Farmers have complained in recent weeks that their crops are rotting in the fields and orchards because migrant workers afraid of deportation are bypassing Georgia in droves, even though the law doesn’t take effect until July 1.
Deal, who signed the legislation last month and has been a strong supporter of immigration reform, said he wants to get beyond anecdotal evidence and look at actual numbers.
As Stephen Taylor points out at OTB, it would have been nice to look at the numbers before the legislation passed, but Republicans were in a too big a rush to verify their brown-hating bona fides.
Meanwhile, over in Alabama, a new law that makes it a crime to give an illegal immigrant a ride and requires schools to verify the immigration status of students was probably passed after careful study of that law’s impact on chicken processing plants and orchards.
eric
perhaps they should pray for the divine hand of god to pick the produce…..
Rosalita
Republicans hate immigrants until their cheap labor hurts their businesses
cleek
yr foot. you just shot yrself in it.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
It’ll be awesome. The unemployed can now get the jobs that the migrants had. I’m sure they’ll be happy to take subminimum wage and filthy, substandard housing while working for angry, uncompromising Georgia wingnut agribusiness combine managers.
eric
@Yevgraf (fka Michael): your ignorance is appalling….farm workers make nearly $50 an hour….they will be lining up for these jobs….. ;)
aimai
The comment thread on the local papers is pretty astonishing: a whole lot of people called for the use of conscript prison labor to pick the crops. The money earned to go to defraying the cost of the prisoners and their guards for the state. Only one person pointed out what a vicious circle of arrest-for-capitalism this would create and no one pointed out that the Southern States had already done this for years after the end of official slavery. Apparently the “small government” South is only against big government until large corporations need big government to re-impose slave labor for them.
aimai
Captain Goto
@eric: BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
I’m *SURE* our troll has a link for that.
c u n d gulag
They’ll fix that easily.
They’ll put prisoners to work on the farms.
I’d stay off of I-95 for awhile.
Especially if you’re a shade darker than a Georgia peach.
They’ll probably give you 1 year for every mile over the speed limit.
Captain Goto
@Captain Goto: Dammit! Missed the half-smiley. Well played, sir.
cleek
@Captain Goto:
(psst)
c u n d gulag
aiami,
The South after the Civil War did, indeed, “conscript” prisoners, black ones, to perform the same labor that they did when they were prisoners, not slaves.
Almost 150 years later, and it’s still a fucked up part of the country.
Lincoln should have let them go.
Cliff in NH
Doesn’t this deserve the tag:
“Hoisted On Their Own Retard”
stuckinred
@c u n d gulag: It was being done 20 years ago in Wilkes County Ga.
Dervin
This is a good thing. One of two things will happen –
1) the working conditions/pay for farm workers will go up.
Or
2) We get immigration reform from the right, the guys who write the checks will force the GOP to get something done.
Dan
It’s interesting and sad that the anti-immigration movement has gotten into full swing at a time when we actually could use more immigration and the legalization of immigrants already here (so they pay into social security, medicare, etc..). One day america may not be a place immigrants are willing to risk their lives to get to and maybe only then will we be able to have any kind of rational discussion of why we spent so much time and effort discouraging them from doing so.
eric
@Dervin: except as to number 1, food prices go up accordingly….in a sense we are all complicit in the degradation of migrant workers in much the same way that we share blame for the plight of chinese workers. by allowing wages to stagnate, americans do not have the “luxury” of making moral purchasing decisions.
gnomedad
Acronyms that make me stop and think:
Outside The Beltway vs. Off-Track Betting
Fixed That For You vs. something about the Yankees
stuckinred
And here is what they are up to now:
Zifnab
@aimai: Perhaps we could import prisoners from foreign countries to inflate our work force. I hear Africa has a lot of political prisoners that would make excellent manual laborers. We could just ferry them over by boat and we’d have all the agricultural labor we would ever need.
stuckinred
We have a huge flea market in Athens and the attendance is way down. My wife says the caseload in the WIC and food stamp program is way down as well. They are getting what the want.
Chris
OH NOES!
The markets are afraid of the uncertainty!
The Atlases holding up our society are going to start going Galt!
Government intervention in the functioning of a free market has brought ruin to us all again!
Oh, the irony.
dpcap
Maybe if the Farmers paid more (you know, like Minimum Wage?!?) they might actually get some legal workers to harvest their fruit.
Oh yeah, nevermind, I like my 99¢/lb oranges.
Chris
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
“Combines?” Wingnuts have “combines”? I thought it was just communists!
dpcap
@Chris: OH the irony is so delicious. It’s too bad Republicans have no sense of taste.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
OT, but I just ran across something great and had to share.
Its proof that the Earth revolves around the Sun – a nice looking girl puts a camera on her rack and counts the number of men who look.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=95a_1306612526
Bob
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
Fixed.
c u n d gulag:
Double Fixed.
Bill H.
So, just to clarify your post, you think the legislature screwed up and accidentally passed a good law which will force businesses to hire legal workers at legitimate wages? Or you are opposed to anit-immigrant laws which result in our businesses grinding to a halt? I’ve read your post twice and I am unclear on the position, but it sounds like you think the law should not have been passed.
There is a sort of a conundrum here. If the jobs are made available to legal workers, then people who are far from home, who came here in a last ditch desperate effort to be able to work, who followed the light of the beacon of liberty, are left starving to death on our soil.
NonyNony
Frankly this shouldn’t be an issue. The Georgia unemployment rate is at 9.9% – this means there should be plenty of folks out there who are willing to take a fair market wage to go do some labor in the fields picking crops.
The farmers in Georgia just need to keep raising their offer on what they’re willing to pay for seasonal labor until they get some takers. Perhaps they can pool their resources and offer to run buses from parts of the state to their farms.
Of course this probably prices the Georgia farmers right out of the produce market, but hey – they’re the ones who keep voting for Republicans who want to put an end to both illegal immigration and farm subsidies. You gots to dance with the one you brung to the party and all that. (“Illegal immigration” is the invisible farm subsidy – nobody talks about it that way, but it is one of the big things keeping our produce prices low.)
Rommie
@Dervin: Either option is taken by Joe Elephant, and thrown back in your face thusly: You silly lie-beral, you just doubled the price of produce at the family grocery store! Why do you hate American Families so very very much?
Snark aside, it’s been one of those unspoken problems for years and years. I live in SW Michigan, so I’m well aware of how the fruit crop is picked around here. The amount of other-way looking is astonishing, all in the name of Cheap Farm Goodies.
stuckinred
@NonyNony: They had a Vidalia Onion grower on the news and he said some locals came out and tried to do it and bailed before noon.
Angry Lurker
@aimai:
Truthfully, my initial reaction to the post was to google Georgia’s unemployment rate (10.2% as of April). I despise the anti-immigrant mindset of the republicans, but in my naivety I figured there might be a silver lining. Fruit rotting on the trees? This is an obvious supply-and-demand problem: increase wages and the labor shortage goes away. Econ 101, right?
Silly me, apparently the state of Georgia is still pining for the days of slave labor. :(
Angry Lurker
@NonyNony:
Much more eloquent than my duplicate post! I got distracted for 5 minutes before I hit send, should have refreshed the page first. :-/
c u n d gulag
@dpcap:
Conservatives all suffer from an irony deficiency.
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
This isn’t a good thing and this ends exactly as some folks upthread have pointed out – the use of conscript labor from all the local prisons and jails, since the owners of these farms damn sure aren’t going to pay anything like a market wage to get the crops in.
Slavery Part II, the legalized version (because it will be race-agnostic – we’ll have blacks, whites and Hispanics all picking the cotton together). Here we go, America.
Chris
@aimai:
Which is just another form of government kickbacks to the farmers. Some might even call them “bailouts.”
They’re too stupid, and too busy getting high on their “yeah! Stick it to the immigrants and make the lazy prisoners work for a living” weed to realize this, but they’re admitting that there are things the free market can’t fix, and that require government intervention. Or at the very least special arrangements between certain parts of the private sector and the government.
Too bad raising taxes on people drowning in money, or simply enforcing minimum wage laws, are off limits as forms of intervention.
Joe Brown
Immigration Reform is crucial and has been for decades. I grew up in Eastern Washington, where the economy depends on migrant labor, and everyone votes Republican. Nice seeing a little karmic payback. Let the crops rot in the fields. They’ll grow back.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Notice how, as is usual, the conservatives in charge demand their way happen immediately, but only ask for ‘studies’ and ’empirical studies’ when prompted by something that butts against their world view, never asking for it to determine whether ‘their way’ is actually correct or not to begin with. You know, kinda like with abstinence only education, energy matters, global warming, etc., etc., etc.
They can’t imagine being wrong ever.
@Dan:
Thanks to the remarkable bulldozing of conservative GOP movements nationwide on the state level, this is par for the course. Is there a problem? Go the absolute reverse of the commonly-accepted solution, ensure things fuck up, but it’s OK because it gilds the right pockets and FREEDUMZZZZ!!! Can’t forget the FREEDUMMMMZ!
It’d be hilarious if they didn’t fucking keep winning on this somefuckinghow.
Cacti
I would say this is a teachable moment of why immigration is a national issue, requiring national solutions, rather than 50 different piecemeal approaches.
Georgia has painted themselves into a corner. If they pay a fair wage to legal workers, they price themselves out of the national produce market as long as other states aren’t doing the same.
PurpleGirl
Wasn’t there some town in Virginia that passed a law about immigration status and then found that a whole lot of people left and the town’s sales tax and business tax revenue plunged because along with the illegal workers, their families left and then all the shops that catered to them (groceries, clothing, hair salons, etc.) also closed and the owners left and took their income tax payments with them.
The law of unintended consequences… (or karma) will get you every time.
Southern Beale
I’m sure, mistermix, that the problem with these state bills is that they were longer than three pages.
Ash Can
I second the notion that this is the opportunity all the unemployed Georgians have been waiting for. The law is already having its intended effect, so go for it, guys. The illegals aren’t taking your jobs anymore. Let’s see that state unemployment percentage plummet now. Come on, what are you waiting for?
Southern Beale
Also:
I’m sure the farmers thought of paying a decent wage so they could attract non-migrant workers to help harvest their crops? Rather than let them rot in the fields?
Of course not! America was, is and will always be built on cheap labor. And when people whine and moan about a $4 tomato, who will remind them that it’s the result of border fences and blaming brown-skinned people for all of our problems?
Steeplejack
Gee, I thought that in the perfect market that is capitalist America what would happen is that prices for a scarce commodity (farm labor) would rise until the demand is met. End of problem. Isn’t that like an immutable law of physics?
Don’t tell me the invisible hand is asleep on the job.
Southern Beale
@Ash Can:
I wage that’s higher than $5 a day, I reckon.
Steeplejack
@Captain Goto:
I think you need to adjust your snark-o-meter.
Cacti
@Southern Beale:
The new bogeyman will be “lazy, entitled, poor people” who have the audacity to expect more than 25 cents per bushel of their labor.
jo6pac
@PurpleGirl:
Yep and some dead towns in the south have come alive when they have moved in and started business to serve those workers. The few people left in those town were greatful because now they didn’t have to travel 40mi plus for food and other services. This might help us in Calif. there a shortage of people who have worked in the fields and as some who did this when I was young to say this hard work isn’t enough.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Cacti:
But lets remember, it’s never about companies and businesses paying illegally cheap wages to maximize profits. That’s just sound god-loving capitalistic theory and damn you and your communist hide for questioning it.
Daddy-O
Irony, thy name is Teabagger.
They will reap teabags if that’s all they sow…
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
You still see prison work crews picking up trash along the roads in North Carolina.
Chris
@Cacti:
Is there a window for Democrats to hammer home the point “sometimes the free market wages aren’t enough, which you already know since that’s why you’re not taking that job – so stop hating on the government and unions which exist to make sure you aren’t forced into that condition”?
It’s just as likely that the wingnuts will simply channel the rage onto liberal “social engineering” and go on hiring half the poor to kill the other half. But one can always hope…
jwb
@Angry Lurker: No, it’s more complicated than that. As has been pointed out upthread, you can only raise the price of labor to the point that the price of the produce supports it (unless you want to lose money on every piece of produce picked). So if the equilibrium price of the produce without the supply from Georgia is still lower than the price that will support higher wage costs, the produce will go unpicked.
To answer someone else upthread, I took mistermix’s point to be that the results of this law were entirely predictable, so the whole hoocoodanode response is laughable. I don’t think mistermix was advocating anything in particular—it’s a very complex problem requiring a very nuanced rather than simple solution—just that the legislators were not exercising due diligence before passing laws.
GregB
Mmm. Conscript labor will save free markets.
1860 here we come.
Linda Featheringill
@Zifnab:
Snap!
Maybe you could go to the website that carries the article and post that comment?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@jwb:
As well as the hypocrisy of them demanding absolute due diligence for any study or proposal that dares go against their perfect new law.
@Linda Featheringill:
Dollars to doughnuts, the snark would be lost and you’d have at least 30 comments all gung-ho for the idea with zero awareness.
wasabi gasp
Doesn’t anybody ever think about the effect this could have on the children? Make them do it.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: Yea, we had another bad storm Saturday night and there were prisoners up the street helping remove a huge fallen oak. I’m not sure I’m opposed to them working but not for a private company.
Feudalism Now!
We won’t pay fair value for food or fuel. We would rather have an underclass with few options do the work for us. Undocumented workers or prisoners makes no difference to the 1%. Farm work is labor intensive and we like to talk a good game of being hard working but rubber meets the road we are not. There are a new wave of immigrants to do that for us.
Doing what is right and sustainable will be a bitter pill to swallow but we are running out of options. High unemployment, high food prices and another financial panic will create a tough election cycle. The voices of intolerance will be on the march and people will be desperate enough to listen.
NonyNony
@stuckinred:
This doesn’t surprise me at all – picking produce is hard work. It should be rewarded accordingly – if the fruit can’t come off the trees or the onions out of the ground the owner of the farm gets nothing and the farm is essentially worthless after all.
We have a HUGE sense of entitlement when it comes to food prices and food production in this country. Whenever I hear people bloviate about farm subsidies and demanding we spend less on them, I wonder if they truly understand just how much their loaf of bread or their hamburger buns would cost them without a hefty wheat subsidy attached. Or if the folks who scream angry tirades about illegal immigrants understand that their $2 a quart prices on strawberries from Wal*Mart come on the backs of the invisible farm subsidy of our illegal immigrant labor force. I’m sure they don’t, and it’s irritating that it’s not an easy problem to explain, and that we don’t have some kind of God-given right to lettuce for less than a buck a head and that it has to come from SOMEWHERE and somebody needs to be getting paid to pick it.
Personally I think that farm labor should be paid a decent wage – but that would have to come with a re-jiggering of our farm subsidies. And, frankly, even though we probably actually can stand to cut some corn, wheat and soybean subsidies, to really get a subsidy that would replace our illegal immigrant subsidy we’d probably need to actually INCREASE our spending on farm subsidies. Which, since nobody seems to understand farm subsidies at all, is probably completely unrealistic (at least until grocery prices hit the roof).
Villago Delenda Est
@Feudalism Now!:
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I’m sure there are lots of shiny white kids of Republican voters that need a summer job. Then they can delay the start of school so the fall crops can be harvested.
Chris
@NonyNony:
I very happily bloviate against farm subsidies.
It’s not a “I want them gone” or “I want to spend less on them” thing, though. More of a “I’m fucking tired of the fact that New York and California have to subsidize red-state agriculture, grin and bear it, but if they try to keep their own money and put it into public schools in Harlem and East LA, that’s soshulism. And I’m fucking sick to death of hearing smug, puffed-up Middle American dipshits prattle on about their ‘rugged individualism’ and how we city-dwelling Yankees who subsidize their lifestyles somehow don’t have it.”
Sorry. Irrelevant and not really opposed to your point. I just
neededwanted to rant. It’s a perpetual pain in my ass when it comes to the public discourse.scav
So, the invisible hand of the forgotten laborers picking the crops delivered an unexpected slap to those busily pontificating about the glories of the invisible hand solving all problems? Well, Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin (which turns out to be more apt than I expected.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
Chris, righteous rant.
The notion of “rugged individualism” is one of the most pervasive lies in this society of ours. The first colonists arrived on government chartered and subsidized boats. The development of the original 13 colonies was heavily subsidized by a distant government. The colonists banded together to survive in an often hostile environment.
Do not get me started on how much government made possible the westward expansion…particularly with military operations to clear out territories of pesky indigenous peoples who got in the way of all those “rugged individualists” who sought “free” land to farm on.
nitpicker
“It makes one wonder about the illegal alien fuss. Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal alien invasion or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won’t do?…One thing is certain in this hungry world; no regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters.” – Ronald Reagan, 1977
Cain
@Cacti:
I think it’s good that we have states coming up with good or bad solutions. Otherwise, we’ll never know the scope of the problem or what works and what not. Of course all this depends on getting good people into government. But having stupid people also works.
In Oregon, I think we’ve mostly resisted smacking illegal immigrants around because of the powerful wine and beer lobby as well as the farmers combined with a very liberal multinomah county. Farmers should also realize we saved their asses when they wanted to cash in on the land a few years ago. They’d have been screwed after the housing fall. Morons.
Dave
Why is it Republicans always want to do the study AFTER the law is passed? Fucking studies, how do they work?
Feudalism Now!
Farm subsidies artificially depress prices to compete in the global marketplace. The agri-business model of Monsanto and others have created the Glibertarian paradise of low wages, sustained influx of government funds, wielding patent of GMOs to thwart competition and destruction of small farms and start ups.
But hey, I can get a case of Pepsi for $4 because of corn subsidies so it’s all good.
artem1s
@jwb:
this. remember that this is the state, while in the midst of a major drought bitched that the Army Corp was stealing the water out of THEIR reservoir to keep FL from burning to a crisp. And their long term solution to the problem was to restart a decades long border dispute with Tennessee so they could steal THEIR water.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amapple/3583667471/
all the headaches and insanity that goes with fighting major legal battles with the feds and their neighboring states rather than the unthinkable option of telling their citizens to turn off their sprinklers and quit filling their swimming pools and watering the million acres of golf courses around Atlanta.
This is what happens when you elect politicians who only care about what happens in the next 2 years in their own back yard.
My rant is over now!
Linda Featheringill
@scav:
Lovely quote!
“You have been weighed and found wanting.”
rikyrah
LET THE FRUIT ROT.
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
@nitpicker: Unpossible! Supply Side Jesus is always against the brown invader!
cmorenc
A major organization whose views and positions usually align closely with the GOP on social issues (and the bane of progressives), is interestingly VERY out of step with them on these state anti-immigrant bills.
The LDS church recently came out with an official pronouncement against the wave of state-level anti-immigrant legislation, stating that this is a matter that must be resolved at the federal level. Particularly interesting is the following passage from the official LDS pronouncement:
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Along those lines, have you ever asked a Brit for their view of the American Revolution?
They’d tell you that the taxes we were so pissed about were meant to help the British Treasury pay for expenses incurred in the French and Indian War. Since we’d benefited greatly from that war, which rid us of the French threat and the hostile Indian tribes allied to them, it wasn’t unreasonable that we be expected to pay for it.
He might also point out that the colonies would never have dared to go independent if that French threat had still existed over the horizon, and we’d been dependent on a strong British presence to stop them if they ever got the urge to march south/west.
It’s an interesting addition to the number of “depending on central government for survival” instances that’ve been written out of our history.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
Rick Perry kicked off his presidential run last night at an anti-choice rally in Los Angeles.
With hysterical and shrill fright, he screamed that Obama is exporting abortion. (quick to the fainting couch).
http://www.maggiesnotebook.com/2011/06/rick-perry-abortion-obama-abortion-a-usa-export/
cmorenc
Here’s the link to the LDS church pronouncement opposing state-level anti-immigration bills.
Third Eye Open
@artem1s: This little episode made me really respect Tennessee. Not enough to move there, but enough to put it ahead of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi as places I would rather set myself on fire, than live in.
Suffern ACE
@dpcap: Just to tamp down on this a little. The farmers do hire legal workers to pick their crops. Not every dark skinned indio is illegal. However, I guess that the idea of being put in detention while someone sorts out one’s legal status kind of drives both legal and illegal workers away. Go figure.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
Excellent point, and one that I was tempted to address in a followup before you beat me to it.
The REAL beef the colonists had was they were “Englishmen” but didn’t have a voice in Parliament like other “Englishmen”. No taxation without representation! Etc.
The founding fathers understood the need for the taxes, but objected to the manner in which they were imposed. They were not teatards, for the most part.
If Lord North had just granted the American colonists a few seats in Parliament, Queen Elizabeth would probably be our head of state right now.
Chris
@cmorenc:
It’d be interesting if more Christians were to pick up on the fact that Jesus didn’t give a damn about nationality or race, that one of the main reasons he’s supposed to have come down is to make God the God of everybody and not just the Nation of Israel, and that American (or any other) nationalism and Christianity aren’t the natural bedfellows they’re so often thought to be.
Well done to the Mormons.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE:
Well, the problem, as we’ve seen in Arizona, is that skin color becomes the litmus test of whether you’re possibly an “illegal” or not.
Irish undocumented people don’t get stopped and carded. They have the politically correct skin color.
It’s racism, pure and simple, and anyone who denies that is a racist themself.
WereBear
@Chris: That’s an interesting take I hadn’t run across before. Thanks!
Mike in NC
@WyldPirate:
Yeah, but we no longer use shackles and bullwhips. Talk about progress!
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh, absolutely. (Was making a point about dependence rather than agreeing with the Brits).
As I recall, one of the things Washington did during his presidency was to send troops to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, making it clear to the teatards of the day that the freedom to not pay their taxes and the freedom to attack tax collectors were not, in fact, constitutional rights.
NonyNony
@Chris:
I agree it’s irritating, but remember that without the farm subsidies, if we were actually charged enough for food to pay people a decent wage and still have enough incentive to grow it, you’d be keeping your own money and instead of putting it into public schools you’d be spending it on food. And every rooftop and park in NYC would have its own victory garden.
No man is an island when you get right down to it – the money that blue states have to give to a lot of agriculture-driven red states comes from the fact that the market for food is so damn lopsided even with subsidies. You really think that the investment banking industry in NYC is more important to a functioning society than the crops they grow in Indiana, Ohio or any other farm state? Nope – and yet that banking industry is one of the things that gives New York such a nice tax base from the salaries of the folks who live there – and give them the ability to give money back to the farm states to keep the food prices for those bankers reasonable.
And keep in mind that part of the problem is that the folks in the “red” states know that they’re living in a dependent relationship with the “blue” states and they resent the hell out of it. That’s been the case since the Civil War, and the number of resentful states in the country grew during the rust belt implosion of the latter-half of the 20th century.
bottyguy
Jeez “a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride.”
I guess I don’t ask immigration status when I give people rides, and I suppose it’s to keep people from picking up day labor. but this is just mean spirited.
Once in a while I pull over when I see some parent and their kids hiking it down North Carolina country roads. I doubt that a law like this would change that but it might make me think twice. The pure meanness of the Republican party is breathtaking, not only do they want to not fund public transportation for poor people, but they want to make sure the poor and immigrants walk or run.
jibeaux
@WyldPirate:
Yeah, but they’re public highways. They also do the roadside wildflower program, and every time I drive by an especially nice patch I think I ought to hire them somehow. They do the landscaping at the governor’s mansion, they move furniture in public office buildings, etc. They’re paid a small amount of money for it. I don’t really have a problem with it. But unless I’m mistaken, Georgia doesn’t have publicly owned onion fields. Growers will just have to pay a wage appropriate to spending the day in the summer Georgia sun doing grueling manual labor and risking heatstroke, I guess.
Martin
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory: The teatards forget that Reagan came from California, agriculture state #1.
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff): How can Obama be ‘exporting abortion’. There’s at least 3 places within 5 miles of where he was standing where you can get an abortion. And how stupid is Perry to kick off an anti-immigration rally in LA? The GOP will never win California on that platform, ever, and him showing up and giving that speech is only going to kill the CA GOP even faster.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
Well, the Brit point was a perfectly valid one. The Seven Years’ War DID provide a great deal of security for the 13 colonies, and was pretty spendy. It’s not surprising that the crown wanted the beneficiaries of that war to help defray the costs.
There were of course other issues on the table (the demarcation line of 1763, for example) but the big one was “no taxation without representation”, and North was willing to cave on most of that…but wouldn’t up the representation…and insisted that the crown still had the inherent right to impose taxes.
By that time, American self assurance had taken over, and the die was cast.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@NonyNony:
You give my neighbors a hell of a lot more credit than they deserve here. I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of them know no such thing, and more than a few of them might try to bust you in the mouth if you said that to their faces. No, down here, the government is just sucking our asses dry, no matter what your damn liberal “federal aid numbers” say.
Judas Escargot
@Southern Beale:
Wonder how much of a tax break those farmers will get next year when they write off those losses?
Bet it’s more than they’d make in profits if they hired legal workers and ran their businesses like legitimate enterprises.
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
And this is a bad thing because….?
Linnaeus
@Chris:
I think there is a window, and the Democrats will start to crack it open when they’re willing, as an institution, to say what you’ve said here. Say it loud and often. No, people’s minds won’t change right away, and there’s other work the Dems and their allies will need to do, but you have to start somewhere.
dpcap
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
Exactly. It’s like that dude in Iowa who put up all the Tea Party posters before people discovered he collected millions in Agri subsidies.
Gov’t aid != Gov’t aid when you’re a Red-Stater
Judas Escargot
@Chris:
Yeah, this: If the true fair market price of a tomato really is $4/lb., then let it be. IMO artificially low pricing on produce, meat, gasoline etc is a big part of what’s driving our over-consumption problem.
Your average rube has no understanding of science, politics, or economics. But they sure as f_ck can understand pricing signals.
dpcap
@Suffern ACE: good point.
Villago Delenda Est
@cmorenc:
All the more reason to reject Mittens Romney and Jon Huntsman as RINOs.
brendancalling
HAHAHAHAHA, sucks to be stupid like Georgia.
They did this “chase out the immigrants” bit a few years ago in Riverside New Jersey when they got scared of the Brazilians that were living and working there. The Brazilians left, and unsurprisingly, the economy collapsed.
NamelessGenXer
I say pile on. BOYCOTT GEORGIA PRODUCE.
Tone In DC
@brendancalling:
Thanks for the links. Same thing recently happened around here, in Virginia.
Martin
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, it’s bad for the GOP. Not sure why Perry would be so eager to damage his own party, other than he’s a moron, which we all knew already.
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
Reminds me of that idiot Tancredo, who went to Miami and started whining about how he heard so much Spanish being spoken in the streets…
Svensker
@Villago Delenda Est:
I agree that it’s usually racism. But I hate that formation — “anyone who denies is it a racist” — because that shuts down any discussion before it can start.. One can’t disagree with you, at all, without being branded as a racist, even before raising a question.
It’s a technique that I hate to see being used by anyone, whether I agree with that person or not, because it automatically creates sides and separates people into “good” or “bad” from the getgo.
Chris
@NonyNony:
I completely agree with that and with everything you said in your first two paragraphs.
My problem is with the no-man-is-an-island-for-me-but-not-for-thee logic that pervades the red states. They expect to be coddled, pampered and subsidized out the ass, but fly into a towering rage the minute the privileges extended to them are extended to everyone else. Say what you want about liberal elitism, but I’ve never seen our people run campaigns in the big cities on the basis of “fuck those hillbilly welfare queens in the South and the West, let’s just pretend we don’t need them, and count all the ways in which they suck and deserve to DIAF.” In red districts, entire campaigns are built around little more than that.
I don’t mind that the government invests in people, whether they’re urban minorities or white country folk. But I’m tired of having to listen to them pretend that it’s not happening, and I’m tired of their insisting on the “privilege” (their word) of drawing water from the well, when they then turn around and heap abuse on anyone else doing it.
Chris
@NonyNony:
I’ve heard the theory that red states resent their dependence and have since the Civil War. First, even if it’s true, they can cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it. Everyone‘s “dependent” on the rest of the community to some degree or other, even the rich who depend on the force of government to protect their wealth and the system in which they make it.
Second, I’m not sure how much I buy it, as EDS says. I don’t think the average American, regardless of politics, realizes the extent to which his/her current lifestyle is created and sustained by the post-New Deal liberal state. For the red states, toss in a culture that revels in its perception of individualism and self-sufficiency, and a political and media culture that does everything to stroke it during every election cycle. If they realize it at all, they’re in deep denial.
aimai
@Chris:
My 12 year old just won a debate “should we have a revolution or not” for the loyalist side by making this argument, very persuasively. Her team of loyalists were the only loyalists to ever win the debate.
aimai
Commish
If you look at it from a certain, twisted angle, there is an almost admirable consistency in some states’ forging ahead with documentation laws despite the economic cost. If they really believe so strongly that America is for Americans (and those with appropriate papers), they should vote their conscience and accept the rotting crops.
Liberals could learn a little something from the Right’s devotion to principles. Not to draw a direct equivalence to rationalized discrimination against brown people, but trying to tease a lesson: if we ever get around to passing real restrictions on carbon emissions, there will be economic costs. We should be ready to accept those….though hopefully those costs will be studied and anticipated as best we can as whatever regulations are designed.
Also, too, I hope Georgia turns for its scientific investigation into the agricultural failures to one of those nearby “Christian” universities where the biology faculty has to swear allegiance to the Book of Genesis.
labradog
@eric: That wage is only on John McCain’s farm.
pseudonymous in nc
@Villago Delenda Est:
Probably not. Given that it took over a month to cross the Atlantic, any American MPs would have ended up as absentee representatives, regarded as little better than than the British colonial rulers. It’s now hard to imagine the autonomy granted to governmental and corporate agents in the era before steam ships and telegraphy, the one making the other possible — an autonomy that allowed Clive and Hastings to take over large chunks of India for the British East India Company before anyone back home knew about it.
It’s not a coincidence that Canadian confederation, designed to offset American claims of manifest destiny, came about at the same time as the first permanent transatlantic telegraph, or that the Indian Raj received its own telegraph link in 1870.
Anyway, back on topic: my sense is that if you gave the voters of Georgia a straight choice between minimum-wage native-Georgian pickers and more expensive produce, or prison pickers and no change in price, they’d heartily support using prisoners.