Colbert's opening statement to House Judiciary Committee

Colbert made many valid points, but my question is this: Did they, meaning the Congress Critters, take him seriously as he was 'in character' and had some really asinine remarks in between his facts, like agriculture is planted at ground level and this practice needs to change. Watch it below and you tell me.



You can watch the entire hearing here on CSPAN.

Update: Both video's courtesy of TPMTv. Here is Colbert being questioned by Congress Critters. He doesn't seem to have much, if any, information when asked specific questions. If it's a joke, it's on Congress for allowing him to testify.

Stephen Colbert to testify before Congress..no kidding!

He will be there on behalf of the UFW (United Farm Workers) according to HuffPo:

Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert will be testifying before Congress on Friday about immigration during a hearing called "Protecting America's Harvest."


Colbert will be appearing with United Farm Workers (UFW) President Arturo S. Rodriguez before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. In August, the comedian spent a day working at a corn and vegetable farm in New York state after Rodriguez appeared on his show to discuss UFW's "Take Our Jobs" campaign.

The effort was intended to debunk the theory that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs away from American citizens and highlight the fact the nation's food supply is dependent on these farm workers. "Farm workers are ready to welcome citizens and legal residents who wish to replace them in the field," said the UFW site. "We will use our knowledge and staff to help connect the unemployed with farm employers."

Out of the 8600 visitors to the UFW site, TakeOurJobs.org, that have actually expressed interest in becoming farm workers, only seven have actually taken the backbreaking job of being a farmworker. The site has had over three million hits to date.

Colbert's stint as a farmworker will air on his show, The Colbert Report, this evening, September 22nd. Must see tv I would say. According to The Daily Caller, Colbert will be appearing before Congress, in character.  Personally, I feel this issue is no laughing matter and what Colbert thinks he can accomplish whilst pulling his shtick is beyond me. But I will watch the Colbert Report tonight and I hope CSPAN will air the hearing Friday.

Is Ernie Istook smoking crack?

And his buddy John Bohner as well...wtf is up w/these two fuckwits and their hatred of the 14th Amendment to our Constitution? Ernie is a member of Nutter University, otherwise known as the Heritage Foundation. Watch him spew his fuckery below:



It's always the undocumented folks fault. Why in the blue hell isn't it the assholes that hire them who should be tarred and feathered, not to mention brought up on charges. These people would not be coming from 1000's of  miles away if there weren't any jobs!!! They come up here and work for shit wages that NO american will do for the wages paid.

So, a hearty FUCK You Ernest Istook! You are our Fuckwit of the Week!

TakeOurJobs.Org- put your $ where your mouth is nutters!

This action was started here in my little burgh of Bakersfield, CA or more specifically Keene, CA which is home to the UFW headquarters. The United Farm Workers (UFW) created this website and now Steven Colbert is doing a piece on it...which as most know...has a humor slant but it's always based in reality.

This morning, it was reported on our local news, Channel 29 KBAK, that over 5,000 people have 'signed up' on the website as of today...BUT:

Only three have actually followed through to actually apply for employment as a field worker...aka a farm worker, harvesting fruits and veggies. I have performed this type of work as a teenager, so I ain't no bleeding heart liberal whining about how hard the farm workers have it. But I am of course a bleeding heart liberal. ;)

From their website, some facts:

There are two issues facing our nation--high unemployment and undocumented people in the workforce--that many Americans believe are related.


Missing from the debate on both issues is an honest recognition that the food we all eat - at home, in restaurants and workplace cafeterias (including those in the Capitol) - comes to us from the labor of undocumented farm workers.

Agriculture in the United States is dependent on an immigrant workforce. Three-quarters of all crop workers working in American agriculture were born outside the United States. According to government statistics, since the late 1990s, at least 50% of the crop workers have not been authorized to work legally in the United States.

We are a nation in denial about our food supply. As a result the UFW has initiated the "Take Our Jobs" campaign.

Farm workers are ready to welcome citizens and legal residents who wish to replace them in the field. We will use our knowledge and staff to help connect the unemployed with farm employers. Just fill out the form to the right and continue on to the request for job application.

** Job may include using hand tools such as knives, hoes, shovels, etc. Duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50 lbs on a regular basis.(emphasis mine)

I have blogged and publicly spoke out, ad nauseum, about the plight of the farm worker, undocumented or not. I have done this for decades as a native Californian and Hispanic woman. How they work ten hours or more a day (without overtime), in 100+ degree heat. How the labor laws always have special 'rules' that usually make the farm workers a class of worker that isn't covered by the basic human rights or wage sections of said laws. This is no bullshit folks....farm workers are usually exempt from many if not most of the protections offered the rest of us as employees.

Most of the responses they have gotten on their website are disgusting, evil, hate-filled comments from rightwing nutters who have no fucking clue.

Every summer here there are dozens of deaths recorded of farm workers that die from heat exhaustion or because a farmer knowingly had a field sprayed with pesticides while humans were working in it. No one is ever prosecuted for these deaths. No ONE.

Spread the word and watch Colbert's report please....they need all the help and press they can get. If all farm workers who were undocumented left tomorrow...we would start paying 10 bucks a head for iceberg lettuce and who knows what for other produce that we all as Americans, take for granted.

Photo is by the great photographer Ansel Adams

The DOJ's suit against AZ: A BLT perspective

The DOJ's 25-page complaint can be read here (PDF). From the BLT (Blog of the Legal Times) comes this explanation of the suit:

The lawsuit makes sweeping claims about the federal government’s power to develop immigration policy. It cites the federal government’s power under the Constitution to establish a “uniform Rule of Naturalization” — translating, it says, to the regulation of aliens within U.S. boundaries and to the terms and conditions for entry and continued presence.


With the State Department joining as a plaintiff, the lawsuit also cites the president’s authority over foreign affairs. “Immigration law, policy, and enforcement priorities are affected by and have impacts on U.S. foreign policy, and are themselves the subject of diplomatic arrangements,” it says.

Together with the complaint, the department is filing a 58-page motion (PDF) for a preliminary injunction. The law is scheduled to go into effect July 29.

*snip*

The DOJ lawsuit does not seek to invalidate the entire Arizona immigration law, known as S.B. 1070. It targets sections 1 through 6 of the law (PDF), leaving alone sections about employment and the impounding of vehicles. By contrast, the complaint (PDF) filed by in May by the ACLU and others asks to have the law struck down in its entirety.

The BLT is a great resource for breaking down legal mumbo-jumbo for non-legal minded folks. I get their daily breaking newsletter.

So, Holder and Company, unlike the coalition of rights groups (ACLU,the NAACP, and the National Immigration Law Center) are not seeking to kill the entire bill....interesting. As for who is representing whom...here is the list, also from the BLT article:

To defend the state, Brewer has hired John Bouma, chairman of Snell & Wilmer in Phoeniz, because Arizona’s attorney general, Terry Goddard III (D), has removed himself.


Five DOJ lawyers have their names on the complaint: Assistant Attorney General Tony West, who heads the Civil Division; U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke; Arthur Goldberg, an assistant director in the Federal Programs Branch; and trial attorneys Varu Chilakamarri and Joshua Wilkenfeld.

Bouma is a big gun, according to his bio at Snell & Wilmer. He is also a conservationist I noticed. AZ's Attorney General Goddard, didn't have a whole lot of nice things to say about Governor Brewer in the AZ Central article linked above. Gov Brewer threatened to shit-can AG Goddard over this entire fiasco. Quite telling I think, don't you?

Today's number: $29 Billion

That cunt, AZ's Jan Brewer, went ahead and signed the bill which legalizes, in AZ, racial profiling and other civil rights intrusions. She received over three times as many anti-bill messages from her constituents than those who supported this fucked-up legislation.

I hope that worthless hag will appreciate the drop in income for her state if, as many think, the state law enforcement folks will go hard after anyone that looks hispanic, otherwise known to the haters as brown people and mud people among other things. Check out this local writeup on what 'those people' aka undocumented workers, bring to the state cash-wise:

If all undocumented workers were removed from Arizona's workforce, economic output would drop annually by at least $29 billion, or 8.2 percent, according to a University of Arizona report released Wednesday.

The study is based on Census Bureau and other data from 2004, the most complete year available, and assumed most non-citizens in the state are undocumented.

It also found that Arizona's documented and undocumented immigrants generate nearly $44 billion in output annually.

*snip*

Without most non-citizen immigrants, the simulations showed:


• $6.56 billion in lost construction output.


• $3.77 billion lost in manufacturing.


• $2.48 billion lost in service sectors.


• $600.9 million lost in agriculture.

"Filling the specific jobs in question would require large numbers of low-skilled workers, and the U.S. education system produces relatively few of them," Gans said. "There simply aren't enough additional workers in Arizona to fill the jobs."

Output means money folks..as in salaries, spending and of course..profits.

What a piece of shit she is...seriously. There aren't enough white folks to take those jobs, and I lived there for over a decade, so I ain't blowing smoke up anyone's ass. But evidently, the governor can't see past her own fucking ignorant nose.

Illegal immigrant population declined last year.

Why this is a fucking surprise I don’t know. We are going through a recession that shows few signs of abating for Joe and Jill Public. That also includes Joe and Jill Immigrant. We have a major water shortage in California, which means the farmers aren’t planting much because their water rations have been cut in half, just for starters. From the Jurist link:

The Office of Immigration Statistics of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report [text, PDF] Wednesday estimating that the total number of illegal immigrants living in the US fell to 10.8 million during the year ending in January 2009. The DHS calculates the “unauthorized resident population” by subtracting the number of legal permanent residents, asylees, refugees, and non-immigrants from estimates of the total foreign-born population. The seven percent decline from 11.6 million in January 2008 is attributed by many to the economic decline during that period. According to DHS estimates, 10.8 million is the smallest population of unauthorized residents since 2005, when there were an estimated 10.5 million [report, PDF]. A Pew Hispanic Center report [text, PDF] released in July showed a similar decline in the Mexican immigrant population in the US. The report clarified that although the recession has hurt employment of Latino immigrants, the decline resulted from decreased immigration into the US rather than from immigrants leaving the US to go back to Mexico.

In December, Democratic lawmakers introduced an immigration reform bill in the US House of Representatives that would give undocumented immigrants an easier path to seek legal status in the country. The proposed legislation, which is titled the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 (CIR ASAP) [bill summary, PDF], follows the Obama administration’s announcement that it would seek immigration reform early in 2010. In November, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the proposed reform legislation would be a “three-legged stool” that combines effective and fair enforcement, an improved process for legal immigration, and a “firm but fair way” to deal with illegal immigrants who are already in the US. The proposed bill is also the first attempt at immigration reform since the failed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill in 2007. At that time, detractors called the bill too lenient on illegal immigrants and said that by granting legal status to illegal aliens, the US was granting “amnesty.”

I am so fucking sick and tired of everyone who blames the brown people for anything and everything. Having a bill that the idiots, Rethugs and racist’s call ‘too lenient’ sounds about right because anything those fuckers hate, must be a good thing.

Federal Judge throws out AZ immigration law challenge..

This is a good thing..its important for several reasons. First, Arizona is attempting to do what many of us have been bitching about for years now..Make the Companies and Businesses responsible when it comes to hiring undocumented workers. It puts on the onus on them, where it belongs. We need to treat them like the damn DEA treats most drug dealers; take everything they own and auction it off, leaving them penniless and in jail. Under the law, any business that is found to have knowingly hired an illegal worker is subject to sanctions ranging from probation to a 10-day suspension of its business licenses. A second violation would bring permanent revocation of the license.

Second, the lawsuit shows us that businesses and corporations don’t want to change the status quo. The corporatocracy talks a good game about illegals being a blight on the American job market, but the reality is, they like hiring them and keeping the wages low and pocketing more of their bottom line, not to mention treating the undocumented workers like chattel.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that illegal immigrants account for one in 10 workers in the Arizona economy. The following is Jurists writeup on this case a good place to go for all things legal:

A federal judge Friday dismissed a lawsuit challenging a new Arizona law aimed at preventing employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. The Legal Arizona Workers Act, enacted in July, gives the Superior Courts of Arizona power to suspend or revoke the business licenses of businesses that intentionally or knowingly employ illegal immigrants. Under the law, employers will be required to check the legal status of new hires using E-Verify, a free online federal program that checks names and identification documents to determine employment eligibility. The plaintiffs, a coalition of advocacy groups and business interests, had hoped to block the legislation before it takes effect on Jan. 1, 2008. US District Court Judge Neil V. Wake wrote that the lawsuit was premature because the law had not gone into effect and no one had been harmed, and also that the plaintiffs were wrong in suing the governor and the attorney general, because under the law, only county prosecutors, who were not defendants, have the power to enforce the law.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has called the law “the most aggressive action in the country against employers who knowingly or intentionally hire undocumented workers.” Napolitano urged similar national legislation in a July letter to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in which she also urged Congress to review the Basic Pilot Program, the federal database used to verify the status of new employees.

I am Hispanic, and I know that I have relatives in my family tree that came into this country without visas. I also believe that any immigrant that slogs through the fucking desert, finds a job and makes a good, decent life for themselves should be granted citizenship. But I am not so delusional that I don’t realize how undocumented workers that flood specific types of job markets hold down the pay scale in those markets. I have seen it first hand for my son who works in new housing construction. He has been told to his face by superiors that they would rather hire two illegals for 10 bucks and hour than hire my son for 20 an hour. I believe that if we hold companies feet to the fire and make them accountable for hiring undocumented workers that the amount of illegals coming northward into America will slow down if not drop to a trickle.

I see first hand how hard they work to make a decent life for them and their families. I see how they pay payroll taxes they never get to file for and recover.. They buy houses and pay their property taxes. They have good family values and are usually very close knit families. I have seen undocumented workers slaving in fields where the temperatures rise to 105-110 degrees every day in the summer, and they do it for a paycheck that wouldn’t even impress the guy working the counter at McDonald’s my dear reader.

So, do not lump me in with the racists and bigots that are screaming about Homeland Security or any of the other bogus bullshit lines of reasoning they use to make Hispanics the ‘new’ Blacks as it were.

Crossposted at Sirens Chronicles