Republican Congressman will ‘do anything short of shooting’ illegal aliens

American-raised, but still illegal

Ga’s farm-labor crisis playing out as planned

It’s hard to follow the news this week, what with the brinkmanship of the debt-ceiling talks pushing us further each day toward economic collapse. I say ‘hard to follow’ not because the news is complicated or arcane but because it’s so unpleasant to behold the Republicans’ calculus that political damage to Obama is well worth the global meltdown they threaten to cause.

Various conclusions can be drawn from the Republicans’ and particularly Rep. Eric Cantor’s behavior, these among them: 1. Republicans don’t think a global economic meltdown will occur. 2. Republicans don’t care one way or the other if a global economic meltdown occurs. 3. Republicans are chomping at the bit for a global economic meltdown. I wish I could rule out numbers two and three.

A metaphor for the U.S. economy. (Pic | couragenet.com)

The links above help explain why I can’t. After one considers the Republicans’ response to the growing number of undocumented workers who pick our vegetables and clean our motel bathrooms, their economic strategy makes more sense. Because especially here in the South, their response to what they call a growing crisis has been to pass draconian new laws that target the powerless and poor while barely trying to curb illegal behavior by the powerful or wealthy.

In Georgia a new law punishes those who “knowingly transport or harbor illegal immigrants.” It lets Georgians sue the government for failing to halt immigration, and it even penalizes the use of fake IDs. A new Alabama law soon to take effect will do all those things and also “require school officials to report students who are illegal” and “allow police officers to detain anyone they suspect to be illegally in the country.”

It’s hard to fathom how one could support allowing police to detain whomever they want on the basis of mere suspicion. I could go on at some length listing discredited regimes past and present of which this law is redolent, but I’ll try to stay on topic. According to the article above, Georgia’s farmers “have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields.” Alabama’s new law will inevitably have the same economic consequence as Georgia’s. But hey, who cares?

Here in Virginia we can’t control what our neighbors do in their state houses, but like some noxious miasma, bad ideas have a tendency to waft across state lines toward Richmond and contaminate our own lawmakers. Virginian anti-immigrant zealots like Corey “They’re Not The Kind of Citizens We Want” Stewart have been clamoring for similar bills whose driving idea is clear: Get rid of these Mexicans, economy be damned. Who cares if no one else wants their backbreaking below-minimum-wage jobs after they leave? Get them out! Get them out!

Just as consumers of the fat substitute Olestra consider anal leakage to be an acceptable side effect, Republicans deem economic destruction to be an acceptable side effect of a number of their legislative goals. Their driving motto: It’s the principle of the thing! Why shouldn’t we increase the number of temporary work visas issued to Mexicans? The principle of the thing! What principle? Who knows! We don’t care! and so on, similarly, in regard to virtually all economic issues great and small.

If we let undocumented workers harvest crops, we can sustain our agricultural economy. If we raise taxes on billionaires or cut the military budget (as China’s ruling party has so helpfully suggested) or simply raise the debt ceiling, we can prevent a run on the dollar and a credit freeze and a leap in unemployment and a possible snowballing destabilization that leads to global unrest. But it’s looking like we will be doing none of these things.

People support higher taxes to reduce the deficit by a 2-to-1 margin

Reality check.

Art | southern4life.blogspot.com

New state law requires gay history in textbooks

‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill continues to bring shame to Tennessee

Yesterday California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a mandate that gay history be taught in schools. Meanwhile in my home state of Tennessee the government is trying to outlaw any utterance of the word gay in schools. I picture Virginia standing at a forked path, peering ahead toward these two possible destinations.

VDOT to hear from public on plan for I-64, 264 interchange

Improving a single intersection in our socialist road system? $307 million. Spending the money in a hurry on something shortsighted, just so the lefty pinko tree-hugging light-railers can’t have it? Priceless.

Two never-finished Navy ships head to scrap heap

These two never-finished, never-used ships cost over $300 million: such a waste that their price alone could have paid for an entire I-64 offramp.

The Virginia Summit in Richmond

Virginia Democrats are holding a summit all weekend in a faroff city that could be less than a half-hour ride away from Norfolk by high-speed rail.

Former Blackwater employees to sue company

These employees are suing because of “new evidence the company overcharged the U.S. government for their security services in the Middle East.” The news here is that there are still people alive who don’t believe Blackwater overcharged the government for security services in the Middle East. Stay posted for new evidence that waterboarding was illegal, that Mohammad Atta never met with Iraqi agents, and that Saddam Hussein didn’t buy yellowcake uranium. 

Norfolk’s homicide rate on pace with 2010

Thirty-four Norfolk murders are on the books so far in 2011.

Without raises, many teachers taking second jobs

Norfolk and Suffolk teachers have had no raises for four years.

Manning-Lamo chat logs revealed

Read the just-released chats and decide for yourself whether or not Wired had defensible reasons to keep these under wraps, besides hiding their own damnable conduct in regard to Pfc. Bradley Manning.

For US soccer, it’s a women’s world

This ought to be a bigger story: the U.S. women’s soccer team has reached the World Cup finals and will play Japan on Sunday for the world championship

Bolaño declares allegiance to the homeland of books

The novelist and poet I would probably call my favorite writer, Roberto Bolaño, died eight years ago today at the age of fifty. His books are still being translated and released in English at rapid-fire pace; click here for a review of Between Parentheses, Bolaño’s excellent new collection of essays and reviews.