The devil you don’t admit to knowing February 28, 2009
Posted by vsap in Blogroll, Financial Crisis, US Politics, Uncategorized.Tags: Democrats, government manipulation of private market, housing crisis, Thomas Sowell
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Thomas Sowell may be known by few or many but his February 24, 2009 column is a must read for those who think the “greedy” in the private mortgage lending business put the housing market in the toilet. Let’s look at an excerpt from Sowell’s column:
“The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 directed federal regulatory agencies to “encourage” banks and other lending institutions “to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions.”
That sounds pretty innocent and, in fact, it had little effect for more than a decade. However, its premise was that bureaucrats and politicians know where loans should go, better than people who are in the business of making loans.
The real potential of that premise became apparent in the 1990s, when the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) imposed a requirement that mortgage lenders demonstrate with hard data that they were meeting their responsibilities under the Community Reinvestment Act.
What HUD wanted were numbers showing that mortgage loans were being made to low-income and moderate-income people on a scale that HUD expected, even if this required “innovative or flexible” mortgage eligibility standards.
In other words, quotas were imposed— and if some people didn’t meet the standards, then the standards need to be changed.
Both HUD and the Department of Justice began bringing lawsuits against mortgage bakers when a higher percentage of minority applicants than white applicants were turned down for mortgage loans.
A substantial majority of both black and white mortgage loan applicants had their loans approved but a statistical difference was enough to get a bank sued.
It should also be noted that the same statistical sources from which data on blacks and whites were obtained usually contained data on Asian Americans as well. But those data on Asian Americans were almost never mentioned.
Whites were turned down for mortgage loans more often than Asian Americans. But saying that would undermine the reasoning on which the whole moral melodrama and political crusades were based.
Lawsuits were only part of the pressures put on lenders by government officials. Banks and other lenders are overseen by regulatory agencies and must go to those agencies for approval of many business decisions that other businesses make without needing anyone else’s approval.
Government regulators refused to approve such decisions when a lender was under investigation for not producing satisfactory statistics on loans to low-income people or minorities.
Under growing pressures from both the Clinton administration and later the George W. Bush administration, banks began to lower their lending standards.
Mortgage loans with no down payment, no income verification and other “creative” financial arrangements abounded. Although this was done under pressures begun in the name of the poor and minorities, people who were neither could also get these mortgage loans.
With mortgage loans widely available to people with questionable prospects of being able to keep up the payments, it was an open invitation to financial disaster.
Those who warned of the dangers had their warnings dismissed. Now, apparently, we need more politicians intervening in more industries, if you believe the politicians and the media.”
Sowell has nailed it. Democrat administrations, Carter and Clinton, were instrumental in creating the current housing “crisis”. Later, of course, the Bush administration marched to the drumbeat, no doubt to get and keep Democrat support for the war in Iraq and the War On Terror. It doesn’t hold Bush harmless at all. It supports Sowell’s assertion that the government created the housing crisis, not the greedy lenders looking to take advantage of uneducated buyers during a boom time. Not all eras between 1977 and 2008 were “booms”. So, this “bust” is government manipulation of a private sector market, not private enterprise duping the innocent “victims” as if they were payday loan sharks.
The old saying goes: “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.” In this case, the devil you don’t admit knowing (government intervention in private markets) does more damage than the devil you know.
Thought Obama’s Not-A-State-Of-The-Union Address was crazy? Looky here! February 25, 2009
Posted by vsap in Blogroll, US Politics, Uncategorized.Tags: Democrat, U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child
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I can’t even begin to dignify President Obama’s Demagogue Democrat talk last night with anything but this: If you take the sugar, carbonation and caffeine from Coca-Cola you have nothing…by the same token, you take all the hyperbole and grandstanding rhetoric out of the President’s talk last night and you have nothing. So, let’s go on to something more important…the children.
As reported by Fox News and others today (bold is mine):
“Sen. Barbara Boxer is urging the U.S. to ratify a United Nations measure meant to expand the rights of children, a move critics are calling a gross assault on parental rights that could rob the U.S. of sovereignty.
The California Democrat is pushing the Obama administration to review the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a nearly 20-year-old international agreement that has been foundering on American shores since it was signed by the Clinton administration in 1995 but never ratified.
Critics say the treaty, which creates “the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” and outlaws the “arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy,” intrudes on the family and strips parents of the power to raise their children without government interference.
Nearly every country in the world is party to it — only the U.S. and Somalia are not – but the convention has gained little support in the U.S. and never been sent to the Senate for ratification.
That could change soon.
Boxer has made clear her intent to revive the ratification process under the Obama administration, which may be amenable to the move. During a Senate confirmation hearing last month, Boxer said she considers it “a humiliation” that the U.S. is “standing with Somalia” in refusing to become party to the agreement, while 193 other nations have led the way.
The U.S. is already party to two optional pieces of the treaty regarding child soldiers and child prostitution and pornography, but has refused to sign on to the full agreement, something which has rankled members of Congress, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“Children deserve basic human rights … and the convention protects children’s rights by setting some standards here so that the most vulnerable people of society will be protected,” Boxer said.
But legal experts say the convention does nothing to protect human rights abroad — and that acceding to the convention would erode U.S. sovereignty.
Because of the Supremacy Clause in Article VI of the Constitution, all treaties are rendered “the supreme law of the land,” superseding preexisting state and federal statutes. Any rights or laws established by the U.N. convention could then be argued to hold sway in the United States.
“To the extent that an outside body, a group of unaccountable so-called experts in Switzerland have a say over how children in America should be raised, educated and disciplined — that is an erosion of American sovereignty,” said Steven Groves, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Parental rights groups are similarly stirred; they see in the U.N. convention a threat that the government will meddle with even the simplest freedoms to raise their children as they see fit.
“Whether you ground your kids for smoking marijuana, whether you take them to church, whether you let them go to junior prom, all of those things . . . will be the government’s decision,” said Michael Farris, president of ParentalRights.org. “It will affect every parent who’s told their children to do the dishes.”
Groves said that erosion has already begun, as the Supreme Court has referred to the wide acceptance of the child-rights law in conferring legal protections on minors in the U.S.”
Giving away our sovereignty has happened over the years by both Democrat and Republican administrations. Unbridled free trade with China has destroyed the textile and steel industries and hasn’t helped the paper industry much, either. NAFTA and other agreements, along with new ones that would create a North American Union from the remnants of the United State, Canada and Mexico, all seemed far-fetched, like science fiction, in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Not today. Yesterday’s fiction is today’s reality.
Now comes the latest and maybe worst rub of all: take away your ability to raise your children as you see fit. Whether you are liberal or conservative you have to lean hard against this kind of left-wing lunacy (of which Boxer continues to be the queen mother).
Stand up and stop this madness. It’s bad enough Obama wants to use the US Treasury for his personal political payola machine, now one of his legion wants to wrest authority of your children away from you!
Stop it…because I said so!
Employee Free Choice Act? NO! February 23, 2009
Posted by vsap in Blogroll, Financial Crisis, US Politics, Uncategorized.Tags: card check, Democrats, Employee Free Choice Act, secret ballot, Steelworkers, Teamsters, trade unionists, UAW
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The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) has one element that totally smacks down its name: elimination of secret ballot union elections. It may strike you odd, or validate what you already know, that Democrats and union leaders support this abridgment of liberty.
As of today employees vote privately, as we all do in a primary or general election, after hearing both the union and employer present their cases. The EFCA eliminates that annoying requirement and replaces it with a document that contain signatures of a simple majority of employees requesting union representation. An election can be requested but it will no longer be required in the name of allowing the employee to choose how the union representing the workers will be formed.
Both sides have salvos to fire. William Lurye, associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution recently, “Employer-mandated elections have resulted in workers being illegally fired in a quarter of these election campaigns. Employees are routinely threatened and forced to vote against the union.” Conversely, R. Lee Creasman, partner for the labor law firm Elarbee Thompson, states, “The most compelling reason not to change the current law is that unions have won over 50 percent of the secret ballot elections conducted in the last decade.” He goes on to say that the new law could ultimately take the decision out of the hands f the employees and employer and place it in the hands of an arbitrator.
The ominous “be careful what you wish for” cloud seems to be appearing overhead.
“The best opportunity for working men and women to get ahead economically is by uniting with co-workers to bargain with their employers for better wages and beneifts,” Lurye concludes.
Creason believes it’s a “cleverly titled bill” that could prompt more employers to consider moving jobs off-shore. He concludes, “A more apt title for it is “The Job Elimination Act”.”
I would like to think that the truth is somewhere in the middle, but it is not. Newly-emboldened trad unionist are feeling particularly strong with Democrats in control in both the White House and Congress. Here is the closest to truth we’re likely to get:
“Under current U.S. labor law, the National Labor Relations Board will certify a union as the exclusive representative of bargaining unit employees by card check process or secret ballot election, which is held if more than 30% of employees in a bargaining unit sign statements asking for representation by a union. If enacted, EFCA would require the NLRB to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees signed cards, the card check process.
Pursuant to the bill, a union can demand that an employer begin bargaining within ten days of certification of the union as the exclusive bargaining representative for an appropriate unit of employees via the card check. In addition, if the union and employer cannot agree upon the terms of a first collective bargaining contract within ninety days, either party can request federal mediation, which could lead to binding arbitration if an agreement still cannot be reached after thirty days of mediation. Where government arbitration determines terms of the agreement, employees would lose their current right to ratify the terms of the agreement. Finally, the Act would provide for liquidated damages of three times back pay if employers were found to have unlawfully terminated pro-union employees.The EFCA also would impose a $20,000 penalty upon employers for each employer violation of the proposed legislation if the NLRB or a court deems the violation willful or repetitive.”
EFCA is a union organizers dream. Unfortunately, it’s an employer’s nighmare. One thing seems to be forgotten from the trade unionist perspective: the employer pays the wages and benefits.
Neither the current law nor the proposed law guarantee total fairness to employee or employer. Both have different slants on “fair”. In my opinion, if there is to be err, then it should be on the side of the employer, the one paying the wage and offering the benefit. Employee control is not to be sought or institutionalized. Have we not learned from the excesses of the UAW, Steelworkers and Teamsters? When the tail wages the dog, financially, industries go down the pipe. I’m sure the “Girls Gone Wild” producers could come up with “Unions Gone Wild” but the entertainment value would be sardonic, not hedonistic. Yes, employers are to blame for allowing unions to take the moral high ground and shame them into concessions they never should have made.
Today, as the auto industry teeters on the brink of terminal submersion, the UAW has trouble conceding anything. Forget the 30 years or so they have watched their market share sink and manufacturing plants close. That’s a compay problem, not a union problem, so they would like you to believe. And, yes, bottom line, it is the company’s problem. It’s the companys fault for allowing thugs to push them around instead of using common sense to snap their backs years ago.
This much is guaranteed: no employer, no union needed. I hope that is considered when the day comes that small businesses are hauled into arbitration and closed quickly after another union “success”.
Defeat EFCA!
Stabilize this! February 20, 2009
Posted by vsap in Blogroll, Financial Crisis, US Politics, Uncategorized.Tags: competitive grants to communities, Housing Stabilization Bill, political payback, President Obama
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President Obama couldn’t slip in help for “community action” groups in his “government stimulus” package, so he put $2 billion of your dollars in the housing bill for them.
Political payback from the messiah of change.
Truliablog, a real estate blog, reported it this way (bold is mine):
“In a smaller separate program there is expected to be funding of $1.5 billion to help renters relocate who have been displaced by foreclosure and $2 billion to stabilize neighborhoods hit by high levels of foreclosure.”
The text of the President’s speech was this (bold, again, is mine):
“In addition, as part of the recovery plan I signed into law yesterday, we are going to award $2 billion in competitive grants to communities that are bringing together stakeholders and testing new and innovative ways to prevent foreclosures. Communities have shown a lot of initiative, taking responsibility for this crisis when many others have not. Supporting these neighborhood efforts is exactly what we should be doing.”
Who’s “we”? He got a mouse in his pocket? If it’s “we” the American people then I’ll pass on that. “Communities” can do nothing about the situation. Individuals acting responsibly can. Throwing money at his buddies at ACORN and other activist groups is simply political payback, another hand-out to the undeserving for the disingenuous. Community action groups do not (NEVER HAVE AND NEVER WILL) “bring stakeholders together” and aren’t interested in “innovative ways” except to line the pockets of leaders and financially support their pet pols.
The president’s a fool if he truly believes that about community action groups. And, I really don’t think he’s a fool which is why I say it’s political payback, nothing less, nothing more, and bald as it gets.
Keep the change.
The Fairness Doctrine By Another Name February 18, 2009
Posted by vsap in Blogroll, US Politics, Uncategorized.Tags: conservative talk radio, Fairness Doctrine, Henry Waxman, Liberals hate free speech, Localization
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The Wikipedia definition of “The Fairness Doctrine” gives a brief overview:
“The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was (in the Commission’s view) honest, equitable and balanced.
The Fairness Doctrine should not be confused with the Equal Time rule. The Fairness Doctrine deals with matters of public importance, while the Equal Time rule deals only with political candidates.
The United States Supreme Court upheld the Commission’s general right to enforce the Fairness Doctrine where channels were limited, but the courts have not, in general, ruled that the FCC is obliged to do so. In 1987, the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine, prompting some to urge its reintroduction through either Commission policy or Congressional legislation.”
In August of last year, a Rasmussen Reports survey showed that 47% of likely voters in the presidential election supported government-imposed political balance on radio stations. The new survey shows only 38% support the idea. So, while it may appear unlikely that the Fairness Doctrine will be re-introduced in congress, especially by liberals who want to silence conservative talk radio, be careful to watch out for the same doctrine on steroids cast in another name: localization.
Localization is a different means to the same end. In short, the federal government will use its power to license to threaten local radio stations into compliance with whatever definition of “fair” they choose. The Feds will create local boards that will review a radio station’s content. For example, if they set a standard that a local radio station must carry at least 50% locally-produced content or face the prospect of not having their license renewed, the station owner is faced with doing what it can to protect its license instead of gathering an abundance of listeners and advertising revenue that generally follows.
In the present era, most radio stations have upwards of 70% of their broadcast time allocated to network or syndicated programming. It’s less expensive and generates more revenue than local programming could ever accrue. This choice is left to the local stations based on market desires. Think of how often radio stations change music formats. This reflects the unique tastes of a specific market at a specific period of time. By contrast, many station owners have found consistent, long term revenue by going the conservative talk route. That route is populated by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, among others. These are not the people liberals like to see dominating the air waves.
What we know about liberals is that they are not concerned about free speech, they are concerned about having their speech listened to and followed. After all, they know best and you’re out there living beyond the Beltway or , worse, outside the original13 colonies, so you are near savages and simply don’t know any better. You can’t be trusted to choose what you listen to so they must intervene on your behalf to protect you from yourself.
Liberal talk radio doesn’t cause a tick on the VU meter in 95% of the markets where it’s even present. Liberal politicians, like Henry Waxman (D-CA), want the government to intervene in the free market to correct this aggregus imbalance. He’s smart enough to know he can’t call it the Fairness Doctrine so he figures if he can give it another name and another slant it can get passed without much notice.
Redirecting the “argument”, not taking it head-on since people would then recognize it for what it is, is an ageless strategy. It is put to us directly in the book “My Utmost For His Highest”:
“Satan does not tempt us just to make us do wrong things— he tempts us to make us lose what God has put into us through regeneration, namely, the possibility of being of value to God. He does not come to us on the premise of tempting us to sin, but on the premise of shifting our point of view, and only the Spirit of God can detect this as a temptation of the devil.” – Oswald Chambers
Finally, consider the snowball effect of a localization doctrine on other formats like music and sports. In its extreme form it could cause ESPN and Fox Sports Radio to reduce its syndicated programming in a market forcing a local station to hire local sports talk personnel or pulling the plug on the format. Or, what about the syndicated country, oldies or “new hits” formats that populate the airwaves today? Require either sports or music format radio stations to comply spells disaster for terrestrial radio as we know it. People would be driven to internet or satellite radio to listen to what they want…until the government figured out how to rope them in.
In short, if liberals wish for “fair” they must be very careful what they wish for.
Wal-Mart layoffs: irony and paradox February 13, 2009
Posted by vsap in Blogroll, Financial Crisis, Uncategorized.Tags: irony, layoffs, paradox, Wal-Mart
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Recession and the law of unintended consequences work paradoxically and ironically, if that’s possible, in Wal-Mart lay-offs in Bentonville, AR, HQ.
From Ad Age, Feb. 11, by Jack Neff (excerpted, bold is mine):
“Part of the moves were to ensure that we continue to do well into the future,” Mr. (David) Tovar (“spokesman”) said. “They’re designed to … increase operational efficiencies to support our strategic growth plans and help reduce our overall costs.”
Despite the layoffs at the home office, Mr. Tovar said the company is creating management jobs in other locations, such as its apparel-buying and merchandising operations in New York, and adding store-level and district jobs nationwide.
The layoffs are particularly surprising, said one person close to the company, because Walmart traditionally has run a lean operation at its headquarters.
Not about improving margins
But the person said Walmart’s focus has been squarely on improving margins for more than a year, which could require belt-tightening despite continued top-line growth.
Mr. Tovar said maintaining or improving margins “is not what this is about. It’s about making sure we have the right people doing the right jobs in the right areas.”
Since Mr. Healy’s report it has been learned that Walmart will not be allowing Bentonville employees to transfer or relocate to New York for the apparel jobs, but will make new hires local (to NYC). Some in Bentonville have been offered store-level or district jobs indicated in the report. I would assume that those jobs don’t have the hours or other benefits of an HQ employee. Having seen first hand how Walmart and K-mart chew up and spit out competent store and district managers, this can’t be an exciting prospect for someone used to admin-type duties at HQ.
The unintended consequence is that even companies doing much better than average (or expected) in challenging economic times receive political cover for their personnel actions. “We” (consumers, share-holders) expect layoffs, so what’s the big deal? Walmart is just the most obvious although it certainly isn’t alone in this activity. Industrial companies which have reported strong earnings (meeting or beating “street” expectations) have gone about layoffs quietly since October 2008. We (the still employed) are apt to think “Gee, Charlie (or Shirley) is with XYZ conglomerate for twenty years and zap! How did their job become so suddenly unimportant?” I don’t think it did.
In these cases, layoffs are corporate crimes of opportunity not necessity.
I don’t have “wealth envy” as Neal Boortz calls it. It doesn’t bother me that companies do what they feel they must and I don’t impune the Walton family or former Walmart CEO Lee Scott for earning what they have over the years. After all, you and I granted them the wealth and lifestyle they have grown accustomed to, haven’t we? In America, we all have the freedom to do the same. They don’t need to heed groups like Walmart Watch that insist the Walton family and Scott should “share their wealth” with displaced employees.
I have walked away from jobs and I have been down-sized, and I don’t hold animosity against any of those companies. History has proven I was right about what would happen after my departure as often as they were. So, let’s see what history demonstrates about Walmart and all other companies that are doing well even today but feel they need to re-align, right-size, down-size or simply eliminate costs to be properly positioned for the future.
My guess is the displaced will be vindicated as often as their companies continue their success without them.
Lincoln speaks today about his trust in God February 12, 2009
Posted by vsap in Blogroll, US Politics, Uncategorized.Tags: Abe Lincoln, Confession, Humility, Lincoln's Birthday, Repentance, Seeking God
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The day before his 52nd birthday, Abraham Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois, to become President of the United States. With the threat of civil war looming, he said goodbye to the friends and neighbors who had come to see him off. “I now leave,” he told them, “not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.” Lincoln’s reliance on God for guidance and strength reflects the instruction of Solomon: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths” (Prov. 3:5-6). On this 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, we celebrate his kindness, integrity, and courage. And we can also learn from him how to face a daunting future with confident hope in the Lord. — David C. McCasland
Living without trust in God is like driving in the fog.
Lincoln approached his work humbly, which stands in stark contrast to the current President. But let’s set aside the latter Illinoisan for the former for today.
Gordon Leidner of Great American History shares this:
“When one reads Lincoln’s presidential speeches, filled with his pleas to the American people to seek God’s aid and guidance, and demonstrative of his own dependence on God’s mercy, it is difficult to comprehend any scholar that would see Lincoln as anything but a man that sincerely depended on God.
The primary reason for this debate over whether or not Lincoln was a man of faith can be summed up in two words: William Herndon. Herndon was Lincoln’s young law partner while Lincoln lived in Springfield. He shared a law office with Lincoln for many years. To make a long story short, Herndon wrote a biography of Lincoln many years after Lincoln was assassinated, and in it he proclaimed Lincoln an “infidel.”
It is true that Lincoln never did join a church, although he attended church services regularly while President. The reason he gave for never joining a church was that he could never be satisfied with all the dogmas and creeds that the denominational churches of his day required. On this subject Lincoln wrote:
“When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior’s condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself’ that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.”
One of Lincoln’s earliest statements on the subject of his faith came in 1846:
“That I am not a member of any Christian church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular….I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, or scoffer at, religion.” [July 31, 1846]
Mrs. Lincoln stated that after the demise of their son Willy in early 1862, her husband drew much closer to God. No doubt. Many of Lincoln’s presidential speeches are superb examples of a man seeking God. Below is one of Lincoln’s many proclamations, as president, for a national day of fasting and prayer. Few ministers of the gospel could have done better (bold is mine):
“It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, and to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in Holy Scripture, and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch (sic) as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” [March 30, 1863]“
Could it be more appropriate today?
E-Verify? Not with gov’t bailout! February 11, 2009
Posted by vsap in Blogroll, Financial Crisis, US Politics, Uncategorized.Tags: Democrats, E-Verify, economic stimulus, illegal immigrants
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John Kass of the Chicago Tribune doesn’t need any help from me but I thought you should see this from his column today (bold is mine):
“With all the hoopla over greasy pork being stuffed into President Barack Obama’s near trillion-dollar spending bill, it’s what is being cut out that’s receiving too little attention.
And once Americans realize it, they won’t be happy.
What’s been quietly stripped is a provision that would have required any businesses receiving federal stimulus cash to use an easy computer program called E-Verify to make sure that the jobs they generate go to American citizens or documented foreign workers, not illegal immigrants.
Democrats in the House voted for the E-Verify component. But when the great porkulus package reached the Senate, Democrats there dropped it.
Of all the garbage in the bill, there’s been little if any discussion about E-Verify. It’s so simple that the clarity of it all must insult those nuanced Beltway sensibilities. So what am I supposed to do with that half a loaf of uneaten Hopium in my desk drawer?
“It’s another example of why people distrust Congress,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who had pushed for an amendment to the stimulus package mandating that E-Verify be used to certify job applicants.
We spoke over the phone Tuesday minutes after the Senate narrowly passed its version of the stimulus package, 61-37.
I asked Sessions how Americans will react, once they figure it out.
“I think the American people will be furious when they find out about this. The Congress tells them one thing, and then in the dead of night, the Senate maneuvers around and does another,” Sessions said. “Those who know are already not happy about it. They see this as one more duplicitous act.”
E-Verify, offered free to all employers since 2004 as a way to combat illegal Immigration, allows employers to determine the legal work status of potential employees by searching their names and Social Security numbers along with other databases.
It’s cheap to operate, and more than 96 percent of job applicants are cleared by the program within minutes. This makes it almost impossible for employers to skirt the system and hire cheap, illegal labor.
But the House Democrats approved it and Senate Democrats peeled it away, a version of the old political con game played out in Washington to trick the suckers back home.
“They get to tell their constituents, ‘See, I voted for it.’ But they never really wanted it in the first place,” Sessions said.”
Dirty rotten scoundrels!
