The Great Imposters

If there is one issue that has had surprising effects on the national Republican races, it is Immigration. Still you have to wonder.

Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo was one of the first to drop out of the presidential race even though immigration was his ONLY issue.

John McCain had to have a near death experience in his campaign before he "got it" that Republicans want a secure border.

But, some of the base of the current anti-immigrant activity is falling apart. There is no longer a united front. The Minutemen organization is in disarray, or at least it's found Jim Gilchrist seems to think so. Local OC newspaper, the Daily Pilot, calles it the Minuteman Meltdown.

Struggles for power and finances have led leaders in the movement to split ties with Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project.

Bickering continues over who has control of the original Minuteman organization and once faithful members are now deserting the group. Barbed e-mails and accusations fly among the former Minuteman loyalists.

It seems to me that this would be a time for OC and LA Greens to ratchet up our support for a rational immigration policy.

At least, the following comment was posted to the story by a very Green sounding "redwoodsforever". "

Minuteman Meltdown? outlines the internal fighting rampant within all the anti-immigrant groups. How are these groups different than the KKK? They all have racism at their core. America has immigration as its foundation; we're all immigrants.

Our 20-year Congressman Rohrabacher is obsessed by the illegal immigration issue. I wish he was as concerned about affordable health care or funding solar & wind power (get off foreign oil). Rohrabacher voted for offshore drilling & in ANWR. He doesn't believe we have a global warming problem & jokes about dinosaur farts. Vote him out in 2008! "

And they found a way to turn that into a tirade against Congressman Taliban... er... Rohrabacher.

Now, let's add to this the fact that long time Republican Strategist and campaign financer, Grover Norquist, is now on the hook for hiring an "illegal" just as was the California Republican party. I am sure glad that the SF Chronicle's Carla Marinucci is on this story, because you know the OC Register will never print it.

Is the Immigration Debate Over?

The San Francisco Chronicle presented two OpEd columns today that give two very different positions on the issue of Immigration.

In the first, Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institute, Stanford University, tells us that Supporters of open borders have lost on that issue.

Republican candidates must risk angering their base by ruling out mass deportation. Democrats should support closing the border tightly and quickly - and not cave in to open-borders pressure groups.

Making these tough choices now is what most voters want. The candidates of both parties in the next few months will either adjust accordingly or lose elections.

In the other column, Roberto Lovato of New American Media, believes that the McCain win puts the Latino Vote back in play.

During the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush's Spanish-language appeals and promises of immigration reform won him somewhere between 37 to 44 percent of the Latino vote, a major increase from what he got in 2000.

So, the Latino vote is not something that Democrats can count on if McCain runs. However, McCain is probably the only Republican Candidate about whom that statement could be made.

But when Democrats are evasive - as in Clinton's driver's license flip-flop or when Obama vacillated after being asked by Univision anchors about his vote for the border fence - I see the moral and political opening exploited by Bush in 2004, and McCain before 2008. My father and most Latinos reject the wall as a muro de la muerte (wall of death). That the immigration debate merits neither Clinton's attention nor Obama's abundant rhetorical powers explains Latinos' frustration (documented in the recent Pew Hispanic poll) and leaves many of us outside the wave of Obama-mania.

Our Green candidates need to make it clear that we understand that the solution to these problems lies not in fences and deportation but rather in allowing Mexico and other national economies to grow, to not saddle them with so-called free trade pacts whose effects are so obviously one sided.

The immigration debate is not over. Greens have a unique message. It is not about protecting American jobs or even our fighting the worlds terrorists by building a muro de la muerte. It is about allowing all people to fulfill their own destinies, to build their own economic future without having American consumerism crammed down their throats.

Bill Moyers on Steroids

The writings of Bill Moyers is a great source. full of things to think about, mull over, and then repeat... repeat often because they seem to fit so many situations. So it is with his recent essay on the Mitchel Report on the use of steroids in baseball.

There was a lesson in George Mitchell's report that I'm not sure even he recognized. The day Americans don't feel strongly enough about the need for level playing fields to fight for them -- the day when cutting corners and seeking an edge become the national pastime -- is the day democracy will be lucky even to find a seat in the bleachers.

I think that the term "level playing field" was chosen with great care. You find it often in the rhetoric of George W. Bush. It forms the basis of almost all discussions of Thomas Friedman's book, "The World if Flat". In the linked Harvard Business Review article, James Heskett asks a number of questions that we need to answer.

Who benefits most from a level playing field? A developing economy achieving productivity gains with volume increases achieved through low factor costs of production? Or a developed economy realizing productivity gains in totally different ways, for example, by leveraging already high factor costs through technology and the education and communication required to use the technology more effectively? Are these two types of economies even competing on the same playing field?

This goes beyond just an knee jerk anti-corporate reaction that I sometimes hear from Greens. I am not sure if that comes from a Marxist or an anarchist perspective and I doubt whether the protesters even know themselves.

If we want to make a serious run for national political prominence, we have start taking the answer to Heskett's question and translate that into specific policies. What do we do about NAFTA? Renegotiate, unilaterally withdraw from the agreement? Gleaned from the comments of those who responded to Heskett on the HBR web site:

Radhika Unni: That doesn't mean I feel that governments should stop the natural market dynamics, but at the same time it doesn't mean that countries should use the term "level playing field" as an excuse for exploitation.

Maybe it is time to re-examine the Platform of the Green Party, especially those section which deal with economic realities.

The Green world view, growing out of the vision of people grounded in the Deep Ecology of Arne Naess, recognizes the interconnectedness of things in the world of social / economic interactions just as much as we do in the world of nature. Not all Greens do. We can not deal with immigration and trade as separate issues. The roots are so intertwined that separation could be fatal to both causes. Does our platform call for a 30 hr. work week when most middle class families have to hold down three jobs just to maintain their standard of living and all the consumerism that this implies.

Moyers has a unique ability to cut through to the soul of this country, to understand and communicate those elements of our makeup that have mythic connotation. The American sense of fair play that Moyers fears we are losing has no better expression than the 10 key values of this party. If we want to move not to the right, nor the left, but forward to a new future, we had better figure out how to tap into these sensibilities.

This time, it really is....

I find myself spending more time watching what the Green Party Candidates are doing, listening to what they say, reading their press releases. I spend too much time reading the sometimes brilliant writing, oft time petty pickering that takes place on internal email lists.

Some observations:
Progressive Greens may not even begin to have a finger on the pulse of what will motivate voters this year. The number 1 issue is coming as a surprise to many: Here is a list of issues that are NOT number One.

Iraq War: For all the duplicity of Cheney / Rumsfeld, this misguided, arrogant attempt at changing the nature of politics in the Middle East has failed in every way except militarily, and that was pretty much a shambles too.

Health Care: Any race with Hillary Clinton in it will always be, to some extent about Health Care and whether she can really get it right this time.

Immigration: The Republicans make sure that we hear a lot about this one. We even have Republican Tom Tancredo getting riled at Mike Huckabee because Huckabee has "stolen" the endorsement of the Minutemen.

The Tarrance Group released the bi-partisan Battleground Poll today and the conclusion is "This time, it really is the economy." Funny thing about that, this is exactly what Steve Loebs was saying in his post at Green Commons earlier this week.

BTW: Iraq War was #2,. Health Care #3 (Cost + Insurance + Medicare) , Immigration #4.

I believe that all our candidates need to start factoring in the effects of the credit crisis, the sub-prime loan scandal, and more importantly, what are the impacts of being a consumer driven economy. What are the ramifications of the fact that this country is "capital poor" and needs in a daily major influx of foreign capital just to sustain what we do. Such was the action today as a Chinese Government owned investment fund poured $5 Billion into Morgan-Stanley.

My real question is this: What is this party doing to talk to the number one issue on voters minds right. now? What message do we have? It is not even on the long range radar in most discussion. And we wonder why people are not listening. Maybe we need to ask our candidates to sign up for a seminar with Steve.

Greening the White House

The Other Race: Greening the White House

“I’m tired of living in an Orwellian novel,” said Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Kent Mesplay, in response to the “Birthright Stripping Act” (aka the proposed AZ "Birthright Citizenship Alignment Act" initiative) requiring that happy parents and hospitals alike wade through yet more levels of bureaucratic muck to prove their patriotism. “Oppressive regimes scapegoat the dispossessed almost on cue,” continues Mesplay, who was himself born in a foreign land while his parents were stationed overseas.

In order to make the 14th Amendment effective in protecting our newest citizens, born on U.S. soil to parents from any nation, Mesplay proposes granting immediate, expedited duo citizenship to the parents thus strengthening the family unit and supporting the child in claiming allegiance to the United States. “It is best that we not continue to have a class of dispossessed, but rather that we do what we can to reunite all families struggling with the governments of the world and bring them into the same regulated, taxed, conscription-ready, documented system that the rest of us enjoy,” Mesplay adds.

Going further, the Green Party U.S. presidential candidate prefers that duo Mexican, U.S. citizenship would allow U.S. citizens to safely invest in Mexico, even as such a program would permit safe, fair, regulated labor to migrate north.

Mesplay, an advocate of decentralization and a limited Federal government, just days ago announced running as a Republican in Arizona in order to be on the ballot. “Our national party deserves national access to ballot lines” Mesplay added, runner-up to Nader at the 2004 Green national convention.

www.mesplay.org

rez@mesplay.org

Reality?

You knew it was going to happen. We have had The Bachelor. We have had the Bachelorette. Now, according to Reuters, we have "Who want's to Marry a US Citizen?"

It trivializes marriage (I don't know if they will challenge civil unions.) It trivializes citizenship. I can remember that Green Card was playing around the time our oldest had a French jazz musician boy friend and that gave us pause. But, at least we knew that it was a fantasy rather than trying to pass itself off as a documentary.

The thought that passed through my mind just now came from an old Pete Seeger anti-war song.. "When will they ever learn." I guess, in this case, the answer is "never."

Dark Age Ahead?

Once in a while you get fragments of ideas, images that are not quite clear, threads that seem to weave themselves into a tapestry that may or may not make sense. When that happens, I try to write it down to see if it still makes sense. That is what I am doing right now. So bear with me, this may be too long but I think that these glimpses of a possible future are somewhat frightening.

When I chose a college, it was a "small Christian College" called the University of Redlands. What I learned there was that I had little admiration for those who proclaimed the truth and a great deal of admiration for those who were searching for the truth. Maybe it was the thread of existential angst that ran through that era.

That is probably why I reacted positively to the discussion on Bill Moyers Journal last night with Anouar Majid. Majid is the author of a new book entitled A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America.

BILL MOYERS: You are saying that an election is not necessarily the measure of democracy or freedom. That it is the extent to which the society permits, if I may, heresy, dissent?

ANOUAR MAJID: Yes. People who cannot live comfortably with differences always have a tendency to slide into tyranny. That's why we have to maintain robust differences within any-- every society-- any society to continue to prevent those practices from ever taking root. Or at least of becoming dominant in those particular societies. Differences are crucial to the emancipation of the mind. And as Adam Smith and other of his contemporary said-- "To a happy life." I mean, there's nothing better than a conversation.

This is a very important point in light of the Pew Charitable Trust Report that asserts that the World Publics Welcome Global Trade – But Not Immigration To close the door to immigration is to shut down one of the paths by which we maintain robust differences in our society.

We in California tend to think of immigration as a US problem with Mexico. The Pew study shows that it is not. This fact is underscored by the report from Current TV on Immigrants and Skinheads in Russia. This report, along with comments from Diane Sawyer, was featured on both Nightline and Good Morning America thus breaking through to MSM, or at least part of it. Watch the report. It is frightening in that this could not happen in Russia on the scale that it is without at least a nod and a wink from the Kremlin. Orthodoxy reasserting itself.

Are we that far from this in America? How much difference is there between the skinheads in Russia and the Minutemen? How close are we to the Islamic orthodoxy of Wahhabism and the smug media use by an Ann Coulter who wants to "perfect" Jews.

I took that title of this from the last book by Jane Jacobs. In Dark Age Ahead she warns a culture that gives lip service to valuing science but has not developed the scientific habit of mind to question and then seek answers. Too often we fall back to the orthodoxy of the past rather than looking at the evidence right in front of us. We fail to ask the right questions. Majib warns Moyers about that.

If we do not have dissent, if we do not have heretics among us, if we do not cultivate these habits of mind, in other word to think creatively and imaginatively and so on we're gonna remain doomed.

The Green Party is nothing if it is not a home for heretics, for those who will question orthodoxy, including the orthodoxy of our own narrative.

Immigration Reform, good for whom?

The most recent "agreement" on immigration reform is, notably, between Senators. It is not a done deal in it's present form. It still has to go before the house of representatives and we have not heard Pelosi comment on the actual form that this is taking. That serves as a lead to make several comments that are tied together only be the fact that they involve immigration.

For starters, you get an entirely different view of the issues on immigration is you pick up media aimed at the Indian immigrants. The May 2007 edition of India Currents gives us a Point / Counterpoint discussion on the question: Is loosening up of numerical limits desirable? Captions tell the story:

The H-1B cap is not preserving the wages of U.S. employees; rather, the jobs are being permanently moved to India!
- and -
According to a Duke University study, immigrants founded 25 percent of the engineering an technology companies created in the last 10 years.

Next, since the new reformed immigration package would greatly expand the number of "guest workers" allowed to enter the United States, there is very real need to address the abusive practices of labor contractors. The United Farm Workers, obviously, sees the Union as the appropriate tool to do this. This morning, they emailed me a copy of their labor contractor action page. Unless this is solved, we have only moved the issue of human rights to a different context, we have not solved it.

In California politics, immigration is a big issue and often for the wrong (repressive) reasons. Orange County Representative Dana Rohrabacher has already been quoted (Costa Mesa Daily Pilot) as seeing the bill feeding an anti-Democratic backlash in the next election.

The battle over immigration is far from over and Greens need to be able to articulate a clear position, based firmly on the 10 key values of this party. Everyone who might think about spending time in any tabling or voter registration efforts should make sure that they understand the recent reform bill and to be able to discuss this bill in light of the current platform.