Starbucks is a favorite meetup location for progressive activists. The internet based Presidential campaign of Howard Dean virtually came to life in the Starbucks franchises of America. I have to admit to even liking Starbucks myself. It ain't Dunkin Donuts, but the Starbucks shops have a good tasting coffee with pleasant atmosphere and decor - sometimes even jazz music. The Starbucks company has touted itself as a customer and employee friendly environment. Like many other deceptive big business P.R. images, reality tells us a different story.
The New York Times (11/26/05) reports that a National Labor Relations Board complaint has been filed against Starbucks indicating that a regional director of operations threatening employees with "loss of wages and benefits if they voted for a union." There have been numerous other incidents of union busting which have been addressed by workers against the company in NLRB complaints. According to UPI, union organizers picketing Starbucks outlets in the New York City area are demanding a 30 hour work week for employees so that workers can qualify for health insurance. Newsday quotes a customer waiting outside of a Starbucks shop with a picket line in Long Island as saying, "If you charge what they do for a cup of coffee, they can afford to give somebody insurance."
Will progressive groups like local chapters of Democracy for America look for another location to hold their meetups until Starbucks management stops denying workers the right to bargain collectively ? I hope so, but so many of the new progressive types are totally indifferent to the labor movement. Unions play a critical role in protecting worker rights and bargaining for a living wage. That's a lot more important than babbling politically correct cliches while sipping on a four dollar latte at Starbucks.
http://www.starbucksunion.org
Saturday, November 26, 2005
The liberal argument against illegal immigration
Richard Lamm, the former Governor of Colorado, has strong progressive credentials. He was an outspoken critic of the Reagan Administration, fought for racial equality, a strong environmentalist and a early supporter of liberalizing abortion laws. In recent years, Governor Lamm has been sounding the alarm about the impact of illegal immigration. As a result, he has drawn the ire of politically correct leftists who have called him a racist, a xenophobe and every other pejorative label imaginable. Governor Lamm has written a letter to Democrats explaining the importance of the illegal immigration and I am reprinting most of this rather long statement because it is so important.
Dear Fellow Democrat:
A group of Democrats is challenging illegal immigration and we would like you to understand why we think this should be a Democratic issue.
We welcome your comments.
Richard D. Lamm
LIBERALS BEWARE: THERE IS A HIGH COST TO "CHEAP" LABOR
Richard D. Lamm, former Governor of Colorado
There is a liberal case for controlling illegal immigration that is seldom articulated. As the issue heats up and sides are drawn, both objectivity and civility seem to be in short supply. Armed citizengroups travel to the Border as self-appointed border guards, setting the stage for worrisome and perhaps violent conflict. Defenders of illegal immigrants call any and all concern about this issue "racist,"and attempt to take the issue completely off the table. The wise words directed at another subject by the late John Gardner seem to apply; the issue is "caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers."
Dialogue is particularly difficult when addressing issues that deal with, or are claimed to be motivated by, race. In a strange way, this is a compliment to America. The struggle for civil rights, even now not completely resolved, was so overdue, so right for its time, so glorious in its accomplishment, that it required the vast majority ofAmericans to inoculate themselves against all forms of racism.Unconscious insensitivities that had developed over the 100 years since the Civil War, had to be changed or at least made into a faux pas. We all step gingerly around the subject of race, and have even taken innocent words like "niggardly" out of our vocabulary because they might accidentally offend. All revolutions have casualties, and by a large margin the small costs are eclipsed by the large gains injustice. But you can't solve an issue you don't talk about, and a problem ignored just grows worse. It is time for an honest discussion about illegal immigration. Not out of a narrowness of heart to newcomers, but because illegal immigration is hurting U.S. taxpayersand the poorest Americans for the benefit of a few. A coalition of "cheap labor conservatives" and "open border liberals" reinforced by political correctness has kept this debate off the table too long. It almost seems naïve to start out the argument that we are a nation oflaws, and that people should come here legally. This is not a mere formality as some imply, or a tiresome technicality: remember that there are millions of people patiently waiting to come to America, and illegal immigrants skip the line. To continue to tolerate this practice is not only a legal issue; it is morally unfair to those waiting to come legally. The argument should stop there, but it doesn't, so let's look at some of the public policy reasons against the institution of illegal immigration
Economic Impact of Illegal Immigration: Illegal immigration is having a heavy economic, social and demographic impact and it is past time to make a liberal case for controlling illegal immigration. Economic and social justice is the glue that holds liberals together. I first got interested in illegal immigration when a Colorado packing plant fired a group of Hispanic Americans andreplaced them with illegal immigrants. A small group of the fired workers came to me, as Governor, to complain. There was little I could do. I called the President of the packing plant who nicely told me to mind my own business and claimed that all his new workers had Greencards, which indeed they had, bought in the underground market along with fake Social Security cards for $25 apiece. Some time later, INS raided the plant but the workforce evaporated during the raid, to return (or to be replaced by other illegal immigrants) shortly thereafter. The plant continued to employ a largely monolingual Spanish-speaking workforce until it was bought out and closed 10 years later.
It is easy to see why this underground workforce is attractive to employers. The owner of this particular packing plant essentially told me he was not going to pay his (legal) workers $16 a hour, plus benefits, when he could hire illegals at $10 a hour without benefits.This type of reasoning will forever lock the bottom quartile of ourAmerican earners into poverty: for how are they ever to obtain a decent wage? Illegal immigrants are generally good hard working people who will quietly accept minimum wage (or below), don't get health care orother benefits, and if they complain they can be easily fired. Even minimum wage is attractive to workers from countries whose standard of living is a fraction of ours.
But that is not to say it is "cheap labor". It may be "cheap" to thosewho pay the wages, but for the rest of us it is clearly "subsidized"labor, as we taxpayers pick up the costs of education, health, and other municipal costs imposed by this workforce. These have become a substantial and growing cost as the nature of illegal immigration patterns has changed.
For decades illegal immigrants were single men who would come up from Mexico or Central America, alone, pick crops or perform other low paid physical labor and then go home. They were indeed "cheap labor". But starting slowly in the 1960s, and steadily increasing to this day, these workers either bring their families or smuggle them into the country later. They become a permanent or semi-permanent population living in the shadows but imposing immense municipal costs. Illegal immigration today isn't "cheap" labor except to the employer. To the rest of us it is "subsidized" labor; where a few get the benefit andthe rest of us pay. These costs ought to be obvious to all, but the myth of "cheap labor" and "jobs Americans won't do" persists. But let us examine it in more detail.
It is hard to get an exact profile of the people who live in the underground economy, but studies do show the average illegal immigrant family is larger than the average American family. It costs Colorado taxpayers over $7,271 a child just to educate a child in our public schools (closer to $10,000 per child per-year for non-English-speakers). Realistically no minimum wage workers, or even low wage workers pay anywhere near enough taxes to pay for even one child in school. Even if they were paying all Federal and State taxes,Colorado's estimated 32.3 thousand illegal alien children in Colorado school systems (out of an estimated Colorado population of 230,000illegal immigrants) impose gargantuan costs on our taxpayers. This figure is actually a significant under-statement because there are an estimated 30,000-40,000 additional children born to illegal immigrants while they are in the U.S. (and these children are considered U.S.citizens), clearly adding to the total impact of illegal immigration.
We have here in Colorado, and increasingly nationwide, single family houses with three or more families of illegal immigrants earning, at the most, between $15,000 and $25,000 per family, but with multiple kids in the school system costing our taxpayers more in education costs alone that all three families gross in wages. Studies show that approximately two-thirds of illegal immigrants lack a high school diploma. The National Academy of Sciences has found that there is a significant fiscal drain on U.S. taxpayers for each adult immigrant(legal or illegal) without a high school education. But don't get caught up in the battle of studies: just use your common sense and thoughtfully consider whether a low income family with three or four kids in the school system are paying anything close to what it costs to educate their kids. These are expensive families to provide with governmental services. Some employers are getting cheap labor and externalizing the costs of that labor to the rest of us.
Americans pay in more ways than taxes. Cheap labor drives down wages as low income Americans are forced to compete against these admittedly hard working people. Even employers, who don't want to wink at false documents, are forced to lower wages just to be competitive. It is, in many ways, a "race to the bottom" fueled by poor people often recruited from evermore-distant countries by middlemen who profit handsomely. It isn't only wages, the employers of this abused form of labor often violate minimum wage requirements, Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, and overtime laws. Further, if injured, illegal workers often have no access to Workmen's Compensation.
The Americans who pay the price are those at the bottom of the economic ladder who directly compete with this illegal workforce. The very people that liberals profess to speak for and care about pay the price in lost and suppressed wages while employers get the benefits of reduced wages. Professor George Borjas of Harvard, an immigrant himself, estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market from newcomers.
The dilemma is compounded by the fact that approximately 40 percent of illegal workers are paid in cash, off books. Go to any construction site, almost anywhere in America, and you will find illegal workers whoare paid cash wages with no taxes withheld. Equally important, those illegal workers whose employers do pay withholding taxes have learned to claim 12 or more dependents, so their withholding taxes are either non-existent or minimal. Virtually every city in America has an area where illegal immigrant workers gather and people come by to get"cheap" cash wage labor. High costs, low taxes, downward pressure on wages, this is not cheap labor; this is the most expensive labor acommunity could ever imagine.
Supply Side Poverty: Consequently, we have a group of workers who pay no, or reduced withholding taxes, with above average birthrate (thus above average impact on schools), impacting our school system, with more, and more arriving every year. It is Orwellian to call this "cheap labor." Itis "supply side" poverty added to our society so a few employers can get "cheap labor." It is happening nationwide. Mortimer B. Zuckerman,Editor in Chief of U.S. News and World Report, speaking of U.S. poverty asks:
"So why haven't overall poverty rates declined further? In a word --immigration. Many of those who come to the United States are not only poor but also unskilled. Hispanics account for much of the increase inpoverty -- no surprise, since 25 percent of poor people are Hispanic. Since 1989, Hispanics represent nearly three quarters of all increase in overall poverty population. Immigration has also helped keep the median income for the country basically flat for five straight years, the longest stretch of income stagnation on record." (10/3/05)
Nationwide people and organizations are starting to object. The Atlanta Business Chronicle wrote that "Georgia taxpayers spend $231million a year to educate illegal alien children" while "public schools(are) facing some of the most significant decreases in state education funding in decades, communities' tax dollars are being diverted to accommodate mass illegal immigration." How can the American educational system improve when it is impacted, year after year, by this source of "supply side poverty."
Health Care ImpactThe health care cost of this illegal workforce is also significant and also subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. You can go to virtually any emergency room in Colorado and you will hear Spanish as the predominant language. "Colorado has one of the highest rates of new mothers whospeak little or no English" (RMN 10/13/05). Over eighty percent of the births in Denver Health and Hospitals are to monolingual Spanish speaking women. Increasingly we are seeing elderly grandparents withhealth problems present in emergency rooms as extended families consolidate. No, we don't know for sure that they are illegal, because it is against Federal law to check, but it is safe to assume that most are. Denver Health alone estimates that they spend one million taxpayer dollars just in interpreting for non-English speakers. Whatwould the total taxpayer cost of interpreting be statewide, and that is just a fraction of the total health care costs? The cumulative cost of this "subsidized" labor is impossible to ascertain and difficult to even estimate, but it is immense and growing as our population of these workers grows. A few benefit, the rest of us pay.
It is technically illegal for illegal immigrants to claim Medicaid, but as Health and Human Services Inspector General found, "Forty-seven states allow self-declaration of U.S. citizenship for Medicaid" andover half of those do not verify the accuracy of these claims as part of their post-eligibility quality control activities." The barn doors are wide open! Families without a word of English boldly declare themselves U.S. citizens and nobody checks! When states don't use the tools available to them, it is more the states' fault than those abusing the system.
Many of my liberal friends like to think of themselves as "citizens of the world" who dislike borders, and indeed we all realize we live in a more interdependent, interconnected world. But "to govern is to choose" and if everyone is my brother and sister than nobody will ever get covered by Social programs liberals compassionately seek. I have been fighting all my life for universal health care, but we can't have"the best health care system in the world" combined with Swiss cheeseborders. Social and redistributive programs require borders. It is fine to think of yourself as a citizen of the world, but we solve most problems in a national context and therefore we owe a greater moral duty to our fellow Americans than we do to non-citizens. Liberals must defend borders or they will lose all the social programs that they care about! No social program can survive without geographic limits and defined beneficiaries.
We often hear that 45 million Americans are without health insurance,but this figure is likely overestimated, because it includes over 10 million illegal immigrants. Most of the estimated 12 to 15 millionpeople living illegally in America do not have health insurance. More and more hospitals are going broke because of the constant stream of uninsured, particularly in our border states. The Census Bureau estimates that 11.6 million people in immigrant households are without health insurance. Not all immigrants are illegal; nevertheless, our experience here in Colorado indicates a substantial majority is notlegally in the country. The problem is much like when the gods condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, and the stone would fall back of its own weight. It is not unlike when you expand education funding or Medicaid and give extrastate aid to impacted hospitals, but the problems grow faster than thesolution. We use the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover uninsured children, but a new flood of immigrant children without health insurance quickly overcomes our gains. The Center forImmigration Studies has estimated that for a recent five-year period, immigrants and their children accounted for 59 percent (2.7 millionpeople) of the growth of the uninsured.
Ironically, the price of compassion is restriction. The only way wecan help America's poor is to develop programs which are not constantly diluted by the rest of the world's 6 billion, no matter how sympathetic.
Impact on our Social Fabric: Illegal immigration is having a heavy impact on our social fabric. A vast majority of illegal immigrants are from Spanish speaking countries. The sheer numbers are retarding assimilation as large ethnic ghettos develop and a de facto apartheid is forming. It isimportant to America's future that we look at how our Hispanic immigrants are doing. Too many of our Hispanic immigrants live in ethnic ghettos, too many are unskilled laborers, too many are uneducated, too many live in poverty, too many are exploited, too many haven't finished 9th grade, too many drop out of school.
The Center for Immigration Studies issued a report last year, which found nationwide: "Almost two-thirds of adult Mexican immigrants have not completed high school, compared to fewer than one in ten nativesnot completing high school. Mexican immigrants now account for 22 percent of all high school dropouts in the labor force." But what is most disturbing is that second and third generations don't do much better. Again, the study from The Center for Immigration Studies: "The lower educational attainment of Mexican immigrants appears to persist across the generations. The high school dropout rates of native-born Mexican-Americans (both second and third generation) are two and a half times that of other natives." It found that Mexican immigrants and their young children comprise 4.2 percent of the nation's total population, yet they comprise 10.2 percent of all persons in poverty.They also comprise 12.5 percent of those without health insurance and their use of welfare is twice that of Native Americans.
Robert J. Samuelson writing in the Washington Post states:
"Our interest lies in less immigration from Mexico, while Mexico's interest lies in more. The United States has long been an economic safety value for Mexico: a source of jobs for its poor. By World Bank estimates, perhaps 40 percent of Mexico's 100 million people have incomes of less than $2 a day. The same desperate forces that drive people north mean that once they get here they face long odds in joining the American economic and social mainstream. Surely we don'tneed more poor and unskilled workers, and Mexican immigrants fall largely into this category. The stakes here transcend economics."(July 20, 2000)
The question has to be asked: "By tolerating illegal immigration are we laying the foundations for a new Hispanic underclass? A HispanicQuebec?" The mere phrase makes liberals cringe. Frankly, it makes me cringe, but immigration is building the new future of America. Are we not building up a large, unintegrated, unassimilated underclass similar to what France is suffering from currently? Is this not a harbinger of social unrest in our own society? We owe it to our children to have a candid dialogue.
Conclusion Illegal aliens are, as is pointed out endlessly, "good hard working people who just want the American dream." But that can't be the end of the argument. The trouble with that level of analysis is that ther eare over four billion "good hard working people" in the world living below the American poverty level, most of who would love to come to the U.S. Obviously we can't take then all. We already have ten-percent ofMexico living here, and a recent poll showed that forty-six percent of all adults in Mexico want to move to the U.S. Then there is Central America. South America. Bangladesh? China? The pool of poor people is bottomless. Yet, we are a nation of laws, with our own unemployed and underemployed, our own kids to educate, and our nation needs to come to some enforceable consensus on what our policy should be on people entering the country illegally.
I have not mentioned what is perhaps the biggest reason to get control over our borders: terrorism. It isn't that I forgot, it is just that all Americans are concerned about terrorism and I seek here to make uniquely liberal arguments. I sense a backlash against illegal immigration that risks many/most of our most important social programs.Polls show that over 70 percent of Americans object to illegal immigration, and we run a serious risk of a backlash against all immigrants if we don't reach some consensus on this issue. Polls also show that there is no issue in America where there is a bigger gap between public opinion and opinions of the media and other "elites."But many of us are against illegal immigration because we do take social justice seriously.
The late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, one of my liberal heroes, was a consistent foe of illegal immigration. In testimony to the House Immigration Subcommittee, February 24, 1995 she stated: "Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence:Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.""...for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process."Barbara Jordan was a liberal who understood that immigrants must be legal and that the law needed to be enforced for the sake of our own poor and our own social fabric. But reasoned dialogue in America is rare these days and issues of immense importance to America's future are not being discussed or even debated. The question of illegal immigration is high on that list.
Dear Fellow Democrat:
A group of Democrats is challenging illegal immigration and we would like you to understand why we think this should be a Democratic issue.
We welcome your comments.
Richard D. Lamm
LIBERALS BEWARE: THERE IS A HIGH COST TO "CHEAP" LABOR
Richard D. Lamm, former Governor of Colorado
There is a liberal case for controlling illegal immigration that is seldom articulated. As the issue heats up and sides are drawn, both objectivity and civility seem to be in short supply. Armed citizengroups travel to the Border as self-appointed border guards, setting the stage for worrisome and perhaps violent conflict. Defenders of illegal immigrants call any and all concern about this issue "racist,"and attempt to take the issue completely off the table. The wise words directed at another subject by the late John Gardner seem to apply; the issue is "caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers."
Dialogue is particularly difficult when addressing issues that deal with, or are claimed to be motivated by, race. In a strange way, this is a compliment to America. The struggle for civil rights, even now not completely resolved, was so overdue, so right for its time, so glorious in its accomplishment, that it required the vast majority ofAmericans to inoculate themselves against all forms of racism.Unconscious insensitivities that had developed over the 100 years since the Civil War, had to be changed or at least made into a faux pas. We all step gingerly around the subject of race, and have even taken innocent words like "niggardly" out of our vocabulary because they might accidentally offend. All revolutions have casualties, and by a large margin the small costs are eclipsed by the large gains injustice. But you can't solve an issue you don't talk about, and a problem ignored just grows worse. It is time for an honest discussion about illegal immigration. Not out of a narrowness of heart to newcomers, but because illegal immigration is hurting U.S. taxpayersand the poorest Americans for the benefit of a few. A coalition of "cheap labor conservatives" and "open border liberals" reinforced by political correctness has kept this debate off the table too long. It almost seems naïve to start out the argument that we are a nation oflaws, and that people should come here legally. This is not a mere formality as some imply, or a tiresome technicality: remember that there are millions of people patiently waiting to come to America, and illegal immigrants skip the line. To continue to tolerate this practice is not only a legal issue; it is morally unfair to those waiting to come legally. The argument should stop there, but it doesn't, so let's look at some of the public policy reasons against the institution of illegal immigration
Economic Impact of Illegal Immigration: Illegal immigration is having a heavy economic, social and demographic impact and it is past time to make a liberal case for controlling illegal immigration. Economic and social justice is the glue that holds liberals together. I first got interested in illegal immigration when a Colorado packing plant fired a group of Hispanic Americans andreplaced them with illegal immigrants. A small group of the fired workers came to me, as Governor, to complain. There was little I could do. I called the President of the packing plant who nicely told me to mind my own business and claimed that all his new workers had Greencards, which indeed they had, bought in the underground market along with fake Social Security cards for $25 apiece. Some time later, INS raided the plant but the workforce evaporated during the raid, to return (or to be replaced by other illegal immigrants) shortly thereafter. The plant continued to employ a largely monolingual Spanish-speaking workforce until it was bought out and closed 10 years later.
It is easy to see why this underground workforce is attractive to employers. The owner of this particular packing plant essentially told me he was not going to pay his (legal) workers $16 a hour, plus benefits, when he could hire illegals at $10 a hour without benefits.This type of reasoning will forever lock the bottom quartile of ourAmerican earners into poverty: for how are they ever to obtain a decent wage? Illegal immigrants are generally good hard working people who will quietly accept minimum wage (or below), don't get health care orother benefits, and if they complain they can be easily fired. Even minimum wage is attractive to workers from countries whose standard of living is a fraction of ours.
But that is not to say it is "cheap labor". It may be "cheap" to thosewho pay the wages, but for the rest of us it is clearly "subsidized"labor, as we taxpayers pick up the costs of education, health, and other municipal costs imposed by this workforce. These have become a substantial and growing cost as the nature of illegal immigration patterns has changed.
For decades illegal immigrants were single men who would come up from Mexico or Central America, alone, pick crops or perform other low paid physical labor and then go home. They were indeed "cheap labor". But starting slowly in the 1960s, and steadily increasing to this day, these workers either bring their families or smuggle them into the country later. They become a permanent or semi-permanent population living in the shadows but imposing immense municipal costs. Illegal immigration today isn't "cheap" labor except to the employer. To the rest of us it is "subsidized" labor; where a few get the benefit andthe rest of us pay. These costs ought to be obvious to all, but the myth of "cheap labor" and "jobs Americans won't do" persists. But let us examine it in more detail.
It is hard to get an exact profile of the people who live in the underground economy, but studies do show the average illegal immigrant family is larger than the average American family. It costs Colorado taxpayers over $7,271 a child just to educate a child in our public schools (closer to $10,000 per child per-year for non-English-speakers). Realistically no minimum wage workers, or even low wage workers pay anywhere near enough taxes to pay for even one child in school. Even if they were paying all Federal and State taxes,Colorado's estimated 32.3 thousand illegal alien children in Colorado school systems (out of an estimated Colorado population of 230,000illegal immigrants) impose gargantuan costs on our taxpayers. This figure is actually a significant under-statement because there are an estimated 30,000-40,000 additional children born to illegal immigrants while they are in the U.S. (and these children are considered U.S.citizens), clearly adding to the total impact of illegal immigration.
We have here in Colorado, and increasingly nationwide, single family houses with three or more families of illegal immigrants earning, at the most, between $15,000 and $25,000 per family, but with multiple kids in the school system costing our taxpayers more in education costs alone that all three families gross in wages. Studies show that approximately two-thirds of illegal immigrants lack a high school diploma. The National Academy of Sciences has found that there is a significant fiscal drain on U.S. taxpayers for each adult immigrant(legal or illegal) without a high school education. But don't get caught up in the battle of studies: just use your common sense and thoughtfully consider whether a low income family with three or four kids in the school system are paying anything close to what it costs to educate their kids. These are expensive families to provide with governmental services. Some employers are getting cheap labor and externalizing the costs of that labor to the rest of us.
Americans pay in more ways than taxes. Cheap labor drives down wages as low income Americans are forced to compete against these admittedly hard working people. Even employers, who don't want to wink at false documents, are forced to lower wages just to be competitive. It is, in many ways, a "race to the bottom" fueled by poor people often recruited from evermore-distant countries by middlemen who profit handsomely. It isn't only wages, the employers of this abused form of labor often violate minimum wage requirements, Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, and overtime laws. Further, if injured, illegal workers often have no access to Workmen's Compensation.
The Americans who pay the price are those at the bottom of the economic ladder who directly compete with this illegal workforce. The very people that liberals profess to speak for and care about pay the price in lost and suppressed wages while employers get the benefits of reduced wages. Professor George Borjas of Harvard, an immigrant himself, estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market from newcomers.
The dilemma is compounded by the fact that approximately 40 percent of illegal workers are paid in cash, off books. Go to any construction site, almost anywhere in America, and you will find illegal workers whoare paid cash wages with no taxes withheld. Equally important, those illegal workers whose employers do pay withholding taxes have learned to claim 12 or more dependents, so their withholding taxes are either non-existent or minimal. Virtually every city in America has an area where illegal immigrant workers gather and people come by to get"cheap" cash wage labor. High costs, low taxes, downward pressure on wages, this is not cheap labor; this is the most expensive labor acommunity could ever imagine.
Supply Side Poverty: Consequently, we have a group of workers who pay no, or reduced withholding taxes, with above average birthrate (thus above average impact on schools), impacting our school system, with more, and more arriving every year. It is Orwellian to call this "cheap labor." Itis "supply side" poverty added to our society so a few employers can get "cheap labor." It is happening nationwide. Mortimer B. Zuckerman,Editor in Chief of U.S. News and World Report, speaking of U.S. poverty asks:
"So why haven't overall poverty rates declined further? In a word --immigration. Many of those who come to the United States are not only poor but also unskilled. Hispanics account for much of the increase inpoverty -- no surprise, since 25 percent of poor people are Hispanic. Since 1989, Hispanics represent nearly three quarters of all increase in overall poverty population. Immigration has also helped keep the median income for the country basically flat for five straight years, the longest stretch of income stagnation on record." (10/3/05)
Nationwide people and organizations are starting to object. The Atlanta Business Chronicle wrote that "Georgia taxpayers spend $231million a year to educate illegal alien children" while "public schools(are) facing some of the most significant decreases in state education funding in decades, communities' tax dollars are being diverted to accommodate mass illegal immigration." How can the American educational system improve when it is impacted, year after year, by this source of "supply side poverty."
Health Care ImpactThe health care cost of this illegal workforce is also significant and also subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. You can go to virtually any emergency room in Colorado and you will hear Spanish as the predominant language. "Colorado has one of the highest rates of new mothers whospeak little or no English" (RMN 10/13/05). Over eighty percent of the births in Denver Health and Hospitals are to monolingual Spanish speaking women. Increasingly we are seeing elderly grandparents withhealth problems present in emergency rooms as extended families consolidate. No, we don't know for sure that they are illegal, because it is against Federal law to check, but it is safe to assume that most are. Denver Health alone estimates that they spend one million taxpayer dollars just in interpreting for non-English speakers. Whatwould the total taxpayer cost of interpreting be statewide, and that is just a fraction of the total health care costs? The cumulative cost of this "subsidized" labor is impossible to ascertain and difficult to even estimate, but it is immense and growing as our population of these workers grows. A few benefit, the rest of us pay.
It is technically illegal for illegal immigrants to claim Medicaid, but as Health and Human Services Inspector General found, "Forty-seven states allow self-declaration of U.S. citizenship for Medicaid" andover half of those do not verify the accuracy of these claims as part of their post-eligibility quality control activities." The barn doors are wide open! Families without a word of English boldly declare themselves U.S. citizens and nobody checks! When states don't use the tools available to them, it is more the states' fault than those abusing the system.
Many of my liberal friends like to think of themselves as "citizens of the world" who dislike borders, and indeed we all realize we live in a more interdependent, interconnected world. But "to govern is to choose" and if everyone is my brother and sister than nobody will ever get covered by Social programs liberals compassionately seek. I have been fighting all my life for universal health care, but we can't have"the best health care system in the world" combined with Swiss cheeseborders. Social and redistributive programs require borders. It is fine to think of yourself as a citizen of the world, but we solve most problems in a national context and therefore we owe a greater moral duty to our fellow Americans than we do to non-citizens. Liberals must defend borders or they will lose all the social programs that they care about! No social program can survive without geographic limits and defined beneficiaries.
We often hear that 45 million Americans are without health insurance,but this figure is likely overestimated, because it includes over 10 million illegal immigrants. Most of the estimated 12 to 15 millionpeople living illegally in America do not have health insurance. More and more hospitals are going broke because of the constant stream of uninsured, particularly in our border states. The Census Bureau estimates that 11.6 million people in immigrant households are without health insurance. Not all immigrants are illegal; nevertheless, our experience here in Colorado indicates a substantial majority is notlegally in the country. The problem is much like when the gods condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, and the stone would fall back of its own weight. It is not unlike when you expand education funding or Medicaid and give extrastate aid to impacted hospitals, but the problems grow faster than thesolution. We use the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover uninsured children, but a new flood of immigrant children without health insurance quickly overcomes our gains. The Center forImmigration Studies has estimated that for a recent five-year period, immigrants and their children accounted for 59 percent (2.7 millionpeople) of the growth of the uninsured.
Ironically, the price of compassion is restriction. The only way wecan help America's poor is to develop programs which are not constantly diluted by the rest of the world's 6 billion, no matter how sympathetic.
Impact on our Social Fabric: Illegal immigration is having a heavy impact on our social fabric. A vast majority of illegal immigrants are from Spanish speaking countries. The sheer numbers are retarding assimilation as large ethnic ghettos develop and a de facto apartheid is forming. It isimportant to America's future that we look at how our Hispanic immigrants are doing. Too many of our Hispanic immigrants live in ethnic ghettos, too many are unskilled laborers, too many are uneducated, too many live in poverty, too many are exploited, too many haven't finished 9th grade, too many drop out of school.
The Center for Immigration Studies issued a report last year, which found nationwide: "Almost two-thirds of adult Mexican immigrants have not completed high school, compared to fewer than one in ten nativesnot completing high school. Mexican immigrants now account for 22 percent of all high school dropouts in the labor force." But what is most disturbing is that second and third generations don't do much better. Again, the study from The Center for Immigration Studies: "The lower educational attainment of Mexican immigrants appears to persist across the generations. The high school dropout rates of native-born Mexican-Americans (both second and third generation) are two and a half times that of other natives." It found that Mexican immigrants and their young children comprise 4.2 percent of the nation's total population, yet they comprise 10.2 percent of all persons in poverty.They also comprise 12.5 percent of those without health insurance and their use of welfare is twice that of Native Americans.
Robert J. Samuelson writing in the Washington Post states:
"Our interest lies in less immigration from Mexico, while Mexico's interest lies in more. The United States has long been an economic safety value for Mexico: a source of jobs for its poor. By World Bank estimates, perhaps 40 percent of Mexico's 100 million people have incomes of less than $2 a day. The same desperate forces that drive people north mean that once they get here they face long odds in joining the American economic and social mainstream. Surely we don'tneed more poor and unskilled workers, and Mexican immigrants fall largely into this category. The stakes here transcend economics."(July 20, 2000)
The question has to be asked: "By tolerating illegal immigration are we laying the foundations for a new Hispanic underclass? A HispanicQuebec?" The mere phrase makes liberals cringe. Frankly, it makes me cringe, but immigration is building the new future of America. Are we not building up a large, unintegrated, unassimilated underclass similar to what France is suffering from currently? Is this not a harbinger of social unrest in our own society? We owe it to our children to have a candid dialogue.
Conclusion Illegal aliens are, as is pointed out endlessly, "good hard working people who just want the American dream." But that can't be the end of the argument. The trouble with that level of analysis is that ther eare over four billion "good hard working people" in the world living below the American poverty level, most of who would love to come to the U.S. Obviously we can't take then all. We already have ten-percent ofMexico living here, and a recent poll showed that forty-six percent of all adults in Mexico want to move to the U.S. Then there is Central America. South America. Bangladesh? China? The pool of poor people is bottomless. Yet, we are a nation of laws, with our own unemployed and underemployed, our own kids to educate, and our nation needs to come to some enforceable consensus on what our policy should be on people entering the country illegally.
I have not mentioned what is perhaps the biggest reason to get control over our borders: terrorism. It isn't that I forgot, it is just that all Americans are concerned about terrorism and I seek here to make uniquely liberal arguments. I sense a backlash against illegal immigration that risks many/most of our most important social programs.Polls show that over 70 percent of Americans object to illegal immigration, and we run a serious risk of a backlash against all immigrants if we don't reach some consensus on this issue. Polls also show that there is no issue in America where there is a bigger gap between public opinion and opinions of the media and other "elites."But many of us are against illegal immigration because we do take social justice seriously.
The late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, one of my liberal heroes, was a consistent foe of illegal immigration. In testimony to the House Immigration Subcommittee, February 24, 1995 she stated: "Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence:Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.""...for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process."Barbara Jordan was a liberal who understood that immigrants must be legal and that the law needed to be enforced for the sake of our own poor and our own social fabric. But reasoned dialogue in America is rare these days and issues of immense importance to America's future are not being discussed or even debated. The question of illegal immigration is high on that list.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
A two party South can be a reality if Democrats go mainstream
Democrats can be competitive again in the South if we can present a positive agenda, reflect mainstream values and connect with religious voters. Two examples of New South Democrats are Harold Ford, Jr. of Tennessee and Gene Taylor of Mississippi. Ford has developed a reputation for a sound approach on issues like fiscal policy and national security as well as showing a proven ability to appeal to voters across racial lines. Taylor is a populist conservative Democrat who has won re-election to Congress in a district that voted more than 2 to 1 for Bush over Kerry. Artur Davis, a Congressman from Alabama, has some great ideas of how to make the Democratic Party dominant again in the South. Democrat Tim Kaine just won the Virginia Governorship where he is expected to continue the moderate policies of Mark Warner. With candidates who can appeal to the vital center, there is no reason that Democrats cannot make the South a two-party region.
Related links
http://www.house.gov/ford/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Taylor
http://standupdemocrats.org/links/Davis.pdf
http://www.southnow.org/pubs/reports/browder.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/bfgsv
Related links
http://www.house.gov/ford/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Taylor
http://standupdemocrats.org/links/Davis.pdf
http://www.southnow.org/pubs/reports/browder.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/bfgsv
Democrats need another Scoop Jackson
Democrats need another Scoop Jackson - that's the conclusion of Froma Harrop writing an extended version of her syndicated column in today's Seattle Times http://tinyurl.com/7528f For those too young to recall the days that Scoop Jackson was a powerful Democratic Senator and advocate for U.S. military strength who twice sought his party's nomination, Jackson is best remembered for being a strong advocate of national defense and security during the Cold War era. Harrop quotes a Jackson biographer who stated that the late Senator from Washington State recognized that "the root cause of the Cold War as a messianic ideology and totalitarianism," says Kaufman, professor of public policy at Pepperdine University. "He would have seen similar root causes in 9/11."
The memory of Scoop Jackson is frequently invoked by Republican neo-conservatives. Harrop points out while acknowledging Jackson's influence on many of today's neo-conservatives that Jackson might not have favored U.S. involvement in Iraq. In 1982, Jackson opposed Ronald's Regan's action to send U.S. troops in Lebanon as he felt that American intervention would have fueled increased religious and ethinic tensions in the Middle East. Regardless of what his position would have been on Iraq if still alive today, Jackson would have a strong credibility on national defense and security issues as Harrop points out "no one would have questioned his determination to defend America." A similar figure today might be Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha, a mainstream Democrat and Vietnam veteran with a strong background in defense matters, who recently called for phasing out our involvement in Iraq.
I would take some exception of Harrop's description of Jackson as a modern day liberal across the board on domestic issues. Jackson was strongly pro-labor and definitely a economic populist which was often defined as liberal at one time. He believed that the Democratic Party needed to represent the interests of working Americans. Jackson though in contrast to the Moveonner Left of today was capable of seeing moral absolutes. Jackson used to say "I'm a liberal but not a damn fool." The late Senator recognized that Soviet authoritarianism was evil and needed to be destroyed. In addition to his strong anti-communism, Jackson had some socially conservative leanings opposing forced school busing to achieve racial balance in public schools (although a firm believer that discrimination on the basis of race must be prohibited) and felt that the emerging gay rights movement was a sign of societal decay. If Jackson were alive today, he certainly be regarded as a conservative in Democratic circles.
We must revitalize the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party. Too many Democratic leaders come across as weak or indifferent to defense and national security matters. Any sane person wants to live in a peaceful world, however, there are times when a nation must be prepared to use military force. Many Democrats today leave themselves open to the impression that they want peace at any price. A lot of Democratic activists seem to feel that the need for a war on terrorism is an illusion dreamed up by sinister neo-conservatives. The reality is that Islamic militants really do pose a threat to America and all democratic nations just as Soviet totalitarianism did during Scoop Jackson's tenure in the U.S. Senate. American intervention in Iraq was, in my view, a distraction from the real war on terrorism. Our party must take a strong stand for securing our borders (something that the Bush Administration has refused to do), bolstering intelligence capabilities and facing up to potential threats from terrorists who may use chemical, biological weapons or nuclear weapons against America and our allies. Democrats continue to be perceived by voters as weak on national security matters and this must change if the party is to regain majority status.
The memory of Scoop Jackson is frequently invoked by Republican neo-conservatives. Harrop points out while acknowledging Jackson's influence on many of today's neo-conservatives that Jackson might not have favored U.S. involvement in Iraq. In 1982, Jackson opposed Ronald's Regan's action to send U.S. troops in Lebanon as he felt that American intervention would have fueled increased religious and ethinic tensions in the Middle East. Regardless of what his position would have been on Iraq if still alive today, Jackson would have a strong credibility on national defense and security issues as Harrop points out "no one would have questioned his determination to defend America." A similar figure today might be Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha, a mainstream Democrat and Vietnam veteran with a strong background in defense matters, who recently called for phasing out our involvement in Iraq.
I would take some exception of Harrop's description of Jackson as a modern day liberal across the board on domestic issues. Jackson was strongly pro-labor and definitely a economic populist which was often defined as liberal at one time. He believed that the Democratic Party needed to represent the interests of working Americans. Jackson though in contrast to the Moveonner Left of today was capable of seeing moral absolutes. Jackson used to say "I'm a liberal but not a damn fool." The late Senator recognized that Soviet authoritarianism was evil and needed to be destroyed. In addition to his strong anti-communism, Jackson had some socially conservative leanings opposing forced school busing to achieve racial balance in public schools (although a firm believer that discrimination on the basis of race must be prohibited) and felt that the emerging gay rights movement was a sign of societal decay. If Jackson were alive today, he certainly be regarded as a conservative in Democratic circles.
We must revitalize the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party. Too many Democratic leaders come across as weak or indifferent to defense and national security matters. Any sane person wants to live in a peaceful world, however, there are times when a nation must be prepared to use military force. Many Democrats today leave themselves open to the impression that they want peace at any price. A lot of Democratic activists seem to feel that the need for a war on terrorism is an illusion dreamed up by sinister neo-conservatives. The reality is that Islamic militants really do pose a threat to America and all democratic nations just as Soviet totalitarianism did during Scoop Jackson's tenure in the U.S. Senate. American intervention in Iraq was, in my view, a distraction from the real war on terrorism. Our party must take a strong stand for securing our borders (something that the Bush Administration has refused to do), bolstering intelligence capabilities and facing up to potential threats from terrorists who may use chemical, biological weapons or nuclear weapons against America and our allies. Democrats continue to be perceived by voters as weak on national security matters and this must change if the party is to regain majority status.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
House passes Republican plan for bigger deficits
House Republican leaders have won passage by a vote of 217 to 215 of a budget reconciliation package which cuts critical programs such as student loans, aid to farmers and Medicaid while doing nothing to curb the expanding deficit. While Congressional Republicans hailed the measure as a courageous exercise in fiscal responsibility, the budget bill only covered most of the costs of $57 billion in tax cuts. Congressman Marion Berry of Arkansas, a leading member of the House Blue Dog Democrats explained why he vigorously opposed the Republican-backed budget plan.
"The Republicans are deceiving the American people by using fiscally responsible rhetoric to hide billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans," said Congressman Berry. "No matter how you package this reconciliation bill, it is still one big Christmas gift for the richest 1% of America."
The Republican leadership decided to go forward with a budget reconciliation package after enacting large emergency appropriations to fund recovery efforts for hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Each committee voted on a series of cuts to reign spending in by $53.7 billion. The largest proposed cuts include $14.3 billion from student loans, $11.9 billion from Medicaid, and $3.7 billion from agriculture programs.
With the budget reconciliation now approved, House Leadership intends to proceed today with a tax-cut package targeted at the wealthiest Americans. The package, which costs an estimated $56.6 billion, would make the tax cuts for the top 1% of Americans permanent and extend the lower tax rate for capital gains and dividends. The total cost of the tax measure exceeds the savings in the budget reconciliation package and only adds to the deficit for 2006.
"If $8 trillion of debt does not get this Administration's attention, I am afraid to see what finally does," said Congressman Berry. "We are going to drive this economy into the ground and leave our children and grandchildren to clean up the mess if we don't start making responsible decisions now about spending."
The U.S. Senate has approved a similar budget reconciliation package with $36 billion in savings and is also expected to consider a tax-cut measure in the coming days that will cost $59.6 billion. A conference committee must work out the differences between the House and Senate versions before Congress votes on the final reconciliation measure.
"The Republicans are deceiving the American people by using fiscally responsible rhetoric to hide billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans," said Congressman Berry. "No matter how you package this reconciliation bill, it is still one big Christmas gift for the richest 1% of America."
The Republican leadership decided to go forward with a budget reconciliation package after enacting large emergency appropriations to fund recovery efforts for hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Each committee voted on a series of cuts to reign spending in by $53.7 billion. The largest proposed cuts include $14.3 billion from student loans, $11.9 billion from Medicaid, and $3.7 billion from agriculture programs.
With the budget reconciliation now approved, House Leadership intends to proceed today with a tax-cut package targeted at the wealthiest Americans. The package, which costs an estimated $56.6 billion, would make the tax cuts for the top 1% of Americans permanent and extend the lower tax rate for capital gains and dividends. The total cost of the tax measure exceeds the savings in the budget reconciliation package and only adds to the deficit for 2006.
"If $8 trillion of debt does not get this Administration's attention, I am afraid to see what finally does," said Congressman Berry. "We are going to drive this economy into the ground and leave our children and grandchildren to clean up the mess if we don't start making responsible decisions now about spending."
The U.S. Senate has approved a similar budget reconciliation package with $36 billion in savings and is also expected to consider a tax-cut measure in the coming days that will cost $59.6 billion. A conference committee must work out the differences between the House and Senate versions before Congress votes on the final reconciliation measure.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Blue Dogs bark at GOP budget scam
Washington's The Hill newspaper http://www.hillnews.com reports that House Republicans are holding off on a vote regarding a budget bill which has drawn strong Democratic opposition and some concerns within Republican ranks. House Republican Leader Roy Blount acknowledged that the budget reconciliation bill simply did not have sufficient votes for passage. The Republican budget plan had drawn fire from the Blue Dog Coalition - a group of 36 moderate and conservative Democrats in the U.S. House with a strong reputation for fiscal responsibility. The Blue Dog Coalition issued a press release on the budget reconciliation which I will reprint as follows:
Reality: the Republican reconciliation plan completely fails by any standard to reduce the deficit, fix the broken budget process, or reduce our dependence on foreign governments and financial institutions to finance our reckless spending. To make matters worse - the U.S. national debt recently broke the $8 trillion barrier. Yet, Republicans in Washington are advocating for a plan that drives our nation even deeper in debt.
“Most Americans hear the word ‘reconciliation’ and think that this means ‘cooperation’ and ‘compromise.’ The reality is that ‘reconciliation’ is a thin disguise for partisan warfare,” said Rep. Jim Cooper (TN), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Policy. “Many Americans also believe that reconciliation is supposed to lead to a balanced budget. But again, the reality is far different. The Republican reconciliation package actually increases the federal deficit by at least $16 billion.”
The current plan moving through Congress includes $54 billion in spending cuts and $70 billion in tax cuts, therefore reconciliation actually worsens the deficit. Additionally, reconciliation makes no mention of how to pay for the president’s bird flu initiative ($7.1 billion) or the reconstruction efforts along the Gulf Coast (approximately $200 billion).
The Blue Dogs have long expressed tremendous concern over mounting U.S. debt and are particularly troubled by our growing dependence on foreign governments to finance our debt. Earlier this year, the Coalition offered a 12 Step Plan to cure our nation’s addiction to deficit spending. The Blue Dog plan required, among other things, that all federal agencies pass clean audits, a balanced budget, and the establishment of a rainy day fund to be used in the event of a natural disaster.
“The Republican-driven reconciliation plan is a misleading and ineffective attempt to promote fiscal responsibility, something most Republicans haven't been serious about in the last five years," said Blue Dog Rep. Allen Boyd (FL). "It is painfully obvious that our budget process is broken, and until this Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress enact budgetary guidelines, such as the common-sense reforms proposed by the Blue Dogs, I’m afraid our country's financial situation will only get worse.”
“Republicans in Washington have created a credit card Congress that relies on borrowing billions from foreign nations like China and Japan. In fact, President Bush has now borrowed more money from foreign nations than the previous 42 U.S. presidents combined,” said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Blue Dog Co-Chair for Communications. “We owe it to our children and grandchildren to do better."
http://tinyurl.com/ckjd9
.
Reality: the Republican reconciliation plan completely fails by any standard to reduce the deficit, fix the broken budget process, or reduce our dependence on foreign governments and financial institutions to finance our reckless spending. To make matters worse - the U.S. national debt recently broke the $8 trillion barrier. Yet, Republicans in Washington are advocating for a plan that drives our nation even deeper in debt.
“Most Americans hear the word ‘reconciliation’ and think that this means ‘cooperation’ and ‘compromise.’ The reality is that ‘reconciliation’ is a thin disguise for partisan warfare,” said Rep. Jim Cooper (TN), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Policy. “Many Americans also believe that reconciliation is supposed to lead to a balanced budget. But again, the reality is far different. The Republican reconciliation package actually increases the federal deficit by at least $16 billion.”
The current plan moving through Congress includes $54 billion in spending cuts and $70 billion in tax cuts, therefore reconciliation actually worsens the deficit. Additionally, reconciliation makes no mention of how to pay for the president’s bird flu initiative ($7.1 billion) or the reconstruction efforts along the Gulf Coast (approximately $200 billion).
The Blue Dogs have long expressed tremendous concern over mounting U.S. debt and are particularly troubled by our growing dependence on foreign governments to finance our debt. Earlier this year, the Coalition offered a 12 Step Plan to cure our nation’s addiction to deficit spending. The Blue Dog plan required, among other things, that all federal agencies pass clean audits, a balanced budget, and the establishment of a rainy day fund to be used in the event of a natural disaster.
“The Republican-driven reconciliation plan is a misleading and ineffective attempt to promote fiscal responsibility, something most Republicans haven't been serious about in the last five years," said Blue Dog Rep. Allen Boyd (FL). "It is painfully obvious that our budget process is broken, and until this Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress enact budgetary guidelines, such as the common-sense reforms proposed by the Blue Dogs, I’m afraid our country's financial situation will only get worse.”
“Republicans in Washington have created a credit card Congress that relies on borrowing billions from foreign nations like China and Japan. In fact, President Bush has now borrowed more money from foreign nations than the previous 42 U.S. presidents combined,” said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Blue Dog Co-Chair for Communications. “We owe it to our children and grandchildren to do better."
http://tinyurl.com/ckjd9
.
Friday, November 04, 2005
Jimmy Carter calls for Democrats to reach out to religious voters
Former President Jimmy Carter has called on Democrats to do more to attract religious voters and move away from a hard-line stance on abortion rights. United Press International quoted Carter, a evangelical Christian and Sunday School teacher as stating that "I've never been convinced that Jesus Christ would approve of abortion." Carter criticized Democratic Party activists who have "over-emphasized the abortion issue."
The Houston Chronicle reports that Carter's suggestion to Democrats hoping to regain an electoral majority is "to let the deeply religious people and the moderates on social issues like abortion feel that the Democratic Party cares about them and understands them is a crucial element that has to be inserted for victory in 2008." Carter also stressed that regaining support among working families is critical to a Democratic Party comeback. "We should protect our environment. We should cast our lot with working-class families instead of the ultra-rich on taxation. We should reduce the deficits, which I think would appeal to the conservatives in both parties," Carter said.
My already high opinion of former President Carter has increased to an even greater level of respect. Democratic leaders and activists would do well to heed the wise counsel of our greatest living former President.
The Houston Chronicle reports that Carter's suggestion to Democrats hoping to regain an electoral majority is "to let the deeply religious people and the moderates on social issues like abortion feel that the Democratic Party cares about them and understands them is a crucial element that has to be inserted for victory in 2008." Carter also stressed that regaining support among working families is critical to a Democratic Party comeback. "We should protect our environment. We should cast our lot with working-class families instead of the ultra-rich on taxation. We should reduce the deficits, which I think would appeal to the conservatives in both parties," Carter said.
My already high opinion of former President Carter has increased to an even greater level of respect. Democratic leaders and activists would do well to heed the wise counsel of our greatest living former President.
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