House and Senate Appropriations Committees are for.

The fact of the matter is, if Congress tried passing any of these on their own (or even attached to another, less important bill), there’s a chance Bush would veto them but a better chance they’d never get called to the floor. Since this particular bill is one that needs to pass no matter what, it’s their best chance of getting the requested funding. What Congressional Democrats (and even a healthy number of Republicans) have finally realized is that the only way to pass much-needed spending is to attach it to something the president wants.

The hypocrisy of this article struck me as well. Bush is the one who started playing hardball by vetoing everything that came to his desk. Now that Congress is playing hardball, it’s suddenly unfair? The article even states that these attachments are important. What, then, does it tell us when both parties feel it is necessary to add them to a war spending bill to get the funding they need? It tells me that the president can’t be reasoned with and needs to be led by the proverbial carrot to make any progress. You may have noticed similar problems Illinois lawmakers are having with the governor.

Unfortunately, the Journal Star’s new website doesn’t have a category titled “Abject Filler and Other Banalities,” so this article ended up in the Opinion section. That’s the unfortunate drawback of opinions; you don’t have to be informed to have one.

The other day, actress/activist Sharon Stone made a remark that the recent earthquake and aftershocks in China were the result of “bad Karma” for the occupation of Tibet. I haven’t seen the response to this yet, but it ought to be indignant. Not only is this in extremely poor taste, it’s insulting to the thousands of victims both dead and displaced who have suffered tremendously in the aftermath of this disaster. Sharon, shame on you.

I’m sick of this kind of opportunistic bullshit where people exploit the tragedies of others to further some political cause. They’d benefit by spreading their message using something relevant to their cause, rather than trying to cash in on someone’s tragedy, especially when there’s no feasible correlation between what’s being compared.

You right-wingers ought to take a hint from this. When one of our people says or does something stupid, we say something about it. The next time one your nutbag buddies says something like “Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for gays,” “the holocaust was Hitler doing God’s work,” “9/11 was God’s punishment for America’s sins,” equate diplomacy with appeasement, use tragedies like the NIU shooting to promote their views against conceal/carry laws or to trump up their case against violent video games, laughably and quite inaccurately stating that America was founded to eradicate Islam… fucking call them out on it! Stop defending this lunatic opportunism and start holding people accountable for making idiotic statements, even if they vote for the same party you do. Remember accountability? That thing you say the left goes without? Give it a spin try sometime–you might rediscover your dignity.