A couple a things on the President's address...
First, I thought Bill O'reilly was the only guy foolish enough to think there were a bunch of guardsmen sitting around with nothing better to do than support border patrols.
Second, why is no one addressing the bait for our illegal immigrants - the employers who hire them. The closest the president's speech came was cracking down on false documents. C'mon, the employers who hire these folks know what they're doing. If a bartender is held accountable for buying off on a fake ID, then why shouldn't a corporation be held accountable too. We're subsidizing their cheap labor and perpetuating the problem as well as putting companies who won't hire illegals at a disadvantage, but God forbid we address that at the big business level! No, we're much better off picking on the bottom rungs of that ladder of corruption. I guess that's trickle down theory at its finest. Ignore the corruption of business until it flows all the way to some poor guy from Mexico who risks his life to be illegally employed at a buck an hour and then arrest him for it. So why doesn't the No Child Left Behind Act arrest failing students?
Third, what's with the amnesty double-speak? Having a job and a home and a history is NOT paying the price for coming here illegally. It's reaping the benefits of amnesty. Call it what you want, but forgiving illegal immigrants is amnesty. I'm the first to admit that we couldn't possibly arrest 12 million people, nor would we want to since most would make fine citizens if they'd follow the rules, but what the pres proposed in that speech was amnesty even though he only used that word to say it wasn't.
Fourth, other than that, it actually sounds like the president has considered some of the realities of this issue. I was pretty impressed by that and the multi-layered approach (except, of course, for the National Guard deal and the amnesty double-speak). Which brings me to...
Fifth: Although the National Guard has pulled almost half the load (45% of troops) in Iraq and Afghanistan, and although they're now being tasked with picking up the slack of some other organization that the top brass have neglected, and although the Guard has consistently done this on about a third of the salary and training time as their active duty counterparts, and although they've done this AND responded to local and domestic national issues, the majority of retiring guardsmen still can't collect a penny of retirement benefit for nearly thirty years after they retire. Active duty retirees collect the day they separate. Most national congressmen collect the day or the year they retire, but guardsmen, many of whom may have seen more combat and overseas duty than some of their active duty counterparts, have to wait until they turn 65. The amounts we're talking here are pretty pathetic, a few days worth of active duty pay per month, but over time, they add up. They (we) deserve it. Write your congressman. Either pay us like active duty troops, or quit using us like them. The unique combination of civilian and military experience that guardsmen offer the nation has to be worth that. If it's not, why would it be called upon so frequently these days?
3 comments:
1)How is addresing the reason illegal immigrants come here putting a band-aid on the problem? Border patrol and fences are band-aids used to cover the symptoms by pretending to give attention to them. Policy and enforcement, especially where employERs hire pools of illegals is the problem. Why would we address that at the employEE level at the start of their commute? That's like arresting a hundred scattered drug users rather than getting the one known dealer. Fences and more cops don't keep those two separated.
Of course there are conscientious employers out there who do their best. Shutting down their competitors who undercut their labor costs should be good news to them/you too!
2) The guard (military) doesn't do civilian law enforcement unless martial law is declared. Talk about a new world order! For that reason, those lines should never be crossed. My unit has done construction/excavating work along the border. Other units have performed tasks within their specialties, but not patrolling or enforcement. So one of two things is going on here: Either the guard's role on our border won't change at all and the president simply offered lip service, or the guard will be used to do civilan law enforcement and that's not their job regardless of what they've been most recently overtasked with and underpaid for!
Your mention of the guard's new job reminds me of a conversation I had with a guardsman in D.C. a few years back while I was attending some classes. She and her husband were both full-time employees of the guard from Virginia or one of the Carolinas I think. They were also both memebers of the John Birch Society. Though they hated everything the Clinton-led military stood for (all that wacko world consensus-building before attacking nations nonsense) they had a theory about being in the military and it went something like this:
The NSA or CIA or FBI or pentagon or somebody had surveyed guardsmen repeatedly regarding their willingness in supporting martial law. Guardsmen repeatedly said they would NOT use force to enforce martial law on American citizens in America. So whoever did this survey came up with the plan to deploy the guardsmen overseas and use active duty folks to enforce martial law at home. Hence these two fine Americans remained employed by the guard as their escape from the black-helicopter-run America under siege by its own government. Talk about insane conspiracy theories! AS soon as I chased this woman out of the hotel lobby, I laughed my ass off! Then I got scared to think that people actually thought like this. Now they're in the majority in congress and in the white house.
part of the big problem is having a complete jackass for pres that runs this country as well as he did his baseball teams and oil companies. That coupled with his fine military career or lack of or cover up or whatever else you want to call it. And I think W drives a rusty Buick too. Hell, just let 'em all in. If we're willing to spend that much on a junk war, we can find the cash to let them all in here. The legal Americans can fund their housing and health care. Maybe halliburton or some oil companies could help??
Now that kind of exchange is the reason I come back to this 'blog. You guys kill me! Oh, and now that it's been pointed out that an anonymous comment posts instantly, while signed comments must be verified (not by me), I've gained a new respect for those who post anonymously so that they can see their posts instantly appear.
For the record, I don't have a problem with anonymous comments. The ones that drove me nuts were the ones who simply wanted a link to their own site to appear, and who clearly didn't really want to spend any time here other than that.
Call it censorship if you wish, but I don't allow advertising on this 'blog for a reason and I'm not about to now.
Later dudes.
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