This entry was posted on 9/6/2006 1:07 PM and is filed under All Posts, The Lies.
The NYT has a rather typical political piece today on the Colorado congressional race between Democrat Ed Perlmutter and Republican Rick O’Donnell. It ostensibly focuses on the "immigration battle" raging within the Republican Party. However, it is a stronger example of the failure of the mainstream media to provide any clarifying information to the general public. Never once does it bother to explain why President Bush, the leader of his party, would embrace "amnesty" and a path to legal citizenship for illegal immigrants, while so many Republican congressmen and Senators have passionately adopted the opposite position: a hard-line, "zero-tolerance", border-control only stand. Even the Republican candidate in the race, O'Donnell, pretends to be confused:
In an interview, Mr. O’Donnell accused his party’s leader, Mr. Bush, of being soft on illegal immigration. “I don’t know why the administration hasn’t enforced the laws,” he said, adding that his objective was border security.
Mr. O' Donnell knows perfectly well why: MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. It's money he's taken, it's money the president has taken, for the entire length of their political careers. Big business in America depends on cheap, foreign, and yes, illegal labor from Mexico, Central America, and anywhere else they can get it, to increase their profits and hold down the cost of making their products. It's a fact that schoolchildren understand. These businesses in turn donate a lot of money to the Republican Party. They own the Republican Party, more than the NRA, more even than the Christian Right.
But what does a Republican from a Southwestern state do when their conservative, white constituents start complaining about all the non English-speaking brown people popping up in their public schools, their hospitals, their jails, their streetcorners? He demagogues.
What he certainly doesn't do is address why there are so many jobs available in this country that few citizens take. And what he will never, ever do, is vote for a living wage that would break the back of illegal immigration in one stroke. It is far easier for these politicians to point to the weak and unrepresented, shouting "Get out", than it is for them to address the market realities their politics and policies have created. Especially when they have no intention of forcing this cheap labor force out in the first place. And especially when they have been bought at a good price by the industries that depend on that labor force.
9/6/2006 7:42 PM
dad wrote:
Outstanding analysis. This is the reason why the Republicans haven't been able to unify on the immigration issue yet--a big divide between big, big business and minutemen mentality. But why won't mainstream media make this point? Maybe because they are owned lock, stock and barrel by big business. Reply to this
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