I'm Gina Smith

Happy Mother's Day! (me and a hot fudge sundae!)

A thought for your May Day.

From Truthout.org.

"We Are Workers, Not Criminals"
    By David Bacon
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Thursday 01 May 2008

    In the big immigrant marches that swept the country on May Day in 2006 and 2007, one sign said it all: "We are Workers, not Criminals!" Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women, who looked as though they'd just come from working in a factory, cleaning an office building or picking grapes.

    The sign stated an obvious truth. Millions of people have come to this country to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, and others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they've found here, not people who mean it harm. Again this May Day, immigrant workers are filling the streets, making the same point.

    Yet, today the Federal government is taking actions that make holding a job a criminal act. Some states and local communities, seeing a green light from the Department of Homeland Security, are passing measures that go even further. These actions need a reality check.

    Last summer, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff proposed a rule requiring employers to fire any worker who couldn't correct a mismatch between the Social Security number they'd provided their employer, and the SSA database. The regulation assumes those workers have no valid immigration visa, and therefore no valid Social Security number.

    With 12 million people living in the US without legal immigration status, the regulation would lead to massive firings, bringing many industries and businesses to a halt. Citizens and legal visa holders would be swept up as well, since the Social Security database is often inaccurate.

    Under Chertoff, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted sweeping workplace raids, arresting and deporting thousands of workers. Many have been charged with an additional crime - identity theft - because they used a Social Security number belonging to someone else to get a job. Yet, workers using another number actually deposit money into that holder's account, and these immigrants will never collect benefits their contributions paid for.

    The Arizona legislature has passed a law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of every worker through a federal database called E-Verify, which is even more incomplete and full of errors than Social Security. They must fire workers whose names get flagged. And Mississippi passed a bill making it a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job, with jail time of from one year to ten years, fines of up to $10,000, and no bail for anyone arrested. Employers get immunity.

    Congress is now debating two bills, the SAVE Act and the New Employee Verification Act, that would require similar use of the E-Verify database.

    In 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act made it a crime, for the first time in our history, to hire people without papers. Defenders argued that if people could not legally work they would leave. Life was not so simple.

    Undocumented people are part of the communities they live in. They will not simply go, nor should they. They seek the same goals of equality and opportunity that everyone else in our country believes in.

    For most, there are no jobs to return to in the countries from which they've come. Rufino Dominguez, a Oaxacan community leader in Fresno, says, "The North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] made the price of corn so low that it's not economically possible to plant a crop anymore. We come to the US to work because there's no alternative."

    When Congress passed NAFTA, six million displaced people came to the US as a result. If Congress stops passing new free trade agreements, and instead faces the damage NAFTA and other pro-corporate measures did in Mexico, the poverty and desperation that fuel migration can eventually be reversed.

    Trying to push people out of the US who've come here for survival simply won't work. The price of trying is that the vulnerability of undocumented workers will increase. Unscrupulous employers use that vulnerability to deny overtime, minimum wage, or fire workers when they protest or organize. Increased vulnerability ultimately results in cheaper labor and fewer rights for everyone. Children live in fear that their parents will be picked up in raids.

    After deporting over 1,000 workers at Swift meatpacking plants, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff called for linking "effective interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program." The government is really after giving cheap labor to large employers. Deportations, firings and guest worker programs all make labor cheaper and union organizing harder. They contribute to a climate of fear and insecurity for everyone.

    Instead of making work a crime and treating immigrants as criminals, we need equality, economic security, jobs and rights for everyone.

A great site for buying green cleaning products.

And Happy Earth Day!

Click here.

Says Wallace Stevens (on Easter)

"Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol.  It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood. " Wallace Stevens, 1916

Hope you don't have a "love" stock. (Reuters)

As a journalist, I don't get to hold stock. Lucky for me. From IGS, Happy Valentines Day!

See Reuters excerpt below.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cupid's arrow apparently missed many investors on Valentine's Day.

The shares of companies selling some of the typical Valentine's Day buys -- shiny baubles, chocolates and bouquets of roses -- were mostly lower on Thursday, following a sell-off in the broader stock market.

Shares of flower seller FTD Group Inc were down 4 percent at $12.85, while shares of luxury jeweler Tiffany & Co  were down 1.9 percent at $39.15 and shares of Hershey Co. slipped 0.7 percent to $35.63.

The business of Valentine's Day has become bigger than ever. Americans are expected to spend a total of over $17 billion on gifts for the holiday, according to a National Retail Federation survey conducted by BIGresearch.

But the buying binge didn't spill over into love stocks. Their declines came as the three major stock indexes tumbled more than 1 percent each, after Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke's said he saw sluggish economic growth ahead and ratings agency Moody's downgraded bond insurer FGIC Corp's "AAA" rating.

In addition, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned about downside risks to economic growth.

"With Paulson speaking and Bernanke, in my portfolio I've got a few green things, but not a whole lot," said Brent Wilsey, president of Wilsey Asset Management in San Diego.

Still, Wilsey said investors shouldn't dump these love stocks.

An excellent non-commercial Valentine's Day idea

... that might actually help someone.

One of my former coworkers, Ben Calica, sent me this. I couldn't resist passing it on.

I'm working with a company that is doing a cool little something for Valentines Day.  Rather than the standard buy consumer goods, they have set up a pathway to let people do something good in the name/spirit of their sweetie.  For example, rather than give a stuffed animal, give a needy family a Llama through Heifer.org.

There is nothing nefarious here.  Names will not be used for any ill, they are just trying to be a conduit for getting some good done in the world.  The company, Polka.com has random acts of kindness a couple of times before, helping a family after the San Diego wildfires and adopting families in over the holidays, and they are building it into who they are as a company.

I'm hoping for your help in spreading out the word about it.

They are calling it Random Acts of Love

Link to find out more about it:

http://blog.polka.com/

Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks!

-Ben

Wild holiday children, my present to you, and pagans.

Yes, we'll be ripping up presents under a Christmas tree tomorrow California style. My little boy is going to be going wild in about six hours, meaning I should go to bed.

However, I know there is an ongoing controversy regarding pagan traditions in Christmas, and I found a great website that wraps it all up quite nicely. Excuse the pun.

And happy holidays, readers. If you didn't check out the last post -- with the optical illusion -- do me a favor and check it out. It's my holiday present to you.

Happy Halloween!

Be scared, very scared.

Twenty years ago today ...

I was in a near deadly car accident with a private investigator named Kevin B. and an unknown passenger in the backseat. (He fled the scene.)

We were all lucky to be alive. Talk about a Halloween scare. I still have windshield glass coming out of my forehead, no exaggeration!

Be safe and have a happy Halloweenie!

gs

War Without End (NYT editorial today)

Find the whole editorial here. Excerpt below from today's New York Times.

War Without End

NYT May 27, 2007

Never mind how badly the war is going in Iraq. President Bush has been swaggering around like a victorious general because he cowed a wobbly coalition of Democrats into dropping their attempt to impose a time limit on his disastrous misadventure.

By week’s end, Mr. Bush was acting as though that bit of parliamentary strong-arming had left him free to ignore not just the Democrats, but also the vast majority of Americans, who want him to stop chasing illusions of victory and concentrate on how to stop the sacrifice of young Americans’ lives.

And, ever faithful to his illusions, Mr. Bush was insisting that he was the only person who understood the true enemy.

Speaking to graduates of the Coast Guard Academy, Mr. Bush declared that Al Qaeda is “public enemy No. 1” in Iraq and that “the terrorists’ goal in Iraq is to reignite sectarian violence and break support for the war here at home.” The next day, in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush turned on a reporter who had the temerity to ask about Mr. Bush’s declining credibility with the public, declaring that Al Qaeda is “a threat to your children” and accusing him of naïvely ignoring the danger.

It’s upsetting to think that Mr. Bush believes the raging sectarian violence in Iraq awaits reigniting, or that he does not recognize that Americans’ support for the war broke down many bloody months ago. But we have grown accustomed to this president’s disconnect from reality and his habit of tilting at straw men, like Americans who don’t care about terrorism because they question his mismanagement of the war or don’t worry about what will happen after the United States withdraws, as it inevitably must.

The really disturbing thing about Mr. Bush’s comments is his painting of the war in Iraq as an obvious-to-everyone-but-the-wrongheaded fight between the United States and a young Iraqi democracy on one side, and Al Qaeda on the other. That fails to acknowledge that the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq is not a democracy and is at war with many of its own people. And it removes all pressure from the Iraqi leadership — and Mr. Bush — to halt the sectarian fighting and create a real democracy.

There is no doubt that organized Islamist terrorism — call it Al Qaeda or by any other name — is a dire threat. There is also no doubt that terrorists entered Iraq — mostly after the war began.

We, too, believe that Iraq has to be made as stable as possible so the United States can withdraw its troops without unleashing even more chaos and destruction. But Mr. Bush is not doing that and his version of reality only makes it more unlikely. The only solution lies with the Iraqi leaders, who have to stop their sectarian blood feud and make a real attempt to form a united government. That is their best chance to stabilize the country, allow the United States to withdraw and, yes, battle Al Qaeda.

The Democrats who called for imposing benchmarks for political progress on the Iraqis, combined with a withdrawal date for American soldiers, were trying to start that process. It’s a shame they could not summon the will and discipline to keep going, but we hope they have not given up. As disjointed as the Democrats have been, their approach makes far more sense than Mr. Bush’s denial of Iraq’s civil war and his war-without-end against terror.