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Arpaio Misspent $99 million dollars?

14 Apr

A six month investigation into the Maricopa County sheriff’s office has discovered that Sheriff Joe Arpaio has inappropriately spent $99.5 million from two jail funds over the last eight years to pay for other law enforcement operations—including immigration patrols.


Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox has told the Washington Post, USA Today and the Phoenix New Times blog, “This is really a disaster for the county … Taxpayers are looking at us and saying, ‘How in the hell did it happen?’…For eight years, [Arpaio has] been signing paperwork that says the budget is balanced, but it’s not.”

The investigation began, after budget officials and members of the county Board of Supervisors suspected that “America’s Toughest Sheriff” was using jail tax money to fund pet projects, such as rounding up undocumented immigrants at places like the Burlington Coat Factory and Pei Wei restaurants, or following county supervisors and judges around in failed public-corruption stings.

The budget paper was quoted in USA Today, “Discrepancies existed for years between sheriff’s employees’ actual duties and the duties reported in county payroll records. As sheriff’s employees were transferred around the agency, the payroll records were not always updated, creating a massive financial problem that will have to be confronted in coming years.”

OK everyone, can you say, “Cover up”?

Interim Chief Deputy Sheriff Jerry Sheridan said there was nothing criminal about the misplaced funds, which he blamed on an outdated payroll system that failed to track when jail duty officers were transferred to regular patrol.

Yeah, right, just a small clerical error; just a small $99 million dollar error; just how stupid do you think people are? Well, wait a tick, that’s not exactly a fair question, after all almost all of your most ardent supporters spend their days listening to Rush, Hannity, et al, and watching FOX PAC the rest of the day. But, how stupid do you think everyone else is?

It’s clear Arpaio manipulated funds to pay for numerous highly questionable operations against immigrants and anyone who opposed him. Yes, the noble sheriff of Maricopa County has used public monies to fund private little witch hunts against county and state officials who questioned his tactics. Where have we seen a person in power going after anyone who questioned him? Well, besides in any number of Steven Seagal movies? Nazi Germany? Soviet Russia? Sarah Palin’s Alaska?

Arpaio is punk thug, and a bully. He’s not the ideal law man. He’s as crooked as a $3 dollar bill. He’s not a hero, he’s a corrupt little fascist and it’s time for him to step down and turn over the keys to his private little Bastille. But please little Tea Party folk, don’t cry for your hero, he’ll be just fine, I hear Hollywood might be thinking about another Duke’s of Hazard movie – he’d make a perfect Boss Hog.

 
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Posted by on April 14, 2011 in Immigration, Politics, Right Wing Crazies, Tea Party

 

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Kansas State Representative Comes up with a Final Solution to Illegal Immigrants, Shoot Them Down Like Hogs?

15 Mar

Virgil Peck, a Kansas State Representative suggested yesterday during a House Appropriations Committee meeting that undocumented immigrants should be hunted down and shot, and yes he’s a Republican.


The Lawrence Journal World reports that during a debate on appropriations for controlling Kansas’ feral swine problem Peck suggested the problem could be handled by shooting them from helicopters.

But wait, there’s more, Peck continued his observation on shooting wild pigs – adding how he would solve the state’s illegal immigration problem too, “It looks like to me if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works, maybe we have found a [solution] to our illegal immigration problem.”

Of course Peck – in good old fashioned GOTP manner – has refused to acknowledge he might have spoken inappropriately, saying he was “just speaking like a southeast Kansas person” and that he expected no further controversy over his comment.

Is this yokel for real? He was speaking like a “southwest Kansas person”? So, by his comment we can assume people from southwest Kansas are racists?

Somos Republicanos, a national Hispanic Republican organization, has called for an apology saying, “We are sick and tired of the bigotry from state legislators who would rather advocate for violence and shooting people than to focus on reasonable solutions.  Hasn’t Mr. Peck learned from the mistakes of Sarah Palin when she put what appeared to be gun sight crosshairs over our Congresswoman, Gabby Gifford’s district?…In a time of extreme tension and occasional violence over illegal immigration, such as the slaughter of a Mexican-American family in Arizona including a nine-year old girl, allegedly by Minutemen, elected officials should refrain from the use of violent metaphors.”

Peck attempted to back pedal his way out by saying he was merely voicing the frustration his constituents feel about the lack of governmental response to illegal immigration.

So, when he said he was speaking as a “southwest Kansas person”, he was speaking as his constituents would speak? So, he was saying people from southwest Kansas were racists?

Of course, why should this surprise anyone? Kansas is, after all, the home of the Westboro Baptist Church, those fine upstanding Christian folks who protest military funerals claiming “God hates America” and he allows soldiers to be killed because “God hates faggots”.

Ah yes, the many faces of today’s Republican Party, the many faces of the conservative Midwest. Enjoy.

 
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Posted by on March 15, 2011 in Immigration, Lunatics, Politics, Right Wing Crazies, Tea Party

 

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There’s no tie to right wing rhetoric and violence in America?

12 Jan

In 2007, Lou Dobbs – then at CNN – prominently backed a sweeping law against undocumented immigrants in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.


Fourteen months later, and just 20 miles from Hazleton, Luis Ramirez, a 25-year-old Mexican, was murdered by teenagers yelling racial slurs and “this is America, go back to Mexico” as they kicked him to death.

According to a New York Times report, “Many people believe the debate fueled by Hazleton’s actions helped create the environment that led to Mr. Ramirez’s death.”

 
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Posted by on January 12, 2011 in Immigration, Lunatics, Right Wing Crazies

 

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President Obama More Conservative than Ronald Reagan?

17 Dec

Yes Virginia it’s true.

When confronted with the impossible solution of how to deal with millions of illegal aliens President Reagan waved his magic pen and pardoned them.

When confronted with the impossible solution of how to deal with millions of illegal aliens President Obama has put forward the Dream Act requiring children of illegal aliens to obtain a college degree or perform service to the country before being allowed to obtain citizenship.

Now, I ask you, who is more conservative?

 
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Posted by on December 17, 2010 in Immigration

 

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Immigration — Threats Flood Into Arizona Judge’s Office After SB-1070 Ruling?

11 Aug

Within hours of blocking key provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, federal district court judge Susan Bolton received hundreds of threats at her court offices.

U.S. Marshal David Gonzales said the judge has been “inundated” with the threats.

“About 99.9% of the inappropriate comments are people venting. They are exercising their First Amendment rights, and a lot of it is perverted. But it’s that 0.1 percent that goes over the line that we are taking extra seriously.” He added, “It is policy at a juncture like this to increase security at the courthouse.”

The Marshall’s office would not say if any threats were coming from recognized hate groups, or if Bolton had received threats at her home. Nor would they discuss any extra security measures, which U.S. marshals routinely provide federal judges.

“It is policy at a juncture like this to increase security at the courthouse. Beyond that, I cannot discuss security matters,” Gonzales said.

Bolton is not the only official facing hostility following Wednesday’s ruling. On Thursday, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) was forced to close his district office in Yuma, AZ, after “finding a window shattered and a bullet inside.”

In April, on the same day SB-1070 was signed into law, Grijalva — an outspoken opponent of the legislation who had called for boycotting the state — closed two district offices “after a man called the Tucson office twice threatening to ‘come in there and blow everybody’s head off,’ and then go to the U.S.-Mexico border to ‘shoot any Mexicans that try to come across.'”

Local militiamen have organized “combat veterans, with kill records, to camp out and patrol” the U.S.-Mexico border, and Neo-Nazis in Arizona now “patrol the border” aiming to “kill or capture immigrants.” Besides immigration-related violence, “threats of violence against lawmakers” also “spiked in the immediate aftermath of the healthcare reform battle in Congress,” when vandals targeted the offices of pro-reform members and threatened to “assassinate” the lawmakers’ children.

Last year, The Arizona Republic reported that the number of threats nationwide against federal judges and prosecutors, plus jurors and witnesses, more than doubled in the past six years, from 592 to nearly 1,300. Gonzales indicated at the time the federal judges in Arizona get three to four threats a week. One federal prosecutor in Tucson revealed she had round-the-clock protection for 10 days after one threat. Federal judges reported that some threat-makers posted personal information about them on websites.

Gonzales said the increase in threats coincides with more online use and the proliferation of blogs. On Thursday he said his agents were aware of hateful threats made about Bolton online since her ruling against the Arizona law. A quick scan shows numerous sites and discussion forums where Bolton is called traitor or other unprintable names.

“I talk with her every day. She’s tough as nails. She takes this as all part of her job,” Gonzales said.

What a wonderful country we live in where citizens can threaten the life of a federal judge for ruling in favor of the Constitution they claim to love, where Neo-Nazis can “patrol” the state’s border with Mexico, and where “militia” groups can recruit former members of our military with “kill records” to “guard” their state’s border. What a wonderful country indeed. Something tells me there’s a lot more to the right’s desire to overturn the Fourteenth Amendment than just immigrant’s kids.

 
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Posted by on August 11, 2010 in Immigration, Lunatics, Racism

 

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Does Glenn Beck support the slave trade or is he just an “idiot”?

03 Oct

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In a chapter in his new book in which Beck attempts to explain to “idiots” what “our Founding Fathers really intended,” Glenn Beck appears to praise an obsolete provision of the U.S. Constitution which prohibited Congress from outlawing the slave trade before 1808 and capped taxes on the slave trade at $10 per slave. In his explanation of the provision, Beck does not mention slavery, saying instead that the provision means that the Founders apparently “felt like there was a value to being able to live here” and lamenting: “Not anymore. These days we can’t ask anything of immigrants — including that they abide by our laws.” The curious thing here is that while the section does talk about migration, it is very clear that Section 9 is referencing the slave trade. In fact, the addition of the word “migration” was to soften the repugnancy of the importation of human beings as salves into the newly created Republic. A Republic based on the inalienable truth “that all men are created equal”.

In the introduction to a chapter titled, “The U.S. Constitution: Lost in Translation,” Beck mocks “idiots” who don’t share his interpretation of the Constitution:

“How many times have you argued with your idiot friends about what’s constitutional and what isn’t? You may even show them the Constitution, but the disagreement continues. That made me think that maybe the problem is that the entire Constitution is written in English — a language that is very difficult for the average idiot to comprehend. In addition, there are several words in the document longer than three letters, making it a tougher read than the “Dick and Jane” books they normally struggle through.”

So, according to the enlightened perspective of Glenn Beck, if you disagree with his ideas, then you’re an idiot? And what if he’s wrong in his perspective? The problem with Beck is that he some how really believes that he is an equal to men the likes of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Beck, for all of his desires to be on equal footing with these men, has exactly three things in common with the Founding Fathers, he’s white; he’s a man; and he’s wealthy. That’s it.

In his book, Beck reprints and then praises Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution. Beck specifically highlights in yellow the phrase “ten dollars for each person”:

Section 9. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

“That’s right,” Beck claims, “the Founders actually put a price tag on coming to this country: $10 per person. Apparently they felt like there was a value to being able to live here. Not anymore. These days we can’t ask anything of immigrants — including that they abide by our laws.” [Arguing with Idiots, Page 278]

Glenn, the founders weren’t imposing an immigration fee on people immigrating to America, they were attempting to collect an import tax on slaves. This is not rocket science. In fact Glenn, according to the “father of the Constitution”, James Madison, in his notes from the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman — who supported the 1808 clause and other efforts by the South to protect slavery in the Constitution — recognized that the $10 tax limit that Beck highlighted prevented Congress from taxing the slave trade out of existence. According to Madison, Sherman “observed that the smallness of the duty shewed revenue to be the object, not the discouragement of the importation.”

Does Glenn Beck support the slave trade? Probably not. Is he just an idiot? Well, when you start quoting sections of the Constitution that were used to protect the importation of slavery, in an attempt to attack immigrants to our country, then yes, you’re an idiot.

 
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Posted by on October 3, 2009 in Immigration

 

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Mexican Immigration Numbers Drop to Ten Year Low?

03 Aug

The number of Mexican immigrants who crossed the border dropped sharply in the past year to the lowest level in a decade, even while undocumented workers already here are opting to stay.

A study, released recently by the Pew Hispanic Center, found that immigrants arriving from Mexico fell by 249,000 from March 2008 to March 2009, down nearly 60 percent from the previous year. But wait, how is this possible? How is it possible that the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has fallen by the sharpest amounts in a decade during the Presidency of Barrack Obama? Wasn’t it George W. Bush who was supposed to be protecting our Southern Boarder with his wonderful fence?

The annual inflow of immigrants is now 175,000, having steadily decreased from a peak of 653,000 in 2005, during the beginning of the second term of Bush/Cheney.

The total population of Mexican-born immigrants in the U.S. also edged lower in the past year, from 11.6 million to 11.5 million, according to the study by Pew, an independent research group. Up to 85 percent of immigrants are believed to be in the country illegally. Another drop? How can illegal immigration be turning around under a Democratic President?

Among Pew’s other findings:

• In 2008, the number of Mexicans apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol — 662,000 — was 40 percent below the peak of 1.1 million in 2004, reflecting in part the sharp decline in the number of new immigrants arriving into the U.S. Why are fewer people trying to come into the U.S. after Bush/Cheney left office? Perhaps the whole “tough on illegal immigration” talk was simply a smoke screen? Perhaps the administration dedicated to making America safer was in reality a sieve through which hundreds of thousands of illegals poured through?

• Mexico is by far the origin of most U.S. immigrants, accounting for one-third of foreign-born residents and two-thirds of Hispanic immigrants. About one in 10 people born in Mexico now live in the U.S.

• The total number of apprehensions by the Border Patrol in 2008 — 724,000 — was at the lowest level since 1973. More than 90 percent of people detained by Border Patrol are Mexican. So? Is it possible that President Obama’s Administration is tougher than Bush/Cheney’s?

The findings come as the Obama administration has pledged to take up immigration law this year. A key Democrat in the effort, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer has said he hopes to have a bill ready by Labor Day and that the way to get it passed is to be tough on future waves of illegal immigration.

Steven Camarota, a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington research group which calls for reduced immigration, said the findings demonstrate that tougher law enforcement can make a difference. Still, he said it will take a lot more than tighter border security to get comprehensive reform passed.

So, the Obama Administration is tougher on illegal immigration than Bush/Cheney? But we’ve heard virtually nothing about this from Limbaugh, Hannity, et al? Aren’t they supposedly dedicated to telling us what no one else wants us to know? Aren’t they the true protectors of America and our way of life? Or, are they simply never going to admit that President Obama could be doing anything right?

 
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Posted by on August 3, 2009 in Immigration

 

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Lou Dobbs Video is OLD News

25 Feb

My grandmotherly friend sent a “must see” video designed to stir everyone up into thinking immigration is going to take a seriously flawed and harmful turn under President Obama. It’s too bad the video is from 2007, and is referring to immigration under the Bush Administration. Nice try though my conservative friends. It’s almost as though they – the conservatives in America – believe we went straight from Bill Clinton to Barrack Obama, and some how there was no George W. Bush. I don’t blame them for wishing this, but wishing it don’t make it so.

If you’re interested in seeing this “must see” video, you may see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP1UQMd7VMw.

Remember this is from June of 2007, not February of 2009.

 
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Posted by on February 25, 2009 in Immigration, Lunatics

 

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