My wife and IFiled under: Happening Now, Politics | Tags: border security, guest worker, Immigration, legislation, politics, Senator Rubio
I like the ideas put forth by Senator Rubio, it makes sense to first, secure our borders and second, to allow unskilled as well as skilled persons to enter the country under a guest worker program. This to be done in conjunction with the strengthening of our data base to show when an employer hires a non-guest worker. We need fines that can be imposed on employers and of course those who are undocumented will be deported.
In this way, the legally hired workers will not be squeezed out by those who have tried to circumvent the law, and work for lower wages as well. I have a friend who used to work in the construction industry. He and his brother would work together, building homes, and doing roofing work as well. Then there was a tremendous influx of undocumented persons who came in and did the same work for as much as 50% less than he and his brother could do it. He is an American of Mexican descent, and feels that one of the great problems of our time is the illegal immigrants in our country. I also knew of a man with a green card, he would come to a small community in the hills above Del Rio TX and work for 6 months or so at jobs that the people in the community were not able to do as this was an aging population. He would then go home for a couple of months and then come back.
That was a good thing for him, his family and for the folks in that community. It was also a good thing for showing how things can be done so that everyone wins. There used to be a guest worker program in this country, it ended in the middle 1960’s. It was a good program but there were abuses in the system. Some workers were treated badly, some would have to work for very low wages. However, when the system worked, the workers were treated fairly and they received fair wages for their work.
We in this nation need to have this program working again, but with proper safeguards to insure that the workers and the employers are all treated fairly. That workers who come into this country under the program will have decent housing, their children will be able to receive an education and that there are fair wages paid for the work that is done. I am sure that those who are highly educated, scientists, doctors and the like don’t have to worry about these things. It is the ones who work in agriculture that sometimes get treated a little shabbily, and it is not everybody just a person or two who will take advantage of these folks. We want to be able to monitor the program in such a way as to make it fair and equitable for everyone.
At the same time, we also MUST secure our borders, there are drug smugglers, slave smugglers and others who abuse the openness of our borders and this must be curtailed as much as possible. I know there are those who want to allow open borders but that is just not feasible in a world where there are those who want to kill and maim. Those who hate us because we are not like them, terrorists if you will, whether Islamist, or some other group really doesn’t make a difference. We don’t want to see our citizens killed and maimed because we won’t control our borders, that is tantamount to the government being complicit in the deaths of our citizens. That is not acceptable, our borders MUST be secure.
What do you think? Is a guest worker program a good thing? Can we really control our borders? Leave a comment, join the conversation.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Federal Government, Holder, minorities, Voter Fraud
The following story appeared in Edinburg TX, having to do with of all things a School Board election.
“SCHOOL ELECTION OVERTURNED
South Texas school board election results nixed
(Information in the following story is from: The Monitor, http://www.themonitor.com)
EDINBURG, Texas (AP) A judge has overturned the results of a South Texas school board election after finding that votes were illegally cast.
The Monitor of McAllen reports visiting District Judge J. Manuel Ba ales ruled the Hidalgo County Elections Department allowed some voters who aren’t part of the school district to cast ballots in the November election.
Ba ales says removing those illegal votes means that Hidalgo school district trustee Mentor Cantu, who had lost to challenger Norma Garza-Torres, is the winner of the school board seat in question. Cantu was sworn into office on Friday.
Friday’s ruling doesn’t settle the November school board election as two other losing candidates still have a pending election lawsuit. New elections could also be ordered for Cantu and the two other losing candidates.”
The State of Texas passed a law requiring voter ID, the law was shut down by the Federal Attorney General because he said it discriminated against “minorities”. The truth of Texas is that we are all minorities in this state. The population shifts here have made it so that Hispanic persons outnumber other groups in many parts of the State. If you look at the names of the persons involved you will see that they were all Latino/Hispanic persons. Even the Judge who adjudicated the case. Would voter ID have helped in this case, I think it would have, but of course it was killed by AG Holder for reasons that no longer make any sense.
In my estimation, if you want to have everybody treated the same, which was supposed to be the reasons for the anti-discrimination laws in the first place, then voter ID makes great sense. It levels the playing field, it helps those who have been disenfranchised regain the vote that they might have lost for whatever reason. You see if you want to vote now, you have to present some kind of ID but anyone can get your ID just by going through your trash and picking up a thrown away electric bill or gas bill or some other kind of identifying document. Then they go and vote early, which in Texas is legitiment way to vote, and use the piece of paper they got from your trash to cast the ballot. Your name goes on the voter role as having voted.
Needing to have an ID with a picture on it will negate that problem. Is it hard to get this type of ID, NO it is not. We hear how hard it is for poor or elderly people to get to the place where they can get this ID. Wrong, we have all sorts of transportation for folks to use, including, but not limited to, public transportation. There are also local transportation vans for those who are unable to afford the bus, or who live in rural areas. The other side of that coin is that most of these folks already have photo ID, in the form of a drivers license. The arguments against this Voter ID law, are spurious and actually are discriminatory in that they are used to say that minority persons are poor and have no way to get to the issuing authority. That is a straw man of huge proportions set up by those who wish to dis-enfranchise those who they claim to be helping.
What do you think about this? Join the conversation, send a letter or email to your State Representative if you live in my State of Texas, contact your representative and tell them what you believe. Then tell the Dept. of (In)Justice what you think. Lets level the playing field so that all persons will have the right and privilege to vote in our elections, without having to worry about Voter Fraud.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Budget, Constitutional Requirements, Election, Politicians, politics
I read this story today: It is all about how the Democratic Party is going to spend millions to turn Texas into a Blue State. OK, they are going to do what they can to change the State of Texas, I think they may just make people angry, but, I could be wrong. The important things in our nation are not important to too many people, and so we have people concentrated on winning the next election instead of trying to get the House and Senate to begin actually doing what the Constitution says they are supposed to do. The House needs to pass a budget, the Senate needs to then discuss that budget, and make amendments to it and pass their version, sending it back to the House. Instead, the Senate is publishing their own budget, not looking at and discussing the one which is put forth by the House. The Constitution says that money bills are supposed to originate in the House, then go to the Senate. If they can’t agree then they are supposed to talk to one another and compromise. Instead there has been NO BUDGET in four years, because the Senate won’t even talk about what the House has passed.
Instead our politicians want to try to get advantage over each other, they begin to work toward re-election right after the election they just won. Politics are a Mess no matter who is in office, they all seem to be concerned with themselves and the people need to be hoodwinked into voting for them. More and more we find our rights, God-given rights, being abridged by these people not because they are trying to make things better, but because they think they will have a better chance to be re-elected.
What do you think? Are you tired of the political games or do you think it is just fine??
Leave a comment, join in the discussion.
Filed under: Politics
Should all kids have armed guards in school?.
This is a great thought from Bernie Goldberg, hope you will read it.
Filed under: Politics
Here’s the real unemployment rate.
Here is an idea straight out of Europe, Switzerland to be precise:
“Our 28th Amendment shall be:
In order to provide for the security of the individual, state and general wellbeing of the country, all able bodied individuals shall be required to own one modern firearm and a minimum of ten rounds of associated ammunition.
Individuals are required to receive training in marksmanship and operation of firearms. Military and law enforcement personnel shall be exempt from training if they have satisfactorily completed firearms training while in their course of their service.
Exceptions shall be made for those adjudicated mentally ill, convicted of a crime of domestic violence, a felony, or have been separated from the military with a Dishonorable Discharge.
Individuals that are fundamentally opposed to owning a firearm shall be taxed and each year shall register with the government as firearms objectors until age 62 or until proven by a medical doctor to be unable to operate a firearm.
If an individual is unable to purchase a firearm one shall be provided by the Federal Government.”
Filed under: Happening Now, Politics | Tags: Assault weapons, crime, criminals, Guns, Police, protection
I hear the Mayor of NYC and the governor of New York State screaming about the need to confiscate guns, take guns away from law-abiding citizens so that crime will go down. The real idiocy with these things is that Law Abiding Citizens are not the ones committing the crimes, with guns. The ones who commit gun crimes are those who don’t care about laws in the first place, they are called criminals.
The history of gun control is that it does not work, crime increases when citizens do not have guns with which to protect themselves from criminals with guns and other weapons that destroy lives. Where I live is a prime example, when we are out feeding our animals, we never know what or who we will meet up with. I do know that the border patrol has caught a number of drug smugglers and people smugglers in our county, some on our property. These people are armed with semi-auto and automatic (assault weapon) weapons. You see that is the other problem with this discussion, one side seems to want to make any gun an assault while the other side wants to make every gun OK to own. Somewhere in the middle is where I am. I own handguns, and semi-automatic rifles and a single shot 30-06 rifle.
None of my guns is an “assault” weapon, because none of my guns can be fired on full automatic. Yet it is said that anyone who owns a gun that can hold a magazine of more than 10 rounds is an assault weapon. Wrong! Assault weapons are those weapons that are capable of firing either one round at a time of 10 rounds at a time. The law says that those weapons are not available for sale to the general public, in other words, I can’t buy an assault weapon even if I wanted one, which to be perfectly honest I do not.
Interestingly enough, criminals seem to be able to get and use assault type weapons in committing their crimes.
The UK has taken guns away from their citizens, the police who used to go around with only a club as their protection and weapon. Are now armed with guns, simply because the criminals who they have to go up against began using guns once the citizenry had no way to protect themselves. So it seems that if you take away the guns from those who will obey the law, then those who do not obey the law will be able to get guns anyway, and are more than willing to use them in the commission of crimes. So, once again I find myself asking why are we trying to remove a deterrent from our law-abiding citizenry when it does actually cut down on violent crime? Just look at the Florida, when the citizens were not allowed to have guns, gun crime was rampant in the state, when they passed the law that allowed citizens to begin carrying concealed weapons, violent crime went down. In every state where this has been tried, violent crime has decreased. Where are there more gun related deaths? Try Chicago, Washington D. C. and other places were guns are not allowed in the hands of law-abiding citizens, but the criminals have plenty of firepower.
So in this debate, let us scrap the “feel good” stuff and begin to look carefully at what it is we are trying to accomplish. So called “Gun Free Zones” are the places were these crimes happen, over and again. Whether it is a movie theater or a College campus or an elementary school. How do we deter these things or at least protect those who are the innocent victims? We make sure that there are armed persons there to protect those places. Not necessarily, teachers but persons who are trained in the use of guns and are willing to use them to protect those teachers and kids. There are many who are trained. Most of us who served any time in the military, know about and respect guns, and how they are to be handled. In States were Concealed carry is acceptable, you have a group of folks who are able to protect themselves and others.
I know that I would be happy to spend a day or two a week in our school system to protect those who are there to learn and to grow, and there are teachers who also do not want to carry guns, as well as those who do have the license. Let us use the resources we have to protect those who cannot protect themselves, it will be a deterrent when the school or theater is no longer a “gun free zone.”
What do you think? Does this make sense, or do you have a different perspective?
Filed under: God, Politics | Tags: Brotherhood of Man, Emancipation Proclamation, ethnic groups, political rhetoric
The Emancipation Proclamation became official on this day in 1863. You can find a copy at the National Archives. This is a powerful document it is the signature document for the First Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, and his very good friend Frederick Douglass.
In Churches across the land these days, we hold a candlelight vigil on New Years Eve, but on 31 December 1862, black churches held their own special vigil, awaiting news of the Emancipation Proclamation becoming the reality of the land. On subsequent 1st of January years, the words were read in black churches across this great land. It would be a good idea I think for people of all colors, black, brown, red, yellow, and white to read this document again. It brought freedom to a people who had been seen as only property in the slave states, it brought recognition of their equality with all the rest of us. There was still more to do, like winning the war in which the country was engaged, the War between the States. Some call it the Civil War, but there was nothing civil about it, nor is war ever civil. War however, is sometimes necessary to right a wrong, this one was. By the time of the war, most states in the north, no longer held slaves, and after the war was completely won, slavery was not a very popular reality, even in those places that had been “exempted” by the proclamation.
Of course there was racism, our country had a terrible time coming to grips with the history of slavery, and even today we do have those who feel that some people are less than others. Personally, I agree with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I want our nation to come to a time when people are judged by their hearts and minds and not by the color of their skin, where people are seen as people, created by God and therefore loved by God.
It requires, however, that all of us are willing to forgo the racist rhetoric, the actions of those who say we need to kill this or that group of people, whether it be “whitey” or “gooks” or any other epithet we choose to use. So let us all wake up to the reality that our creator, created all of creation, that we all descended from one woman, the one who was co-created with the first man the one we call Eve. Until we can understand that none of us is superior at birth, hint, we all come into the world naked and crying, helpless and in need of someone to take care of us. We all will leave this life the same way, dead and helpless as we were at birth. So here we are in the 2013, splintered by political rhetoric into ethnic groups, and rich vs poor groups. The only ones who win this mess are the politicians and lawyers.
It is time for all of us, men and women, no matter our ethnicity, no matter our so-called station in life, to realize one thing. We all live in the world, a fairly small and insignificant place in the overall galaxy and if we don’t learn to live together, we shall surely perish as warring groups, killing each other and destroying our world in the process.
Can we stop this stupidity, and come together as brethren (brothers and sisters), members of humanity, and not different groups who hate the others? That is what God wants us to be, the word he gave us was to love your neighbor as yourself. Do that and you will not be able to harm your neighbor. So let’s give it a try, shall we?
Tell me what you think. Leave a comment, let us start a conversation.
texasjq2 