"We need to come together for the good of the country...."

....said the Republicans and the Democrats.  "So just do exactly what I say and everything will be fine."

We Americans are pretty much evenly split between our preference for liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.  You'd think our politicians would sit down, haggle some, bang on the table some and swear, then eventually agree to split the difference.  "I'll give some here if you'll give some there."  That's how you get things done.  Doesn't that seem reasonable?

But Nooooooo!  The ultra-conservative (Tea Party) Republicans and the ultra-liberal wing of the Democratic party (do they have a catchy name?) won't give an inch.  "My way or the highway" they say.  If I were to sum up the Republicans with one word or phrase it would be "tax cuts".  They resent spending a penny of their upper-class money on anything the Democrats might want.  And the one word that sums up the Democrats would be "gimme".  They want all kinds of benefits, and want the Republicans to pay for it.  Dream on!  Those two extremes are like oil and water....they're never going to mix.

This leads to pissed off, violent followers who take their guns to baseball fields and try to kill Republicans.  It might just as easily be disgruntled hotheads who tried to kill Democrats at     fill in the place__. 

Listen up you knuckleheads....work it out!  Democrats:  $15 an hour for unskilled labor can't be justified.  If you want to make $15-$20 an hour you need a skill.  Republicans:  Agree to fund apprenticeships and trade schools so the unskilled can learn and work and pay taxes. 

Republicans:  Lack of healthcare is killing people, mainly poor people whose employers seldom offer benefits.  Your proposed healthcare replacement plan is, to use Prez Trump's word, "mean".  Show a little heart.  You want to round up all the "undocumented workers" and send them somewhere, anywhere else but here.  But we need their labor!  Find a way to bring them into the system where they can raise their kids without fear, work, and pay taxes.  Democrats:  Work together to devise a plan that guarantees "registration" will NOT be the first step to deportation as so many fear.  Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Democrats:  More gun control laws won't work any better than the old gun control laws.  Face facts. Republicans:  Grow some balls....quit cowering to the NRA.  You can work with Democrats to get help for the mentally ill who are too often the ones who get hold of guns and go on killing sprees.  Spending some money on mental health care now will pay dividends later.  And both of you should surely be able to agree to get guns out of the hands of known felons who are prohibited from having them in the first place.  Our laws have no teeth!  Fix it.

See, it isn't that hard.  Compromise.  Neither will get everything they want, but no one will feel like they were kicked to the curb, either.  Politicians got us into this mess, and they can get us out of it, too.  Let's try pragmatism for a change, because God knows extreme ideologies have done us more harm than good.

S

Just blowing smoke, they are.

For as long as I can remember people have been coming into our country without going through the proper channels.  Historically we think of these "illegals", or "undocumented workers" if you prefer, as being Mexican, although many come from Latin America, too.  Today we're hearing more about Muslim immigrants, but by the numbers, it's still overwhelmingly an Hispanic issue.  Point is, they are here among us now.

There's a lot of hot air being spewed by our political candidates this election year telling us we need to "get all the Mexicans out and take back our country!" It makes for a good 30-second sound bite, which coincidentally is about the limit of the average voters attention span.  The more simple minded say all 11,000,000 (?) illegals should be rounded up and deported, just like that.  Easy peasy.

Just think about that for a second.  Who would be doing the "rounding"?  Do we have enough law enforcement to pull some off crime detail and charge them with stopping all brown-skinned people on the street and demanding proof of citizenship?  Correct answer:  No.  And if we did, how long would it take for someone to challenge said roundup in court?  Correct answer:  Maybe 15 seconds.

But lets assume we did have the manpower to round up all brown-skinned people and the courts looked the other way.  How many could we round up per day?  10,000?  Do we have enough spare holding areas to put up 10,000 detainees a day, every day for years?  Correct answer:  No.  

But assuming we did, do they get their day in court?  We just can't assume brown skin = illegal....many are no doubt native born or naturalized US citizens.  After we determine which brown-skinned people are US citizens and which aren't, do we have enough lawyers to represent the undocumented, or enough judges and courts, to hear 10,000 cases a day?  Correct answer:  No.

But assuming we did, do we have enough guards, or food preparers, or doctors, etc, to look after 10,000 more people a day who are in our custody?  And if we did, can we afford them?  Can we afford 30,000 meals a day?  Correct answer:  No.   

But if we could afford it, and if our legal system could process 10,000 cases per day and order them returned to Mexico (or Guatemala or wherever they were from), do we have enough buses to actually transport them all?  At 55 seats per bus, that would require 82 buses a day, every day.  And you can't get from Chicago, or Oregon, or New York to our southern border or beyond by bus in one day....it might take 6 or 8 times that many buses.  (Hmmm....wonder what the gas mileage of a Greyhound Bus is?)

And if, after 3 years of intense round-up we could deport all 11,000,000 undocumented workers, and assuming no new illegals crossed the border in the meantime, who would pick our crops, or pave our roads, or roof our houses, or bus our tables, or mow our lawns?  Are we all of a sudden going to get industrious and do all those things for ourselves?  Correct answer: Not a snowball's chance in hell!  (And if we tried, we'd realize fast we need them as much as they need us.)

I rest my case.  There is NO WAY we're going to deport 11,000,000 people!  So the next time you hear a political candidate say he "wants 'em all out", just know they're blowing smoke up your ass skirt, and then ask yourself, what ELSE are they blowing your way?

Yes, we need a workable plan to bring our undocumented workers here now into our system and make them honest taxpayers, and to control who crosses our borders into our country, but this hair-brained scheme isn't it.

And besides, the overwhelming majority are just like us, decent people simply trying to make a living. Think, my friends. 

S

Just stirring the pot....plus a double feature

Time for me to make at least half of you mad, and maybe all of you.  A topic back in the news today has touched a nerve....immigration reform.

On the face of it undocumented workers who literally wade the river or jump the fence ARE ILLEGAL.  It's undeniable.  The knee-jerk reaction is to round them up and send them back.  IMO, that is probably the worst thing we could do, and probably impossible to do, too.

Truth is, we NEED these people.  Stop and think about it....without them most of our restaurants would simply not be able to function.  They grow and harvest our crops.  Roads and bridges, not to mention homes or office buildings, would not be built.  Landscape companies, janitorial companies, all sorts of blue collar companies would go out of business.  They do honorable work that we want and need and value.  

And no, there aren't enough native-born (white, black, or brown) Americans to fill those positions if all the illegals were sent home.  There are "Help Wanted" signs out there right now and I don't see whites or blacks lining up to apply.  I frankly doubt that even much higher wages would entice enough whites to fill those positions.  Consumers simply can't pay more for their daily necessities.  Our buying power is stretched now.

So what form should immigration reform take?  I have no idea, but I know we need to agree to something that will make these illegals a legitimate part of our economic landscape.  Industrious, clean living undocumented workers should be made taxpaying partners in America.

This ties in with another news bullet that just popped up on my 'puter:  Whites in America had more deaths than births last year for the first time ever.  We need MORE workers to pay taxes, and we can't count on those new workers being white.  

We'll need to either raise taxes or make even deeper cuts in services, including defense, and as the recent sequester has shown, we squeal like 2-year-olds when you ask us to do without something.  The solution (to me) is obvious.

OK, rip me.

S

PS....I had another post in the que, but decided this one was more "in the news".  It follows if you're interested.