I came across an excellent long post at Bookworm this morning. I have been very aware of the growing presence of illegal aliens in California for the past 40 years. Not far from my home you can see some of it as Hispanic men gather at street corners looking for day labor.
Two such corners are at Jeronimo and Los Alisos in Mission Viejo. Another is a half mile away at a U-Haul yard where people rent trucks and trailers. Every morning you will see 50 to 60 men standing on the corner and running over to any car that seems to be slowing down or stopping.
Anyway, here are a few reflections on what is happening.
The communists’ big moment came in 1995 when no one was looking. That was the year that the Democratic Socialists of America, a communist group, put one of their own — John Sweeney — in as head of the AFL-CIO. Overnight, the AFL-CIO, an organization that was once ferociously anti-communist and that opposed amnesty because it would hurt working Americans, turned into a pro-communist, pro-amnesty group.
More than that, through the AFL-CIO, communists suddenly owned Congress. After all, unions (headed by the SEIU, which outspends the next two donor organizations which are also Leftist) are the largest contributors to Democrat politicians.
Ok, Ok I know that communists are an old story. Still, what we see in this country is Socialism gaining adherents among the young and poorly educated and among the rich who consider themselves immune to its ill effects.
Over the past 20 years, the unions’ biggest push has been for amnesty, something that, as I noted, the old unions viewed with revulsion as a job destroyer. The new guard, however, understands that amnesty is the pathway to a permanent Democrat majority. Keep in mind the fact that Mitt lost the presidency by only 2.5 million votes, while amnesty promises 8 million or more permanent Democrat votes. (And yes, while Hispanic family values ought to make them side with conservatives, the fact is that they overwhelmingly vote for the same Democrats that slice and dice them by race and create financial incentives that keep them locked in the ghetto.)
Sadly, when it comes to amnesty, the communists and Democrats don’t act alone. They get way too much help from the Chamber of Commerce, which owns Boehner and Co.
I also agree here. A recent story illustrates this issue. Southern California Edison Company, the largest public utility in the area, is laying off US tech workers to hire foreign workers on H1B visas.
To make this story even worse.
Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs.
The employees are upset and say they can’t understand how H-1B guest workers can be used to replace them.
The IT organization’s “transition effort” is expected to result in about 400 layoffs, with “another 100 or so employees leaving voluntarily,” SCE said in a statement. The “transition,” which began in August, will be completed by the end of March, the company said.
“They are bringing in people with a couple of years’ experience to replace us and then we have to train them,” said one longtime IT worker. “It’s demoralizing and in a way I kind of felt betrayed by the company.”
So much for STEM degrees being the key to reliable jobs.
The H-1B program “was supposed to be for projects and jobs that American workers could not fill,” this worker said. “But we’re doing our job. It’s not like they are bringing in these guys for new positions that nobody can fill.
“Not one of these jobs being filled by India was a job that an Edison employee wasn’t already performing,” he said.
Oh well, this is an example of the “Animal House” principle.
Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up… you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it!
The rest of the Bookworm post goes into the role of illegal immigration and why it is being pushed by Democrats.
Thus, in a marvel of shortsightedness, the Chamber of Commerce types see these new immigrants as a source of cheap labor that maximizes profits, without understanding that they’re also the socialist wedge that will destroy capitalism. As Lenin presciently said, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
Lest you think that Trevor is connecting imaginary dots with invisible lines, remember the treasure troves (of communist party memoirs) in the library. he’s got first person data to support every one of his allegations.
Thanks to his research, Trevor can name the five most powerful forces in the amnesty movement. The godfather of the movement was the late Humberto Noé “Bert” Corona , a Stalinist and Democrat who started the amnesty movement in Los Angeles in the 1950s. He was also the one who brought the wealth and moral suasion of the Catholic Church — which was already being moved Left by the Liberation theology movement — to back amnesty. Corona’s goal wasn’t to save souls, though. He wanted to and did grow a permanent Democrat voting base in California.
His history is interesting. Harry Bridges, chief of the ILWU and a major figure within the CIO, offered Corona a position as a CIO organizer. Harry Bridges was openly a communist and In the 1990s Bridges was revealed to have been a member of the Communist Party USA in the 1930s.
OK. We know that relationship. What else ?
As a founder and leader of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional he played an important role in the efforts to gain an amnesty program for undocumented workers in the Immigration Reform and Control act 1986. IRCA.
Also referred to as Amnesty.
The next important person in the amnesty movement was Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, and the one who turned L.A. into a sanctuary city that no longer worked to deport illegal aliens (which was still something of a novel idea as little as a decade ago). Approximately 1/10 of all Los Angeles residents are now illegal aliens and beneficiaries of amnesty. (I’ve also been told by a reliable source that, thanks to this influx, a significant number of American-born L.A. Unified School District teachers test positive for TB, although they’re not actively ill.)
We know about Villaraigosa, whose political career went into eclipse after his lackluster term as Mayor.
The third person behind amnesty is Gilbert Anthony Cedillo, the major player in California’s Democrat Senate. It was Cedillo who got the DREAM Act passed in California. It put California taxpayers on the hook for funding college education for illegal aliens, all while squeezing students in America legally out of the education system.
California also boasts the fourth amnesty powerhouse, Marie Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary and Treasurer of the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO. She is the person behind “get out the vote” efforts for Latinos — legal or illegal.
These four people have made sure that California, which brings the largest number of electoral votes to the table in presidential elections, will be solid blue for the indefinite future.
The only chance that California might rejoin the rational world is if the state goes bankrupt. Silicone Valley and the tech industry seems able to stave off collapse of state finances so far. California is heavily dependent on taxes paid by the high incomes of Silicone Vally. Rumors of a tech bubble are so far only that, rumors.
It’s hard not to think about it as we ease into 2015, given that signs of froth have been building in tech since ever since the end of 2010, when acquisition prices and private company valuations started to soar. After four years of steep gains – of companies such as Salesforce.com hovering near all-time highs without ever turning a profit, of the Nasdaq creeping up on 5000 and at least one private company nearing a $25 billion (or more) valuation – shouldn’t something give?
All cycles being equal, of course we’ll see prices come down, eventually. But I don’t think it will happen for a few more quarters yet.
And:
It’s clear that there’s money to be made in Silicon Valley right now, and no one wants the boom to end.
The effervescence that dominated the final few years of both of the previous market booms was largely due to low interest rates, which, perversely, pushed piles of cash from around the globe into asset classes yielding the best return. The lower the rates, the loftier the inflation. That’s also where we find ourselves today.
If that ever happens and it might soon, California will feel real pain. In the meantime….
Medina is one of those working to get Hispanics the vote in Texas.
If Texas goes as blue as California, thanks to all those reliable Democrat votes, Democrats will have a permanent lock on the electoral college and, through that, a lock on the White House. Moreover, that permanent lock will come after Obama has set the precedent for unilateral executive action without regard for Congressional powers.
Incidentally, the union chiefs are open about their goals, although most of the rank and file are ignorant of this. Contrary to what ordinary union members assume, which is that their unions are looking out for them, the union movement, having been taken over by hard-core socialists, has only one goal: a permanent, hard-Left Democrat political majority. Three years ago, Medina was caught on tape telling supporters that the amnesty movement is the top priority of the Progressive movement. Note that the union’s priority isn’t the American worker, who’s getting screwed by amnesty.
The rest, as they say, is worth reading. What worries me is the role of Republicans in this building crisis.
History, however, offers a useful precedent for conservatives in America. In 1976, the mandarins of the GOP looked at Ronald Reagan, an up-and-coming California politician, and decided he was toxic. Too extreme, they said. We need someone moderate, someone like Gerald Ford (a good man, but a lousy conservative politician). And so it was that Jimmy Carter became president — or, as Trevor said, Carter became the second-worst president in American history.
Reagan, however, didn’t give up, nor did his supporters. Rather than abandoning the GOP, which has a very useful infrastructure, conservatives took it over, just as the Leftists have taken over Truman’s and Kennedy’s Democrat Party. By 1980, the man who was considered so toxic the GOP wouldn’t touch him won 48 states.
Can this happen again ? I thought Romney was the last chance in 2012. Maybe I’m too pessimistic.
“Can this happen again?” It may depend on whether some kind soul passes Hellary’s e-mails to the Republican Party You can probably assume that many nations’ intelligence services have copies: surely one will be considering trading them to the Republicans in return for future favours.
Just as I assume that there are people who know what it is about O’s past that he is so keen to hide, and that those people therefore have considerable power over the present administration, so I assume that the e-mail custodians will have power over Hellary’s administration. So will someone reckon they’ll have power over the Republicans if they trade early, before anyone else does? It’s a bit like Game Theory, isn’t it?
We’re not supposed to have a future, that’s the point.
As for elections saving us…No.
I agree with the article’s general outlook, but saying that open borders are going to bring us to “socialism” or “communism” suggests that the writer doesn’t really understand what’s going on. We’re not moving toward any form of “socialism” but government-directed crony capitalism with a strictly enforced “multi-cultural”/politically correct civil religion, centered around veneration of sacred victim classes. The real enemies of the Left are not the rich or business as such, but the mass of self supporting, private-sector-employed working class and middle class.
The writer is way off base in assuming that the peasants immigrants flooding the US adhere to “family values” as that phrase was used by Republicans back in the 80s and 90s. This is just lazy stereotyping. These groups have long since been shown to have the same social pathologies as the American underclass, e.g., single motherhood.
The US labor movement’s shift of position has to be understood against the background of the decline of the private-sector manufacturing unions and the dominance within the AFL-CIO of public sector unions and “service” unions that represent mostly unskilled, uneducated, largely immigrants workers.
Also, I don’t think the Chamber of Commerce types are short-sighted, since we’re not really moving toward socialism, and corporate and entrepreneurial types will always find a way to make money in the Brazil-like America of the future. Their interest in politics is entirely venal. And the Republican Party will survive as a rump business lobby in Congress. All they need is 40 seats in the Senate to exercise some influence on legislation of interest to business. Anyway, the Democrats will probably keep them around (as they do on the state level in NY state) as an excuse not to give the far left everything it wants.
I don’t see any Reagan-like figure around to save us from this. Keep in mind, Reagan may have won the Cold War, but on this one, he was on the other side – at the behest of his corporate backers, he signed the 1986 immigration act, which helped bring about the current disaster.
I think we are beyond electoral redemption. For electoral politics to have an effect, at least one organized party has to be opposed to that which we need to be redeemed from. [apologies to any English teachers reading that].
Immediately after the election, what I used to refer to as the Institutional Republicans and now refer to as the DIABLO Party violated every promise to their voters and passed a bill that is now known as the Cromnibus [CRiminal Omnibus spending bill] which despite being written completely by the Republicans did the following:
1) funded literally everything that Obama wanted and has done until the campaign for the putative 2016 elections. Note that all they had to do is fund until the new Congress met in January with a Republican majority in both Houses and then start the fight they promised their voters.
2) included, hidden in that bill, was funding for all aspects of Obama’s declared Amnesty for illegal aliens. The money was placed in other Executive Departments, primarily HHS, instead of DHS. This was done by the Republicans. The Democrats knew about it and were openly bragging about it in POLITICO.
3) the DIABLO’s inserted the bit about DHS funding expiring in February as a red herring. It set up a freebie veto at worst of the denial of Obama’s power of rule by decree. Because they had already approved and funded the Amnesty.
At that point, it became impossible, in the limited time remaining, to save the country by electoral means.
4) after some verbal games, the DIABLO’s in the new Congress with Republican majorities in both Houses, voted WITH the Democrats over DHS and caved. Many of those who voted against the cave in the House were given a pass to by Boehner to avoid primary challenges. But the leadership and 75 of the DIABLO’s voted openly with the Democrats for a Republican surrender. This made Obama’s claim of the power to rule by decree in violation of the law, or to ignore the law at will, something that the DIABLO’s had agreed to, ratified, and funded.
At that point, we lost the Republic.
It is notable in passing that the outgoing Attorney General, Eric Holder, endorsed and supports the concept of presidential rule by decree. The new AG-designate, Loretta Lynch, testified in support of that presidential power before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the confirmation process.
The new DIABLO majority in the Senate means that the Judiciary Committee has 11 Republicans and 9 Democrats. It takes a majority to pass a nominee out. Given her testimony, all it would have taken was a party line vote to block her interpretation of presidential dictatorial powers.
She passed out of the Judiciary Committee with 3 Republicans endorsing the president being a dictator. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Orrin Hatch of Utah. All part of the DIABLO leadership.
There is no organized political party operating under the Constitution. Which means that however the country is eventually saved, it will not be by votes. I offer a reference to Thomas Hobbes’ LEVIATHAN, and his concept of “State of Nature, red of tooth and clawe”.
Subotai Bahadur
“suggests that the writer doesn’t really understand what’s going on”
Your explanation suggests you don’t or didn’t read it.
“assuming that the peasants immigrants flooding the US adhere to “family values”
Misstating what was written.
“at the behest of his corporate backers,”
The 1986 law was an attempt to deal with the existing illegals with a promise to close the border thereafter. The promise wasn’t kept but Reagan never had a GOP Congress after Dole lost him the Senate. I blame the 1994 GOP class that took both houses. They could not get this past Clinton but they had Bush, who was weak on this and deluded himself that the Mexican immigrants would evolve into GOP voters, which was nonsense.
The Tea Party is the future of the GOP if it is to have a future.
The points about Socialism and communism were to identify the origins of this concept. Socialism includes “crony capitalism” since that is not really capitalism any more than the Nazis and Mussolini practiced Capitalism.
Mike K
“And yes, while Hispanic family values ought to make them side with conservatives . . .”
Sure sounds like he’s buying into the myth that our current crop of immigrants bring with them “family values” only to be corrupted by the US welfare system. Otherwise, why should their “Hispanic family values” cause them to “side with conservatives”?
I agree that the pro=immigration movement historically descends from the pro-Soviet far left of midcentury (as almost all of movements making up the contemporary left do). But that’s what you’re reading into what the writer is saying; the writer keeps talking about “socialism” and “communism” like a John Bircher circa 1965. Whether crony capitalism is a variety of “capitalism” is a semantic issue.
I think you’re too easy on Reagan (but you are appropriately disdainful of GW Bush and the GOP congress of 94). Back in ’86, there was actually a constituency in the Democratic Party for immigration enforcement. Instead of tapping that, Reagan signed IRCA and did nothing about future enforcement. Given that Reagan was more of a militant free-market ideologue than a conservative, it’s not terribly surprising that he did little about the immigration disaster then in progress.
The GOP could have a future as a business lobby zombie-party, led by politicians and staffers expecting eventually to become actual lobbyists. In fact, that seems to be what the GOP already is. It would be nice if the Tea Party could turn the GOP around, but I see no prospect of this.
“a John Bircher circa 1965.”
He is from New Zealand and has quite a story. At one time in the 80s, New Zealand had a very left wing government. Since then, they have adopted free market reforms and are a good example of what capitalism can do, even in difficult circumstances.
“Silicone” valley is the San Fernando valley near LA where the porn industry resides.
Silicon Valley is southeast of San Francisco where the electronics industry resides.
Just thought I’d make that clear.
Mike K,
I support free market capitalism, and I’m glad that New Zealanders are benefiting from it. But I would accept the hypothetical imposition of socialism in the US in exchange for a reversal of the immigration disaster we are experiencing. Of course, no such choice is being offered.
>. Given that Reagan was more of a militant free-market ideologue than a conservative<
given that he was dealing with a house controlled by the proggtarded for 40 years…
It is ironic that most of these people are fleeing socialist paradises. It may be time to give Southern California to Mexico. They treat socialists, who stray from the party line, like Trotsky.
I have great respect for SB’s commentary, which I have found insightful in many areas. In this case, however, I’m afraid he has let his frustration over the continuing subversion of constitutional processes by the multi-culti and PC elite cause him to be overly pessimistic about the future of the republic.
Yes, we are in a perilous and weakened condition, both internally and externally. Yes, the burgeoning progressive state is a powerful threat to the freedoms and liberty we have traditionally valued in American culture. And yes, the struggle to halt the further collectivization of our society will be dangerous and difficult, and more, the effort required to successfully dismantle the leviathan state that has already been constructed over the last century of progressive ideological dominance will be massive and long-term.
But we have faced many significant threats before, some ideological, and some militaristic, and some, the most deadly, a gruesome combination of both, and have prevailed with less resources of all kinds than we have available to us in the current case.
It will not be easy, certainly, nor amenable to some one shot and done election, nor ever final in the sense that some further irrational lust for power will not infect a future group, requiring another round of vigilant opposition in support of constitutional principles.
There will never be a time in the life of any free people when that liberty is not threatened by the power lust that lives deep in the reptilian brain of every human being. The control and limitation of that ancient urge was the very purpose of the Founders’ efforts, and has been defended in every age since with the minds, hearts, and blood of those for whom life without freedom is not only unacceptable, but unimaginable.
Our children, and their children, will all have a part to play, as we do, now, in beginning the long march through our culture that will defeat the ideology of the collective hive mind, and open the windows, once again, for the fresh blast of free air we were all born to breathe.
As a great man once said, in a time of travail deeper than any we have experienced, let us have a new birth of freedom, preserving, defending, and protecting one of the greatest human experiments of all our days on earth.
This will not be easy, or pain-free, or quick. It is work for an entire lifetime, and generations more.
But if, from the local school board to the city council to the state legislature to the great offices of the federal government, each one of us did all that our talents and abilities could do to enlarge individual freedom, and shrink the encroaching ideology of the collective, these roaches that now infest our culture would soon flee into the shadows from whence they came, hiding there from that which they hate and fear most of all—the independent mind which is confident in its right to liberty.
There is a goal that is worthy. Here is the field of conflict, with battles for the mind, the soul, and the body, all waiting for those willing to make the effort, and unwilling to live as anything but free men and women.
The future lies there in the gutter, where the bloody failures of collectivism have thrown it.
Pick it up. It belongs to the free and independent mind, not to the cattle of some collectivist herd.
Veryretired,
I think our difference is based on how much time we each believe there is. I don’t think that time is measured in election cycles any more. Because elections have been rendered moot. Electing 100 Republican Senators and 435 Republican Reps., and a Republican President would not have any effect because there is no real difference at the national level between the two parties, because the Republicans will yield to anything the Democrats and the media say. Because both parties reserve their hatred for the productive citizens of the country.
We have a long night to get through, before there is going to be anything approximating consent of the governed. There is no surety that we will survive that night as a country.
Our children and grandchildren will be engaged in the fight for liberty; not only in the sense of the ongoing battle against would-be tyrants, but the actual battle against tyrants in office.
The loss of the rule of law and the Constitution guarantees it. Politics is how any society allocates wealth and power, hopefully without open warfare. When politics fails, the default is to force by various claimants to power until a new equilibrium is reached.
Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln. . . . Karl von Clausewitz.
“War is merely a continuation of Politics by other means.”
The elites of our country have destroyed our politics. Right now, fear of the power of the state is the only determinant. That fear will not remain overwhelming forever.
I would rather that you were right and we could deal with this through political means. I have been active in politics, Diety help me, since I was 10-11 years old. From the time I could vote until January 2, 2013 I have made every Republican state convention [and all the lower conventions and caucuses] as a delegate, except for 2. One of those years I missed was because I lost a son. I have been a national delegate once. I have run a presidential campaign in my county. I have more than a little experience with American politics, and am actively in the TEA Party now. I’ve been doing it all for a while, being on Social Security.
I also have some training as a historian. While history does not repeat itself, human stupidity does. There are patterns, and we are repeating one now. I don’t see it ending well or easily. I hope you are right, but I fear a worse outcome.
Subotai Bahadur
At that point, we lost the Republic.
Terrible to watch a people vote away their liberty and prosperity, isn’t it? Distracted, perhaps, by indulgences? Politics too complicated? A wish to free of necessity?
America was lost in the Depression, when Congress surrendered its law-making authority to the bureaucracy, which has been left to write its own rules, and when the the Supreme Court affirmed the power transfer. Everything else is a long, slow, slide downhill as the old inhibitions fade with time and the passing of generations.
The Interstate Commerce Commission was the first instance in which Congress delegated its law-making authority to an agency. This happened in 1887 under Democrat Grover Cleveland. The ICC was terminated in 1995.
The past is not so golden as we remember nor the future as dim. The country may be different, but that will be because the times will have changed. We survived the arrival of the Germans and Irish, so I expect that we will survive the current arrivals. Southern California is going to be very different and we might not be comfortable there, but then Cotton Mather and John Adams might not be comfortable in Boston today.
SB,
Thank you for your thoughtful response, although I would never expect anything else from you.
There are some patterns in our history, and I believe we are going through some of those phases now.
First, as Prof. Mead has described, the blue social model of big government progressive welfare statism is collapsing under the strain of its unfunded obligations and self-contradicting assumptions. This may very well bring about a political re-alignment, involving the fracturing of old coalitions and the formation of new party structures. The Tea party phenomenon is an obvious example of the kind of slowly coallescing organization that might either develop into an independent party, or revamp one of the existing structures to a new purpose.
The progressive carnival may appear strong and irresistible now, as it has entrenched its ideas in so many areas of our cultural and political life, and it’s adherents seem to be in control of our politics, media, and educational systems, but this seeming strength is illusory, as it is in many outwardly powerful authoritarian systems. But the structure is actually very brittle, built on intimidation, corrupt payoffs, and smothering any opposing ideas.
That latter element is the key, and is becoming increasingly difficult in an age when the whole world is wired into a massive information exchange network, in which secrets are difficult to keep, and too many outlets exist for all of them to be blocked.
Second, the US and various other areas in the world have been experiencing a spiritual revival of Christianity, something which has occurred before in our past, and which might power a strong reaction to both progressive secularism and Islamic aggressiveness. As the last two have become de facto allies in a war against western social and cultural structures, including political democratic principles, constitutional processes, and individual freedom of conscience, a determined effort against one of necessity drives a concomitant effort to oppose the other.
It is the progs who have placed themselves in the crosshairs next to their Islamic allies, and if it becomes a free-fire zone, so much the worse for them.
Finally, at least for now, the world is in an era of massive instability, brought about by the collapse of one empire, and the self-strangulation of another. Similar to the 1920’s and ’30’s, several contenders are vying for the vacant leadership roles, and it is clear the Pax Americana is over.
Over the next generation, and more, ordinary people must find a principle or principles to rally around to protect their lives and families. If those who believe in freedom, constitutionally limited government, and the fundamental rights of human beings to think, believe, and peacefully live as they see fit can make their case forcefully and confidently, then those ideas can be the needed rallying points.
The ongoing life of any civilization is always an continuous struggle to formulate the ideas and principles upon which that culture will organize its social and economic processes. For millennia, theocratic authoritarianism was the only idea considered. In our history, a new and revolutionary concept, the only truly revolutionary idea in human history, was advanced—that it was the person in which all political and other autonomy and power resided, and only a government which protected that individual sovereignty was legitimate and acceptable.
It is time to reinvigorate that revolution by proclaiming the pre-eminence of that idea once again. No doctrine of statist infallibility, collectivist omniscience, or spiritual submission, that demands the forfeit of individual autonomy, can stand up against it.
And, critically, no polity energized by the ideas of liberty and the freedom of the individual can be subdued by the serfs of the collective, or the irrational devotees of a crazed death cult.
As a great man once said while speaking to a joint session of our congress, “What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not understand that we will never cease to persevere against them, until they, and the world, are taught a lesson they will never forget.”
Class has begun. It is time for the lesson to be taught again.
I wonder if a similar report is lurking in Obama Administration files. This is the Labour Party’s plan for immigration to change the vote.
The Government has always denied that social engineering played a part in its migration policy.
However, the paper, which was written in 2000 at a time when immigration began to increase dramatically, said controls were contrary to its policy objectives and could lead to “social exclusion”.
Last night, the Conservatives demanded an independent inquiry into the issue. It was alleged that the document showed that Labour had overseen a deliberate open-door Âpolicy on immigration to boost multi-culturalism.
Voting trends indicate that migrants and their descendants are much more likely to vote Labour.
Heh, as Instapundit says.