Ezine 2005

Cronies in 'cuffs, New Urgency Displayed by Rove

Meanwhile, the hopeless Los Angeles Times once again gets it wrong, wrong, wrong 

Even with his growing ethics troubles, presidential advisor Karl Rove has stepped up pressure on Congress to "reform" immigration policy. The Bush Administration, according to a Sept 23 "Los Angeles Times piece, wants Congress to pass a "guest worker program that would temporarily legalize the status of millions of illegal workers," i.e., an amnesty.

The White House describes the Bush plan as "comprehensive" and "realistic."

It counts as comprehensive because, first, it prevents future "labor shortages" by implementing the oft-stated George Bush goal of matching any willing worker anywhere in the world with any willing U.S. employer. Like an alcoholic who avoids ever needing another drink by ensuring he always has a full case of vodka on hand, the Bush/Wall Street Journal immigration policy provides against future labor "needs" by setting the immigration spigots at wide open.

Second, and providing its comprehensiveness, the bill simultaneously solves the problem of what to do with the millions of illegal aliens already in the United States. It calls them something else.

"Illegal aliens," under the Bush guest worker amnesty, will henceforth be known as "guest workers," and presto! illegal alien problem solved.

Making the Bush plan realistic on top of comprehensive is the plan's somber recognition we've been beat. Illegal aliens are here to stay, the Bush plan says in its best grown-up voice. Just admit they're not going anywhere—regardless of our wishes, regardless of our laws, regardless of our well-being—and let's everybody stop throwing these strident little tantrums.

But that sounds just like granting a blanket amnesty and eliminating the borders, someone might venture. Aren't Americans, like, 99% opposed to that?

Opening the borders to the world will make our borders more secure, Wall Street Journal Republicans (seriously) respond reassuringly, because once people no longer need to sneak into the United States, but can walk right through the front gate in broad daylight, we'll suddenly have the enormous advantage of knowing that they are here.

Furthermore, the Bush plan is not—not!—an amnesty for illegal aliens. The Bush Administration, which conducted a total of zero workplace enforcement actions last year, is bestowing guest worker status on the illegal aliens only temporarily, you see. Once their temporary status runs out in three to six years—when someone else is president—everyone has to go home.

Confounding the Bush-bashers and making the Bush plan even less an amnesty is a provision in the proposal requiring illegal aliens, before being rewarded for breaking the law with the Bush not-an-amnesty, are first punished for breaking the law . An amnesty, the White House explains patiently, wouldn't have the punishment part in there. And the oh-I-get-it look crosses the collective face of the nation's editorial writers.

Under the Bush not-an-amnesty, before the aspiring guest workers can get their legal status (which sells on the street in Beijing for US$30,000), they must suffer the payment of a fine and, like, do twenty push-ups. Forty if they are violent criminals.

Rove has been busy selling the George Bush comprehensive and realistic immigration plan to members of both parties, reports Mary Curtius of the Los Angeles Times. Frankly, that surprises me. With both Jack Abramoff and David Safavian now indicted, and other Karl Rove/Grover Norquist cronies likely to follow, you'd think Rove would be too busy squirreling away funds to cover bail money and legal expenses to waste time peddling some immigration plan corporate America loves.

Not that anyone who relies on the Los Angeles Times for the news would have the slightest clue corporate interests have anything to do with our immigration policy anyway. Los Angeles Times readers who read the Mary Curtius piece learned instead that the motives behind the Administration's immigration policies are centered around "the administration's efforts to reach out to Latino voters," not corporate campaign contributions.

Nowhere in her report does the Los Angeles Times reporter mention the money behind immigration policy. Los Angeles Times reporters, apparently, can have their professional curiosity and desire to get to the bottom of an issue satisfied by the official line from the White House press office; they can safely ignore an elephant in the living room the size of Jupiter: A quick search on the Senate's lobby disclosure website for the amount of money spent on lobbying the federal government last year in which the immigration issue was one of the issues lobbied on produces the stunning result: $191,294,943 (spend some time with this puppy).

It's mind-boggling, negligent, in fact, that the Los Angeles Times—and practically every other paper in the country, for that matter—can continue to report that the immigration policies of this administration, the hiring practices of which nearly caused a real labor shortage in the lobbying industry, is about Latino outreach, while a fetid river of money, hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign and domestic profits, flows through the city looking for power to corrupt.

But that's exactly what the Los Angeles Times reported to its hoodwinked readers: the Bush immigration plan is about exactly what the Boy Scouts over at the White House say it's about—Latino outreach.

Karl Rove himself has said so.

The White House is launching its latest assault on the borders because, reports Mary Curtius with child-like innocence, the administration is "concerned that increasingly strident anti-immigrant voices within the party were undermining" Latino outreach efforts.

To counter those increasingly [since 1999, at least] strident anti-immigrant voices, the "administration formed a coalition of business groups and immigration advocates during the summer to lobby for the sort of comprehensive plan Bush has advocated since early in his presidency," reports the Los Angeles Times.

The group to which Mary is referring, but not identifying, is Americans for Border and Economic Security, a new lobbying group headed by Ed Gillespie, the Enron lobbyist Bush appointed to chair the Republican National Committee during his first term, and the smarmy Dick Armey, former Congressman from Texas, who whined unctiously to Bloomberg News recently, "Immigrants aren't being talked about in a very endearing way. But we're talking about real good people who are doing what we all are trying to do, which is feed our babies.'' (Like I said: smarmy.)

The new lobbying group is actively working to pass the president's immigration plan, or, as we know from the quality coverage provided by the Los Angeles Times, the president's effort to shore up Republican support among Latinos.

To raise funds for the Republicans' Latino outreach program, the Gillespie/Armey lobbying group is hitting up big corporations with a history of favoring unpopular, but lucrative, cheap lab— er, minority outreach immigration policies.

Gillespie and Armey promise to use the $3 million in corporate funds they hope to raise to get the president's Latino outreach immigration plan through Congress. They figure it will cost about $3 million to get members of Congress to vote for a bill that would accomplish the well known corporate goal of helping Republicans appeal to Latinos.

Terry Holt, a former Bush campaign spokesman, is working with Gillespie and Armey on the effort to use immigration policy to endear Republicans to Latinos, an ethnic group that is falling behind non-Hispanic whites, according to a Pew Hispanic Center .pdf study, thanks substantially to the negative economic impact of large-scale immigration.

But in an August interview, Holt told Bloomberg News, that "the campaign being planned by Gillespie and Armey is aimed at emphasizing the economic benefits of immigrant workers."

Gillespie and Armey, for their part, in trying to convince corporations to support their efforts to support the president's Latino outreach program, emphasize the severe labor shortage crisis in which the country remains gripped. It's a puzzling strategy, since they have never, to my knowledge, cited any evidence whatsoever that Latinos are any more worried than the rest of us that the United States has run out of Americans.

Dick Armey, a former economics teacher, explains the economics of the GOP's Latino voter outreach program to Bloomberg's business publication this way: "Businesses would like to have more access to these kinds of workers who we can't seem to find in the domestic labor supply.

As talking points go, that one definitely needs work, too. Otherwise, I'm afraid, they aren't going to be very successful at turning Latinos—or the rest of the domestic labor supply, for that matter—into Republicans. Perhaps if they threw in a few family-values-don't-stop-at-the-Rio-Grandes, it would sound snappier.

For now, however, I'd caution corporations looking to unload a bunch of money on the GOP's efforts to shore up support among Latinos to look elsewhere.

In the meantime, the current corruption scandal continues to grow. As it gathers steam, I have no doubt the Los Angeles Times will be in the front row at the public stonings gleefully throwing rocks with everyone else.

I sincerely hope at some point someone of substance in that organization stops and looks back at the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the immigration issue in general over the years. He or she will notice that the coverage overall has been practically indistinguishable from the inadequate, misleading, and pitifully weak piece by Mary Curtius noted here.

I hope that that person at the Times has the strength of character and nobility of soul to recognize that the responsibility for the disaster being needlessly visited on this country, and on our young people, isn't limited to the bribe-givers, the influence-peddlers, and the bribe-takers.

Not by a long shot.

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