I'm Wondering How Obama, Who Has Now Established That He's Nothing But "Better Than Bush," Will Tackle Immigration Reform

The only real post-partisanship will fit right in

I've been afraid to let myself think this but I knew it in my bones: Obama's one of them, not one of us. "But he's better than Bush." So? Mr. Hankey is better than George Bush. An embryonic stem cell is better than George Bush. Bush is certainly the worst thing that's happened to this country politically since his ideological antecedents-- Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephen's, Leroy Pope Walker, Stephen Mallory, Christopher Memminger, Judah Benjamin, John Reagan, Robert Toombs, John Breckinridge, et al-- led a secessionist movement to preserve slavery, instigating a catastrophic civil war. Why not say Obama is better than them? He certainly is. But so what?

If Personnel is Policy, we had to have had a good idea what Obama was going to be as soon as he named Rahm Emanuel his chief of staff and started appointing a gaggle of corrupt corporate lackeys, tax scofflaws, and Clinton Administration retreads to the top posts in his government. Democrats hate to say it-- as though by doing so we give ground to rightists-- but, in all truth, Bill Clinton will go down as one of the worst presidents in ever... not as bad as Bush, of course, but possibly worse than Reagan or even Nixon. It's hard to imagine how America will ever wind up with someone better than any of them. Obama's only been in office for two weeks and he's already letting the almost universally discredited Republicans call the shots. It's going to be all downhill from here. This nation is a captive of what Dwight Eisenhower warned us-- and worse. Watch him:



I think he may have been the last president to have had such a radical thought, or at least one he shared with the American people. I still have some hopes that Obama could possibly make things a little better for working families. I'm sure he'd like to, as long as he doesn't rock the boat too much. None of our political class wants to rock the boat too much. When I meet one who doesn't mind-- a Carol Shea-Porter or an Alan Grayson or a Donna Edwards-- I'm in awe. None of them are looking for a revolving door that takes them to the riches of the multibillion dollar lobbying industry (organized looting of the taxpayers). But they are an increasingly endangered species. Several years ago a study reported by Thomas Frank found that 43% of ex-members of Congress went to work in this disgraceful way. The percentage is much higher now.

Saturday's NY Times carried an editorial regarding New York's newly appointed-- what a shameful anachronism that concept is-- senator, Blue Dog Kirsten Gillibrand. They wonder aloud if she "can she represent a constituency beyond the narrow politics of her district, where she has been a bullet-headed opponent of gun control, proudly basking in the extremist affections of the National Rifle Association."

It’s not that Ms. Gillibrand is never willing to step out on a limb as a Democrat from a rural, Republican district. She has been a stout defender of women’s rights. And there was the speed, startling to say the least, with which she came around to embrace gay marriage.

Gay marriage is a nonstarter even among liberal Democrats like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, but it is firmly supported by the one person whose vote Ms. Gillibrand needed to win her Senate seat: Governor Paterson.

Hmmm. There’s flexibility, and then there is rootlessness. We doubt New Yorkers want to send someone to Washington carrying a bag of random principles determined mostly by constituents’ angry phone calls and her patron’s personal priorities.

Ms. Gillibrand has pledged herself to studying the issues to better represent all of New York. She should start with immigration. New York is huge; it contains multitudes, including millions of newcomers who perpetually renew it. It is Hempstead and Elmira, Watertown and Montauk. And it is New York City: the glory of the No. 7 subway, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and its 21st-century counterpart, Kennedy International Airport.

Ms. Gillibrand’s House votes on immigration amounted to a repudiation of New York’s special gift to America. She allied herself solidly with expulsionist Republicans, who reject assimilation in favor of locking down the border, deporting 12 million illegal immigrants and enshrining English as America’s one true tongue. She has favored enforcement rigidity over common sense; she was one of the first to denounce former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s well-meaning effort to make sure illegal immigrants drive with licenses and insurance.

Ms. Gillibrand has not shown that she understands the ineffectiveness and moral bankruptcy of enforcement-only schemes. To take one example: The SAVE Act, which she co-sponsored [with vicious, reactionary xenophobes Heath Shuler and Tom Tancredo], was all about border fencing and requiring everyone in America to prove legal status before being allowed to work. Nothing in it required or allowed immigrants to come forward and legalize. It was meant to seem tough, but was actually a weak reassertion of the status quo, in which undocumented immigrants are denied hope of legal status while the government tries to make them so miserable that they go home. That is a recipe for creating and exploiting a cheap, docile underclass.

Ms. Gillibrand does understand that the country needs to increase and streamline legal immigration. But defending immigration should be an absolute minimum qualification for a political leader from this state. New Yorkers should expect much more.

Today's Times features a story by Dan Frosch, Paying Taxes, And Fearing Deportation which talks about the plight of immigrants without mentioning Gillibrand, Shuler and Tancredo. It struck a very personal chord in me because I too was once an undocumented immigrant, living and working (and paying taxes) in another country. I was an American citizen but my conscience didn't allow me to live in the U.S. while it was slaughtering innocent men, women and children in a war of unprovoked aggression in Vietnam. I settled in Holland and, ironically, wound up working for the Dutch government. It wasn't legal. But unlike the racist regime in Weld County, Colorado, no one ever tried to throw me or any of the thousands of war resisters out of the Netherlands. I worked. I paid my taxes. Eventually Nixon was being impeached and I moved home. Sometimes I wonder if I can collect anything for those taxes I paid in Amsterdam. Many Hispanic immigrants in this country never get a dime from what they pay into the system.

The campaign is causing concern at the I.R.S., which says illegal immigrants paid almost $50 billion in taxes from 1996 to 2003, and among immigrants’ rights groups, which call the operation a thinly disguised attempt to root out illegal immigrants.

“For years, they said immigrants don’t pay taxes and are a burden on our system,” said Julie Gonzales, the political coordinator for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Late last Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado filed a lawsuit in State District Court here arguing that by seizing and retaining confidential tax information, the Weld County authorities had violated privacy rights of thousands of taxpayers.

“If the sheriff and the D.A. can comb through thousands of records in a tax preparer’s office on the theory that some of their clients are doing something wrong, then none of our confidential information is safe,” said Mark Silverstein, the legal director for the group.

Where I went to school we learned about the pride all American feel that immigrants have built America into a vibrant and exemplary society, much of its strength resting in its diversity. I guess they don't teach that anymore. Or maybe they never did in backward parts of the country from when these xenophobic notions spring.

And, of course, as long as we got off onto a tangent about immigration, I need to mention that the evils of xenophobia are, ironically, quite Globalized. This weekend the London Times reported on a bizarre kind of xenophobia breaking out all over Northern Italy. Silvio Berlusconi's neo-fascist government is encouraging a campaign against... ethnic foods-- gastronomic racism and culinary ethnic cleansing!

Luca Zaia, the Minister of Agriculture and a member of the Northern League from the Veneto region, applauded the authorities in Lucca and Milan for cracking down on nonItalian food. “We stand for tradition and the safeguarding of our culture,” he said.

Mr Zaia said that those ethnic restaurants allowed to operate “whether they serve kebabs, sushi or Chinese food” should “stop importing container loads of meat and fish from who knows where” and use only Italian ingredients.

Asked if he had ever eaten a kebab, Mr Zaia said: “No-- and I defy anyone to prove the contrary. I prefer the dishes of my native Veneto. I even refuse to eat pineapple.”

Mehmet Karatut, who owns one of four kebab shops in Lucca, said that he used Italian meat only.

Davide Boni, a councillor in Milan for the Northern League, which also opposes the building of mosques in Italian cities, said that kebab shop owners were prepared to work long hours, which was unfair competition.

...Vittorio Castellani, a celebrity chef, said: “There is no dish on Earth that does not come from mixing techniques, products and tastes from cultures that have met and mingled over time.”

He said that many dishes thought of as Italian were, in fact, imported. The San Marzano tomato, a staple ingredient of Italian pasta sauces, was a gift from Peru to the Kingdom of Naples in the 18th century. Even spaghetti, it is thought, was brought back from China by Marco Polo, and oranges and lemons came from the Arab world.

Mr Castellani said that the ban reflected growing intolerance and xenophobia in Italy. It was also a blow to immigrants who make a living by selling ethnic food, which is popular because of its low cost. There are 668 ethnic restaurants in Milan, a rise of nearly 30 per cent in one year.

Although they are targeting McDonald's as well as kebab shops, French restaurants are excluded. They haven't figured out what to do about Sicilian cuisine since it is influenced by Arab cooking. Maybe they should ask Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.