There’s a lot of little news items I’ve collected over the last couple weeks as I followed the “Fair Share” saga. So tonight cleans out my “Favorites” folder that I collect them in until the time is right.
“Website Labels Illegal Immigration Opponents ‘Racists’” (Cybercast News Service, January 10, 2006)
So opponents of illegal immigration are racist? Well, that theory’s wrong because I’m not racist – I don’t believe in discrimination for or against any race, creed, or color. But I certainly oppose illegal immigration, simply because it’s illegal!
The target of the website is a group called the “Herndon Minutemen”, a group that monitors the goings-on of a taxpayer-supported day labor center in Herndon, Virginia (not far from Washington, DC.) It’s an offshoot of the main Minutemen group that drew volunteers from across the country in a bid to supplement the U.S. Border Patrol in Arizona last spring. Rather than verify the status of each laborer, the group uses a different tactic – monitoring the employers who come in to hire the laborers by photographing them and taking down the license numbers of the cars employers used. Basically, they work to discourage employers from using the laborers that congregate there. (Sounds like union tactics.)
The website is sponsored by the League of United Latin America Citizens, a group that also has termed a proposed wall at the Mexican border a “wall of hate.” But when Mexicans living illegally in the U.S. comprise a huge chunk of the Mexican economy from the money they send back to Mexico, it’s obvious that the folks south of the border want as open of access as possible. Never mind that it’s criminal in the first place, and, at least in Salisbury, encourages additional crime because the immigrant population shuns banks and carries large sums of untraceable cash around.
“ACLU Slap-down”, GOPUSA.com (January 12, 2006)
This column by Lisa Fabrizio noted a recent Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision by Judge Richard Suhrheinrich in the case ACLU v. Mercer County. Basically the judge told the ACLU to stick their so-called “separation of church and state” where the sun doesn’t shine. Regardless of how the lefties at the ACLU like to read the Constitution, that phrase occurs nowhere in the document.
Basically, having a display in a Kentucky courthouse called “Foundations of American Law and Government” which includes the Ten Commandments, Mayflower Compact, Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta, and other noteworthy documents isn’t an endorsement of religion, but truly shows the foundations of our government. While I’m certain the ACLU would turn no stone to find out if one of our Founding Fathers was Islamic and read the Koran, the many references by them to our Creator somehow don’t find their way into their collective conscience.
“Hospital Chains Feel Union’s Wrath In Chicago” (CNS News, January 11, 2006)
This is another attempt by the Service Employees International Union to coerce union recognition. The SEIU is also the group behind the anti-Wal-Mart Fair Share commercials I alluded to in a recent post. In Chicago, they created a front organization called the “Hospital Accountability Project”.
In this case, they are pressuring some Chicago-area hospitals by encouraging uninsured patrons to go to these hospitals for their care. Billboards encouraging this prominently mention the targeted hospitals, but fail to note that almost all hospitals provide charity care. The SEIU is mad because the hospitals aren’t unionized and make low-income patients actually pay their bills. What a concept!
Part of the Hospital Accountability Project’s “Protocol of Agreement” is that, “no patient, who is unable to pay a bill for health care, should be sued for failure to pay”, and, of course, “workers should have the right to form and join a union.”
It’s just another example of the unions trying to stick it to a successful business that happens to be non-union. As I continue to say, workers don’t get a gun placed to their head to work at a non-union company.
And finally, there was a story on 20/20 the other night called, “Stupid in America.” While I did not see the story myself, there’s been a few of my fellow bloggers who have commented. (One is here.)
I’m a graduate of a public school myself. I don’t necessarily think all public schools are bad, but if more competition was introduced it could only improve the odds of a child getting a good education.
Of course, there is a lot of things that have changed since I went to school in the 1970’s (graduated in 1982.) I sometimes find it amazing that I survived and learned when:
Most of my classes had 25-30 kids in them.
There was no air conditioning in my schools. I went to a total of 6 schools including vocational school and none of them were under 10 years old…one was originally built in 1909.
I did have sex education in 9th grade, but no condoms were used as props or distributed in my school. Nor did we learn anything about exploring our gay/lesbian side.
There were no “counselors” who came to our school when classmates died. Granted, that only happened once and it was my senior year. Very sad, the kid got cancer midyear and was gone by Easter break. Didn’t get to graduate.
But I did learn reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Get the basics down, then in the higher grades learn to think critically. I shudder to think how I may have turned out had I been schooled recently and exposed to propaganda dispensed as learning.
