Suffolk County versus New York State

*Cross posted from Chuck for... *

For those unfamiliar with my politics, I am a Democrat of the very left variety, but don't expect same old, same old.

Steve Levy (D) is Suffolk County Executive with an 80% approval rating amongst all voters and has been endorsed for re-election by both Democratic and Republican Parties in the county. He is an adamant opponent of tolerance for illegal immigration and refuses to create hiring halls for illegal hiring, which has put him in opposition to the Democratic lead (108 of 150) State Assembly in Albany which has tied up a 1% sales tax for Sufffolk County amounting to $320 million.

Hiring halls are intended to get the illegal immigrant day workers off the street and out of sight of the increasingly unhappy voters. Now it isn't apparent that Mr Levy is some closet racist, NYT points out:

' The chairman of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, Assemblyman Darryl C. Towns of Brooklyn, said in an interview that “it’s time for two former colleagues to have a cup of coffee,” noting that Mr. Levy had supported antidiscrimination bills during his years in the State Legislature. '

But, here is what the battle in Suffolk County seems to come down to:

'John Taylor, standing with a cup of coffee outside his Village Art and Frame shop nearby, echoed Mr. Levy’s feeling that illegal immigrants are taking jobs and undermining wages, saying of the caucus: “What is it about the word ‘illegal’ that people don’t understand?” '

Now I cannot speak for the underlying thinking of the proponents of illegal immigrants, but implicit in their stance is this, "all you have to do to get a job and services in the US is get here."
Evidently a segment of the Albany Legislature agrees with this. Too bad there's no way to tie their income to the wages of those affected, they'd squeal quick enough. It's real easy for folks to kick around ideas that do not harm them, it's real easy to hang out the 20% of the population who work with their hands, you save 5% on the price of your house, you save 5% on the price of your vegetables, you save that 5% at the cash register and pay multiples of it in State and Federal subsidies to those workers and the costs to the health care system. Legal American workers are pushed into poverty by this plutocratic agenda. George W Bush is fine with it, doesn't that give you a clue?

George W. Bush - Coward in Chief

The younger Mr. Bush’s cowardice is arguably more responsible for the calamities of his leadership than anything else.

Frank Rich looks into the eyes of George W. Bush and sees above all else a coward.
A Profile in Cowardice(TS)

THERE was never any question that President Bush would grant amnesty to Scooter Libby, the man who knows too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq. The only questions were when, and how, Mr. Bush would buy Mr. Libby’s silence. Now we have the answers, and they’re at least as incriminating as the act itself. They reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice.

The timing of the president’s Libby intervention was a surprise. Many assumed he would mimic the sleazy 11th-hour examples of most recent vintage: his father’s pardon of six Iran-contra defendants who might have dragged him into that scandal, and Bill Clinton’s pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich, the former husband of a major campaign contributor and the former client of none other than the ubiquitous Mr. Libby.

But the ever-impetuous current President Bush acted 18 months before his scheduled eviction from the White House. Even more surprising, he did so when the Titanic that is his presidency had just hit two fresh icebergs, the demise of the immigration bill and the growing revolt of Republican senators against his strategy in Iraq.

That Mr. Bush, already suffering historically low approval ratings, would invite another hit has been attributed in Washington to his desire to placate what remains of his base. By this logic, he had nothing left to lose. He didn’t care if he looked like an utter hypocrite, giving his crony a freer ride than Paris Hilton and violating the white-collar sentencing guidelines set by his own administration. He had to throw a bone to the last grumpy old white guys watching Bill O’Reilly in a bunker.

But if those die-hards haven’t deserted him by now, why would Mr. Libby’s incarceration be the final straw? They certainly weren’t whipped into a frenzy by coverage on Fox News, which tended to minimize the leak case as a non-event. Mr. Libby, faceless and voiceless to most Americans, is no Ollie North, and he provoked no right-wing firestorm akin to the uproars over Terri Schiavo, Harriet Miers or “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.

The only people clamoring for Mr. Libby’s freedom were the pundits who still believe that Saddam secured uranium in Africa and who still hope that any exoneration of Mr. Libby might make them look less like dupes for aiding and abetting the hyped case for war. That select group is not the Republican base so much as a roster of the past, present and future holders of quasi-academic titles at neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute.

What this crowd never understood is that Mr. Bush’s highest priority is always to protect himself. So he stiffed them too. Had the president wanted to placate the Weekly Standard crowd, he would have given Mr. Libby a full pardon. That he served up a commutation instead is revealing of just how worried the president is about the beans Mr. Libby could spill about his and Dick Cheney’s use of prewar intelligence.

That's right, Bush doesn't give a rat's ass about Libby or even what little might be left of his base. His only interest was in making certain that Libby wouldn't or couldn't sing. To make sure that Libby couldn't be put under oath once again and forced to document the lies and deceptions that led this nation to war. The commutation rather than pardon did that. While his conviction is still under appeal Libby can take the 5th. If he had been pardoned that would not have been an option. Bush from the very beginning has been an adolescent, cowardly playground bully. Rich's own paper touched on that cowardice it it's editorial today advocating a withdrawal from Iraq.

It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor.

But Rich has other examples of Bush's cowardice.

People don’t change. Mr. Bush’s failure to have the courage of his own convictions was apparent early in his history, when he professed support for the Vietnam War yet kept himself out of harm’s way when he had the chance to serve in it. In the White House, he has often repeated the feckless pattern that he set back then and reaffirmed last week in his hide-and-seek bestowing of the Libby commutation.

The first fight he conspicuously ran away from as president was in August 2001. Aspiring to halt federal underwriting of embryonic stem-cell research, he didn’t stand up and say so but instead unveiled a bogus “compromise” that promised continued federal research on 60 existing stem-cell lines. Only later would we learn that all but 11 of them did not exist. When Mr. Bush wanted to endorse a constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage, he again cowered. A planned 2006 Rose Garden announcement to a crowd of religious-right supporters was abruptly moved from the sunlight into a shadowy auditorium away from the White House.

Nowhere is this president’s non-courage more evident than in the “signing statements” The Boston Globe exposed last year. As Charlie Savage reported, Mr. Bush “quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office.” Rather than veto them in public view, he signed them, waited until after the press and lawmakers left the White House, and then filed statements in the Federal Register asserting that he would ignore laws he (not the courts) judged unconstitutional. This was the extralegal trick Mr. Bush used to bypass the ban on torture. It allowed him to make a coward’s escape from the moral (and legal) responsibility of arguing for so radical a break with American practice.

In the end, it was also this president’s profile in non-courage that greased the skids for the Iraq fiasco. If Mr. Bush had had the guts to put America on a true wartime footing by appealing to his fellow citizens for sacrifice, possibly even a draft if required, then he might have had at least a chance of amassing the resources needed to secure Iraq after we invaded it.

But he never backed up the rhetoric of war with the stand-up action needed to prosecute the war. Instead he relied on fomenting fear, as typified by the false uranium claims whose genesis has been covered up by Mr. Libby’s obstructions of justice. Mr. Bush’s cowardly abdication of the tough responsibilities of wartime leadership ratified Donald Rumsfeld’s decision to go into Iraq with the army he had, ensuring our defeat.

Never underestimate the power of the unconscious. Not the least of the revelatory aspects of Mr. Bush’s commutation is that he picked the fourth anniversary of “Bring ’em on” to hand it down. It was on July 2, 2003, that the president responded to the continued violence in Iraq, two months after “Mission Accomplished,” by taunting those who want “to harm American troops.” Mr. Bush assured the world that “we’ve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” The “surge” notwithstanding, we still don’t have the force necessary four years later, because the president never did summon the courage, even as disaster loomed, to back up his own convictions by going to the mat to secure that force.

George W. Bush will have a legacy - that of a coward. People see that already. The latest Newsweek Poll shows Bush's approval rating nearing Nixonian levels at 26% with only 60% of the members of his own party giving him a positive rating.

Thanks to memeorandum for making this a featured post.

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David Broder says.....

....the problem with the United States is all the pesky citizens.
David Broder asks: what do they think this is, a Democracy? Well at least that seems to be what he is saying in his latest rambling column, A Mob-Rule Moment.

A particularly virulent strain of populism has made official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion.

The nerve of those people to think that those they elect should actually listen to them.

In today's Washington, a badly weakened president and a dangerously compliant congressional leadership are no match for the power of public opinion -- magnified and sometimes exaggerated by modern communications and interest group pressure.

Sorry Mr Broder, I fail to see how politicians being "match for the power of public opinion" is a bad thing. Isn't that why we call them "representatives"?

Of course since Mr Broder sees himself as a centrist both Republicans and Democrats are "guilty" of listening to the people.

The latest cave-ins involve immigration and trade policy, and both seriously threaten the national interest.

The Republican base stopped the immigration bill and "labor and liberal groups" ended fast track trade agreements. We can see where Mr Broder's heart lies, the defeat of both of these bills was a blow to corporate America. The immigration bill would have given them cheap labor in the US and fast track trade makes it easier for corporations to take advantage of slave labor abroad. At least now we know why David Broder hates Democracy.

Update
Ed Morrissey gets Broder exactly right:

At Heading Right, I take a look at Broder's cri de coeur over the use of "modern communications" in intimidating Congress into rejecting bad legislation. The paradigm has changed, and Broder appears unaware of it or incapable of understanding it -- perhaps because he has so much to lose.

Pitty Party II

On the day after the Washington Post ran it's poor Dubya piece Robert Novak rolled the stone away from the entrance of his crypt long enough to pen a poor Republicans commentary. Or at least that's what it seemed to be when I first read it.

It is difficult to exaggerate the pessimism about the immediate political future voiced by Republicans in Congress when not on the record. With an unpopular president waging an unpopular war, they foresee electoral catastrophe in 2008, with Democratic gains in both the House and Senate and Hillary Clinton in the White House. That's the atmosphere in which these lachrymose lawmakers have for several months faced an increasingly hysterical onslaught from constituents demanding the death of the "amnesty" for immigrants they heard vilified on talk radio.

These callers swamped phone lines to Republican congressional offices (as well as to the White House) with threats that they would never vote again for anybody supporting "amnesty." While that intimidated some previous supporters of the immigration bill, its opponents saw in the xenophobia of their backers a ray of light in the bleak political landscape.

The first bit of cynicism from Novak shows up here. He realizes I think that the xenophobic monster the Republicans created to win elections has turned on them and threatens the party. And what about those Republican lawmakers? Few profiles in courage here.

McConnell was among six switchers who voted no after the 40 senators needed to kill the bill were recorded. Another late switcher was Sen. Sam Brownback, seeking the Republican presidential nomination as the candidate of the right. He voted for the first cloture motion on Tuesday to keep the immigration bill alive and put out a news release on his presidential Web site explaining his vote. On Thursday he voted again for the bill. But when it became clear the measure had failed, he changed his vote from aye to nay and scrubbed his earlier statement from the Internet.

The inevitable schism

The headline reads:
Immigrant Bill Dies in Senate; Defeat for Bush
While it is true that this is an individual defeat for Bush it is much more. Many of us have noted that the Lee Attwater/Karl Rove Republican party was made up of two groups with very divergent interests, the corporatist/feudalist elite group and the redneck theocrat working class. Lee Attwater was the first to recognize that the corporatist/feudalist elite could never win an election on their own. Attwater also recognized the potential of the a large minority of the anti-segregation evangelical Christians. The modern Republican party was born but a great schism was always inevitable. The immigration issue may will turn out to be the wedge that drives those interests apart. Tim F. at Balloon Juice sums it up well:

At its heart the GOP has two basic camps* – business conservatives who bankroll the party and the social conservatives/theocons who staff it. In that light one could easily judge the towering achievement of Bush’s term as POTUS to be his ability to defy the centrifugal forces of majority power and hold the GOP’s unlikely coalition together as firmly and as long as he did. If so, his towering failure will undoubtedly be his adamant support of this immigration bill. I have tried for days to think of something that could wedge the social cons apart from the business cons than immigration but I just can’t do it. The Chamber of Commerce loves our current system because one can pay illegals practically nothing and they will thank you for it. In their view any fix to the current system has to keep bringing in large numbers of people with poor language skills (can’t have them reading those OSHA flyers on the wall) and a weak bargaining position, e.g. guest workers. Otherwise Americans had better get ready to start paying more for hotel beds, restaurant meals and packed meats.

The key problem is that the thing that the business cons need more than anything is exactly what the social cons desperately want to end. This issue has no conceivable middle ground because the social cons want less of precisely the same thing that business cons need more of. The historical calm between these two camps lasted and could only last as long as party leaders had the good sense to keep the issue off the front burner altogether. Any move to change the status quo would necessarily set off contrary demands that could easily spiral into open warfare.

Tim gets it right. "Any move to change the status quo would necessarily set off contrary demands that could easily spiral into open warfare". That's exactly what the immigration bill did and the warfare resulted in a schism. This of course is not all that is going on. The social conservatives are loosing their influence. A younger generation of Evangelical Christians are once again discovering the actual teachings of Jesus who talked about helping the poor and tolerance, something missing from the church until now. So while this is a loss for Bush it may represent the end of the Republican Party as we have known it since Lee Attwater.

Quote of the day

The quote of the day comes from John Cole while discussing the immigration bill.

I don’t know if the bill would have been a good or bad thing for the country- I really don’t. As I stated before, I have mixed feelings- anything Michelle Malkin is that vehemently opposed to can’t be all that bad, anything Bush and Kennedy agree on can’t be all that good.

So where are all those centrists?

The out of touch DC pundits like David Broder are for ever telling us that the US is made up of moderates/centrists. According to Broder they want Washington to act in a bi-partisan manner and solve the nation's problems. Well now we have a bi-partisan immigration bill written by both Democrats and Republicans including the administration of George W Cheney Bush and Teddy Kennedy. Well guess what, only 22% of the American voters like it.
Just 22% Favor Stalled Immigration Bill

As the Senate prepares to resume debate the “comprehensive” immigration reform bill, the legislation continues to face broad public opposition. In fact, despite a massive White House effort, public opinion has barely moved since the public uproar stalled the bill just over two weeks ago.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 22% of American voters currently favor the legislation. That’s down a point from 23% a couple of weeks ago and down from 26% when the debate in the Senate began. Fifty percent (50%) oppose the Senate bill while 28% are not sure.

But at least there is bipartisan opposition.

Among the public, there is a bi-partisan lack of enthusiasm for the Senate bill. It is supported by 22% of Republicans, 23% of Democrats, and 22% of those not affiliated with either major party. It is opposed by 52% of Republicans, 50% of Democrats, and 48% of unaffiliateds.

So Mr Broder, where are all of your centrists/moderates?.

Thanks to Rational Conservative Ed Morrissey for the link. Ed says:

Rational liberal Ron Beasley at Middle Earth Journal wonders what happened to the supposed majority of moderates in the US electorate. They're there, Ron, but they don't like the bill either, because it won't work.

I still doubt the moderate/centrist America meme but Ed is right. We can all agree, if for different reasons, that this is a bad bill. OK, I'm guilty, I used this as an opportunity to take a cheap shot at David Broder. With that said I'll probably do it again.

The Jungle and Immigration

Note
This post has been moved up from the weekend.


The battle over the Immigration Bill continues. It is seen as a war of us against them. Many in the Republican base think the 'them' are the hoards of brown skinned men, women and children form Central America - they are wrong. The 'us' is the American middle class and the 'them' are the feudal corporate overlords who wish to destroy the American middle class. Now they have shipped nearly every job they can off to third world countries to avoid paying a decent wage and to escape those inconvenient safety laws. There are some jobs that just can't be outsourced like the ones at the Del Monte plant in North Portland that was raided last week. Nine out of ten of the workers supplied to Del Monte by American Staffing Resources was illegal. I for one cannot believe that Del Monte management was not aware of this but they are the 'real' criminals here but will go unpunished. The Del Monte raid gives us even more insight as to why corporations are willing to hire illegals - working conditions and worker safety. The description of the North Portland Del Monte plant reads like something out of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
Immigration raid highlights unsafe food plant conditions

An immigration raid at a food processing plant that left 167 workers facing possible deportation also highlighted unsafe working conditions that already had been the target of a state investigation and a successful lawsuit by workers, officials said Wednesday.


The federal raid at the Fresh Del Monte Produce Co. plant near the Portland shipyards on Tuesday came after state regulators had opened a pair of new investigations into conditions facing mostly illegal workers who process fruits and vegetables.


Kevin Weeks, spokesman for Oregon OSHA, said the state investigation began after the complaints were received on May 14, and was followed by a random inspection on June 7 that generated a second investigation.

The Jungle

Among the observations of the federal undercover informant at the Fresh Del Monte plant listed in the affidavit:


-- Electrical extension cords were submerged in standing water, supervisors were not diligent about the cleanliness of vegetables before boxing for shipment, and the employee bathroom and cafeteria were "extremely dirty" and not cleaned on a regular basis.


-- There were about 3 inches of cold water on the production area floor, where most workers wore sneakers or shoes even though they were supposed to be provided with boots.


-- Workers were not paid overtime for the extra time it takes to return all the production equipment after a shift.

If you really want to end illegal immigration then you jail the executives of both Del Monte and American Staffing. A few Hispanic mangers at American Staffing were arrested but not the executives of American Staffing or Del Monte that had to know what was going on.

Update
The Gun Toting Liberal discusses this issue and asks a very good question: Where are the REAL liberals when you need them.

Howard Fineman - Good Question, Bad Answer!

Howard Fineman asks a really good question:
Why is President Bush risking a nasty battle within his own party over immigration reform?
Now Howard has an idea that is not only wrong but silly.

June 12, 2007 - Though I’ve never heard him use the term, my guess is that George W. Bush sees himself as a hacendado, an estate owner in Old Mexico.

That would give him a sense of Southwestern noblesse, duty-bound not just to work “his” people, but to protect them as well.

His advisor, Carlo Rove, has explained that a system called “democracy” now gives peasants something called “the vote.” It would be shrewd, Rove said, for hacendados to grant their workers’ citizenship.

That’s the best explanation I have for why Bush is in the midst of what may be a suicide mission on immigration policy—embarrassing for him and ruinous for his party.

OK, that's Howard's best and it's just plane silly in addition to being dead wrong.

Now Howard gets a little closer to the truth hear but still no cigar.

An ungrateful base
Long ago, when he was running for governor, Bush told me that he was a “southwestern” Republican, not a “southern” one. As a son of the southwest, he wants employers to have access to all of that cheap labor, but wants to make the system more orderly, at least not cruel. He hopes (as he did as governor) to get credit for wisdom.

It infuriates Bush when people—in his own party, no less—are not grateful for what he sees as an act of heartfelt, enlightened generosity and foresighted management.

Well maybe a cheap cigar - Howard does touch on Bush's adolescent nature. I'm right because I said so. Anyone who has raised teenagers is familiar with that attitude. And then there is this typical teenage male behavior.

So he sounded like the Texas gunslinger he pretended to be as a kid when he squared off against GOP foes of his sweeping immigration proposal. His timing was perfect, as in wrong, just as he was preparing to attend the Senate Republicans’ weekly luncheon on the Hill. “I’ll see you at the bill signing,” he said, chestier than usual.

He might live to regret such playground bravado. If you are president, the only thing worse than issuing a public threat to your own party is failing to make it stick.

Now Bush has gotten away with it for six years but he may not be able to make it stick now.

Well Mr Fineman came close to the correct answer but I wonder if he knew it.

Update

It appears it really is suicide.
Republicans abandoning Bush

In the poll, Bush’s approval rating is at just 29 percent. It’s a drop of six points since April, and it represents his lowest mark ever on this question in the NBC/Journal poll.

Democratic pollster Jay Campbell, who works with Hart, attributes this decline to Republicans. Back in April, 75 percent of Republicans approved of Bush’s job performance, compared with 21 percent who disapproved. Now, only 62 percent of Republican approve, versus 32 percent who disapprove.

Produce on ICE

On the same day that George W. Bush Lobbied G.O.P. Senators on Immigration Federal agents raided a Portland produce processing plant and the staffing agency that supplied the plant's workers.

A federal raid on a large North Portland food processing plant Tuesday ended in the arrests of 167 workers, intensifying Oregon's immigration debate, tearing apart families, unnerving employers and sparking new calls for U.S. leaders to rewrite the nation's immigration laws.

An estimated 160 federal agents swept into Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. and the firm that supplied its workers, American Staffing Resources, arresting three managers and locking up most of the arrested workers in a federal detention facility, where they face possible deportation.

The action was part of a six-month criminal investigation into the North Carolina-based employment agency, which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accuses of conspiring with Fresh Del Monte to hire and employ undocumented workers. Federal authorities allege that nine out of 10 employees hired by the staffing company used Social Security numbers that were fictitious or belonged to other people.

Staffing agency supplies phony documents.

The criminal case began shortly after Christmas, when immigration agents, operating on tips from the public, sent an informant to apply for work at Fresh Del Monte's plant on North Rivergate Boulevard.

The informant told a produce manager that he was born in Mexico and had no legal documentation to work in the United States. The manager pointed him to the nearby office of American Staffing Resources, according to a federal search warrant affidavit. There, wearing an audio recording device, the informant began gathering information that culminated in Tuesday's arrests.

In the early months of this year, according to the affidavit, managers told the informant he could find phony identification on the streets of Woodburn. One manager eventually sold the informant a Social Security card, the government alleges.

A joint investigation by immigration and Social Security Administration agents found that during one stretch last year, American Staffing Resources had employed 596 workers. Only 48 of them had valid Social Security numbers, according to the affidavit.

Some workers have criminal records, face deportation warrants or have been deported previously, justice officials said.


Managers indicted

On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department indicted staffing firm managers Margarita Amezcua-Salvador, Jose Dejesus Buenrostro and Jose De Jesus Zarazua-Lopez for alleged roles in the scheme and accused them of immigration crimes, document fraud and identity theft, according to federal prosecutors.

Tuesday morning, agents arrested Amezcua-Salvador and Dejesus Buenrostro in Portland and Zarazua-Lopez in Fresno, Calif. They detained 167 Fresh Del Monte workers under administrative arrest, accusing them of being in the country illegally.

Around noon Tuesday, about a half-dozen federal agents hauled boxes of documents out of American Staffing Resources' office in Portland's St. Johns neighborhood. A "closed" sign hung on the office door, and the shades were fully drawn on the agency's windows.

While a few low level mangers were arrested I can't believe that upper level mangers at American Staffing Resources or executives of Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. didn't know what was going on - but they will not be punished - it will stop with the low level Hispanic managers. The current laws are not effective as long as the corporations and their executives are not held accountable.