Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (100187)	2/19/2011 5:10:08 PM
From: locogringo	5 Recommendations Respond to of 224724

Please use some punctuation, and personal comments when reciting a printed fax that you just received. It looks better.................HTH............. I hate for you to look as stupid as you are appearing to look tonight. Reciting like a brain dead lemming.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (100187)	2/19/2011 5:27:24 PM
From: lorne	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224724

Gosh darn it ken...more problems for you demmies. :-) obama just gotta protect his voter base? Kansas unveils Arizona-like bill targeting illegals By DAVID KLEPPER Thu, Feb. 17, 2011 The Star’s Topeka correspondent kansascity.com TOPEKA \| Kansas joined Arizona on the front lines of one of America’s hottest political debates Thursday when conservative state leaders introduced legislation targeting illegal immigrants. Modeled after Arizona’s controversial law on illegal immigration, the bill proposes several measures to deal with a problem that supporters contend the federal government has too long ignored. The proposed legislation would: •Require local police to check the legal status of those they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally. •Require proof of citizenship for anyone seeking public assistance. •Make it illegal to harbor illegal residents and bolster the penalties for making fake identifications. •Insist that state and local governments and their contractors run citizenship checks on all new hires. Rep. Lance Kinzer, an Olathe Republican, wrote the bill with Secretary of State Kris Kobach, also a Republican. Both said the bill took some provisions of Arizona’s law — known as SB 1070 — and added other pieces from earlier proposals in Kansas. Kobach helped write the Arizona law. Many of its provisions were blocked by the federal courts. Still, Kobach said he thinks the Kansas bill is on solid legal ground. Kobach predicted the bill would pass, thanks to last November’s election, which put more conservatives in the Legislature and Republican Sam Brownback in the governor’s office. Brownback has yet to weigh in on the bill. “I heard from many, many constituents last fall that Kansas needs an SB-1070-style bill in Kansas,” Kobach said. “The political climate has become much more receptive to these types of proposals.” With anti-illegal sentiment running high across the nation, lawmakers in several other states also are looking to implement parts or all of the Arizona law. In addition, Kansas lawmakers are considering repealing a state law granting in-state tuition to children of illegal immigrants and requiring voters to show identification to crack down on illegal immigrant voter fraud. Like those measures, the new Arizona-style bill is likely to pass the conservative-led Kansas House. But political observers said it could run into challenges in the more moderate Senate. Senate Vice President John Vratil, a Leawood Republican, said he thinks it is foolish to consider Arizona-style reforms now while that state’s new laws are entangled in legal challenges. “Why would we go down the same road as Arizona until there’s a determination in the federal courts?” Vratil asked. “It’s silly as far as I’m concerned. All we’re going to do is get sued.” Key to the legislation’s passage is a compromise designed to ease concerns from the state’s business community. Three years ago, lawmakers proposed requiring all businesses to use the federal E-Verify system to check the citizenship of new hires. Those that refused would face fines. But business and agriculture groups loudly complained and the bill died. This year’s bill, however, requires only state and local government and their private contractors to use E-Verify. “We tried to strike a reasonable balance,” Kinzer said. While the Kansas Chamber of Commerce would prefer federal immigration reform, the group said in a statement Thursday that Kinzer “has addressed some major points of contention within our membership.” Despite the compromise, many businesses will still oppose the law, predicted Mira Mdivani, president of the Corporate Immigration Compliance Institute and an immigration attorney in Overland Park. Mdivani worried that businesses making even unintentional mistakes with E-Verify could face felony perjury charges and lose their business licenses for three years. She said Kansas leaders should focus instead on the state’s budget crisis or the sluggish economy. “It’s such a waste of the scarce resources of our state, especially now,” Mdivani said. “In a time when we’re all concerned about government spending and business regulation, they want to do this?” Critics of the Arizona law argue that local police don’t have the training, time or resources to enforce federal immigration law. But Overland Park police spokesman Matt Bregel said urban departments should be able to adjust with minimal problems. “We already have the resources here and a good relationship with ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement),” Bregel said. “If we had suspicions that someone was here illegally, we would inform ICE and it would be up to them to take it from there.” Civil rights groups, however, worry about the unforeseen consequences of such a law. Immigrants — legal and illegal — might be afraid to contact police in an emergency for fear their residency would be questioned, said Elena Lacayo, immigration field coordinator with La Raza, a Latino civil rights organization. La Raza is monitoring similar bills around the country, but Lacayo said not as many states are wading into the immigration debate as she had expected. She suspected the cost and the legal questions caused some state lawmakers to think twice about following Arizona. “Do states really want to spend more money than they have to enforce laws that they aren’t even supposed to be enforcing, simply for political gain?” she said. Regardless of the legal and economic issues, the bill’s introduction is likely to delight many in Kansas’ conservative movement. “We have to do something about the illegal aliens,” said Paul Degener of Topeka, a member of the anti-illegal-immigration group November Patriots. “If the federal government won’t do it, well, then it’s got to be done by the states.”

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (100187)	2/20/2011 1:02:13 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224724

The Muppets' Spendthrift Lobby Posted 02/18/2011 07:00 PM ET Puppet Pork: If you wonder why it's hard to cut spending, consider the throng of U.S congressmen lining up with Arthur the Aardvark to defend PBS funding from budget cutters. A $14 trillion deficit doesn't tickle us, Elmo. It wasn't an episode of "Sesame Street," but it might have been. There on the Capitol steps was Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., accompanied by fellow Democratic Reps. Paul Tonko, Bill Owens and Nita Lowey of New York and Betty McCollum of Minnesota, with a bevy of Muppets to fight against cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's budget. "This is an ideological attack on public broadcasting," Markey said. "Arthur, you're silence is eloquent." We are not making this up. A U.S. congressman was discussing public policy with Arthur the Aardvark. He's a puppet, Ed. Actually, it would be a sensible move to trim at least one ornament from the liberal tree, one that has outlived its usefulness and is a luxury we can no longer afford. Then again, Markey et al. thought spending stimulus money on turtle tunnels was a good way to stimulate the economy. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-N.C., has taken particular aim at CPB and its corporate offspring, PBS, noting on his blog that in 1967, when CPB was created to "facilitate the development of public communications," there were only a handful of television stations with limited viewing choices. Now we have hundreds of channels running through our cables, bouncing off our satellite dishes and dancing on our iPads. There is no reason why lavishly successful offerings like "Sesame Street" couldn't succeed on their own. The fact is, many of the offerings on PBS, television's answer to Air America, don't deserve airing, much less a public subsidy. President Obama slated CPB for $451 million in his recently announced hall of mirrors budget, after getting $420 million from Congress last year. This is not the direction you go if you want to cut spending. The president and Democrats say they want to know what the GOP would cut. OK. How about starting here? From 2003 to 2006, DeMint notes, "Sesame Street" made $211 million from toy and product sales. Yet taxpayers are being asked to subsidize the salary of Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell, who received $956,513 — nearly a million dollars — in compensation in 2008. "The GOP should be less preoccupied with silencing Cookie Monster and more focused on reviving the economy," Rep. Lowey proclaimed. "How long will it take for some people to learn that people want Congress to focus on creating jobs, not laying off Bert and Ernie." Again, we are not making this up. It was Lowey who brought Bert and Ernie to testify on Capitol Hill in 1995, the last time the GOP took control of Congress and allegedly tried to throw Big Bird out in the street. Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., notes that since the passage of the stimulus some 2.5 million private-sector jobs have been lost, with 48 out of 50 states losing jobs. Yet, "We cannot allow Republicans to lavish hundreds of millions of dollars a year in tax breaks on Big Oil while leaving Arthur and his pals in the lurch," said Markey, the co-sponsor of the economy-killing cap-and-trade bill that made it through the House last year. He would have left the entire American economy in the lurch. At least Big Oil would create real American jobs and lower energy prices if we let it. The second anniversary of the stimulus package, passed on Feb. 17, 2009, saw an additional $3.4 trillion having been added to the national debt, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt. Over that time, the government has had to borrow an additional $29,600 per household, raising the total debt burden to $125,475 per household. And that doesn't even include Bert and Ernie's pad on Sesame Street.