April 5, 2019: Why Are Republicans So Inept at Identifying Undocumented Workers?

 

4/5/19: Trump lovers will be thrilled to hear that on Thursday ICE launched one of its largest raids in years, netting 280 undocumented workers at CVE Technology Group and four related businesses in Allen, Texas. No telling how many of those 280 were waiting to rape or murder upstanding Americans. You can definitely assume all of them were working cheap.

Soccoro Lechuga, right, was one of those arrested.

She had worked at CVE for six years.

 

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$6.43 per hour, with no overtime pay.

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It’s odd how often businesspersons – who lean heavily Republican when voting and donating to campaigns – are caught hiring the undocumented and then insist they believe we need a giant border wall. A check of public records fails to yield much info on Edward Cho, owner of CVE, but odds are strong he donates more to Republican causes and candidates than otherwise. Nearly three out of every four dollars donated to political parties in Texas end up in GOP coffers. 

The state is controlled by Republicans: governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, both houses of the legislature. Both U.S. senators and 23 of 36 representatives in the U.S. House are members of the Republican Party. Yet they remain inept when curtailing the hiring of undocumented workers in their own state.

 

The Texas Tribune pointed this out in an article in 2016: 

In Texas, 1.1 million unauthorized immigrant workers [emphasis added] made up 8.5 percent of the state’s total labor force, concentrated in industries like agriculture, hospitality and especially construction, where an estimated 25 percent of workers were unauthorized.

 

Researchers at the Workers Defense Project and the University of Texas at Austin put that number even higher, finding that half of surveyed construction workers in Texas said they were undocumented.

 

Typically, Tribune reporters talked to two undocumented brothers working in construction. They said they often put in 14-hour days, for which they earned $90, meaning they worked for $6.43 per hour, with no overtime pay. (See: 4/9/19, for hiring practices at Trump National Golf Course in Jupiter, Florida.)

January 16, 2020: Trump, Giuliani and Lev Parnas Knew Exactly what They Were Doing in Ukraine

 

1/16/20: Lev Parnas wants all Americans to know that he never really believed GOP donor and Trump pal, Robert F. Hyde, was serious about paying Ukrainians to bump off U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. 

Isn’t that great!

 

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A Pandora’s Box painted orange.

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On the other hand, Parnas, who has turned over hundreds of pages of documents, emails, texts, voice mails and other records to investigators, says President Trump knew all along about the hold on aid to Ukraine. He knew all along what Giuliani was up to behind the scenes. 

He knew what Parnas was doing. 

When Trump said he didn’t, Parnas says, the president was lying.

 

For now, we’ll put aside the bulk of what Parnas said during an interview on MSNBC last night. But it’s possible that he is about to throw open a Pandora’s Box painted orange. Consider just one example. He has provided investigators with a letter from Rudy Giuliani to President Zelensky of Ukraine, dated May 10, 2019. In that letter, Giuliani is clear. “Just to be precise,” he writes, “I represent him [Trump] as a private citizen [emphasis added], not as President of the United States.” 

Rudy is working for one client: Donald J. Trump, as private citizen. And his client is well aware of what he’s doing. 

“In my capacity as personal counsel to president trump and with his knowledge and consent,” Giuliani adds, “I request a meeting with you[.]” Then he suggests two dates: May 13 or May 14.

Now compare what Parnas has said (and he’s got plenty more to add) to what President Trump said last November. In an interview with Bill O’Reilly (remember him), O’Reilly wanted to know. Had Trump asked Rudy to go to Ukraine and to pressure President Zelensky? 

“No, I didn’t direct him but he’s a warrior. Rudy’s a warrior.,” Trump replied. 

“I think he’s done work in Ukraine for years,” Trump continued, as if he had no idea what Rudy was up to in Ukraine. “He’s done a lot of work in Ukraine over the years and I think, I mean that’s what I heard. I might have even read that someplace, but he’s a good man and he’s an honorable guy and he’s a great crime fighter, corruption fighter.”

 

Yes, Trump might have heard about what Rudy was up to doing somewhere, or read it somehow. 

Asked by O’Reilly what Giuliani was doing in Ukraine on his behalf, Trump sounded as if he had been asked to explain the theory of relativity. “You have to ask that to Rudy,” he told his host, “but Rudy, I don’t, I don’t even know. I know he was going to go to Ukraine and I think he canceled a trip. But, you know, Rudy has other clients other than me. I’m one person.” 

Okay, at least Trump knows he’s “one person,” not some conglomeration of weird personalities. We have that, at least.

 

Asked shortly after, if he had gone to Ukraine to push President Zelensky to investigate the Biden family, Rudy told ABC News that Trump “is correct.” He “never went to Ukraine for any probe.” 

Now Parnas appears to have evidence to prove that either Don is lying, or Rudy is lying, or both.

 You can listen to Giuliani explain why he was in Ukraine.

This tape is from June 2021.

 

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SCIENTISTS AT NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration release their report for 2019. 

While Trump worries about light bulbs trying to kill us, and flushes his toilet like a madman (see: 1/13/20), we now know we have just passed through the second-hottest year ever.

 

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“These trends are the footprints of human activity stomping on the atmosphere.” 

Gavin A. Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

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As usual, The New York Times does an excellent job of explaining these findings. This is not “Fake News,” as Trump fans might insist. This is providing readers with NASA and NOAA charts. 

Then the Times quotes scientists. “These trends are the footprints of human activity stomping on the atmosphere,” Gavin A. Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, tells Times reporters. “We know that this has been driven by human activities.” 

The five hottest years on record are the last five, leading Deke Arndt of NOAA to explain, “We’ve entered a new neighborhood in the last five years.” 

It’s a bad neighborhood too. 

You wouldn’t want to buy a house there.

(Don’t believe me. Go to the NASA website if you like.)

 

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IN OTHER NEWS, Virginia becomes the 38^th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. It’s a symbolic move – since the window for ratification closed in 1982. Still, it’s interesting to see how far the “weaker sex” has come in the last half century, with the amendment first proposed in 1972.

 

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“Of all the classes of people who ever lived, the American woman is the most privileged. We have the most rights and rewards, and the fewest duties.” 

Phyllis Schlafly, head of the Eagle Forum, 1972

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This blogger is a liberal in part because he’s old enough to remember a time when women in Ohio couldn’t work construction – because state law said you couldn’t ask a female to lift more than 25 pounds on the job. He graduated from high school the same year a woman who tried to crash the Boston Marathon was nearly ejected from the field. He remembers the “good old days” when Sen. Joni Ernst (a good conservative Republican) could not have flown jet fighters, as she has. In fact, if someone like Sen. Ernst had found work as a stewardess in 1970, they would have been fired if they gained ten pounds and, in any case, they “aged out” of the job at 35. 

By comparison, NASA’s latest graduating astronaut class includes five women out of eleven candidates: Kayla Barron, Zena Cardman, Jasmine Moghbeli (an Iranian-American immigrant), Loral O’Hara and Jessica Watkins. “They are the pioneers of the final frontier whose work will help fortify America’s leadership in space for generations to come,” Senator Ted Cruz told the audience at their graduation. 

“I am excited for the opportunities ahead of them,” he added, “including landing the first woman ever on the surface of the Moon, and having the first boots to step on Mars.” 

Ah, for the good old days, when a good conservative like Phyllis Schlafly could insist that women had it made, as long as they stayed at home where God wisely placed them. “Of all the classes of people who ever lived, the American woman is the most privileged,” Schlafly insisted in 1972. Lucky women: “We have the most rights and rewards, and the fewest duties.”

 

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DID SOMEONE MENTION immigrants? (Not counting the undocumented workers the Trump Organization keeps having to fire?) Yes. Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, warned on Wednesday that, “There has been a complete breakdown of law & order in New York City.” He went on to add in a tweet: “NYC proudly passed sanctuary city laws & bragged about it for months. But now they, & more importantly, the citizens of NYC are facing the deadly consequences of the sanctuary policies.” 

At issue is a heinous crime. On that all agree. Reeaz Khan, a 21-year-old man from Guyana, has been arrested and charged in the brutal sexual assault and murder of 92-year-old Maria Fuertes earlier this month. 

Got it? 

Undocumented immigrants want to kill us all – and if one undocumented worker or illegal immigrant commits a crime anywhere in America, then we have a “complete breakdown of law & order.”

 

Now, let’s say Boeing executives cover up flaws in the safety design of their new 737 Max 8 plane. Two crashes: 346 dead. 

Does that represent a “complete breakdown of law & order?” 

Or the Sackler family and others in Big Pharma push sales of opioid pills, calling them safe? Over the course of nine years, 100 billion of those pills are sold to the people of the United States. That works out to 300 pills for every man, woman, and child in America. Hundreds of thousand die from opioid abuse. 

“Complete breakdown of law & order?”

 

A quick check indicates that Mr. Wolf hails from Mississippi, born there in 1976. His grandparents, if they are still alive, could remember the “good old days,” when law and order was always upheld, and you could lynch African Americans with impunity. If we compare states, Wolf might want to focus on crime in Mississippi, instead of New York City. 

For every 100,000 inhabitants in Wolf’s home state there were 2,637 serious crimes in 2018. 

In New York State, that number was 1,791, making it the eighth safest state in the land.

 

Let’s not forget the raids last August, when ICE agents stormed into seven chicken processing plants in Mississippi and arrested hundreds of undocumented workers with butcher knives in their hands. 

Good Lord! No man, woman, child, or chicken was safe!!! 

We don’t have to be idiots, like Chad Wolf, when we consider the news. One scummy criminal doesn’t translate into some sweeping truth. But that doesn’t mean Trump’s most fervent fans won’t try to shape this one killing into proof that we must have that Wall, that all white folks are in imminent peril, and that all immigrants with dark skins are murderers and rapists. 

Well – except Muslims. 

If you believe Trump, they’re all terrorists.

 

It’s ludicrous. In the same way, you can’t use the shooting in Odessa, Texas (8 dead, 25 wounded) last August to prove that there has been a “complete breakdown of law & order” in Texas. 

Nor does a mass shooting in Virginia Beach in May (13 dead, 4 wounded) prove that all city workers want to kill people. 

See, however, Sean Hannity and Tomi Lahren, both using the New York City murder to “prove” a point. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: We mentioned the hundreds of undocumented workers arrested in an ICE raid in Mississippi last August. They are scheduled to begin having hearings in court. Originally, the raids netted 680 workers thought to be in the U.S. illegally. A significant number managed to prove their citizenship or legal status and were released.  

It’s odd how this happens, you know. 

First, in a deep-red state, where the governor’s mansion and both houses of the Mississippi legislature have been in Republican hands since 2012, how was it possible this could go on? How could companies get away with hiring so many of the undocumented, when the state also sends two Republican senators and three Republicans (out of four members) to the U.S. House of Representatives?

 

Second, how much money are we going to have to spend to get rid of all the undocumented workers in the end? This raid required a year of investigation and planning. Some 600 ICE agents were involved. 

What would it take to staunch the “invasion” of our country, if we know that even Donald J. Trump has a soft spot for hiring the undocumented because, frankly, they work hard, and, even better, work cheap?

 

Third, why is it that food processing plants in Mississippi can’t find American workers? Or is it just that they don’t want to look that hard? If an American worker wants $16 per hour to cut up chicken parts, and a Guatemalan or Ecuadorian will do it for $7, and not expect the company to kick into Social Security, is it just greed? And why arrest the undocumented? 

Why not arrest the employers? 

One of the plants raided was owned by Koch Foods, Inc., one of the largest privately owned companies in the U.S. 

The owner is Joseph Grendys, a man worth an estimated $3 billion (he needs a Trump Tax Cut). The only records this blogger can find, show that when Grendys does donate to politicians, he donates to Republicans almost every time. 

There was one exception, back in 2000. 

Grendys also donated $100,000 to the Chicago mayoral candidacy of Paul Vallas, who ran as a “Non-Partisan.” 

But he didn’t win.

 

In any case, let’s consider Grendys’ billions. Koch Foods Inc. has 14,000 employees. If he wanted to hire Americans, he could take one of his billions, keep the other two for himself, and have $71,428.57 per employee to divvy up. 

We also know that both Koch Foods Inc. and Peco Foods Inc., the second company raided, were recently sued by the federal government for anti-competitive practices. So, there’s another level of greed. 

Even Fox News, has reported that unsealed court documents charge that these companies “willfully and unlawfully” employed undocumented workers.

 

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LAST, BUT NOT LEAST, the human costs of the raid cannot be underestimated. Many of the arrested workers have children. Many of these workers had been employed for years by these companies. They had had children during that time and those children are U.S. citizens. At least one of the arrested workers was a child, age 14, one of 18 juveniles caught working. 

ICE officials did agree that arrestees would be released under court order if they were pregnant, had health problems or small children at home. 

Friends and relatives, community organizations, and others are rallying to help the families. The Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services is also looking into foster homes for some of the young.