Hispanic immigration and Fascism

Ann Coulter seems to be just about the only prominent conservative voice speaking up loudly and unapologetically against amnesty for America's 11 million Hispanic illegals.

And most libertarians have long been scathing about opposition to illegal immigration.  For example:

Let it be noted that Jeb Bush deserves kudos for making sense on the immigration issue. When he describes coming to the United States illegally in order to find opportunity as "an act of love, it's an act of commitment to your family," he displays more compassion and decency than any of the fence-building border warriors possess in their shriveled, nativist souls.

So I would like all libertarians to answer me this question:

"Why are you happy to import into the USA millions of Fascists who are ready to vote for Fascist laws and candidates?"  That Latin Americans are in general Fascist in their inclinations you can see just by looking at the governments that already govern them.  And the Democratic party has plenty of Fascist legislation ready to go if they can get support for it.  Federal Republicans already do little else but knock back destructive Fascist legislation from Democrats.

I don't think I have a "shrivelled" soul but I am certain that I have an anti-Fascist soul.  Do libertarians have self-hating souls?  It sure looks that way to me

Yes.  I know where the trouble lies.  It lies in the doctrinaire libertarian belief that liberty will solve everything.  What that overlooks is that you don't get liberty just by asking for it.  You have to preserve and extend it by all means possible.  And an important part of that is not letting Fascists get control of your life.  When the Brownshirts come knocking on your door, you are going to feel great that you made a pure-souled case for liberty, right?

And in case anybody is childish enough to accuse me of being racist, the authoritarian inclinations of Hispanics could just as easily be attributed to culture as race.  The Catholic church could be seen as having a large part in that.  Even South America's great "liberator", Simon Bolivar, was thoroughly Fascist  once he had wrenched control from the feeble hands of the Spanish monarchy. Bolívar proclaimed himself dictator on 27 August 1828 and the dictatorships have flowed thick and fast ever since. There is a semblance of democracy in most of Latin America at the moment but corruption remains their basic form of government. Does the USA need any more of that?

Once again: With Hispanics you are not talking about just a few families. You are talking about a major voting bloc.

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Undocumented Unworkers Pouring Across Rio Grande

All this Obama as Deporter-in-Chief  talk doesn't seem to impress actual illegal aliens, who are becoming more blatant about border-crossing.  From the NYT:

Lured by Hope of U.S. Asylum, Migrants Strain Border Security [3]

By JULIA PRESTON   APRIL 10, 2014

HIDALGO, Tex. — Border Patrol agents in olive uniforms stood in broad daylight on the banks of the Rio Grande, while on the Mexican side smugglers pulled up in vans and unloaded illegal migrants.

The agents were clearly visible on that recent afternoon, but the migrants were undeterred. Mainly women and children, 45 in all, they crossed the narrow river on the smugglers’ rafts, scrambled up the bluff and turned themselves in, signaling a growing challenge for the immigration authorities.

I know you are supposed to notice differences between men and women and children, and just call them all Undocumented Workers, but when the illegal aliens were mostly men decades ago, they didn't reproduce anchor babies as much. Women illegal aliens are anchor baby generating machines. And then there are their already-born kids who are tax sinks.

After six years of steep declines across the Southwest, illegal crossings have soared in South Texas while remaining low elsewhere. The Border Patrol made more than 90,700 apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley in the past six months, a 69 percent increase over last year.

The migrants are no longer primarily Mexican laborers. Instead they are Central Americans, including many families with small children and youngsters without their parents, who risk a danger-filled journey across Mexico. Driven out by deepening poverty

Is there evidence that poverty is deepening in Central America? Are they fleeing hunger?  Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala Among 10 Fattest Countries

increasing numbers of migrants caught here seek asylum, setting off lengthy legal procedures to determine whether they qualify

The new migrant flow, largely from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, is straining resources and confounding Obama administration security strategies that work effectively in other regions. It is further complicating President Obama’s uphill push on immigration, fueling Republican arguments for more border security before any overhaul.

With detention facilities, asylum offices and immigration courts overwhelmed, enough migrants have been released temporarily in the United States that back home in Central America people have heard that those who make it to American soil have a good chance of staying.

“Word has gotten out that we’re giving people permission and walking them out the door,” said Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent who is vice president of the local of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union. “So they’re coming across in droves.”

In Mexican border cities like Reynosa, just across the river, migrants have become easy prey for Mexican drug cartels that have seized control of the human smuggling business, heightening perils for illegal crossers and security risks for the United States.

At the Rio Grande that afternoon, the smugglers calculatedly sent the migrants across at a point where the water is too shallow for Border Patrol boats that might have turned them back safely at the midriver boundary between the United States and Mexico.

A Border Patrol chief, Raul Ortiz, watched in frustration from a helicopter overhead. “Somebody probably told them they’re going to get released,” he said.

As agents booked them, the migrants waited quietly: a Guatemalan mother carrying a toddler with a baby bottle, another with an infant wrapped in blankets.

Undocumented workers each! Soon they'll be productive members of the work force.

A 9-year-old girl said she was traveling by herself, hoping to rejoin her mother and two brothers in Louisiana. But she did not know where in Louisiana they were. After a two-week journey from Honduras, her only connection to them was one telephone number on a scrap of paper.

A Honduran woman said the group had followed the instructions of the Mexican smugglers. “They just told us to cross and start walking,” she said.

But whereas Mexicans can be swiftly returned by the Border Patrol, migrants from noncontiguous countries must be formally deported and flown home by other agencies. Even though federal flights are leaving South Texas every day, Central Americans are often detained longer.

Women with children are detained separately. But because the nearest facility for “family units” is in Pennsylvania, families apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley are likely to be released while their cases proceed, a senior deportations official said.

Minors without parents are turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services, which holds them in shelters that provide medical care and schooling and tries to send them to relatives in the United States. The authorities here are expecting 35,000 unaccompanied minors this year, triple the number two years ago.

SOURCE

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IRS Employees Don't Just Target Political Enemies, They Also Support Friends, Says Federal Watchdog

We already know that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has a long history of wielding its awesome clout against political opponents of sitting presidents, powerful members of Congress, and the tax collectors themselves, but who are IRS employees for? Well, President Obama seems to tickle their fancy. According to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which enforces the Hatch Act limiting political activity by federal employees, IRS employees are "alleged to have engaged in partisan political activity on duty and in the federal workplace."

Under federal law, IRS employees, like most federal workers, are considered "less restricted employees" who still must mind their actions lest they be be seen as using the taxpayers' money and resources to influence who gets to rule over those taxpayers. According to the list of no-nos, such federal workers "May not engage in political activity—i.e., activity directed at the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group— while the employee is on duty, in any federal room or building, while wearing a uniform or official insignia, or using any federally owned or leased vehicle."

Nevertheless, in a press release dated April 9, the Office of Special Counsel reports that not just individual IRS employees but whole offices are openly rooting for the incumbent president of the United States.

OSC received allegations that employees working in the IRS Taxpayer Assistance Center in Dallas, Texas, violated the Hatch Act by wearing pro-Obama political stickers, buttons, and clothing to work and displaying pro-Obama screensavers on their IRS computers. It could not be determined whether these materials were displayed prior to the November 2012 election or only afterwards. However, since the information OSC received alleged that these items were commonplace throughout the office, OSC issued cautionary guidance to all IRS employees in the Dallas Taxpayer Assistance Center that they cannot wear or display any items advocating for or against a political party, partisan political group, or partisan candidate in the workplace.

Other IRS employees face discipline for advising taxpayers to vote for President Obama during the course of their duties.

This raises certain concerns given the tax agency's acknowledged ability to peer into and disrupt the lives of individual taxpayers and organizations. Just yesterday, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to refer former IRS official Lois Lerner to the Justice Department over allegations that she led the targeting of conservative political organizations.

Long before the current scandal, presidents of both parties—including Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Richard M. Nixon—used the IRS as a bludgeon against political enemies. "My father," Elliott Roosevelt said of FDR, "may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution."

Further evidence of politicized tax collectors with distinct partisan preferences does the IRS no favors—and should scare the hell out of Americans.

SOURCE

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White House Says Wage Gender Gap Stats Are Misleading...When Applied to the White House

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney doesn't like when you apply the same logic governing wages in private businesses to his employer's own payroll. As President Obama prepares to sign an executive order addressing the gender gap in federal contractors' wages, critics have pointed out that female White House staffers make an average of 88 cents for every dollar male staffers earn.

Carney protested that this was misleading, because women and men holding similar positions at the White House are paid equivalent salaries. Because women outnumber men at the lowest levels of the employee chain, however, the average female salary at the White House is lower.

Carney is right: It is misleading to average the salaries of men and women in widely varying positions and then use this as evidence that women are being discriminated against. That women disproportionately make up lower-paid positions may point to some broad, systematic gender bias, past or present, but it doesn't equal outright sexist behavior on an employer's part.

It's good that Carney acknowledges this as far as the White House is concerned, because the Obama administration and many others are quick to gloss over nuance like this when talking about the wage gap in general. We frequently hear that American women make only 77 cents for every dollar men make, but this is based on data that fail to account for women's work histories and life choices. It aggregates the earnings of women in all positions and compares this average against the earnings of all men.

SOURCE

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Equal Pay' Fails in Senate

Senate Republicans successfully blocked so-called “equal pay” legislation that's a key part of Democrats' election strategy of class and sex warfare. Democrats claim that women are paid less than men (they may be at the White House, anyway), but as we wrote Wednesday, that's largely a bogus claim. Naturally, the facts don't stop Democrats from pushing for a federal “solution” to the “problem.”

Along with their proposed minimum wage hike, Democrats' policies will only slow economic growth further for everyone. As Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “[W]hen it comes to American women over all, what we've seen over the past five and a half years is less income and more poverty. That's the story Senate Democrats don't want to talk about.”

SOURCE

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Bad Brew in Florida

Legislators in Florida have identified a serious problem in their state: Microbreweries who sell directly to customers. Craft beer makers are understandably outraged at the idea that they should have to first sell their beer to a distributor and then buy it back before selling to customers. But new Republican-sponsored legislation does just that. The beer doesn't even have to leave the brewer's premises; just process the paperwork and pay the middlemen.

Obviously it's nothing but a payoff for distributors. Evidently “Big Beer” is sour-faced about the competition they're facing from smaller (and better in our humble opinion) brewers and lobbied for the ridiculous law. That's what happens with cronyism – both sides become drunk on power.

SOURCE

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