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Prez drops ball, Dems can't pick it up

By Owen Paine on Wednesday May 17, 2006 11:29 AM

Prez productions has once again laid a stone egg. The hoped-for red-meat immigration bull run -- "6 thousand helmets to the border" -- has already turned into a farce. It's unraveling so fast all we need is some dumb goober to drill a fellow Guardsman in the ass, to complete the first act. If indeed this show is the work of master political theater impresario Karl Rove, then the poor puffy bastard needs the hook.

But of course the higher donkery can't take any advantage of the debacle -- they're canned shit on this issue. Admittedly, the issue itself couldn't be more radioactive -- but temporizing and pandering only allow the repubs to stay in the driver's seat. The repubs have a corporate cheap-labor agenda that flies right at the red neckery on this one, and eventually the Rahm-Hill project will maybe say let's flank 'em -- let's cry "whack the employer here, he's the villain!"

I say nope nope nope, this one calls for principle, just like the Iraq war does. The donks can't be allowed any wiggle room on this one either. Let 'em stay, make 'em legal -- period. This issue -- generous and humane immigration -- is worth going into a indefinite minority party status to defend. It's ultimately an issue that can only be fought out on a class or race basis. Straddle this one and you'll split your groin. It's like the popular front in the 30's -- if the donks fail to do the right thing here -- if they continue the savvy percentage game -- they'll lose anyway, while just playing the corporations' dummy hand for 'em.

Hey, nothing new there, eh?

-------------------------

By the way -- there's plenty of ways to control the flow honestly and humanely. For starters, raise the peso's dollar exchange rate by 100%. But that's wonk talk, I'm afraid.

Comments (3)

Expecting the DLC to push for penalties on corporate hiring practices?

Waiter! I'll have what he's having. In fact, make it a double! :-)

Tim D:

One major step in the right direction in terms of solving the “immigration crisis” would be to renegotiate NAFTA and CAFTA so they place people and the environment over profits (pardon the cliché), if not cancel them completely. It should be obvious to anyone with a brain that our comrades south of the border are coming here in droves as economic refugees – victims of neo-liberal snake oil forced on them at virtual gunpoint by the United States and its ruling class. As Jeff Faux, founder of the invaluable Economic Policy Institute pointed out in an article on CounterPunch, "[NAFTA] flooded Mexico with highly subsidized U.S. and Canadian grain, driving between 1 and 2 million Mexican farmers off the land and adding to the supply of desperate Mexicans looking for work." On top of that, the Mexican government under Zedillo did everything it could to dismantle Mexican infrastructure in the early years of NAFTA, which has predictably enough left the country absolutely devastated.

At any rate, I have no qualms about granting full rights to undocumented workers from Latin America (as well as aggressively unionizing them), but I think our priority should be to improve their situation at home, so they need not abandon their families and homelands in search of work in foreign lands.

JS PAINE:

alan S :

you conflate
theortical results ..a threat to the party /dlc corporate donors bottom lines

with a fine laff
over the "gesture "
to squeeze the repubs nuts
demagogically

hell its
an old pro wrestling trope

the heels appeal
to the ref
to stop
the dirty fighting
in an act
of baby face mockery

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