THIS MODERN WORLD

Philippe Sands was on Hardball last night. He’s the U.K. law professor who originally broke the news on the memo recording the January 31, 2003 Bush/Blair meeting at the White House.

His book, “Lawless World,” isn’t available in the U.S. yet. And I was genuinely surprised when Sands said it also mentions ANOTHER memo:

…one other aspect that I’ve described in my book, “Lawless World” that hasn’t emerged so much in “The New York Times” is another memo, which records a conversation between Colin Powell and his counterpart in the United Kingdom, Jack Straw, which makes it clear that in Colin Powell’s eyes if there wasn’t enough evidence for a second security council resolution, then there wasn’t enough evidence to justify the U.S. going in alone.

This immediately reminded me of a story the Guardian published on May 31, 2003. The story claimed a transcript of a conversation between Colin Powell and his U.K. counterpart Jack Straw was circulating in NATO circles. Supposedly they spoke briefly before Powell’s address at the U.N., and both had deep concerns about the Iraq intelligence:

Mr Powell told the foreign secretary he hoped the facts, when they came out, would not “explode in their faces.”

This seems plausible on its face. Remember that Larry Wilkerson, Powell’s chief aide, has said:

I recall vividly the Secretary of State walking into my office. And he said, looking out the window, just musing. He said, “I wonder what we’ll do if we put half a million troops on the ground in Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and don’t find a single weapon of mass destruction.”

However, right after the story came out, the Guardian issued this correction:

In our front page lead on May 31 headlined “Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims,” we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.

I’ve wondered ever since what was going on here. Was the transcript real, or fake? Did the Guardian ever actually see it? Why did the Guardian phrase the correction in such a peculiar way, while leaving the story on its site? Note they don’t apologize for the story as a whole; just for claiming Straw “met with Powell at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations.” Does this indicate the transcript was real, but Straw met with Powell elsewhere, or at a different time, or they spoke by phone?

Now, of course, I wonder: is this what Philippe Sands was talking about yesterday? It seems plausible.

On the other hand, Powell and Straw would have been more likely to discuss a second resolution in late February or March.

In any case, this is an important subject that deserves further coverage. Certainly the memo Sands refers to should receive attention. And the origins of the Guardian story should be cleared up. If any of this is real and is ever published, it would likely be extremely unpleasant for everyone concerned.

(The entire Hardball transcript is posted here.)

Since Mexican immigration is the topic du jour (not in the blogosphere as much as the streets of L.A.), let me share the findings of a 2001 report from the Center for Immigration Studies :

Large-scale immigration from Mexico is a very recent phenomenon. In 1970, the Mexican immigrant population was less than 800,000, compared to nearly 8 million in 2000.
. . .
Though most natives are more skilled and thus do not face significant job competition from Mexican immigrants, this study (consistent with previous research) indicates that the more than 10 million natives who lack a high school degree do face significant job competition from Mexican immigrants.

By increasing the supply of unskilled labor, Mexican immigration in the 1990s has reduced the wages of workers without a high school education by an estimated 5 percent. The workers affected are already the lowest-paid, comprising a large share of the working poor and those trying to move from welfare to work.

This reduction in wages for the unskilled has likely reduced prices for consumers by only an estimated .08 to .2 percent in the 1990s. The impact is so small because unskilled labor accounts for only a tiny fraction of total economic output.

So the findings seem to suggest that there’s a nugget of truth in the xenophobic “they’re stealing our jobs” line in that unskilled workers are forced to compete with their immigrant counterparts, but the only “stolen” jobs are taken by greedy employers who want to skirt our labor laws and make a few extra bucks. The total lack of price reductions additionally supports the fact that there is no great economic incentive for this shift in the workforce. Sure, immoral businesses are saving money, but those savings are being put into their pockets, not passed onto consumers.

Because of their much lower education levels, Mexican immigrants earn significantly less than natives on average. This results in lower average tax payments and heavier use of means-tested programs. Based on estimates developed by the National Academy of Sciences for immigrants by age and education at arrival, the lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is a negative $55,200.

Although they comprise 4.2 percent of the nation’s total population, Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) account for 10.2 percent of all persons in poverty and 12.5 percent of those without health insurance. Even among Mexican immigrant families that have lived in United States for more than 20 years, almost all of whom are legal residents, more than half live in or near poverty and one-third are uninsured

Even after welfare reform, an estimated 34 percent of households headed by legal Mexican immigrants and 25 percent headed by illegal Mexican immigrants used at least one major welfare program, in contrast to 15 percent of native households. Mexican immigrants who have lived in the United States for more than 20 years, almost all of whom are legal residents, still have double the welfare use rate of natives.

Mexican immigration acts as a subsidy to businesses that employ unskilled workers, holding down labor costs while taxpayers pick up the costs of providing services to a much larger poor and low-income population.

…and the vicious cycle begins anew. Immigrants are paid less which makes them more likely to be in poverty which makes them more likely to need social services which they aren’t contributing “enough” towards because they’re paid less…but don’t fall into the trap of reaching the simple conclusion that “if they’re here, they should pay taxes”. Another part of the report points out that they do pay taxes, but there’s a rub :

The March 2000 CPS indicates that in 1999, the average federal income tax payment by households headed by Mexican immigrants was $2,156, less than one third of the $7,255 average tax contribution made by native households. By design, the federal income tax system is supposed to tax those with higher income and fewer dependents at higher rates than those with lower income and more dependents. So the much lower income tax contributions of Mexican immigrants simply reflect the tax code and not some systematic attempt by Mexican immigrants to avoid paying taxes.

In 1999, 74 percent of households headed by natives had to pay at least some federal income tax, compared to only 59 percent of Mexican immigrant households. Even if one confines the analysis to legal Mexican immigrants, the gap between their tax contributions and those of natives remains large. Using the same method as before to distinguish legal and illegal Mexican immigrant households, the estimated federal income liability of households headed by legal Mexican immigrants in 1999 was $2,538. Thus, the very low tax contribution of Mexican immigrants is not simply or even mostly a function of legal status, but rather reflects their much lower incomes and larger average family size.

Which is where most Republicans would start talking about tax “reform” as if raising the taxes of the poor is going to help someone who isn’t even lucky enough to live paycheck to paycheck. If businesses insist on paying immigrants shit, the least they should do is pass along the difference to help offset they problem they’re creating. Better yet, they should stop being allowed to break the law and save a few bucks. Or to paraphrase something I wrote earlier, breaking the law should always be more expensive than obeying it.

We’ve got a serious immigration problem in this country that’s the fault of businesses who have shifted jobs from American workers to illegal immigrants and the goverment that’s looked the other way for decades. The idea that the President and his allies want to codify this second class of workers (and solidify the division between the two) shows you how out of touch he is with working men and women. The struggle in the streets of Los Angeles and elsewhere isn’t one between immigrants and Americans, but between the working class and the business/government entities that are looking for new avenues to cheap labor, even if it means exploiting ethnic tensions to turn people against each other.

I really, really hate the President’s plans for “immigration reform” and it looks like I’m not the only one :

“Society is made up of groups, and as long as the smaller groups do not have the same rights and the same protection as others – I don’t care whether you call it capitalism or communism -it is not going to work. Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counterpower, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.”
– Cesar Chavez

Since I’m too lazy to rewrite my thoughts on the President’s horrible, elitist, and divisive plans, here’s a rerun of a post I wrote back in November.

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For all of you conservatives who love to praise the “free market”, let me call bullshit on this enduring lie that the President frequently cites to sell his immigration plan. From yesterday’s speech :

As we enforce our immigration laws, comprehensive immigration reform also requires us to improve those laws by creating a new temporary worker program. This program would create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do. Workers would be able to register for legal status for a fixed period of time, and then be required to go home. This program would help meet the demands of a growing economy, and it would allow honest workers to provide for their families while respecting the law.

The “jobs Americans won’t do” lie was also recently advanced in the Washington Post by a spokesman for the Labor Department and a “panicking” farmer (via Kevin Drum) :

“There are just some jobs people don’t want to do,” Nassif said. “It’s the most developed nation in the world using a foreign workforce, and people need to recognize that. We need to make them legal.”

Jack Vessey said he listed openings for 300 laborers at the state office of employment last week to prepare the lettuce fields for harvest. “We got one person,” he said. “He showed up and said, ‘I’m not going to do that.'”

The key to unraveling this bullshit is that the anonymous laborer quoted above likely ended his gripe with “unless you pay me more”. The President wants you to think this is because American workers are shiftless elitists, but it’s the employers and their shills who are the assholes here.

What people like the George W. Bush don’t understand is that capitalism is not a one-way street. When the demand for workers is high and the supply of laborers is low, the rational solution would be for employers to raise wages, increase benefits, or both to ensure that supply catches up to demand. But that would mean actually spending more money, and we can’t have that.

Instead, employers have found a way to get around their obligations by employing “undocumented” workers (and thus creating a demand for illegal labor). Why are these men and women willing to do the same job that Americans are unwilling to do for less money? Well, they’re here illegally, for one. They probably don’t speak English well and have little familiarity with existing labor laws. They’re doing a job that’s unskilled while under the constant threat of deportation. Sounds like the new face of indentured servitude to me, but the President and his allies are trying to figure out ways to make it acceptable.

But here’s the key to all of these proposals : These illegal workers aren’t being offered citizenship, but membership in a “guest worker program”. Bush and co. don’t give a damn about the working class in this country, they just want to make sure that the crooks aren’t penalized for breaking our labor laws. The solutions bandied about would create a pseudo-citizenship which will protect employers but do little to lift immigrant workers from the bottom rung on the economic ladder. When residence is closely tied to employment, the threat of deportation doesn’t go away, it just gets hidden a little better.

Which makes this whole debate even more galling. Immigrants are being exploited, American workers are getting screwed, and the whole debate is happenening as if these two groups of victims are on opposite sides. If you want to stop illegal immigration, you don’t need to build a fence. The supply of illegal labor will go away once the demand for it ceases. We don’t need new plans, we need to rigorously enforce the laws already on the books. If that means that employers are going to have to pay more to the people doing the jobs that “Americans won’t do” and pass those costs on to the consumer, then it’s hardly our place to question the wisdom of the invisible hand, right?

Also, it should be stressed again that George Bush and his allies should be ashamed of themselves for slandering us with their anti-worker rhetoric. Aren’t you paying attention, America? The President of the United States just called you an indolent snob. He thinks you’re too lazy to do an honest day’s work and too effete to do work that will get your hands dirty. Doesn’t that piss you off? It should.

The New York Times has confirmed the so-called “White House Memo” of January 31, 2003 is genuine. The memo, first reported several months ago, records a meeting at the White House between Blair, Bush and key advisors. Among the key points:

1. Bush had decided on war no matter what, even if UNMOVIC found nothing and they failed to get a second U.N. resolution.
2. Bush suggested creating a pretext for the war by painting a U.S. spy plane in the colors of the United Nations, in hopes Iraq would try to shoot it down.
3. Bush thought it was “unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.”

So, how to deal with this embarrassing information? An unnamed “senior British official” tries this gambit:

“In all of this discussion during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is obvious that viewing a snapshot at a certain point in time gives only a partial view of the decision-making process.”

Huh, that sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before? Oh, right—it’s exactly what Tony Blair said about the Downing Street Memo:

“The trouble with having a political discussion on the basis of things that are leaked is that they are always taken right out of context. Everything else is omitted from the discussion and you end up focusing on a specific document.”

UK Defense Secretary John Reid also said this about the Downing Street Memo (via Nexis):

“You can produce one out of a thousand of memos that were flying about, which represented one person’s view about one particular issue.”

So now we have TWO British memos shamefully ripped out context. Or rather, eight memos ripped out of context, counting the six other documents related to the Downing Street Memo. Wait, I’m sorry—nine memos, when you add in the one Paul O’Neill revealed showing the Bush administration already planning for “Post-Saddam Iraq” on January 31, 2001. Or actually, ten memos, counting the NSA memo about spying on the U.N. Well, to be fair—eleven memos, given the one Blair aide John Sawer wrote in May, 2003 about the lack of post-war planning.

Okay: we have eleven internal memos ripped horribly out of context. And in a bizarre coincidence, they tell exactly the same story as a gigantic amount of public information.

But that’s irrelevant. What’s important is we know if we had access to all the relevant government documents, they would tell a completely different story. If only Tony Blair and George Bush had the authority to declassify them!

Sadly, of course, this is impossible. Blair and Bush are completely powerless in this matter. All they can do is tell us how they would be completely vindicated if only we knew things we aren’t allowed to know.

Greg and Mr. Tomorrow have produced pictures of George Bush looking quite peculiar.

Nevertheless, I believe my Bush photograph below trumps them all.

Still, I’m not displaying this to denigrate Bush; just the opposite. As I said some time ago on my own site:

I don’t like the “look at this picture of [someone I disagree with] looking stupid!” school of commentary. If you take enough pictures of any person, they will look stupid in a least a few of them. Thus, all you’re proving when you do this is that the person you disagree with is a person. What an achievement.

So that’s not what I’m getting at with this picture. On the contrary: it reminds me of George Bush’s berserk humanity. Nothing, not even the power of the presidency, can protect human beings from the silliness within us all.

ALSO: When you saw this picture, did you try to make this face yourself? Be honest.