It is sometimes difficult to understand political issues, unless we examine the associated facts in order to assess the potential for disfunction or failure. The following information was useful in helping me to form an opinion and an action regarding this important issue. Interesting read to say the least.


FROM THE LA TIMES

1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County (L.A. County has 10 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.

2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.

4. Over 2/3's of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.

5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.

7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.

8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.

9. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.

10. In L.A.County 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak Spanish (10.2 million people in L.A.County).

(All 10 from the Los Angeles Times)


Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops but 29% are on welfare. http://www.cis.org


Over 70% of the United States annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration.


The cost of immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was a NET (after subtracting taxes immigrants pay) $70 BILLION a year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University].


The lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is a NEGATIVE

29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.

I guess somebody better tell that to Bush.

Build the fricken fence!

Round 'em up and return them to Senor Fox. After confiscating any valuable property to cover any outstanding bills.

sard-what about if they have children that are legal americans?....do we send the parents back and put the legal american children in orphanages?

im for a policy of zero legal or illegal immigration until we get our house in order. look -the way our government fixes a problem is to call it something else.....they will take the word "illegal-alien" and fix it by making it the word-"legal-alien".....will anything change other than the name??? will it matter at all if the feds bring in a bit of taxes over the name change? HELL NO!!!!!!

Bush co. will not send the mexicans home or fix the problem until the mexicans are done doing the dirty work of the bush admin: breaking the unions and creating a slave labor class of workers in the usa so that manufacturers can better compete in "globalization" and not have to leave the comforts of america in order to start a new sweat shop

how many illegal aliens are running the garbage trucks that pick up garbage in your neighborhoods?????
i bet the answer is ZERO.....why? because they are well paying union jobs! you can stop illegal immigration by supporting unions!!!!
and you will also get famillies whose parents earn a living wage, with health care, and raise children who are healthy and less likely to cause crime or suck up govt. services. it is these famillies that are going to save up money and possibly start a new business which will create jobs!! not the rich........

but bush will destabilize our economy with his union busting and anti-labor stance and use the immigrants and his guest worker programs to do it...he wont do a thing to help protect the living wage of the blue collar american worker and we will pay the price for it with high crime, high taxes high prices and low low wages

Illegal aliens? Note Bush's term, foreigners who risk their lives... If that isn't spin, I don't know what is.

Vote whore.

I'm still looking for the candidate who will straiten out the alien mess including making it hard for the poor bastids to find a job without legal citizenship documents.......


It wasn't Bush, and it wasn't Kerry......

It boils down to supply and demand, (like everything else), one of the keys has to be cracking down on the employers...............

That's the ONLY key, but those whores in Congress, both Republicans and those so-called Democrats are getting phat kick-backs from the very same employers who are trying to lower labor costs by undermining American Union Labor.
Kiss your 40 hr work week and your health bennies goodbye, boys, The Pinkertons are running the show these days.

Gosh, here I'd been thinking this was the country where a person is free to hang out their own shingle and have a go at the big time, or at least rise to the top of his chosen profession and again, supply and demand works for the intelligent and ambitious ...

P.S.
I thought it was those Democrats, and those so-called Republicans ........

you will do the most to stop illegal immigration by supporting your unions......

I wish I could jump on the union bandwagon, but I have serious reservations.

I would rather see labor laws strengthened in this country. I speak from experience here, but as a former chief shop steward for a few hundred workers... I had to DEFEND a union member from disciplinary action that was adversly affecting MY working conditions.

Unions protect the lazy and a union often prevents a company from receiving a fair days work for a fair days pay. It's nearly impossible to fire people for deliberately poor performance. Government employee unions are the worst!

Government regulations with teeth (no $1000 penalty for repeatedly violating safety laws etc, make the fine hurt!) and shrinking the worker pool might be better for business.

Just my .02.

I agree at least in part with AuntyM !!!


I have seen employees protected by unions when the employee was intentionly nonproductive, in fact, that is about the only thing I have seen unions do aside from collecting money and campaigning for liberal democrat polititions.


Why is it so scary for people to accept work and compensation comensurate to their performance ? I don't need union protection to find work, nor do I need a union to tell me what I'm worth. There is one other benefit of unions which I guess I should aknowledge, and that is helping to keep prices up where a small business can make bank just by being efficient.

I know of an electrician who is unemployed about half of the time because nonunion companies get all the local work that isn't government funded, the guy has lived under the union so long, and believed so much of their propaganda, that he is literally affraid to step out on his own and bid on the local non-union work..........and make more money per year, and contribute to the economy. He claims that the union would harass him and try to get the state/county inspectors to harass him, and he would loose his pension...

The union has made him into a pussy !

aunty/oregonian-
i definately know what you are saying and agree. there are definately problems with unions and i am not personally a member of one or ever have been..... but it is starting to seem like they well may be far less of an evil than previousely percieved...
it seems like the present system is leading to millions of jobs that all dont pay anything and no matter where yo work it still wont pay the bills.... like the fast food mentality nowadays where kids just dont give a hoot about their job because there is allway the same job for a different fast food spot right next door....

the garbage trucks just seemed to click with me for some reason because i was noticing that they are well paid, ethnically balanced, have health care and are unionized.... but my garbage has never been forgotton or late and i was doubting that there was ever an illegal immigrant behind the wheel......
ive heard horor stories about the unios too from a career in the building trades and definately horror stories from my mom too, who worked for dshs for years.....she would say that there are ladies who show up drunk every day and there would be nothing you could do to get rid of them other than promoting them

lupo;
IF we could cut wellfare programs down to the point that people have to be litterally unable to support themselves to get any assistance, AND erase the minimum wage, Then we could just let supply and demand do it's thing..........


I know I won't be working for any less than I get right now regardless, and if my cost of living goes up, then my price goes up, if you can find somebody who will do my job for less money then fine. When I can no longer compete in my current ocupation, then I will find another.........

As long as people can work for minimum wage, and still draw wellfare (by whatever name...), then the market is skewed, same goes for illegal aliens mooching off the system, and lazyass Americans too. By cutting the benies to the riff-raff who get a lot of them we save Uncle Sugar a ton of loot, then those former professional couch potatoes are going to be productive to boot, it's a double schwang !

Oregonian, I'm terribly sorry, but career couch potatoes will never be made to be productive. They'll be the first with an L&I injury, the first to be laid off and placed on unemployment and they will be on SS disability long before you ever will be. These people learn how to work the system and will find loopholes you and I never dreamed of.

If they're females, they will get pregnant by as many men as they can for multiple child support payments and they'll do it for as long as they can get away with it.

I prefer to give them a sturdy tent and 3 squares a day. Let their kids stay in shelters and attend school. It's cheaper and if that doesn't motivate them, then they have only themselves to blame.

AuntyM, I know the system is practically unchangable, but I think people who are living on the dole are having it too easy, they would have to take a pay cut to get a job ! The benefits aught to provide about what you prescribed...3 hots and a cot, nothing else, heck ya they will be stigmatized.


Start down this topic very far, and we will get to financial aide, what a joke that is, incentive to be a cull.

aunty-like the mom in "million dollar baby" that was pissed that her daughter bought her a house... cuz then she was going to lose her welfare if the state found out about the house....

those people piss me off too...... although there are alot of folks out there that really do need public assistance. i mean like people that you dont see at the stores and such but are partialy retarded or not crazy enough to be committed but not sane enough that you would want them to be fixing your cheeseburgers.

the sense of community is gone in a present day society and the ability for us to help eachother out and be able to expect the same in return is diminishing....and we all need help some time or another for health reasons or money reasons or whatever
so different in rural areas. i remember being out at our wheat/barely farm in palouse and asking where jim was. jim was our farmer that lived there and farmed the land and his dad before him.... jim and all the local farmers were over at a neighbors farm with their own combines and such harvesting thousands of acres for a friend that had come down with cancer and couldnt get the harvest done and would have been done for if it didnt get harvested...... i thought that that was so cool and every one of those farmers knew full well that they could expect the same if it happened to them...... it was their "safety net"
and now that community is dissaapearing and being replaced with society ,where its rare to know your neighbors let alone even speak the same language .....we still need some sort of safety net.....

Lupo, dependance on the government is part of what is loosening those tight nit communities...

The system as is forcibly collects money from all taxpayers to provide for those in need, the trouble is that the distribution is inefficient, and corupt on many levels....

Taxpayers feel less generous to others because they have already been coerced to contribute...

oregonian- i would disagree. i feel that it is dependance on corporate employment and the need to work more and more to pay the bills is loosening those tight nit communities... now it takes most families two parents working just to get by.....and on the welfare you are concentrating on welfare to the poor which is extreemly small compared to welfare tot he rich which accounts to over 1 million dollars for every dollar spent on payments to the poor......i agree on ending dependance and entitlement to other peoples money but what needs the most attention.....stopping the culvert of wasted tax dollars to the allready rich or stopping the driping faucet of money going mainly to famillies that really need it......and 90% of those on welfare to dependant famillies reall really need it......

Can an apple tree drop an orange? It is tough but how can an illegal alien create a legal child? It would be mean to deport the illegal and break up the family, so treat them as a unit and deport them all. Modify the laws to support the process.
We will always have problems that need attention in this country. That doesn't mean we should become isolationists to solve those problems. That will just creat more and bigger problems.
I have belonged to The IAFF, The Aviation Machinists, The Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks and Employees, and the Steelworkers. Mostly they all had their hand in my pocket for very little return. I am not refuting the history of union/management relations, just the fact that the unions no longer represent the worker. The union leadership has much more in common with the management types across the table than they do with the rank and file. They play golf together, they belong to the same clubs, etc.
Unions help kill KACC. They shut down the Ravenswood facility and so many others I cannot list them all. You wonder why so many businesses go off shore? Take a hard look at union operations in the last 50 years. The Unions and the litiginous liability game have destroyed more free enterprise than Stalin could have if given a free hand.

lupo,lupo,lupo...

I guess I will try to learn from the perspective from which you speak, but it is very different than my own, I have been broker than broke before, when I was out on my own with a highschool diploma, and I have hung around with people who will always be broke....

I now support my wife and two children in a dumpy little place on a couple of acres which we own, I have my own business, and have had for the last 10 years, my wife does not work other than 24/7 taking care of us and maybe volunteering at the school once in a while.......

I know people who are activly seeking ways to get "free money", but could not be counted upon to show up for a job more than twice a week, they are lazy bastids, and they should be starving to death, they will NEVER be productive members of society/economy as long as there is an alternative. IF you took away every means of survival other than honest work, they would have to get off their ass and work..........

I think the welfare business is better left to the families of the deadbeats, the churches, and nice people who can afford it and get their jollies from having power over people in exchange for letting them act helpless, and that is what it is most of the time, an act...they have been trained to play the victom for money. The guys handing out the money are "enabling" the losers to be just that.

AND...

This crap about a family cannot exist on one income any more is the purest form of B.S. I have ever heard, it ranks right up there with single sex marriage !


How many of these "families" with both parents working and the kids in commercial daycare are just "getting by".....with two deluxe cars, deluxe home in deluxe neighborhood, deluxe aluminum boat not more than 5 years old, Hollywood style wardrobes for the whole family, bicycles, skateboards, computers, microwave "ovens", deluxe appliances, cabin on the lake, extra large 401K, motorcycles, jet skis, trips to the mountains skiing every winter, vacations to Mexico-Grand Canyon-Yellowstone-Disneyland-Bla-Bla-Bla...........

Face it, both parents work because the woman wants to get away from her real duties of raising her kids, it is not caused by the economy.

In case you are wondering, I am in the position I am in now because I try harder than a lot of other people around me, and I live in the best country in the world where a modest amount of intelligence and ambition is all you need. I got an old couch and an old freezer from my Old Man when I moved out after graduation, and a .22 pistol from my Grandmother, everything else I have came from me wearing out a lot of gloves and getting up before daylight and going to work for 20 years.................

Lazy people riding on my tax dollars suck.

Oh brother. :rolleyes: Looks like Oregonian is taking up where TK left off...

I think they think they're the only ones to struggle and make it as a family.

Didn't see any reference to my being the only one, but I have heard there are a few "moms" putting in 40hr weeks, and hiring someone to "watch" their kids and clean the house......and many of these folks could certainly trim their budgets by more than "mom" makes............

First off... I tend to agree that mom's need to raise their kids themselves. I did.

But I don't agree that most can make a mortgage payment, groceries, bills and a car payment on one salary.

As long as women don't feel valued for their contribution to home and family, they will seek personal satisfaction outside the home. Society needs to change it's values... instead of blaming mothers.

I agree that society is driving this, but you must realize that society IS the greedy people who want two paychecks......


A mortgage payment is only one of the things a person has to consider when taking a job and having kids...

I am saying they could live in a plain small house, without all the bells and whistles on one income, and focus on finishing what they started which is raising a family, and I can show you if you want to come over for a BBQ some time....

I sometimes wish for some of the fancy toys other people have, but I'll not be trading away the integrity of my family for material gain.

O, if you think all women do is work for a paycheck, you're mistaken.

I think a lot of people would be happier if they didn't have kids, so why all the pregnancy ???


No, it's not simply a by-product of sex, there are plenty of things which can prevent pregnancy other than abstinence.

My sentiments exactly. I stopped at one, long before it was in vogue.

What amazes me is that so many people are lousy at parenting, but they think they'll get better with more?

It's too bad agreeing isn't more exciting...

Sardonicus and I were pleasant to each other and killed a thread.

Bush sucks... there... that should work.

Bush is still the least of the evils we had to choose from in the last election...and you know it.

I and many thousands of dead people disagree.

i work hard too oregonian.....
i am a roofing contractor which means not only do i come home extreemely tired but i have one of the top ten most dangerouse jobs in the country......i dont like the fact that there are some who cheat on welfare and noone who works as hard as me does like welfare cheats but there are alot of folks that cannot work that need govt assistance for a period of time. and the number one cause of poverty in this country is getting hurt on the job....and its not because of L and I cheats......you only get an average payment of $50,000 for an amputated hand.......


.......im just saying you sentiment is about 2o years out of date......to buy a 700 square foot cottage anywhere around here is $atleast 2500,000 if it is on a lot not too much bigger than the house...and that would be a lucky find, the average home price now in puget sound is $400,000.... and its not because they are building them so big its because the prices are skyrocketting along with fuel prices and food prices and everything else..........sorry but the ole "i use to walk up hill to school both ways" crap just doesnt cut it anymore.......
the times have changed

lupo,

We have some things in common, I cut timber, that may not be roofing, but it ain't for pussies either....

My sentiments are not 20 years out of date, nor one minute out of date, it is called living within your means...if the head of the household can't swing a 2.5 million dollar house payment and still make ends meet then that is the wrong neighborhood to be shopping in, and likely the wrong county to boot ! (plus I'm sure you put in at least one extra zero)


As far as the down and out go(legitimate cases), I'm not saying they don't need and deserve a helping hand, I am saying it should not be the government's job, and dang sure not the Federal government at that ! Beyond the fakers and lazy bums, there are surely some truly needy folks, why can't that be handled by :

1) Family
2) Churches
3) Friends/Neighbors
4) Charity
5) Insurance policies

lupo, I reread your post, it seems that you may have overlooked the part where I explained that I live in example of what I said, if you really doubt it's true come on down, have a look, I'll take you to work for a day, and afterward I'll show you my personal budget.........I live in a modest shack on a great rural location, have 2 great kids and some pretty neat toys.........I never inherited a dime nor had any inside scoop on a great job. I started out cutting fire trail and planting trees, and when I heard about better paying jobs I went and got the job because I worked as hard as I could. My wife is a homemaker and I feel sorry for anyone trying to raise a family without a fulltime homemaker.

Again Oregonian, you seem to think women only work so they can afford a bigger house and better car. Some actually enjoy their jobs as teachers, executives, salespersons etc... and don't want to give up a career just so they can stay home and have kids.

What's wrong with the man staying home and looking after the kids?

The minute my wife wants to pull the wagon, I'm ridin' !

The youngest is in kindergarden now, so the timing couldn't be better...

The women who will ditch their kids for a "career", are even worse that the one's trying to keep up with the Jones's(the greedy/career lady).


Something really unnatural about any species of mother who will shirk mothering opportunity, seems backwards to me.

Some men are more suited to parenting than their wives.

In any case, we can't impose our values or ideals on others, no matter how right we think we are. Bush is finding that out the hard way.

All the "bad" people around, and you have to act as if W is your own personal punching bag...

Proud of you, Oregonian. My son's wife is a stay at home mom. And I'm thankful. Much of the trouble in the ranks of the young comes from not having a parent at home. Nobody there for them when it counts.
BTW the cliche about " A house is not a home" is accurate.

Your right on Aunty M., Civility kills. Like the media's preference for doom, gloom, and blood. You gotta create hate and discontent to make a thread thrive. Some can and some can't, Ichy'rhoid for example.

O, very few bad people have any impact on me personally. Bush and his war have been bad for my family.

Oh, and it looks like most Americans agree with me about Bush. :p

yeah- trying to keep the water and gas on in the house is "keeping up with the jones'"

i guess if there wasnt three of us in a 700 square foot house priced at just under a half million dollars, i would agree with ya.....

lupo, you FUNNY !

I sure wish everyone else was as good and as wholesome as me, too.

I remember a 750 sq ft house in my past. First house I ever purchased. Cost $6,000.00 in 1952. Principal and interest, $50./month. Traded my '48 Ford 2 door sedan for a down payment. It was a real cheapie even for the times. No basement. boo Oil potburner for heat. boo Youngstown steel cabinets. semi-boo
Had a great view tho. And it beat the hell out of paying rent.
Why would anyone pay half a million for 700sq feet? Yikes Not what I would call entry level housing.

average home price in puget sound area for a two bedroom house is over $400,000....... all the while,wages are decreasing in terms of buying power.

not what i would call entry level housing either!!! but immigrants(both to the country and to the puget sound area from other states) increase the demand for housing and the supply is limited.....
those of us that grew up here are being forced out and our city and culture are being destroyed. hell yesterday hiking up to rattlesnake ridge in north bend, atleast 50%-60% of the people we passed on the trail didnt speak english......

Lupo
That area is huge for Japanese tourists to visit.

true....i forgot about the buddist temple and the amount of tourists that come up to see it...

Uno de Mayo. Merde.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=22275

Bush, kerry are one in the same their both members of thye same organization skull and bones with the same agendas.

Illegals need to be deported at any cost. They have no rights as a united states citezen they are not citizens. Round them up at the rallies they have no right to protest!

Micro

Hmmm, I think almost those exact words were spoken by a few Native Americans back in the day