Croom Station Signal

A Hard Working Immigrant Speaks Truth to the Cheap Foreign Labor Lobby

From the ABA Journal Magazine, August 2011:

"I was once an immigrant from a third-world country, where corruption is widespread in all levels of the government.

"Although our constitution guaranteed us freedom of speech, in reality one can easily be executed for saying something inimical to the greedy government officials’ interest.

"The influx of immigrants here from my country of origin greatly boosts that country’s economy. And here is why. Roughly 140,000 employment visas are issued to aliens to work here as skilled and non-skilled worker every year. For skilled worker, one is required to possess a bachelor’s degree.

"However, a degree in a third world country isn't remotely comparable to a bachelor’s degree here because of disparity in quality of education. In a third world country, one is guaranteed a degree by merely paying all the tuition fees and 90% class attendance. The educational institutions there are primarily motivated solely by generating revenue rather than providing quality education.

"Despite the disparity, US is giving equivalent credits to those degrees resulting in employing alien graduates here mostly as teachers and health personnel.

"Now once this alien worker obtains a green card, they will petition for their alien relatives. Most of the petitioned relatives specially the parents will not find a job. After these relatives obtained citizenship in five years, they will put them on welfare—a preconceived intent formulated since the petition was filed. Entitling to benefits can easily be achieved because most foreigners have a tight-knit family and usually live under one roof hence will show no assets at all.

"My country of origin produces a lot of graduates who are employed all over the world despite of our no-quality education. Because part of our culture is to help our relatives back in our country of origin, we send “remittances” out of our monthly pay to that country which is indubit-ably a great boost to their economy and blissfully, to the corrupt government officials."

Read the article (OK, its shamelessly about me), where this revealing story is posted as comment number 5 by "Sam."

GOP Politics of Illegal Alien College Tuition

The thoughtful Americans at the Center for Immigration Studies have one of the more observant (and yet so disappointing) insights into the feckless electoral campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry:

The heated exchange between Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry over the issue of in-state college tuition for illegal aliens illustrates how different candidates might approach a policy problem for which there's no easy answer. Where they come down on this issue shows whether a candidate is able to make tough but right decisions that best serve the national interest.

Rick Perry has been defending Texas's DREAM Act Amnesty Lite.

At the September 22 Florida debate, Texas Gov.Perry defended his support for a Texas law giving in-state tuition to illegal aliens.

"If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they have been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," Perry said. "I still support it greatly."

Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney replied, "I think if you're opposed to illegal immigration, it doesn't mean you don't have a heart, it means you have a heart and a brain."

Perry's snarky soundbite reveals a lot about him. Some 32,000 illegal aliens already received taxpayer subsidies of $40,000 or more for a Texas undergraduate degree course, in place of lawfully resident Texans, citizens and legal immigrants alike. So why does he come down on the side of lawbreaking illegals, and against lawful state residents?

Emotion.  Perry lets his heartstrings be his guide. He feels sorry for illegal aliens who purportedly were brought to this country as minors. Those matters of fact are hardly proven in each case, but Perry substitutes his sympathetic urges for the sort of toughness of thought and steely reasoning necessary to serving as the leader of the free world.

That's not good enough. Candidates who can't resist putting their personal feelings ahead of clearer, though tougher reasoning and allegiance to the requirements of justice are unfit to hold office. In-state tuition for illegals encourages and rewards more illegal immigration. It misallocates limited public resources, which the public has entrusted to officials. It cheats legal residents.

 

Obamanomics Hurts the American Working Man-- Bad

As President Barack Obama puts together yet another “new” jobs plan, he is up against a powerful and dangerous trend:  A smaller share of men have jobs today than at any time since World War II.**

If that sounds bleak, it is. The portion of men who work and their median wages have been eroding since the early 1970s. For decades the impact of this fact was softened in many families by the number of women going back to work. The housing bubble helped mask it by artificially stoking the male-dominated construction trades. But when real estate crashed, the portion of men holding a job—any job, full- or part-time—fell to 63.5 percent in July 2011— just a hair above the December 2009 low point of 63.3 percent.

These are the worst numbers since 1948. Among the critical category of prime working-age men between 25 and 54, only 81.2 percent held jobs. In the current recession, 80 percent of all jobs lost were held by men. In perspective, in 1969 95 percent of men in their prime working years had a job.

Men who do have jobs are getting paid less. Adjusted for inflation, median wages for men aged 30 to 50 dropped 27 percent—to $33K a year— from 1969 to 2009, according to an analysis by MIT economics professor Michael Greenstone, who was chief economist for Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. "That takes men and puts them back at their earnings capacity of the 1950s. That has staggering implications."

Moderately skilled men without a college education have taken direct hits to their employment prospects.  But even those with bachelor's degrees from less selective schools are seeing their economic worth erode. The middle is crumbling, with elites doing better while more male citizens are being pushed down the compensation scale.

What is wrong?

Looting the Transportation Trust... Again

In my rather lonely campaign for Delegate in 2010, I identified the looting of the Maryland state trust funds by O’Malley and his Dixiecrat machine at the statehouse as one of the top threats–-along with massive underfunding of state pension funds – to any hope for future state fiscal solvency.  At O’Malley’s urging, the General Assembly in 2009 had looted more than 57 trust funds to “balance” the 2011 budget, a blatantly sleazy accounting trick remniscent of the “securitization” of mortgage debt by Fannie and Freddie Monster over the past decade.

These funds, covering everything from the environment to public health to highway construction, set aside specific sources of tax revenue for continuing public projects of wide public benefit. 

Throughout the last decade, the General Assembly raised taxes based on the assurance that the taxes would fund these public trusts.

Here we go again.  O’Malley has just moved to transfer massive amounts of tax revenue out of the Maryland Transportation Trust Fund to “balance” the 2012 budget, taking $60 million for the general fund and $40 million  for the rainy day fund. As the Gazette reports, the Transportation Trust was created in 1971 as a dedicated source of support for MDOT and is required by statute to maintain a $100 million reserve.  The Transportation Trust funds critical projects such as highway and bridge maintenance and construction, as well as operating the MVA, the Port of Baltimore, BWI and our regional airports, and the Baltimore and Washington Metropolitan transit authorities. Funding comes primarily from the gas tax, vehicle title taxes, and vehicle registration charges.

But that’s just the law, before it gets greased by the good old boys who run the machine: O’Malley, Miller, and Busch. Reality is that between 1984 and 2004, the Dixiecrats diverted a total of $571 million to non-transportation related programs, with more than one-quarter never reimbursed. Under O’Malley, trust funds transfers metastasized:  In the past three years alone, more than $2 billion has been transferred for other budgetary purposes.

The sleight-of-hand proposed to fix this mess is a boost in the gas tax.  Now, as far as taxes go, a gas tax spreads the pain about as evenly as possible; it’s among the milder of modern instruments of fiscal torture.  But only a fool or a fellow greaser would trust this administration or the Tweeders in the General Assembly to really use gas tax revenues for highway maintenance.

Lowlights of Maryland Budget Deficit Crisis from our State Budget Analyst

The General Assembly’s own Office of Policy Analysis has now pegged the 2011 state budget deficit at a crushing $1.6 BILLION.  Senate President-for-Life Mike “V.” Miller says addressing the budget black hole “is going to be very, very, difficult.”  Of course the “non-partisan” OPA was considerate enough to wait until AFTER November 2 to release the bad news, presumably with the humanitarian intention of avoiding fear-mongering among the peasants.  In Naptown, “V” stands for Venal. 

But a read though the charts prepared by OPA Director Warren Deschenaux show the fiscal outlook is much worse than the MSM have reported.

The OPA “Spending Affordability Briefing” is a shocking data-dump for the numerate. 

 

 I’ll try to share some of the most appalling “lowlights” here on the mighty Signal.

But you can also download the charts and tables and see for yourself at:

http://mlis.state.md.us/other/spending_affordability/briefing_111010.pdf . 

Lowlight:  The Dixiecrats claim that the last thing to be cut will be state aid for public education. But the biggest percentage increase in public education support between 2011 and 2012 will be subsidies for the schools with the highest numbers of illegal aliens, where state subsides for “limited English proficiency” payments will go up a hefty 7.7%.  The relative increase from 2010 is even higher, 9.5%, but OPC chief Warren Deschenaux conveniently omitted that figure from the briefing, which you have to calculate for yourself.  See Briefing page 14.

By contrast, funding for community colleges will rise a measley 1.9%, and supplemental state education grants, designed to improve programs for the poorest American public school students, will drop by 9.2% from 2010 to 2012.  Again, the budget analyst only provides the percent for the 2011-12 projected change, to make it look like there is no real drop at all.

Lowlight:   The worst fiscal situation in Maryland’s history since the end of federal occupation after the Civil War is barely reflected in the Dixiecrats’ suicidal entitlements for votes agenda.  Projected general fund spending on direct welfare payments is projected to metastasize 113.3 % between FY 2011 and 2012, while state medical assistance programs, which include massive subsidies for uncompensated medical care for illegal aliens, will surge 66% next fiscal year, an increase of  $1.15 BILLION DOLLARS in just 12 months!  See Briefing page 39. 

Lowlight:   While the “magic” press conference budget deficit is pegged at $1.6 BILLION, the structural deficit – that’s the “real” 2012 budget deficit of ongoing revenues less operating costs—is a staggering $2.1 BILLION.  See Briefing page 16. 

Lowlight:   The General Assembly spent like drunken sailors and stole grandma’s savings to fool the public with the 2011 budget.  Buried on the last page of the briefing is a chart innocently labeled the “Fund Transfers and Multiyear General Obligations Bond Repayment Plan.”  An inquiring taxpayer will see that the Dixiecrats “transferred” $444 MILLION for 18 key special trust funds (a total of 57 funds in all were raided) to pay the bills this year.

The “repayment plan,” to be spread over the coming four years, is of course a fantasy. Briefing page 51. Even more shocking is the $350 MILLION taken in 2011 from the Local Income Tax Reserve— income taxes collected by the state for county governments— and used instead to paper over the shortfall in funding for the soon-to-be bankrupt state teachers pension funds.  Briefing page 11. 

Lowlight:  In 2012, the state will somehow have to come up with $1.21 BILLION in new state taxes to replace one-time federal stimulus funds used to paper over the 2011 deficit.  Briefing page 11. 

Lowlight:  We're starting to pay out-of pocket for Obamacare madness in 2012.  Since BS&N (Barak, Steney and Nancy) slashed reimbursement for over-the-counter medications from the federal health savings programs starting on January 1, 2011, the state will have to pay $5.1 million just to fund the difference for state Medicaid recipients.  Briefing page 8. 

Lowlight:  The state is planning on a nearly 450% increase in video lottery terminal revenues between now and 2015 just to keep the “magic” deficit figure below its unsustainable 2011 level.  This “stupid poor people’s tax” scheme is a fiscal fantasy and a social abomination.  Briefing page 22. 

Lowlight:  Maryland has reached its maximum sustainable level for general obligation bond borrowing, which is calculated as a ceiling of 8% on state general revenues used to pay GO bond interest payments. Briefing page 26.  

The outlook for the Transportation Trust Fund is even worse.  They apparently have exceeded their sustainable borrowing limits by projecting unreal revenue levels over the next five years from vehicle titling and fuel taxes.  BOTTOM LINE:  Even if O’Malley imposes draconian taxes, Maryland’s capital spending programs, particularly for roads and public transportation, are going to take a massive hit.  Crumbling infrastructure will then takes its inevitable toll on state economic activity and the tax base it can generate.  It’s called the race to the bottom. Briefing page 23-24.

Obamacare Strips OTC Medications from Taxpayers' Health Savings Plans

Here it comes... 

In one of the first cuts in what will soon become a healthcare massacre, the Washington Examiner, in an Oct. 28, 2010 story, reports that, beginning on January 1, 2011, our flexible savings plans (FSPs) and health savings plans (HSPs) can no longer be used to claim reimbursement for over-the-counter medications, unless you get a doctor's prescription! 

Yes, I know it's nuts. 

A national law that supposedly reforms our healthcare system instead forces you to go to the doctor to get a prescription for cold medicine, band aids, or poison ivy cream before you can use the money you saved to pay for these basic healthcare items. 

The Examiner cites an online provider that says it will no longer allow you to use your FSA savings to pay for, "acid controllers, allergy and sinus medication... anti-gas... baby rash creams... respiratory treatments, cough, cold and flu remedies... stomach remedies.... feminine anti-fungal treatments.... or pain relief."

According to the Examiner:

"The new provision guarantees that patients will either pay more for the same drugs, clog doctors' offices with expensive and unneeded appointments, or a combination of both, defeating the entire stated purpose of Obamacare." 

"With each new revelation, it looks less like a fix for the health care system, and more like a recipe for increased state control of Americans' financial and health choices."

 

 

Maryland's Silent Tsunami

I never thought I had much in common with the Washington Post editorial board until I read "Maryland's Silent Tsunami," the lead editorial in its October 4, 2010 edition. 

It is frighteningly on-point about the crisis facing the Old Line State:

"Neither O'Malley or Erhlich have cared to publicly discuss the most daunting threat to Maryland's fiscal health:

 Billions of dollars in pension and healthcare bills coming due for retired teachers and former state employees, and no plan in place to pay for them."

 

This wakeup call could have been lifted directly from my Clean House in Annapolis District 27A Delegate 2010 campaign website.

The Post explains better than I:

"Having shortchanged--for almost a decade-- its contributions to the pension fund that covers more than 100,000 former employees, the state faces unfunded pension liabilities of more than $18 billion and unfunded health-care obligation projected at $15 billion.  That's $33 billion in bills coming due, a sum equal to an entire year of state spending.  And no one knows where the money will come from."

The Post editorial writers seem to agree with my analysis of the source of the problem:

"The numbers reflect a sorry record of political avoidance, cowardice, and pandering by decisionmakers in Annapolis, often in thrall to public employee unions.  Starting in 2003, lawmakers allowed the state to trim its annual payments -- a decision akin to with holding part of your mortgage payment....   

Vallario: DUI not a conflict with my interests!

At nine in the evening on the last night of the 2010 General Assembly session, House Judiciary Committee Chairman and Head Weasel Joe Vallario convened the Committee to inform them that he was killing legislation that would have required an ignition interlock device be installed on vehicles owned by motorists convicted of drunk driving. 

The bill had passed the Senate unanimously weeks before-- but Vallario permitted no vote on the measure. He bluntly informed the Committee that advocates like MADD had rejected his demands to water down the bill, and he provided members and the media with a chart to help explain his decision.

 

Even the flabby liberal Baltimore Sun described that chart as “fundamentally flawed.”  Vallario dishonestly used non-comparable data to misrepresent studies from New Mexico and Virginia, states which do not have comparable interlock device legislation.

Vallario was once again weaseling on behalf of private interests—in this case the state liquor lobby—true to his sleazy MO for the last 30 years in Annapolis.  (See my July  2009 post on this topic).

The chart did not use authoritative data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:  Records of drunk driving fatalities based on the national standard of .08 percent blood alcohol. Like a brazen ambulance chaser, Vallario took data from a advocacy group called AlcoholAlert recording all fatalities in which the driver  had any alcohol in the bloodstream--down to the non-intoxicated level of .01—and compared this with records from non-interlock states, using liquor lobby preferred standards of .15 or higher.

As one commentator on the Sun blog puts it:

“Vallario is a walking conflict of interest. His constituency is not in Prince George's County but among the defense bar, of which he is an active member.  He reminds me of the tavern-owning state senator from Baltimore decades ago who, asked why he voted on a bill affecting his bar, answered, 'It doesn't conflict with my interest'."

“Speaker Busch should be ashamed at condoning this grossly unethical behavior.”

Source:  Michael Dresser, Baltimore Sun 4-19-2010

After 57 Special Fund Raids, Annapolis Leaves Nothing for the 2012 Budget

The 2010 Maryland General Assembly included the good, the bad and the ugly, as it does every year. Unfortunately, the fiscal year 2011 budget it approved was pretty bad and ugly.

The Governor and the machine leaders of America's most intrenched one-party state legislature produced a crass election year budget that failed to address the long-term deficit problems confronting our state. The TWO BILLION dollar deficit was "fixed" by $300 million in one-time transfers, by raiding forty trust funds,and blowing $1.3 billion in federal stimulus money. 

 

None of these gimmicks address the $8 billion in future deficits predicted for the next four years.  More importantly, this dishonest budget will guarantee a significant tax increase in 2011, after the election year. 

 

Bottom line is that the 2011 budget ended up the same as last year's, which itself was bloated and in need for prudent cutting. 

 

The major difference is that the 2011 budget was funded by raiding numerous special funds and by blowing one-time income for Barak Obama. There were a reported total of 56 funds raided, including Highway User Revenue, Bay Restoration Fund, University System of Maryland, Injured Workers' Insurance Fund, Waterway Improvement Fund, Injured Workers' Insurance Fund (State Liability Reserve), Ocean Beach Replenishment Fund (Local), Board of Physicians Fund, Injured Workers' Insurance Fund (State Administrative Costs), and the Board of Nursing Fund.

 

In a typical maneuver, funding from the flush tax, which was intended to improve the Bay, was stolen to balance the budget, and no meaningful legislation to prevent polluting runoff from major cities like Baltimore was passed.

This means that next year whoever is Governor will have a tough job. The special funds will be gone and the federal money will be nonexistent.  In short, all this will result in higher taxes.   Source: Delegates Pat McDonough and Rick Impallaria.

WPost: Area Sheriffs Join ICE to Cuff 'Em, Card 'Em and Deport 'Em

Eight law enforcement agencies in Virginia and Maryland have recently joined a sweeping federal program that aims to identify and deport illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes. The agencies join about 150 other jurisdictions in 19 states as part of a program the Obama administration hopes will be in all 3,100 local jails nationwide by 2013.

The Secure Communities program allows local law enforcement officers to check fingerprints against the FBI criminal database and the Department of Homeland Security's biometric database.

According to ICE, since the program was implemented in October 2008, more than 18,800 illegal immigrants charged with crimes such as murder, rape and kidnapping have been identified. More than 4,000 of those people have been removed from the country.

Arlington, Fauquier, Loudoun and Stafford counties and the City of Alexandria are the most recent additions to the program, ICE officials announced last week. They join Prince William and Fairfax counties in Virginia. A week earlier, officials announced that Frederick, St. Mary's and Queen Anne's counties in Maryland had joined the effort, which was underway in Prince George's County. ICE officials said this week that they are working with the District to deploy the program as well.

Obama's Two-Class America

It’s official-- the United States has become a two-class society.  In 2010, half of Americans will pay federal income taxes and half won’t.  

The Tax Foundation reports that 40 percent of Americans now receive federal government handouts of cash and valuable benefits. Twenty percent of Americans now get 75 percent of their income from the federal government. Another 20 percent get 45 percent of their income from the government. Those handouts are financed by the people who do pay federal income taxes.

Obama's stimulus law legislation will add nearly $800 billion in new means-tested welfare liabilities over the next decade, or about $22,500 for every poor person in the United States.  On average it will cost each family that pays federal income taxes over $10,000.  

The media likes to divide Republicans into fiscal conservatives and the so-called social conservatives, and pretend that their interests are different. In fact, the overwhelming reason for big government's extravagant spending, is the breakdown in our culture, which social conservatives have been battling for years.

Steny Hoyer and the Tax Tsunami

The House Ways and Means Committee has released the list of $670.3 BILLON DOLLARS in tax increases that have been signed into law by President Obama. That's a staggering $2,100 per year in additional federal taxes for every man, woman, and child in America. 

 

Those new taxes include at least 14 violations of President Obama’s campaign "pledge" not to increase taxes on middle-income Americans, which he defined as families making less than $250,000.

 

Here are some ripples from the GIANT TSUNAMI of NEW TAXES that has flooded over the citizenry in the 14 months of one-party control of Washington:

 

*  Tax on individuals who do not purchase government-approved health insurance.

*  Tax on employers who fail to buy government approved health insurance.

*  40% tax on high cost health plans, but with an exemption for union members.

*  .9% increase in Medicare tax on wages and self-employment income.

*  A new 3.8% surtax on certain investment income.

*  Increase from 7.5% to 10% of income the threshold for deducting medical expenses.

*  A new $2,500 annual cap on Flexible Spending Account contributions.

*  Excise taxes on brand name pharmaceuticals.

*  Excise taxes on medical devices including wheelchairs.

*  A 10% federal tax on indoor UV tanning services.

*  New tax on insured and self‐insured health plans.

*  Double the penalty for non‐qualified HSA distributions.

*  Tobacco tax increase.

 

But that’s not all.  Unless Congress takes action, here is a sample of EVEN MORE tax increases that are scheduled to kick in automatically in the immediate future:

That Glorious Song of Old...

 

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen! 

May nothing you dismay. 

Remember... Christ our Savior

Was born on Christmas Day.

Merry Christmas 2009 to All 

from your neighbors and friends at Croom Station. 

Christmas 2009: Crossing the Delware to Smash Obama's Healthcare Hessians

Senate Democrats are celebrating the passage of their version of health care reform this Christmas Eve.  But perhaps of greater historic significance is that voters really don’t like what they see.

At the start of the week, only 41% of voters nationwide in the Rasmussen Report polling supported the health care bill, with a decisive 55% opposed. The third week of December was thus the fifth straight week with support stagnating around 38%-41%.

Part of the opposition comes from a general skepticism about Congress, rather than specific policy issues. But specific policy issues also confront the Obamanomics lobby as they try to negotiate a final version of this legislation in early 2010.

Abortion: A strong majority (54%) of voters say taxpayer-funded health insurance should retain the prohibition on federal funding of abortion, up 6% since September. A tiny 14% want health insurance paid for or subsidized with taxpayer funding to be required to cover abortions.

Illegal aliens:  An overwhelming 87% of voters proof of legal presence in the U.S. should be a prerequisite government health care subsidies, with a just a tiny 8% of far-left anti-majoritarian voters opposed. Rasmussen notes that this compelling statement of public attitudes has not changed since September. The President and congressional Democrats are still lying to the public that Obamanomic health care will not cover illegal aliens, but Americans are not fools and are aware that the legislation does not require proof of legal status for those seeking taxpayer-funded health care help.

Public option: The socialized insurance provisions in the House version are highly unpopular, with 63% of voters saying it is more important to guarantee that no one is forced to change their health insurance coverage than it is to give consumers the choice of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option. Just 30% think the “public option” is more important.

Like public opinion on abortion and illegal alien benefits, these numbers are unchanged from the end of September. Voters agree with Republican skeptics that, under the House public option scheme, rational businesses will actually dump their existing employee health coverage because it will be cheaper to pay the fine for not having coverage than to continue paying for workers’ health insurance.

Killer Drunk Driver's Best Friend in Annapolis

Aristotle believed that drunkeness never excuses crime, but actually increases guilt, because the drunken lawbreaker has willingly deprived himself of the ability to reason that alone can distinguish right from wrong, and separates men from beasts.

A different view is held by creepy Maryland State Delegate Joseph F. Vallario, Jr. (D-Prince George's and Calvert).  Vallario thinks drunks should always get another chance to kill and injure behind the wheel, just so long as their DUI defense attorney (that would be Joe) gets his "fee."

According to the Washington Post, all but three states and the District now have some form of interlock law for drunk drivers. Virginia for example mandates their use for two-time offenders who want to keep driving.

But Maryland law merely says they “may” be used.  2009 legislation that would have changed "may" to "must" in many cases once again died in a House committee chaired by Vallario, well-known among the trial bar, insurance companies, and surviving relatives of citizens killed by drunk drivers as the drunk drivers best friend in the Statehouse.

"If you take the test and blow a 1.5 blood-alcohol level and you want an interlock, you can get it," Vallario told the Washington Post.  Vallario said mandating their use could cause problems for people convicted of drunken driving who "don't have a car because we can't compel them to buy a car and put one of these in it."  

Indentured Foreign Teachers in Maryland Public Schools

I recently ran across a June 2009 report by the American Federation of Teachers spotlighting a troubling increase in the hiring of exploitable foreign teachers, primarily from the Philippines, to work in the most dysfunctional public schools in Baltimore.

 

According to the AFT report, “Importing Educators,” in 2005 Baltimore City Public Schools recruited 108 teachers from the Philippines to help meet staffing shortages in schools labeled “persistently dangerous” by the state of Maryland.

   

By 2009, more than 600 Filipino teachers, or ten percent of the city’s entire teaching force, are working in Baltimore. 

 

The recruitment process is designed to make it easy to avoid recruiting U.S. citizens for these jobs. Rather than attending job fairs throughout the Mid-Atlantic, trying to persuade American teachers and recent education school graduates to accept positions in troubled inner-city schools, Baltimore officials can “meet all their hiring needs in one trip.” The recruitment agency paid for multiple junkets by Baltimore Schools HR officials to Manila, a locale known for its sex tourism, staying in luxury hotels.  

 

Such arrangements violate many international standards for ethical recruiting and create powerful incentives for school officials to rely foreign body shops for filling positions.  Each foreign teacher recruit must pay between five and eight thousand dollar “placement fees” to a body shop contracting with the Maryland school district. In the past year, two of the Filipino teachers working in Baltimore have committed suicide, raising alarm bells about the conditions under which they work and are housed.

 

The problem is spreading rapidly to other counties in Maryland which have adopted similar hiring practices.  By summer 2009 more than 1,200 Filipino teachers alone were estimated to be working in taxpayer-funded teaching jobs state-wide.

 

One Baltimore official was quoted as saying that recruiting domestically is “almost a waste of time.”

The Joker Agenda Spotted in College Park

On July 21, the Prince George's County Council adopted Resolution CR-12-2009, entitled "Spending of Federal Economic Renewal Grants."  

CR-12-2009 finds that "the economic downturn is having a critical impact on everyday Americans who are struggling to maintain or find jobs"  and that "our taxpayer dollars should be spent to maximize the creation of American jobs and restore the economic vitality of our communities."

The resolution urges the County to spend Obama stimulus funds "wherever possible on products made in the United States or"  -- now get this-- "services performed in the United States."

The resolution reeks of hypocrisy.  PG County has gone out of its way to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund illegal alien day labor and unauthorized alien worker  service centers, while our American youth 16-30 unemployment rate is at  Depression-era levels. 

PG County's shameful cheap labor santuary laws are premised on the assertion that there are thousands of jobs in Maryland that "Americans won't do."

Please, show me a single elected county official who gives a rats' ass about saving the American worker.  Just try and file a complaint about immigration-related employment discrimination with the County Human Relations Commission or complain about illegal alien crime to the PG Police, or the illegal labor coolie centers in Langley Park and Oxon Hill. 

If you are a citizen, you can forget it.  You're on your own.

What was Council Member Eric Olsen, the author of this loopy protectionist drivel, thinking? 

Seems the Joker Agenda is apparently thriving in College Park.

 

Donna Edwards, Cuba, and the Yanqui Dollar

Q: Why is Maryland Representative Donna Edwards (D-Ft. Washington) such a fanatic about a radical public option for health care reform?  

A: Because she is a committed ideological admirer of Cuba, and the Cuban socialized medicine system in particular.

So here’s what La Donna Fidelista has in store for Maryland:

Under the Cuban government's health care monopoly, the state has complete control of who gets help, and how much. Private, non-governmental health facilities, where ailing citizens could buy treatment, are illegal.

As a result, average Cubans suffer long waits at government hospitals, while many medical services and technologies are available only to the Cuban party elite and foreign "health tourists" (like Rep. Edwards) who pay with hard currency.

Even access to rudimentary medicines as antibiotics and aspirin is rationed.

Rep. Edward’s antipathy to private health care is deeply ideological.  From 2000 until her election in 2008, Rep. Edwards was the Executive Director of the Arca Foundation, a creepy foundation founded by an eccentric heiress, Nancy R. Bagley, daughter of the founder of the R. J. Reynolds tobacco company.

In 1968, one of his grandchildren, an archetypal Al Gore global elitist, gained control of the mid-eight figure endowment, gave the fund a new age moniker, and took it on a hard left turn, with an agenda of grants for pro-Cuba, pro-Sandinista, and anti-corporate groups, underneath a patina of yuppie-style environmentalism.

Prior to joining Arca, Rep. Edwards was the first executive director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and largely responsible for the rabidly feminist Violence Against Women (VAWA) Act of 1994.

VAWA created the corrupt “battered immigrant” visa program, which allows illegal aliens to avoid multi-year waiting lists for green cards by denouncing their spouses as wife-beaters.  Under VAWA, the accused spouse is considered guilty until proven innocent and cannot confront or otherwise respond to the charges.

Thanks to Edwards 'vision', today a cottage industry in fabricating VAWA visa horror stories is flourishing, linked to open borders groups.   

Rep. Edwards also earlier headed the Center for a New Democracy, the “think tank” founded by d*ckhead Senator Gary Hart that lobbied for more government regulation of the middle class......

Obama and the Revolution in France

My friend Rob Sanchez, the patriotic web warrior and author of the online Job Destruction Newsletter, uses the example of post-modern France to show how uncontrolled immigration promotes national suicide.

In France, Muslims from North Africa were imported for several generations by using a temporary guest worker program. These cheap laborers were in theory temporary, but in practice most of them stayed on, either legally or illegally. France gave most of the early guest workers citizenship and welcomed their families also.

 

It was the French version of Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The French government vowed to make sure that all of the new immigrants would go through secular assimilation programs, but for many that never happened.

 

The French government didn't follow through on their costly promises, and the truth is that many of the Muslims had no intention of changing their loyalty to France.

 

 

Instead of assimilating, the immigrant laborers were isolated in public housing ghettos on the outskirts of major cities such as Paris. With extremely high birthrates and European social welfare benefits, the population of angry Muslims began to swell.

 

In addition to the guest workers there was a growing flow of illegal immigrants from Arab countries into France. Unemployment rose most dramatically among the youngest age groups, who were typically second or third generation French citizens. It was a perfect formula for social unrest: Mexifornia + Islamism on steroids.

The result: riots broke out in 2005. Sporadic violence has continued ever since. One of the main factors driving the civil unrest is youth unemployment, which surpassed the 20% level in 2005.

 

If unemployment was a major factor in the riots in France, then we had better prepare for the same thing here. The U.S. unemployment rate of young American minorities is rising far above the levels that sparked violence in France. To see just how dire the situation is, here, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are the stats on U.S. non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rates, by age range and year:           ......

The Political Fantasy of ObamaCare

Economist Robert J. Samuelson has concluded that the claims about health care reform made by the Obama administration and its allies on Capital Hill are "self-serving exaggerations and politicial fantasies."   The federal government "cannot both insure the uninsured and rein in health spending," he writes.

Samuelson's explanation? "  It is a myth that the "uninsured" get little or no care. They currently get two thirds as much health care as the insured, who pay for premiums and services themselves. 

If the "uninsured" become insured through taxpayer subsidies, there is no reason they will not begin to consume as much health care as insured taxpayers. 

"Judged objectively, 'reform' may do exactly the opposite of what Obama says." 

Mr. Samuelson attributes the irrational momentum on Obamacare legislation to date to the President's "ability to make misleading statements sound reasonable or sophisticated."  Tellingly, he notes that "the administration can't logically argue that much health care is wasteful and also that the uninsured will automatically benefit from more of it." 

Doc Samuelson's diagnosis is fortunately gaining increasing public attention: The President "offers the illusion of reform while perpetuating the status quo of four decades."