I HATE Lou Dobbs! He's a racist, loud mouthed mofo (nt)

He and his anti-immigration bullshit is getting VERY OLD. I'm sick of hearing about it.

People at DU fell in love with him when he picked up on the outsourcing thing, but underneath he's still the same ole xenophobe he always was. According to Lou, evry problem we have in the country will be solved when all the "illegals" are rounded up and sent back..and when a 40 ft wall is erected from sea to shining sea.

He is wrong...but then he has a TV show and we don't:(

.....the next day he's a clod.

He's still the same old asshole I always thought he was.

sometimes I agree with him, like on the borders and outsourcing and the national debt and trade deficits.

I don't think he is an unprincipled conservative. I do think he is concerned about the decline of the middle class in this country.

You could do a lot better than picking on Lou Dobbs. I'll take 50 Lou Dobbses over one Hannity or Hume or Gibson or O'Reilly or Coulter or Cavuto or Novak or Carlson or... need I go on?

I also remember him talking about before the last election how this administration was using psy-ops on the American press (including his network) and using them to mislead the country. He said that is meant to be used on enemies in war time, not on your own country.

He taught me so much about outsourcing that I didn't know, including bringing foreign workers in on VISA's then Americans train them in a company and then the Americans get laid off.

He really does care about the middle class and workers.

He's a stuffy old codger who speaks in mind. There are things I disagree with but he is no neo-con or mouthpiece for administration.

All the other guys are recognized as rabid right-wingers, but a lot of people eat up Dobbs' pseudo-populism. In my book, Dobbs' isn't about sticking up for the American worker, but about economic nationalism.

Plus, how can you forgiving him for giving Tom Tancredo a continuing platform?

has racial issues. His diatribes about the border go beyond just being concerned and wander into racist "they are taking over our country" territory. Just listen to him on China!

I want people to come in LEGALLY, just like my husband did. I don't want my nation to be owned by another either. Call me a xenophobe then. There is a time to protect your nation and this is one of them.

I'm an immigration lawyer and have been working hard on this issue. There is NO legal way for the vast majority of undocumented workers in this country to get here. That's the whole point of trying to pass a guestworker bill. I don't know how your husband got here, but it seems that there is a tendency of many immigrants to want to slam the door behind them.

We can be proud of the House of Representatives. Today they are passing a bill that will declare 11 million undocumented people in this country as felons who can be imprisoned for up to five years. That includes 1.6 million children. It also will allow prosecution of doctors who treat these people, clergy who offer any type of economic support and anyone else aiding and abetting this new felony. What's next? Hiding families in your attic?

Hope you're proud.

..Tarring the issue as racism" is simply wrong....That might be an underlying reason for some folks, but certainly not for me or many I know...It's a question of JOBS, WAGES, and even the environnment...There's only so many people a nation can support, and as far as I know, THIS country currently has THE most liberal immigration policy of all..This is NOT to say that I'd favor all of the provisions the Immigration Lawyer mentioned, but this is a COMPLEX issue, which can not just be responded to in knee-jerk fashion.
..Part of the problem, I think, is that we are all in the habit of thinking of this country as "the land of immigrants"..What is not realized..and what has been cited in a book by two pulitzer prize-winning journalists, Barlett & Steele, in "America: Who stole the Dream" is that for MOST of this country's history we had a "quota"..and no, it wasn't a "racial quota"..it was just a quota of about a quarter million people a year...As of the middle nineties the level has gone up to OVER a MILLION a year!!..The highest since the turn of the LAST century.

And, according to these journalists...a LOT of this has to do with the HB-1 Visa..which was introduced in the eighties during the Bush or Regan administration...As Clinton's Secty of Labor Robert Reich said "It is fraught with abuse"*

Fraught with abuse because the original intention (supposedly) of the bill was to allow non-Americans to take an AMERICAN job (yes, there are/were some protections there)..IF..no American can be found for it..In other words, some very specialized work....It's now, in the words of the authors, simply "rubber-stamped" for jobs like "Pizza Hut Manager"...and the idea, of course, is to keep wages down.

First, the US has one of the world's most restrictive and complex immigration systems. To say that we have THE most liberal immigration policy shows complete ignorance of the subject. I can send you my 25 volume treatise on US immigration law if you've got $4000 and a lot of bookshelf space. There are 8,000 full time immigration lawyers in the US. Guess how many are in the UK. Fewer than 200. France? Just four for the whole country. In those countries, the system is easy enough to navigate without having to resort to hiring a lawyer.

And use some common sense. If it were so easy to get to the US, don't you think people would do it legally rather than living in the shadows in constant fear.

As for the H-1B visa, this visa has been around since the 1950s. And it is used by rural communities to get physicians to the most medically underserved communities (I write a treatise published annually on this topic), overcrowded school districts needing math and science teachers, major research institutions recruiting top Ph.D.s and MDs working on little things like a cure for AIDS or a bird flu vaccine. Lou Dobbs would lead you to believe that H-1Bs are just for computer programmers when fewer than a third are going to that industry. Congress slapped a $500 per worker fraud tax on all H-1B applications to address this question. The reality is that there has been virtually no fraud, but the nativist crowd wanted this as a trade for keeping the program. The criminal penalties for immigration fraud are severe and you'll hear no argument from me that those laws should be vigorously enforced. But the nativists look for any excuse to kill legal immigration they can find.

What I find most troubling with people holding your views - good Democrats who genuinely care about the American worker - is that you don't see any connection between outsourcing and immigration. Did you know that Congress slashed H-1B visa quotas by 2/3 in 2002? What do you think companies do when they can't find the workers they need? They move. I have a number of clients who have done just that. They have closed operations in the US because they were tired of trying to find workers in the US that were qualified. When they go to China or India, that problem disappears. Unfortunately, all those Americans who worked side by side with the H-1Bs, lose their jobs.

I know your response - they should just hire a willing American. Well guess what? We have 4.9% unemployment in this country and in the professions - and H-1Bs are only available to people holding unversity degrees - the unemployment rate is even lower. In the tech sector, the unemployment rate is now BELOW 3%. There are very few Americans who can't find work in these fields. Sure there are pockets of unemployment that make nice anecdotes. But the macro picture is pretty clear that H-1B workers SAVE jobs for Americans and not the reverse.

Finally, you mentioned President Clinton. Clinton dramatically raised the H-1B quotas during his term in office. And while you can't credit foreign workers for the robust economy of the 90s, they certainly were a part of the success story.

"To say that we have THE most liberal immigration shows complete ignorance of the subject"

Please don't imply "complete ignorance" on my part, I DID preface it with "to my understanding"...It wasn't stated as absolute fact. As to the numerical comparison of immigration lawyers in the US and in those of a couple of European countries...I would think that population and proportionality might explain some of that.

As to the "common denominator" of outsourcing and immigration...Yes, I certainly do see the link. I think it's called "cheap labor".

I'm aware of Clinton's role regarding the H-1B visa..It's one of the reasons I voted for Nader in '96.

..As for Clinton's supposed economic "success story" of the '90s...It was only one for those whose income was already in the top 20%; at least according to people like Richard Gephardt, Robert Reich and people like me who continued to see our wages stagnate.

Much of my information, as I've implied, comes from the work of the two journalists I've mentioned, Barlett and Steele. They are pulitzer prize winners and have written extensively on politics and the American economy. If you haven't read any of their books, you may have seen their series "Corporate Welfare" in Time magazine a few years ago.

My son's father became a citizen as a child when his parents were naturalized when they were given amnisty. He grew up to be A UNION WORKER. Right now migrant workers are being used to be union busters, but then aganin, unions and the rights of workers that have been in place since FDR are rapidly falling between our fingers.

As a person who has been involved in imigrant's rights most of my life, can you not agree with me that they have changed in the last 20 years? Can you not see that both the repuke & Dem side of the isle are enabling union-busting by winking and nodding at many industries exclude American workers for those who are willing to work with out potections & rights???? I have recently known migrant workers who work jobs that citizens would LOVE to have, but are not even allowed to work because the boss wants only those who will not demand a safe working condition, a fair wage, or benifits.

No. Really. We must have an honnest debate. Give straight out amnisy or what ever, but do not buy into a charade of "guestworker" that will just encourage the more rapid decline of the worker salery.

This is nothing less than about worker's rights.

This is about workers' rights. That's why the AFL-CIO is supporting comprehensive immigration reform that includes a guest worker plan. Undocumented workers obviously can't join unions. They have no worker protections. They cannot collectively negotiate for higher salaries, health care, etc. The guest worker plans being promoted by Senators like Barack Obama have those protections. They will enable foreign workers to join unions. They will raise wages because employers won't be able to use workers' illegal status to suppress wages.

People who like unions and want to improve working conditions need to be out there supporting this!

for all the undocumented workers in this nation to get here. It existed before they crossed our borders. It requires completing the appropriate papers and having someone who can vouch for you personally and with finances. My first husband was from the ME and my current husband is from the Caribbean. Both came legally and contributed much to this nation too. I lived overseas for an extended period of time and observed the laws of that nation to be there. Just because you are poor doesn't give you permission to break the law. We didn't have much as newlyweds back then, but we observed the laws on both sides of the ocean. That is a freaking cop-out. Laws are being broken on more than one level and by more than one group--the employers who hire undocumented workers, the politicians who wink and don't adequately fund enforcement, and the ILLEGAL immigrant who KNOWINGLY does everything possible to circumvent the immigration law to get into the country and to stay here. It is not ONLY Hispanic people who make up this illegal workforce. It is law enforcement problem AND an economic burden.

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG


There is no program for unskilled workers to come to the US. I don't know your various husbands' histories, but I can assure you that there is an answer. Did they come in a skilled/professional worker program? Did they benefit from the amnesty of the 1980s? Did they have family sponsorship? But I can tell you that they did not come in an unskilled worker program. I promise you that if I had the opportunity to interview your husbands for five minutes I'd be able to give you the answer.

Being lectured to regarding immigration law by people that have no clue about immigration law is frustrating. Rather than relying on me, I'd suggest visiting a few web pages

http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/prsptm/pr10282005.cfm - statement of AFL-CIO supporting a guest worker program with worker protections

http://www.immigrationforum.org/documents/TheDebate/EnforcementBorderInterior/EnforcementFactsBackgrounder.pdf

http://www.hias.org/News/Docs/comp_reform.pdf

http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/30279/

http://www.lirs.org/DonateServe/advocate/CIR/

I think the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service succinctly makes the case:

"There are 10.3 million undocumented people in the United States. (1) Who are they and why are they here? As has always been the case, these are people who migrated here for family, work and freedom—to unite with loved ones, to take up employment or to seek refuge from persecution. They are often the same honest, hardworking people who take care of our parents and children, clean our offices, and harvest our food. They come and remain here to carry out vital services for our communities, doing jobs for which there are not enough U.S. workers. Nonetheless, the system does not provided a viable way for these individuals to receive proper documentation. As a result, they often work for unfair wages in unsafe conditions, marginalized from the rest of society and separated from their families. We carefully consider these injustices and also the common good, “The existence of a permanent sub-group of people who live without recourse to effective legal protection opens the door for their massive abuse and exploitation and harms the common good.” (2) Any reform must acknowledge that these newcomers are integral to our communities and interwoven into the economic, cultural and political fabric of our society. It must also acknowledge that as a nation of immigrants and of laws we must be humane and just to newcomers while assuring orderly migration."

Folks have the right, of course, to disagree. But know that the Democrats OWN this issue. Every major candidate in '04 supported this type of plan. President Bush is actually assuming he's going to get 100% Democratic support for his plan and Senator Frist has said they are mainly just hoping to get a Republican majority to support comprehensive immigration reform. Yesterday, in the first of a couple of key House votes on a horrible immigration bill, the Democrats voted almost 100% against the bill. If you are anti-immigration and want to find friends on these issues, you'll find loads of them at Free Republic.

after all, we have a huge prison industry in this country. Then the greedy guts can privitize all the prisons.No way are that many people going to prison.

were in large part because of the "Black power structure" in New Orleans.

concerned with this topic needs to pay attention.

... is a racist. It's the lowest kind of discussion -- fallacious to say the least.

are you against legal immigration as well? And how about allowing for asylees and refugees to come to the US? And how about providing due process rights to immigrants?

I think the fact that there are 90 members of the anti-immigration Immigration Reform Caucus in Congress and only one1 is a Democrat. Ours is a party that recognizes that the anti-immigration movement in Congress is, at its core, about protecting a white, WASPy America. That's what we expect from the Republicans.

If not, then there's no basis to label him a racist.

I don't watch CNN anymore at all, but my memory of Lou Dobbs is that he's a thousand times more serious a journalist than most of the hacks on cable news.

I can find you dozens of examples of him opposing legal immigration. He does this over and over again. I have to confess as well that Dobbs' show occasionally calls me as a background source. I think it is largely to figure out what the pro-immigration side has to say about an issue so they know what to expect, but I like to think that I can do some good poking holes in some of their flawed arguments. The kinds of questions they ask me are often pretty revealing about the agenda of the show's producers so I'm okay with talking with them.

opposing legal immigration.

Thank you.

This is from FAIR - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Peter Hart is the well known Democratic pollster. It can be found at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1162.


Dobbs' Choice
CNN host picks immigration as his ax to grind

By Peter Hart

With all the attention paid to the near-overt partisanship of the Fox News Channel, it's important to remember that skewed reporting wasn't invented by Rupert Murdoch's cable operation.

In the last few months of 2003, CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight devoted abundant broadcast time to what anchor Dobbs described as an influx of "illegal aliens who not only threaten our economy and security, but also our health and well-being. Millions of aliens crossing our borders."

The selection of topics, the slanted sourcing and the occasionally inaccurate or incomplete information conveyed on the program all seemed calculated to convince the viewer that the U.S. is in the midst of a crisis that is, according to Dobbs, "changing the very nature of this country" (9/30/03). The title of a series on immigration, "Broken Borders," conveyed Dobbs' political position; immigrants were also routinely featured on his show's regular "Great American Giveaway" segment.

Grim concerns

Dobbs' immigration reports--which tended to blur the distinction between legal and illegal immigration (see sidebar)--covered a grim array of concerns. Segment after segment was devoted to "illegal aliens" who are getting free medical care (10/1/03), putting their children in schools (10/2/03), committing sex crimes (10/30/03), getting breaks on college tuition (10/22/03), clogging up the federal prison system (11/4/03) and "flooding across our borders in some cases carrying dangerous diseases" (11/20/03).

Dobbs' tone throughout was one of high alarm. "Illegal alien smugglers and drug traffickers are on the verge of ruining some of our national treasures," he warned in one show (11/19/03). In another segment (11/20/03) he complained that "700,000 illegal aliens enter this country every year, some carrying deadly diseases."

Dobbs infused his own comments with a political urgency he found lacking elsewhere: "There are an estimated 10 million illegal aliens in the United States, and federal agencies are doing little to investigate and apprehend them" Dobbs explained (11/18/03). "Ten million illegal aliens live in this country," according to the anchor (11/17/03). "But many politicians--in fact, most--business leaders and union leaders are silent about this critically important issue."

Dobbs praised the bravery of those who called for tougher U.S. immigration policies. Interviewing Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) about a proposal to eliminate a foreign workers' visa program, Dobbs said she was "showing considerable political courage in even taking up this issue. . . . When one talks about this issue, and confronts it directly, they're accused of being xenophobic, they're accused of being racist. . . . But the facts are incontrovertible."

Another of the show's reports focused on illegal immigrants convicted of sex offenses who, after serving time for their offenses, "subsequently disappear from U.S. law enforcement officials." In a discussion after the report, Dobbs praised government officials for finally dealing with the problem publicly "because they have been scared to death of the political correctness issues in this instance." Does Dobbs really believe it requires a unique kind of political bravery to crack down on illegal immigrant sex offenders?

Skewed guestlist

The soundbites and long-format interviews on Dobbs' program were skewed in favor of the most passionate immigration critics. Viewers were less likely to see analysts who would either defend immigrants or emphasize the relative benefits of immigration.

On the October 31 broadcast, for example, one report featured comments from only two sources, both representatives of anti-immigration groups: Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies and Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. (Interestingly, both groups were founded with the help of John Tanton, an anti-immigrant funder with ties to the white supremacist movement--Intelligence Report, Summer/02.)

That interview was followed by a one-on-one with Arizona State Rep. Russell Pearce, a Republican leading an initiative called Protect Arizona Now, which would make proof of citizenship a requirement for receiving government benefits. Dobbs described the effort this way: "Citizens of Arizona, faced with the growing numbers of illegal aliens in their state, are now taking aggressive action to protect their public services and their state budget."

The Federation for American Immigration Reform's Stein appeared on Dobbs' show five times in the month of October, along with five appearances by representatives of the Center for Immigration Studies. Immigrant advocacy groups, by comparison, made a total of four appearances in the month, along with two guests from the Cato Institute, which takes a libertarian position on immigration.

Dubious stats

A lopsided guest list wasn't the only problem. In a report (10/30/03) on the economic impact of immigration, CNN correspondent Lisa Sylvester claimed that "researchers at the National Academy of Science concluded that while the gains to the U.S. economy due to immigration could be as high as $10 billion, the cost is higher--as much as $20 billion." Host Dobbs added that "the economics are beginning to look somewhat convincing, don't you think?" Sylvester's response: "Clearly, the costs seem to be outweighing benefits in this case."

But that's not what the 1997 NAS study found. The researchers estimated that immigration provided a net gain for the U.S. gross domestic product of between $1 billion and $10 billion (see New York Times, 5/18/97)--in other words, that the benefits outweighed the costs. The $20 billion "cost" factoid was advanced by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (press release, 5/19/97), which extrapolated on a set of annual estimates in the NAS report, arguing there is "a total cost to those taxpayers of $15 to $20 billion dollars, much higher than the economic benefits."

Dobbs is best known as a business reporter; his show was, until recently, called Moneyline. So it might make sense that he would focus on the economic impact of immigration: "The real losers are the hard-working millions of Americans each day who are watching their wages depressed in many cases," he declared on one show (11/17/03). (Dobbs' sympathy for labor is not particularly consistent. Discussing workers at Wal-Mart--11/22/02--he commented: "They're not unionized, so the union must not have a terrific story either. . . . End of story as far as the markets are concerned. That's what counts.")

A more cautious conclusion comes from that same NAS report misused by Dobbs to demonstrate the fiscal burden of immigration. Workers without high-school diplomas, according to the study, have seen their wages drop, in part due to competition from immigrant workers, while workers who were not in direct competition with immigrant workers may have benefited from their presence in the domestic economy.

This nuanced view of immigration policy as having winners and losers points to the vital need for a broad debate on the costs and benefits of immigration. Clearly, CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight is not the best place to look for one.

SIDEBAR:Terms of Debate

CNN's Lou Dobbs is disgusted by the way some people talk about immigration: "We've got nearly approximately 700,000 illegal aliens crossing our borders every single year," he lectured one guest (9/30/03). "It continues unabated despite the national security interest in this war on terror. We have not been deporting illegal aliens. As a matter of fact, you just used the expression 'undocumented worker.' They're illegal aliens. The niceties of language--it's sort of interesting to hear how there's been this language shift, from 'illegal alien' to 'undocumented worker' to 'guest without status.' I mean, where does the nonsense end?"

In one debate (11/19/03), Dobbs the moderator took a moment to express his frustration with the terms a guest was using: "You've added the word 'immigrant' rather than 'illegal alien,' which is the point we're talking about. And, really, there's quite a major, important distinction, do you not agree?" In fact, there's not much distinction in definition between "alien" and "immigrant"--aside from the fact that "alien" is generally considered to be pejorative and "immigrant" more neutral.

As for the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, Dobbs has blurred that line himself, as when he previewed a report about the federal prison population (11/4/03): "Coming up, we're going to take a further look at the impact of illegal aliens. And it is an expensive proposition, particularly in our nation's prisons. Illegal aliens, those noncitizens taking up a third of the cells in our federal penitentiaries."

Minutes later, CNN correspondent Bill Tucker said of incarcerated noncitizens: "And while they were in prison, you'd think we'd identify which ones are illegal aliens. We don't." Tucker added that "one-third of the people in federal prisons are not United States citizens. Incredibly, there's no system currently in place to identify how many of those prisoners are also illegal aliens." He finished his report that night by telling Dobbs that there was "no way to know whether they're illegal or not." In other words, Dobbs' claim that one-third of federal prisoners were "illegal aliens" was made up out of thin air.

In another segment (9/23/03), Dobbs was outraged over a cross-country "freedom ride" campaign for immigrant and workers' rights. "Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal, this next story will amaze you," Dobbs explained. "People who have not respected immigration laws in this country are now demanding equal treatment under the law. They have begun a cross-country demonstration for those rights, in fact."

Responding to a viewer's letter a week later (9/30/03), Dobbs commented, "I should point out, not all of the people on those buses are illegal. Although we are told that some of them are, according to organizers of the group."--P.H.

Dobbs has probably done hundreds of stories now on immigration since he started his rant three years ago. Find me a single example where he had a positive thing to say about immigrants. Surely, there is one nice story out there on this topic. And if you've devoted 100s of stories to a particular topic and can claim to be fair and balanced, then there must be one example somewhere where he had something nice to say about an immigrant.

Ours is a party that hopes Ladino immigrants will vote a straght Democratic ticket. The real issue is, do we have a right to control our own borders. If you truly favor legal immigration, how can you justify special treatment for line jumpers. Why should someone who enters the country illegally get preferred treatment over someone who abides by the rules and waits for an entry permit? You can have a system of laws or you can have chaos.

What line? There is no line. We do not have a guest worker program for temporary workers in this country. This is a classic argument of the anti-immigrants. If only people complied with the law, we would be just fine. Except there is NO legal way for the vast majority of the workers in question to get here. This is not a matter of encouraging people to do it the legal way. If you're so sure of yourself, tell me how a company legally goes about sponsoring the workers. Want to hire a nanny from Mexico? Tell me how you legally do it?

Get it? There is no such thing as an "entry permit." We do not have a visa program for unskilled or low skilled workers - all those backbreaking jobs we're trying to educate our kids enough to be able to avoid.

I challenge you or anyone on this board to tell me how an employer can legally sponsor an unskilled worker for a visa under our current system.

... I can't. I've explored how I might emigrate to New Zealand. I can't. They're not interested in people my age (62) unless I were quite wealthy (I'm not).

Want a Nanny? Hire an American. Not willing to pay enough? Too bad. There are about ten million fewer people employed today in the US than would be employed if we had merely average employment growth. For people who are employed, their real income has declined. Tax cuts for the wealthy have "trickled down" on India and China. The federal minimum wage is at a 50-year low. The ratio of corporate profits to employee compensation is at an all-time high.

In my opinion, those who want to employ Mexicans (or Canadians, or Chinese, or Indians, or French) can goddamned well MOVE to Mexico (or Canada, or China, or India, or France)! Go live there and improve their economy.

Every country sets immigration policies based on what they need. New Zealand has a point system and younger workers are what they reward. They have an aging population like the US and are looking for young, educated workers to help finance the retirement of older workers. Not that different than us. Can't claim to be familiar with Tahiti, but I would imagine that it is everyone and their dog's dream to retire in Tahiti. So they can be picky. A number of countries have retiree visas for people who can show they are in a position to be retired and will not need to depend on the state. Mexico and Costa Rica, for example, are very popular havens. Perhaps you should have invested in a good immigration lawyer :-).

As for the silly argument that we can solve all problems with just paying more, I have one response. Do the math. There are 11 million undocumented workers in the US. There are approximately 7.1 million unemployed Americans (5.0% rate of unemployment). Do you assume that your average unemployed auto factory worker wants to clean hotel rooms or pick oranges? But let's assume they do (though this is a dubious assumption, of course). You take all 7.1 million unemployed workers - the stockbrokers, factory workers, airline mechanics, etc. - and put them into $20/hour jobs as nannies, restaurant busboys, homebuilding laborers, etc. You still have 4 million unfilled jobs. And at that point, all you're doing is playing a big shell game moving workers around but not having enough. The reality is not that simple. Do you think an unemployed worker in Detroit will move to Omaha because that's where the job is. Or are they going to wait until the job they want comes along? And do you think the average worker has so little pride in their skills, education and training that they will just take any job that comes along?

The fact of the matter is that we have 11 million illegal workers in this country because we have jobs for them. Companies are willing to be exposed to massive fines, criminal prosecutions and horrible PR because they're in survival mode. And I'm mainly talking about mom and pop companies.

First off, your subject line is insulting. Cute technique - a substitute for intellectual honesty? You go on to describe a cartoonish set of strawmen and neatly attack them with a scythe of abolitionism and radicalism. It's nonsense and bears no resemblance to the equitable economics being proposed.

Currently, due to a host of systemic complexities created in the chase of inflated Nth-generation equity trades, mergers, acquisitions, and tactical bankruptcies, workers are compensated for less than half of the value of their labor. (The average worker compensation in the S&P500 is less than half of net operating revenues, after which value evaporates into the pockets of ownership.) The 'ownership cabal' and its apologists sneer at "solv(ing) all problems with just paying more" but that's exactly how their wealth has been plundered, with the kind assistance of friendly regulators and market manipulators. The very notion that labor compensation should be derived solely on the basis of how well it's exploited, without consideration for the value of a worker's very life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (with spouse and children, for example) is a forest of corruption invisible to those too close to the trees. The inversion of values that subordinates human individual, social, and family values to a perversion of an economic system is appalling.

Less than 35 years ago, a (mostly legal) immigrant workforce constituted less than 10% of agricultural labor. Today it's more than 50%. What's noteworthy is that this correlates closely with the increase in the Gini coefficient - an appalling increase in the inequity of income distribution in our nation. One does not solve a problem in a month that's grown like a cancer for over 30 years. In that 30 years, the US economy has become banana republican rather than change the economy of Mexico to become more equitable. That's the plantation economics of the 'ownership society' and it's based on treating labor as a commodity - both unlawful and immoral.



There is not room nor time (nor context) in this forum to catalog the explosion of corruptions of the last 25-30 years, all designed to enrich the rich, increase privilege for the privileged, and exploit the poorest and least powerful in this country. Suffice it to say that when the 'ownership society' invites and facilitates an invasion of cheap labor from a deliberately oppressed neighboring country it's an invasion in nearly a literal sense of warfare. To attack those raising the alarm as racists is the cheapest and most hypocritical of ploys. It's disgusting. But monarchs (and oligarchs) have always deployed cannon fodder against cannon fodder, haven't they? It's just another kind of war profiteering - class warfare.

It's impossible to take you seriously after learning that. I'm surprised you didn't vote for Perot given your interest in charts.

Well, whatever floats your boat, I suppose. I find it difficult to regard anything you say as being honest, or even sane, after learning that. I'm suprised you didn't vote for Bush considering your aversion to objective measures of equity.

:sarcasm: ... but not much.

basis, I'm afraid that you WILL have some problems on this board.

First of all, they are rarely even 'caught'..and most consider the 'fines" as a cost of doing business..

But America shouldn't do this? Or it's only okay and understandable for other countries to do that?

And I think that the argument that Americans won't do the work the illegal immigrants will is one of the most absurd opinions used in the whole debate, second only to charges of racism. And I can't believe all progressives aren't against corporations making billions on cheap illegal immigrant labor, because they're really the only winners in this.

Construction jobs, which used to be mostly Union and held by many US-born men with a high school education, used to pay very well and have decent benefits. More and more of these jobs, however, are going to undocumented workers - not because there are not US workers but because undocumented workers will accept far less money and few, if any, benefits. The undocumented workers cannot be blamed for accepting the work; after all, they're just here to do any job they can but the companies who hire them are almost never punished in a meaningful way for hiring these workers (or the numerous OSHA and other violations often associated with jobsites worked by non-Union undocumented workers). This is just one example where pay erosion is indeed caused by the presence of illegal workers, and where a mandated wage would give illegals no advantage over US-born workers.

So do I. And we cannot do that as long as we have an immigrant work force that operates in an environment where they fear deportation and are regularly being exploited by employers who know they have the workers under their thumb. If you look at the guest worker plan being co-sponsored by Senators Barack Obama and an assortment of other Democrats AND Republicans (including John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Mel Martinez and Sam Brownback), you will notice that they give workers the power of "portability." That means an employee can take his or her work visa from employer to employer. THat has the effect of raising wages because workers have the power to walk.

Let me give folks on this board a reality check. We can build fences, we can criminalize illegal immigration (an incredibly cruel proposal that will likely pass the House next week thus making 1.6 million children felons overnight), we can take right after right away from the undocumented. But as long as living conditions in Central America, Africa and other regions are deplorable, people will cross deserts, stow away on cargo ships, etc. to get here.

We keep telling the Republicans to pay attention to history, but these posts are good examples of how we ignore history ourselves. This country has had a steady stream of immigration since its founding. Only in a few points in history have we slammed the door and the consequences have been tragic when we have. We slammed the door on the Chinese in the 1880s for all the reasons people have been posting here. It took more than a half century before they were allowed in. Chinese immigrants tried to get in pretending to be nationals of other countries and often found themselves serving long terms in prison just for trying to have a better life.

And I shouldn't have to tell folks here about the National Origins Act of 1924 that slammed the door on Italian and Jewish immigration. That very law was the reason that Jewish immigration to the US in the Holocaust was virtually nil. Our national shame for that episode led us to sign on to the UN Convention on Refugees after World War II (which, incidentally, was the basis for much of my family coming to the US in the 1950s).

Finally, the irony of the post above is that the unions we love were founded by immigrant workers seeking better working conditions. How sad it is that those very unions would be used by nativists as justification for keeping out immigrant workers. Fortunately, the AFL-CIO is taking the lead SUPPORTING guest worker plans. Yes, the unions in this country are supporting immigrant workers. Why? Because they know that immigrant workers are a solution to declining union membership. They also are future Democratic voters. I'd suggest we think about that when we gripe about how we keep barely losing elections.

The illegal employers and their workers get out of that part. The rest of the taxpayers get to take up the slack as it relates to things like maintenance of roads, etc., which are used by ALL, but only paid for by taxpayers. So the lower wages ought to be considered fair to those who don't have to pay any taxes at all. If there could be an easier way for them to go through proper channels to enter and be tax-paying workers, it would be better for all of us and they could share part of the load as well as reap the benefits of living here. I am married to a legal immigrant, by the way, and thus went through the process of someone entering this country legally (took 3 years).

-- the Peter Best of the Tubbies, if you will.

No one listens to me when I advance this theory.

But that was Lou's begionning in show business. Naturally CNN thought he had promise and signed him on to do their financial desk, then limelighted him for his own hour-long show.

God help us all.

He reminds me of Mr. Bumble from OLIVER TWIST a little. Maybe a lot.

I'm sick to goddam death of hearing him bitch about immigration. A vapor of racism floats over every word he says on the subject.

Lou, dammit, you should never have left the Teletubbies.

He's not in love with administration, and he asks a lot more questions of it than the average talking head. Just because he doesn't fall in line with you on every single issue doesn't mean he's the worst of all evils.

He just kissed her ass for 20 minutes.

He is about the only talking-head that doesn't have his head up the administration's ass..in fact, if you listen to him these days, he's decidely against outsourcing of jobs, big corporations screwing the middle class, and he is extremely vocal about our civil rights being in danger.

That seems to give a rat's ass about labor issues and the dismantling of the middle class at the hands of corporate America.

Since those are issues that I feel extremely passionate about, I like Lou. I don't agree with everything he says, but I haven't found a human being I can say that about yet.

a living wage law, universal health care, or a boost in unemployment benefits?

For a guy that's such a champion of labor, he seems strangely silent on such issues.

(But I don't watch him much, so maybe I've missed it.)

For what it's worth, I do believe I've heard him bitch about unemployment before.

But are we really requiring that people pass some sort of litmus test now? Lou is a journalist with wide exposure and he covers stories that nobody else does (or will) on a wide variety of labor issues. He does his part to get the word out... I know that I have come to trust him report the truth often and loudly on something that is given too little attention anywhere else, including on the left. I can sense that Lou feels as passionately about labor as I do, and I do respect and appreciate him for that.

One thing that I like about Lou Dobbs, and Jack Cafferty for that matter, is I always know they will really speak their mind. There's a certain amount of respect that earns you, even when you disagree with them. One thing you can almost always bet on with people like that is since their opinions are shaped by the facts and their own personal feelings, not partisan hackery, that they'll usually come out on the correct side of the issues... loudly.

He said "our government LIED to us" in a spot about a report about outsourcing that had been edited to keep out information inconvenient to the current admin. Ok so they lied about this one report and Lou didn't go on about all the other lies, but he didn't hide behind nonsense like... misrepresented, misled et al. I think in the same report he went off about the qualifiers everyone uses: "It appears...." "It seems...."

Like others have said I don't agree with him on everything, but he has some issues that I can stand with him on.

But I couldn't give a shit about anything else he says, to be honest.

fucker

ago that Dobbs is not fond of persons of color. I stopped watching his show after he interviewed a Palestinian Representative and was so very, very disrespectful to him. He treated the Israeli representative far differently. Even some of his viewers wrote in to criticize him for his behavior. He did not have to agree with the Palestinian but since he had invited him to his show he could have shown some respect. I am concerned with illegal immigration but I think Dobb's obsession has something to do with the race of most of the illegal aliens. HE also was one of the first commentators to go after Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans. He definitely does not like people of color.

I like Lou Dobbs.

It'll lower your blood pressure and keep you from being misinformed.

win/win.

with that.

They are liars. I don't know why anyone would take them seriously.

stopping companies from hiring illegals and outsourcing jobs, well I guess that makes me one too..Wasn't it that white people won't do those jobs sort of how the South justified slavery?

and not letting them fade away. BTW I cut the cable so I don't know what set this off.

Nothing means more to Lou Doobies than his real bosses...the financial barons of Wall Street. In the 90's, this dude was dispensing fly-by-night financial propaganda...helping build that big bubble in the 90's...like crazy. He's always been corporate America...doing a balancing act between financial conservativism (not spending HIS money...) and liberal consumerism (getting YOUR money). The predicate that makes this system flow is keeping the consumers spending. When his food chain is messed up, Lou Doobies goes to war for his beloved Wall Street.

While Doobies loves to condemn the illegals...he only gives lip service to those who directly and ultimately benefit from their "illegailty". He rails on outsourcing and how its killing "middle class jobs", but still rubs elbows with the CEOs of those companies and talk about their newest set of wheels or other toy. He claims to be against this regime's drunken spending, yet if given the choice of educating a child or returning big dividends, the divdends win out every time. He's isn't a populist...only plays one on TV. The illegal issue also clouds who profits from their labors...the largest corporations. While he claims to champion corporate coruption, he sat by when a lot of the scams were going on...knowing about them...and said nothing. He only condemns those who were caught.

Doobie still owes us an explanation about his "Judy Miller Watch". He made her into a saint and then went very silent when her scam (which many of us here knew all along) unraveled. C'mon, Lou...how about it???

And I agree with him wholeheartedly about those pieces. However, I did get the impression that he is racist during his coverage of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees. He's said quite a few things that can be construed as racist, but I find him more tolerable than say, Bill O'Reilly or anyone on FNC for that matter.

which may be because you omitted to explain the basis for your opinion.

Which is really not very different. I don't think Dobbs has any problems with any particular minority group. He dislikes all immigrants, regardless of ethnicity.

Dobbs was awarded the Katz Award last year by the Center for Immigration Studies, the anti-immigrant think tank funded by Tom Tancredo's allied nativist groups. That's the award for the "best" coverage of immigration for any journalist in the country. It usually goes to someone at the Washington Times or somoene on right wing talk radio. But Dobbs certainly was the gift that kept giving so I guess you could say the honor was deserved.

we could expect a lot of objectivity from you on this issue.

...and how do we weigh your credibility?

I encourage all of you to educate yourselves. There are plenty of places you can go on the web. I posted a couple of links in a separate thread in this discussion (#50).

But go to web sites for the AFL-CIO, the National Immigration Forum, the American Immigration Law Foundation, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (or similar refugee organizations from other faiths like Lutheran Immigration Rights Service, Catholic Services, etc.).

Read the immigration views of 2004 Democratic presidential candiates who largely all were in agreement with eachother and consistent with what I have been saying:

Dennis Kucinich - http://www.issues2000.org/2004/Dennis_Kucinich_Immigration.htm

John Kerry - http://www.issues2000.org/2004/John_Kerry_Immigration.htm

John Edwards - http://www.issues2000.org/2004/John_Edwards_Immigration.htm

Al Sharpton - http://www.issues2000.org/2004/Al_Sharpton_Immigration.htm

Joe Lieberman - http://www.issues2000.org/2004/Joseph_Lieberman_Immigration.htm


Even Ralph Nader supports a guest worker program - http://www.issues2000.org/2004/Ralph_Nader_Immigration.htm

which you weigh the credibility of other posters here, who, in the main it seems, do not reveal their occupations.

I'm a graduate of one of the top law schools in the US and started work with a major corporate law firm with a very large salary. I switched practice areas and set up a solo law firm after taking pro bono cases from a local refugee assistance organization. I found corporate law to be unfulfilling, but immigration law allowed me to do what I consider to be genuinely good work. In Judaism, it's a "mitzvah" to "welcome the stranger" and I get tremendous satisfaction knowing that my work helps people and sets a good example for my children. The salary is obviously a lot lower than I'd make doing mergers and acquisitions, but I've never regretted it. And I don't think there are many lawyers who really feel great about the work they do. I tell you all of this because if money was my motivation, I could find much more lucrative work. But I doubt I could find anything more rewarding in law.

that prompted the OP to spout that uninformative emotional blurb.

It seems that some DU-ers think that all of DU is watching the same TV program that they do, inspiring them to post in GD the sort of comments one would make to someone who's sitting next to them.

Make no mistake.

source please

Take or leave it.

What did you see that led you to believe he's a racist?

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/02/ldt.01.html

<snip>SYLVESTER: And our nation has been quick to help those in other countries in need, which is why many are asking the question why has it taken so long to come to the aid of American citizens on our own soil -- Lou.

DOBBS: It is an absolutely appropriate and frustrating question. Lisa, there is in this charge, particularly from Reverend Jesse Jackson, from the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus among others, there's been no mention of Mayor Ray Nagin, who is black, the -- a predominantly black power structure in the city of New Orleans. Why is that?

SYLVESTER: Lou, I'm sorry. But we're having some audio problems, and so I was not able to hear the question. If you could repeat it again, please.

DOBBS: I'll sure try. Why has there not been, from the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, other certainly well-meaning groups, focusing on the racial issues here, no mention of the fact that the mayor of New Orleans, who has to bear first responsibility in this, Ray Nagin, is himself black? That the power structure of the city of New Orleans is primarily black? The police department, the majority of which is black? Why has there been no focus on those facts and those responsibilities?

SYLVESTER: Well, we heard the mayor earlier today, for instance, and he was very irate. The sense is that it's the federal government that has somehow dropped the ball. These politicians, the Congressional Black Caucus...

DOBBS: I don't think anybody would argue that, Lisa. But why would not black leaders concerned about black poor people in this case, who are the predominant victims here who remain in their city stranded, why would they not also focus on a black mayor of that city and its black power structure?

SYLVESTER: I think one of their reasons is at this point they don't -- they're looking at this as in something needs to be done right now. I think that as the days go on they will be looking around to see what happened, what went wrong. But at this point they were very clear that they didn't want to point fingers, because they realized they're still very much in crisis mode.


But for the Lou Dobbs apologists around here they won't see anything wrong even remotely with Lou bringing up New Orleans "black mayor and its black power structure" repeatedly without ever mentioning "heckuva job Brownie" and the great federal support Bush provided to NO.

something I never do. My boys, 6 and 11 were shocked to hear their father say the F word in front of them.

I didn't realize that a transcript was available.

There you go, doubters. These remarks could come from Goebells himself. The entire conversation is about race.

I repeat, LOU DOBBS is a racist. Short. Simple. Clear as a fucking bell.

His criticism may be inspired by racism but he doesn't express it.

He asks a question that would have some validity if it weren't so that NO local government was dependant on federal government during the aftermath of katrina. In fact federal government in the form of FEMA had taken over the "management" of the disaster - and what a fine disaster they made of it. Dobbs either doesn't know this or he ignores it. That i think is more significant then any latent racism that might be involved here.

Racism goes along the lines of "niggers are lazy, criminal, stupid, should be killed or castrated".
What Dobbs said doesn't come close to that.

Yup, no racism there. Who to believe, you or my lying eyes, right?

Do

As far as i know it is a common synonym for the PC "African American".
"Nigger" has strong racist associations, but "black" does not.
Blacks more often then not identify themselves as "blacks", in so far that their race is concerned - as is the case now in the Katrina aftermath.

...discussing the 'white power' structure Bush controls in Washington D.C. I will agree with the premise you are attempting to put forth. But until that happens you are pissing up the wrong tree.

Nagin being black had just as much to do with things going wrong in New Orleans as did Brownie being white. Dobbs and some others don't seem to be able to understand that. Toodle loo.

Don

I can't believe that most of the Bush sychophants are part of the media. We have a state controlled press.

But then the business news went away and there was a daily jihad against free trade and Mexican people.