DANIEL GREEN FIELD: THE WEEK THAT WAS PART ONE
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DON’T CALL IT AMNESTY
Amnesty is bad. Everyone agrees on that. Even the senators who support amnesty claim not to support it. Instead they support “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” with “A Path to Citizenship”. They support a comprehensive solution that will be compassionate and work as an immigration policy for the 21st century.
No one uses the term “amnesty” anymore except opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens and their more vociferous advocates. This makes for some confusing speeches and press conferences.
The most bizarre argument that advocates of amnesty are making is that we have “de facto amnesty” now. The argument goes that since we have de facto amnesty now, we should just have the real thing and get it over with.
A lack of proper enforcement is not de facto amnesty. Amnesty is legalization. What Rubio and Rand Paul call de facto amnesty is the difference between not arresting a drug dealer and legalizing heroin.
The big sales pitch for 2012 was overall electability. The sales pitch for 2016 is Latino electability. The GOP only wants someone who has a shot with the Latino vote. And Marco Rubio and Rand Paul are busy polishing their Latino vote credentials. It’s a stupid way to run a political movement, but a great way to get ahead.
Even if amnesty is good for Rubio or Paul, it’s not good for the Republican Party, for America or for Latino immigrants for that matter, who are entitled to a legal system of entry, rather than being told that their best route into the country is by bribing a coyote and trying to make it across the border.
And during an economic downturn, championing mass immigration is insensitive to the majority of American workers. The GOP failed to properly make its case to them in two elections. Now it’s giving them a big middle finger while chasing after the Mexican-American vote, even though far from all Mexican-Americans support amnesty.
And worst of all they’re doing it dishonestly.
Take Rand Paul.
Rand Paul struggled valiantly to tell the media that haggling over terms like “path to citizenship” and “amnesty” gets the debate nowhere.
“[The debate] is trapped in a couple of words — ‘path to citizenship’ and ‘amnesty,’ ” he said. Taking a shot at the anti-immigration advocates, he said later in the call, “Everybody who doesn’t want anything to move forward calls anything they don’t like a ‘path to citizenship’ and ‘amnesty.’”
Sounding a tad forlorn, he then asked, “Can’t we just call it reform?”
Can’t we just call it what it is?
Reform tells you nothing about a policy. Obama called Obamacare reform too. Everyone calls their policy proposals reform. It’s a brand. It tells you nothing about what it does.
If you were reading conservatives sites this week, you saw the drama of Rand Paul going back and forth over whether he supports a path to citizenship or not.
As for citizenship, he went around and around with reporters, reiterating in response to each variation on the same question that for citizenship the new visa holders would “get in line” or “go to the back of the line.” He referred to the “existing” line but allowed that there had to be discussion about country limits, how many people are in line, how long they must wait, etc.
He also indicated he was open to “rethinking” his opposition to granting citizenship to children brought here illegally if the border security issue can be resolved.
Lines. Lines lots of lines. But at the end of the line is citizenship.
“I didn’t use the word citizenship at all this morning,” Paul said. ”Basically what I want to do is to expand the worker visa program, have border security and then as far as how people become citizens, there already is a process for how people become citizens. The main difference is I wouldn’t have people be forced to go home. You’d just get in line. But you get in the same line everyone is in.”
So Rand Paul’s proposal would legalize and eventually turn millions of illegal aliens into citizens… but he thinks it’s unfair that the end result be associated with him.
He’s not proposing to turn them into citizens. He’s just proposing to legalize them so that they can apply for citizenship.
The question for those who supported Rand Paul isn’t whether you want amnesty. Everyone is entitled to their point of view.
The question is should politicians be up front about the policies they support or should they hide them because they don’t trust the voters?
Even though Paul would clearly make it easier to become a citizen, he said he would rather not label it a “path to citizenship,” because using that phrases means everyone “closes their ears” to the rest of the argument.
Is this what you really want?
This doesn’t just apply to Rand, it applies to Rubio, who has been even worse on this out of the gate. The problem is that the Republican Party is overrun by presidential wannabes who don’t want to say what they mean and when they’re finally forced to take a position that is mainstream to their base, but edgy by their standards, they mess it up badly and blame the right-wing voters for the consequences.
AMNESTY AND LIBERTARIANS
During the debates over this topic, I wrote,
Libertarianism, like every other political philosophy, is not an absolute good. Thinking that way leads to totalitarianism.
There are good things about it, but there are also self-destructive things about it.
Proposing to turn 11 million voters who oppose libertarian ideas into citizens is an example of the latter.
Allah and Ace wrote something similar
Maybe the libertarians are right: Let’s simplify things by opening the borders instead. Offer to hand out voting ballots to anyone around the world who’s willing to pay U.S. taxes. (Imagine what fine libertarian electoral outcomes that would produce.)
Indeed! A mass influx of immigrants from socialist countries with cradle-to-grave entitlements (and broken economies– gee I wonder if those two are related?) should finally gift us all with Rand Paul and Reason’s dream of a public ready for some libertarian economic solutions.
There’s a reason that Internationalism doesn’t work. It doesn’t work when liberals or libertarians champion mass migration and a borderless world because their specific philosophy can turn any group of immigrants around.
Philosophies can be applied to a specific nation. Attempting an international application is how we got the War in Iraq.
Just because a political philosophy works in the United States does not mean it will work in Mexico, El Salvador, Iraq or Afghanistan.
Refusing to understand that by championing international democracy or immigration is asking for big trouble.
HOW TO DESTROY EVERY FAST FOOD JOINT IN AMERICA IN ONE EASY STEP
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, suggested raising the minimum wage to $22 per hour is only logical if you look at the numbers.
With labor costs running to between 25 to 35 percent at eateries and a lot of retail, tripling that would turn labor costs into the majority of business cost and would put many of them out of business.
The majority of McDonald’s fast food joints are franchisees. Franchisees have to pay a 45,000 dollar franchise fee back to McD’s plus 12.5 percent of sales. The price of meat keeps going up thanks to Obama’s environmental games. Here’s what a typical breakdown looks like.
Typically, food costs range from about 25%-28% of sales, while cooking oil and condiments cost 3%-4%. Labor costs vary from 25% to over 30%, not including management.
Now perhaps Elizabeth Warren can explain how a McDonald’s franchise is sustainable now that it’s paying out 90% of its sales to the workers, not including management.
Elizabeth Warren Proposes Tripling Labor Costs for American Small Business
HUSSEIN OF JERUSALEM II
As Obama lands in Ramallah, the city’s central Al-Manara square has filled with 200-300 angry protesters demonstrating against the US president’s visit. Many are shouting slogans such as, “We don’t want anything peaceful, only bullets and missiles,” and, “Go home you devil, we don’t want to see Americans here,”
Many protesters are holding up signs calling for Palestinian prisoners to be released, including Fathiya Ajaji, whose son Ahmed is in jail in the US for involvement in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Before Obama’s trip to Israel, he met with two organizations that support Hamas. And one of those organizations provided him with pro-Hamas proposals.
During his trip, his language suggested that his administration was softening its line on Hamas, calling on it not to engage in violence, rather than condemning it.
On the other hand when it came to Hezbollah, Obama offered a strong condemnation.
What’s the difference? Focus on the last 10 words. “[Hezbollah] supports the massacre of men, women and children in Syria.” Hamas is part of the Sunni coalition and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s on the “right side” of the Syrian Civil War. Hezbollah is part of the Shiite coalition. It’s on the “wrong side” of the Syrian Civil War.
Obama told Israelis, “Four years ago I stood in Cairo in front of an audience of young people. Politically, religiously, they must seem a world away. But the things they want — they’re not so different from what the young people here want. They want the ability to make their own decisions and to get an education and to get a good job, to worship God in their own way, to get married, to raise a family. The same is true of those young Palestinians that I met with this morning. The same is true for young Palestinians who yearn for a better life in Gaza.”
Again, this is from Obama’s big Jerusalem speech and it proves that he either has no clue what happened in Egypt or is just determined to tell insane lies hoping that college students don’t watch the news.
The outcome of democratic elections in Egypt showed that what they wanted was theocracy, the repression of Christians and women, and a state of sectarian conflict.
They didn’t want to worship God in their own way. They wanted to compel everyone to worship Allah their way.
They didn’t want the ability to make their own decisions, they wanted a theocracy that would make those decisions for them.
Obama’s analogy is dangerously apt. Gaza is run by Hamas, which is the local arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas won the last elections in the Palestinian Authority. If actual elections were held now, Hamas would win them again.
That is why Obama calls on Israelis to trust them, but doesn’t call on his good buddy President Abbas to hold elections that would prove conclusively whether that trust is merited.
The used car that Obama wants to sell Israel is the beat-up 20-year-old “concessions to terrorists” coupe. It’s got a new paint job, but it doesn’t run because there’s nothing under the hood except paper and empty promises. But every time you turn the key, it blows up and a lot of people die.
So yes, Israel looks great behind the wheel of the peace process. It looks 20 years younger. And 20 years dumber. But strip away the empty compliments and it’s the same dirty old clunker underneath.
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