As I’ve explained before, the real answer to the illegal immigration issue in the US is to make it much easier and simpler to come in legally. So to see this damn near made me spit my morning coffee:
The Bush administration is proposing to nearly double the cost of becoming a U.S. citizen and drastically raise the cost of becoming a legal permanent resident. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, announced Wednesday it wants to raise the application fee for citizenship from $330 to $595 and the fee for becoming a legal permanent resident from $325 to $905. […]
Applicants now pay a $70 fingerprinting fee. The agency wants to increase that to $80. Fees also are paid for work permits, replacing lost green cards and petitions to adopt orphans from other countries and other benefits.
The largest increases are a jump from $475 to $2,850 for entrepreneurs who want to immigrate to the country and plan to invest in businesses and create jobs, and an increase from $180 to $1,370 for people still applying to be legal residents under the 1986 immigration law that granted amnesty.
They claim it’s to raise money for improvements. Yeah, riiiiiiight…
Proof of it has been meager thus far. Although, in a way if they did you couldn’t really blame ‘em: if someone were to invade Mexico, would the US say “nah, not our problem”?
*awaits anguished screaming about “moral equivalence”…*
Two things that the Bush Administration & its supporters are known to say:
1) “Terrorism has nothing to do with our foreign policy, those people just hate our freedom”
2) “Argument over strategy emboldens the terrorists”
Well, one thing we do with our freedom is engage in debate on all sorts of issues. If that emboldens them, you could say in a rather meaningless way that the “hate our freedom” charge is correct, but wouldn’t that also mean NOT debating it amounts to bowing to their demands?
If you’re a masochist and need to read the whole thing, here. Have fun. Otherwise, I’m going to throw some shit at specific lines in this latest emanation from President Dumbass…
Unemployment is low, inflation is low, wages are rising.
1) depends on how you define unemployment.
2) the measurement used for inflation leaves out a lot. And “low” by whose standards? The debt is still shooting up.
3) rising in absolute numbers? Barely. Rising in a meaningful sense (read: faster than inflation)? Hell no. This discrepancy is why despite not having hit inflation-adjusted highs in gas prices and sustained the peak people still bitch loudly about them.
First, we must balance the federal budget.
LMBAO!!! This after 6 years of “defecits don’t matter”?
We can do so without raising taxes.
Sure. In fact, it’d be very easy. Just eliminate every piece of the government not explicitly authorized by the Constitution. Whu, what’s that? I can’t hear you, these damn pigs keep flying into my window.
In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of the earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and the Senate; they’re dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk.
You didn’t vote them into law. I didn’t sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law.
Of course, what he doesn’t mention is that he’s slipped things in from his end too.
States that make basic private health insurance available to all their citizens should receive federal funds to help them provide this coverage to the poor and the sick.
Technically speaking, if government funding is involved it ain’t “private”…
We should establish a legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis. As a result, they won’t have to try to sneak in.
Y’know, you could just get rid of caps on immigration.
For too long, our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes and to terrorists who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments and raise the price of oil and do great harm to our economy.
Says the lifelong kiss-ass to oil interests. Hah!
After a short, empty bit about alt-fuels and conservation (long story short, he implies subsidies out the wazoo, rather than dropping the ones on oil & letting the market work for once) comes the following:
[…]to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Uh, yeah, horde even more oil so the prices can be temporarily goosed, that’ll REALLY promote weaning off.
Five years have come and gone since we saw the scenes and felt the sorrow that the terrorists can cause. We’ve had time to take stock of our situation. We’ve added many critical protections to guard the homeland.
Like torture, warrantless wiretapping of US citizens, secret no-fly lists, and the tossing of “innocent until proven guilty”. Oh yeah, did I mention torture?
This war is more than a clash of arms. It is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance.
To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come and kill us.
You mean US meddling in a part of the world that was already nuts to begin with, whether for oil, apocalyptic obsession with Israel, or sheer hubris? Cuz if not, I have no idea WTF you’re referring to removing.
Radical Shia elements [in Iraq], some of whom receive support from Iran, formed death squads.
…and the ranks of many of those death squads are the same as that of current Iraqi security forces. Nice try though.
Every one of us wishes this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk.
Friends? What friends? The majority of Iraqis not only want us to leave, they even explicitly support attempts at killing our troops to encourage it! What part of “fuck off” is so hard to understand?
We didn’t drive Al Qaida out of their safe haven in Afghanistan only to let them set up a new safe haven in a free Iraq.
Considering the half-assing of both wars, they can flip a coin.
The rest is even more blahblahblah, until he mentions Mutombo & that dude that stopped a guy from getting ran over by a subway train.
I come away w/ one question: why the fuck do they televise this? Seriously, other than the few brave souls who liveblog it (I don’t have the patience for that much bullshit in one sitting. Besides, Rachel Ray was on*), who watches it? As if there isn’t enough meaningless pomp in politics…
(* - yes, I watch that “Tasty Travels” show. Two reasons: the food, an’ she’s kinda hot to me. Nice ass for a white chick.)
Roughly overheard earlier on CNN: “The challenge w/ Sadr is that when troops go in they aren’t confronted with a standing army. First thing they see is some unarmed Iraqis standing around. Then comes a sniper shot, and one of their soldiers is wounded. Soon after, more sniper shots & then the battle is under way.”
A thought of mine in response that’s sure to be misinterpreted: Sounds to me like, regardless of other areas in which they obviously do fit the interpretation of being radical nutjobs, in this portrayal at least it’s just legitimate defense of territory. After all, we are trespassing…
It can’t all be about Iraq — or warrantless wiretapping, or torture, or corruption, or…you get the idea — so Bush is talking health insurance:
President Bush will propose a tax deduction of $7,500 for individuals and $15,000 for families regardless of whether they buy their own health insurance or receive medical coverage at work.
The proposal, to be announced Tuesday in his State of the Union address, is aimed at giving the uninsured an incentive to purchase a medical plan. It also is designed to encourage those with generous plans to either embrace cheaper insurance or pay taxes on the part that exceeds the deduction, a Bush administration official familiar with the proposals said Saturday.
If passed by Congress, the proposal would be the first time that workers could get a tax break if they bought their own insurance. But it also would be the first time that some employer-provided health care benefits could be taxed. Health care benefits provided by companies are currently exempt from income and payroll taxes. (emphasis mine)
Health insurance coverage is screwy primarily for one reason: due to restrictions on wages under FDR, employers offered health insurance instead of higher pay, it being exempt. The wage caps went away, the policy imbalance in favor of employer-based health insurance remained.
Bush’s response? Slap an arbitrary number value on coverage & say “get less than this & we’ll cover it, get more than this & we’ll tax you on it”. Basically if you still have decent insurance through your job you’ll be penalized for it, when the structure isn’t your fault anyway. Great…
As for the tax “break” for buying your own plan, it doesn’t go far enough. Employer plans are untaxed at the moment, just make it so all plans are untaxed, that’d be a lot simpler. Besides, too many different things are taxed as it is.
Shorter David Weigel re: Obama’s chances: “Yeah, he’s a big-talking empty suit, but recent history proves we frankly don’t give a shit”
I’d have to say, that’s the first even remotely reasonable argument for thinking he has a chance at becoming president I’ve heard. Not that I care (I already know I’m not voting in ‘08, unless I can fill in a write-in ballot with “kiss my ass”), it’s just amusing to me all the attention thrown at him. Why, I’d think that the media thought articulate black men were akin to unicorns the way he’s being approached, the mix-ups with his name notwithstanding.
Here’s a thought experiment for you: try to imagine someone w/ Obama’s background running for office, except speech-wise & philosophically he acted like me. How long do you think he’d live?
Noticed in a Tim F takedown of the “new” strategy (a must read in itself) a link to a story that should make anyone not employed with an oil company puke. Some excerpts:
As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country’s massive oil reserves. […]
[T]he new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as “production-sharing agreements”, or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq’s oil. PSAs allow a country to retain legal ownership of its oil, but gives a share of profits to the international companies that invest in infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries. Their introduction would be a first for a major Middle Eastern oil producer. […]
Critics fear that given Iraq’s weak bargaining position, it could get locked in now to deals on bad terms for decades to come. “Iraq would end up with the worst possible outcome,” said Greg Muttitt of Platform, a human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry. He said the new legislation was drafted with the assistance of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the US government, which had a representative working in the American embassy in Baghdad for several months.
“Three outside groups have had far more opportunity to scrutinise this legislation than most Iraqis,” said Mr Muttitt. “The draft went to the US government and major oil companies in July, and to the International Monetary Fund in September. Last month I met a group of 20 Iraqi MPs in Jordan, and I asked them how many had seen the legislation. Only one had. (emphasis mine)
So among all this chaos still going on, a US consulting firm writes legislation for Iraq, passes it around to oil companies and the IMF to give their two cents, and the Iraqi government doesn’t even get more than a token shot at even reading it. That legislation has to do with, oh 70% of their economy.
Sovereignty? What sovereignty?
Ok, obviously I don’t think they should go the traditional route of government ownership, especially considering how that worked for them before (read: poorly). But considering it’s their country, & we claim it’s supposed to be a democracy, doesn’t it naturally follow that the answers to who decides and what to do would be “the Iraqi people” and “whatever the hell they want”? I suspect if a poll were circulated in Iraq about this proposal they’d have to add a third option of “fuck you”, cuz “no” would hardly suffice.
