From the Wall Street Journal (June 29, 2009):

Some Republican members of Congress want the U.S. Census Bureau to end a 2010 Census partnership with Acorn, the community organizing group that was hit by accusations of voter-registration fraud in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

Acorn, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, signed up in February with the bureau to be a “2010 Census Partner,” which includes, among other things, identifying job candidates, encouraging its members to participate in the count and distributing literature explaining the importance of the census.

But in the wake of accusations that some former Acorn employees engaged in voter registration fraud in the 2006 and 2008 elections, the partnership isn’t sitting well with some Republicans on Capitol Hill who worry that Acorn could skew results. There’s a lot at stake since the census is used to dole out money to states and localities and to allocating seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

…

Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa) tried unsuccessfully to attach an amendment to a must-pass appropriations bill to forbid any Acorn involvement in the 2010 Census. The outspoken Mr. King is perhaps the most vocal critic of the organization, introducing a host of bills that would limit Acorn’s affairs in federal governance.

As for allegations of voter registration fraud — some Acorn employees were accused of signing up voters using names like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys — Acorn spokesman Scott Levenson said his organization has cooperated fully with authorities, and promptly dismissed people accused of with wrongdoing.

At the time, many of the potentially faulty registrations were flagged to election officials as a result of the group’s own internal controls.

That hasn’t dispelled the distrust. “There is a trust issue when you mention Acorn and the census together, regardless of what they’re doing. It casts doubt on the accuracy that would come out” of the headcount, said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R., Ga.).

From the Wall Street Journal (June 29, 2000):

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)

Janet Contreras is a woman from Arizona who wrote a letter titled “Open Letter to Our Nation’s Leadership” to radio and TV talk show Glenn Beck, expressing her frustration with the current politics and two principle political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, in the United States. Beck read her letter out on both his radio and TV shows, and it has begun to be widely circulated across the Internet and other media outlets.

I am Janet Contreras, a concerned, home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you’re willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?

Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:

One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I’m not a racist. This isn’t to be confused with legal immigration.

Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.

Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.

Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.

Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don’t you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!

Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don’t you start there.

Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don’t trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.

Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why ‑‑ what do you have against shareholders making a profit?

Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.

Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we’ll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band‑Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.

Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let’s have it. Let’s say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try ‑‑ please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.

Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.

Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let’s just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I’m busy. I’m busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.

I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.

From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don’t want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we’re morons.

We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we’re so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work , pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn’t ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when hewill rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.

Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don’t care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.

Video of Glenn Beck’s interview with Janet Contreras about her letter:

The original Glen Beck show where he reads the letter:

From the Yakima Herald:

But opponents argued a limited program was too innocent sounding and that it was only a matter of time before a full-scale program would start to drive up labor costs. Hines earlier in the meeting admitted he would hire more paramedics if allowed.

Noting that the fire department also wanted to hire a dozen more firefighters if the EMS levy passed, Councilman Bill Lover said he feared a paramedic program would strengthen the firefighters union and lead to nonbinding arbitration that would hit taxpayers in the pocketbook.

“We really need firefighters,” he said, “not paramedics.”

SOAR worked very hard on this issue, getting the facts about fire department expenditures and looking at how other jurisdictions handle aid calls.  Members spoke before the City Council and also wrote letters to the council and Chief Hines.

Check out this Reason article: http://reason.com/news/show/133722.html

Obama’s newly nominated “drug czar” is Seattle Police Chief Gil
Kerlikowske. And just like a real czar, the drug czar, whose formal
title is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, can
destroy rights instantly, and he can set the stage for additional harm.

Before the dark days of the Clinton administration, few federal
government officials had done more to damage Second Amendment rights
than William Bennett, the so-called “drug czar” under President George
H.W. Bush. In March 1989, Bennett set off a national panic by pushing
the first Bush administration to ban the import of so-called “assault
weapons.”

(more…)

For years Americans have been told by journalists, businessmen and politicians that the U.S. Suffers from a farm worker shortage that is easily remedied by importing huge numbers of immigrant workers, mostly from Mexico.  Pro-immigration forces have repeatedly insisted, often without supporting data, that farm produce would rot in the fields were it not for the arrival of every increasing numbers of low-wage workers willing to work long hours for low pay under difficult conditions to make sure fruit and vegetables are shipped on time to grocery store shelves.

The New York Times, a major corporate proponent of mass immigration and multiculturalism, reported in September [2007] that “a nationwide farm worked shortage [is] threatening to leave fruits and vegetables rotting in the fields.” And the Wall street Journal claimed in July [2007] that “20 percent of American agricultural products were stranded” because of labor shortages.  Sharon Hughes, a lobbyist for mass immigration, asserted, “We are either going to have our food produced by foreign workers here in the United States, or the farming process will move to foreign countries.”

But a new study challenges those assertions.  Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California at Davis, reports that the economic evidence for a so-called shortage simply doesn’t exist.  In his study, “Farm Worker Shortage?“, produced for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., Martin found that the federal government’s own official reports dispute the popular claims.

Government economic reports, he said, “suggest that there are no widespread farm labor shortages. The Congressional Research Service in September 2007 concluded that farm labor trends suggest ‘no nationwide shortage of workers.’ The GAO [Government Accountability Office] in 1997 similarly concluded there is ‘no national agricultural labor shortage at this time’ and that ‘a sudden widespread farm labor shortage requiring the importation of large numbers of foreign workers is unlikely to occur in the near future.’”

Martin noted that there is no economic or government definition of just what a labor shortage is. In a free market economy, price is the mediator between supply and demand. If the demand exceeds supply, the price will rise.  If the supply exceeds demands, the price will fall.  He noted that if there were a real labor shortage, the wages of farm workers would be rising. But that is not the case, he said.  His study found that the average farm worker earns about $9.06 an hour, compared to $16.75 for non-farm production workers. Wages for farm workers increased only on-half of one percent a year on average between 2000 and 2006. If there were a shortage, wages would rise much more rapidly.

The same is true of the previous decade. Data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey found a slow rate of wage increase for farm workers. Between 1990 and 2001, NAWS reported that the average hourly earnings of non-farm production workers rose from $10.34 to $14.26, or 36 percent.

“These employment and earning data reported do not suggest severe farm labor shortages, especially not in the major fruit and vegetable producing states of California and Florida,” he concluded.

His study also found that there is little evidence that growers are offering workers any new non-wage benefits such as housing in an effort to keep them working on the farm.

“Indeed, as federal and state regulations raised standards for farm worker housing, many farmers stopped providing housing, especially for seasonal workers,” he reported. “If workers are readily available, farmers are less likely to offer what can be an expensive benefit.”

At the same time that the cost of farm labor was rising more slowly than that of non-farm production labor, the production of fruits and vegetables was increasing or remained steady. The study found that the production of non-citrus fruits rose from about 17 million tons in 2001-2002 to almost 19 million tons in 2006, while the products of vegetables remained stable at about 465 million hundredweights since 2001. He said that if farmers feared labor shortages, they would have planted fewer acres of crops.

Martin concluded that even if farm labor costs increased due to a smaller labor pool, the effects on consumer prices would be small.

“Labor cost comprise only 6 percent of the price consumers pay for fresh produce. thus, if farm wages were allowed to rise 40 percent, and if all the costs were passed on to consumers, the cost to the average household would be only about $8.00 per year,” he found.

Mechanization, Martin said, would likely offset any higher labor costs anway. He noted that after the “Bracero” Mexican guestworker program ended in the mid-1960’s, farm wages rose 40 percent, but consumer prices rose very little because the mechanization of harvesting some crops dramatically increased productivity.

Originally printed in “Middle American News“, December 2007

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