The McKinley Plan: Republicans Protect The Borders-Democrats Don’t

Last Tuesday the DM Register headlined the McKinley Task Force recommended changes to Iowa’s immigration laws. Don over at Cyclone Conservative gave the details of the proposal a thorough review last Tuesday and we here at TRS urge everyone to watch the video.

The Senate Republicans produced the nearly perfect Republican immigration position. Long ago TRS called for a Republican immigration plan that enforced existing laws while helping streamline the legal entry process, particularly for shrinking states like Iowa. Now we have it. The only downside is creating fourteen new trooper positions to expedite enforcement. Since the troopers have been recently spotted doing traffic enforcement on residential streets in urban areas perhaps we could simply reassign fourteen existing troopers? Otherwise, spot on!

Under its new leadership our Republican Senate is showing a willingness to advance a very clever agenda. The Republican immigration plan puts the state of Iowa in the position of helping people who deserve help, once lawful immigrants who have simply run afoul of the bureaucratic maze of the State Department like Adriadne awaiting the Minotaur. At the same time, the Republican proposal also emphasizes enforcement of employer sanctions.

Even better, the Democrat response demonstrates that they cannot move beyond the politics of hate. Race baiting is such an integral, immediate and visceral component of Democrat politics and ideology that the Democrats first response was to characterize the bill as anti-Hispanic racism. One liberal characterized the plan as “creating a situation where anyone who's brown is suspect”. How?

The accusations of racism arise from an objection to the mere existence and enforcement of any immigration laws, lSince present demographic trends show that Hispanics dominate both legal and illegal immigration into the United States, Hispanics presently violate immigration laws in far larger numbers than do other immigrants. To attribute the statistical affects of the Republican proposal on anything more than demographic reality bespeaks either gross disingenuity or gross ethnic paranoia.. Moreover, it conclusively establishes that liberals will never protect the borders because they simply don’t respect the borders.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy used the opportunity to class bait as well, commenting that the plan "amounts to an amnesty bill for corporate CEOs who want to abuse workers, drive down wages and violate the law." How?

The GOP plan requires the Attorney General of Iowa to develop protocols for correlating state and federal enforcement. Such a protocol should require the state to notify the feds when an Iowa employer has knowing employed illegal immigrants. Most prosecutions would obviously be conducted by the federal law enforcement authorities who specialize in such prosecutions.

The Democrat plan is to create an entirely new and very expensive prosecutorial system for the purpose of pursuing fines of only $10,000. The size of the fines wouldn’t justify the cost of the prosecutions or the additional state prosecutorial staff necessary to enforce a whole new set of state criminal laws that simply duplicate federal law. Tell me again about efficient use of resources my Democrat friends.

Good policy makes good politics and the Republican plan will prove the axiom’s wisdom if we keep this issue before the public and don’t allow the Dem hate machine to shout us down with the usual accusations of racism.

Apparently not the cause of his life-Edwards out.

Rumor has it that John Edwards is abandoning his Presidential campaign. If so, his statements of last week that he was in the race for the long term, because his vision of a social welfare nanny state, grounded on the Marxian maxim of from each according to their ability and to each according to their need, was the “cause of his life“. Apparently not.

So long John, hate didn‘t sell this time around either.

W wins again-earmark reform.

Last night President Bush just might just have inflicted his most cutting blow on the Ds. Now that the Dems control Congress they have accessed the incumbents’ secret weapon, earmarks.

Damascus Nancy, Dingy Harry and ABSCAM Jack spent the first six years of the Bush Presidency attacking the GOP for an earmark funded culture of corruption. Upon gaining control of Congress W didn’t interfere much with the Democrat spending. The Administration won the big budget battle but otherwise allowed the Democrat leadership to increase earmarks by more than 600%.

Last night, in a brilliant election year move, W stopped the earmarks in their tracks. Congress can appropriate the money but the President spends it and W said he won’t. Moreover, the Administration even limited Congressional ability to earmark above the table, before appropriations bills are submitted for a floor vote by threatening vetoes of bills that haven’t pared the earmarks contained therein by at least 50%.

Taking the high road against a detested and corrupt practice is always good politics. It is purely brilliant politics when that deadly veto pen can be used by a lame duck President to block every election year payoff while simultaneously illuminating the details and authors thereby turning a traditional strength of incumbency into a perilous weakness. What if the President used the bully pulpit to hammer Dems by name, especially ABSCAM Jack Murtha, the true Earmark King, a few times a week for theirs obscene spending projects.

One can only muse at the gnashing of teeth and rending or clothes that occurred when Damascus Nancy, Dingy Harry and the Earmark King, ABSCAM Jack Murtha started musing on the latent budget hawk in George W. Bush at last night’s SoU after parties. If the look on Speaker Pelosi’s face when the President described the earmark reforms he was exclusively implementing through his Article II powers. The blinks increased to several a minute and, shortly thereafter began pouring through some written materials.

That’s a pretty loud quack for a lame duck.

Jasper County GOP, Jim Van Engelenhoven and the demise of gift certificates.

TRS had a great trip over to the Japser County GOP Central Committee meeting tonight. Much good work was done by the Jasper County Republicans. Those guys continue to be one of the most organized of Iowa counties.

Chairman Eldon Pals brought the important local issue of a new casino in Newon before the committee. Perhaps more on this hot topic in the coming days. It was good to see the kind of productive discussion that the Jasper County folks held last night.

Rep. Jim Van Engelenhoven of Marion County provided an update on the Democrats’ misdeeds with your money and freedom during the early days of this 2008 General Assembly. Though hardly the most significant of the calamitous policy the Dems have already advanced this year, one budget scam best illustrated the omnivorous and insatiable need for your money that the socialist nanny state requires.

Jim reported that Gov. Chet “Big Lug” Culver has not abandoned his desire to tax holidays. As the reader will recall, last fall the the Big Lug attempted to add sales tax to Halloween Jack-o-lanterns. This year the scheme is to require all gift certificates sold in Iowa to have and bear expiration dates. Upon expiration without redemption the merchant would be compelled to send the money to the State.

Of course, such a scheme would make it harder to redeem gift certificates while probably garnering rather modest sums of money for the state. There is truly no stone that Democrats will leave unturned in their search for the PIN code to your wallet.

The living Kennedys, larger than life Clintons and the Empresses’ clothes.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have bamboozled the American public for sixteen years.

For the better part of two decades the Clinton lie machine has spun the most outrageous of cover stories. My favorite was, of course, the protective persons privilege. During one of the many times United States Attorney General Janet Reno litigated against the United States on behalf of Bill Clinton personally, the USAG actually proposed that the police officers (Secret Service Treasury agents) who guard the President be prohibited from testifying about criminal acts they eye witnessed the President commit.. While the general public would probably have swallowed (no pun intended) that one, even the most liberal of D.C. District judges couldn’t .

Time and again the Clintons and their fawning media sycophants and liberal hangers on demanded the American people indulge in “a willing suspension of disbelief”. However, the Clinton propaganda machine may have just met its match in the reality of Barack Obama.

Hillary and especially Bill Clinton spent the first part of the South Carolina primary campaign trying to convince the state black Democrats that Hillary and, of course Bill (‘cause its really always about Bill) were black and Obama was white. While that takes chutzpah, it won’t seem so far fetched if you think about some of the obviously false and, at times, preposterous and irrational propositions they persuaded the public to accept, even Bubba couldn‘t pull off suspension of disbelief. Week two saw a new Clinton approach; concede South Carolina and divide the Democrats along racial lines. Since whites outnumber blacks 3 and 4 to 1 in most primaries the math looks good in Clinton world, so the only thing President Clinton risked was his historic mantle as the first black President.

Then came the crushing South Carolina defeat. Even worse, the Clinton propganda machine was confronted by the Caroline Kennedy and, today, Teddy Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama. The elderly Senator’s language reached levels of enthusiasm he had previously expressed only upon learning that Dewar’s was, indeed, intravenously consumable.

While the only Presidential Bill Clinton really shared with JFK was philandering, the Clintons have always claimed themelves to be lineal heirs of the Camelot mantle. While the claim was like Henry Tudor's to the crown of England (illegitimate on both sides), their was enough there there for the Clinton's to seem like the were Presidential. The Kennedy endorsements now strip even the pretense of JFK from the Clinton facade.

Now Hillary is campaigning hard in Florida for tomorrow’s primary. Of course, the state has no delegates and no other Democrat is participating. But Hillary is on hand to declare victory.

When will someone show the Empress a mirror?