Politics Blog

State governments continue to crack down on illegal immigration, with good results.

Missouri:

Gov. Matt Blunt was in Kansas City and St. Louis last week promoting his own crackdown on illegal immigration. If the feds weren’t going to do it, he was, Blunt said.

The part of his plan that got the most attention, of course, was the announcement that the Highway Patrol and other state law enforcement agencies will start verifying the immigration status of people they arrest.

…

However, there was another element to the Republican governor’s plan that critics will have a hard time convincing me is a bad idea.

That’s Blunt’s two-pronged effort to deny state aid and contracts to businesses that employ illegal immigrants.

In other words, he’s getting after the big reason we have the illegal immigration problem in the first place.

Already, recipients of Missouri tax credits are required to submit proof that the people they employ are in the country legally.

What’s new is that the Missouri Department of Economic Development will now begin checking to see if those records are correct.

They’ll do that by randomly inspecting construction projects underwritten with state tax aid. And if officials learn that illegals are working on a job, the project could lose state aid.

That’s the plan, anyway. The follow-through we’ll have to keep an eye on.

The second part of the guv’s directive hadto do with contractors.

Blunt ordered an audit of all state vendors to weed out those who knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

Naturally, Blunt is being accused of playing politics in an election season. And I don’t doubt there’s some or a lot of that.

What pol doesn’t do a political cost-benefit analysis of every move he or she makes?

(That is, other than maybe Kansas City’s mayor, who hasn’t quite mastered that yet.)

However, regardless of Blunt’s motives, he’s on the right track.

Georgia:

Atlanta Highway is home to a number of what are often referred to as “tote a note” used car lots. These dealerships carry older and less expensive used vehicles and offer in-house financing.

The clientele is mostly Hispanic. The signs beckon “Compre aqui paga aqui” or “buy here, pay here.”

But dealers along the road say the buying part of that equation has dropped significantly since July 1. A new state law requiring car buyers to have a valid Georgia driver’s license before a new title can be issued has sent business plummeting.

Mike Grindle, who owns Jim Waters Motor Co. on Browns Bridge Road and King Motor Sales on Atlanta Highway, admits that his business at the Atlanta Highway location is off dramatically.

“Our Hispanic business has absolutely disappeared,” Grindle said, predicting an economic impact from lost sales tax revenue.

“We report several hundred thousand dollars a month in car sales,” Grindle said. “That’s a lot of revenue.”

Grindle said prior to the new law, his Hispanic customers had a Mexican driver’s license or a fake state license.

“There are fake driver’s licenses and everybody knows it,” he said. “You can go to Virginia and get a license and a lot of them have done that.”

The auto dealer said Georgia’s crackdown has opened the doors in other states.

“Up in Tennessee they’ve got their arms wide open saying ‘Come on, we want you,’” he said. “They’re (Hispanics) moving out of state. The Hispanics’ No. 1 deal is to get a car. They don’t care if they’ve got a place to live as long as they’ve got a car.”

Aaron Katz, manager of Art’s Auto Sales on Atlanta Highway, said his business has been off by 30 to 40 percent since the first of the year.

“Business has been slow this year,” Katz said. “A lot of them (Hispanics) are going back to Mexico. We’ve had a few cars given back to us because they’re leaving to go back.”

An interesting observation that other states’ legislators might want to take note of.

— PoliPundit

So I flip to Fox News, and President Bush is speaking from Anbar province in Iraq right now… Not bad!

— PoliPundit

Hope everyone is enjoying their Labor Day weekend. The Labor Day holiday also means that the start of the NFL Football Season is days away!!

And what better way is there to “kick-off”and enjoy the upcoming football season then by joining us for the Second Annual Conservatives with Attitude! & Polipundit Pigskin Challenge! It’s free to play.

Rules:
1) Email me at AJSparxx@gopusanj.com to participate, choose a nickname that you want to use. (No email addresses will be made public.)
2) Each week, email your picks, (no spread will be used), to the email address in #1 the day of the first game for that week. (In football, the week ends with the game on Monday night.)
3) Every Tuesday morning, the standings will be posted and will be cumulative.
4) A prize(s) will be awarded to the winner(s) at the end of the season.

Are You Ready For Some Football ??

— ‘The Commish’ A.J. Sparxx

So I happened to be browsing the Washington Post web site today, and found three - count ‘em, three! - articles worth excerpting.

Bob Novak brings up the fact that GOP donors are fighting mad about amnesty, and it’s showing in donations. He gives an example that sounds all-too-familiar to me:

During the summer, a female acquaintance of mine in her 70s who had been a faithful Republican during her long life received a GOP telephone solicitation as a previous contributor to the party. Not this time. She informed the fundraiser that President Bush’s position on immigration was the last straw. She would not give the Republicans another dime.

That’s what I’ve been telling the RNC for several months now. And yet, rabid amnesty backer Mel Martinez remains the head of the party…

Former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey poignantly explains why he and Larry Craig were so uncomfortable with their homosexuality:

As a child, recognizing my difference from other kids, I went to the local public library to try to better understand my reality. Back then, many library card catalogues didn’t even list “homosexuality” as a topic. I had to go to “sexuality, deviant” to learn about myself, and the collected works were few and frightening: “Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases,” “Homosexuality: Its Causes and Cure,” “Sexual Deviance & Sexual Deviants.”

If you haven’t experienced it, it may be hard to understand the sinking feeling most every gay boy or girl of my generation experienced upon coming across that section of the library. All I could do was slam the drawer closed and leave, steeped in hopelessness.

No relief was forthcoming from my then-Catholic faith, which said the practice of homosexuality was a “mortal sin” subject to damnation.

In the way that teenagers do, I came to the conclusion that my only options were suicide, something for which I could never find the courage, or “closeting” my homosexuality. After all the whispering, fights, insults, reading of academic journals and lessons from the church, you simply say to yourself: This thing, being gay, can’t be me. Everything and everyone told me it was wrong, evil, unnatural and shameful. You decide: I’ll change it, I’ll fight it, I’ll control it, but, simply put, I’ll never accept it. You then attempt to place “it” in a metaphorical closet, keep it separate from open daily life and indulge it only in dark, secret places.

The danger of this decision is the implicit shame it carries. I was convinced I was worth less than my straight peers. I was at best inauthentic, and the longer I went without amending that dishonesty, the more ashamed I felt. And the third shame, for me, was my behavior. From the time in high school when I made up my mind to behave in public as though I were straight, I nonetheless carried on sexually with men.

How do you live with this shame? How do you accommodate your own disappointments, your own revulsion with whom you have become? You do it by splitting in two. You rescue part of yourself, the half that stands for tradition, values and America, the part that looks like the family you came from, and you walk away from the other half the way you would abandon something spoiled, something disgusting. This is a false amputation, because the other half doesn’t stop existing.

I’m thrilled that Larry “AgJobs” Craig can no longer attempt to destroy America from a perch in the US Senate. But I’m saddened that we live in a world where people are forced to live a lie because society chooses to condemn what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms. In a generation or two, stories like Craig’s and McGreevey’s will hopefully begin to sound like antiquated anomalies.

And then there’s this article which explains why America will still be No. 1 for the foreseeable future:

I get the sense that even the most even-keeled observers are so disillusioned by Iraq, official sleaze, corporate greed, fiscal madness and so on that they fear the whole American enterprise is fundamentally diseased. Ask your friends which country will be most dominant in 50 years, and you’ll be unlikely to hear anyone say “the United States.”

…

But if global power is measured by military might, no other country is within light years of America. Our military expenditures, according to Cullen Murphy, are about equal to the defense expenditures of the next 15 nations combined.

North Korea spends approximately $5 billion a year on its military. That is what the Pentagon leaves as a tip for a waiter. That’s what we spend on condiments! That’s our ketchup and mustard budget!

The gross domestic product of the United States for 2007 probably will be in the vicinity of $13.2 trillion. China is right around $2.6 trillion – in fourth place, after the United States, Japan and Germany.

China’s rivers are sewers. Environmental problems make the Chinese economic boom unsustainable. That’s the recent assessment of China’s deputy minister for the environment in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel: “This miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace. Acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory, half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens does not have access to clean drinking water.”

Moreover, China will be the first country to get old before it gets rich. China’s one-child policy, so rigidly enforced in the 1980s and 1990s, will haunt the country as it finds itself without enough workers to support a geriatric population.

My colleague Joel Garreau recently surveyed global demographic trends for Smithsonian magazine and concluded that the United States is in far better shape than any potential rival. By 2020, there will be only one German worker for every German pensioner. Japan is rapidly aging and having few babies. Russia combines a low birthrate with decreasing life expectancy. Every year, 700,000 more Russians die than are born.

…

Americans are blessed with a durable Constitution, cultural diversity, abundant resources and an open society. I think we’re capable of solving our problems. That’s the position, too, of Murphy, whose America/Rome meditation ends on a hopeful note. He writes that a fundamental characteristic of Americans is the belief that improvement is possible. Sure, we’re making many of the mistakes the Romans made: “But the antidote is everywhere. The antidote is being American.”

Happy Labor Day!

– PoliPundit

In a pro-active move before the Congressional hearings kickoff because of the steroid related deaths in Pro-Wrestling, the WWEhas fired and/or suspended over a dozen WWE performers who have been linked to steroids.

If you follow the WWE, some of the names will be familiar from the list that has been reported by the New York Daily News, ESPN and Sports Illustrated:

Chavo Guerrero, Shane Helms, Randy Orton, John (Johnny Nitro) Morrison, Funaki, Charlie Haas, Umaga, William Regal, Edge, Booker T, Santino Marella, Mike Bucci, Ken Kennedy, Batista, and Chris Masters.

On a personal note, Charlie Haas debuted as a Pro-Wrestler on my AWC wrestling show in February of 1999 and Mike Bucci, who wrestled as Simon Dean in the WWE and as Super Nova/Hollywood Nova in ECW, has been a friend of mine since 1992 and was a guest at my wedding. That takes care of the publicly released stories. Now let’s go backstage into the lockerroom over the last couple of days and get information not known anywhere else.

According to my sources, Stephanie McMahon, (Vince’s daughter), addressed the wrestlers before a TV taping and announced that wrestlers would soon be suspended due to their link to online pharmacies. She also relayed that Vince was looking forward to testifying before Congress on this situation.

Stephanie also talked about some changed to the WWE Wellness Policy, (as the WWE prepares to be grilled by Congress). The WWE will now test for marijuana use and failed tests will result in fines, NOT suspensions. Also, the WWE will be testing for anti-estrogen drugs, which are commonly used to offset some of the effects of steroid and HGH use. Anyone that tests positive will receive immediate suspensions.

And before any new talent can sign a deal, they must undergo and pass the WWE Wellness test.

One of the wrestlers on the list, Batista, has denied having anything to do with the pharmacy that he has been linked to and has discussed suing the media outlets that reported it with WWE lawyers, (who are VERY busy these days, lol).

“The Game” Triple H, gave a rah-rah speech and asked that everyone come together and overcome these obstacles.

After the meeting, the wrestler known as Eugene was fired and escorted from the building immediately. Talk about coming together. Rah-Rah!!!

– ‘The Commish’ A.J. Sparxx

How would this possibly be good for Larry Craig, the Republican Party, the Senate, or the country?

Senator Arlen Specter said Idaho Republican Larry Craig should try to withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct in connection with an incident in an airport men’s room and fight the case.

“I think he could be vindicated,’’ Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on the “Fox News Sunday’’ program.

Specter, of Pennsylvania, said that Craig “hasn’t resigned’’ from the Senate, only that he “intends to resign’’ as of Sept. 30. That gives Craig a month to fight the case in court, Specter said. If the case went to trial, Specter said Craig “wouldn’t be convicted of anything.’’

I sincerely hope Specter is caught violating farm animals in time for the GOP to nominate a replacement for the 2008 elections.

— W.C. Varones

Perhaps someone could do us the favor of outing Lindsey Grahamnesty before the 2008 GOP Senate primary in South Carolina…

— PoliPundit

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected on a reform agenda after years of state mismanagement by Democrats. He made one attempt to follow through on his campaign promises with a reform agenda via several ballot initiatives. When those initiatives failed due to union campaign money and California’s drooling idiot voters, Schwarzenegger decided, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” He’s been governing like a left-wing Democrat ever since. He’s spending faster than predecessor Gray Davis ever did, and his staff is filled with left-wing Democrats from the Davis administration. Now he’s calling for socialist health care in California (including for any sick Mexicans who want to jump the border for free treatment).

The domestic media would never point out any of this. Leave it to the Agence France-Presse:

Universal health care is normally an issue raised by left-wing Democrats, but Schwarzenegger used the issue to help gain re-election in November 2006, which he did thanks to Democratic support.

When was the last time you saw the phrase “left-wing Democrats” in an American MSM story?

— W.C. Varones

The Ross Report
by Richard Ross of Conservatives with Attitude!
{Live from the California - Mexico Border traveling with the Minutemen}

The North American Union is a step closer to reality as our open borders president won a victory in court when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco late on Friday denied an emergency petition sought by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and consumer group Public Citizen to halt the start of a one-year pilot program to open the U.S. border to long haul Mexican trucks.

Reuters: Mexico trucks to roll on U.S. highways

What’s the next step…Erase the border?

— ‘The Commish’ A.J. Sparxx

The agriculture industry is trying to sneak in a “mini”-amnesty for their millions of imported servants, called “AgJobs.” Yesterday, I watched the head of the Washington State Growers Association say on TV that, if they missed an upcoming two-month window, they wouldn’t be able to force AgJobs through Congress until at least 2010.

Well, they just lost one of their strongest supporters:

Agriculture leaders and organizations in the West indicate they will soon be pressuring their representatives in Washington, D.C., to pass the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act - commonly known as AgJOBS - this fall as part of the 2007 Farm Bill.

Introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, the legislation failed in earlier attempts as part of a comprehensive immigration package. Opinions on its potential for success as a stand-alone bill and as a part of the farm bill differ among agriculture leaders, but they agree that the labor situation is critical.

Sgt. David Karsnia may have done more to safeguard America than any other cop in the country!!

— PoliPundit