Judicial Supremacy Strikes in Oklahoma

by Phyllis Schlafly, June 18, 2008

The elected representatives in Oklahoma passed a law to stem the tide of illegal aliens and, faster than you can say "judicial supremacy," a federal judge blocked its enforcement. The court suspended key sections of the law even before it was due to take effect on July 1.

The Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act was designed to prevent illegal aliens from taking jobs from Americans and from evading taxes by working in the underground economy.

The Oklahoma law passed the State Legislature by overwhelming bipartisan veto-proof majorities (88-9 in the House, 41-1 in the Senate) and was signed by the Democratic Governor. Public opinion polls reported that the law enjoys 88 percent public approval, and it was recognized as a model for other states to copy.

The law required employers who have contracts with the state of Oklahoma to use the Oklahoma Status Verification System to verify the legal status of their employees. The law expanded the definition of "discrimination" to include firing an American while retaining an illegal as an employee.

The penalty for violating this law was requiring the employer to withhold state taxes in a manner to ensure that Oklahoma would receive all proper employment taxes, including taxes for those employees who are not legally in this country. Oklahoma should certainly be able to protect itself against the non-payment by illegals of taxes that Americans pay as a matter of course.

Even though the new Oklahoma law didn't go into effect, it is credited with reducing Oklahoma unemployment significantly below the national average. The bill's sponsor, State Rep. Randy Terrill, said, "Oklahoma is no longer OK for illegal aliens."

The big national news this month is the Department of Labor announcement that U.S. unemployment has surged to 5.5 percent, the sharpest monthly spike in 22 years. The unemployment figures are particularly painful for teenagers; only about one-third of 16- to 19-year-olds are likely to get summer jobs.

The employment picture in Oklahoma is quite different: Oklahoma's unemployment rate is now only 3.1 percent and dropping. That's because after the Citizen Protection Act was passed a year ago, illegal aliens began leaving the state.

The lawsuit to overturn the Oklahoma statute was brought by the leading trade group for large corporations profiting from hiring illegal aliens at the expense of American citizens. The name of the case is Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Brad Henry.

The judge granted standing to the Chamber of Commerce to sue even though it had not been hurt one iota by the law that had not yet taken effect. The judge, in effect, legislated from the bench by blocking the statute from taking effect, so all its benefits may never be known.

The judge accepted the Chamber's argument that Congress has preempted state laws by federal statutes about immigration. But we all know that the federal government is incapable or unwilling to carry out the necessary enforcement of existing laws that the American people deserve to have enforced.

There is even a federal law called the Tax Injunction Act that prohibits federal courts from interfering with state taxation. The court sidestepped that law, declaring that the federal court could interfere because the Oklahoma statute is more like a regulation than a tax.

Across the country, 43 states have passed more than 182 immigration-related laws. Several leading decisions, such as the federal decision reviewing the ordinance passed in Valley Park, Missouri, have upheld the laws against challenges.

Taxes and jobs are not the only reasons why states need to protect their citizens against illegal aliens. Rep. Terrill says, "Our Bureau of Narcotics here in Oklahoma estimates that something in excess of 40 percent of the drug trafficking through Oklahoma is directly attributable to our illegal alien problem."

The courts should not be interfering with legislative remedies to protect American citizens from losing their jobs to illegal aliens who may not even be paying taxes on their wages. And we certainly should not tolerate drug trafficking coming in from Mexico.

Overturning the massive votes in the Oklahoma legislature and the will of the people makes this new decision one more example of how the courts are trying to make themselves an elite branch of government whose every pronouncement is accepted as "the law of the land." It's time for Americans to rise up and reject the rule of judges and return to rule by our elected representatives.

Congress can and should withdraw jurisdiction from federal courts to interfere with prudent attempts by states to protect their governments and lawful residents. Congress could simply amend the Tax Injunction Act to clarify that federal courts lack authority to entertain any challenge to a state law that involves the collection of taxes from illegal aliens.

Read this article online: http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/june08/08-06-18.html

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[by permission]

Read Phyllis Schlafly's other columns here.

Chain of Command for Treason

WAKE UP, OR YOU WILL DIE HOMELESS AND HUNGRY

Your Enemy is the “Chain of Command for Treason”-CCT, consisting of Elites and their Foundations, who control the Corporations and Media, who in turn control our Government with the direction of their think tank and shadow government, The Council on Foreign Relations, CFR et al. Elites are mostly the progeny of wealth, a few have earned or stolen their own money, many of the forebears were ruthless and very active supporters of Fascism and Communism as are the leaders of both parties today. These statements are not subject to question, there is just too much documented evidence to support them. Today’s leaders of the CCT and their supporters have been taught from birth that they are superior to average Americans who are only ignorant and common people born to be their slaves. No Question, we will be their slaves if they take away our Sovereignty. The ultimate objective of the CCT leadership is Power, Wealth and a One World Government with them as the unelected despots. ...In case you missed this exposé, read it all now.

By Andrew C. Wallace - NewsWithViews.com - February 13, 2008

A New Argument About Immigration

by Phyllis Schlafly - May 28, 2008

Many arguments, pro and con, about how to deal with illegal aliens have been passionately debated over the past couple of years, but there are still other arguments that need public exposure. Mark Krikorian presents a new argument in his forthcoming book called "The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal."

The pro-more-immigration crowd argues that today's immigrants are just like immigrants of a century ago: poor people looking for a better life who are expected to advance in our land of opportunity. Krikorian's new argument is that while today's immigrants may be like earlier ones, the America they come to is so very different that our previous experience with immigrants is practically irrelevant.

The essential difference between the two waves of immigrants was best summed up by the Nobel Prize-winning advocate of a free market, Milton Friedman. He said, "It's just obvious that you can't have free immigration and a welfare state."

The term "welfare state" does not just mean handouts to the non-working. Our welfare state encompasses dozens of social programs that provide benefits to the "working poor," i.e., people working for wages low enough that they pay little or no income taxes.

Immigrants of the previous generation were expected to earn their own living, pay taxes like everybody else, learn our language, love America, and assimilate into our culture. Today's immigrants likewise come here for jobs not welfare.

During those prior major waves of immigration, the United States didn't have a welfare state. Native-born Americans survived the Great Depression of the 1930s without a welfare state.

The Social Security retirement system was established only in 1935. Most other agencies that redistribute cash and costly benefits from taxpayers to non-taxpayers started with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the late 1960s.

Today's low-wage immigrants and lower-wage illegals can't earn what it costs to live in modern America, so they supplement with means-tested taxpayer benefits. And many immigrants don't learn our language or assimilate into American culture because of the multicultural diversity taught in our schools and encouraged in our society.

Today's immigrants fit the profile of the people who benefit from our welfare state: the working poor with large families. Krikorian sets forth some dismal figures.

About 30 percent of all immigrants in the U.S. workforce in 2005 lacked a high school education, which is four times the rate for native-born Americans. Among the largest group of working-age immigrants, the Mexicans, 62 percent have less than a high-school education, which means they work low-wage jobs.

Nearly half of immigrant households, 45 percent, are in or near poverty compared with 29 percent of native-headed households. Among Mexicans living in the United States, nearly two-thirds live in or near the government's definition of poverty.

Costly social benefits provided to the working poor include Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (now called TANF, formerly AFDC), food stamps, school lunches, Medicaid, WIC (nutrition for Women, Infants and Children), public housing, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one of the most expensive parts of income redistribution. Twice as many immigrant households (30 percent) qualify for this cash handout as native-headed households (15 percent).

Health care is another huge cost. Nearly half of immigrants are either uninsured or on Medicaid, which is nearly double the rate for native-born families. Federal law requires hospitals to treat all comers to emergency rooms, even if uninsured and unable to pay.

Hospitals try to shift the costs onto their paying patients, and when the hospitals exhaust their ability to do this, they close their doors. In Los Angeles, 60 hospitals have closed their emergency rooms over the past decade, which imposes another kind of cost.

Immigration accounts for nearly all the growth in elementary and secondary school enrollment over the past generation. The children of immigrants now comprise 19 percent of the school-age population and 21 percent of the preschool population.

The Heritage Foundation estimated that in order to reduce government payments to the average low-skill household to a level equal to the taxes it pays, "it would be necessary to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, all means-tested welfare, and to cut expenditures on public education roughly in half." Obviously, that is not going to happen.

Attempts to limit welfare eligibility for illegal aliens by provisions added to the 1996 welfare reform law, SSI, food stamps, Medicaid and TANF all failed. Krikorian concludes that "Walling immigrants off from government benefits once we've let them in is a fantasy."

As Americans are pinched between falling real estate values and the inflation of necessities such as gasoline, they are entitled to know how their tax dollars are being spent. The big bite that social benefits to immigrants (one-third of whom are illegal) takes out of taxpayers' paychecks should be factored into any debate about immigration or amnesty policy.

Read this article online: http://www.eagleforum.org

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[by permission]
Read Phyllis Schlafly's other columns here.

Americans Doubtful of Free Trade Benefits

Many people in the United States think free trade policies have not been beneficial to their country, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 48 per cent of respondents believe commerce pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are bad for the U.S., while 35 per cent disagree. ...more

Angus Reid Global Monitor - via americaneconomicalert.org - May 13, 2008

Is U.S. Innovation Headed Offshore?

Apparently not, even though more research and development is joining manufacturing in the shift toward low-cost nations

To those worried about America's ability to compete in the 21st century, the trend is alarming: Just as key manufacturing industries fled offshore in the 1970s and '80s, U.S. companies are now shifting more engineering and design work to low-cost nations such as China, India, and Russia. Surely, innovation itself must follow. ...more

by Pete Engardio - Business Week via AmericanEconomicAlert.org - May 7, 2008

FREE TRADE DOES NOT WORK

Free-trade theories don't allay fears - Times Daily • "Princeton economist Alan Blinder, a longtime proponent of cross-border commerce, now says that it will create more severe social and economic upheaval than he once believed.Blinder predicts that 30 million to 40 million American jobs are likely to be shipped overseas in the next 10 to 20 years, some of them in white-collar occupations such as financial analyst, microbiologist, graphic designer, radiologist and, oddly, economist.Those who still put great faith in free trade - Democrats and Republicans alike - need to look beyond their platitudes to see the displacement and anxiety it has created among middle-class workers. Their worries are not born of ideology but of a hard and bitter experience that has left them anxious about the future." ...

Patriotism, Protection And Prosperity

"The wealth ... independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures," stated Mr. Hamilton. "Every nation ... ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These compromise means of substance, habitation, clothing and defense."Today, soybeans, corn, wheat, rice, cigarettes, meat, hides, waste paper, fertilizers and cotton are among America's top exports. Industry, on the other hand, has been gutted, mines have closed, factories have been boarded shut, and America's labor force has declined over 20 percent since 1950."

Philadelphia Bulletin - via AmericanEconomicAlert.org

U.S. economy's sound is a ticking debt bomb

Columbia Daily Tribune • Comment: "I don’t know if we’re heading for another depression. I do know you cannot count on the big banks and the Wall Street insiders to tell you the truth. Or the national government, for that matter. I do know there is too much debt, and it would behoove us to pay it off as quickly as we can. I do know that when you keep hearing people say the economy is fundamentally sound, it’s time to worry that it’s anything but sound.At the end of World War II, we were the top dog. Our country had not been damaged. Europe and Russia were in ruins; so were China and Japan. Today, Europe, Russia, China and India - to name four - are tough economic competitors. We’re dependent on oil imports. Our currency is losing its value. We continue to bleed manufacturing jobs." ...

BLACK AMERICA HOSED BY OBAMA & WHITE POLITICIANS

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Senator Barack Obama voted for the June 2007 immigration amnesty that doubled current immigration levels to two million annually. He voted for complete amnesty for in excess of 20 million illegal aliens. He voted for the Dream Act that took millions of dollars out of the hands of black American college kids’ hands—only to give it to illegal alien students. Fortunately, senators under enormous pressure from American voters defeated both bills.

What’s the problem here? Barack Obama represents the best of African-Americans. Yet, he fails black America miserably! He stands in favor of flooding this country with lower wage labor that destroys any chance for African-Americans to gain a living wage. ...

By Frosty Wooldridge - NewsWithViews.com - January 21, 2008

Inflation Rising at Fastest Rate in 26 Years - video

No wonder Ron Paul recently won the Wall Street Chatter presidential poll: he’s the only candidate who has been warning us of the threat inflation poses to our economy — a threat that looms larger every day. Now news is breaking that in 2007 wholesale prices rose at their fastest rate in 26 years. Yahoo! Finance tells the story:

The Labor Department reported that wholesale inflation was up 6.3 percent for all of 2007 ...

[See the rest of this story at the "Daily Dose" - with a Ron Paul video, a YouTube classic of Dr. Paul confronting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke over inflation - posted Jan. 15]

Free Trade Follies - Jan. 5

Krugman: Growing trade with Third World hurts U.S. wage earners - Salt Lake Tribune • Comment: "But for American workers the story is much less positive. In fact, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that growing U.S. trade with Third World countries reduces the real wages of many and perhaps most workers in this country. And that reality makes the politics of trade very difficult."

Trade policy comes under the spotlight - MSNBC • Comment: "Free trade advocates hope the protectionist rhetoric is a temporary phenomenon as candidates pander to the party base ahead of caucuses and primaries. But there is no guarantee the successful nominee will shift back to the centre before November's election because opinion polls show concern about free trade spreading beyond Democrats. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found 58 per cent of Americans think globalisation has been bad for the US, up from 42 per cent a decade ago."

The Consequences the Trade Deficit - CounterPunch • Comment: "The current account deficit imposes a significant tax on GDP growth by moving workers from export and import-competing industries to other sectors of the economy. This reduces labor productivity, research and development (R&D) spending, and important investments in human capital. In 2007 the trade deficit is slicing about $250 billion off GDP, and longer term, it reduces potential annual GDP growth to about 3 percent from about 4 percent."

Annus Horribilis Ahead? - Town Hall • Comment: "The America the next president will lead is no longer able to win or end her wars, defend her borders, enforce her immigration laws, balance her budget, eliminate a chronic trade deficit that now runs to 6 percent of GDP, or maintain the value of the dollar. We save nothing. Though addicted to oil, we refuse to drill off our coast or in our own territory. Meanwhile, Arabs and Asians, choking on dollars, are buying up our corporate and strategic assets and taking over our toll roads."

No Jobs, No Money - Thank you, "Free Trade"

Trade vital in '08 campaigns (w/interactive) - Houston Chronicle • Comment: "Many of this year's major presidential candidates — nearly all Democrats and Republican populist Mike Huckabee — have responded by promising tough trade negotiations to give American workers a break and raise standards worldwide."We need trade without tradeoffs for America," former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., said in a speech at an Iowa union hall on Aug. 6. He vows, if elected, to put "regular families" ahead of the interests of multinational corporations.In contrast, four of the top-tier Republicans — Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson — have come out in support of free trade, even if it's a tougher sell."

Dollar's Fall Is Felt Around The Globe - Washington Post • Comment: "Already, however, the impact of the weaker dollar is growing. Rolls-Royce has proposed moving some operations from Liverpool to its factory in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Airbus has said it will shift more of its production to the United States, home turf of rival Boeing, to offset the cost of the stronger euro. As the dollar has weakened over the past seven years, Airbus has opened assembly lines and other operations in Wichita and Mobile, Ala.; as well as in Moscow and Beijing."

Foreign nations snap up U.S., Europe bank shares - Axcess News • Comment: "The key solution, he says, is already in place: An executive-branch review process that considers national security implications of foreign investments - whether the investor represents a government or some other overseas entity. The process, tightened this year by Congress, is known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.The review authority works, as long as it is used properly, says William Hawkins of the US Business and Industry Council, a private lobbying group for manufacturers. "They haven't been exercising that authority [enough]" he says."

Cheer's tough to come by for families who've lost their jobs - Marietta Times • Comment: “There is the immediate shock of the loss,” Lott-Gramkow said. “People who have been making $20 an hour for years at one job are suddenly faced with the realization of a cut to $10 or $12 an hour. It’s devastating to them.”

CSUSTL Letter to the Bush Administration Concerning Draft WTO Rules Text - PR Newswire • Comment: "The Committee to Support U.S. Trade Laws ("CSUSTL") today sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez and United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab the House and Senate leadership expressing the Committee's dissatisfaction with the draft negotiating text issued by the Chairman of the Doha Round Rules group. CSUSTL has urged the Administration to negotiate stronger rules against unfair trade practices."

China Grabs Wests Smoke-Spewing Factories - New York Times • Comment: "In its rush to re-create the industrial revolution that made the West rich, China has absorbed most of the major industries that once made the West dirty. Spurred by strong state support, Chinese companies have become the dominant makers of steel, coke, aluminum, cement, chemicals, leather, paper and other goods that faced high costs, including tougher environmental rules, in other parts of the world. China has become the world’s factory, but also its smokestack."

Export of U.S. industry has meantlost U.S. jobs, dangerous products - WorldNetDaily • Comment: "As consumer safety recalls of Christmas products made in China continue at a torrid pace, a new report shows the average Chinese worker making toys is paid a meager 36 cents an hour – just 2.5 percent of what U.S. toy manufacturers pay domestically."

Leo W. Gerard: The Polar Express Terminates in Beijing Now - Huffington Post • Comment: "They joined half a million U.S. apparel workers who lost their jobs to foreign laborers over the past decade. The "problem" with American workers, whose average wage is $10 an hour, is they just can't compete with Asian workers, who get closer to 30 cents an hour, who may be forced to work 14-hour days, and whose employers frequently ignore health, safety and environmental standards. HoHoHo! Merry Christmas!If Santa now resides in a communist country of 1.3 billion where his elves may construct toys for American boys and girls in sweatshop conditions no American worker would tolerate, does that somehow make him less jolly?"

JOBS: Where did they go?

Let's Protect American Jobs

by Phyllis Schlafly, November 7, 2007

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is an old verse that just isn't true. Indeed, words can hurt, break up marriages, destroy careers, and defeat political candidates.

Even words out of one's own mouth can be destructive. We recall such bloopers as presidential candidate George Romney self-destructing his 1968 presidential candidacy with the word "brainwashing," or Gerald Ford losing in 1976 after saying "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," or Richard Nixon pleading "I am not a crook."

In the fast-moving battleground of the internet, words used as epithets can be powerful missiles to hurl at an enemy. Among the arrows with poison tips designed to slay a political enemy are the words "racist," "bigot, "fascist," "nativist," and "extremist."

The spin artists, now a fixture in modern politics, tell us what we are supposed to think about what we just saw (such as a presidential debate). They use word power to set the parameters of political debate.

More insidious are the words that are redefined to stifle political discourse. As Humpty Dumpty told Alice in Wonderland, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."

Alice demurred: "The question is whether you can make words mean different things." Humpty Dumpty countered, "The question is which is to be master; that's all."

The word definers who choose to be master frustrate rational debate by redefining good words into bad words, mouthing them with a sneer until they become a smear.

Protect is an obviously good word. The dictionary defines it as preservation from injury or harm. Most of us fervently believe in protecting things that are precious to us.

We all want to protect our homes from being invaded by a robber. Parents want to protect their children from predators in person or on the internet, as well as from immoral curricula in public schools.

We want to protect the institution of marriage so we can have a stable society based on the family, and so children can grow up with a mother and a father. Most of us want to protect innocent unborn babies from the butcher's knife and scissors.

We believe in protecting our country and our flag. Our soldiers fight to protect us from foreign enemies. Our police stand guard to protect us from thugs on the street.

We want to protect our liberties from over-reaching bureaucrats and from supremacist judges who pretend to "evolve" the U.S. Constitution. We want to protect the Pledge of Allegiance and the Ten Commandments from the lawsuits that try to ban them from schools, courthouses and parks.

We want to protect our borders from being invaded by illegals who violate our laws. We want to protect Americans from the illegal drugs that are smuggled across our border.

Protectionism is an acknowledged virtue in all areas of life, except one. It is a semantic curiosity that, somehow, the word protectionism has been placed in the globalists' quiver of arrows to shoot down anyone who tries to protect the good jobs that have enabled millions to rise from poverty into the middle class and live the American dream.

It's time that we denounce the semantic scalpers who have perverted the word protectionism. It's time to say, yes, we do want to protect American jobs and industries from global competition with slave labor, inhumane working conditions, and countries that use the profits on their sales to us to build a military force to threaten us.

Yes, we do want to protect American industries from competition with foreign countries that engage in unfair trade practices, dishonestly manipulate their currency, steal our intellectual property, and then bring their products into our stores without paying the same border fees that U.S. products must pay when we sell to foreign countries.

Yes, we do want to protect American workers against the globalists' effort to locate manufacturing jobs in Asia where people work for 30 cents an hour. Even the Wall Street Journal-NBC poll reports that Republican voters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, now believe that free trade is bad for the U.S. economy because it costs jobs.

Yes, we do want to protect Americans from the low-wage, non-English-speaking Mexican truck drivers whom George W. Bush is allowing on our highways. Yes, we do want to protect Americans from the poisonous pet food, seafood, toothpaste, and toys that come from Communist China.

Yes, we do want to protect Americans from the foreign tribunals that rule against us, such as the World Trade Organization that has ruled against the United States in 40 out of 47 cases and now is demanding that we repeal our law against internet gambling. Yes, we do want to protect American sovereignty and wealth from the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea which seeks to control all the seas and the minerals under them.

It's time we reclaim the words protect and protectionism and proudly say, yes, we believe in protecting America and American workers against unfair competition, unfair trade agreements, and unfair foreign tribunals.

Eagle Forum • PO Box 618 • Alton, IL 62002 • phone: 618-462-5415 • fax: 618-462-8909 • eagle@eagleforum.org

Read this article online: http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2007/nov07/07-11-07.html

[reprinted by permission]