The rhetoric runs pretty high when most Americans discuss the issue of illegal immigration. All too often, from both sides of the political debate, there is the agreement that undocumented workers cost us tax dollars. What rational is this belief based on? Most of the studies that I have read, including this latest one from Texas, indicate otherwise. In its conclusion it states;

The Comptroller’s office estimates the absence of the esti­mated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our Gross State Product of $17.7 billion. Also, the Comptroller’s office estimates that state revenues collected from undocument­ed immigrants exceed what the state spent on services, with the difference being $424.7 million.

I remember when I was going to school in San Diego that this rhetoric was completely radicalized to the point of comparing illegal immigration to rape and murder. Because most people seem to put on their blinders whenever illegal immigration is brought up, insane comments like that become accepted in our soceity.

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Posted by Brooks Smith at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments

A lot of complaints about President Bush’s foreign policy are that it does nothing but cause the world to hate us. Most of this assertion is based on the Iraq war, handling of the UN, standoffish “diplomacy,” and our inadequate funding in foreign aid. While true, it ignores the fact that our country has done most of the same things for the last fifty years. Some examples would be the establishment of current IMF policy, the Vietnam War, and how we have controlled debate in the UN. To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, the direction of our policy has been the same, but this time under Bush it has been placed on steroids.

Over the past few days the repercussions of our policy were exhibited with the riots preceding the death of former Chilean dictator Pinochet. The death of former leaders in our country is pretty docile compared to other countries. Several thousand supporters of Pinochet marched and when they noticed the journalist covering the event they started throwing bottled water and cursed at them for their “unfavorable” opinions on the dictatorship. A riot ensued, which in turn started another riot form protestors of the supporters. The man has been out of power for sixteen years, and people have acted like he was recently assassinated.

We cannot forget that the seventeen years of dictatorship was created by the same foreign policy that we have run for years. Pinochet gained and sustained his power just because we had a few presidents that felt that South America would be better if it had a country with a privatized economy.

Most of what had unfolded in Chile should be understood as an example of our backward foreign policy of short-sited economic gains. We make the untrue connection of believing that because there are free markets that democracy will ensure. Both Kissinger and Nixon believed that if Salvador Allende was in power then he would start a domino effect of “socialist” governments. This fear of a soviet block just south of America is the same nonsense that brought us the war in Vietnam.

The reason behind these riots is something deeply rooted in their consciousness. It’s difficult for us to imagine emotions from their own 9-11 (September 11, 1973), but I’ll try to give you smidgen of truth.

Pretend that we just recently elected a new president with an overwhelming majority of the vote with a populist agenda. Then, a few days before he would be sworn in, the White House was bombed (financed and planned by a powerful foreign country), and a general was placed in power to push a totally different political/economic agenda. A dictatorship would quickly develop and a police state would be implemented resulting in a couple million murdered. A lot of resentment would be directed toward the government, but even more would be placed upon the power foreign country.

The torture that we put Chile through twenty year ago still resonates today, and it will take even more years for the wounds to heal. Much of what is happening under the guise of anti-terrorist measures by our government is creating even more wounds which I fret will never heal.

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Posted by Brooks Smith at 7:14 PM | Permalink | Comments

Last year the 109^th congress only worked 103 days. I don’t know if this is good news or bad news, but contrary to popular belief our congressional leaders only worked two and a half days a week. What did they do with the extra two and a half days? Campaigning? Accepting bribes from lobbyists? Taking naps? Playing video games? With the deregulation of the FCC, changes in Medicare, elimination of welfare, drafting the Patriot Act among other things it’s pretty hard to imagine what other horrible things they could accomplish if they actually tried. With all things considered I am kind of glad that they only worked at half the pace.

With the elimination of whole three-week vacations, these politicians are finally starting to come grip of what every American has to deal with. Most parents have to spend five days a week at work with little hope (or desire) of a vacation. One representative complains in the article that she has to figure out how to juggle her time at work to accommodate her daughter’s Girl Scout activates. To her this is an unnecessary inconvenience, but to many Americans it is reality.

It’s pretty sad that the Democratic Party boasts of this change in congressional procedures with the same gusto as raising the minimum wage and making health care affordable. What is even sadder is that we continue to believe that taking time off from work is something that is detrimental to our well-being. All workers have the right to take paid time off from work; lets just hope that our representatives increased workload will force them to change our current work standards.

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Posted by Brooks Smith at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments

With the midterm elections over and most of the congressional committees already named to begin in January, the media has already started a drumbeat for the presidential election. It would be great if they would put more attention to what bills will be proposed within the first hundred hours under a Pelosi run house, but most news media corporations like to discuss idle political gossip. Right now all the talk is a McCain vs. Clinton match up. They use the current poll answers to formula their option that these two are most likely what each party will produce.

On Hardball, Chris Matthews keeps pushing this idea that McCain and Clinton contest is not only likely, but eminent. Almost to the point that everyone besides Giuliani is even given a realistic look. This proposed match up is probably the best bet of occurring, but we are still in the beginning stages of their campaigns. There is always a chance that an unknown to the general public that will emerge into national consciousness. Just think of examples like Howard Dean, Ralph Nader, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. None of those guys were even remotely known a year before the election.

These obscure politicians should at least be given some air time, or even talked about. It would be even better if the networks would actually discuss third party candidates, or better yet their platform issues. I have little hope that any of these people will get any attention, until they win a huge primary state election.

What also needs to happen is to actually get into depth with each candidate. What they have said, what bills they voted for, any scandals they may be involved in, and what they propose needs to be analyzed with a certain level of scrutiny.

I guess I am up to the task. It may be daunting, not in the sheer number of candidates, but with the amount of scandals and poor decisions made. Whole volumes of texts could be devoted to the illegal and unethical behavior of Newt Gingrich. Even with the issue of voting to give the President ultimate power to declare war includes most of the Democratic Party hopefuls.

Over the course of the year, I hope to give a fair and non-bias perspective on the Presidential candidates to give readers (and podcast listeners) an accurate understanding of these men and women.

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Posted by Brooks Smith at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments

From disputed ballot chads in Florida to bullying other countries at the U.N., John Bolton's psychotic reign of terror is now over. All this time we couldn't laugh at his ill rational and unstable behavior without the fear that he actually has the power to implement them. Now, we can just laugh at him without dreading of a possible nuclear holocaust.

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Posted by Brooks Smith at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Comments

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, tell the Observer that the online encyclopedias will not bow to Chinese Censors.
Wales said censorship was ' antithetical to the philosophy of Wikipedia. We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information, and for us to compromise I think would send very much the wrong signal: that there's no one left on the planet who's willing to say "You know what? We're not going to give up."'
Wikipedia has been banned in mainland China since October 2005. No specific reason has been given publicly. The consensus is that the Chinese Government is concerned about entries covering Taiwanese independence, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, among other entries. Despite China's assimilation of capitalist structures, they continue to violently repress human rights. Proscuting jounalists and bloggers has become common place. The free exchange of idea on the internet seem to be a serious concern for the Chinese Communist Leader. Their heavy filtering of the internet has become known as The Great Firewall of China. This filtering has really only been made possible by the cooperation of American corporations like Microsoft, Google , and Yahoo. Each has made special version of their search engines to be used in China. These search engines filter out all content that the Chinese Leaders wish to censor. Hand in hand they cooperate to cover up the brutal reality of the Chinese government. A very good critic of these companies can be found on NewBuster. Allegedly, Yahoo recently took it on step further providing information that led to the arrest of a Chinese blogger. Jimmy Wales should not be alone in his stand for freedom. In this time of faux patriotism, its getting harder and harder to find real patriots that fight for the Ideals of this country. And the most important of those ideals is the free flow of information. Without that democracy means nothing at all. It is sad to see so many corporate leaders putting the dollar before their humanity. Especially when it is a company that I generally respect, like google.

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Posted by Jason Rigden at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments

Okay lets suppose for a moment that you are interested in politics. Really interested in politics. Really really interested. Actually obsessed. You are the type of person who would actually think about reading the full test of a bill in congress. Your hard core. If this is you, then you need to check out govtrack.us, a 2006 Webby Award nominee. Through the power of rss and/or email, you can pick "monitors”" that will track your legislator, bill, or simply special issues. The reason I say it is for the hard core political junkie, is the fact that is real news. No spin, commentary, just the facts. I think a lot of of people would get turned off by that, but for folks like you and me its better than midget kick boxing.

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Posted by Jason Rigden at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments

Seems like they let just about anyone have a podcast these days. Now the government is jumping on board too. Check out firstgov.gov's podcast page to find them. The same page also link to various official government rss feed, for all you rss junkies out there. On the site you can find links to everything from President George W. Bush's Speeches and Remarks; to Homeland Security Research News from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); hell even the fucking President's dog, Barney has one. Sadly, it seem that only the executive branch is really represented. The only US court to have a podcast is the 7th Judicial Circuit of the United States.
And as far as I can tell there are no Congressional Podcasts from the government. The closest thing I could find would be cspan's page. But its not a podcast and its in realplayer format. Its nice to see Congress embracing open formats. Hey wait a minute didn't Sen. Maria Cantwell work for RealNetwork. Yes she did. Cspan is great sometimes, but usually its just some Junior Sen. from Kansas yelling about farm subsidies for his soy bean farmers. No one cares, and so they tune out. Podcasting gives the people what they want when they want it. Transparency in government means nothing if the information is so difficult to find, that it essentially might as well be secret.

While I like the steps that the US government has taken in regards to creating podcasts and rss feeds,they need to do more. There needs to be one site that collects the recordings that already exist and are continually being made and then make them available for the people when they want it. This site would be the Cspan of the internet. Imagine a searchable multidimensional audio archive of every committee hearing, floor debate, official speech, and federal court decisions. You would be able to search and track bills, or follow court cases, or track your congress man's activities like never before. Not only would this be help voters to be more informed, but it would also be an enormous resource for the ever growing movement of citizen journalist.

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Posted by Jason Rigden at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments

Maybe your a candidate, a writer, an activist, an event organizer, or whatever but for some reason you want to be a guest on our show. Just send us an email at theshow@lawngnomedeathmarch.net tell us who you are and why you want to be on our show. We'll take a look and get back to you as soon as humanly possible. All interview will be done over the phone or though skype on Mondays or Tuesdays, unless under special arrangement.

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Posted by Jason Rigden at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments

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Posted by Jason Rigden at 8:02 PM | Permalink | Comments

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Posted by Jason Rigden at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments

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Posted by Jason Rigden at 3:41 AM | Permalink | Comments

In an attempt to educate people outside of their American Idol, CSI, or Monday Night Football trivia here is some shit you've probably never heard about. Well, have you even heard anything about the recent Mexican election? Probably not, I know I've heard very little, so I'm quite sure that unless your an Mexican Politics major you probably know shit. I was doing some research on this and I have to admit the whole thing is truly fucked-up. Here are some links to find out a little more about this election. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.

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Posted by J.L. Bielecki at 2:45 AM | Permalink | Comments