Racist show-me-your-papers’ law is bad for Michigan’s economy

You had to know this was coming with the crazy bills being introduced by Republicans all over the country, and an extremist rightwing Republican here in Michigan is set to introduce a racist show-me-your-papers’ law like they did in Arizona last year.

State Rep. Dave Agema, R-Grandville, is apparently concerned about the huge illegal immigration problem here in Michigan, and this despite the fact that the Republicans are planning to cut revenue sharing to local governments, meaning they will be laying off more police officers, they get to take on a job of the federal government. Apparently, we are simply overrun with Canadians coming from across the border.

The law gives “local police officers authority to investigate, detain and arrest people for perceived immigration violations without the benefit of proper training, exacerbating the problem of racial profiling and raising concerns about the prolonged detention of citizens and legal residents,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). One main reason for the law in Arizona was voter about voter suppression, and Arizona has a history of minority voter suppression.

It’s unclear what Agema’s motivation is, other than to gain favor with the rightwing base, but what it will do is discourage job growth and burden police departments.

The Michigan League for Human Services (MLHS) just released a report that says immigration is good for the economy and discriminatory bills like Agema’s hurt job growth.

Many immigrants are job creators. Immigrants are responsible for 33 percent of all high-tech startups, making Michigan third among all states in producing new high-tech business opportunities, according to the MLHS. In fact, in 2006, 22 percent of the international patent applications from Michigan listed a foreign-born resident as one of their key inventors, ranking Michigan 8th in the nation.

Because of that job creation, the purchasing power of immigrants is also on the rise. In 2009, the purchasing power of Michigan Asians and Latinos combined, totaled $17.5 billion, an increase of over 300 percent by each population since 1990.

The Republicans budget has huge cuts to higher education, even though experts agree that education is the key to Michigan’s recovery. During the 2008-2009 year, foreign students contributed $592 million to the local economy in tuition, fees, and living expenses. Forty four percent of all engineering master’s degrees and 62 percent of engineering doctorates are awarded to foreign-born students in the state.

Michigan’s economy could be negatively impacted by the passage of Agema’s Arizona-style immigration bill. Why live in a state where you could be pulled over for driving while brown?

A picture is worth a thousand words

With apologies to mod rocker Rod Stewart, but it is true that “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”

This offensive and disgusting billboard in downtown Mason City, Iowa was paid for something called the “North Iowa Tea Party.” It depicts the President of the United States with photographs of Nazi leader Hitler and communist leader Lenin beneath the labels "Democrat Socialism," "National Socialism," and "Marxist Socialism."

It was roundly criticized, even by fellow teabaggers. The billboard was quickly taken down today because of that criticism, but not before the American people got a good glimpse of what the teabaggers are really like. They are beginning to realize how racist and hateful the fringe teabaggers really are.

Arizona ‘show-me-your-papers’ law is about suppressing minority voters

Much of the attention over the recently passed Arizona racial profiling law has been how unconstitutional and racist it is, but what has been overlooked is that it may be another attempt by Republicans to suppress minority voting.

The law gives “local police officers authority to investigate, detain and arrest people for perceived immigration violations without the benefit of proper training, exacerbating the problem of racial profiling and raising concerns about the prolonged detention of citizens and legal residents,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that plans to challenge the law in court, along with the National Immigration Law Center (NILC.The law violates the Supremacy Clause by interfering with federal immigration power and authority, and it unlawfully invites and encourages racial profiling against Latinos and other people of color.

The “show-me-your-papers” law conjures up images of old black and white movies where the Communist block KGB agent on the train dressed in a long, black trench coat asks to “see your papers, please.” I’m not sure what papers that is, but the only thing that would prove I’m a U.S. citizen would be my birth certificate or a passport. I don’t make it a habit of carrying my birth certificate, and even though I have been all around the world, but I have never had a passport. I would venture a guess that less than half of U.S. citizens have a passport.

This is about racial profiling, but it is also about voter suppression. Like Arizona, Michigan is a border state, but I can guarantee you no Canadian is going to get pulled over just because he meets a criteria for being Canadian, such as drinking Labatt Blue, wearing a hockey jersey and saying “abut” all the time. That is, of course, if the Red Wings come back to eliminate San Jose and the Montreal Canadians get by the Pittsburgh Penguins; then it’s OK.

But author and investigative journalist Greg Palast makes a case for what this law is really about: Republicans disenfranchising minority voters who may vote Democratic. Arizona has a history of minority voter suppression, as does un-elected Governor Jan Brewer, who signed the bill into law.

Palast said when Brewer was Secretary of State, she “organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.”

Palast said in 2008 while working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, a team flew to Arizona to investigate what looked like a purge of Hispanic voters. Voting or registering to vote if you're not a citizen is a felony, and it should be easy to find them because they list their names and addresses. Palast and his team discovered Brewer had not “busted a single one of these thousands of allegedly illegal voters,” nor had she turned over any for federal prosecution.

One of the many questions I have for this textbook definition of racial profiling is where are the teabaggers? I would think government officials violating the constitution and arbitrarily pulling people over for no reason to ask for their citizenship papers and even requiring then to carry citizenship papers at all times is a classic Big Brother, government overreach.

So, when are teabaggers going to organize a protest?

GOP rolls out fake outrage over Reid remarks

The fake Republican outrage over the stupid, private remarks by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, is sickening.

Reid referred to President Obama, then a fellow senator from Illinois, in private talks as “light-skinned” and speaking “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” in a new book on the campaign by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Reid has both apologized to the public and personally to the President. “I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” Reid said in a statement. “I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans, for my improper comments.”

Obama has accepted the apology, as did African-American leaders. But that’s not enough for the Republicans, and they are calling for his resignation. The are trying to tie it to the racist remarks of former Republican Senate Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. Lott spoke at the 100th birthday party for former Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-South Carolina, and the 1948 presidential candidate of the segregationist party.

Lott said that if Thurmond had won, “we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years.” In other words, if Thurmond had won and maintained segregation, the country would be better off, and he said we needed a segregationist as president.

Lott eventually apologized, but he resigned nearly two weeks later. However, it was not because of the remarks, it was because he was ineffective as a leader.

GOP launches racist attack on Katrina victims

The Livingston County Republican Party is taking up the racists remarks of its hero Rush Limbaugh and launching a thinly-veiled racist attack on the Hurricane Katrina victims with a letter writing campaign.

The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus published a letter to the editor from Howell Republican Tom Worley that basically accused the victims of Hurricane Katrina of being looters, thieves and whiners, as compared to the victims of the current flooding in the Midwest, specifically Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who are non-complaining, salt-of-the-earth people. The not-so-subtle point the Livingston County GOP and Limbaugh are trying to make is people in the Midwest are white and the backbone of America versus the people in New Orleans who are black and criminals. The political debate in Livingston County has taken a decidedly ugly turn since Allan Filip took over as chair of the party almost two years ago, and this is just one more example.

While the floods in the Midwest are devastating and the courage of the people affected is inspiring, the damage pales in comparison to Katrina. Hurricane Katrina was one of the five deadliest hurricanes and the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, displacing more than half a million people, killing over 1,700, and causing $81.2 billion in direct damage. One magazine even named it one of the top 10 worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

The loss of live can be contributed to both the ferocity of the storm and the short time people had to prepare. The people of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama did not have nearly the amount of time the people of the Midwest had to react to the category 5 hurricane.

When you talk about New Orleans, many did not have the means to evacuate. Many urban dwellers do not own a car because they simply do not need one. It is estimated up to 100,000 New Orleans families did not own a car.

I would imagine it takes at least a few days of rain to raise flood waters like it did in the Midwest. Even Worley said in his letter that, “When this happened in 1993, I had the privilege of visiting the flooded area.” Flooding for those who live in a flood plain is not something new to them. But the biggest difference in the reaction of FEMA.

Their actions in New Orleans served as a perfect example of what not to do in a disaster, and the lessons leaned from their disgraceful performance in New Orleans will help everyone else. Even the official news source from the Republican Party, Fox News agrees.

“Nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina turned FEMA into a punchline, many homeowners, politicians and community leaders in the flood-stricken Midwest say that so far, the agency is doing a heckuva job — and they mean it.”