Effect Measure

This has been going on for years but it doesn’t make it more acceptable:

More than 3,000 Jewish settlement housing units are being built in the occupied West Bank where the Jewish population is growing steadily, Israel’s anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now said Wednesday.

In its annual report on settlements — considered illegal under international law — the organisation said the largest sites of construction were in Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, Modiin Illit and Beitar Illit.

In addition, another 90 caravans were added to wildcat outposts — which unlike full settlements are not authorised by Israel — and of which permanent construction is taking place in 30, Peace Now said.

The existing 102 outposts are home to 2,000 settlers. Last year, one unpopulated outpost was dismantled.

Over the past year, the number of settlements remained the same at 121 and no new outposts were established, the report added. (Agence France Presse)

The increase in size of the settlement blocs — a quarter of a million Israelis now illegally occupy Palestinian land — and their deeper penetration into the territory of another nation is not just a breach of international law, it is a major source of conflict and violence in the area. The settler population is growing at an annual rate of 5.8%, in effect doubling every decade, despite the continued assurances Israel has given the US it will dismantle illegal outposts and bring illegal settlement under control. It has done neither. It doesn’t care what the US thinks because the US is powerless to oppose Israel in any meaningful way.

Whenever I put up a post critical of Israel I get a vigorous reaction from those for whom Israel must never be criticized. I expect the same this time. Defending the indefensible is its own condemnation. This is not a suicide bombing, but it will just as foreseeably be the cause of violent death.

Comments

#1 Lea
February 22, 2007

Your last sentence, did you leave out a word?

What’s your solution revere?

Parallel universe right here in the U.S.A. revere with the Illegal Immigrant issue. How many latin americans now illegally occupy the United States? Thousands upon thousands.
#2 revere
February 22, 2007

Lea: Yes. Left a word out. Thanks. Fixed. This post was about what you shouldn’t do. There is no conceivable justification for what they are doingl. It makes any possible solution much harder to achieve.

Regarding the parallel, there is none. Immigrants are not occupying and taking by force our land. On the contrary, we profit from themi n taxes they pay and don’t receive the benefits for and labor they do that Americans won’t. They keep your prices down. They don’t take your homes and land and invite their army in to protect them.

For the record, my least worst solution is for the Palestinians to give up their demand for return to their expropriated homes in Israel, for the Israelis to give up their illegal occupation of Palestinian terriroties (i.e., pre-67 borders) and for Jerusalem to be internationalized. Not perfect but the best that can be done.
#3 M. Randolph Kruger
February 22, 2007

Revere…Right on about Israel. Wrongo on the illegals. We pay 7000 per student here and they occupy our schools and pay no property taxes which is how we fund education. Some states do it by sales tax, we dont and most of the S. states dont. I can assure you that having been on one of the local committees about this issue that even with the sales tax that they do pay that we get that wiped out when only 10 go into our hospitals with no medical insurance and rack up a quarter million in health care costs. It cost the local government 14 million in just one quarter and we are now getting ready to file suit in Federal court to get the money that the INS owes us for it. I could build one hell of a wall with 14 million per quarter.

Point is simple, they like the Israelis they shouldnt be here or there. We benefit nothing from them being on our soil nor do the Israelis. Personally I think the Mexicans are staging an invasion and could by 2030 vote because of all the illegals who have gotten the vote, remove Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California from the Union and make them part of Mexico.

I am looking soon for the wholesale slaughter of illegals by Texans and the other border states pretty soon. Just an open season and shooting back into Old Mexico when they start across the border. At what point in time do we simply say enough and do something about it that no one really wants to do? When it starts to drag our economy down is when. Those businesses that were set up in Mexico to drop the costs are now too expensive and they are moving out of there for Honduras, Guatemala etc. So now there are varying degrees of poor.

What about all of the people who have followed the rules and been waiting for 10 and 15 years to immgirate?

Invasion is what this is and its state sponsored economic terrorism under the UN Charter.

All too easy.
#4 revere
February 22, 2007

Randy: So renters are free loaders? Only property owners are full fledged and weight pulling citizens? So all the social security taxes they pay but get nothing for count for nothing? All the labor at wages below what everyone else would take and which you benefit from don’t help you? That’s what I call a parallel universe.
#5 M. Randolph Kruger
February 22, 2007

Been my experience that they are paid in cash with no SSA. That being that they are paid below minimum wages because if there was a SSN used they would have to pay minimum.

Better that they just stay in Mexico Revere. Renters are free loaders especially when apartments are used and they load them up with 10 people in a one room and more than 1/3rd are of school age. Taxes are only paid on the entire property rather than the number of people in residence generally and figured on 2.5 kids per.

Immigration is legal as long as you follow the rules. What you esconce is illegal activity and tears at the fabric of US society. It is also grounds for war.
#6 Lea
February 22, 2007

Excellent points revere however, these points do not bring any balance to the issues that MRK brought up. Perhaps that’s the real issue: Balance. The globe appears to be devoid of balance.

My mom, sweet hardworking woman, said decades ago that the Mexicans would stage an invasion and take back Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California. I scoffed at her and tried to not listen, it’s only now that I’m discovering how wise she was then and is now. Even in her own harsh way. Truth is often hidden in rough words.

America has carried a huge burden by letting so many people migrate here and it’s getting to the point where we are upsetting the natural flow of our very livelihood.

How is the U.S. powerless to oppose Israel in any meaningful way? Even if we the people wanted to oppose Israel it wouldn’t happen as our government is not listening to us.

If it’s believed the Israeli’s are a national security issue to the U.S. then get involved, if they are not then leave them alone and allow them to create their own little world.
#7 revere
February 22, 2007

Randy: I believe there is good data (cited somewhere here, maybe by MiH) that there is a very large net plus (in the billions) from SSA taxes from flase SSA numbers used by “illegal” immigrants (NB: a person isn’t illegal). Renters pay property taxes through their rent, which includes taxes and other landlord expenses. the idea that any illegality destroys US society is absurd. Our government commits illegal acts daily and so do many of us when we jay walk or take a pencil home from work or any of a thousand other minor infractions. Then there are the perjurors, not like Scooter, who got caught, but a zillion other officials and business people testifying in contract cases who didn’t. We all know that the way it works is that the big guys can violate the law and the little guys go to jail. That’s the fabric of american society.
#8 Lea
February 22, 2007

Faded, old fabric revere.

Worn out and useless.
#9 Baratos
February 22, 2007

How is the U.S. powerless to oppose Israel in any meaningful way? Even if we the people wanted to oppose Israel it wouldn’t happen as our government is not listening to us.

I believe Israel has the third largest military on Earth. Also, around the time of its formation, five or six neighboring countries invaded, were defeated, invaded again, were defeated, and then Israel conquered a large chunk of land for no real reason. In a war between the US and Israel, I would put my money on Israel.
#10 marquer
February 23, 2007

Been my experience that they are paid in cash with no SSA. That being that they are paid below minimum wages because if there was a SSN used they would have to pay minimum.

That is in fact what I have repeatedly seen to be the case on California construction job sites.

What mass illegal immigration does is to help lock in the race to the bottom both on wages and on working conditions.

Revere occasionally references Jordan Barab’s very commendable writing on workplace safety. In that line, the presence of the illegals has allowed employers to cut corners on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

I’ve seen guys on THIRD-STORY sloped roofs with no safety harnesses. (From which roofs they can, do and frequently have fallen with fatal consequence.) Have seen them down at the bottom of deep trenches with absolutely none of the side reinforcement which OSHA correctly calls for. And yeah, they get buried alive in those trenches when things go wrong. Seen illegals working inside of fully energized electrical boxes with no lockouts. Terrifying stuff.

Progressives are completely correct when they point out that the illegals are fleeing extremely difficult circumstances in the illegals’ home countries, where there is little or no remunerative employment. We should be sympathetic to that.

However, progressives are utterly in error when they assert that the US can admit high-fertility, uneducated and desperately poor Third World residents in the present tidal-wave numbers that they are coming in, without having that do tremendous damage to the things that progressives claim to value. Like living wages. Workplace safety. Union membership. Some semblance of environmental quality and open space.

All of that is being lost. Ed Abbey said, “The conservatives love their cheap labor; the liberals love their cheap cause.” Bingo. Spot on. I don’t think that either cheap labor *or* cheap causes are good for this country in the long run.

Life is without a doubt for shit in places like rural Mexico. But much of that is the directly attributable fault of Mexicans. Americans didn’t tell the guy in Michoacan that it would be a good idea to have eight kids that he can’t feed. Americans didn’t vote for the kleptocratic and incompetent Mexican federal government.

(While our own federal government is kleptocratic and incompetent as well, it is vastly less so relative to that of Mexico. You don’t see US Presidents retiring as billionaires from the take, as Carlos Salinas de Gortari very infamously did.)

There are things which Americans have done that have had damaging echo effects upon Mexico. NAFTA is one. Our huge recreational drug habit is another. We should apologize and rectify those mistakes. Repealing NAFTA would be a good start. Shutting off the War On Certain Drugs to follow.

Beyond that, Mexico and the rest of Latin America have a house of their own that they need to get in order. The Mexican elite regard the US as a giant safety valve, a sponge to sop up the people whom they can’t manage to feed and clothe and house on their own hook. It’s time for that to come to an end.

–
#11 Greg
February 23, 2007

It seems to me, Kruger, that you would have better luck, instead of shooting migrants, you shoot the corrupt employers and their bribed officials.

You are correct that the quasi-legals are a drain on your local economy. Revere is right that they are a huge benefit to the federal economy, more so to corporations. Not to mention those neighbours of yours who are accepting honoraria and generous PAC endorsements for stirring up the hatred.
#12 Lea
February 23, 2007

marquer: Exactly. Wow. Thank you.
#13 M. Randolph Kruger
February 23, 2007

I could add also that California now acknowleges that 3 million illegals were registered to vote in the Bush 1/Clinton election that Clinton took by a very narrow margin and then called it a “mandate” of the people. Those were not Republican voters either. Pretty soon all of this living wage crap is going to put us out of work in all levels of our workforce. To be effective, you have to be fluid. All I see is the minimum wage going up, it should be going down to encompass the dynamics of a world economy.

Would I take less? Only if I had to. In under six months another car company is going to go into the toilet and with it about 1/10th of the retail and manufacturing sales in this country. Shortly after that GM or Ford will likely follow the way of the dinosaurs. Cant sit around pushing a broom for 70 bucks an hour. Unions have pushed it to that Revere because they dont distinguish from the unskilled janitor to the unskilled guy who puts on a wiper blade. Its now gotten them all into trouble and once they go so will the rest of our business.

When this commode flushes its going to take us all. Then what? We all will be working for the same wages as some bozo in Mexico. Keep raising that minimum/living wage and keep running us out of the world marketplace because it flat costs too much to operate here.
#14 M. Randolph Kruger
February 23, 2007

Greg as I said before, illegal immigration is also considered to be invasion. I would gladly round them all up and give them a choice between a rope and Mexico. Employers and employees both. Big decision…think hard. I do believe that a country must protect its borders first and that is from enemies both foreign and domestic.

It might just take a bird bug to come flying in and reset the buttons that everyone including me wants to see.
#15 Darin
February 23, 2007

I’ve heard the rhetoric from Israel for 15 years. It may have been happening for longer, I just remember remember it going on that long. Always the same, we won’t/don’t do it and more settlements are created. I’m kind of shocked at how often this gets reported and how easily Israel repeats the same story.
#16 DeadAhead
February 23, 2007

Absolutely right, Revere, though your thread was hijacked for an immigration war.

What does it say that your critique of Israel’s land grab didn’t provoke a storm of protest here? That may be the most significant response of all.

I worry that a lot of people have taken to muttering quietly among themselves about Israel’s dangerous policies. I have long feared that the reaction to the mess Likud, the neo-cons, and Bush & Co got us into might be a long new wave of anti-Jewish sentiment.

People need to speak out publicly about the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. I hope that Israelis–who supported peace until one of them murdered their Prime Minister–have begun to realize after that latest mess in Lebanon that only compromise, and not nuclear weapons, can pave the way for peace in that area.

If US foreign policy keeps flying off the tracks, I don’t doubt that Jews will ultimately be blamed for it, even though so many opponents of that policy were in fact Jewish. That’s how the right wing has historically played the blame game.

Keep speaking out.
best, DA
#17 revere
February 23, 2007

Randy: The car companies are going down because of the $1500 per can they pay for health insurance that Japanese makers don’t have to pay because of universal health care there and because of “the markget,” in this case the market it labor. If you want “fluid” then you also want a free market in labor which is what immigration is. You want it both ways. marquer is also right that by not enforcing international standards in environmental and workplace safetythe “free market” (which you extol) is keeping those “illegal immigrants” in sweatshops in their own country where your heroes are outsourcing american jobs. Much easier to blame it all on Mexicans, though. No complications.
#18 M. Randolph Kruger
February 23, 2007

So once again, the US’s problems are all based upon healthcare and its our fault that the illegal activity is condoned in that vein.

The car companies and others are going down because all UHC is going to do is to spread personal responsibility to someone who has nothing to do with it. Germany has UHC and I sent you the thing that said that they had to have yet another 1.5 billion just to keep their own system afloat. And yet again, here we go they have to have secondary insurance to cover what the other doesnt cover. Very nice everyone spending all of their money on someone elses problems. Guess we have to just decide which level of communism we like and just go with it.

What I blame though is the illegal activity. Have to start somewhere with the problem. Put up a wall or prepare to start to destabliize our government in lieu of another government. You say the car companies dont have to pay? You still have to pay for someone else to have health care and UHC would be a lot more of your income going into a bureacracy in the US. The UAW just have it in their contracts. UHC will put the UAW out of business.

So we end up with subsidizing Mexico and every third world nation, SS goes bust and everyone happily goes down to the sea like lemmings simply because one has the urge.
#19 llewelly
February 23, 2007

‘Renters are free loaders’?
Property owners typically include property tax in the rent. The few who don’t are either charities or going out of business.
#20 M. Randolph Kruger
February 23, 2007

Revere, MIH is also an American citizen and here legally. A lefty for sure but legal as they come just as mine was in 1868! The Israelis are bulldozing in one end of the occupied lands and building in the other. How they get away with this is beyond me. Here in the US we have a government that believes that its okay to take your land, then give it to another for private development. Sounds so very Stalinist to me on both sides of this coin. Either way it ends in what will be chaos on the small scale or anarchy on the large. It will without result in the S. part of this country being invaded and in force. Hey, they have rights under our constitution. Time to limit them.

Wont matter. This country is in decline because we have overspent, overtaxed, over everythinged until there is nothing else for either side of the aisle to take. You feel that the world is entitled to the same lifestyle I believe across the board. That is an assumption that is made by be. If its true then please make sure you state it for the record. Healthcare is not a right. It is an assumption that it should be. The Mexicans feel they have the right to impinge on my life. I dont. You also make and you do state it that these illegals by paying sales taxes have the right to do what they are doing. You also assert that the israelis are illegals and have no right to do what they are doing. Both are conducting illegal activity as specified under the UN charter. This is invasion on both of their parts and the nations that its happening to have but 3 courses. Do nothing, negotiate or after a combination of the first and second….war. If the illegals continue on either side of this planet continue their activity there will be door number 3.

Its like climate change, its either global warming or it is indeed climate change. Whats in a name when the end result is demise?
#21 revere
February 23, 2007

Randy: Maybe you are right. Let’s get rid of all health care benefits for the military and the government. Communism. No tax breaks for corporations. Communism.

I also have a solution to your problem that breaking the law will destroy the fabric of civilization. Get rid of the border. Than moving here to work from Mexico will just be like moving from Tennessee to Florida for you.

Overtaxed? We are one of the least taxed developed countries, and we get far less for what we pay than others.
#22 Matt R
February 23, 2007

Baratos;

Don’t you think Israel might have a difficult time remaining a world class military power once the United States stops supplying them with weapons? It’s our bombs landing in Beirut, remember that. Those being infringed upon by settlements (and bombings in civilian areas) are not ignorant as to where Israel gets its military power. And it quickly becomes our mess to clean up.
#23 Melanie
February 23, 2007

randy: what is the cost to public health of 47 million uninsured peeople and the untold millions more who, are like myself, underinsured? It’s prolly a little more than Germany’s problem which, in the larger scheme of things, a mere sneeze compared to the deficits our current government is racking up.
#24 Lea
February 23, 2007

It was me that hijacked this topic, apologies extended if that’s necessary. marquer said, and it’s true, so don’t deny it: Mexico and the rest of Latin America have a house of their own that they need to get in order. The Mexican elite regard the US as a giant safety valve, a sponge to sop up the people whom they can’t manage to feed and clothe and house on their own hook. It’s time for that to come to an end.

We are indeed in the midst of several corrupt individuals that are manipulating entire populations. All of them are maniacal and want to control the world.

And I don’t quite understand where the notion of helping everyone in the entire world keeps coming from other than our own childhood upbringing. It’s not possible to accomplish this and quite frankly it’s turning the diamond into dust. Let these nations handle their own situations and leave the U.S. out of it. But that won’t happen as money rules the moment, and the next and the next.

revere: Real healthcare benefits only exist for Active Duty Military. As far as government employees go, in order to pay their health insurance requires a second job, in other words it’s such a huge chunk of their paycheck. Again, we’re retired military and we have to now pay for our healthcare, where my husband was told upon enlisting that the healthcare would be for life. The rules have changed, he was in essence lied to.

How the heck are we to ever know the truth about any situation on this globe when all we receive are half-truths? Unless someone dedicates themselves to all the blogs around the globe and studies it endlessly, all we’re going to have is what another person tells us or the hype that the news constantly spews out. It used to be where one could only believe half of what they heard, now it’s down to maybe a quarter of what we hear.
#25 M. Randolph Kruger
February 23, 2007

I wont post on this any longer… its way off topic and has drifted from the M. East to Mexico to healthcare. The Israelis are wrong… period. The Mexicans should be put on notice that the tolerance for this crap is getting thin and that under the UN provisions that an attack on Mexico could be the end result. It is a part of the UN Charter. Its economic terrorism. It isnt up to us to do anything but defend our borders, by whatever means necessary.
#26 Lea
February 23, 2007

Not wanting the Mexicans here is how the Native Americans must have felt when the white man landed at Plymouth Rock.
#27 bar
February 23, 2007

It is educational to see you americans arguing in such an enlightened manner about Hispanic immigrants.

Might I add my two cents? I suspect that the Hispanic problem arises because of your labour control (OH&S, minimum pay, health care by employers, social security etc) laws. The Hispanics I talked to in California were just looking for paid work to feed their family. (The last thing they would want is turn a state of the US into a Mex state, and bring back all that corruption). Because they are “illegals” they are not protected by labour laws, employer funded health care, so cheaper to hire, and literally, a Pareto situation has evolved. (i.e. everybody has improved their position. Even those who claim to have lost their job, because another job is available. Plus Hispanics contribution to e.g. building makes housing cheaper.)

The general solution is probably to repeal all that retrograde labour legislation and allow unrestricted work permits to all comers.

Since this is a health blog, lets look at what might happen in health care. At the moment the US seems to have a 2 tier system, the top tier paid for by (many now going broke) mega-corporations as a salary package, offering a surfeit of care to patients of whom a large proportion are probably hypochondriac. The bottom tier having doctors trained in less expensive universities, charging less for care, and probably underservicing. By abandoning corporate health care packages & having individuals be responsibile for their own health care, I would anticipate the two tiers would become more of a continuum, and the big health care insurance organizations would have to offer more competitive rates. Some of the top tier doctors (the ones servicing the hypochondriacs) might be losers, but in the main I would expect a booming economy, ordinary Americans living in a more fluid labour market, getting better pay, a general improvement in OH&S, (employers not wishing to pay damages) and a smaller social security net covering more people.

Forgive me if I hit any sacred cows.
#28 Melanie
February 23, 2007

bar, since you clearly aren’t a Yank, I’ll cut you a little slack. The health insurance industry in the US is a racket. Private insurance sucks (I’m paying a fortune for a policy which covers nothing more than medical catastrophe). You may not like the NHS, but you get more out of it than I get for my fabulously expensive private policy. It is well known that health outcomes (including life expectency) in the US are among the worst in the industrial west. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to be me.
#29 Greg
February 24, 2007

Kruger, don’t they learn ya nuttin in bootcamp no more?

There is no point in defending your borders if your enemey is to your rear. Sitting in your general’s tent, sharing a toke with him.

You, Kruger, consider illegal immigration to be invasion. Your general and his cronies consider it to be good business.
#30 brynn
February 24, 2007

I would gladly round them all up and give them a choice between a rope and Mexico.

This is “arguing in such an enlightened manner”? Or, Bar, were you being sarcastic?

M. Randolph Kruger, are you advocating vigilantism and lynching?

Even if you’re jesting, I find it shocking and disgusting. And if you’re serious, what you’re advocating is way more criminal than some poor Mexican crossing a border without a visa to labor in California’s fields or the homes of the rich cleaning toilets and babysitting for a pittance.

Shame on you.
#31 Lea
February 24, 2007

brynn: go to the minutemanproject.com site and click on Hate Mail. You may be surprised.

The East Coast sees this different from the West Coast. The South sees it different from the North. People who don’t live in the U.S.A. haven’t got a clue.
#32 kiwi
February 25, 2007

I absolutely disagree with your comments about the Israel/Palestine situation,but cherish the notion that we can have a discussion without the fear of being shot,bombed or beheaded by people who have seemingly lost the power of rational argument.
#33 bar
February 25, 2007

brynn;

Not sarcastic. Not exactly enthusiastic about “choice between a rope and Mexico”. My point was, many of the posters are making rational calculations beneath the rhetoric. (e.g. marquer).

I am suspicious of people who “know” what is right. “Vigilantism” and “lynching” are emotive labels and I deplore their use.
#34 brynn
February 25, 2007

Lea,
You’re making quite an assumption about where I’m from. I happen to be a third-generation native Californian, now living in Europe because I so strongly oppose the Iraq war.

But as a native Californian, whose grandmother, mother, myself and grown daughter were all born in California and who lived more than 50 years in California before I moved to Europe, much of the time in San Diego, I’d say I have as much insight on the issue of Mexican immigration, legal and otherwise, as anyone.

And bar, are you saying you deplore the use of the words “vigilantism” and “lynching,” more than someone actually threatening Mexicans with “a rope” or a return to Mexico?!
#35 Lea
February 25, 2007

Then we have something in common brynn, just different perspectives.
I grew up in San Diego, California, born at Mercy Hospital. Third generation and lived there for 41 years in East San Diego. Went to Will C. Crawford High and Miramar Community College.
What part of San Diego did you live in?
#36 brynn
February 26, 2007

Lea, I grew up in El Cajon. Later lived in Hillcrest and North Park.
#37 Lea
February 26, 2007

Very interesting brynn, good to know you sir.
#38 M. Randolph Kruger
February 26, 2007

So Brynn I will break this silence on this to say one thing….

You didnt misinterpret what I said. You aim them back to Mexico or using the provisions of the lefty liberal UN Charter, call it invasion and make them combatants. They can leave at the end of a gun, or at the end of a rope. After a while, they will get the message. Feel free to live in Europe. They are so civilized and all of us Southern gun toting, truck driving, tobacco chewing dumbasses will handle this problem on our own if the system wont. I deplore whats happening in Mexico and I deplore more whats happening to our society.

Cheaper to build a wall that they would need a rocket belt to fly over. I can tell you that they are costing me big right now. But you dont care… you live in Europe and likely have no concept as to what has happened in the last few years. They aint going to California any longer, they are coming here and out of compassion I help them back to Mexico, but even my tolerance is wearing thin.
#39 brynn
February 26, 2007

M. Randolph Kruger,

You bet I’ll choose Europe over a nation rapidly falling under the rule of armed-to-the-teeth rednecks boasting about their courage to bully and threaten to shoot or lynch poverty-stricken, unarmed peasants crossing an imaginary line in the sand in a desperate attempt to keep their families from starving.

Yeah, you’re definitely bursting with compassion there.
#40 Lea
February 26, 2007

brynn: You just don’t get it. We are strained to the maximum and can bear no more. We have absorbed all we can absorb, it’s wearing on the fabric of our beingness and our very livelihood.

The U.S.A. is still a young nation and we will make it. We are still perfecting our “sea legs”.

Rednecks? When push comes to shove please don’t call out for help from the very people that would save your collective butts.
#41 M. Randolph Kruger
February 26, 2007

Hmmm Brynn… Yeah you would and should because regardless of how you think you wouldnt like it much any more. Feel free to stay there, or when you do decide to come back make sure that you make an application to the Mexican embassy for a visa. You wont be wanted in the United States of CanAMexico because they will then decide that Canada has a GREAT social services system. Eveyone is just too stupid to see where this finally leads.

I guess those guys that are carrying all that dope and guns are just someone for us to bully around and shoot. Lynchings and Vigilantism are representations of illegal activity. Invocation of the provisions of national security act, the Monroe doctrine and of course the UN Charter all are in our favor and by God they are legal! There are over 1000 a day crossing the border so you can sit in Europe and tell me how bad we are here as they bankrupt our social services system that so many AMERICANS are depending on. Indeed Brynn you left because of the war in Iraq. What? Do they have to come and kick your door down to get you to do something? Yeah, you are better off staying there. Its not about trying to feed their family. Its about someone stealing your car, dealing in drugs, shooting at border agents, and using your uterus as a weapon against a foreign country by economic invasion. Its about bankrupting a system thats already bankrupted only this time it will take the entire country. We are not a welfare state but this is happening in just about every state south of Kentucky now. Tennessee has over 45,000 illegals that they know of.

Its not that they do jobs that Americans wont do any longer. Its taking jobs that belong definitively to someone else. Its about getting illegal loans from banks to establish residency and never, ever paying taxes that others have to. Its about my kids being bused 35 miles per day because they have rights that mine dont and have loaded up the schools and are demanding that they be taught in Spanish. They have superrights because someone thats a leftist thinks that they do. Time for the guns or the ropes and/or a bus to send them back. They DO have the option not to break our laws now dont they? I foresee a day and very soon where you could go to jail for say 25 years for employing an illegal knowningly. I prefer not to take a militaristic stand but if it doesnt stop soon that will be the only thing left to us to do.

They turned one election and California got Gray Davis and we got Clinton. At least they were able to recall Davis when the state tax system imploded as all of those people applied for social services. So lets just call it a line drawn in the sand Brynn, lefties always do and when its crossed they say that they line was too close and we should have moved it back. Hows Minnesota sound to you!?

Back on topic.
#42 bar
February 27, 2007

Brynn: MRK was expressing an honestly felt exasperation with illegal immigration. He did not use perjorative terms.

Umm, btw, I notice that your beloved United States of Europe seems to be having it’s own problems with immigrants “south (and east) of the border.” Why don’t you try living somewhere that has no problems? Like Iran or Sudan or most of Africa or Asia? Not too many illegal immigrants being sent home from those places.

MRK: the answer to them not paying income tax is to collect a consumption (sales) tax instead. If immigrants are taking all the jobs, so why is the US unemployment the lowest (currently less than the nairu) for decades? Truth is, because the job they displace someone from by taking lower wages now puts cheaper goods in all citizen’s pockets, which citizens then go out and spend the saved surplus to buy other stuff, the production of which provides a new job at higher wages for that displaced worker.

Straight words sound crooked.
#43 M. Randolph Kruger
February 27, 2007

Back on topic.
#44 v
February 28, 2007

MRK – just an idle few of questions here

If the BF did hit – would all the illegals in the US of A be given access to life saving vaccine, medications, and treatment?

Will the American Government have enough vaccine for her American citizens and all her illegals?

Are you prepared to defend yourselves when the panic hits?
#45 brynn
February 28, 2007

Brynn: MRK was expressing an honestly felt exasperation with illegal immigration. He did not use pejoratives terms.

Several people have hijacked this thread, which was originally about Jewish settlements in Palestine, to express some truly ugly Right-wing sentiments toward Mexicans in America. Whether or not one resorts to the “N” word, a lynching is still a lynching. An absence of pejoratives in this case is irrelevant.
#46 v
February 28, 2007

Brynn,

Is not a statement asking whether there is sufficient vaccine for both US citizens as well as the illegals, showing concern for all the people of the U.S.?
#47 revere
February 28, 2007

v: Brynn’s hijacking point is correct. But regarding your question, my answer as a doctor and a public health person is that I am not here just to protect people with certain passports but to protect the community which includes everyone who lives in it — including prisoners, politicians, corporate CEOs and other social misfits. People who are out of work, too, not just because they are “Americans.” And certainly people who work their asses off tto provide me with cheap whatever it is they are getting screwed to provide me with, whatever their passports.

From the public health perspective, vaccine reduces the basic reproductive rate (and hence the speed and even possibility of spread) without regard to citizenship, so just from the science side we need to vaccinate as many people as possible. The virus doesn’t check passports, either.