It's always easier to blame someone else for our problems. I'm retired now but got down-sized out of a well paying job & was forced to take a job at about 1/2 my salary. In my particular situation they did not give my job to an underpaid immigrant they just closed the regional office because the employees at our office were some of the highest paid employees in the company. So the CEO wanted more money so they closed an office of about 750 employees is a small town in central California. He got a bonus, of course, we got the shaft.
We don't have an immigrant problem. We don't have an employee problem. What we have is a greedy corporate officer problem & the sooner we solve that problem the sooner we can get decent salaries, decent health care, prices that are not "gouged" because of a pandemic. You have noticed that supply chains have been repaired so to speak, but gosh, somehow or other prices did not come down! And "coincidentally" (ahem!) corporate profits just happen to keep going up.
So yeah, we have a corporate problem, an oligarch problem, a con-artist problem but sure go ahead & blame the brown people that clean the toilets, grow our food, pack our meat, yeah. I'm sure they're the ones at fault!
My wife was an associate vice president* for a top-five US bank. They told her to train people in India as they were going to move her whole department there to save a few bucks. She told them to "GFY" and retired (which she would have done within two years anyway). She worked there for 40 years and would have gotten a year's salary as severance if she stuck it out for a few months, but she doesn't regret her decision.
*it sounds more impressive than it is, I think they have hundreds (or more) AVPs
That is impressive! Very impressive. Kudos to your wife.
Just think, she is braver & has more character & moral fortitude than Bezos, Zuckerberg & the rest of the sleazeballs slithering down to Mar a Lago on their stomachs to kiss trump's "nether regions".
Just think, she TURNED DOWN MONEY out of principle! That takes guts! You gotta good one!
Few comments so far but none say what needs saying, Thom: you are 100% right, and the morbidly rich depend on illegal immigration both for cheap, unprotected labor and to keep legal workers underpaid, subservient and out of unions or other protective organizations. The courts are of little help. They are slow and expensive and management-oriented by and large, even more so after being packed with right wingers with more to come. I saw that first hand in my law firm, which had a powerful management labor law department that always won from my own knowledge. Mind you, the claims I saw, two of which I helped litigate, were often bogus, and the ones we handled did not involve immigrants. But we also had a superb immigration department handling a lot of HB-1 visas. There was abuse there too, and still is, and many horror stories out there of U.S. professional losing jobs to foreigners prepared to work for peanuts or even nothing to get one of those visas and seek to gain citizenship here.
The only real instrument for immigration control is the one whose history you so damningly present: holding those who employ illegal aliens accountable, with serious penalties that are enforced, not just against corporations, but the hotels restaurants, and rich people who have illegal cooks, dishwashers, gardeners, house cleaners, maids, nannies, delivery people, you name it. BUT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Because of the term I first saw you use here and which I have unashamedly borrowed since: the MORBIDLY RICH. They have the lobbyists and the influence and the money to bribe Congresspeople of both parties and people in government, including immigration authorities, to keep it from happening.
So no matter how many people get deported, my bet is that more will still flood in, and the incoming Administration will lie about that, and hide any detrimental effects on domestic employment, crime, swamping our medical resources, raising the taxes of those of us lacking the income and lawyers to avoid paying them.
What we CAN do is what you are doing here: slap them in the face constantly with their hypocrisy. Tell our friends and neighbors who use illegals that they are the problem, not the illegal immigrants they are abusing for personal advantage. But know that the love of money will, it seems, always trump everything else for those who have it, and those who want it more than they want decency, honor, dignity or integrity.
You are correct Roy, the immigration problem has two faces.
1. It is made in the U.S.A., by our corporations who use the resources of Central and South America as profit centers and sources, using our influence to overthrow governments and install friendly dictatorships, until they are not It started with the Banana Wars and the latest is Venezuela. Cuba is a prime example Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Chile Peru..
Our government is simply a tool to be used by the real powers.
2. The other face is culture. The cultures of these countries, the basis of which is patriarchalism, submission and dominance, to church first, then to state. Superstition replacing reason.
The purpose of ideology, and religion is an ideology, a secular ideology, is to inculcate and maintain a subservient, slave, mentality.
Bother you not about being rewarded here and now, be obedient and worshipful and your reward comes in the hereafter.
This is the leitmotif of Christianity and Islam. Especially the Catholic Church, protestantism, especially Calvinism has turned that on it's head, with the idea of predestination and the prosperity gospel.
The governing ethos of Central and South America: Catholicism.
Had employer sanctions been enforced, we would have had no immigration problem
I also think that the same people who send them to the border are the same who blame it on Democrats. How do impoverished immigrants get the fare to get to the border? While they induce Cuban and Venezuelan dissidents to vote with their feet, Reoublicans demonize then when they make it.
That is what I say about the Venezuelans, who claim to have traveled through Colombia, through the Darien Gap, up the Pan American Hiway and show up at the border, freshlyscrubbed,their boys carrying soccer balls and daughters dolls.
I lived in Panama, with Panamanians, and no Panamanian would go near the Darien Gap, hostile tribes, bandits, poison snakes, peccaries, jaquars. And once through you have to make your way to over the bridge of the Americas, travel through Panama City, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico
one hell of a long and expensive journey, not to mention dangerous, and yet they arrive at the Texas Mexico border fresh scrubbed with toys.
More likely they spent $4 or $5,000 board a plane in Caracas, and disembark in Mexico.
Unless they rely on Taxi's, Buses and trains, and they cost, maybe there is a taxi stand on the north side of the Darien Gap.
About the Gap, no Panamanian in their right mind would venture into the gap.
The poster boy for employer sanctions for illegal hiring was Trump. The Employer Sanctions Act, also known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, is a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that prohibits employers from hiring unauthorized workers.
Several of his golf clubs hire workers on the H-2B visa program. Hiring records show that Trump clubs don’t try too hard to find US workers in the high season, and the company’s recruiters usually say that no Americans even apply for them. In a prospective American is denied a job, there may be a cause of action.
Are not Trumps H-2b Visa hires from Poland and Eastern Europe? That is white folk,and even then he doesn't pay them all o f their earned wages, and I am sure that although he deducts taxes, L&I, and FICA he doesn't remit them to the Federal Treasury or the State.
Yes. Probably Slovenia. For years I produced an annual seminar at hotels nationally. Virtually all take advantage. I never saw any Africans.... A few Asians.
The contracts are audited. That's how we got the cases.
Had to pay $2 mil + reimburse them at Trump Tower. He had a modeling agency, brought in H1B, had other ventures. He probably contracted out to labor pools.
In Ocean City, Rehobeth, most of the hotel workers were Polish visa workers. Here we had asbestos in the federal buildings; contractors brought Polish workers to remove it. I also had jurisdiction over abestosis re government contractors, never hasd any Polish workers' cases. I assume some went home to die.
Many employers contract with labor pools, pass themselves off as independent contractors.
Jumping in, because I listened to the audio/video version a little while ago. I have long found this immigration situation confounding and have strongly suspected that we are deliberately being given sort of blurry or vague information about the situation. I have questioned and doubted that the immigration situation is anywhere near as bad as what Trump and his supporters have portrayed. My brother, a Trump voter, recently asked me if I cared about the so-called immigration crisis, and he was astonished that I do not and I did not consider it to be an issue when I voted for Kamala Harris. But I have a question and I wonder if anybody can clarify this for me. I have a couple of female friends who are registered Democrats, who voted for Joe Biden, but who are married to MAGA husbands. I find that on some issues they are influenced by the thinking of their MAgA spouse. For example, last spring, I had several conversations with one of them who claimed to be very upset about the immigration crisis and sounded to me like she was seriously thinking about voting for Trump in the 2024 election over the immigration issue. She insisted that she had seen and heard Biden on television proclaim that our border is open. She was very upset about this. Does anyone know if this is an accurate statement, or is this a sentence that was taken out of context in an address that Biden delivered shortly after he won the election in 2020? I was unable to accurately respond to this because she was so adamant in her insistence that she heard Joe Biden say our borders are open. Anybody?
I watch a lot of CNN, MSNBC, PBS and have never seen Biden or anyone in his administration say we have open borders. As a matter of fact this past year his administration decreased the number of immigrants entering legally. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes, autocrats and their party use hate, misinformation and continually repeat the lies. Did you notice how upset Trump was after the debate w Harris with ABC for fact checking? He didn’t even repeat the lies, just lashed out about taking away the broadcasting license and suing journalists. I sometimes think we are in a surrealist time but then I remember the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War ( and most recently the Iraqi invasion by the US) and it’s always been here. We just had a lot of progress w minority rights , diversity and a slow progress towards equity. It became too much for racists and sexists and all it took was a depraved individual without any sense of decency, ethics to organize the hate ( with the help of well connected politicos. The big quest is why do even those who know better continue to encourage or participate ( the Grahams, Sununus, Cruzes,?
Mitch, I am constitutionally incapable of belief, but I am beginning to accept the possibility of a multiverse and that we , or rather I, am living in an alternate reality, were up is down, good is bad, right is wrong
Google the Mandela effect, Millions of people world wide believed that Nelson Mandela died in Prison, then he shows up on TV as a hero being released, there are lots of instances like that.
The had a TV Series and a book of the same called The Man in the High Castle.
an alternate reality where Germany invaded America landing at Virginia Beach.
Maybe one day I will wake up in a MAGAt free universe, no Trump, No Musk, no religion, no ideology.
William, there are astrophysicists who theorize/predict multiple universes and we are one of many. Philip K Dick wrote the High Castle book and he is a favorite SF writer. He also wrote Bladerunner ( titled “Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?”). I think its just been so long since the last global turmoil that we ( in the US and Western Europe where we stopped invading our neighbors) that our political system ( even in a strong democracy) has allowed nihilists and oligarchs to attain so much influence and power. Maybe Canada, Greenland and Panama will come rescue us.
Mitch: Thank you for this statement:"I think its just been so long since the last global turmoil that we ( in the US and Western Europe where we stopped invading our neighbors) that our political system ( even in a strong democracy) has allowed nihilists and oligarchs to attain so much influence and power.
In one sentence you nailed it.
I could indulge in rhetorical meandering, philosophical philandering and a historical exegesis but you said it all in one sentence.
I see it as another Trump business opportunity. His private prison owner donors and the labor pool industry will benefit directly and he may personally have a piece of the action as he is an expert in using temporary visas.
Nobody mentions the pardon he gave Bannon, who was running a scam on the border wall and still is exposed in a NY criminal case.
The climate crisis will only exacerbate this problem as populations are forced to move in order to survive. It seems to be the way that man discovered habitable lands.
Thom Hartmann has been correct about immigration for as long as I have read him, the early 1990s. If only everyone in the U.S., knew what he so clearly conveys in his columns on immigration. Thank you Thom.
Immigration is the cause of the rise of the right in Europe and America.
The problem is caused primarily by global warming, wars and cultural conflict and in turn is creating cultural conflict which is causing the rise of the right like the Fidesz party in Hungary, which enabled Orban to take control, Giorgia Meloni's, Brothers of Italy party, Marine le Pen's, National Rally Party, the British National Party.
Here is what Omer Azis, a former foreign policy adviser of Justin Trudeau has to say
Some of its growth is a symptom of larger problems, which include extreme inequality, racial polarization and weaponizing the state to come down on minorities. Since the 1970s, we’ve seen a disintegration of the social order in the United States. There was the mass incarceration of African Americans, harsh drug and anti-immigrant policies, and trade deals and economic arrangements made by liberal elites that left many people behind. So you have a mass of people who are disaffected, disillusioned, unemployed, and neither left party or right party can reach them. And that’s how someone like Trump can come in and take over.
That is true of the rise of fascism in America and Canada, Europe is another matter, there it is the influx of an unassailable alien culture which actually threatens to display western culture.
This is what brought Viktor Orban to Power, he promised to build a wall to keep them out, and he did, he promises to deport them and he is doing just that. Shades of Stephen Miller, Hohan and Trump.
In America race plays a bigger role than it does in Europe. Europe doesn't have the slave, race, civil war history that is the millstone of America. Although they do have their history of problems with ethnicity like the insanity of the Balkans. Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, Kosovarians all Slavs, The differ only in religion Bosnia - Muslim, Croatia- Roman Catholic, Serbia - Greek Orthodox, Kosovo Muslim.
During the Roman empire the region was called Illyria, and it even provided an Emperor named Constantine.
The advantaged taking advantage over the poor is a moral crime. Those that hire anyone that does not have a legal right to work in America simply have to be made responsible for their actions. That will take care of most of the problems. The intentional failure of Congress to properly address the problem is the other failure of society. Nobody cares about these people and the advantaged get rich off of doing so. Our authorities continue to abuse their positions of power so soon the GFC will take action and replace all these greedy failures. Do not be surprised when it happens before or by around mid year.
Once again, the corrupt practices by the government, making moronic accusations that ‘Biden is the problem ‘ is a lie by the totally unprincipled Trump and his band of thieves.
But at the same time monied Corporations are all self serving liars .
Thank every Republican president and a few Democrats that thought we should “ all just get along” for the complete acceptance of dirty politics and policies.
The art of corruption has been perfected over many years by the republicans and sanctioned by the Supreme Court five.
‘The Immigration problem ‘has been fed the same BS trope as another distraction by these Constant Liars Club members.
The pure caustic hatred put forth by Trump and his crew has infiltrated every aspect of policy.
Elon Musk , the richest and sickest of them all , is attempting to make his insane policies stick to punish the already ailing people whose wealth has been obliterated by himself and others like him .
These people are poison to America.
One only has to listen to their putrid rhetoric to see how this works.
Dawned on me reading this that one of the major problems that Democrats have is that they assume that people are just too smart to actually buy into the scams and stupid, ridiculous positions that the Republicans are selling. I can understand that mindset. You would think that common sense would prevail and voters would rally against the darkness of the lies, gossip, and misinformation propaganda program that has been instituted in this country. Hartman is calling out the stooges and their minions and the Democratic politicians had better get on the train sooner than later. They hide behind their naiveté and pretend to be "when they go low, we go high". Well, that worked out great. Take off the soft gloves and put on the brass knuckles. This isn't a tea party...pun intended. Stop acing all innocent and morally superior. Time to fight and fight in the form that the avengers are determining.
It's always easier to blame someone else for our problems. I'm retired now but got down-sized out of a well paying job & was forced to take a job at about 1/2 my salary. In my particular situation they did not give my job to an underpaid immigrant they just closed the regional office because the employees at our office were some of the highest paid employees in the company. So the CEO wanted more money so they closed an office of about 750 employees is a small town in central California. He got a bonus, of course, we got the shaft.
We don't have an immigrant problem. We don't have an employee problem. What we have is a greedy corporate officer problem & the sooner we solve that problem the sooner we can get decent salaries, decent health care, prices that are not "gouged" because of a pandemic. You have noticed that supply chains have been repaired so to speak, but gosh, somehow or other prices did not come down! And "coincidentally" (ahem!) corporate profits just happen to keep going up.
So yeah, we have a corporate problem, an oligarch problem, a con-artist problem but sure go ahead & blame the brown people that clean the toilets, grow our food, pack our meat, yeah. I'm sure they're the ones at fault!
My wife was an associate vice president* for a top-five US bank. They told her to train people in India as they were going to move her whole department there to save a few bucks. She told them to "GFY" and retired (which she would have done within two years anyway). She worked there for 40 years and would have gotten a year's salary as severance if she stuck it out for a few months, but she doesn't regret her decision.
*it sounds more impressive than it is, I think they have hundreds (or more) AVPs
That is impressive! Very impressive. Kudos to your wife.
Just think, she is braver & has more character & moral fortitude than Bezos, Zuckerberg & the rest of the sleazeballs slithering down to Mar a Lago on their stomachs to kiss trump's "nether regions".
Just think, she TURNED DOWN MONEY out of principle! That takes guts! You gotta good one!
TY
Yep, she's a keeper 🥰
Few comments so far but none say what needs saying, Thom: you are 100% right, and the morbidly rich depend on illegal immigration both for cheap, unprotected labor and to keep legal workers underpaid, subservient and out of unions or other protective organizations. The courts are of little help. They are slow and expensive and management-oriented by and large, even more so after being packed with right wingers with more to come. I saw that first hand in my law firm, which had a powerful management labor law department that always won from my own knowledge. Mind you, the claims I saw, two of which I helped litigate, were often bogus, and the ones we handled did not involve immigrants. But we also had a superb immigration department handling a lot of HB-1 visas. There was abuse there too, and still is, and many horror stories out there of U.S. professional losing jobs to foreigners prepared to work for peanuts or even nothing to get one of those visas and seek to gain citizenship here.
The only real instrument for immigration control is the one whose history you so damningly present: holding those who employ illegal aliens accountable, with serious penalties that are enforced, not just against corporations, but the hotels restaurants, and rich people who have illegal cooks, dishwashers, gardeners, house cleaners, maids, nannies, delivery people, you name it. BUT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Because of the term I first saw you use here and which I have unashamedly borrowed since: the MORBIDLY RICH. They have the lobbyists and the influence and the money to bribe Congresspeople of both parties and people in government, including immigration authorities, to keep it from happening.
So no matter how many people get deported, my bet is that more will still flood in, and the incoming Administration will lie about that, and hide any detrimental effects on domestic employment, crime, swamping our medical resources, raising the taxes of those of us lacking the income and lawyers to avoid paying them.
What we CAN do is what you are doing here: slap them in the face constantly with their hypocrisy. Tell our friends and neighbors who use illegals that they are the problem, not the illegal immigrants they are abusing for personal advantage. But know that the love of money will, it seems, always trump everything else for those who have it, and those who want it more than they want decency, honor, dignity or integrity.
You are correct Roy, the immigration problem has two faces.
1. It is made in the U.S.A., by our corporations who use the resources of Central and South America as profit centers and sources, using our influence to overthrow governments and install friendly dictatorships, until they are not It started with the Banana Wars and the latest is Venezuela. Cuba is a prime example Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Chile Peru..
Our government is simply a tool to be used by the real powers.
2. The other face is culture. The cultures of these countries, the basis of which is patriarchalism, submission and dominance, to church first, then to state. Superstition replacing reason.
The purpose of ideology, and religion is an ideology, a secular ideology, is to inculcate and maintain a subservient, slave, mentality.
Bother you not about being rewarded here and now, be obedient and worshipful and your reward comes in the hereafter.
This is the leitmotif of Christianity and Islam. Especially the Catholic Church, protestantism, especially Calvinism has turned that on it's head, with the idea of predestination and the prosperity gospel.
The governing ethos of Central and South America: Catholicism.
The governing ethos of North America: Calvinism.
Toss in global climate change
Just some thoughts.
Had employer sanctions been enforced, we would have had no immigration problem
I also think that the same people who send them to the border are the same who blame it on Democrats. How do impoverished immigrants get the fare to get to the border? While they induce Cuban and Venezuelan dissidents to vote with their feet, Reoublicans demonize then when they make it.
That is what I say about the Venezuelans, who claim to have traveled through Colombia, through the Darien Gap, up the Pan American Hiway and show up at the border, freshlyscrubbed,their boys carrying soccer balls and daughters dolls.
I lived in Panama, with Panamanians, and no Panamanian would go near the Darien Gap, hostile tribes, bandits, poison snakes, peccaries, jaquars. And once through you have to make your way to over the bridge of the Americas, travel through Panama City, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico
one hell of a long and expensive journey, not to mention dangerous, and yet they arrive at the Texas Mexico border fresh scrubbed with toys.
More likely they spent $4 or $5,000 board a plane in Caracas, and disembark in Mexico.
Unless they rely on Taxi's, Buses and trains, and they cost, maybe there is a taxi stand on the north side of the Darien Gap.
About the Gap, no Panamanian in their right mind would venture into the gap.
Thom, we have longstanding temporary visa programs. I heard appeals for 20 years. E.G. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-2b
2025 allocation under Biden. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/h-2b-non-agricultural-workers/temporary-increase-in-h-2b-nonimmigrant-visas-for-fy-2025
We also have several other visa programs.
At one time I was on the BALCA board. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oalj/contacts/BALCA
The poster boy for employer sanctions for illegal hiring was Trump. The Employer Sanctions Act, also known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, is a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that prohibits employers from hiring unauthorized workers.
Several of his golf clubs hire workers on the H-2B visa program. Hiring records show that Trump clubs don’t try too hard to find US workers in the high season, and the company’s recruiters usually say that no Americans even apply for them. In a prospective American is denied a job, there may be a cause of action.
Are not Trumps H-2b Visa hires from Poland and Eastern Europe? That is white folk,and even then he doesn't pay them all o f their earned wages, and I am sure that although he deducts taxes, L&I, and FICA he doesn't remit them to the Federal Treasury or the State.
Yes. Probably Slovenia. For years I produced an annual seminar at hotels nationally. Virtually all take advantage. I never saw any Africans.... A few Asians.
The contracts are audited. That's how we got the cases.
I read that when Trump built his casino he imported construction workers from Poland, and still didn't pay them.
Had to pay $2 mil + reimburse them at Trump Tower. He had a modeling agency, brought in H1B, had other ventures. He probably contracted out to labor pools.
In Ocean City, Rehobeth, most of the hotel workers were Polish visa workers. Here we had asbestos in the federal buildings; contractors brought Polish workers to remove it. I also had jurisdiction over abestosis re government contractors, never hasd any Polish workers' cases. I assume some went home to die.
Many employers contract with labor pools, pass themselves off as independent contractors.
Jumping in, because I listened to the audio/video version a little while ago. I have long found this immigration situation confounding and have strongly suspected that we are deliberately being given sort of blurry or vague information about the situation. I have questioned and doubted that the immigration situation is anywhere near as bad as what Trump and his supporters have portrayed. My brother, a Trump voter, recently asked me if I cared about the so-called immigration crisis, and he was astonished that I do not and I did not consider it to be an issue when I voted for Kamala Harris. But I have a question and I wonder if anybody can clarify this for me. I have a couple of female friends who are registered Democrats, who voted for Joe Biden, but who are married to MAGA husbands. I find that on some issues they are influenced by the thinking of their MAgA spouse. For example, last spring, I had several conversations with one of them who claimed to be very upset about the immigration crisis and sounded to me like she was seriously thinking about voting for Trump in the 2024 election over the immigration issue. She insisted that she had seen and heard Biden on television proclaim that our border is open. She was very upset about this. Does anyone know if this is an accurate statement, or is this a sentence that was taken out of context in an address that Biden delivered shortly after he won the election in 2020? I was unable to accurately respond to this because she was so adamant in her insistence that she heard Joe Biden say our borders are open. Anybody?
I watch a lot of CNN, MSNBC, PBS and have never seen Biden or anyone in his administration say we have open borders. As a matter of fact this past year his administration decreased the number of immigrants entering legally. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes, autocrats and their party use hate, misinformation and continually repeat the lies. Did you notice how upset Trump was after the debate w Harris with ABC for fact checking? He didn’t even repeat the lies, just lashed out about taking away the broadcasting license and suing journalists. I sometimes think we are in a surrealist time but then I remember the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War ( and most recently the Iraqi invasion by the US) and it’s always been here. We just had a lot of progress w minority rights , diversity and a slow progress towards equity. It became too much for racists and sexists and all it took was a depraved individual without any sense of decency, ethics to organize the hate ( with the help of well connected politicos. The big quest is why do even those who know better continue to encourage or participate ( the Grahams, Sununus, Cruzes,?
Mitch, I am constitutionally incapable of belief, but I am beginning to accept the possibility of a multiverse and that we , or rather I, am living in an alternate reality, were up is down, good is bad, right is wrong
Google the Mandela effect, Millions of people world wide believed that Nelson Mandela died in Prison, then he shows up on TV as a hero being released, there are lots of instances like that.
The had a TV Series and a book of the same called The Man in the High Castle.
an alternate reality where Germany invaded America landing at Virginia Beach.
Maybe one day I will wake up in a MAGAt free universe, no Trump, No Musk, no religion, no ideology.
William, there are astrophysicists who theorize/predict multiple universes and we are one of many. Philip K Dick wrote the High Castle book and he is a favorite SF writer. He also wrote Bladerunner ( titled “Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?”). I think its just been so long since the last global turmoil that we ( in the US and Western Europe where we stopped invading our neighbors) that our political system ( even in a strong democracy) has allowed nihilists and oligarchs to attain so much influence and power. Maybe Canada, Greenland and Panama will come rescue us.
Mitch: Thank you for this statement:"I think its just been so long since the last global turmoil that we ( in the US and Western Europe where we stopped invading our neighbors) that our political system ( even in a strong democracy) has allowed nihilists and oligarchs to attain so much influence and power.
In one sentence you nailed it.
I could indulge in rhetorical meandering, philosophical philandering and a historical exegesis but you said it all in one sentence.
I see it as another Trump business opportunity. His private prison owner donors and the labor pool industry will benefit directly and he may personally have a piece of the action as he is an expert in using temporary visas.
Nobody mentions the pardon he gave Bannon, who was running a scam on the border wall and still is exposed in a NY criminal case.
The climate crisis will only exacerbate this problem as populations are forced to move in order to survive. It seems to be the way that man discovered habitable lands.
Thom Hartmann has been correct about immigration for as long as I have read him, the early 1990s. If only everyone in the U.S., knew what he so clearly conveys in his columns on immigration. Thank you Thom.
Immigration is the cause of the rise of the right in Europe and America.
The problem is caused primarily by global warming, wars and cultural conflict and in turn is creating cultural conflict which is causing the rise of the right like the Fidesz party in Hungary, which enabled Orban to take control, Giorgia Meloni's, Brothers of Italy party, Marine le Pen's, National Rally Party, the British National Party.
Here is what Omer Azis, a former foreign policy adviser of Justin Trudeau has to say
https://broadview.org/the-alarming-rise-of-modern-fascism-in-canada/
Some of its growth is a symptom of larger problems, which include extreme inequality, racial polarization and weaponizing the state to come down on minorities. Since the 1970s, we’ve seen a disintegration of the social order in the United States. There was the mass incarceration of African Americans, harsh drug and anti-immigrant policies, and trade deals and economic arrangements made by liberal elites that left many people behind. So you have a mass of people who are disaffected, disillusioned, unemployed, and neither left party or right party can reach them. And that’s how someone like Trump can come in and take over.
That is true of the rise of fascism in America and Canada, Europe is another matter, there it is the influx of an unassailable alien culture which actually threatens to display western culture.
This is what brought Viktor Orban to Power, he promised to build a wall to keep them out, and he did, he promises to deport them and he is doing just that. Shades of Stephen Miller, Hohan and Trump.
In America race plays a bigger role than it does in Europe. Europe doesn't have the slave, race, civil war history that is the millstone of America. Although they do have their history of problems with ethnicity like the insanity of the Balkans. Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, Kosovarians all Slavs, The differ only in religion Bosnia - Muslim, Croatia- Roman Catholic, Serbia - Greek Orthodox, Kosovo Muslim.
During the Roman empire the region was called Illyria, and it even provided an Emperor named Constantine.
Think WW II.
The advantaged taking advantage over the poor is a moral crime. Those that hire anyone that does not have a legal right to work in America simply have to be made responsible for their actions. That will take care of most of the problems. The intentional failure of Congress to properly address the problem is the other failure of society. Nobody cares about these people and the advantaged get rich off of doing so. Our authorities continue to abuse their positions of power so soon the GFC will take action and replace all these greedy failures. Do not be surprised when it happens before or by around mid year.
Once again, the corrupt practices by the government, making moronic accusations that ‘Biden is the problem ‘ is a lie by the totally unprincipled Trump and his band of thieves.
But at the same time monied Corporations are all self serving liars .
Thank every Republican president and a few Democrats that thought we should “ all just get along” for the complete acceptance of dirty politics and policies.
The art of corruption has been perfected over many years by the republicans and sanctioned by the Supreme Court five.
‘The Immigration problem ‘has been fed the same BS trope as another distraction by these Constant Liars Club members.
The pure caustic hatred put forth by Trump and his crew has infiltrated every aspect of policy.
Elon Musk , the richest and sickest of them all , is attempting to make his insane policies stick to punish the already ailing people whose wealth has been obliterated by himself and others like him .
These people are poison to America.
One only has to listen to their putrid rhetoric to see how this works.
Dawned on me reading this that one of the major problems that Democrats have is that they assume that people are just too smart to actually buy into the scams and stupid, ridiculous positions that the Republicans are selling. I can understand that mindset. You would think that common sense would prevail and voters would rally against the darkness of the lies, gossip, and misinformation propaganda program that has been instituted in this country. Hartman is calling out the stooges and their minions and the Democratic politicians had better get on the train sooner than later. They hide behind their naiveté and pretend to be "when they go low, we go high". Well, that worked out great. Take off the soft gloves and put on the brass knuckles. This isn't a tea party...pun intended. Stop acing all innocent and morally superior. Time to fight and fight in the form that the avengers are determining.