(Full episode here).
Green Mass Group is supposed to be a respectful, civil, online community. And I truly hope that it remains one. But I can’t hold back my contempt for State Treasurer Tim Cahill. As if his “playing politics with terrorism” nonsense back in May wasn’t vile enough, Tim had to remind us in last night’s debate just how much of a divisive demagogue he really is when it comes to people who don’t look like him. Click here to watch the third segment of the debate. The immigration question comes up after the 14-minute mark, and Timmy gives his initial answer at the 15:25 mark. His real colors shine through when he replies to Stein, at the 17:50 mark. And try to ignore his odd Bush/Palin-ism of “illegal citizens”.
We have 9% unemployment, so we have to deal with this at the state level. We can’t wait for Washington to fix this for us. So we have to deal with it, and one of the ways to deal with it is to go through the E-Verify system for businesses and for government, to make sure that both government and local business aren’t hiring illegal citizens before they hire legal citizens. We have to put our people first in this state.
In other words, they took our jobs!
In her post-debate press release, Jill Stein observed that “the low point for me was when Tim Cahill claimed that undocumented immigrants were taking jobs and resources away from ‘our people’. And neither Baker or the Governor offered any clear challenge to this dangerous and divisive assertion. The Governor said only that we already had laws in place to deny services to immigrants, and that crackdowns were a Federal responsibility. I think that anyone who aspires to be the Governor of this Commonwealth should be quick to stand up and stop attempts to turn people against each other – and especially attempts to get struggling people to blame the poorest and least powerful among us for our problems. Our current economic crisis has everything to do with the greed and abuse coming from Wall Street and we need to stop the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants.”
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Towards other post-ers and commentators on here, sure. Otherwise, no reason not to tell TC or whoever to go fuck himself.
That said, immigration’s a tough call. Easy enough to bash Cahill, who’s going to play the lowest-common-denominator card throughout the camapign (well, he DOES represent the views of a certain constituency, so he’s entitle to his place at the table–funny to see him enmeshed in a squabble with Howie Carr, since their demographic is pretty much one-and-the-same)–but what is the solution? I haven’t figured it out yet. My heart tell me one thing, but my brain, alas, leads to me to James H Kunstler and David Pimentel (though JHK’s nuts if he thinks a damn wall’s gonna work).
The thing that always impressed me most about this country, which I do love after my fashion, is that we’re a nation of mongrels. We have no “natives,” aside from those whitey pretty much annihilated; none of us has any true claim to the land, or to any nonsensical religio-tribal heritage that defines the damn place. Interbreeding = evolutionary success. And that extends to culture as well as to biology. Fact is, hispanic culture is going to transform this country into something very unlike what it is and was–and that includes our language. GOOD.
BUT … what’s our carrying capacity again?
Like I said, I don’t have a solution. Yours?
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http://www.carryingcapacity.org/
Ahh yes, the threat of “Cultural Marxism”. Immediate Immigration Moratorium, :: nods head, vomits ::
Sigh. I’m not as hip with the arguments, counter-arguments, or the facts concerning carrying capacity as some others. But I can at least say that because carrying capacity is an ecological and biological concept, it cannot be properly comprehended in human terms without recognizing and including sociological concepts.
Otherwise you get a “social blindless” that misrepresents and distorts the relationship between human beings and the natural world. In theoretical discussion, and discussion meant to explore differing scenarios and possibilities, you can let that slip a bit because its not about implementation.
However once you jump into social and political action, when you begin to consider solutions and policies, you better damn well have your ideas straight regarding how ecology and society interrelate. And you have to concern yourself with ethics, as well as simple political sense.
Cahill is playing on racism, pure and simple, there is no positive or constructive thinking going on there. The American immigration debate is almost entirely consumed by the specter of institutional racism. Its a messy cauldron of fear, scapegoating, and projection of economic and social insecurity.
If you want to actually come to “solutions” (to any of the issues that get lumped in here) you have to get outside the immigration “debate”.
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I know who’s playing a large part in feeding us–and so does the business-end of the GOP, who have no intention of sending all the unauthorized immigrants home no matter what the teabaggers say. Nor of providing them with any benefits or protection whatsoever, of course.
I don’t think mentioning the precarious state of our nation–in so many respects–necessarily implies vicious racism. It’s a reality, and a massive influx of immigrants–at any point in our history–has to be taken into account, even if the problem is wildly exagerrated here in MA (Obama’s aunt ain’t exactly the root of our economic woes). My point is that while you can trumpet homosapienism and the need to think beyond national and tribal boundaries–it ain’t happening, and it won’t for another millenium. There are very real issues now, and while I agree with you that the unauthorized wouldn’t represent the “drain” on our budgets that they ostensibly do if we shifted priorities, it IS still an issue. See Ireland for a good example.
You can call out Cahill et al for sure. I’m sickened by the anti-immigrant rhetoric as well (and also believe that the “anti-illegal immigrant” talk is simply cover for “anti-immmigrant” in general, pace Pat Buchanan and other fuckwits who are aghast that our “western heritage” is bing “watered down” by all these non Anglos), and I was horrified while working for the past few years in Bostons Maine Industyrial Zone seeing so many IMF vans pulling up outside the fish processing plants–and leaving fuller than they arrived.
But willy nilly, the nation isn’t about to simply drop it’s nationalistic posture (I’m actually a fan of nation-states, myself–and of competition to boot), so what I’m looking for is a sane alternative plan. On the state level–on the federal level, Jill’s dead on about the effect of two decades’ worth of trade policy on indigenous ag and trade.
Maybe the guest worker idea. How will that affect the MA state budget? I’m not really arguing with you here–I’m just more interested in numbers than in the idea that we all start thinking like homo sapiens. You know better than anyone that we’re about to start experiencing a steep decline in that affluence you cite–and you know what happens in those cases. I do not believe that this is the dawning of the age of aquarius, and I know too well what happens historically in periods of declining resources.
So I’m hpoing to see, not simply blame cast at the system, but a genuinely workable plan, here in MA, that will stand in stark counterpoint to the inhumane “round ’em up” philosophy Cahill seems to epitomize. BEFORE things get any uglier.
(An aside: not sure what you mean by “the jobs in industrial agriculture that latin american migrants are traveling here for would better serve the planet if they never existed…?”)