Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Little Crow Peep

Frustration has given way to disgust in Arizona's great immigration debate. Basis for argument aside, any criticism is met (by conservatives mostly) with the same 18-letter response. It's like dealing with sheep. They all flock in the same direction. They all bleat the same thing.

"Ha-a-ve you read the bi-i-ll?"

Oh, I've read it. On paper, meaning without regard to the behavior and motives of each rugged individual out there, one cannot definitively say that SB 1o7o is a racist bill. No. It is, however, a stupid bill.

I understand its proponents when they say that illegal immigration has cost Americans their jobs, even though so many more have been lost to corporate outsourcing. Seldom is that concern followed logically, or we'd see more business licenses revoked, a thing rarer than a bighorn in these parts.

As with the war on drugs, conservatives have it backward on this issue, focusing on demand (people who want work) instead of going after supply (employers who willingly hire them). The new law mandates - sans funding - that any city, county or otherwise politically incorporated entity question the citizenship of anyone upon reaching the point of "reasonable suspicion" during any "lawful stop" or arrest.

Ask any cop how far he or she has to follow you before finding a reason to lawfully stop you. The one I asked said half a mile. As for what comprises "reasonable suspicion", we may as well ask former Bush administration attorney Kris Kobach of Missouri, who wrote the bill for the Republicans in the Arizona legislature (we know this because it was not written in crayon).

An accent. Fluency in English (or lack thereof). Certain clothing. The number of people in a vehicle. Stuff like that. Never the color of their skin, no. Or their national origin. Why would a cop need to consider one's national origin when determining one's status as a citizen? All of this takes place "when practicable", according to Kobach's legalese.

"Practicable", by the way, has two definitions. One is capable of being used or done. The other refers to a theater prop that is a workable part of a stage set. Alas, SB 1o7o doesn't specify.

These are not the only problematic vagaries in the bill - not hardly. The section allowing citizens to sue any agency they believe to be running afoul of the new law is meritless on its face. In order to sue anyone, one has to have legal standing. One has to prove one has been damaged. Judges will rightly consider this to be a waste their time, and worse.

The provision that denies any sort of plea bargain for an illegal immigrant is an outright assault on the judicial branch. It does provide a 20-30 day jail sentence for a misdemeanor offense of being here illegally (read: Three hots and a cot on the taxpayers' dime). It's ridiculous to the point that Esquire Kobach should be called before the Bar and made to answer for himself.

Even if this joke of a law somehow passes Constitutional muster, it creates layers of legal nightmares across the state, twisting the knife already buried deep into our economic aorta. The burdens that SB 1o7o places on the Attorney General's office should also be filed in the basket of really bad ideas. Like it says on the money, e pluribus unum - one out of many.

SB 1o7o makes it a misdemeanor for an illegal immigrant to apply for a job. It makes a criminal out of ordinary citizens for soliciting work from a non-citizen. How were you to know that worker's legal status? Doesn't say. Employers, however, will only be prosecuted (snort) when they "knowingly" hire an illegal immigrant.

If you get caught transporting illegal aliens, your vehicle will be impounded. It does not say anything about impounding your animal. To borrow a few peas from J.D. Hayworth's brain, one can just as easily smuggle immigrants in on horseback... Maybe that's just another corporate loophole.

(And why not? There are vast expanses of language throughout the bill that threaten to do what has never been done in Arizona before. The only thing left out by the lawyers were the actual words "wink" and "nod" in parantheses.)

SB 1o7o is filled, however, with lines that boggle the minds of even junior varsity legal scholars. Section 2, Title 11, Chapter 7, Article 8 explains that an officer may transport an illegal alien to la Migra, "notwithstanding any other law" (rape, murder, what have you). It does not allow us to sue said officer if we come become victims of a crime (rape, murder, what have you) while he or she is wasting his or her time doing that.

Section 6 begins with the words, "Arrest by officer without warrant". This is why those textbooks out of Texas don't put the words "Thomas" and "Jefferson" next to each other.

So, we can ask, is it fair to label Arizona's new law Jim Crow? Perhaps not. Still, it doesn't reflect well on us when the state pulls the wool over our eyes, fleecing us all with sheer stupidity. We should all be sheepish when asked, "Ha-a-ve you read the bi-i-ll?"

As for the poor folks who just want a better life than what they left behind in their home countries, well, they're on the lam now.

pH 5.26.1o

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Drunk Legislating

It is an astonishing act to shoot oneself in the foot. It is another thing entirely to shoot oneself in the foot while standing in a rowboat. That has been the net effect thus far of Arizona's infamous Senate Bill 1o7o, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Jan Brewer, and has been the talk of the nation ever since.

It has been commonly referred to as the "Papers, Please" law, drawing overblown comparisons to Nazi Germany. Some have likened it to apartheid. Others label it ethnic cleansing. Whatever the analogy, this is not the stuff that travel agents' dreams are made of.

Indeed, the hole blown in our economy has been considerable. Hotels and convention centers are bracing for the worst. Los Angeles and San Francisco have both slapped boycotts on the state, costing Arizona tens of millions of dollars.

Even the GOP has decided to hold the Republican National Convention elsewhere; the event is believed to have the same regional impact as the Super Bowl. They must be worried about the Hispanic vote, and they should be: Statewide, 67 percent of Hispanics oppose the law.

Here in the 'Zona, the people and the press are suffering from denial. They consider criticism, boycotts and relocations to be meddlesome. They wish the money good riddance. Perhaps we could annex Blythe from California and change the spelling - not that many of us would notice.

So who comes riding in to save the day for Governor Brewer? Who else but Sarah Palin and her goodies-grubbing entourage. What advice could she possibly have given to our beleaguered Governor? Quit?

Whatever else she said, Palin expressed the need for Americans to say, "We are all Arizonans now." She also called the Grand Canyon State "ground zero" on the illegal immigration issue. Might as well be... We're already ranked at zero in that danged education category. We're dead last in annual personal-income growth.

Moreover, it would indeed be a shock for all Americans to suddenly be turned into Arizonans. First of all, we'd all have to carry concealed weapons. We'd have to ride motorcycles without helmets. We'd have to be able to tolerate (and function in) 120 degree heat.

We would all have to be able to "hold it" for long distances, as our rest areas on the highways have been closed. We'd all have to be content to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in the real estate market. And we'd all have to vote for Sarah Palin with the expectation that she might actually be able to win.

On top of all that, we'd also have to excommunicate ourselves from California. Not only are we on bad relations (which can only get worse with the Suns-Lakers series on the horizon), it is also understood that the California Highway Patrol will be pulling over all vehicles bearing Arizona license plates in order to conduct mandatory sobriety tests.

It's not profiling. It's called "reasonable suspicion".

pH 5.16.1o

Monday, May 10, 2010

Divine Introspection

As the first gooey blobs of oil hit the Gulf Coast beaches this week, one cannot help but wonder, why does God have it in for those Red States? After all, there are Republican governors in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The only other state to ever suffer from an oil spill of this magnitude was Alaska (not exactly a bastion of liberalism).

The real obstructionist ass-hats in the Senate and the House also hail from those Southern states, which are also prone to hurricanes. And floods. And tornadoes.

It's funny how hurricanes never seem to strike New England. How flooding happens in Tennessee and North Dakota (Red States) but not water-rich Minnesota or Ohio (Blue States). How tornadoes will bedevil Texas and Oklahoma (Red States) but not so much Iowa or Illinois (Blue States).

Despite the fact that California exists on a shaky fault line, it has relatively few earthquakes. Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, only very rarely suffers from a tsunami. So how could Alaska have suffered both in 1964, when an earthquake felled its cities and caused a tsunami that swept every stick of furniture off of Kodiak Island? Red State, Blue State.

Even the industrial accidents seem to plague those states than lean more conservative. They have coal mines in Pennsylvania and Maryland, but the bad accidents seem to happen more often in places like West Virginia and Kentucky. Red States. Blue States.

You hear of school shootings in places like Arkansas, Montana and Colorado, but not so much in Vermont, Rhode Island or Oregon. (Granted, Obama won Colorado in 2oo8, but Colorado was Red at the time of the Columbine tragedy, which occurred in an affluent Denver suburb.)

Doesn't anyone ever wonder why the temperatures in Arizona routinely reach the 120-degree mark in the summer - yet in next-door New Mexico, they don't? To break it down, one has to ask, why does God hate Republicans? I'm not saying that's so... I wouldn't presume. I'm saying it appears that way.

I can hazard a guess as to why. It's due to the fact that conservatives tend to take God's name in vain. That Commandment, by the way, doesn't mean "don't swear". It means not to seek your own glory with God on the front of your shield. When has any Democrat done such a thing? Every time you turn around, some Republican or other is doing exactly that.

Prayer might help. It didn't during the Civil War, though, when the Blue States had to quell the rebellion of the Red States. God let Sherman burn his way through the South with impunity despite the pleas and prayers of every plantation owner who ever flew the Stars and Bars.

Why doesn't God like Republicans? I could expound upon that but it wouldn't further my point. If you really want to know, ask Him.

pH 5.1o.1o