January 22-23, 2018: The GOP Suckers' Bet

 

1/22/18: The GOP-controlled Congress manages to rack up an average approval rating of 15.8%. Most Americans agree that House Speaker Paul Ryan has no more spine than a bowl of butterscotch pudding.

___ 

 

1/23/18: Immigration talk is all the rage in Washington. Trump’s right-wing base hates immigrants because immigrants want to kill Americans with saws, hammers, and garden tools. 

Let’s take a trip to Texas – where they really, really, really need a wall! 

____________________ 

“Texas lives on immigrant labor. Our economy is the way it is partly because cost of living is cheap and the reason for that is labor is cheap.” 

Jeff Nielsen, Houston Contractors Association

____________________ 

 

Look closely and you notice something odd. Texas government is dominated by the GOP. Texas has a GOP governor. The GOP controls the Texas House of Representatives. And the Texas Senate! The state has two Republican U.S. senators. Republican-gerrymandered districts ensure Republicans send 25 GOP representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives vs. 11 Democrats. Yet, undocumented workers are employed all across the state. 

Despite what Trump & Co. would have you believe the undocumented aren’t killing people. They’re laying brick, finishing drywall, and shingling roofs. According to the Houston Chronicle, 400,000 construction jobs in Texas are filled by undocumented workers. 

Why? 

They work for half what American workers might demand (see, Polish workers: 11/27/17). Jeff Nielsen, executive vice president of the Houston Contractors Association, is blunt. “Texas lives on immigrant labor. Our economy is the way it is partly because cost of living is cheap and the reason for that is labor is cheap.” 

(As a blogger, I found that 400,000 number so surprising, I decided to recheck my sources. The sources agree.)

 

A Pew study completed in 2014 estimated that 1 in every 12 Texas jobs was filled by an undocumented worker. They were hired mostly by GOP-leaning business owners, almost all of whom would argue what we what we need most if we want to help real American workers would be massive tax cuts for business. Tax cuts would allow them to hire more workers.

Republicans control government in Texas

and still don't stop hiring of undocumented workers

 

 

This is the GOP suckers’ bet.

 

This is the GOP suckers’ bet. A GOP president insists he’s going to build a big, beautiful wall to keep illegal immigrants out. GOP lawmakers, local, state, and federal, talk about helping the real American worker. Many of those real American workers vote for GOP candidates because, hey, Democrats want to “take away all their guns.” Democrats want to make “war on Christmas” and let transgender individuals invade the bathrooms. Meanwhile, GOP business types drive wages down for the real American worker by hiring the undocumented.

 

Also: they ship jobs overseas for fun. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Might I add, as a card-carrying liberal, that I believe Donald J. Trump is a sack of excrement when he hints that all Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers and jaywalking monsters. I believe the average person from Mexico, entering the U.S. legally or not, is pretty much the same as the average native-born citizen. I figure the average immigrant in 2018 has the same motivation my equally-reviled Irish immigrant ancestors had in 1846. 

I taught American history for decades. I don’t forget that my ancestors were supposedly a “threat” to traditional American values. 

Why? 

They were Catholic.

March 17, 2021: Be Glad Your Ancestors Were Allowed to Come to America

 

3/17/21: Happy St. Patrick’s Day, especially to those 31.5 million Americans who have Irish roots to the family tree.

 

____________________ 

“There was but one hope: America.” 

Irish immigrant, 1848

____________________

  

Be grateful that rules of immigration were lax in the 1840s, when your ancestors fled starvation, hoping to find a better life in this country. As one immigrant explained, “There was but one hope: America.” 

Be glad your ancestors weren’t turned away to starve. In Ireland, in those bleak days, observers noted dead and dying people scattered by the roadsides. Many of their faces were stained green from eating grass in vain attempt to stay alive. 

When you hear about the 4,200 children, unaccompanied by adults, currently piling up on our southern border, and hoping to gain refuge, call it something besides a crisis “on the border.” We’ve rescued people from around the globe before. We took in nearly four million Irish. They were feared because of their religion. 

We took in three million Italians. They were feared because they supposedly all belonged to the Mafia. 

We took Russian Jews, who spoke no English on arrival. 

We took in Cubans, Iranians, and Vietnamese, fleeing brutal oppression. 

We enticed millions of undocumented workers to breech our borders, with a promise of jobs, low-paying as they might be.

 

Don’t forget your ancestry when you think about the “crisis” on the border. It’s almost certain that someone in your family fled poor conditions in distant lands and risked all to reach the land of the free.

 

* 

ALSO, IF YOU ARE A TRUMP FAN worried about dangerous criminals traipsing across the border and killing you in your sleep, don’t forget Rejected-President Don’s prediction. He insisted that if Biden took office the media would quit talking about COVID-19. He said all the media really wanted to do was talk about the virus to make him look terrible. 

What a whiner that guy is! 

Even now, loyal, science-averse Trumpophiles tell pollsters they are reluctant to get the vaccine. In one recent poll, 56% of white Republicans said they were either unsure about or opposed to being vaccinated.

 

So here is where we stand. The U.S. continues to lead all the nations of the world in total deaths. 

Second place in a contest no one wants to win goes to Brazil, led by another virus denier, Jair Bolsonaro. According to Worldometers, as of March 17, Brazil had suffered 285,136 deaths from the virus. 

That meant President Bolsonaro was looking hard for scapegoats to explain his nation’s problems, having fired his third healthcare minister and appointed his fourth since the pandemic began.

 

According to Worldometers, the United States has suffered 1,656 deaths per million population. To our north, Canada has managed the crisis much better: 594 deaths per million. To our south, Mexico, with its less advanced medical system, has also fared better: 1,502 deaths per million. 

Almost every other country in the world has done better – because they have not been led by virus-deniers, and fans of the virus-deniers have not been fed a diet of medical bulls***, by idiots like Rush Limbaugh. France, hit hard by the first wave of disease, has rallied, and held losses to 1,399 per million. At one point, we were tied with Ireland at 350 dead per million. Ireland has lost 917 per million as of today. South Korea took the coronavirus threat seriously from the first. That nation has lost 33 per million. Finland, a socialist country, has lost 145. Germany, with a trained scientist as president, has lost 889. The death toll in Israel is 659 per million. Sweden, another country where medicine is socialized, first tried for “herd immunity.” They soon realized that was a mistake. Still, their losses are lower than ours, at 1,304 per million. No leader in Japan claimed COVID-19 was “just a flu,” as did Trump. 

The death toll in Japan: 69 per million.

 

The bottom line is clear. The U.S. has some of the most expensive healthcare in the world. Virus-denier Trump downplayed the threat; and hundreds of thousands of Americans died needlessly, as a result. 

Worst-performing nations in the world, measuring deaths per million: 

Gibraltar:                   2,791 (94 total deaths)

San Marino:               2,266 (77 total deaths)

Czechia:                      2,229

Belgium:                     1,942

Slovenia:                     1,899

Montenegro:              1,861

United Kingdom:       1,847

Hungary:                    1,807

Bosnia

  and Herzegovina:    1,739

Italy:                           1,712

Bulgaria:                     1,695

United States:      1,656